Down and Dirty (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book 9)

by A W Hartoin

  “So white, maybe forties, five ten to six foot, and hunts,” I said.

  “That’s about the size of it. Believe it or not the witness accounts are even worse. Several onlookers said he was black. One said he was white, but wearing a Cardinals jacket and cap. And on from there. The truck is a no-go, but there are APB’s out on you two.”

  “Me?” I said. I wasn’t driving.

  “Fleeing the scene. Person of interest,” she said. “I gather that you aren’t popular with a Detective Jones.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “They do, however, have a hint of a lead on your truck. Two witnesses saw a young man running from the scene. They can’t agree on anything, except that he was young and white. Height, clothing, hair color are all different. A Detective Nazir is pulling security footage in the area to see if he can get someone driving away. Jones tried to cancel that, but he overruled her.” Calpurnia looked up and her dark eyes bored into me. “What did you do?”

  “I’m me and I won’t cooperate with her on Catherine. To be fair, nobody else is either, but she thinks it’s my fault.”

  “Is it?”

  “Not really. She rubs people the wrong way.”

  She tapped her keyboard. “She has a history of that.” Julia’s personnel record from Chicago popped up.

  Spidermonkey coughed quietly.

  “Oh, yes,” said Calpurnia. “Go ahead. Jones can wait.”

  He gestured to a chair and I sat down next to him. On the screen was Molly’s calendar with an appointment scheduled for Calabasas with the International Bank of the Midwest’s head of accounts, Eric Schneider, and their cyber security head, Luanne Gallagher, two months ago. After that, there were multiple phone calls per week and several more meetings with different members of the bank. A month ago, Catherine turned up for a meeting where she met with Calabasas, Gallagher, Schneider, and a vice president, Ben Stacey. A week later, Molly noted that they had the account, but it wasn’t assigned. Last Monday it was finally given to Catherine and she got the files and began work on Tuesday.

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. If Morty was to be believed, the bank’s customers were losing money. Not a lot, but money that was adding up to a hell of a lot, but they spent what looked like a ridiculous amount of time dicking around.

  “What took so long?” I asked. “It took a while to choose Elite, but why wait after that?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” said Spidermonkey.

  Fats sat down on the other side of Spidermonkey and said, “Well, don’t keep us in suspense.”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself. This is so much fun,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, it’s thrilling, but since we were shot at today, let’s move it along.”

  Spidermonkey blushed a tad bit and hurried up explaining that initially Morris Security had been hired to see if there had been a data breach. None was found. Then they thought it was a computer glitch, but Morris couldn’t confirm that either. Since the money was going somewhere, Elite was contacted to see if there was a pattern to the losses that had eluded them.

  At first, the delays at Elite were about the contract, access to accounts, security, all the minutiae that went into defining how the deep dive into Midwest’s problem would go. There were lawyers and nothing goes fast with lawyers. Once that was settled, it then became about who would do the work. There were several candidates, but Calabasas wanted Catherine on it since she was the best at that kind of thing, but Midwest kept dithering about. That’s why Calabasas insisted they meet Catherine. He thought it would reassure them. Spidermonkey showed me the notes of that meeting and it seemed pointless to me, just a lot of talk of Catherine’s qualifications, which they already knew.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s the big deal? Who cares who does the work as long as it gets done? It’s not personal.”

  Spidermonkey smiled widely and Calpurnia’s consternation had vanished. She was smiling as well.

  “That’s exactly what we thought,” he said. “Now look at this.”

  He pointed to the notes at the bottom of that meeting with Midwest and Catherine. The bank people left and it was just Catherine and Calabasas talking. In just a few lines it was clear that they thought it was odd, too. Catherine outright said that she’d never met with any client before and was worried that she hadn’t made a good impression. Calabasas said she was fine and that maybe Midwest liked a more personal touch.

  “Do they?” I asked.

  “I haven’t had time to dive into their security, but on the work I’ve done with other banks and businesses of this size the answer is no. They delegate very well. And once Elite was chosen and contracted they would normally not care at all about the people doing the work. It’s up to Calabasas to fulfill the contract. From what Midwest passed on to Elite, that’s how it was with Morris.”

  “Can I read the emails?” I asked.

  Spidermonkey opened up Calabasas’s email and I scanned through the traffic, looking for Catherine’s name and it wasn’t long before a pattern emerged. Calabasas wanted Catherine on it from the onset. He offered to take her off her current projects immediately, but it took weeks for them to settle on her because they kept changing the subject. “Who else do you have available?” “Who else has the experience needed?” There were other excellent forensic accountants at Elite and their names were bandied about, but Calabasas kept saying Catherine.

  “They didn’t want Catherine,” I said.

  “I’m glad you agree,” said Spidermonkey. “I thought maybe I was reading something into it.”

  “No,” I said. “Every time Calabasas said Catherine, they politely countered with another name.”

  “It was personal,” said Fats.

  “And it shouldn’t be,” said Calpurnia. “But since they didn’t name the specific objection, there’s something else going on.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But this isn’t good business. It’s a waste of time. If you don’t want someone, you give your objection, either they’re able to counter it or they can’t. This must be a personal objection, not a business one. Maybe one of Catherine’s lovers’ wives is the president.”

