Evan’s morning included addressing the officers who were rotating onto first shift with Clark and Phillips in the back of the room trying not to be seen. Evan told the officers he expected them to keep the laws they swore to uphold when they graduated the academy. He finished by letting them know if they couldn’t abide by the laws of their town, county, state, and country he’d be in his office until ten-thirty to accept resignations. If they needed more time to think about it, he’d be back after two.
He was just outside his office door when Rita stopped him. “You’re serious about cleaning up the town, aren’t you?”
“Very.”
“You know some people aren’t going to like that.”
“I’m sure, but I think most will. Are there some people in particular I need to worry about?”
She shrugged. “I’ve always found it odd that Mr. Jones at the bank has lunch with different men who mostly aren’t from around here once a week. There’s always a briefcase at that lunch.”
“Banks do business with more people than locals, Rita. They could be bank auditors or associates from different branches.”
Rita shrugged her shoulders. “I guess. But if Curtis is guilty of passing counterfeit money, where has he been putting it? Was it all at his house?”
“I don’t know. I assume that’s what my meeting at the Sheriff’s office is about. Do you know something you aren’t sharing?”
“No, sir. I just watch. Curtis met with Mr. Jones several times himself, and I saw him bring one of those briefcases into his office a few weeks back.”
“Did you see him leave with it?”
“No, sir,” Rita said as she shook her head.
“Is there a safe in my office I don’t know about yet?”
She tapped her finger on her lips for a moment. “I don’t know, but Curtis had a bookcase added about a month ago.”
“Show me the new one.” Evan stepped aside for Rita to enter his office. The new shelves had more personal effects than books on them.
”Rita, let’s get a box and remove all of Curtis’ personal items from this office today, please. We can store them in the evidence room until we know what we’re looking for.”
Evan slowly looked at each shelf of the bookcase and noticed it was hand crafted to match the others in the room. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look old. Just like the others, the bottom shelf was about a foot off the floor with a decorative front panel like wainscoting. The others had old law books on them, but this one was empty and upon closer inspection, the shelf was removable. He slid it off to find a hollow space with a briefcase inside. “Get me a pair of gloves please.” Rita left and returned with gloves, the box he’d requested, and an evidence bag. He slipped on the gloves and pulled out the briefcase. “Is this the one you saw?”
“Looks like it. Are you going to open it?”
“I think I should do that with the Sheriff and State Police.”
He placed the briefcase in the evidence bag and sealed it shut before both he and Rita initialed the bag across the tape. “Rita, I’m gonna step out and check on Ginger. I’ll send Rodney in here for y’all to check the rest of the bottom shelves.”
“Yes, sir.”
Evan hit Ginger’s speed dial before he reached the door to the parking lot. The sound of her voice made him breathe easier. “Hey, babe.”
“Hi. You sound like you’re feeling good this morning.”
“We are. We ate breakfast and now we’re helping Kayla clean. If we’re not too tired, we’re going to lunch with Kayla and Cat.”
Evan smiled as he couldn’t help but notice how she said we. “Darlin’, sorry to ruin your plans, but until we know where Frank Smith is, you can’t leave the ranch without me or Mitchell.”
“I’ll tell Kayla, but she’s not going to like it.”
“I’ve got a meeting at the Sheriff’s office this morning that’ll probably run into the afternoon. If you need anything, send me a text.”
He disconnected the call as he walked back into his office with Rodney and Rita standing among a bunch of books. “Well?”
“The only other false bottom was in the bookcase on the other end. There wasn’t another briefcase, just a night deposit bag from the bank. We’ve already put it in an evidence bag and sealed it like before,” Rita said. “We didn’t open it.”
“Thank you,” Evan said as Rodney handed him the bag. “While I’m at the Sheriff’s office, will y’all put the books back on the shelves?” He didn’t wait for an answer as he left with the bags. Just as he closed the trunk, an officer he recognized from the morning meeting approached him. He looked older than Evan, maybe close to forty and nervous.
