Lilith: a novel

by Edward Trimnell

  Would Greenwald’s memories of Jessica Knox be characterized by the same degree of uneasiness and guilt that had characterized those of the teacher, Mr. Frogge? Or had the two had the more distant and impersonal relations that one would expect in the sterile world of banking? Would Greenwald, who had doubtlessly supervised dozens—if not hundreds—of employees in the intervening years, even remember Jessica Knox?

  Alan didn't know the answers to these questions. However, he wasn't going to give Greenwald an opportunity to concoct an expedient and self-serving narrative. Enough years had passed since Jessica had left the bank that Greenwald would not be anticipating questions about her. Alan intended to gently blindside him, and assess his unrehearsed responses.

  He also decided to conduct this interview without Maribel. Jessica would have been an adult when she crossed paths with Greenwald. Nevertheless, if there had been any relationship between them, it would have been considered an unethical breach of the bank’s policies, given that Greenwald had been Knox’s supervisor.

  Greenwald might be more easily persuaded to open up in front of a man, rather than a man and a woman. Especially if Alan promised him that the conversation would remain confidential and off-the-record.

  Seth Greenwald was about the same age as Mr. Frogge, but with an important difference. Whereas Mr. Frogge was athletic, there was a distinct softness about the pudgy, red-haired Seth Greenwald. He had never been an athlete, not even in his youth.

  Greenwald greeted Alan in the main customer area of the bank before leading him back to his private office. His manner was friendly but businesslike. He wanted to know what this was about. He had likely been expecting an issue of recent vintage. Perhaps the branch manager thought that Alan was investigating Middle Eastern terrorists who were laundering money, or the possibility that some of the credit cards issued by the bank had been compromised by identity thieves.

  Greenwald clearly hadn’t been anticipating the name Jessica Knox. When Alan mentioned her, Seth fumbled on his reply. His pale cheeks turned the color of his hair.

  “You did know her,” Alan said, drawing his own conclusions. “And you remember her. She wasn't just another employee for you, was she?”

  “I, uh—“ Seth fumbled.

  “Look,” Alan said, cutting to the chase. “It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened.”

  “I slept with Jessica Knox,” Greenwald blurted out. “I’m not proud of it, mind you, but, hey, I—”

  “I don’t work for the bank,” Alan said. “And this isn’t a meeting with corporate HR. I’m a state law enforcement officer, and I’m investigating a homicide case.”

  Greenwald was taken aback by the word “homicide” as most people who live and work in sheltered environments usually were, in Alan’s experience.

  “You’re telling me Jessica killed someone?”

  Alan found it strange that this was the first thought that should come to Greenwald’s mind. Did he think that Jessica Knox might be capable of homicide?

  “Right now Jessica Knox is what we’d call ‘a person of interest’. We’re looking for her; but she’s off the grid, so to speak.”

  “That doesn't surprise me,” Greenwald said. Then he added, not without reluctance: “especially when you consider the circumstances under which she left the bank.”

  “That’s what I need to know all about, Mr. Greenwald. That and anything else you might be able to tell me about Jessica Knox. After so much time has passed, I don't necessarily expect that you’ll be able to help me locate her—at least not directly, but maybe you can tell me what sort of person we’re dealing with here. I’m looking for your insights, Mr. Greenwald. You were her supervisor for three years here at the bank, and it’s pretty clear that she left under a cloud.”

  “She did,” Greenwald confirmed. “I have reason to believe that Jessica stole some assets from the bank. But I was never able to prove it, the evidence against her being circumstantial.”

  “Was there a police investigation?” Alan asked, already anticipating the answer.

  “No. We kept it quiet.”

  Meaning you kept it quiet, Alan thought but did not say.

  “There were reasons,” Greenwald continued, “and I’d tell you about those. But—”

  Alan motioned for him to continue. “But what?”

  “My conduct—my conduct with her—wasn't completely ethical.”