  Spidermonkey looked at me. “Did Morty give you any other names that you forgot to give me?”

  “No, but take a look at that suicide,” I said. “My dad’s got a feeling.”

  “Porter Weeks III, Midwest’s CFO,” said Spidermonkey. “His name isn’t on anything with Elite. Never mentioned.”

  “What are people saying?” I looked at Calpurnia,

  She shook her head. “We don’t know him.”

  Spidermonkey bent over his keyboard and pulled up the obituary with the obligatory posed photo. Weeks was comparatively young, handsome, and wealthy.

  “Why would he do it?” I asked. “Most people would think he had it all.”

  In a minute, Spidermonkey got access to the suicide note. “Standard note, if there is such a thing.”

  I leaned over and read, “I’ve always wanted the best for my family. I love you all and I’m sorry. Dad.” I stood up and paced around the kitchen. There was something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Fats. “He’s sorry. So what?”

  “It’s not that. Something’s not right about that note.”

  Calpurnia sat up. “Yes. Read it again.”

  I read it again.

  “I love my family,” said Calpurnia softly. “What would I say to my family at that moment? Not that. No, definitely not that.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The note, it’s not personal. There’s not, ‘Son, blah blah blah.’ ‘Wife, blah blah blah.’”

  “You think it’s a fake?” asked Fats.

  “No. I think it tells us a lot about Porter Weeks III because it’s not personal. There’s not a specific reason. How many kids?” I asked.

  “Let me see,” said Spidermonkey
. “We’ve got five kids, ages eleven to twenty-two. One wife and they were still married.”

  “Is the Weeks family fancy?” asked Fats.

  “Old money, but not a ridiculous amount. The name stands for something in certain circles.”

  “Why do people care about that?” asked Fats.

  Calpurnia smiled. “Fibonacci means something to people. Status means power.”

  “People care,” I said. “That’s it. Look at Weeks’s financials.”

  “It’s not like a suicide would help that,” said Calpurnia. “No insurance.”

  “I’m not thinking insurance. I’m thinking about that line ‘I’ve always wanted the best for my family.’”

  Fats cracked her knuckles and said, “He couldn’t give them the best so he killed himself?”

  “Maybe. As Calpurnia said, what’s important to say to the people you love a moment before you blow your head off on a golf course? Saying how you wanted the best is about money, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “It could be,” said Calpurnia. “If he was about to be ruined financially, there’s no more giving them the best.”

  “He’s a money man,” said Spidermonkey. “He came from it. He had it.”

  “Let’s say that’s what’s important to Porter Weeks III. That’s the priority. Not how he was proud of whatever or I hope you overcome what I’m about to do. No. He’s thinking about money. Were they broke?”

  Spidermonkey was typing furiously. “High use on the credit cards. But they are paying their bills on time. Credit report is very good. I’m going with they weren’t broke.”

  “Keep looking,” I said. “It’s about money. Has to be. I feel it.”

  “Let me see. They spend a lot on those credit cards. There’s a ton of tuition, but they aren’t behind in any of it. I’m not seeing it, Mercy. I’m just not.”

  “What about their bank accounts? Does the wife work?” asked Fats.

  He shook his head. “I haven’t broken through the walls in Midwest and that’s their bank. The wife doesn’t work.”

  “So he’s paying for everything,” said Calpurnia. “I suppose that’s reasonable. He’s a CFO.”

  “Midwest is fairly small,” said Spidermonkey. “It’s no Goldman Sachs. I’m guessing he’s making about 750 to a million a year.”

  “Is that enough to pay for what they’re buying?” I asked.

  “At first glance, yes, but not by much. Let me break out the calculator.” Spidermonkey literally pulled out a fat calculator, the kind that you do calculus with, and went to town on it. His phone rang and he glanced over without missing a beat and said, “Novak. Get that.”

  “I thought we didn’t need him,” I said.

  “We did.”

  I answered and said to the Parisian hacker that had helped me so much on the Angela Riley case, “Hey, it’s Mercy.”

  “Just who I wanted to talked to,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yes. I have gone through the deep fake account that you were concerned with.”

  “Fake ‘em till you break ‘em?”

  “That’s the one. I have found the anomaly you believed would be there.”

  I leaned on the island and felt the cold from the granite seep into my back. “Great.”

  “You don’t sound pleased,” said Novak.

  “It’s just this case is kinda gross.”

  “It could be worse,” he said. “I once—”

  “No, no. I’m good. I don’t need worse. What did you find?” I asked.

  It wasn’t exactly a smoking gun, but it had a whiff of powder. As Spidermonkey said, Catherine’s pictures and—gag—videos were popular. The site didn’t allow lookie-loos and had some pretty good security, not good enough to keep Novak out but as far as I knew nobody did. The site pixelated the important bits of the subject’s body so you couldn’t get a good visual, but you could see if the body was right and the face was visible. You’d have to make some serious effort to break through to steal videos or pictures and their prices were midrange. There was plenty of browsing going on, but most registered users did buy and they visited a lot. Novak used an algorithm he’d written for something else and was able to filter the buyers and browsers.