“Chief, we haven’t officially met, but I’m Jeff Applegate.”
“Hi, Jeff.” Evan reached out his hand to shake Jeff’s. “How can I help you?”
“I went through the academy with Chief Taylor. He helped me through and promised I’d have a job.”
“Former Chief Taylor. He won’t be serving on this force again. Is that gonna be a problem?”
“I don’t know, sir. I liked the way he ran things. Not that I don’t enjoy my job, but I enjoyed some of the unofficial perks that came with it.”
Evan raised a brow in question. “Unofficial perks?”
“You told us we needed to keep up with the changes in the laws and uphold them. What if my mama’s speeding? How am I going to issue her a ticket? She’d skin me alive. Not to mention, the Chief let my boy off for taking candy from a store one time. Now you’re telling me the store owner can press charges.”
This time Evan furrowed his brows. “The store owner should’ve been given the choice to press charges. Your family, just like mine and any other officer’s should be held to a higher standard.” Evan leaned against the trunk of the car. “One of the hardest parts about being an officer in a small town is you know almost everyone. A lot of our citizens are getting up in age so somehow I don’t think your mom would be speeding, but I get your point. I think we’ve always had a little leniency with speeding for everyone in town. When you’re on duty, I expect you to enforce the law. I don’t care if it’s your mama, wife, child, brother, father, preacher. If you can’t write the ticket, call someone who can.” Evan rubbed his forehead. “Look, I’m not trying to be a hardass, but the former chief left a hell of a mess to clean up. I’m gonna do what I have to for this town thrive. If you don’t think you can be a part of that, I’ll be back at two to accept your resignation.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll explain it to my family tonight. My boy hasn’t done anything else, but he just got his driver’s license.”
“Good.” Evan nodded and watched Jeff because there seemed to be something else on his mind. “Is there something else you wanna ask me?” Jeff looked at Evan with concern, like maybe he shouldn’t ask, but he needed to know.
“If he does get in trouble, can I just pay you like I did Chief Taylor?”
“Excuse me?” Evan put his hands on his hips and leveled his stare at Jeff. “Please explain that statement because I’m trying to wrap my head around what I think that means.”
Jeff cleared his throat and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Just like when my boy was younger and took that candy, we could pay Chief Taylor to make it go away.”
Evan’s eyes widened. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No, sir. Then from time to time, we’d pay him more so he’d continue to forget. My wife was stopped for speeding and my boy was twelve when he stole that candy. I’ve been paying the Chief a hundred dollars a paycheck to keep it quiet. I just want to know if I’m to pay you now.”
Evan bent over at the waist and took deep breaths because he thought he’d hyperventilate. What the hell? How did this department get so screwed up? When he stood back up, he looked Jeff in the eyes. “You said we. How many officers were paying the former Chief?”
“Me and five others.”
“At a hundred dollars a paycheck?” Evan’s voice was i
ncredulous.
“I don’t know what they were paying.”
“Do you know who these other officers are?”
“Yes, sir. We met the chief every payday in the parking lot. It didn’t matter what shift we were on. We’d better be there at seven that night with cash money.”
“Do you know what shift these men are working today?”
“They’re not all men, sir.”
“What shifts are these officers working?”
“Some are inside now. Some come on at four.”
Evan looked at his watch. “I have a meeting in fifteen minutes. You get in touch with all the officers and tell them to meet me in the conference room on the second floor at three thirty.”
“So you’ll tell us what our new terms are then?”
“No, Jeff. There isn’t gonna be any terms at all, but I need the full picture.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Evan nodded to let him know they’d get to the bottom of everything. Son-of-a-bitch! No wonder the officers didn’t have anything, Curtis was taking their money. It was a good thing he was in protective custody because Evan wanted to beat the shit out of him again. As soon as he was in his car, he called Mayor Sinclair. When his secretary picked up, Evan cut her off, “This is Chief Riverton. I need to speak to the Mayor now.”
