Cast the First Stone

by K. J. Emrick

  The tellers are behind their counters at the back, with security gates hanging above their stations ready to drop down and seal them off in case of a robbery. Nobody would be stupid enough to rob this place, in the heart of the city, but I’m sure it makes the customers feel safer. The tellers aren’t who I need, though, and I don’t give them more than a cursory glance. I need to talk to someone a little higher up the staffing ladder. Not the loan officers out at their desks to either side, either. They’re several steps above those peons working their fingers to the bone up on the balcony level, but still not important enough. No. The person I need…

  Is in that corner office right there, sitting at the big desk behind the glass walls. He’ll have the authority I need. Right now he’s leaning his stocky body back in his chair, talking on the telephone and scratching his balding head with one finger, looking very serious. That’s okay. He’ll drop what he’s doing for me.

  Making a beeline for his office door, as if this is the whole reason I came here in the first place, I go right inside without knocking. “Mister Halstead? We need to talk.”

  He stares at me with dark brown eyes, and I stare back, and after a moment he shifts in his seat and clears his throat. The springs in his chair squeak in protest under his portly hips. “Jeff,” he says into the phone, “I’ll have to call you back. Yes. Someone just burst into my office. No, no, it’s just a young woman. Apparently she thinks we need to talk. Yes. I’ll call you back later.”

  Setting the desk phone’s receiver back down on its base slowly and very carefully, Mister Halstead folds his heavy fingers together on top of his belly. I stare at him, clutching the strap of my satchel. It’s a battle of wills to see who will speak first.

  “Well?” he asks me. “Who are you?”

  I win. “My name is Laura Berkenstein. I trust you don’t have any appointments for the afternoon, Mister Halstead. You and I will be spending some time together.”

  Irritation etches deep lines across his brow. “I don’t know you. How do you know my name?”

  It’s written across his office door, actually, but I’m not going to tell him it was that easy. “I know your name because it’s my job to know all about this bank.” I reach into the front flap of my satchel and take out a bifold ID holder, flashing it to him quickly. “I’m a banking regulator. Now. I’m going to sit down, and ask you some questions, and I think we’d better both hope that the answers you give me are the right ones.”

  I put the ID case away again before he’s gotten a good look at it. The top half is my photo on a card with some official looking writing laid over Michigan’s state seal. I made that myself with photoshop, and I’m kind of proud of it. The bottom half is actually my library card. The trick to showing off fake IDs like that is to tell people it is what you want them to think it is, and then show it off just long enough for them to get a glimpse. Usually their own worries fill in the blanks for them.

  Remember, banks won’t talk about their customer accounts. Not to anyone. They won’t respond to a polite request, or to a well-meaning question, or to a logical argument. What they will respond to is fear. When they’re afraid they’ll get investigated if they don’t cooperate, or be shut down for any length of time, or have anything else happen to them that might undermine their ability to make money, then they’re much more willing to talk to you.

  The one official entity that scares them is a Federal Banking Regulator.

  Regulators oversee the country’s banks and the transactions that they make. That makes me the boogie man to people like Mister Halstead. Right now, I’m his worst nightmare.

  Of course, impersonating a Federal employee is, well, a Federal offense. I wouldn’t recommend trying this at home. If I get caught, I’m going to be in really, really deep trouble. So let’s hope I don’t get caught. Jail and I do not get along. I know that from experience.

  That’s a long story that I really don’t have time for right now.

  “You’re a banking regulator?” Halstead asks, growing visibly uneasy. “What are you doing here? What could you possibly want with me? I mean… with my bank?”

  Now that was an interesting slip. Why would he assume I was after him, specifically? If he’s nervous about something he’s done, then just a little push will get me all the cooperation I need. With a smile, I let him think he’s in big, big trouble. “I’m here about one of your bank’s accounts. One that you handled personally, Mister Halstead. The irregularities we’re looking into are disturbing, to say the least.”