  “As I’ve tried to make clear, this isn’t a workplace ethics investigation I’m conducting here. This is a homicide investigation.”

  “What about the statutes of limitations?” Seth asked, reminding Alan oddly of Mr. Frogge now. It was one thing to come clean about past transgressions; it was another thing to be legally liable for them.

  “Unless your involvement with Jessica Knox also involved murder or the funding of terrorists—or something of a similar magnitude—then you won’t have a problem with me. Is this garden-variety embezzlement we’re talking about?”

  “Something like that,” Seth acknowledged. “Let’s just say that there was strong evidence to indicate that Jessica took some assets that didn't belong to her. Specifically, she may have removed some assets from a customer’s safety deposit box.”

  “And you didn't report her,” Alan said.

  “She blackmailed me. She could prove that the two of us had an inappropriate relationship. If she would have gone to the bank’s management, I would have lost my job—everything I’d worked for.”

  “So you were the victim, then,” Alan said.

  “Hey, you asked me what happened. I’m telling you.”

  “True enough,” Alan allowed. “Go on, please.”

  “Like I said, the evidence against her was circumstantial, though I’m ninety-nine percent sure she was guilty of theft. It was tricky, because the owner of the safety deposit box was deceased, and she had never given the bank a line-item accounting of the contents of the box. That happens sometimes, you know.”

  “So the heirs—presumably the next of kin—had no reason to raise any questions.”

  “Something like that. Yes, that’s it, more or less.”

  “The perfect theft,” Alan said. “It was in everyone’s best interest to sweep it under the rug.”

  “Hey, she blackmailed me is what happened. And we came to an understanding: She would resign her position immediately, and leave quietly. No questions asked and no charges filed. It seemed like the best possible outcome, given the situation.”

  Best for whom? Alan thought, but again did not say.

  Seth Greenwald then proceeded to tell Alan about the day that Ellen Frazier had come into the bank to take possession of her late mother’s safety deposit box. Greenwald described the suspicious trips between the room where the safety deposit boxes were stored, and the parking lot of the bank—and presumably Jessica Knox’s car. Greenwald reported how Knox had immediately resorted to threats when cornered.

  “It was as if she knew right away that she had an insurance policy,” Seth Greenwald said.

  “Probably she did, Mr. Greenwald. She was sleeping with her boss, after all.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Oh, one last thing: You said that there was never any full accounting made of the contents of the safety deposit box before and after the suspected theft. But do you have any idea how much Jessica Knox might have taken? Is there any way to assign a rough dollar amount?”

  “Oh,” Seth said. He paused, and Alan had the sense that the bank manager was doing legitimate mental calculations, as opposed to simply thinking up prevarications.

  “It could have been quite a lot,” he finally said. “The Crabtrees—Ellen Frazier’s parents—were very resourceful, from what I gathered. Jessica might have gotten way with quite a bit of money, once everything was converted to cash.”

  “How much, ballpark?”

  “Again, no way to be sure. But it might have been an amount in the high five figures, maybe even in the low to middling six figures. Enoug
h for a single young woman with minimal fixed expenses to live on for a number of years. But not enough to live on forever. She probably got away with a sizeable nest egg. But that wouldn't have lasted her forever, would it? And Jessica didn't have much experience with investing. She came from a working-class background. So she wasn't used to having money.

  “What often happens in cases where someone gets a sudden windfall is, they start spending recklessly, like the money will last forever. But sooner or later, that level of money runs out. After this long, my guess is that Jessica Knox would be running low, and—” The bank manager hesitated.

  “What? Go ahead and say it.”

  “Well, this is just a hunch, based on what I saw of her. I don’t know the details of the case you’re working on, of course. What I was going to say is that Jessica Knox would probably be looking for another easy mark about now—or maybe several of them.”

  39.

