by Trace Conger
For a moment I thought this could be the breadcrumb I needed, but the feeling quickly vanished. The photocopy Miller provided had the same name and address information as the documents I pulled from the DMV.
The Banker was still a ghost.
I tapped my finger on the photocopy of the license and slid it back across the table. “This is the same contact information we have on file, but it’s a dead end. Do you remember anything about him?”
“Not really. It was a few years ago.” Miller studied the gray-and-white face from the photocopy. “I remember meeting him and showing him the inspection report on the vehicle, but I wouldn’t even remember what he looked like if it wasn’t for this picture.”
“How did he contact you?”
Miller rifled through the folder. He grabbed a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Here’s the online ad we ran on the truck. He might have emailed or called us. No way to tell.” Miller looked at the paperwork again. “There’s no record of an email address in here.”
“What about your email system? Maybe you still have the correspondence on your computer?”
“Our email system automatically deletes anything older than 18 months, so I wouldn’t have any emails from him.”
“Do you have an IT guy I can talk to? Maybe the emails were archived somewhere.”
“I’m the IT guy.” He smiled apologetically. “Like I said, we’re a small company. I’m also the head of HR and facilities manager.”
Miller must have recognized the disappointment on my face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” he said.
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Miller.” I slipped a crisp white business card for Roger Mathers from my suit pocket and handed it to Miller. “Please call me if you think of anything that might help. We’re very anxious to find Mr. Coyne.”
Miller ran his fingers over the embossed Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation logo on the card. “I’ll do that.”
I stepped out of his office, thanked the young woman at the front desk, and waked back to the Escalade. My head hung a bit lower than when I walked in.
Connor abruptly ended his phone call as I climbed into the passenger side.
“What’d you find out?” he said.
“Nothing we didn’t already know. The Banker bought the truck here, but he paid in cash and used his alias so we’re still shitting goose eggs.”
I scanned the dashboard of the Escalade until my eyes fell on the glove box. “You keep your registration in here?”
“Yeah, why?”
I clicked open the glove box and the leather door dropped toward the seat. On top of the vehicle’s owner’s manual was a white envelope.
“It’s in there,” Connor said.
Inside the envelope was the vehicle’s title, registration and copy of Connor’s insurance card. I skimmed each document. “This is all your real information?”
“Yeah. I’m not hiding from anyone. I’m just a normal guy in a normal SUV.” He thought for a moment, probably trying to determine where I was going with my question. “What’s on your registration?”
“My car is registered to a fake company, but my real name is on it. Anyone running the registration would get my name but a fake address.” I jostled the envelope in my hand. “My apartment is under my company name too. An extra layer of misinformation.”
The key to not being found is the ability to hide in plain sight. While I like to operate in the shadows, I have no reason to hide from the police. Take my license and registration for example. With the exception of a fake LLC as the owner of my vehicle, everything else works out. If I get pulled over and a cop runs my plates and license, it’s all going to come back as accurate. No reason for the officer to dig further. He writes a ticket and drives away.
Most criminals get nailed at routine traffic stops because they’ve done something stupid to manipulate their license or registration. Maybe they walk into a DMV with a fake birth certificate or a fake social security number and try to get a license under a false name. The system automatically cross references the information and immediately alerts the DMV employee of any suspicious information or mismatched data.
Years ago, if you wanted a false identity, all you had to do was find some deceased person who was close to your age. It would take some time, but you could get ahold of their birth certificate and social security documentation, take it to the DMV and get a license in their name. As long as the sex and the age matched up, and you weren’t sweating bullets at the counter, chances are you’d walk away with a new license with someone else’s name on it.
That’s not the case today. Now, all the government agency computer systems talk to one another, and a lot of them do it in real time. Try the same method to get a fake license today, and when the DMV clerk keys in your social security information, the Social Security Administration will flag you for being dead while you’re still standing at the counter.
That’s why, next to getting a fake passport, getting a fake driver’s license is one of the hardest things for a criminal to acquire. It’s not like in the movies, where someone pays a master forger to make the documents. That might work on the surface, but the first time a cop runs your license through their system or a TSA agent scans your passport at the airport, you’re fucked. The information on the back end doesn’t sync up with what’s on the document. And while it’s easy to change what’s on the document, it’s damn near impossible to change what’s in the system.
“We’re going about this all wrong,” I said.
“How’s that?” Connor tossed his phone onto the console.
“Let’s take a step back.” I turned in my seat to face Connor. “If you needed to get a fake identity through the DMV, how would you do it?”
Connor thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t go through the DMV. That’s pretty much impossible. I’ve got a guy who produces a document that’s almost as good as the original, but I’d use an out-of-state license to throw anyone off.”
“But if you got pulled over and a cop ran your info, they’d nail you.”
Connor tapped the white envelope in my hand “Which is why I have a real license.”
“But the Banker doesn’t, and if he’s driving around the interstate for hours every day, he’s likely to get pulled over once in a while. It’s just probability.”