  Without warning, he jumps up out of his chair, rushing around me to the door. For a man his size, he certainly can move quickly. “Shh, please.” He doesn’t say anything else until he has the door tightly shut. “Be careful what you say out loud, my coworkers—”

  “I’ll decide what I say to you, Mister Halstead.” I’m not going to give him a chance to control this conversation. He needs to be off balance if I’m going to get him to reveal private banking information without calling his bosses to confirm my story. “You and your bank released thousands of dollars of a client’s money to someone who had no right to those funds. Tell me, Mister Halstead, how did you let that happen?”

  “Now just hold on a minute,” he blusters, his cheeks puffing out with indignation. I swear I saw a bead of sweat trickle down that dark skin of his. “I have never… I would never… The rules of this bank are of the utmost importance to me. I follow every rule to the letter!”

  I expected him to say something like that. From another pocket inside my satchel I take out a piece of paper with Barlow’s bank account information, all of it rewritten in my own looping penmanship. I didn’t want to take the chance someone would recognize Barlow’s writing. “This is the account. This is the date the funds were withdrawn. They were not taken out by Mister Barlow Michaelson, and yet all of his money is gone. You were the manager overseeing that account, were you not?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” he mumbles, “I would have to look it up to be sure…”

  “Don’t bother, I’ve already done my homework before coming here.” Which was a lie, of course, but I’d bluffed my way this far and there was no stopping now. “This is your responsibility. You need to explain yourself.”

  Grumbling under his breath, Mister Halstead takes the paper from me and then yanks his keyboard closer. His fingers slap away furiously. “On that date, that account was accessed by… oh my. Yes. Yes, I see. This isn’t Barlow Michaelson. This is… wait a moment.”

  He taps on his keyboard some more, while his eyes keep flicking over to me.

  The silence is getting thick in the room, but I don’t let him see that worry me. “What is it, Mister Halstead? I don’t have to remind you how important this could be for your bank, and for you as well. A mistake of this magnitude could cost you more than just your job.”

  With a final jab of a finger, he pushes the flat screen around for me to see. “This is the security footage of the person accessing that account on that day, Miss… what did you say your name was?”

  “Laura Berkenstein.” I always use the same alias. It makes it easier to remember. Leaning forward, I take a good look at the image on the screen.

  The person at the teller’s window is definitely not Barlow, but I recognize her right away. That’s Katarina, just as pretty as her photo, wearing a red knee-length dress. She’s smiling as the teller pushes the money across to her, in wrapped bundles that went straight into a backpack.

  Only, Katarina wasn’t holding the backpack. The woman with her is the one holding it, and all the money in it.

  I couldn’t see her face. She’s turned away from the camera, wearing a wide-brimmed hat that flopped down, hiding even her hair. The only way I could tell it was a woman was the shape of her body, and the way she moved. Definitely feminine.

  Now who was this?

  Mister Halstead was watching me closely for my reaction and I suddenly remember that I’m playing a part here. “Yes. See?” I point animatedly at
the screen. “That is not Barlow Michaelson. You have a lot of explaining to do. Do you have another camera angle? Maybe from behind the teller station so I can see the face of this other woman here?”

  “I’m not so sure it’s me who needs to explain themselves.” He sits back in his chair, pretty smugly this time, hands folded over his belly once again. “It turns out that this account was a joint account with one Katarina Borishev, and if I remember correctly, that is her right there. Although, it will be hard for me to remember for certain because I most certainly was not the manager overseeing this account. So tell me again, Miss Berkenstock—”

  “Berkenstein,” I correct him. If I’m going to play my part, I might as well play it to the hilt. “And I’ll thank you to show me some respect since it’s your job on the line here.”

  “Is it? Is it really? Hmm. Interesting. Seems to me that you’re the one who has all the information wrong on this case. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if you really are from the banking regulation commission at all.” His cheeks puffed out again, and when he stands up this time, I know my charade was over. “You stay right there, whoever you are. I’m going to get the senior manager. We’ll see what he has to say about all of this.”

