But here was the part of policing no one told you about until it was too late: The doing was the smallest piece of the job. Writing up reports detailing what you’d just done, on the other hand…
He was filling out paperwork. Lots of it. So was Kevin, but Kevin actually liked paperwork. He was annoying that way.
Two A.M., his cell phone rang. Nicole Adams. Didn’t surprise him, and not just because Nicole was an upwardly mobile FBI agent, but because she genuinely cared about her work. If a case didn’t have a resolution—and this one certainly lacked many key answers—she’d stay nose to the grindstone till it did.
Out of professional respect, not to mention for old times’ sake, he took the call.
“Found the white van?” she asked immediately. His department was handling the APB on the white cargo van, not to mention Justin Denbe’s corpse.
“No van, no band of merry men and no dead body.”
“Seriously? With all the officers in the area?”
“I’m getting the impression the hired muscle involved a brain or two.”
Deep sigh. “The body bothers me,” Nicole muttered. “They’re not going to keep something that incriminating, let alone smelly, in the back of their vehicle.”
“Oh, I doubt they’re driving the van anymore. Best guess, given their complete disappearance off the radar screen, is that they had another vehicle waiting. Tomorrow morning, we’ll start sending divers into nearby lakes and ponds. Most likely, we’ll find the van completely submerged with Denbe’s body in the back. That would explain the whole now-you-see-’em, now-you-don’t act.” His turn to ask a question: “Any trace of the missing funds?”
“No, and I’m told the financial gurus have turned Anita Bennett’s personal finances inside and out. It’s possible she has the monies stashed under an alias in yet another offshore account, of course. But as of this moment, we’re mostly chasing our tails.”
Wyatt grunted, Nicole’s frustration on the subject mirroring his own.
“Libby and Ashlyn?” he asked.
“Returned to their townhome.” Where they could magically pick up the pieces of their lives. Nicole didn’t say the words out loud, but they were implied.
“Are you going to see her?” Nicole asked abruptly.
“Who?”
“Tessa Leoni. She stands next to you, you know. With everyone else, she maintains a good three- to five-foot barrier. But not you.”
Wyatt thought he might be blushing. He covered his face with his hand, while hedging carefully. “Why are you asking?”
“It’s late. I’m tired. I’m curious.”
“Tessa is an interesting woman.”
“You’re going to ask her out.” Nicole supplied the words not as a question but as a statement. She didn’t sound angry about it, though. More like satisfied.
“What’s his name?” Wyatt asked.
Nicole’s turn to blush, at least that’s what he told himself.
“Well, now that you mention it…”
Turned out she’d met a financial planner six months ago. They were very happy together. Which made Wyatt feel surprisingly better about things. Not that they owed each other anything, but still… Always nice to know the other person was happy, and all’s well that ends well.
“You’ll call me when you find the van?” Nicole requested now. “Or better yet, when you’ve located our three suspects.”
“Sure. Likewise?”
“Likewise.”
“Now go get some sleep. One of us has to.”
Wyatt hung up the phone. Then he laced his fingers behind his head, leaned back in his chair and frowned. Personal life aside, Nicole’s update on the missing funds bothered him. A van with three commandos and a body vanishing into thin air made some sense. The right pond, forest gully, overgrown pile of bramble. Plenty of places in the wilds of New Hampshire convenient for disappearing a vehicle. But the embezzled funds? Eleven million dollars that had been sitting around in a variety of fake bank accounts for the past fifteen or so years suddenly gone without a trace?
“Kevin,” he called out. Across the task-force room, where they’d spread out to do their paperwork, Kevin’s head popped up.
“What?”
“You’re a smart man. If you had eleven million dollars, what would you do with it?”
“Stuff my mattress,” the resident brainiac replied promptly. “Bedding doesn’t require any paperwork. Better yet, it can’t testify against you in a court of law.”
“But the funds were in the Bahamas just a week ago,” Wyatt countered. “In real bank accounts. That’s what Ruth Chan said. She went to steal the money back, so to speak, only to discover there were even more accounts than she’d suspected.” Which sparked another thought.
“What’s harder to believe, Kevin? Getting away with embezzling from a major corporation for sixteen years? Or stealing the money, but not touching a penny of it during all that time?”
