Mortal Dilemma (25 page)

“I've made a cursory analysis of the documents Reuben Carlson sent me,” he said, “and it looks like there was an awful lot of money going from the Fortson trusts into a lot of different accounts, mostly in the Tallahassee area.”

“Did any of that money go to Wayfarer, Inc.?” I asked.

Ken thumbed through a small stack of documents. “I looked at what I've got so far, and extrapolated over the three-year period since Rachel's death that approximately ten million dollars was transferred to Wayfarer.”

“That's a lot of money,” J.D. said.

“Yes,” Ken said, “and all the checks were for ninety-five hundred dollars.”

“The feds don't get too excited unless the checks are for ten grand or more,” J.D. said.

“Right,” Ken said, “and these checks were sent to several different accounts that Wayfarer controls. I've listed them as Wayfarer numbers one through twelve.”

“That hides the transaction even better,” I said, “Were all the accounts on the same bank?”

“No. Each account was in a different bank. The banks are mostly small community banks in little towns between Pensacola and Jacksonville. And Wayfarer wasn't the only corporation where lots of money was being sent.”

“How did the trusts work when it came to sending money?” I asked.

“Simple. Peter Fortson signed checks just as if they were drawn on his own account. He was the co-trustee with the bank, but he was the only one who could sign a check. Everything was run through the bank in Orlando that served as the co-trustee.”

“The bank was probably co-trustee, so the trust would continue in the event of the deaths of the beneficiaries,” I said. “In this case, Rachel and Peter.”

“I looked at some of the corporations that were receiving the money Fortson sent,” Ken said. “Most of them are like Wayfarer. We don't know who any of the board members are, or who runs them. Their offices of record seem to be for the most part just mail drops; boxes in stores where those who rent the boxes can remain anonymous. But there were some individual names that popped up who were sent large amounts, often by wire transfer. Most of them had to do with business transactions, but I think that was bogus. I couldn't find anything anywhere that would indicate that the business deals were ever consummated. No return on investment, no transfers back to the trust, nothing.”

“Were you able to figure out who the recipients of that money were?” J.D. asked.

“I found out quite a bit on some of them. Several were bookies with mob associations.”

“You think Fortson was involved in gambling?” J.D. asked.

“Maybe.”

“Does it look like Peter was in any kind of money squeeze at the time of Rachel's murder?”

“It would appear so. The trust documents were in the stack we got from Parrish's office. The trust was set up so that Peter and Rachel's dad was the sole beneficiary, but he could also borrow from it. It looks like the grandfather was afraid that his grandchildren might be a little more profligate than his son, so the trust documents provided that upon the death of the son, that is Peter and Rachel's father, the trust would be split into two parts. There was a firewall between the two parts of the trust. Neither of the kids, Peter or Rachel, could invade the other's half. When one of them died, if he or she had no children or a spouse, the money in the decedent's trust would revert to the remaining child's trust. When Rachel was killed, Peter got everything.”

“What did Peter's trust look like at the time of Rachel's murder?” I asked.

“It was almost gone. Peter had borrowed so much from it that the principal had been depleted to almost nothing. He would have been destitute within a year or so.”

“Where did Peter's money go?” J.D. asked.

“I don't know. Yet. I haven't had time to go through the documents on Peter's trust that preceded the time of Rachel's death. But I can tell you that there were big checks going out of his trust to some of the same people the checks were going to just after Rachel's death. A cursory look at those documents makes me think that Peter depleted his trust funds by sending the money to some pretty bad people over a number of years.”

“What happens to the money now?” J.D. asked. “Peter told me it would go to a bunch of charities, but I never saw the trust documents.”

Ken said, “The trust will survive, but the money generated by it all goes to various legitimate charities. At least that's the way Grandpa Fortson set it up. But there's a hitch. Several weeks ago, Peter
petitioned the probate court in Orlando to allow him to change the terms of the trust. He wanted all the money to go to one entity that appeared to be a charity, rather than the ones his grandfather had set out in the original documents. Last week the probate court issued an order refusing to change the beneficiaries. The money will go to the charities Grandpa set out.”

“What was the charity Peter wanted to leave the money to?” I asked.

“It's called Ishmael's Children. He'd given a lot of money to it over the past three years or so. But there's something funny going on with it. Fortson's federal income tax returns were included in the documents on his laptop, and he never took any deductions for donations to Ishmael's Children. I checked it out. I don't think it's a charity. It's on the Department of Homeland Security's list of organizations that support al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations. It may be a terrorist group itself. That wasn't clear, but I'd bet my last buck it isn't a charity.”

M
ONDAY
, N
OVEMBER
3

S
KEETER
E
VANS SAT
in the same interview room that had held Xavier Duhns several hours earlier. His right arm was shackled to the O-ring cemented into the floor. He looked like a big dumb redneck. He was wearing a sweatshirt from which the sleeves had been torn, revealing muscled arms tattooed with a mixture of prison tats and work done at a tattoo shop that catered to people who thought caricatures of naked women were fine art. His red hair hadn't been washed or combed in weeks, if ever. He sat scowling across the table at Detective Glenn Howell. J.D. and I were back in the anteroom watching through the one-way glass.

Glenn sat quietly, looking directly at Skeeter. A couple of minutes passed and then Evans opened his mouth and proved my hypothesis that he was dumber than a stump. “What the fuck you looking at, you blond motherfucker?”

The detective smiled, reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, and pulled out a small aerosol cylinder, held it near Skeeter's nose, and pressed. A quick spurt of spray, short and pungent, pushed Skeeter back in his chair. I smelled the odor of pepper spray escaping the small room. Skeeter howled and put his free hand to his face, trying desperately to make the burning go away. Glenn pushed his chair back, stood, and walked out.

