Bobat Too

When I wrote the story the only logical place I found to break it was at the end of BobKat. This is the continuation of that story. This might stand alone, but it will make more sense if you have read the first installment.

Again, I tried not to hurt any feelings, hay bales, words or other such critters while writing this story.

I went back and tried, to some degree, to incorporate more dialog into the story; I guess it is not quite my style, but I tried. I tend to like to tell a story from a semi-detached point of view.

About the commenters who thought I ended it too short and did not flesh things out, again I did not want to give away more of what I was thinking. I suppose I could have told you there would be more; but I was not happy with what I had yet. I did not want to feel forced into providing what I felt was not up to what I want to share with you.

I hope this satisfies everyone, I like what I have done with it.

Maybe I don't get it; but, I think that loving wives stories should be about wives who love the ones they are supposed to, their husbands.. OH silly me!?

PTBzzzz

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I was in town to pick up supplies when I spotted a woman coming out of the bank. The way she walked looked too familiar. You could tell by her movements that she was angry. This was the way I had seen her walk for too much of our marriage. Yes, it was my ex-wife Kat. She had disappeared years ago after giving birth to our daughter. No information was ever found on where she went. My entire farm and that of my Dad were searched multiple times by cadaver dogs. Parts of the surrounding properties were searched too. There were absolutely no clues about what happened.

I watched as she climbed into the backseat of a large SUV, the car pulled out from the curb. The windows were tinted to the point of being opaque. I pulled a pen out of my pocket and wrote the tag number on the receipt in my hand.

I called the sheriff and reported my observation to him. Later that evening he came by the house and told me the car got away.

After talking to the folks at the bank he determined that she had tried to take part of her money out of the bank. The problem was that the accounts were change by court order during the divorce proceedings. To withdraw any money you needed the correct new account and the court had to sign off on the withdrawal for the next 10 or so years.

When I filed for divorce they tried to give me the money, I did not want it. It was blood money to me, or worse it was money paid to a prostitute. I asked that it be held in trust for our daughter's college expenses. Other than some pictures she had nothing else to remember her mother by. She was way too young when Kat left to have any memory of her. As far as I ever knew Kat did not have any other family; she refused to talk about them.

After calling the sheriff I called my sister Sue, told her what I had seen, and asked that the video monitoring system be reinstalled.

Sean, her husband, called me later that evening and told me that the only cameras removed were the ones in our bedroom. The others were set to constantly record over any old data. The cards held 36 hours of memory if they ran continuously. Being motion activated they could have a longer time frame. He came over and changed out the cards for new ones and took them back for review.

The first one he looked at was the camera that covered the front lane leading to the house. In the last 8 days there were 2 times when unknown vehicles came into the drive and both times the same guys got out to look around. Then they got back into the car and drove away. One of the vehicles was the same SUV from the bank; the other was a dark blue pick up. The other 2 outside tapes only showed a different view of the area. The tapes from inside did not produce any results.

The sheriff had the tag number for both vehicles now.

The next morning found the state police at my door bright and early. They wanted details on the accident, my divorce, any background information I knew on my ex wife and exactly what I saw the day before. They apologized for not being able to tell me anything "...at this time." I was really puzzled as to what was happening.

When Merry, my now wife, returned from teaching that afternoon she reported that there were strange things going on in town. "There were a lot of new people in the area that to someone other than an observant local would blend right in. Some drove old farm trucks, others just looked like they could live here but she knew they didn't."

Some of the elementary school busses now had a second assistant. The new people were not local.

I discussed what happened in my day.

The next morning I had more visitors. The tags on the cars that had visited my driveway were from out of state; Sean had not told me about that, and I was too shocked at seeing Kat, so it did not occur to me to think of it. This time the visitors were from the FBI. They asked the same questions all over again, they recorded the interview. They asked a lot more detailed questions than the state police did. Finally I had to ask what was going on.

They only told me they were investigating a possible kidnapping.

I asked if the victim was Kat, they did not answer.

Being kept in the dark sucks. The only information I heard in the next 3 weeks was that the back of a withdrawal slip at the bank had a note that said "HELP....." I overheard that as I walked past 2 of the county deputies talking to each other. I could not make out the last of the sentence because he lowered his voice and was facing the other way. It might not even be related.

I called the sheriff and asked him to drop by and see me when he had a chance.

I also asked Sean to see if the life insurance was still paid up and to get me the date it started. He called back and said it was still in force, paid up and completely in order. He gave me the policy number, the date and the company's name that issued it.

I started to worry when he told me that the policy was still in force.

Just on a lark I looked around for our old bank statements from when we got married. I finally found them in a corner of the barn. I went through all of the statements for the first 3 years of our marriage and did not find one that paid for the insurance.

Next I called Sally, Rich's ex-wife, and asked her if it was company policy to pay for life insurance for the spouse of an employee.

Her response was that "...they have never done that for anyone."

I then asked her, please, to go through the bank statements for the same time period and see if there were payments made for a policy written from that company.

