Who is Raphael Garza? Part 6
Who was Jorge Montoya?
As exhausted as we were, neither of us slept well, and we were both awake by 8:15 Sunday morning. As we drank our coffee, we didn't speak about our adventure of the previous night. After eating breakfast, I went into my office with the three items I took from Garza, his keys, his cell phone and his wallet. Kathy followed me in with fresh cups of coffee for both of us. The keychain held the fob for the keyless start and another fob for his home security system. I opened Garza's phone, but it was locked. I tossed the phone on the desk and said. "That's no help."
"Check his wallet and see who he was yesterday," Kathy said.
I looked at her because of the way she phrased her statement, "See who he was yesterday." It was almost funny, but still appropriate.
The wallet held $150 in cash, two debit cards, and a Pennsylvania driver's license. The name on the debit cards and driver's license was Jorge Montoya.
"Another fucking name!" I yelled.
I showed Kathy the license and said, "His name is Jorge Montoya, and it has an address in Rydal, Pennsylvania."
The picture on the license looked more like his Garza character than Carlos, but it was easy to see that he could play both.
"You think that's his real name?" Kathy said.
"Who knows? This license was issued in 2010, so he has used that name for a while. Let me check out this address and see if it is real, and if so, we will need to find out if anyone else lives there that might come looking for him."
I Googled the address on the driver's license and looked up the property tax records. The tax records verified that the property was purchased in 2010 by Jorge Montoya.
"I am going to have to pay a visit to the late Mr. Montoya's house.
"Why?"
"I want to know if he really did live there and see if anyone lived there with him.
I would also like to get inside the house to see if there is anything there that could lead back to us."
"If you go, I am going with you."
I was going to say no, but I could see that she was determined. "Okay, go after lunch."
The drive from Princeton to Rydal took about an hour. My GPS led us directly to the house. From the street, you could not see the front of the house or the garage entrance. I drove around the block once before I pulled into the driveway and stopped in front of the garage. As soon as the car stopped, Kathy jumped out and went to the front door and pressed the doorbell. Kathy waited a minute then pressed the doorbell again. There was still no response, so Kathy came back to the car.
"What were you planning to do if someone answered the door?" I said.
"I would have said 'Hello, have you heard the good word of our lord and savior'?" Kathy said. "You wanted to know if anyone else lived there, didn't you?"
I was tense, but I had to laugh anyway. "I guess if someone did answer the door, you would be sent away pretty quickly."
Montoya's key chain had a fob with buttons to open the garage door and arm and disarm the house's security system. When I opened the door of the two-car garage it was empty. I pulled the car in and closed the door behind us. I listened for any sounds that would indicate an alarm, but heard nothing. I got out of the car and approached the door to the house. I pressed the button on the fob to disarm the alarm system and heard a beep and a recorded voice say "System Disarmed."
Kathy and I both put on latex gloves, I opened the door and we entered the kitchen of the silent house. Kathy gave the kitchen a quick appraisal and said, "Looks like he lives, I mean lived, here alone."
"What makes you say that?" I said as I opened the refrigerator.
"Look in the sink. There is one coffee mug, one plate, one fork, and one knife. It looks like he had breakfast for one yesterday."
"There's not much food in the fridge, I said. "Some ground beef, a block of cheese and some salad makings. There's also a half case of beer." I took two Dock Street Bohemian Pilsners from the fridge, handed one to Kathy and said, "I think we need to search the rest of the house to be sure he lived here alone."
We walked through the family room into the front foyer. To the right of the stairs leading to the second floor was Montoya's home office. I told Kathy that I was going to start in the office and asked her to check out the second floor. As Kathy headed upstairs, I sat down at Montoya's desk and searched through the drawers. In the top drawer, I found a new unused flash drive and a roll of tape, a couple of pens and an unused pad of paper. The lower drawer was full of file folders. There were many documents in the folders, but after looking through them, they didn't seem to have anything to do with the drug dealing or the money laundering, so I put them back where I found them and turned my attention to the laptop computer on the desk. When I moved the wireless mouse, the screen lit up and displayed the desktop. Apparently, he, I guessed I should call him Montoya now, wasn't worried that he would never be coming home again and left his computer on when he left the house Saturday morning. That thought gave me a chill. I guess you can never be sure of what might happen to you at any time.
