“Why didn’t you tell me about your near-death experience when we spoke yesterday afternoon?”
“I wasn’t sure it meant anything.”
“Somebody tries to kill you and you think it might not mean anything? Come on, Abby, you can do better than that.”
“All right, the truth is, I didn’t want you pulling me off the case.”
“I see.”
She stared at him. “You’re not going to do that, right, Paul? Right?”
He didn’t answer. “Did you see Hickle this morning?
“Yes, on the video monitor.”
“How was he? Still agitated?”
“I think so. Can’t be sure. He didn’t hang around long. Left for work at five thirty. I drove past the donut shop on my way over here and saw his car in the parking lot.”
“If he hasn’t varied his usual routine, maybe he’s not as worked up as you think.”
“Or maybe he’s maintaining his routine to give himself time to think.”
“Biding his time? Getting ready to strike?”
“Yes.”
“Against Kris—or you?”
“Maybe both of us.”
“All right. So tell me. If there is an informant, who could it be?”
Abby shrugged. “Someone with inside knowledge and a motive.”
“Then we’re looking for somebody who knows you’re on this case. Somebody who can get in touch with Hickle. Somebody who would want to sell you out. And somebody who wants Kris dead.”
“Right.” She hugged herself. “I’ve gotta tell you, I hate this a lot. You know me, the original control freak. Now suddenly everything feels like it’s out of control. I should be the one with all the secrets, but now Hickle has a secret I can’t guess. It—it’s got me kind of unnerved.”
“Did you get any sleep at all?”
“Couple hours. Not good sleep, I kept having this dream…Forget about that. It’s not important.”
“A psychologist who says dreams aren’t important?”
“I’m not a psychologist.”
“Neither am I. Tell me anyway. It’s not good to hold these things inside you.”
“Well…I dreamed I was in the hot tub again, being held down, only this time I didn’t find a way to fight back. I just struggled until my air ran out, and then…”
Travis put his arms around her. “It’s okay,” he whispered as he rocked her gently.
“No, it isn’t. I don’t like falling apart like this.”
“You aren’t falling apart.”
“Well, wimping out, then.”
“You’re not doing that, either. But under the circumstances it might be best if we…altered our strategy.”
“Took me off the job? Is that what you’re saying?”
“It may be the only prudent solution—”
She pulled free. “No chance. I’m not running away. I signed up for the duration.”
“If Hickle has been tipped off, you can’t achieve anything useful anyway.”
“Wrong. I can watch him the way I did last night. Besides, he may not even know about me. He may not know anything. And I’m not a quitter, Paul.”
“We’re talking about your life…”
“Right. My life. Therefore, my decision.”
He studied her. “This isn’t about Devin Corbal, is it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean trying to prove yourself to me. Or redeem yourself. Something like that.”
“Don’t get inside my head, please.”
“I just want to know why you’re so insistent on taking this kind of risk.”
“Maybe I just like to live on the edge. Or maybe you’re right about Corbal. What difference does it make? It’s my job, and I’m doing it, and that’s that.”
She glared at him, defying him to disagree.
Travis relented. “Okay.” He teased a strand of hair off her forehead. “You’re stubborn, you know.”
“It’s a quality I pride myself on. Now, have you ever heard of a company called Western Regional Resources?”
“Should I have?”
“Probably not. They don’t seem to do a lot of advertising. I traced the phone call Hickle received, then tracked down the number with a reverse directory. The call was made from a cell phone registered to Western Regional Resources. I couldn’t find it on the Internet or in Lexis-Nexis. Needless to say, they aren’t in the Yellow Pages either.”
Travis looked away toward the view of the canyon framed in the deck’s glass doors. “We can find them.”
“Could be tough. My guess is, it’s a dummy corporation.”
“That’s my guess too,” Travis said softly, still staring into the distance, and then he felt Abby’s gaze on him.
“You know something,” she whispered.
“I might. Follow me.”
He led her to the rear of the house, detouring to pick up his notebook computer from the study. When he ushered her into the master bedroom, Abby shook her head in mock dismay. “You’ve got a one-track mind.”
“Not today. This is all business.” Travis opened the hinged double doors of a walnut entertainment center, revealing a TV set with a thirty-inch screen.
“There’s nothing good on at this hour,” Abby said.
“Watch and learn.” He picked up the remote control and pressed the channel buttons in a seven-digit sequence. With a metallic snick, the front of the TV swung a few inches ajar on hidden hinges. “A safe,” he explained unnecessarily. “State of the art.”
“Very clever, but what if you want to watch Letterman?”
“The TV is fully functional. It’s a flat-panel screen, four inches thick, with the circuitry imbedded in the frame. The rest of the unit is hollow.”
“So what’ve you got in there? The family jewels?”
“I believe you know where I keep those.” Travis opened the safe door fully, revealing racks of CDs in plastic sleeves. “What I store here are files. Highly confidential files.”
“Background checks,” Abby said quietly.
“How’d you guess?”