She called back 6 hours later and told me a policy was paid for out of her companies accounts until Rich was sent to jail. She said Rich had signed all the checks.

I asked if I could have copies of the checks. She had them waiting for me already.

We talked about my visitors. I asked her if she had any idea what the state police and FBI were looking for.

She said "They visited me too and asked for all kinds of information about Rich; how we met, where he was from, if I knew he had been married before, if he had any family, just about everything except the size of his left foot.

I asked her to put the copies she made for me away and told her I was going to call and speak to someone about the payments. Could she please let the authorities have any information they wanted on the matter.

The sheriff had not come out to see me yet, so I called him and told him about the conversation between Sally and me. I said they should get a copy of the policy and compare signatures from some old checks of mine to my signature on the policy. I also suggested that they look into how the policy is now being paid.

Less than 5 minutes later I was surrendering 20 old checks to the FBI for signature comparison to the policy. The lead agent sheepishly told me they had not thought about an insurance fraud connection to their investigation.

I told him "There might be more I could disclose if they would let me know what they were looking for."

His response was "I need to check with my boss and see if he wants to do that."

I asked "...if he needed his boss's permission to wipe when he took a dump."

He scowled at me and turned to go.

I called him back "I already know enough to realize my life is in danger, I am worried for the sake of my wife and children. If I do not get answers soon I will pack up and go elsewhere to hideout until you boys pull your heads out of your asses."

I then asked '...if he had reviewed the evidence that was used to put Rich away for rape."

"Um, no." was his response.

I then told him "There are hours of recordings between Rich and Kat from before the rape. There might be something that will help you."

He did not know about those either.

The next morning I was summoned to see him and his boss, they came to get me. The 3 of us sat down in a secure conference room at their offices.

"We are recording this conversation; do you have any need for a lawyer? If you do we will stop now and you can get one."

"Keep the damn recorder running until I leave the room to go home. I have no need for a lawyer but you might want to include my brother in law Sean in the conversation too. I might miss or forget something important to you. Hell! Bring in my sister too; she is just as involved as Sean and me."

They wanted to stop the recording.

"Oh, Hell No! Keep the damn thing running, I have absolutely nothing to hide."

They handed me a phone; I called Sue. She answered their office phone.

"Sue, this is Bobby. This conversation is being recorded by the FBI, I need you and Sean to come in and help me give them information on things that happened before my divorce from Kat. If you want to bring a lawyer you can."

"Are you sure you want us to do this?"

"Yes, when you get here I will tell you why I think we need to talk to them. They will send a car for you."

20 minutes later Sue, Sean and their lawyer were escorted into the conference room.

After everyone was introduced I started talking. "Are we still being recorded?"

The agents both said we were.

"I have come to the conclusion that my life is in danger because of the large insurance policy taken out on me by Kat. I want these people to have as much information about the things that happened between Kat and I before the divorce as we can give them."

I turned to the 2 agents and said "If I am wrong please correct me, otherwise we need to get started."

The 2 of them looked at each other and shrugged. The head agent, Shultz, said "I guess, in a nut shell you are correct."

"OK, why don't we start with the accident?" I said. Then I proceeded to tell him about plowing the fields, parking the tractor, walking toward the house and waking in the barn, covered by a hay bale and weak from loss of blood. I also told about the conversations between Kat and Rich in the hospital room.

"Did I forget anything? We need to give as much information to them as we can. Did we do everything by the book? AND, make sure they get a copy of the pictures taken after the accident too."

Sue spoke up, "We did everything exactly as the law requires. You are the sole owner of the farm; you requested video and audio surveillance of your property. We provided that service to you. The signed copies of the work order are in the files. We placed 10 digital motion activated video cameras upon your property in areas that would provide complete coverage of all comings and goings, as well as the main living areas of your home. We have complete copies of all those recordings except for the recordings of your bedroom."

Shultz and the other agent Carter sat there with their mouths hanging open. It was so quiet in the room I swear I could hear them drooling.

"Is that something that might help your investigation?" I asked.

Their heads started to nod, "Yes" one of them muttered.

"Do you have the capability to copy of all the recordings at high speed? I do not feel that we should have to give up the originals. The volume is too great to use standard methods. You can have everything we have, and if there is an issue about clarity you can view the originals at any time. Don't forget we have the memory card from the camera that took the pictures."

"We can have it here no later than this afternoon." Carter replied. He walked to a corner and made a call.

"I have reviewed the recordings from our bedroom; I doubt that there is anything that would help you unless you want to try to charge her with trying to screw me to death. If you think you have need of them you can watch them at my place; the only recording from our bedroom that I think you might need to see is the 2 different views where Rich and Kat are rutting. Do not forget to copy the telephone recordings."

Sean spoke up and asked if they wanted the records from the 2 GPS devices.

Their eyes started to glass over. "You tracked their movement too!"

"We only tracked them after the attack. Now,'" I said "what can you tell us about your investigation that will not compromise it. Sue and Sean are officers of the court and can not divulge any information without loosing their business. I need to know how to protect my family and myself from harm. I am not about to say anything that will help the people you are investigating."