  “Of course,” I insist, cool as a cucumber. “We’ll get to the bottom of this and then you’ll see I’ve been treating you fairly. In fact, ‘fair’ is my middle name.”

  With a huff, he leaves his office, throwing his door open so wide that it slams against the wall on his way out.

  My middle name isn’t really ‘fair’ by the way. Just in case you were wondering.

  As soon as he’s gone, I get up from my seat and twist the monitor around more. Taking my cellphone out of the satchel and quickly setting it to record, I play the security footage again. I get as much of a closeup on Katarina’s companion as I can, but that isn’t saying much. It’s like the woman knew exactly where the camera was and knew to keep her face away from it. Not Katarina, though. She isn’t even trying to hide. It was like, as much as this other woman wanted to stay hidden, Katarina wanted to make sure that people saw her.

  Interesting.

  Any further examination of the video is going to have to come later. I doubt it’s going to take very long for Mister Halstead to get his supervisor and come back, and there was no way in hell I was going to be sitting here when they came storming in to double check my credentials. This girl is gone.

  Outside on Woodward Ave again, I book it in the opposite direction of where I left my car. No doubt the bank has some kind of outside surveillance system and I didn’t want them looking at it later and watching me make a beeline for Roxy. I’m going to circle the block and come back around. Just another of those little tricks you pick up as a private investigator. Or as a criminal.

  Some days there’s not a lot of difference between the two, except that criminals act out of selfish motives, and I’m trying to help people. That’s how I’ve always tried to live my life. It’s what led me to join the military, and it hasn’t stopped now that I’m a civilian.

  Right now, I need to disappear. That isn’t hard in a place as crowded as downtown Detroit. There’s a lot of problems that come with living in a city but one of the great things about being here is that one second you can be in someone’s office, and then in the next you’re disappearing into a crowd of hundreds. Mister Halstead and his associates will never find out who it was that went visiting them today, pretending to be a banking regulator.

  Nobody I’m walking past knows me. No one will remember my face in two seconds. They could flash an image of me sitting in Halstead’s office up in the sky right now, and still no one would notice I’m standing right here. There’s a reason Superman lived in Metropolis. You really think it was just his glasses that hid his face?

  I think I’ll probably have to wait on the Shake Shack until next time, though. Too bad. I could almost taste that peanut butter milkshake.

  Where to start looking for missing persons, step three. If you can’t find them, interview friends and family.

  According to Barlow, there was no family to talk to. Katarina’s parents were dead, no brothers or sisters. No family. So that left friends.

  At a coffee shop several blocks away from the First National Bank, I sip at my café macchiato, legs crossed at my ankles as I sit on a stool, both hands wrapped around my mug, staring at my laptop screen. This was something else that had been in my satchel. The glasses went back in when that came out. I don’t need them to read through Facebook. My pretty blue eyes work just fine.

  I actually have a Facebook page that I use for my business. That’s what Barlow had been talking about earlier. I know it sounds kind of cliché, but this is a modern world, and putting up flyers on telephone poles and handing out business cards just doesn’t cut it anymore. These days you have to have an online presence if you want to get anywhere. It’s not making me rich and famous, but I do have a very nice review on there from Mrs. Hazel Podune from when I found her stolen wedding ring in a pawn shop over in Niagara Falls.

  Later tonight I’ll check it like usual, to see if there’s anyone reaching out about my rates or looking to hire me. I get a fair amount of work coming through my page these days so at least a once a daily log in is in order.

  Right now, I’m looking for someone else’s page. Katarina Borishev was an immigrant to our country, looking to experience everything America had to offer. I had no doubt that she’d created a Facebook page for herself. She was probably following a couple dozen celebrities on Twitter, too. The thing about Twitter is it’s great for fueling debate over just about anything, but as far as tracking someone down it isn’t that useful at all.

