Moral Hazard (Southern Fraud Thriller)

by J W Becton

  If anyone was going to save my ass, it would be me.

  I would save my own ass.

  That thought kicked my brain out of poor-pitiful-me mode and into planning mode. I began listing my next steps.

  “Before anything else happens, I need to get more information about exactly what I’m dealing with: the defense attorney, prosecutor, judge, the chances of the evidence being admissible despite everything, and I know just who to ask.”

  If anyone knew where to go from here, it would be my best friend and US Attorney Helena St. John.

  Of course, that in itself would be a bit tricky. Like Tripp, Helena knew that I had been investigating Tricia’s rape, but she didn’t exactly know the lengths to which I’d gone.

  Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even hesitate to pour out my confession to her, but Helena’s new job in the fraud and public corruption sector of the US Attorney’s office made me hesitate.

  What I had done could only be termed “public corruption” in the loosest sense of the word, at least as far as I was concerned, but a little phrase had begun skittering around my brain: “noble cause corruption.”

  For that, I might be a good candidate for poster child.

  Some cops believe that the ends justify the means. When faced with legal red tape, police bureaucracy, or maybe even lack of admissible evidence, these officers would take unethical or even illegal actions if they believed in a positive overall outcome. The only thing that mattered was taking a dangerous criminal off the streets.

  Other cops, like Tripp, approached law enforcement by regs. Tripp trusted the process and placed a high value on how police work was done. He refused to take a questionable action, even if it meant he could put a bad guy in jail. Because he followed procedures to the letter, every one of Tripp’s arrests would be solid. No criminal would get off on a technicality.

  Both types of cops were ultimately trying to do the right thing. Both believed they had a noble cause. But some, like me, felt forced to break some rules to get the job done. That’s where the corruption part came in.

  In the police academy, we’d been exhorted to follow procedures and always act professionally. If we did those two things, we would avoid temptation because behaving unethically for a good reason is a great way to land in a seriously messy situation. Careers could end, cases could be tossed out, and dangerous people could be unleashed back on society if cops didn’t play by the rules. And didn’t I know it?

  Maybe I hadn’t adopted an anything-goes approach to law enforcement on the whole, but I had certainly taken a questionable action when I stole evidence. At the time, all I cared about was taking a sexual predator off the streets, and the system wasn’t helping make that happen.

  I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. The past could not be changed. I had to look to the future. Helena would understand, and she would help me.

  “I’ll talk to Helena tonight after work,” I said mostly to myself.

  “Speaking of work,” Vincent said, checking his watch. “Ted’s probably waiting for us.”

  I checked the time myself.

  Crap. Late again.

  Three

  The time had come to deal with Julia Jackson and Mark Vincent, and the watcher was going to make sure they went down in a spectacular fashion.

  Images of the two investigators stared at him from the computer screen, and he glared back. His fingers tightened on the mouse, making the plastic crackle under the strain. The hunt had already begun, but his quarry did not yet realize it. The trap was baited and set, and soon Jackson and Vincent would be lured into the open.

  Meanwhile, like a good hunter, he hid in the tall grass, acquainting himself with the natural instincts and behavior patterns of his prey. And waiting for the opportune moment to pounce.

  Soon, very soon, but not yet.

  Releasing the wounded mouse, the watcher stood, crossed the office, and extracted a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels from its hiding place in a lower cabinet. Pouring the liquor into a plain glass tumbler, he pondered the plan already in motion. He’d put a great deal of care and subtlety into his opening gambit.

  He couldn’t be too careful. When your quarry is a couple of seasoned investigators, effective concealment becomes more complicated, and Vincent’s history as a military cop who specialized in personal protection increased the odds of the watcher blowing his cover.

  Many routine techniques had to be exercised with extreme caution. Automobile surveillance was out.

  If Jackson didn’t spot the tail, Vincent would. And that was a confrontation the watcher did not want to have.

  Not yet.

  Safely assessing this game required a fixed location where he could conceal himself with a low chance of exposure. For that, he needed misdirection, a distraction. He needed them to focus ahead while he stalked them from behind.

  Glass in hand, the watcher returned to his desk and flipped to another window on his computer, revealing a picture of a work-roughened man in his forties. The state Workers’ Comp Board had been investigating Randy Blissett for allegedly faking a back injury for years.

  Unlikely as it seemed, this hermit was the key to his plan.

  Rather than attempting to track Jackson and Vincent as they went about their daily lives, the watcher had decided to organize their schedules for them. His job uniquely positioned him to do just that, and he could make it look legit. After all, he knew more than a trifling amount about insurance fraud and the people who committed it.

  By default, he also knew the people who investigated it, and some of them owed him favors.

  So he’d called one in.

  Now, instead of worrying that Jackson and Vincent would get wind of his surveillance, the watcher would simply move them around Mercer according to his own will and then box them in. He would always know where they were.

  They would be occupied and isolated, leaving him free to unearth their secrets, to peek inside their psyches, to determine how to influence their actions according to his whims.