Sue and Sean showed them their ID's.

Shultz started to tell us about the investigation. "The 2 sets of license plates are registered to a company in the next state, There are 2 other company vehicles we are watching for as well; the sole owner of that company is one Richard Roberts. . He, as you know, was in jail for the rape of your wife. He was released on Parole about 6 weeks ago. His address of record is just this side of the state line, and about a ½ hour drive from the address of record for the company that owns the vehicles."

"We have been watching the address he is supposed to be living at and have seen no activity. We have not seen him at the business address either. We also have not found either of the vehicles that were in your driveway, or the other 2 they own."

"The long and the short of it is we have a great deal of information but not the correct information. Mr. Roberts is required to check in with his probation officer tomorrow before noon, we hope to get a tracking device on his car when he checks in."

At this point we are hoping that some of the locations you recorded earlier will be of use in trying to find him."

"You may have noticed a lot of people you do not know in town. At this time we have 6 agents staking out your home, 2 agents near the bank, and some around the school where your wife and daughter spend time. We can not tell you where and how many, but they are there for their protection. There are backups waiting to swoop in at a moments notice, I won't say where they are."

Well, I had seen 2 of the agents near the house; I did not care about the bank and knew of about 13 agents near the school by Merry's count. I said nothing about them.

"We have just this morning received the original copy of the insurance policy at another of our offices; the checks you gave us should be there in about an hour. They will do a careful analysis of the handwriting to determine if there is fraud involved."

"That is where things stand at this time." Someone knocked on the door, entered when called in, set a box on the table and left.

Agent Carter said "That is the device to copy the memory cards."

The damn thing was smaller than a pack of playing cards.

Shultz dialed a phone number and reported that there was no activity at the areas we needed to go to. I was placed in one car and taken home. Sue, Sean, their lawyer and 4 agents were placed into a delivery van with no windows and sent back to their office. The van pulled into their warehouse and discharged the occupants to go pull and copy the files. 10 minutes later the van was back on the road with a flash drive holding all the locations that Rich had gone before the rape arrest. For good measure they also had the list of where Kat had gone during the same time. A little over 4 hours later they had a copy of every recording ever saved at my farm and they were gone.

I had been told to continue life as usual until otherwise notified. The next day as I drove into town to pick up some bags of feed at the mill I saw a dark blue pick up, with out of state tags, parked near the court house. I was sitting at a red light on the square when a boy who looked to be about 15 came running out of the park after a ball; it went under the truck. The boy ran up to the truck and announced that their ball had rolled under the truck, and then he asked if he could reach under and get it. The driver nodded his approval so the boy lay on the ground, slid under the truck picked up the ball and reached into his pocket before he grabbed the frame of the truck to pull himself out again. He ran around to the driver's side thanked the man and ran off. That took 15 seconds, tops.

I thought, "That was really slick if it was what I thought I saw." I found out after the case was over that it was what I thought.

Can you say GPS? I knew you could.

The boy was an agent in training who just looked really young; I found that out later too.

I drove on to the mill without a second glance.

When I left to head home the truck was gone.

Life continued at the usual pace for the next 3 weeks, I noticed 2 more of the 6 agents who were staking out the farm; the other 2 must be really good.

It was a Friday when agent Shultz came out to see me at the farm. He was all smiles. "Thank you for your assistance, it made our job so much easier. We have Mr. Roberts in custody, along with 3 of his cronies. We believe we have everyone and the case is airtight. We are ready to charge him with the murder of his first wife, attempted murder of you, 2 counts of insurance fraud, extortion, blackmail, multiple counts of rape, embezzlement of funds from the real estate company, kidnapping and illegal detention of your first wife. We also have him for exceeding the speed limit and running a stop sign just for shitzangiggles."

"Your ex-wife Kathy is being held in protective custody; she will be one of our main witnesses against them. Even without her testimony we have a slam dunk case here. The information we got from you made the case that much tighter."

"Will Kat be charged with anything?"

He replied, "No, when she disappeared, he had her kidnapped. When she went to the bank the first time she was given papers to fill out for the court order to get her money out. He had her fill them in and mail them back to the court. There was a copy of her drivers license, still had her old address of the farm on it, as proof of identity. The notary who signed off on the form knew just about where they lived. His description of the place put it where our GPS and your older GPS records showed he had gone."

4 months later in Federal Court the trial began, Kat was nowhere to be seen until the day she testified. She was escorted into the courtroom by 6 burly bodyguards, all 7 of them had on flack jackets and protective headgear.

Kat had a rough time testifying as to the facts in the case; she broke down and cried many times over the 2 days of testimony. The lawyer for Mr. Roberts and his cronies tried to make her out as a spurned lover, a whore, an adulterer and any other thing that popped into his head as he rolled along.

There were tapes made from a bug that they put into her bra when she returned to the bank to get her money, the money was all marked and serial numbers recorded. She also had a bug in her purse and one in the bag she carried the money out in.