Project Far Reach

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Calls and text messages about other cases poured into the closed in office where the small group of police officers struggled to discover more about events that lead to Edward's case. Hardy, Deivia and Jeremy Holder were determined to unravel this one. The department didn't like having the Feds come in and take over, and locals usually felt as thought the out-of-towners rarely had there best interests at heart.

The team divided up the work between them and got busy. Deivia typed furiously on the computer finding and downloading as much data as she could about Sara Johnson's financial records. It was beginning to look to her like the woman may have been involved in more than mere animal care. Several chemical and automotive companies had been show up in the customer database. Sara had either been a serious entrepreneur or her veterinarian career was just a front.

Officer holder was searching through various contacts and relatives of Edwards for any criminal backgrounds. They figured if anything popped out it would be a good place to start. So far parking tickets and a few juvenile instances were the only things revealing themselves.

Hardy looked at page after page of news articles as he ran searches on his laptop. The detective was intrigued at the papers the days before he met Edward. He had read both articles at least five times. The first one seemed to be more sympathetic but both were a little sarcastic; especially the second one. It seemed like the piece was actually designed to attack Edward directly. Hardy suspected that if the murder had never happened the Johnson's surely would have tried to press charges.

He minimized the page and started looking at older articles. His search was pretty broad. Anything in the last five years that had anything to do with dolphins or whales was popping up. He had only recently found out about a series documenting modern day whaling by serious countries and people. He had always figured that whaling was something that had been done in our ancient past. Of course he could remember the 'save the whales' movement back in the seventies and eighties, but since then he'd never given it a second thought.

The Detective was eventually pulling up three thousand year old accounts of dolphins helping humans. The oldest of which was of a boy who had befriended a dolphin and would travel with him up the river each day and do tricks for the townspeople. Apparently, one day the dolphin tried to follow the boy all the way home and got stranded and died.

More recent facts he learned included that a person in the classical British Navy could be hung for shooting at dolphins. This was based on the superstitious belief that dolphins would help sailors that were stranded at sea. The people based this belief on tales dating back to the ancient Greeks. One such tale was of a man being forced to walk the plank on a vessel far at sea. The man's only last request was that he be allowed to whistle one last song. The captain agreed and when the long high pitched song was over the sailor jumped over board. Apparently, a nearby group of dolphins had heard the song and were attracted and they helped the man over one hundred miles to shore.

He was surprised to find that even the classic book MOBY DICK was based on the true story of a whaling vessel struck by an infuriated bull sperm whale. The damage of the impact sunk the ship, leaving the crew drifting in the middle of the pacific in a few small boats.

One of the more recent attacks by whales was of course the infamous killing by a killer whale in captivity. A fierce debate ensued over whether the animal should put down or not. He remembered hearing something about it.

Hardy looked down at his watch, seven thirty. It was probably getting dark outside and they were getting nowhere fast. “Alright everyone it's getting late, what do we got?”

Deivia rolled around in her chair. Several loose strands of hair had slipped out of her pony tail and were pointing awkwardly. “Well, I spent the better part of the day looking at the wife's financial records. She's an absolute entrepreneur. She's got at least ten different businesses going worth over two million dollars in all. Just out of curiosity I figured I would look at Edward's finances just to be thorough. Turns out he's the real gold mine.”