Finely Ground

by Jennifer Templeman

  “I’m making great progress with my files,” Ellie answered, unable to keep her smile from showing.

  “I don’t doubt it, but I’m thinking that isn’t why you look—” he paused long enough that Ellie watched him search for the right word—“glowy.”

  “That’s not a word,” she couldn’t help but point out.

  “It is now; I just said it.”

  “You are not related to the Webster family. You can’t just make up words and decree them part of the lexicon,” Ellie stated.

  He made a sound of disagreement but didn’t force the issue. It did give him reason to push away from the doorway and move to sit in her straight-back guest chair. “I hear you’re helping Little Miller on a case.”

  “Little Miller?”

  “That’s what we call his nephew, George.” Phillips seemed amused. “He looks like him, talks like him, and is convinced one day he’ll lead like him.”

  “Do you think he will?” Ellie wondered, respecting Phillips’s professional instincts.

  “Maybe.” Phillips shrugged. “He’s shown great wisdom in accepting your help and suggestions and following up on everything you’ve pointed out. So, he shows a certain level of promise.”

  “I think it’s because his uncle told him to,” Ellie responded.

  “Whatever. To be a good leader, at some point you have to have been a good follower, and he’s got potential.”

  “Is that why you came down here?” Ellie wondered, feeling like they hadn’t gotten to his real point yet.

  “Nah, I just wanted to let you know I’ve got an interview in an hour, so I’m probably going to need to leave a little later today.”

  “That’s all right. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.” She waved her hands over the files that all needed to be reviewed.

  “Jeez. This place is like walking into the morgue,” Mack announced from the doorway.

  “If you want more life, you need to go upstairs,” Phillips replied smoothly.

  “Yes, but some of the things living up there need a strong dose of penicillin before I’d be willing to touch them,” Mack bit back quickly, making Phillips laugh out loud.

  “Aren’t you mental-health professionals supposed to be calm and slow to jump to conclusions about people?” Phillips stood up and moved to the doorway to leave.

  Mack made a gesture, as though that were ridiculous. “That’s only true if you’re billing by the hour. I work for the government, so I have to move a little faster than that.”

  Phillips seemed sincere when he said, “It’s great to see you, Mack.”

  “You too,” she quickly responded, moving to take the seat he’d just vacated.

  “I didn’t realize you made house calls,” Ellie blurted out, hating how she seemed to lose some of her internal filter when she was nervous.

  “This doesn’t feel like a house call. Seeing your working conditions, it feels more like an intervention.”

  “It’s got a certain kind of charm you have to experience over time to understand,” Ellie said in defense of her cave in the basement.

  “I’m going to take your word for it…” Mack didn’t seem convinced as she looked at the walls and the scuffed tiles on the floor. “Anyway…” It was like she just remembered she hadn’t come for a health-code inspection. “I wanted to talk to you about talking to you.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I pushed you a little the last time we met and left the ball in your court, which is still completely true. But I didn’t want you to feel like there was no point in meeting, even if you aren’t ready to dig into the messiness of the past.”

  “You aren’t like any doctor I’ve ever met,” Ellie said bluntly, ignoring for the moment what the other woman had said.

  “Thank you.” Mack seemed genuinely please by what she seemed to have taken as a compliment. “I’m a little bit like watching a ping-pong match between players who aren’t all that good. Not only is the ball going back and forth, but every few hits it moves in a totally unexpected direction too.”

  That seemed like an apt description.

  “You really don’t mind not having any sunlight?” Mack was back to staring at the walls.

  “I’m usually focused on my computer screen or papers. Even if I had a window, I wouldn’t be looking out of it,” Ellie explained.

  “You’re very practical,” Mack announced, not giving any indication if that was a good or bad thing. “Anyway, I heard you’d been targeted by a real whack job and wondered if I could be helpful.”

  “You mean, am I handling being threatened?”

  Mack tilted her head, making Ellie believe that wasn’t exactly what she’d meant. “I’d find it hard to believe you’re falling apart from having a couple of notes left for you and your car being stolen. But if you are, we can certainly talk about that. What I meant was, would you like me to look at the notes and give you my professional opinion of what’s going on?”

  “I think Phil mentioned the profilers upstairs had already reviewed them,” Ellie shared while opening the drawer where she had photocopies of the two letters.

  Mack didn’t seem deterred. “Great, then you’ve got a full-scale description of just how crazy this guy must be. I’d like to talk about what that means for you.”

  Ellie handed the two short notes to Mack and waited as she read them several times. Then she was surprised when the small woman took off her shoes and began to walk around the elevated table in her office, mumbling to herself. She stopped and put the papers on the table Ellie used to examine documents and then grumbled about how high it was.

  “I’ll bet the guys in profiling had a field day with these. I think you’ve got a couple of options available to you. One, you can hide and know that he will keep trying to draw you out. I think he’s going to want to have you nearby when he hurts whoever it is he’s targeted in your family. So if you stick to your routine, he’ll get frustrated and try to get you to come to him.”