“Yes, sir. Hold on one moment please.”
“Evan?”
“Mayor, we’ve got a huge issue with the police department. I need you in attendance at a meeting in the second floor conference room at three-thirty.”
“What’s going on?”
“Sir, you need to hear this shit first hand. You just need to be there.” Evan disconnected the call and thought about the bags in the trunk. Ben was going to freak when Evan opened them.
Evan was reaching for the second bag when Ben walked up. “Need some help with those?”
“Thanks. You’re not gonna believe the shit I’ve uncovered this morning.”
“Yeah, and you’re not going to believe what the lab uncovered about that picture you gave me.”
Evan stopped. “What’d they find?”
Ben shook his head. “Not out here, but you’re not going to like it. What’s in these anyway?”
“A briefcase and night deposit bag we found in my office this morning. I don’t know the contents, but I have an idea. Is Ginger in danger?”
“Not if she’s on your ranch. Were they were delivered to your office?”
“No, the former chief had them hidden in there.”
Ben quickly glanced at Evan. “Are you fucking with me? These were stashed in the police department?”
“I can’t make this shit up. I’ll tell y’all about that and the conversation I had before I came here. You better plan on keeping Curtis Taylor for a long time because I don’t think he can give you enough information to make up for the charges you’re about to hear.”
Ben furrowed his brows. “I can’t wait to hear this. By the way, have you seen Judge Bishop lately?”
“No.”
“We haven’t seen him either,” Ben said with a resigned sigh.
“Is that why we’re meeting?”
“That and Frank Smith was due back from vacation today, but he didn’t show,” Ben said as they entered the building.
They stopped talking while they passed through the department to the Sheriff’s office and tapped on the door. Evan lowered his voice when he asked, “You got somebody watching his house too?”
“Yeah, and we’ve got nothing.”
“How long have you been watching it because I heard he was back in town before dawn last Sunday morning,” Evan said.
“Since he mysteriously took vacation. What’ve you heard?”
They were waived into the office. “Are we meeting in here or somewhere else because we’re gonna need a big space and a lot of privacy.”
“Let’s go next door. I’ll tell the desk clerk not to disturb us,” Sheriff Cahill said.
They walked into a room with a large table and several chairs. They placed the bags on the table and lowered all of the shades on the bank of windows that made up one wall while they waited for Sheriff Cahill to return. When the Sheriff walked in Evan asked, “Is this room sound proof?”
“You’d have to yell pretty loud to be heard, but it’s possible,” Sheriff Cahill said with a grin.
“Sheriff, I don’t think you’re gonna be grinning long,” Evan said as he walked back to the table.
“What y’all got?”
“Have you heard from Deputy Smith yet, Sheriff?” Ben asked.
“No, but I sent an officer by his house earlier. He said Smith’s personal vehicle wasn’t there, but his patrol car was.” Sheriff Cahill’s voice was all business.
“My men say the same thing. They haven’t seen any activity there since he became a person of interest,” Ben continued.
“I spoke with Ruby on Monday. She said Frank came to see her before dawn Sunday morning. Apparently, he’s staying on a boat and was running out of supplies and lonely.”
Ben asked, “Lake or ocean?”
“I asked the same thing. She didn’t know,” Evan said. “When he went deep sea fishing the other week, did he say if it was his boat?”
“Didn’t sound like it. He said it was a day trip. I assumed they went out on one of those chartered rigs,” Sheriff Cahill said.
Evan cut his eyes to Ben while he made a couple calls. “We should know if either of them has a boat registered in a few hours, but finding out if they went on a day trip will take a little longer because the number of charters. Since those trips usually ship out between five and six in the morning, we’re checking the ones departing from Charleston and Beaufort. The ones up the coast don’t make sense.”
“Does the Judge have a boat?” Evan asked.