Kevin was intrigued. He pulled himself away from his own pile of paperwork and walked on over. “Implies the person didn’t need the money yet. Not a drug addict or a gambler skimming money to feed a habit. More like, a disgruntled employee building a rainy-day fund.”
Kevin raised an interesting point. Most embezzlement cases still went back to motive—addiction issues, pressing medical bills, perhaps alimony and/or child support that was squeezing the person’s bank account. But embezzlement was generally carried out by an employee with a high degree of financial knowledge and authority in the company. Meaning these were people who were intelligent, respected and trusted. Most didn’t go to the dark side without some kind of underlying justification.
“So we’re talking a patient person. No immediate pressing financial issues. He or she created the first fake company approximately sixteen years ago,” Wyatt reviewed out loud. “Then, maybe when that didn’t trigger any consequences, simply kept going along. One year into two, then five, then ten, fifteen…skimming money, always small amounts, nothing that would make the radar screen. So disciplined. Almost gamesmanship.”
Wyatt tried the word on for size, liked it. “We’re talking someone who most likely, at a certain point, embezzled for the sake of embezzling. A personal little secret that enabled her or him to giggle on the inside during all management meetings, whatever. The classic if-only-you-knew…
“Of course, all good things must come to an end. Which in this case is August, when purely by accident, Ruth Chan discovered the first fake vendor. She does a little more digging, gets her ducks in a row, then discloses the fraud to Justin four weeks ago.”
Kevin frowned at him. “Justin knew about the missing money for a whole four weeks.”
“Yes and no,” Wyatt found himself correcting. “At the time, Chan thought the total amount skimmed was only four hundred thousand, an amount more annoying than horrifying for a hundred-million-dollar company. In fact, Justin decided the amount was so low that, instead of involving the police, he devised a strategy for stealing his own money back. He sent Ruth Chan to the Bahamas to close out the fake account, except the money was literally transferred out the day before.”
“So when does Justin know the full extent of the damage?” Kevin asked.
“He…didn’t,” Wyatt murmured, thoughts hitting overdrive.
“Huh?”
“He didn’t. Chan called him Friday afternoon. Told him the one account had been closed already but didn’t mention anything else. She asked for more time to investigate instead. Then…just hours later, Justin and his family were abducted from their own home.”
Kevin was staring at him. “To cover up the embezzlement,” the brainiac stated, as if this should be obvious. “So Justin would never know about the full eleven million that had been stolen from his family firm.”
“Maybe.” When he walked through the timeline out loud, what Kevin said made sense. Ruth Chan discovered the embezzlement was actually twenty times worse than they’d suspected, and within hours, Justin had been kidnapped. No such thing as coincidence in policing. Meaning the two events had to be connected. And yet. And yet…
“Ruth Chan!” Kevin declared abruptly. “She was the embezzler, and she arranged Justin’s kidnapping to cover up her own crime. Better yet, she’s not even in the country, meaning she has the perfect alibi.”
Wyatt frowned at him. “Without Ruth Chan, we wouldn’t even
know there had been sixteen years of fake billing. Since when does the thief report the theft?”
“To evade suspicion?” Kevin suggested.
Wyatt rolled his eyes, shook his head. “Who knew?” he asked abruptly. “That’s the question we need to answer. Who knew Ruth Chan had discovered the fake vendors? Who knew Ruth Chan would be in the Bahamas Friday morning to close out the first account? Who had enough inside information to transfer out all the money one day prior, to get his or her ducks in a row…”
Wyatt’s eyes, suddenly widening.
“Ruth Chan told someone,” Kevin was saying. “Or Justin did. Someone they trusted, but shouldn’t have, obviously.”
“Or, she didn’t tell anyone at all. She didn’t even want to talk to Justin about it, right? Not until she’d done all her homework first. That’s the kind of person Ruth Chan is, meticulous, discreet. We didn’t understand that. We didn’t pay enough attention to that. If anyone talked, it wasn’t Ruth Chan, it was Justin. Shit, I gotta make a phone call!”
Chapter 42
ASHLYN NEVER MADE IT TO THE BEDROOM. After the past few days spent desperately anticipating sleeping in her own bed, she barely made it out of the shower before crashing with wet hair and a T-shirt on the family-room sofa.