  “What’s my other option?”

  “You can draw him to you by intentionally baiting him. If you begin spending intentional time with your family members, it will either cause him to show up to prove how powerful and in control he is, or it will frustrate him even more because you’re in the way and keeping him from doing what he has planned.”

  “I’m not sure frustrating a crazy man sounds like a good idea.”

  “It might make him desperate, which would cause him to lose control. People without control make mistakes, which means you increase the chances of catching him quicker. He’s proven himself capable of evading the FBI for months, so if you want to speed up the process, doing things to screw with his master plan increases the likelihood he’ll get sloppy.”

  “Have you shared this with Phil or Miller?” Ellie asked.

  “Why would I?” Mack seemed confused. “This is all part of doctor-patient confidentiality. Plus, I don’t want to get involved in file review again, but I do love sticking my nose in every so often just for fun. Consider it a freebie.”

  Mack put her shoes back on and then moved to the door before adding, “If you get tired of waiting for whatever he has in store next, remember you do have some power in this situation. You aren’t at the mercy of some unpredictable psycho.”

  Ellie hadn’t considered that she held any power here. It was refreshing to think she could impact the investigation and not just be a sitting duck, waiting for Garrison to strike again. Basically what Mack was suggesting was getting out of the office more. The last time she’d gotten in the field, it hadn’t ended well and was completely to blame for having the doctor gunning for her now.

  Not able to decide what made the most sense, Ellie turned back to her e-mail and saw some notes from George. He’d taken her advice and had retrieved the Coke bottle from the last truck to have the lab analyze it. The company who insured all the cargo was the same in all four cases, which was the first piece of connective evidence they’d come across to date.


  Pulling up a general Internet search, Ellie read that Consolidated Risk was a fifty-year-old insurance company specializing in manufacturing liability and cargo/inventory coverage. They’d done well in their specialized niche but had not made the moves into full corporate coverage that would allow them to compete with the national names most people recognized. In the small pond of long-haul freight, they were a big fish.

  While she was reading about the company’s history, her cell phone rang.

  “Miss Michaels,” came a slightly accented and nasal voice.

  “Yes, this is Ellie Michaels.”

  “This is Jonathan Alberts, from your auto-insurance carrier. I’m calling to follow up on your claim of a stolen vehicle.”

  “Oh, yes, thank you for calling.” Ellie’s manners always seemed to kick in when she met someone new, giving her one thing she could honestly thank Janice for.

  “It says here you were in a coffee shop and somebody rode off with your car.”

  “That’s right,” Ellie confirmed.

  “Do you have reason to believe it might be returned to you?”

  “No,” she answered honestly. For all she knew, Garrison had left it beside the road a few blocks away and someone else had already taken it for resale.

  “You were current on your premiums, and the blue-book value on a two-year-old Honda Accord is pretty good, so we can begin to process the claim to get you the difference between the value of the car and the deductible.”

  “How much is the deductible?” Ellie knew this was something she should be more familiar with, but to date, her auto insurance was something she paid for every month but had never needed to use.

  “You have an excellent plan, so it’s only five hundred dollars,” he announced, as though losing half a grand was good news. “And you have rental-car coverage that should be enough to get you an economy rental while you’re waiting for all this to process.”

  “How long should it take to get processed?” Ellie couldn’t imagine driving a toy car for very long.

  “Your file is already complete. You must have some connections in law enforcement to have all the reports pulled together within twenty-four hours.”

  “I work for the FBI,” she offered.

  “Oh wow. My brother works at the Bureau here in Boston,” he announced, explaining the accent she kept picking up on. “Anyway, I’d think you should have a check within four to six weeks.”

  “That’s a long time,” Ellie complained.

  “That’s standard policy,” he explained. “It might come faster in your case because you already have all the required reports that take most people a couple of weeks to wrangle up.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Are there any other insurance questions I can help you with today?”

  Ellie’s eyes moved to the screen, and she asked, “How much is the deductible for most companies that insure freight from theft?”

  “That’s not a simple question,” he responded. “I mean, they’re able to set the level of risk they’re willing to accept internally, plus the underwriting process might demand a specific level based on past performance.”

  “Can you explain that?” Ellie sat forward, feeling like this was important.

  “Is this for a case you’re working on?” he asked.

  “It’s related, yes.”

  Ellie figured he probably didn’t have time to waste on the phone with her if it didn’t related to his job, so she was surprised when he said, “I can’t wait to tell my brother I was helping on an investigation—he usually insults my work as not important compared to his.”

  Ellie found herself defending someone she’d never met. “Everybody’s work is important.”