There were no interesting files or folders on the desktop, so I opened his email account. There was nothing in his inbox, but there was a note he sent out Friday to a theater group in Paducah, Kentucky, which included his headshot using the name. Alonzo Jackson. In the email, Montoya inquired about the prospect of auditioning for any upcoming projects. Apparently, he could not give up the acting bug.
The picture he attached to his note showed him with medium length light brown hair and no facial hair. Montoya looked very different, but not enough that I couldn't tell that it was the Weasel.
There were no emails to friends or business associates, and the trash file was empty. There was only one name in his contacts list. When I put the cursor over the name, Maggie, the email address that came up was 'margaret.robertson@xxx.com' I wondered if Margaret was a business contact or a personal friend.
With nothing else in the emails, I went to the files on the hard drive. There were no music files or picture files, but there were about twenty files in the Documents folder. Two of them caught my interest. The first file I opened was labeled 'Business.' The file was a spreadsheet with about 125 names with street addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers followed by three columns of numbers. There was nothing to indicate what the numbers represented. The names were in alphabetical order, and there were five lines with no information. I had no idea what this file represented or if it was important. The other file labeled 'PWs' was just what you might expect it to be. It was a spreadsheet listing the web addresses for several businesses along with sign-in IDs and passwords, phone numbers, and in some cases, account numbers.
The list started with the IDs and passwords for three different email accounts, followed by insurance companies for his car and homeowner's policies and a few other internet sites that didn't interest me, but what followed did. First Bank of Brodricksburg was next on the list, followed by Bank of America and the Cayman National Bank. These bank listings included sign-on IDs, passwords, and account numbers. I sent the 'PWs' spreadsheet to Montoya's printer and then opened each of the three email accounts.
The first one was the account that he used to send out his headshot. JMontoya@xxxx.com.
The ID for the second account I found was carl0s@xxxx.com. The notes in this account were all sent to or received from Montgomery and Farrell. The emails dated back to the first of the year. There were only thirteen notes, and I downloaded them all to the flash drive I found in Montoya's desk drawer.
The third account with the ID, cagomez, concerned me. When I opened it, all the notes were in Spanish. There were only five notes in the inbox and three in the sent file. I added these notes to the flash drive. I took three years of Spanish in high school, but that was a long time ago, so I knew it would take me a while to translate those notes.
When I found nothing else of interest in the office, I went back into the hallway and opened the hall closet. There was only one thing in the closet. It was a big safe, five feet tall, and maybe three feet wide. I went back to the office and looked at the spreadsheet, and on the last line was the word "Combo" followed by the numbers 37, 96, and 14. Could it be that easy? I spun the dial to the numbers, and the safe opened.
The contents of the safe presented a whole new set of problems. I am not a weapons expert, but it appeared that Montoya had two AR15 assault rifles and five different handguns in the safe, with several boxes of ammunition for those weapons. In addition to the guns, there were stacks of hundred dollar bills totaling $50,000 and a large envelope containing what I assumed to be the missing $240,000 in bearer bonds. There was also a Pendaflex accordion file full Montoya's legal papers. Behind the Pendaflex folder, I found a box on the floor of the safe. The box contained twenty DVDs in individual cases.
I was using the computer to look at one of the DVDs when Kathy came back into the office.
"I checked out the master bedroom and found only men's clothing all the same size, same with his dresser drawers. But in the master bathroom, I found a woman's bathrobe. Maybe that's for guests. I also looked in the other rooms up there, and I can say that no one else lives in this house,' Kathy said, "There is one other room I think you should see before we leave."
"We can't leave yet," I said, and I led Kathy over to the closet and showed her the safe. She looked at the guns, money and bearer bonds and shook her head.
"What do you think we should do?" Kathy said.
"I've got something to show you over here," I said, and moved over to the desk and motioned for Kathy to follow me.
I pointed to the twenty DVDs in their plastic cases and picked one up, and I indicated the writing on the DVD case. 'Julia Paxton, May 28, 2005.' I picked up another DVD. This one said, 'Laura Nelson November 4, 2011'.
Kathy looked at me and asked, "What are these?"
I pointed at the computer screen and hit play, and the video of Kathy in bed Garza appeared on the screen. Kathy didn't make a sound, and when I looked at her, tears were streaming down her face. "Turn it off, please," She said.