“Maybe he’s sure to keep his speed down, so he doesn’t get tagged.”
“He’s too cautious. Everything he’s done until now tells us we’re dealing with someone who takes his time to stay hidden. He’s got a license and registration under a different name, but he’d be too cautious to risk getting caught at a traffic stop with bad paperwork. We’re not talking about a couple of underage college kids buying beer with a fake ID. He’d need to have legit information to show a police officer if he was ever pulled over.”
“So?”
“So how did he get it?” I said. “How would you get it?”
“Like I said, I wouldn’t try. It’s nearly impossible to con the DMV. They cross reference everything. You’d need a workaround.”
“Right. You’d need someone on the inside. I read an article a year or so ago about a DMV employee who was selling fake driver’s licenses to people who flunked their driver’s exam. He was making something like $200 a pop. It went on for years until they snagged him during an internal investigation.”
“But that’s different,” said Connor. “All those people still had their info in the DMV system. They weren’t fake licenses. The documentation was legit, the clerk was just circumventing the testing procedure, not the database. Run their license and registration and all the right information comes up. Run the Banker’s information and the wrong information comes up. It’s not the same.”
“I know it’s a different situation, but the fact is, these people had an inside man helping them, so it’s plausible that the Banker had an inside guy at the DMV who helped him.”
“But, it still doesn’t add up,” said Connor. “Even if he
had an inside man, the employee still couldn’t enter the fraudulent information into the database. The system would still kick it out when the name, social, and DOB didn’t sync up. Having someone on the inside really wouldn’t help.”
“What if the employee didn’t enter the Banker’s fraudulent info at the DMV counter?”
“I don’t follow,” said Connor.
“What if the Banker went into the DMV and got a license as usual, presented all the right information just like everyone else? Real name, real address, real everything. Nothing triggers in the system because it’s all legit. All the info checks out. It’s all accurate. But then, the inside man goes into the database to edit the information right there at the DMV. Maybe editing the information isn’t subject to the same triggers and review as issuing a license from scratch.”
“So the employee alters the accurate info, changing the identity, reprints the license and hands it to the Banker for a chunk of cash?”
“Just like your friend at the phone company. You said it yourself. Wouldn’t be hard to find someone making 30K a year who’s willing to fudge some figures for a nice quarterly bonus.”
“It’s a good workaround.” Connor glanced down at the white envelope and back at me. “Strong theory, little brother. How in the hell are you going to test it? I’ve got zero contacts at the DMV. Do you?”
“No. We’ll have to get creative.”
Twenty Nine
CONNOR AND I RETURNED FROM Indianapolis to my apartment to find Albert sitting on the couch watching an episode of Longmire and nursing a cup of coffee. He watched as we walked into the living room before propping his feet on top of the wheeled suitcase in front of him.
“I suppose we’re going to talk about that?” I said eyeballing the suitcase.
“I booked myself on a train to Meddybemps,” said Albert.
“Trains don’t go to Meddybemps.”
He shook his head. “I meant I got a ticket to Portland. Mitch is going to pick me up there and take me the rest of the way.”
“Mitch Skinner?” said Connor. “I’m surprised he’s still alive.”
I looked at the suitcase again. “What are you two bastards up to?”
“Not up to anything,” he said. “Just got to go settle something.”
“You’re seventy-one years old,” I said. “The only thing you should be settling are healthcare bills.”
“You’re an asshole.”
Some people have a romantic fascination with train travel, but riding the rails to Meddybemps, Maine is about as fun as a colonoscopy with no sleepy juice. Meddybemps is in the Downeast region of Maine, about 25 miles from Eastport. My father bought the summer camp on Meddybemps Lake in the sixties and spent most of his summers there until he stopped going a few years ago.
I’d looked into that train route before when I was considering visiting my father there one summer. First, it’s a 15-hour trek from Cincinnati to Washington, DC. Then you have to switch trains for a 10-hour ride to Boston. Then you switch trains again in Beantown, and you’ve still got another two hours to Portland, Maine. After stepping off the train in Portland, you’ve got another four-hour car ride to Meddybemps. High-speed-rail it isn’t. Add in all the waiting around time and you’re looking at a 30-hour trip. And departure times are as inconvenient as shit. For the same price, it’s much easier to hop a three-hour flight.
But my father couldn’t fly. What he wouldn’t admit, and what I didn’t have to ask, is that he was taking the train because there’s less security, and he’s got a piece stashed somewhere in that suitcase. To settle something in Maine.
I poured a cup of coffee and sat in the chair opposite the couch. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell us what this is all about.”
Albert shifted in his seat, but kept his brown leather boots on the suitcase. “I ever mention the name Ollie Stoner to you?” he said.
“No, you haven’t mentioned him,” I said. I knew who Ollie Stoner was. His name was always on the tip of someone’s tongue in Meddybemps. He was a fixture, like fish frys and mosquitoes. His name even came up when I was there on my last case.