“I wondered about it sometimes. It seemed like a reasonable precaution. TPS is hired to protect people from a variety of threats. Not all stalkers are strangers. Routine background checks might come in handy in some cases. Anyway, it seemed plausible to me that you would cover that angle. Why not? You cover everything else.” She smiled slyly. “You’re basically an obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive perfectionist.”
“Flattery is cheap.”
“So TPS digs up dirt on its own clients and the people in their lives.”
“We prefer to think of it as gathering intelligence.”
“Whatever. You investigate a client’s spouse, business partners, personal trainer—anybody in a position to deliver harm. But you never tell them, because they wouldn’t appreciate having their pals and loved ones put under a microscope.”
“That’s why these files are confidential and why they’re kept in my home.”
Abby approached the safe and peered inside. “CDs,” she said. “Four dozen or so. That’s, what, thirty gigs of data?”
“Not all the disks are filled to capacity.”
“Even so, it’s a lot of info.”
“As you said, I’m thorough.”
“Actually, what I said was that you’re an obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive—”
“I think thorough captures it adequately.” He thumbed through the disks until he found one labeled “BARWOOD,” which he lifted from its sleeve. “You’re right, though. You can store a lot of information on a CD. All seventy-five thousand articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance.”
Abby nodded. “Or every detail of Kris Barwood’s life and the lives of her friends, her relatives…her husband.”
“Yes.”
“Good old Howard.” Her voice was low and thoughtful.
Travis frowned. “Once again you don’t sound surprised.”
“I was up most of the night reviewing the possibilities. And the husband is always a possibility. Please tell me that Howard Barwood set up a company called Western Regional Resources.”
“I wish I could. That would make everything easy.”
“And things are never easy. It would take all the challenge out of life. If he doesn’t own that company, what made you think of him?”
“Let me show you.” Travis placed his notebook computer on the bed and inserted the CD, bringing up its contents on the screen. A series of folder icons appeared. The first was labeled “BARWOOD, HOWARD.” Others bore the names of various people connected to Kris—friends, coworkers, attorneys and managers, even her housekeeper.
He accessed Howard Barwood’s folder. Inside were more folders, arranged alphabetically: BANK ACCOUNTS, CLIENT LIST, CREDIT HISTORY, FINANCES, INSURANCE, MEDICAL RECORDS, MOTOR VEHICLES, REAL PROPERTY, TAXES, TELEPHONE RECORDS.
Abby sat on the bed beside him, looking over his shoulder. She sighed. “There aren’t any secrets anymore, are there?”
“Not many. It takes some effort to uncover all this, of course. A surname scan delivers the basic info: driver’s license, vehicle registration, voter registration, and real estate holdings. The Lexis-Nexis property database supplies previous or secondary residences. We check employment history with an executive name search. Most of our information comes from the subject’s credit history. It tells us where he travels, what he does for entertainment, where he likes to shop. Then there are insurance policies, medical records, phone bills, property tax filings, financial statements…”
“All technically off-limits to snoops and hackers.”
“But accessible to those in the know.” He opened the ASSETS folder. “When I first investigated Howard, the Barwoods’ net worth was twenty-four million dollars. That was in 1994. Recently we took another look. This is the figure now.”
Abby leaned close to the screen. “Twenty million,” she said. “So either they’ve made some lousy investments or there’s something funny going on.”
“It’s something funny.” Travis scrolled through pages of spreadsheets, highlighting figures in the Date Sold column. “Howard has begun liquidating his assets.”
“If the assets are held jointly, wouldn’t he need Kris’s approval?”
“Most of these accounts were set up so as not to require a cosignatory. It makes it more convenient for either asset holder to write a check.”
“And also more convenient for one asset holder to move funds around without the other’s knowledge. Where did the profits from the asset sales go?”
“Into a local bank account set up in Howard’s name.”
“His name alone. No Kris?”
“No Kris.”
The bed creaked as Abby tucked her legs under her in a swami pose. “I’m beginning to see where this is going. The money didn’t stay in that bank account, did it?”
“No, it didn’t.” Travis found Howard Barwood’s statements in the BANK ACCOUNTS folder. Cash withdrawals had been made at irregular intervals. “Cashier’s checks,” he explained. “Fifty or a hundred grand at a pop. After that, the money trail runs cold.”
“You have no idea where all that cash is going?”
“Yes and no.”
“I thought you might say something like that.”
“Did you? Why?”
“Because you still haven’t explained how dummy corporations fit into all this.”
“Good point. I haven’t. There is another factor.” He opened the REAL PROPERTY folder. “When we ran a property search on Howard Barwood, we found a house in Culver City.” An address came up on the screen. “At first glance there’s nothing odd about that. Howard owns a number of properties, small and large. But recently he sold this house, taking a loss. The buyer was something called Trendline Investments. They’re incorporated in the Netherlands Antilles, if that means anything to you.”
“A haven for offshore banking. Airtight secrecy laws.”
“Very good. Now look at Howard’s credit card statements.” Travis opened the CREDIT HISTORY folder. “They include the purchase of round-trip airline tickets to Willemstad. It’s the capital city of the Netherlands Antilles.”