  Facebook, on the other hand, is a private investigator’s dream. A long time ago P.I.s like me would have to follow people around for hours to take pictures of what they did during their day. Now we just have to go to the internet because people post everything they’re doing, minute by minute. I mean, everything. What restaurant they’re eating at and what they’re eating there, the people around them in the grocery store, their brand-new car complete with license plate number, pictures of their new boyfriend, all of it. Right there for the picking.

  With a name like hers, it didn’t take me long to find Katarina Borishev’s page. I only had to go through a few of them. A couple with cats as their profile picture. One with a cutesy saying about who shot first, Han or Greedo. Thankfully, the Katarina I wanted had her actual photo on her page. A few seconds of scrolling and there she was.

  She did have it locked down so that only her friends could see it. That would have been a problem, if I hadn’t asked Barlow to give me his username and password. By using his page I would be able to see everything she had on hers… ah. There we go.

  Her last post was the day before she took out all that money from the bank. Just comments about the weather, and a video of a cat playing a piano. In fact, most of her posts were like that, scrolling back a few months. The weather, and animal videos. There were a few posts about how lucky she was to be here in America with Barlow, what a great man he was, and how happy they were to have found each other. Reading it all, I could almost believe everything he told me about them being in love.

  Must be nice. Me and love are practically strangers these days. I’d like to say it’s because I don’t have time for it, but that would be a lie. I’ve just given up.

  Enough of that, and back to the case. If there’s nothing in her posts, then I need to check out her photos. There’s plenty of those. Pictures of her. Pictures of Barlow. Pictures of a cat, and not the one that was in the video. I’ve never been much of a cat person, but Katarina obviously was. There was a few outdoor shots, green trees and skyscrapers and a few sunsets over the cityscape. I didn’t immediately recognize any of the buildings, but I could imagine how someone from another country coming here might be fascinated by even the most mundane warehouse.

  I sip more of the café macchiato and end up frowning down into the cup. It�
�s gone cold. Blech. The photos scroll down the page one after another, until I reach the end. If I’d been hoping for a photo of Katarina and the mystery woman from the bank I was out of luck. It would’ve been too easy anyway. A photo of the two of them arm in arm, their faces tagged with each of their names? If it was that easy people wouldn’t ever need to hire me.

  All right. I’ve still got one angle to try here. Backing out of her photos I go to her friends list instead. While that loads, I bring the mug up to my lips, and thankfully I get a flash of that cold coffee touching my lips three seconds from now. Sometimes seeing my own future saves me from more than just bullets. I put the mug aside and promise myself not to touch it again.

  So, on to her friends list. I see Barlow’s name. Barlow’s parents. In order to find out who everyone else is, I have to click on their names one at a time and go to each page. There’s Barlow’s cousins. There’s some work friends of his. It’s all people he knows. Didn’t Katarina have any friends? Where’s this Carol woman that she was texting with, for instance? Was it even possible to be texting buddies with someone and not be friends on Facebook? Maybe Carol was here somewhere but she was using a different name. The woman in the bank, was she Carol? Now that would be interesting…

  Ah. Here’s something.

  There’s one name on Katarina’s friends list that isn’t a relative or an acquaintance of Barlow’s. No connections to Barlow at all, for that matter. Katarina’s one and only friend. I’m sure it was hard for her making new friends, being from another country and all, but even complete shut-ins had more friends on their Facebook list than she did. This one friend of hers must be someone special.

  Louise Timmins. That was the name. An older woman with graying hair and round glasses, smiling in her profile picture. A quick comparison of Louise’s friends on her list didn’t show any other overlap with Katarina’s. She didn’t know anyone Katarina knew, and she didn’t know anyone Barlow knew. She didn’t even know Barlow. It was just the two of them, Katarina and Louise, Facebook friends for no reason. Mrs. Timmins worked at a medical clinic over on Miller Street as a nurse. Somewhere near the railroad tracks, if I had my street numbers right. Now why would Katarina have an elderly nurse as her only friend on Facebook?