Carl had been in his downstairs office when the security system was tripped. He looked up from his desktop, heart racing, and froze momentarily. The house was empty, of course. Jennifer had left him five months ago and had filed an alimony suit against him, which was currently tied up in the court system. Between Jennifer leaving, the theft of his remaining funds from the account he and Chambers had set up, and what happened at Bent Creek, his nerves were shot. He’d been burning money leasing a private jet to ferry him back and forth between coasts, trying to appear that business was normal. But in the back of his mind, business wasn’t normal. Even Jake had been on edge and Jake wasn’t even a member of Chef Munchel’s club. “I’m just going to close that account,” Jake had told Carl after Carl returned home from Bent Creek and the two of them had a long talk on the phone about the theft. “I’ll close it and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“That’s a good idea,” Carl had agreed.
“If those transactions were traced, we’re in deep shit.”
“I know.”
“And if they connect us through phone records or email, our story is simple,” Jake said. “We met at the American Bankers Association conference in 2008. That’s partly true.”
“It is,” Carl agreed. It was true. Two months after the ABA conference, they were planning on the White/Chambers Hedge fund that had netted both of them close to a quarter of a billion dollars in just one year’s time, a fund that had also tanked in the marketplace and had played a big part in the financial meltdown of the last recession. “And I suggest you make good use of that paper shredder.”
Unfortunately, Carl didn’t follow his own advice. He’d stewed over the theft. Two hundred and fifty k wasn’t much, but it was all that was left in the fund that had, during its height of performance, outperformed others on the market. To see it reduced to such a paltry figure and then to have that sucked out of the account...well, it was insulting, to say the least. The fact that the money came out of the account electronically told Carl that somebody at the financial institution had a hand in it. Upon arriving back to his apartment in New York after the fiasco at Bent Creek, he’d made a few phone calls to the principals of the private banking institution where the account was opened. Nobody had a clue as to what happened. The CEO and IT Director had pored over every transaction, every network log, in an effort to trace when and how the money had come out of the account. Despite their exhaustive efforts, the money had seemingly vanished without a trace.
At one point, Carl had to stop worrying about the theft. In the grand scheme of things, it was a paltry sum. On the other hand, he had a bad feeling that the disappearance of the funds meant something bigger was at play. Was this the result of some kind of government committee? The IRS? As far as Carl knew, the IRS didn’t snag money out of private banking accounts. They sent nasty letters, paid personal visits to places of business or residence. They hounded you, annoyed the living shit out of you. If you didn’t pay up, they froze accounts. They didn’t just swoop in and take the money without some kind of warning. And it took them a long time to eventually freeze an account. No way was this the work of the IRS.
Who was it, then? He’d been under the impression it was Rick Nicholson. But a week after the Bent Creek fiasco, Emily Wharton had called with a bombshell. The money had been stolen by a waitress, Anna King. It was unsubstantiated, of course, but she’d confessed, and in the turmoil that followed, Anna had escaped. Her whereabouts were currently unknown. “But I’ve hired a private investigator to find her,” Emily had told him. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
Carl remembered Anna. She’d been quiet, polite, a good waitress. She hadn’t really stuck out from Jim’s wait staff at the restaurant. Carl could barely remember what she looked like. He remembered her being reasonably attractive, and the more he thought about her, the more he began to get the sense that she had played down her physical appearance. Her makeup was sparse, her hair wasn’t very stylish, and the way she carried herself seemed to suggest that she’d spent her adult working years in the service industry and had been beaten down from it. He wondered now if that was all part of her act, to make her appear invisible.