  After a surprisingly short amount of time, he found one user that had been a member for two years and had never bought anything from the site. That was unusual, but not totally unheard of. What was very unusual was that they joined, were active for exactly three hours, and didn’t use the site again until two months ago. They spent an hour on the site, searching “Midwest and accountant”, found Catherine, looked at her pictures, but not her videos and left. They hadn’t been back.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “They covered their tracks pretty well.”

  “Puhlease. They’re not better than you,” I said.

  “You know me well and you are right I will get them, but they have encrypted and bounced around their IP address.”

  “So…what do you have?”

  “They forgot one important thing.”

  “And that is?”

  “I chased the IPs down and got back to the original server. Does the University of Missouri at Rolla mean anything to you?”

  I turned to everyone at the table.

  “What?” asked Fats.

  “Morty said the code to hack Catherine’s phone was fresh. He’d never seen it before.”

  “So.”

  “There’s a good reason for that. An engineering nerd from Rolla wrote it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  SPIDERMONKEY WAS CONVINCED, but Calpurnia wasn’t. She could see my logic that fresh style of coding would come out of a university like Morty indicated, but she didn’t think there was some kid sitting in a dorm room defrauding an international bank all by his lonesome.

  “I don’t buy it either,” said Fats. “I don’t care how smart he is.”

  “Nobody said he was alone,” I said. “Besides, you said there aren’t coincidences in crime, Fats.”

  “I said there weren’t a lot of coincidences, and you haven’t connected the suicide. So far, Weeks is just a mentally ill rich man with a gun permit.”

  “No, he’s not,” said Spidermonkey. “Mercy’s right.”

  I stood there and basked in the moment. Right. I loved being right. It happened rarely and usually at great cost.

  “Stop looking so smug,” said Calpurnia with a smile.

  “I’m not smug. I’m right. Let me enjoy it.”

  She waited a second and then said, “Alright. You’ve enjoyed it. Now how is Mercy right?”

  Spidermonkey waved me over and tapped the screen. It was a termination of a life insurance policy for Porter Weeks III dated three years ago. If there was some connection to his suicide last week, I wasn’t seeing it.

  “So what?” I asked. “He dumped the insurance.”

  Calpurnia steepled her fingers. “Ah yes. People don’t dump the insurance unless there’s money issues.”

  “But I thought there wasn’t any,” I said.

  “There wasn’t recently, but three years ago Weeks dumped the insurance and ran up the credit cards. Lots of jewelry and cash withdrawals,” said Spidermonkey. “Weeks was paying the minimums on multiple cards and then the situation resolved itself a little over two years ago. He reinstated the insurance.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “I’ll know that when I get in his bank accounts. I can only see the credit cards and his email. Family maybe. He may have gotten access to a trust. Those people usually have them.”

  “Was it sudden?” asked Calpurnia. “Or over time?”

  “Sudden. The spending went way up.”

  Calpurnia and Fats looked at each other and said, “Gambling.”

  “That’s pretty cliché,” I said.

  “For a reason,” said Calpurnia. “Cash withdrawals say gambling. Did he spend time in Las Vegas?”

  Spidermonkey went to work and after a minute said, “N
o. Two years ago with the wife. Looks like some sort of convention.”

  They went on to ask about other destinations, but all came up empty.

  “Maybe it’s all local,” I said. “Or online.”

  Calpurnia shook her head. “I’d know about a big fish like that, but I’ll call Cosmo and see if he flew under my radar, but I seriously doubt it.”

  “I’d expect to see something in his email connected to gambling,” said Spidermonkey. “I’m not. No interest in sports that I can see.”

  “Maybe he had a gambling phone,” I said. “Was he still making cash withdrawals on the credit cards?”

  “Not anymore. Could be using his debit.”

  “I don’t think it matters,” said Fats. “So Weeks had money problems and he offed himself for whatever reason. How does that connect to Catherine and the account?”

  “Or for that matter,” said Calpurnia, “some kid in Rolla.”

  “I’d like to know what his money problem was and how he fixed it,” I said. “Do any of Weeks kids go to Rolla?”

  Spidermonkey chuckled. “You must be joking. People like that don’t go to state schools. Perish the thought.”

  “So where do they go?”

  “The little one goes to Forsyth in Clayton. The high school senior is at a military academy near Jeff City.”

  I held up my hand. “Is that weird? What did the kid do to deserve that?”

  “Maybe nothing,” said Spidermonkey. “Some families have a strong military tradition.”

  “You’re telling me that Porter Weeks the third served in the military?” I said. “Come on.”

  “I haven’t checked, but I agree it’s unlikely. The rich don’t generally see military service as a viable career option. It used to be a good start for a political career, but not so much anymore.”

  “What about the rest of the kids?” I asked.

  “We’ve got two Columbias and a Duke.”

  “That’ll break the bank,” said Calpurnia. “They’re paying over a quarter million in tuition every year.”

  “Plus all the room and board,” said Spidermonkey. “You can add another fifty thousand. And they all drive BMWs or Mercedes. New, in case you’re wondering.”