“So let me take a shot in the dark. Trendline Investments is a dummy corporation. Howard set it up. He sold the Culver City house to himself.”
“I think so. Can’t prove it, but his trip to the Antilles is strong circumstantial evidence. He stayed for two nights, enough time for him to execute all the paperwork required to establish a shell corporation with its own bank account.”
“When?”
Travis scrolled down to the hotel charge, dated November 22, 1999. “Late last year. Shortly before the transfer of the deed to the Culver City house, and shortly before the other assets started to mysteriously disappear.”
“And Kris doesn’t know?”
“There’s no evidence that she does. Of course, financial records can tell us only so much.”
“Seems like they’re already telling us quite a lot.” Abby thought for a moment. “Was the Culver City house deeded to Howard alone?”
“Yes.”
“So even when he owned it openly, Kris may not have known the house existed?”
“Right.”
“I see.” She rubbed her forehead wearily.
“You get it, don’t you?”
“You don’t have to hit me over the head with a two-by-four. When a guy owns a residence his wife doesn’t know about and goes to considerable lengths to keep it a secret, there’s usually only one reason. Howard is cheating on his wife. He uses the house for the occasional secret rendezvous. He intends to get a divorce. He’s going to say good-bye to Kris.”
Travis nodded. “But California is a community property state…”
Abby untucked her legs and got off the bed. “Which means the Barwoods’ assets will be divided down the middle. And that’s a problem for Howard, because while his wife is extremely well off, he’s worth much more than she is. He doesn’t want to surrender half his wealth. To shield as much of it as he can, he’s secretly transferring their assets overseas, hiding them under the umbrella of a shell company incorporated in a jurisdiction with extremely tight banking secrecy laws. That way, when the assets are divided, there’ll be less to divide.”
“All of which is perfectly legal,” Travis said, “as long as he paid his US taxes. There’s no law against moving money overseas, even if the intent is to shield it from a claimant in a lawsuit or a divorce.” He ejected the CD.
Abby shook her head. “You haven’t told Kris?”
“Not a word. I’m fairly sure Howard’s stealing her blind, but how can I say anything without revealing the background checks we’ve carried out?”
“Under the circumstances I hardly think she’d blame you for it.”
“She would if it turns out I’m wrong. Most of this is supposition, remember. We don’t know for sure that Howard owns Trendline or that he’s conducting these transactions without Kris’s knowledge. Possibly the two of them planned the asset diversion together. It could be some complicated tax shelter, only borderline legal. If it is, and I start asking about it…”
“You say good-bye to another client.”
“Right. The one I can least afford to lose.” Travis slipped the CD back into its plastic sleeve. “Besides, our job is to safeguard Kris’s life, not her finances.”
“It’s her life I’m worried about,” Abby said slowly. “If Howard is fooling around and wants a divorce, and if he’s so desperate to keep his hands on his money—”
“Then he might have a motive to get rid of his wife in a more expeditious fashion.”
“By providing inside information to the psycho who’s stalking her. You think he would do that? Sell out Kris to her would-be assassin to get her out of the way?”
“It’s cold, I grant you. But LA’s not exactly a town known for its warmth and humanity.”
“And if all
this is true, then Howard might be my mystery assailant from the other night. He knew I was on the case. He might’ve been afraid I’d find out too much. If he was watching Hickle’s building and saw me in the hot tub—”
“He could have decided it was a golden opportunity to get rid of you.”
Abby frowned. “I knew I didn’t like the guy. Is there any way we can discreetly find out if he’s alibied for that night?”
“Sure. The security officers stationed at the guest cottage keep a log of all comings and goings. I can find out if Howard was out that night. Odds are, he was.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He goes out nearly every night. Breaking in his new car, he claims.”
“Or visiting his house in Culver City and whoever he’s seeing there. And on the way home, maybe stopping at Hickle’s apartment building to do a little mischief. It’s all possible, but we have to nail it down.”
Travis nodded. “We will. If Howard has set up one dummy corporation, there could be more, and one of them might be Western Regional Resources—in which case, Western Regional is probably incorporated in the Netherlands Antilles like Trendline. It might even be connected with Trendline. A shell within a shell, that kind of thing. I’ll have my staff get on it right away.”
“If they can establish a connection between Howard and Western Regional, we’ll have to tell Kris.”
“I know.”
“And the police.”
“Yes.” Travis shrugged. “See, we’ve got options, leads. Things aren’t as completely out of control as you thought.”
She tried to brush off what he’d said with a wave of her hand. “It was a rough night, that’s all. Left a bad residue.”
“Feeling better now?”
“Considerably. Not that I came here to—well, I mean, I wanted to brief you on urgent developments. I wasn’t looking to be…comforted.”
He stood and drew her close. “But you wouldn’t turn down a little comforting, would you?”
“Guess not.” She looked down at his robe and smiled. It was her first real smile since she’d arrived. “You know, the last time we were together outside the office, I was the one in the bathrobe.”
“I remember. Vividly.”
The Shadow Hunter Page 16