Ollie ran a junkyard near Meddybemps and was rumored to be wrapped up in petty crime. Mostly, he’d steal cars, appliances, copper, or anything else he could resell at his junkyard. He had a bad temper, and two boys who could punch through an outhouse without breaking a sweat, but he kept his operation small so he wouldn’t draw any attention from the authorities. “What about him?”
Albert paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “About four years back, Mitch and I had a little run in with Ollie.”
“Define run in,” I said.
“Ollie used to break into homes around town and steal shit, but a while ago he upped his game. He started threatening locals to sign over the titles to their homes. He essentially put a gun to their head and threatened to kill ‘em and their kin unless they signed over their property. Anyone who said anything got a beat down courtesy of Ollie’s boys. People were scared shitless. A lot of ‘em just packed up and left town. And those that stood up to Ollie didn’t last long.”
“Why didn’t they go to the police?”
“What police? Constable Hafner was the only law we had up there, and Ollie done paid him off, so he wasn’t gonna do shit.”
“Couldn't you go higher up? The state police?”
“They don't give two shits about what happens in Meddybemps. And with no one willing to point a finger at Ollie, it wouldn't matter anyway.”
“I didn’t know Ollie was into anything that big,” I said.
Albert smirked. “So you do know who he is?”
“I never said I didn’t. I said you never mentioned him. So how did you and Mitch get involved?”
Connor laughed as if he’d heard the pending explanation before.
Albert went on to explain. “One day Ollie figures out the property around the lake is some of the most valuable around town, so he starts going after those deeds. Eventually he comes looking for me and Mitch. Wantin’ our properties, so we figured we had to put a stop to it. Mitch comes to me looking for a solution because we knew Ollie wouldn’t take no for an answer. So, together we came up with a plan to put Ollie and his boys out of business.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” I said. “What was the plan?”
Connor laughed again. “Oh, you’re not going to believe what they cooked up.”
“How do you know about this?”
“Never mind about that,” said Albert. “Anyway, we knew Constable Hafner was as crooked as a piece of driftwood, but I knew the game warden in Meddybemps. Guy by the name of Neil Cutter, and we went to see him. Told him everything we knew about Ollie. What he’d been doing and how he was coming for our property. Well, Cutter lives on the lake too, and wasn’t happy with what Ollie was up to, so we came up with a solution to our problem.”
“What’d you do, Dad?”
“Turns out that someone ransacked the game warden’s field office earlier that year. Made off with rifles, ammo, cameras, computers, and a bunch of other equipment.”
“Ollie was dumb enough to hit a warden’s outpost?” I said.
“Probably not,” said Albert. “I’d wager it was some kids. Ollie might have brass balls, but he’s not stupid enough to go after a game warden.”
“So how’d you tie it back to Ollie?”
“Cutter was right pissed about the break in. It didn’t look so good that his office got popped and he had to ask for all new equipment. Especially since they got off with several firearms. That looked real bad. Cutter wanted to nail whoever did it.”
“I’m still not seeing the connection with Ollie,” I said.
“I’m gettin’ to that,” said Albert, kicking over his suitcase. “We wanted Ollie, and Cutter wanted someone to pay for the break in. Turns out Cutter had a boat on a trailer sitting near the warden’s dock. He amended the incident report and added the boat and trailer to the descriptions of items stolen from the
field office. That night, someone made sure that boat and trailer ended up in the back of Ollie’s junkyard. The next morning, someone called in an anonymous tip to Cutter’s office. Cutter bypassed Constable Hafner, got a warrant to search the yard, found the boat, and popped Ollie and his boys for possession of stolen property. Stolen federal property. Ollie ended up getting three years in the clink. His boys each did one.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Now they’re all out and looking for you and Mitch.”
“Sounds about right,” said Connor.
“Something like that.” Albert polished off his coffee and set his cup on the end table. “That’s why I have to get back to Maine.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to me,” I said. “Surprised you and Mitch didn’t just shoot Ollie and toss him in the lake.”
“Thought about it, but I didn’t want blood on my hands. Honestly thought someone would shank the dickhead in prison. Everyone hated that prick. Or maybe he’d die of old age. He’s in his sixties.”
“Anything else to the story?” I said.
“That’s mostly it. Might have left out the part about Mitch and I helping ourselves to the two duffle bags of money Ollie had stashed in the back of an old Buick on his lot. Figured Ollie owed us something for all the trouble he put us through.”
“That happen to be the $20,000 I fished out from under your boathouse a few weeks ago?”
“That’s right,” said Albert. “So, you can thank Ollie for this nice place here.”
“That’s some secret you’re cartin’ around there, Dad.”
“We’ve all got secrets, kid. Some are just bigger than others.”
“Ain’t that right,” said Connor.
I turned to Connor. “And you knew about all this?”