  Albert made a noise of acknowledgment, “Well, to answer your question, the lower the deductible, the more expensive the coverage. If they haven’t experienced much loss, then they might be willing to have a higher deductible so they can save money through the year on their premiums. I mean, if you never have a claim, then at the end of the year, you’ve paid all that money for nothing. But if a company has a reason to believe they will incur some loss through the year, they would be smart to go for a lower deductible so they get reimbursed for most of their loss.”

  “What if the loss is less than their deductible?” Ellie wondered, remembering the freight missing from each of the trucks hadn’t amounted to much.

  “Then they should still notify the insurance carrier so it can be documented and used to rate them for the next year, but if the loss is less than the deductible, then they don’t get any money from their carrier.”

  “Tell me about the rating for next year,” Ellie said.

  “Well, all companies have to reapply for their coverage each year. We have them detail out their business plan for the year and compare it to their past performance. Then we rate their risk for having claims based on our history with them. A company who has few or no claims is a lower risk for us to carry, so they get a lower rate. But if someone has lots of claims—even if they don’t require a payout—then they are considered a greater risk to have future losses against the policy, so their premiums are going to go up.”

  “How much do they go up?” Ellie asked.

  “That’s impossible to predict,” he answered, disappointing her. “We have math guys running all kinds of logarithms I could never understand to come up with the risk basis and premium, but it’s not unusual to see a premium increase by twenty to forty percent in a single year to compensate for past losses.”

  “That’s a big jump in expenses,” Ellie realized.

  “Right, so most places will increase their deductible when that happens, which causes their premium to be reduced to help mitigate the increase in cost. But by doing that, if they have more loss in the next year, they have to eat more of that internally because their deductible won’t cover the full loss and they are continuing to increase their risk factors, which might cause their premiums to increase again the next year.”

  “That’s a vicious cycle,” Ellie said.

  “Exactly,” he agreed. “Companies spend a lot of money bringing in consultants to help them mitigate risks so their losses will be controlled. If they let it get out of hand, then they could find themselves in a position to be uninsurable because the risk of loss is too great.”

  “What kind of consultants do they hire?” Ellie asked.

  “They’re called risk assessors, or sometimes risk-mitigation experts. It’s kind of silly because most insurance companies would be happy to work with them on it as a part of their coverage, but I think spending money on a third party makes it something they can get more buy-in on from their employees.”

  “Thanks for your help,” Ellie said, already knowing the next avenue they should pursue in digging for a potential further connection.

  “Do you mind if I tell my brother about this conversation?” he asked.

  “Not at all. Be sure to take my name so you can tell him who you were helping,” she told him. If his brother had been around for very long, he no doubt knew about her father. Her name alone was meaningless, but if he made the connection, it might help him to see his brother a little differently.

  After disconnecting, she quickly typed a note to George, suggesting he reach out to each of the trucking companies to see if they’d hired a risk-assessment firm. She explained the role this kind of consultant would play and was curious if it might provide a future connection for him to follow up on.

  Feeling pleased with herself, she shut down her computer and began to plan out dinner. If Phillips was content being her chauffeur, then the least she could do was pay him in well-prepared food. Besides, a good meal was always made better with a great cup of coffee, and with any luck, Joe might stop by again.

  Chapter 8

  “Hello?” Ellie tried to force her eyes open at the same time she answered her phone. Unless her alarm hadn’t functioned properly, it was entirely too early for anyone to call with good news.

  “Ellie, I’m
sorry to call you so early, but I figured you’d want to know that your car is parked back in front of the shop in the same space you used when it was stolen,” Joe’s concerned voice relayed.

  “What time is it?”

  His deep laughter came through the phone first before he answered, “It’s a couple minutes before five o’clock.”

  At least she knew her alarm was functioning; it wasn’t set to go off for another twenty minutes. “Okay, I’ll be there in a while,” she replied, not sure why she needed to come right now.

  “I thought you might want to see it before I call it in,” he prompted her again, which had her sitting up to help clear the cobwebs in her head.

  “Why do you need to call it in?”

  “When I walked over to look at it, there are notes and pictures everywhere inside. I think the entire car is full of messages, so the feds are definitely going to want to process it as a crime scene.”

  “All right.” She realized if she wanted to see it undisturbed, she needed to get going right away. “I’ll shower and come straight over, but I’ll have to wake up Phillips for a ride.”

  “I’ll give him a call so he’ll be ready too,” Joe offered.

  “Thanks,” Ellie replied, finally beginning to feel awake.

  “I’ll have a cup waiting for you when you get here.”

  ****

  The first sip of coffee in the morning was a special experience. She had skipped her usual workout and rushed through her morning routine to get to Mocha Joe’s as quickly as possible, but until she felt the warm liquid going down her throat, she didn’t feel completely awake.

  After her third taste of the deliciousness in her hands, Phillips interrupted to say, “Okay, now that your eyes are focusing, do you want to take a look? The guys are on their way.”

  Ellie nodded, still feeling it was too early for decent conversation. She was up earlier than most, but apparently Joe was up well before her and was functioning as though it were mid-day.