  The watcher swirled the last of the whiskey in his glass and swigged, feeling his cheeks flush as the liquor burned down his throat.

  By occupying Jackson and Vincent with an impossible-to-solve case, he would be free to uncover the dirt he needed. Already he’d contacted a few of his most trusted sources around Mercer and asked them to keep their ears to the ground. That, of course, had been a calculated risk, but it was all part of the job. He couldn’t do everything himself. He was just one man working against two adversaries.

  But even that worked to his advantage. As partners, Jackson and Vincent were essentially a single unit. Sullying one of them would effectively damage the other as well.

  To neutralize both investigators, only one of them needed to be destroyed.

  Only one. But which?

  Setting aside the empty tumbler, the watcher considered the morsels he’d discovered so far. He knew something of the investigators’ careers, but their personal lives had been more difficult to infiltrate. He’d exhausted the usual sources—state records, courthouses, social media, Internet database searches—and hadn’t found much.

  Because she’d lived in Mercer all her life, Jackson’s history yielded more details. And dammit, as far as he could tell, she was a frickin’ angel, complete with sparkling halo and gossamer wings. Jackson had served on the MPD until seven years ago, when she’d been downsized out of a job. Later, she took a position at the Department of Insurance, where she landed frequently in the news for uncovering major fraud.

  And for ending cases with shooting fatalities or car crashes, which was something to be noted. On paper, she might be a little angel, but she was an avenging angel, and the more dangerous the subject, the closer he wanted to be to them. Soon, he would insinuate himself into her life, and she wouldn’t even realize a predator breached the walls of her garden.

  Jackson’s personal life presented him with some easily exploitable vulnerabilities, but nothing that would take her out of the c
hase altogether. From what he could tell, she was alone, already existing on the fringes of the herd, easy for a hungry lion to separate and devour. A single woman who lived without a roommate, she had a family life littered with piles of dirty laundry. Her parents were divorced, her rape-victim sister loved to hit the bottle, and her father attended court-ordered anger management classes. Her sister’s alleged rapist had recently been arrested and charged, and the case was coming to trial soon.

  On the other hand, Jackson retained some formidable assets. Her guard-dog friends presented a problem. Not only was her partner, Vincent, always at her side, but her two closest friends, Tripp Carver and Helena St. John, were highly placed in the MPD and the US Attorney’s office.

  She might not have family, but she had powerful, protective friends.

  He sneered with delight. Skeletons may not be hiding in her closet, but she was far from invincible. The watcher would be able to contort every one of her assets to his advantage. The chase was an important part of hunting, but cutting off escape routes made the job easier. Leaving Jackson no means of escape would demoralize and defeat her before the chase even began. If the watcher separated Jackson from her friends, his position would only be strengthened. Each option he snatched away would weaken her further. He would work until she was alone and vulnerable, depressed and totally lacking in options. Trapped, pinned down, and hopeless. Just what he needed.

  If he opted to make Jackson his primary target, manipulation would serve as his main weapon. Women were traditionally easier to maneuver because their brains were less rational, and they operated more on their emotions. The less his quarry engaged in analytical thought, the better off he was. Plus, he could charm her—make her lady parts light up and quiver—and get closer to her than he could to Mark Vincent.

  But could he depend on Julia Jackson running on her girly feelings and not on the cop instincts she clearly had? And could he sully her reputation of an angel in a believable way?

  Switching the view on the monitor again, the watcher studied the burly male.

  If it became clear that Mark Vincent made a more suitable target, the watcher would need to devise a plan based on overt extortion rather than subtle emotional manipulation. In short, he’d need dirt on Vincent so damning that the guy would knuckle under and not fight back.

  The trouble was finding the dirt. Finding anything, really.

  The DOI website revealed that he had served as a military cop for sixteen years, but Mark Vincent’s Navy records were buttoned up tight.

  The man had something to hide. But what?

  The watcher couldn’t crack into much from that period of Vincent’s life. However, court records showed that he got divorced before entering the military. Vincent didn’t appear to have any contact with his ex-wife, but the watcher could poke around there if he had to. Exes liked to reveal their former spouse’s hidden skeletons, but he didn’t think he’d have to go there.

  Not when Vincent’s son offered plenty of good possibilities. Justin Montgomery was recently ousted from college for stealing and selling tests and was later arrested for underage drinking and drag racing.

  Industrious kid.

  If Justin hadn’t already done something that would motivate dear old dad, the watcher could help that along. It shouldn’t be a difficult task. The kid was obviously not a saint, and his crimes were recent. Throw a little temptation his way, and the watcher might just have something to use against Vincent.

  The kid was a fresh wound.

  He’d stick his finger in and see what oozed out.

  Still unsure of his primary target, the watcher sank back in his leather chair. He pondered refilling the tumbler that had been languishing at his elbow but decided against it. He ought to remain sober, ready at all times.

  “Which of you will it be?” he asked the silent images. “Which one of you is ripe for the plucking?”

  If everything went as it should, the watcher would soon know everything they did, everywhere they went, and every dirty little secret they harbored.

  And he would use it all against them.