“Was that pepper spray?” I asked.

“Yeah. It's kind of a sedative. It'll make him a bit more docile.” He walked into the breakroom down the hall and returned with a plastic bottle of water and a washcloth. He went back into the room and handed them to Skeeter. “Here. Wash out your eyes. When you're finished, we can either have a civil conversation, or I can use up some more of that spray.”

Skeeter nodded.

“Talk to me about the car you stole.”

“I didn't steal no car.”

“You paid Xavier Duhns two thousand bucks to steal one.”

“Okay.”

“Where'd you get that kind of money, Skeeter?”

“Okay. A dude gave me the money. Told me he needed a car. Xavier was like a subcontractor, you know?”

“Who's the dude who paid you?”

“Didn't get a name.”

“Describe him.”

“Never saw him.”

“How did you set up the deal?”

“Phone.”

“How did you get the money?”

“One of those messenger dudes brought it to me.”

“Messenger dude?”

“You know. Those guys what drive those little cars and deliver packages and such around town.”

Glenn nodded. “Okay. How much did he give you?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

“Are you telling me you just handled all this, set up the car theft, and all out of the goodness of your heart?”

“The dude might have paid me for my time.”

“How much?”

“A grand.”

“When was this set up?”

“Last Wednesday.”

“What time of day.”

“I don't remember. Sometime in the morning.”

“Early?”

“Yeah. Right after I got out of bed.”

“What time do you get up?”

“Usually around ten.”

“Who were you supposed to kill?”

Glenn leaned back in his chair, giving J.D. the signal to enter. As she walked in the door, Skeeter did a double take, recognition dawning across his face. He slumped a little in his chair, confusion replacing recognition in his facial expression.

“It's good to see you again, Skeeter,” J.D. said, taking a seat next to Detective Howell. “You don't look so tough without that shotgun.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Skeeter said in a voice that carried no conviction. He was had and he knew it. He wiped at his red eyes some more with the wet washcloth.

“Skeeter,” Glenn said, “I need to tell you something. Kind of in confidence, if you know what I mean.”

Skeeter nodded, a bit tentatively, I thought.

“You tried to take out a cop,” Howell said. “Now we just can't let that sort of thing go. I mean, can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if dumbasses like you could just kill cops when they feel like it? Why, you and your buddies would make a regular thing of it and take your chances in the system. You know how we prevent that?”

Skeeter shook his head.

“We kill you. No trial, no investigation to amount to anything, no lawyers. We just take you out in a police boat to the middle of Lake
Monroe, tie a couple of anchors around your neck and drop you overboard. You can see how that might work as a deterrent.”

“I want a lawyer,” Skeeter said.

J.D. leaned into the table, staring directly at Skeeter. “Man, you are dumber than a goldfish.”

“I ain't dumb,” he said. “A little slow, maybe.”

“Then chew on this and see if it makes sense. You are not getting a lawyer. You're going to Lake Monroe as soon as it gets dark and you won't be coming back. The Seminole County sheriff will be out a couple of anchors and one very dumbass citizen. Do you get that?”

“You're going to kill me?”

“That's my preference,” J.D. said, “but you have one way out. You answer our questions truthfully, and you'll be charged and go to prison, but you won't die. At least not tonight.”

Skeeter looked down at the table and said in a quiet, defeated voice, “What do you want to know?”

“What else did the man who gave you the money for the car want you to do?” J.D. asked.

“Kill you.”

“How was that set up?”

“He was going to send me an iPad that would track the car you were driving. I was supposed to go to Gainesville and be ready to pick up your trail when you got to the Interstate. Somebody would call me when you got within range of the iPad, and I would park in that rest stop just before you get to Paynes Prairie and wait for you to pass.”

“How did you know I was going to be on the Interstate?”

“The man on the phone said he was pretty sure you would be coming that way. I asked him what would happen if you went right down Highway 19. He said he had another team on that route to take you out.”

“Did he say why he wanted me dead?”

“No.”

“How much did he pay you?”

“Five grand.”

“A few minutes ago you said he paid you one grand. Now it's five grand.”

“It was five,” Skeeter said.

“Five grand? To kill a cop?”

“Well, I had to give Xavier two thousand.”

“Geez,” J.D. said, “I thought I'd be worth more than five grand.”

“Three grand, actually,” Glenn said.

“You hush.”

“I'm just saying,” Glenn said. “Somebody once paid a guy ten grand to take me out.”

“Did you catch him?''

“Sure did. Just some sleazeball I'd sent to prison ten years before.”

“What happened to him?” J.D. asked.

“He's in Lake Monroe.”

“Oh,” J.D. said.

She turned back to Skeeter. “What were your instructions?”

“The man told me to get the car and go to Gainesville Thursday morning. The messenger what brought the money also brought me the iPad and showed me how to use it. It didn't have nothing on it but a map. The messenger told me that I would get a call from somebody on Thursday who would tell me when to turn the pad on. He said there'd be a little dot on it that would be a moving car. There was a picture of the detective in the envelope with the money. He said the detective would be driving that car and that I was supposed to pull up beside her on I-75 when we were going over Paynes Prairie and shoot her and bring the car back to the parking lot out by the airport.”

“Who was the guy in the van following me?”

“I don't know. I didn't know there was a guy in a van.”

“Guy named Mabry Jackson.”

“Don't know him.”

“You didn't have a backup out there?”

“No.”

“Somebody in a van tried to kill me after you sped on by. He wrecked and when I went to see about him, he shot at me. I had to kill him. You don't know anything about that?”

“No, ma'am. I'd surely tell you if I did.”

“Does the name D. Wesley Gilbert mean anything to you?”

“Never heard of him.”

“What phone did the man contact you on?”