by Bob Mayer
Porter was pacing back and forth. “All right. Let’s add it up. Rachel's lifestyle, the insurance money and Stevens’ good-looking secretary. If Doctor Stevens had known what his wife was doing he could have divorced Rachel, but it would have been ugly and he would have lost a hell of a lot of money. Colorado has no fault divorce. This way, not only doesn't he lose, he makes money on her insurance. Even if he paid York just the insurance money, he'd have kept all his money and saved himself a hell of a lot of embarrassment. Plus there was the money Rachel was squirreling away-- Stevens might have known about that too. She might have been stealing from the household account somehow.”
Porter looked at Chase. “York probably would have gotten away with the murder if we hadn't had the luck of the partial license number. The crazy stuff had just been his back-up plan that he'd cooked up from stuff he learned in school.”
Chase wasn’t totally buying it, but there was a logic to what his partner was saying. “All this is just speculation, though. We had—and have-- nothing tying Jeffrey Stevens to Jim York. If there is a connection, I’m sure the two would have buried it very deeply.”
Chase could see the stubborn look on his partner’s face, so he decided to play along. "All right. Let's say Stevens knew what his wife was doing and let's say he got angry enough to want her dead. What'd he do? Just go to her class and try to find someone willing to kill her?"
Porter shook his head. "No. Go back to the blackmail angle. We know York followed her three weeks before he killed her. We know he used the post office to find out what was going on in the swingers’ club. We know he went by the house and took pictures. Suppose York came to Stevens threatening to expose Rachel. Then suppose Stevens turned it around and made him a better offer than blackmail."
"That's a lot of supposing without any hard evidence."
Porter held his hand up. "Stay with me on this. York goes to Stevens and threatens to expose what Rachel is doing. First off, Stevens is going to be surprised-- to say the least-- to find out that Rachel had been going to the swingers' club. Maybe he even agrees to pay off York to keep him quiet.
"But then he sits and thinks about it. Why would he want to be married to Rachel anymore? He's already got Lisa Plunkett well in hand. Why pay York to keep quiet about what Rachel's doing? Maybe Jeffrey even confronts her and she blows him off. Or even brings up divorce, which is going to cost him a lot. I don't know. But say somewhere along in there, Stevens decides to get rid of his problem. His problem isn't York. It's Rachel. So he makes a counterproposal to York. He offers him a lot of money to kill her. It ends the problem and it ends the blackmail at the same time. And Jeffrey certainly is smart enough to know that you can't ever get away from someone blackmailing you. He'd also be getting York out of his life too."
Chase was trying to keep up. "Ok. But I still don't understand the crazy thing."
"If you were York and I was Stevens, we'd both be sitting here worrying about the death penalty if York is caught. If York gets murder one, he has no reason not to drag Stevens in with him. In fact, he'd probably do it to cop a plea and implicate Stevens to stay out of the chair. So they figure out a way to keep York from the chair, if he's caught. At the same time, keep us from digging any deeper into why York killed Rachel. The DA certainly doesn’t look ready to. I can just picture those two sons-of-bitches sitting there trying to figure out how to cover their asses and York, with his background in psychology, coming up with the perfect answer."
Porter suddenly stood.
"Where are you going?"
"I need to check something. I'll be back."
While Porter was gone, doubts continued to swirl around in Chase’s head. This whole line of reasoning was based on assumptions. But assuming the assumptions were correct-- making himself a double ass, Chase supposed-- he mentally berated himself for not having worked this possibility out while he was investigating the case. He'd dismissed Jeffrey Stevens as a possible suspect much too easily. He went down to the storage area, signed out the Book of Rachel, and brought it back up to his desk. Maybe there was something in there he'd missed.
When Porter came back in, he tossed a copy of a computer printout on Chase’s desk and sat down with his own copy. "Those are all the numbers York called in between the night he followed Rachel to the club and the night she died."
It was a short list. “Obviously, York didn't have many friends.”
“He called the Stevens’ residence three times in that time period."
"So what?” Chase said. “He might as easily have talked to Rachel about the notes he took rather than Doctor Stevens. We need more than the fact that York called the house. If you're right, Stevens will never admit he talked to the man and we can't exactly ask Rachel if she talked to him. And York sure as hell isn't going to talk. If they were in this together, we need to find how they worked out the money."
Porter nodded. "If Stevens paid York to kill Rachel you can be damn sure he didn't give him all the money up front. I bet it was something like half up front and half after the case was dropped. Since we caught York, Stevens is probably holding onto that other half."