“A little John boat he uses for fishin’ and huntin’,” the Sheriff confirmed. “Why?”
“Has anyone seen it?”
Ben made another call to add Harland Bishop to the boat registration search as the Sheriff stepped out of the room. As Evan took a seat, he heard the Sheriff ask a couple deputies to check the boat landings at the lake and river for Judge Bishop’s truck. That too would take time they didn’t necessarily have.
While Evan waited for them to dispatch their people, he stared at the bags. His stomached rolled to think those officers were being blackmailed by their own boss. Was he using the money to launder the counterfeit bills? It was the Sheriff’s voice that brought him out of his reverie, “Evan, what’s in the bags?”
Evan told Sheriff Cahill and Ben what was found and where as well as relayed the story his officer told him. When he finished his story, he looked at the two sets of eyes staring back at him. “I think the briefcase is gonna be more counterfeit and marked currency, and the night deposit bag will be legit bills from the blackmail money.”
“How the hell was all this going on down here and nobody knew?” Ben threw his hands in the air. “Damn. With all the other money we found at Curtis’s property, I need to notify Secret Service. A hundred thousand is enough to totally fuck with the economy down here,” Ben said. With a scowl on his face, he turned to make another call and all he said was, “I’ve got more.”
They opened the bag holding the briefcase to find stacks and stacks of bundled money. Some was held up to the light, and they saw it’d been bleached. Others looked normal, but the few serial numbers they ran were marked bills used in gun and drug buys by ATF and DEA. Those could definitely be linked back to Masterson Investments. The briefcase being in Curtis’s office was further verification he was taking bribes. “Has he told you the total MI paid in bribes here?” Evan asked.
“He claims he doesn’t know because Mr. Jones was the money man,” Ben confirmed.
“One of my officers said Mr. Jones has lunch once a week with different out-of-town people. She says there’s always a briefcase present.”
“How does she know that?”
“Appa
rently, these lunches happen every Wednesday. She’s been watching him, I guess,” Evan said.
They moved to open the other bag. Just as before, there were bundles of bills. They repeated the same process, except they added the pen test. They counted fifty-thousand dollars in legitimate currency. Evan shook his head as a wave of nausea rolled through him.
“The blackmail money?” Sheriff Cahill asked.
“Looks that way,” Evan said. He couldn’t help but think about those families living in fear of charges hanging over their heads if they didn’t pay. “I wanna give it back to them.”
“It’ll have to be evidence for a little while,” Ben softly said.
“How long has this been goin’ on? That’s a lot of money for six officers. Do you think there were others?” the Sheriff asked.
“I don’t know. I’m meeting with the Mayor and the officers at three-thirty. Hopefully they can give us the whole picture, but that may be why he felt he ran the town.” As they replaced the money in the bag, Evan said, “The first day Kayla was back, he told her his badge got him whatever he wanted. I think he’s been bullying our citizens, and they’ve been too scared to say anything.”
The Sheriff left to find tape to secure the bags again.
Evan tensed and his voice was unyielding when he said, “Time’s up, Ben. I need to know about that picture.”
“It was taken by the same phone that took the picture of Harley.”
“We know that’s Frank. If he’s still using his same phone, let’s call the bastard.” Evan looked at Ben questioning why he hadn’t done that yet.
“Don’t you think we’ve tried? This isn’t my first rodeo, Riverton.” Ben glared at Evan with his hands on his hips then continued, “When the lab calls the phone, my men hear it ring inside his house. Since there hasn’t been any movement there, he apparently didn’t take it with him.”
Evan raked his fingers through his hair and pulled. “Fuck,” he said in a barely audible tone. “What about the first one?”
“Nothing yet.”
Evan’s fingers were laced on top of his head as he paced the length of the room. “Man, I know you’ve got this, but…” The tone of his voice and the look Evan gave Ben showed his desperation.
Unfinished Business: A Riverton Crossing Novel Page 24