In the weeks that followed, Carl had thought a lot about her and the methods she might have employed to steal his money, which had come by piecemeal from Emily during weekly phone calls. As a result, he had been lax in destroying his records on the hedge fund account. Instead, he’d tucked them away in a locked file cabinet and continued on as if nothing happened. He got updates from Wayne Sanders and Emily Wharton regarding the Bent Creek fiasco, and despite a scary few weeks of uncertainty, things were beginning to ease up there. Wayne reported that the Willow Grove Sheriff’s Department had done what they were paid to do and they performed the task beautifully—they’d covered everything up (Wayne also admitted that Anna or somebody else had phoned the sheriff’s department, obviously not knowing that the sheriff’s department was in Bent Creek’s pocket). The bodies were disposed of in the incinerator on Bent Creek grounds (Wayne’s voice had changed pitch slightly when he said this, as if he were uncomfortable talking about it, or something about it bothered him). Wayne made sure Chef Munchel’s business affairs were taken care of—his lawyers had done a splendid job of forging the correct documents that stated Jim had decided to move to Thailand and was turning his company over to his trusted manager, a woman named Alice Henderson, who was stunned and surprised at the news. Likewise, Paul Westcott was made to appear as if he’d skipped town as well. Rick Nicholson’s demise had been the toughest—apparently, he’d been quite talkative to family and friends in the Denver area about his new gig, and Wayne had been ferrying calls from them demanding to know where Nicholson was. They wouldn’t accept the Sheriff’s verdict that Nicholson had returned to his apartment in Boulder, packed up his meager belongings, and left for parts unknown. The sneak thief Wayne paid to rifle through Nicholson’s apartment and remove certain items, making it appear as if he’d packed hastily and left town seemed to satisfy even the state police. But Nicholson’s family and friends weren’t buying it. They’d hired a private investigator.
Luckily, there had been no inquiries regarding the disappearance of the Johnson’s, nor Shane and Jackie Daniels. Their respective colleagues didn’t know about Bent Creek (it was in the bylaws and was similar to the first rule of Fight Club—don’t talk about Bent Creek...to anyone).
The last phone call Carl got from Wayne was two days ago. “It looks like things are going to be okay,” Wayne had said. He’d sounded better to Carl, less tense, the worry out of his voice. He was beginning to sound like his old self. “I’ve been in constant discussion with other members of the board and we’re leaning very strongly toward not holding our annual meeting next season. We thought we’d wait until the following year.”
Carl had agreed that would be a good thing. Actually, he had doubts the club could continue. They would need a chef. A chef like Jim Munchel couldn’t be found lurking in every restaurant.
What had been more disturbing to everybody on the board was the absence of data on the computers at Bent Creek.
Emily Wharton had reported this to Wayne Sanders shortly after the events that had ended so bloody. Their IT Director, Mark Robinson, had reported to Emily that the daily reports he received via email ended suddenly on September 22, the day after things went to shit. Even more troubling, Mark was not able to remote into any of the servers, much less ping them. With no way to troubleshoot what was wrong with the network, Emily told Mark that he was to remain at home until he received a call from her that he was to go to the grounds and investigate the matter. A few days after the county sheriff’s department performed their cleanup, Wayne and several other board members drove to the grounds to do further cleanup—mop up the blood, get rid of personal belongings of those who died, and deliver a handsome payout to Sheriff Andrew Walker for his cooperation (strangely enough, Sheriff Walker reported that the bodies of Dale Lantis, Rick Nicholson, and the t
wo other menu items that had been secured and stored in one of the walk-in freezers were not present during their cleanup. Carl himself had flown in a week or two later and assisted with a walk-through of the property with Wayne, where he found evidence that the incinerator had been put to use. Sheriff Walker hadn’t noticed that, but Carl did; at times, he assisted Chef Munchel with disposal of those portions the group could not consume by cremating them in the incinerator. A glazier was hired to repair the damaged heavy plate glass door in the lobby. Once the interior was cosmetically sound, Emily placed the call to Mark Robinson, who drove up to Bent Creek from his cozy suburban home in Aurora, Colorado.
Mark had been stunned by the damage in the data center—the secure door to the server room had been shattered, the server rack compromised. All drives had been completely wiped of data, the backup tapes stolen. Mark had worked tirelessly for a week to restore data from a week’s worth of backup tapes that had been stored offsite by their offsite data storage vendor. He’d made several phone calls to Emily, telling her in a snotty voice that if they’d only listened to him and had all their data saved to a cloud, they wouldn’t have to worry about any missing data. Emily had told him to shut his pie hole and fix what he could. And because Mark was very good at shutting up and doing what he was ordered to do, no matter how stupid or against the grain, he did what he was told and performed admirably. Despite his efforts, there were gaps in the missing data. At the end of that week, Mark had submitted his report to the board of directors on what remained missing and what was salvageable. The board was still poring over this information, focusing on the personnel records of Anna King and the scant customer information on Bob Garrison.