Chase considered the situation. "Yeah, but he'll have to pay York soon or else face York turning on him."
Porter's brow was furrowed as he thought about it. "You know, Stevens is in a shit position if that's the case. York is in jail. The only thing Stevens has keeping him quiet is the money he has yet to pay. We need more.”
“The money York got paid—if your theory is true, would be a good start,” Chase said. “If York had been paid off by Stevens, then what would he have done with the money? He couldn't deposit it in a bank for several reasons. One is that on any deposit over ten thousand dollars the IRS is automatically notified and we checked that out on York yesterday.”
Porter nodded. “He could have spread the money, however much it was, out into many smaller accounts, all below ten grand, but then he'd still have a paperwork trail. Let’s check York’s house again.” Porter was anxious to do something, anything other than sit at his desk.
Chase wondered if all this was keeping him from facing what he had learned about Rivers and Vladislav. Nothing had changed in Wyoming, but Chase knew that Rivers was too smart to be trapped like a rat in a cage. He wasn’t in Wyoming. Chase had a very strong feeling Rivers was close, very close. And if he was close, there was a good chance Vladislav was close.
But he had to back up his partner. Chase got up and followed Porter out of the squad room.
* * * * *
The police tape was still across the front door of York's house. Porter put his hand on the door handle to get out, but Chase stopped him.
“Hold on. Let’s think like York for a moment. If he had a bunch of cash he wanted to hide, where would he put it?”
“The uniforms did a pretty good job checking the house, looking for the murder weapon,” Porter said. “So—“
Something clicked for Chase. “It’s not in York’s house.”
“Then where is it?”
“Follow me.” Chase got out of the car and walked up to Arnold Rogers’ house. He answered after about ten rings. Chase asked him if he could take a look at his car. The car that would be Jim York's when Rogers died and that never moved out of the garage. Rogers gave Chase a set of keys and he went out to the garage behind the house with Porter following.
The door swung up with a loud protesting of rusted metal. The dark blue Buick had definitely seen better days. Chase opened the trunk while Porter opened the driver’s door.
A spare and the jack along with an old rotted blanket made up the contents of the trunk. Chase lifted the spare and checked underneath. The rust had been scraped off the head of a bolt far up in the trunk. He climbed in and checked. Someone had recently worked on all the bolts that held the back seat against the front of the trunk. Chase got out and searched around the garage until he found an old adjustable wrench.
“What do you have?” Porter asked, appearing at the rear of the
car.
“Watch.”
Chase squatted in the trunk and went to work. All the bolts came off easily. He climbed out and went around to the back seat. With a pull, the back of the seat fell forward. Taped to the steel framework were packets of cash, wrapped in plastic.
“I guess you were right,” Chase said.
* * * * *
Porter looked at the cash on the conference room table and then at Chase. "How much?"
"A quarter million."
Porter whistled. "He didn't get that by savings pennies. What did Rogers say about it?"
"I didn’t tell him about the cash. I asked him if anyone had done anything with the car. He didn't know anything. He said the only person who'd been in the garage as far as he knew was Jim York."
Porter picked up a packet. "What now?"
"If this two hundred and fifty grand was York's by legitimate means, it seems logical that he would hire some high speed attorney to represent him instead of going with the public defender that he has. So I think we can safely assume this is ill-gotten gains.”
Porter tossed the packet back on the table. "I think Stevens paid York this money and it was just bad luck that we even caught the man. I wouldn't be surprised if there might not be another quarter million or so payment awaiting York."
Chase nodded. "That may be true but we still don't have anything solid to nail Stevens with." He pointed at the computer printouts. Not only had there been a blank on York but he'd also come up with zip on Stevens making any significant withdrawals over the past year.
Porter pulled out the background he had dug up on Stevens. "I've got Stevens’ annual income at almost two million. That's reported income. Who's to say he hasn't been skimming a lot of his cash income and not reporting it to the IRS?"
Chase considered that. "Yeah. It's possible. Lots of lawyers and doctors do that to save on taxes. But two hundred and fifty grand is a hell of a lot of cash and not have anyone know."
"Maybe someone did know," Porter said. "Who's the one person whose help he would need to skim on his reported income?"
Chase smiled. "Lisa Plunkett."
Porter nodded. "She could have done a number on the office books. What if we hit York up? Tell him we found his cash?"