  Because if knowledge was power, then the watcher was God.

  Four

  The last to arrive at the DOI staff meeting, Vincent and I slipped into the conference room while the group was still exchanging small talk. Across the large conference table, Matilda lifted a questioning brow and checked her watch, her bracelets jangling.

  I rolled my eyes at her, and then we both smiled.

  I wouldn’t say these meetings were a complete joke, mainly because Ted, our supervisor, took them so seriously. He’d been calling them with increasing frequency over the past months. Ostensibly, their purpose was to ensure that all agents and employees knew of upcoming events and big cases, but I suspected that Ted actually held these meetings to put a leash on the chaos that seemed to follow Vincent and me from case to case.

  We had all the luck.

  These meetings—combined with Ted’s newest trick of assigning us only the dullest paper-pushing, number-crunching cases available—were part of his method for keeping life at the DOI on an even keel.

  If that were even possible.

  As usual, Ted presided over the group with all the ceremony of a priest serving his first Communion. He was not garbed in flowing robes, but given the ceremony with which he ran the meeting, he might as well have been. His attire was much more formal than that of any other staff member. Forget business casual; Ted liked to dress as if he worked on Madison Avenue, and his only nod to comfort came when he removed his suit coat and draped it neatly across the back of a vacant chair at the head of the table. As if the coat and tie weren’t enough, the crease in his dark suit pants could probably be used to cut glass, and his monogrammed white shirt was starched so stiffly that he might not be able to bend at the waist.

  Ted’s voice carried loudly through the conference room as he stood behind his chair, using it like a lectern, and carried on with the small talk. At Ted’s right, Matilda recorded the minutes of the meeting, her polished fingernails rapidly tapping on her laptop. What she could find necessary to record from this idle prattle, I couldn’t figure.

  On the other hand, maybe it would one day be important to know that Webb Gershman’s daughter had asked him to install a nanny cam in her apartment so she could spy on her babysitter. Who knows?

  I tried to pay attention as Webb finished up his story, but I obviously had other things on my mind, and I ended up dropping in and out of the flow of words a few times.

  “Long story short,” Webb concluded finally, “I spent the greater part of my weekend installing a tiny camera in a teddy bear’s eyeball just so my granddaughter could drool all over it and short out the device twenty-four hours later.”

  Dale Birkbeck, Webb’s investigative partner, led the polite laughter, and I made an effort to join in.

  Mercifully, Ted took the floor.

  According to our fearless leader, the DOI continued to suffer from budgetary issues, which, based on the accusatory looks he sent Vincent and me, probably had something to do with the last big case we had been allowed to investigate. Ted hadn’t passed along the repair estimates, but the damage to the classic car we borrowed to go under cover had probably cost more than our branch’s rental budget could afford. That meant we’d be doing without the little extras to which we’d become accustomed.

  Probably minor, insignificant things like toilet paper and heat.

  I glanced beside me at Vincent and rolled my eyes. He lifted an eyebrow in response, but otherwise, he remained still, arms outstretched on the table, open palms resting facedown beside the legal pad he was ignoring.

  Meanwhile Ted’s spiel meandered on, and Matilda recorded his words for posterity. Ted began doling out Webb and Birkbeck’s new assignment—some sort of maritime fraud on the Old Muddy River. Lucky.

  I began to listen more carefully when I heard him say, “…and Special Agents Jackson and Vincent will be handling the Department of Transpo
rtation workers’ comp fraud.”

  Upon hearing our names mentioned, I cut my eyes back to Ted in time to see him sliding two folders across the table to Vincent and me.

  “Julia, Chief,” he continued pertly, “the state board requested you specifically. With your skill set, this should be a simple workers’ comp case. A simple but important case.”

  I restrained another eye roll at Ted’s not-so-subtle implication. He claimed to be assigning Vincent and me simple cases in order to keep us available to tie up the loose ends of our last case, a massive fraud ring that spanned several states in the Southeast.

  Somehow, I doubted that availability was Ted’s only reason for giving us white-bread cases.

  Our boss walked a fine line between his desire for newsworthy busts and his abhorrence of the spectacular, often costly takedowns that sometimes accompanied those arrests. He wanted the DOI to be known for solving crimes without causing a ruckus, shooting anyone, or going over budget.

  Too bad for Ted that Vincent and I seemed to cause a stir wherever we went. And the budget? Forget about it.

  Though he approved every expenditure beforehand, Ted couldn’t seem to help himself when it came to penny pinching. If we adhered to the letter—or would that be number?—of the budget, then he wondered why we hadn’t been able to cut costs more. If we went over budget, then he, well, I guess the most accurate phrase would be “freaked out.”

  His freak-outs usually resulted in a sudden onslaught of paperwork-based cases.

  Despite my dislike of being given the lion’s share of the boring assignments that passed through the DOI, I couldn’t help feeling a little grateful for the lighter workload. With Vincent’s preoccupation with his son Justin and me dealing with Slidell’s trial, it was probably a good thing that our lives weren’t continuously put in danger.

  Not that I would admit as much to Ted.