  A cold front had turned the springtime weather of Cincinnati unseasonably damp and chilly. This annoyed Travis Hall to no end. He hated the weather in Ohio. A light spittle of rain stung his face as he waited on a bench outside the strip mall where he was supposed to meet Alicia Griggs at three o’clock p.m.

  Travis pulled his cell phone from his army surplus jacket and checked the time: Alicia Griggs was already more than ten minutes late. Damn her.

  He shivered and pulled the collar of his jacket up against his cheek. And damn the weather in Cincinnati.

  A few big scores, and he and Jessica would be able to get the hell out of here—down to that tropical island the two of them were always talking about.

  And from there? Who knew?

  Travis had no illusions about the nature of his relationship with Jessica Knox. Jessie was an okay girl, as girls went. She was a decent lay; and she had enough brains to help him with projects like this Lilith scam. That made her better than most.

  But Jessica, he knew, also believed that she was smarter than her man—and that would eventually lead them to conflict. Sooner or later she would question him one too many times, and he would finally have enough of her. There could only be one leader in any enterprise, Travis knew. And he hadn’t spent that time in prison, eating crappy food and dodging queers in the shower, learning the tricks of the trade from more experienced cons, so he could get out and take orders from a woman.

  Travis was vaguely aware of the trends in the straight world: He knew that there were big corporations that had female bosses. Well, that was fine for those guys who wore suits and ties all day; it wasn't all right for him.

  This meant that he and Jessica would eventually part ways. When that time came, Travis knew that Jessica would be due for a rude surprise: She had always considered herself the smarter of the pair. She would learn otherwise.

  But that rude awakening lay somewhere in the future. In the meantime, the two of them would work together and make a big pile of money. They would get out of Ohio and onto one of those tropical islands.

  Travis was fully immersing himself in the familiar daydream about the tropical island when Alicia Griggs finally appeared. He saw an old beater of a car—one of the sedans that Chevrolet hadn’t made in about ten years—roll noisily into the parking lot of the strip mall. The engine was ticking loudly and one of the wheels was squeaking. The car’s windshield was cracked. The original color of the car—Travis believed it was some shade of green—was faded, and the body was blotched with patches of rust.

  Alicia brought the car to a sudden stop, barely bothering to negotiate the lines that indicated a parking space. As she exited the vehicle, a trio of young African American males who were loitering near the entrance of the tattoo parlor on the far side of the parking lot paused their conversation. One of them whistled at her, and Travis cringed when she turned around and nodded appreciatively. He didn't want a confrontation; and if Alicia wanted to strike up a conversation with young black guys, she could damn well do it on her own time and her own dime.

  But Alicia turned back around and kept walking, having seen Travis sitting on the bench. During her shambling approach, Travis asked himself once again if what he was planning was truly feasible: Could Alicia Griggs pass for Jessica?

  Alicia Griggs did roughly resemble Jessica, but the key word here was rough. She was thinner than Jessica—though not from working out. Alicia spent most of her time, energy, and meager funds in pursuit of the next high. She was a junkie’s junkie, eagerly consuming everything from meth and heroin to the various prescription pills that had become street drugs in recent years. Travis could see at least two track marks on her arms, even from a distance. Alicia was about the same age as Jessica—somewhere in her early thirties—but she looked ten or fifteen years older. As she sat down on the bench beside him, he noticed that her hair—dark like Jessica’s—was starting to thin.

  She’ll be dead before her fortieth birthday, Travis thought. And for a moment he indulged in what passed for his own version of temperance. Travis certainly liked marijuana, and maybe even the occasional hit of coke or ecstasy. But he avoided heroin, meth, and other intravenously taken drugs like the plague. Ditto for the prescription painkillers like Percocet and Vicodin, which seemed to be as addictive and ruinous as heroin.

  “Hey!” she said vacantly, leaning into him, as if this were all a big joke, as if there wasn't money on the line and his freedom on the line.