Carl cocked his head, frowning. The security panel at his office door that monitored the estate’s security system was blinking several red lights, indicating an intruder. He was debating on whether to put a call in to the police—surely they were already on the way now—when he heard the faint murmur of voices coming from outside.
A moment later, several loud booming sounds at the front door. A male voice barked out. “FBI! Open the door now!”
Oh shit! Carl dived for the key to the file cabinet where the hedge fund records were kept. As he fumbled the key in the lock, he thought, I shouldn’t have been so goddamn lazy, should have shredded these papers weeks ago! And as he flipped on the shredder and pulled the first file out, papers spilling to the floor, a series of heavy booms came from the front door and then a resounding crash as the front door banged open and heavy footsteps pounded down the entry hall and Carl knew he was really, truly, fucked now.
* * *
They took him quickly, swarming over him, pinning his arms behind his back roughly and pointing ugly semi-automatic weapons in his face as they shouted at him to “get on the ground, motherfucker!” They pushed him to the ground, got his wrists cuffed behind his back with a pair of zip lock cuffs, then hauled him up. It was FBI all right. Black clad, with bullet proof vests and crash helmets. There were no less than a dozen of them running around like ants all over his house. “What are you charging me with?” Carl demanded.
“Securities fraud and a host of other things,” one of the agents said. He was young with a crew cut and appeared to take his job seriously. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law...”
And as Carl White was led out of his home, leaving half a dozen FBI agents to paw through his office, the foremost thought on his mind was this all had to do with the theft of his money from that hedge fund, and if it was truly Anna King who had set him up, she were going to be sorry she’d ever been born.
* * *
Earl Sanders was scared.
He was standing in his plush living room at his home in Aliso Viejo, California, trying to scrutinize the fine print of the search warrant he’d just been served with. A team of CSI techs were searching the house for various items, and Virginia and the kids were freaking out. They were seated on the sofa in the den, being questioned by several detectives. Earl was trying not to let his nervous demeanor show. “I’m telling you, you have the wrong guy,” Earl said, shoving the document back at the detective, who hadn’t taken his stony gaze off him since Earl answered the door. “In fact, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to call my lawyer now.”
“Detective Giraldo?” one of the CSI technicians called out.
Earl and Detective Giraldo turned toward the CSI agent, who had just emerged from the stairway that led to the lower level of the home. The agent held up something that looked like a test tube strip. “We’ve got a match, sir.”
A match? Earl thought. A match to what?
“Mr. Sanders, you’re under the arrest for the abduction and murder of Carla Taylor,” Detective Giraldo said. He nodded at two other detectives who were standing close by. “Cuff him.”
“Wait...what?” Earl protested, his heart slamming in his chest at the mention of the name. His arms were jerked behind his back by the other two detectives but Earl paid them no heed. His head was reeling at this news. How could they tie him to Carla Taylor’s murder? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s Carla Taylor?”
“You’re also being arrested for the murders of Dale Lantis, Alan Smith, and Rick Nicholson,” Detective Giraldo said.
The world went black. Earl felt his knees buckle, but somehow he held on. “What? I don’t understand?”
Detective Giraldo raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You don’t understand? How is it that you fail to understand, Mr. Sanders?”
“I...I...” Earl’s mouth suddenly felt very dry. “...I don’t understand how this is happening.”
“It’s quite simple, Mr. Sanders. Our CSI technicians have matched DNA on the bloodstains and human remains found in the freezer and your work area downstairs. Does that help you understand the charges against you?”
Hearing this did more than help Earl Sanders understand the charges against him. It made him faint from the sudden shock of the news.