I’d been on the phone while she showered. Talking to Tessa Leoni, who was kinder and gentler than I would’ve expected. She assured me she would personally handle the situation with Chris. With discretion, of course. As well as the appropriate use of force. Her tone told me enough and only made me like her more.
I wanted to feel satisfied. Vindicated as an appalled mother, a betrayed friend. All those times I’d had him over to my house. And, yes, somewhere along the way, it had become clear he harbored a schoolboy’s crush on me. Certainly, right after I learned of Justin’s affair, Chris starting hanging around the house more, clearly willing to be a shoulder to cry on.
But I hadn’t leaned on him. I’d turned to painkillers instead.
I showered my way through my outrage. Washing my hair again and again and again. Lathering up, rinsing down, repeat, repeat, repeat. It was late, after 2:00 A.M. I should finish up, go to bed. I applied deep conditioner, then scoured my skin with the same ruthless diligence I’d just spent on my hair.
I wanted to think the worst of our experience was behind us, but
I already understood from this evening’s ordeal that the grillings from various law enforcement agencies had only just begun. In the morning, they’d be back. More questions, maybe even a request for a formal statement regarding Ashlyn’s relationship with Chris. Maybe they’d require a medical exam. Maybe I should think about hiring a lawyer.
What were your rights when you were a victim of a kidnapping and other violent crimes? What kind of counsel was involved in prosecuting a grown man for sleeping with your teenage daughter? What if Ashlyn wouldn’t press charges, or answer questions? Should I demand it of her, or would it only traumatize her further?
Then, in the middle of the shower, rinsing the conditioner from my hair, it hit me:
My husband was dead. I was alone. For now, for always, there would be no partner to ask these kinds of questions. Ashlyn’s best interests sat solely on my shoulders.
My husband was dead.
I was now a single parent.
Justin…the knife protruding from his bloody chest.
I went down. Dropped to my hands and knees on the tiled floor, the water beating at my back while I panted, gasping for breath.
Moments in a marriage. All those times when I know I saw my husband. All those times I wanted to believe he saw me. The first time we made love. The priest, declaring us man and wife. Him, holding a squalling newborn in his arms. And Justin, dying before my eyes.
He’d looked at me. He’d known, maybe even felt the serrated blade already sliding between his ribs. He’d known he was dying. And he had not looked at me with anger and blame, only regret.
I would miss us
, he’d said. He would grant me a divorce if I wanted it, but he would miss our family.
Was I crying? It was hard to be sure, with the shower spray pouring down my neck, around my face.
I would have to plan a funeral, I thought, but how did you plan a funeral with no body? Wait for the police to find it, I guess. Wait for that sheriff’s detective and his deputies to return my husband to me. And Ashlyn. She would want to say good-bye to her father. She would need closure, just as I had needed it thirty years ago.
And that thought stung me all over again. That for all my planning and sacrifice, in the end I hadn’t spared my child my deepest pain. She’d lost her father, just as I’d lost mine. Now I would play the role of my mother, trying to hold it all together. Meaning wading through finances that sounded like they were already strained.
What if we lost the house, what if we moved into tenement housing, what if Ashlyn never got to go to college, but became collateral damage of her father’s poor planning, just like I had been?
I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping, and yet no air would come into my lungs. I had survived three days in an abandoned prison, only to succumb in my own shower.
Then, in the back of my mind…hydrocodone. My orange-bottled pills. Maybe still downstairs in my purse in the center island. But if not, I had other stashes, a woman who knew how to keep her secrets. Half a dozen pills tucked in the back of the silverware drawer, ten more in my jewelry travel bag, four or five in the bottom of a crystal vase in the china closet. Close to two dozen emergency pills.
I stood up. I tasted oranges and I didn’t care. I was going to get out of this shower. I was going to head downstairs, raid the first hidden supply. Just this once, of course. After the past few days, I’d earned this.
I rinsed my hair.
I shouldn’t do it. I’d promised Justin I’d be strong for our daughter. He’d pressed me in the cell, probably already suspecting something would go wrong with the ransom exchange, needing the reassurance that I could raise our child without him.