  Then she gave him a double take, as women so often did. But this was something different, he suspected. He had not spent much time with Alicia Griggs, but he sensed that Alicia was secretly hoping that their relationship would advance beyond the business level. She would spend a long time waiting for that. Alicia might have been a reasonably attractive woman at one time. Years of addiction and street life, however, had taken their toll. She was passable for a job like this—fooling the cop—but not the sort of woman Travis would want to take to bed. Nevertheless, her obvious crush was useful to him. It was one of the factors that gave him control over her.

  But apparently not enough control to make her show up for a meeting on time.

  “Hey yourself. You’re late.”

  “Only by ten minutes.”

  Travis decided to ignore her lame attempt at an excuse. Time to get on with it.

  “When I called you said you wanted to make some money. Do you still want to make some money?”

  “How much money, baby?”

  Travis named an amount that was high enough to ensure her follow-through, yet low enough that it was still a bargain for him. Especially when you considered that, if everything worked out, Alicia was going to help him and Jessica throw the police off their trail.

  Her eyes lit up. She was pleased with the amount. And every single cent of it, minus a minimal amount for living essentials, would go in her veins, up her nose, or down her throat in pill form.

  “What do you want me to do?” she said, becoming a bit more apprehensive now. Even a street junkie instinctively knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch. “Do you want me to turn tricks somewhere? I won’t lie to you, Travis. I’ve done that before, but I didn't like it. And Willie didn't like me doing that, either. You remember Willie, don’t you?”

  Of course Travis remembered William Mofford. Travis wasn't outright afraid of many people, but William Mofford was one of them. Mofford was a sometime drug dealer, sometime gang enforcer, and sometime pimp. No matter what Alicia might say to the contrary, Travis knew that Alicia had worked the streets for Mofford for a time in the past. Until Mofford had taken a shine to her. The two had a child together, though Travis doubted that either Alicia or Mofford had custody of their joint offspring.

  “I don’t want you to turn tricks,” Travis said. “In fact, you’re going to keep your clothes on the entire time. What I have in mind for you is well—let’s call it an ‘acting job’. You can act, can’t you?”

  Alicia shrugged. “How hard can it be? But I don't have to remember a bunch of lines, do I?”

  “This isn’t that ki
nd of acting,” Travis said. Then he explained to her, in considerable detail, that she would be acting like a woman named Lilith, a woman who had placed her profile on an Internet dating site. And she would be performing for the police.

  Travis had decided beforehand that he would need to tell Alicia that “Don”—the man she would go out with—was in fact an undercover cop. This would ensure her constant awareness of the stakes involved. The knowledge that she was on a fake date with an undercover policeman would also prevent Alicia from engaging in illegal behavior. She would be less likely to light up a reefer at the end of the evening, or try to lift the guy’s wallet.

  Travis didn't, however, tell Alicia that he and Jessica had been murdering men for considerable sums of money. That knowledge would make Alicia a liability, both during her outing with Don and afterward. She would thereby become a loose end that would have to be clipped.

  Travis would be willing to clip her—if necessity demanded it—but that would require him to risk the wrath of William Mofford. Rumor had it that the two were still close—relatively speaking, of course.

  No, it was sufficient for Alicia to know that the police were conducting an investigation. He and Jessica weren’t completely innocent, but they weren’t the perps that the police ultimately sought.

  “What are the police investigating?” Alicia asked.

  “Something crazy, baby.” Travis shook his head at the misguided nature of it all. “Some folks have been killing men they meet on dating sites. At least that’s what I hear.”

  “You’ve been killing people?” Alicia Griggs blurted out, recoiling.

  “Hell, no, Alicia.” Travis paused to look around. There was no one within earshot of the bench. “And watch your mouth. What Jessie and I’ve got going is a simple blackmail scheme. We catch married men on these websites who are out looking to cheat on their wives. Then we threaten to send evidence of their activities to the missus if they don’t pay us a thousand bucks.”