* * *
All told, a dozen arrests were made across the continental United States that day. All of those arrested were members of the Bent Creek Board of Directors. Media journalists did not seem to notice that Mr. Sanders’s arrest bore any links to the arrests of the Bent Creek board members, which was being tagged as one of the largest investigations of criminal financial fraud in recent memory. Instead, Mr. Sanders’s arrest was trumped as yet another deranged psycho leading a double life; respected banker by day, sadistic serial killer by night. His wife, Virginia, and their kids were devastated.
Jake Chambers was arrested that day too, on fraud and embezzlement charges, same as his partner in the hedge fund, Carl White. Likewise, Carl White and Jake Chambers were not implicated in the Bent Creek fiasco. A journalist who wrote for the Wall Street Journal made a thin connection but ultimately wrote that the White/Chambers arrest was due to a completely separate matter, one that bore no relation to the level of dishonesty and corruption that had brought the Bent Creek empire down.
Emily Wharton and Wayne Sanders were the last board members to be arrested. Emily was taken into custody in her office at Max Brothers, the firm she headed. She immediately pled her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and called her lawyer, who immediately began leaking highly spun stories to the press. Wayne Sanders was arrested at Dulles Airport just as he was about to board his private jet that was scheduled to depart to Italy. Unlike Emily, Wayne’s arrest was loud and dramatic and it made front page headline news: billionaire financial tycoon throws temper tantrum on Dulles runway as he’s being arrested for committing multiple counts of securities fraud. Those stories did not help his image with the general public, who had grown tired of hearing stories of spoiled rich people anyway. Privately, Wayne conferred with his lawyers and wondered how this could happen. Exactly how had he cheated investors? When his lawyers revealed the evidence the government had against him, Wayne was shell-shocked. Unauthorized accounts op
ened, funds shuffled around that he never knew about, even cases of funds bought before the prospectus on them was fully known, which constituted securities fraud. In short, all instances were clear setups—the question was, who set him up? He could only think of one person capable of pulling this off: Anna King.
Emily Wharton thought of Anna too while she sat in jail awaiting trial. She went over it constantly in her mind. How the little bitch had pulled one over on all of them. If there was one thing the Bent Creek board of directors had in their corner, it was that they conducted all their business affairs legitimately. When the US government stepped in to bail out the banks, those board members who were affected by the financial crisis played by the rules. They attended hearings on behalf of their various industries; they kept their books opened to federal oversight committees. The only illegal activity undertaken by anybody on the Bent Creek board was the sole reason the club had been formed in the first place—for the procurement of their main ingredient, human meat, for consumption in their secret, extremely exclusive, exotic dining club. That constituted abduction and murder.
But illegal financial and business shenanigans? Never! Drugs, sexual assault and battery, and other felonies? No way. None of the club members had as much as a speeding ticket on their record.
Emily fumed silently in her cell. If they had only gotten to Anna in the weeks after the shit went down at Bent Creek! But they couldn’t. Anna had disappeared off the face of the earth. Not even the private investigators she’d hired discreetly could find her. It was as if Anna had never existed.
Emily and Wayne realized they could not bring Anna’s name up to their lawyers, much less anybody else, without revealing what really went on at Bent Creek. They could only remain in custody on pins and needles as the resort was thoroughly searched by investigators. Despite searching the place from top to bottom and questioning past and former employees and customers, no evidence of foul play turned up. Earl Sanders didn’t even say a word despite the charges being levied against him; he was being charged with four murders, based on anatomical and DNA evidence found in his home. Carla’s father, Joe Taylor, identified the scrap of clothing found in a sealed-off basement room in Earl’s home. The scrap of clothing contained Carla’s DNA. Despite their diligence, no mention was ever made to Earl or his defense attorney that Carla had once applied for a job at Apex, Limited, and Earl did not volunteer that information. To do so would only open the door to things he did not want to talk about, especially if he wanted to keep his family safe. He had heard about Wayne Sanders’s arrest, and while the billionaire might be behind bars, his reach beyond them was long and dangerous. So Earl kept quiet and let the government paint a very ugly picture about him, one that would compare him to other monsters like Dennis Radar and Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer.
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