Chase shook his head. "Wouldn't work. If York's got more money coming to him, he won’t talk. He's got nothing to gain and everything to lose by talking."
“I’ve got an idea,” Porter said. “If we can’t break York, then we have to break Stevens.”
Once he explained the concept of what he wanted to do, the plan seemed to take on a life of its own. Chase caught on very quickly. They worked on the letter together. It was addressed to Stevens from Jim York. Chase typed the entire thing-- York had been anal about typing things and they do have typewriters in the prison library. The postmark wasn't too hard. The county lock-up was in the same zip code.
Chase knew it was risky, so he made a pact with Porter that he would take all the heat it went awry. Porter, after all, had a wife and kid.
For Chase there was only one question: would Stevens fall for it? That he had paid York to kill Rachel, Chase was now accepting as the only explanation, but how nervous was the doctor? So far, Jeffrey Stevens had been a pretty cool customer. Chase almost got sick thinking of the act he had pulled in the DA’s office yesterday.
Porter was betting on the fact that a letter from York threatening to expose Stevens' involvement in the murder unless he got even more money right away for his defense would shatter the doctor's cool facade. Chase didn't want to think about what would happen if Stevens blew it off, but he couldn’t see that happening.
* * * * *
Porter covered for Chase at work while he set up quarters at the First National Bank and waited for Stevens to do something stupid.
The longer Chase sat there, the more he worried. Chase pictured him and Porter hanging out under a bridge somewhere sipping their cocktails from a paper bag if this blew up in their faces. Chase knew he wasn't that far from doing that anyway, but Porter had a family. Chase knew he could cover for his partner so far, but if someone dug, the blast zone might take Porter down.
Chase hadn’t told Porter about Fortin, Vladislav, Rivers, and that whole mess, because he figured he didn’t want Porter’s dog to lose its head or worse. But here Chase was putting Porter’s ass on the line, even though it was his partner’s idea.
Chase’s lack of pursuit after getting the information from Cardena bothered him. Because it meant he also was much smaller. He’d been threatened, shot at, and his landlord’s dog killed and here he was sitting in a bank. He was keeping his eyes open for any information concerning Rivers or Vladislav, but he wasn’t actively pursuing either because he had nothing more to dig into. Also, he didn’t want the CIA to pull the plug on him before he wrapped up the Stevens case once and for all. Chase knew it was rationalization, but it worked for the time being.
Chase was so busy watching the safety deposit room that he didn't even realize someone had come up behind him until the shadow from the front windows fell over him. He turned in his seat and looked up into Donnelly's face.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Detective Chase?"
Chase was still trying to come up with an answer when Donnelly pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and shoved it under Chase’s nose. It was the letter to Stevens telling him to immediately deposit two hundred and fifty thousand in a specifically numbered safety deposit box at this bank or the writer, Jim York, would inform on him in the matter of the murder of Rachel Stevens.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Chase had on his best suit, not a very good one, as he went to the chief’s office. The secretary ushered him right in and he took the one open seat, plastic and rigid, all alone in front of the big desk. Donnelly was seated against the wall and shooting Chase dagger looks. The chief was looking through a file folder and let Chase squirm for a few minutes before finally acknowledging his presence.
"What did you think you were doing?" He held up a hand. Chase figured that was what they call a rhetorical question. "I've read Lieutenant Donnelly's report and I just cannot believe an officer in my police force would do such a thing. Don't you think Doctor Stevens has suffered enough with the death of his wife? Do you have a personal vendetta against the man? Do you know that the doctor is seriously considering suing the city?"
Chase wasn't sure which question the chief wanted him to answer so he did the smart thing: he kept his mouth shut. The only good thing to happen since Donnelly had confronted Chase at the bank was that Chase had managed to keep Porter's name out of it. As far as everyone knew, Chase had done this alone.
The chief was still glaring at Chase so he figured the man was waiting for him to say something. "What about the money I found, sir?"
"That's another thing, Detective Chase. What authorization did you have to search that car?"
"I had the owner's permission," Chase replied.
"How did you connect the money with Jim York and Doctor Stevens?"
Good question. That was the whole point of the letter they'd sent to Stevens, but Chase certainly wasn't going to go over that again. He decided that silence was the best he could come up with to that one.
"And where is this money?" the chief asked.
"In the safe at our squad room," Chase said.
"You're keeping a quarter million dollars in the safe in your squad room?"
Chase assumed that was another rhetorical question.
"You never officially reported finding this money, did you?"
"No, sir."
“It’s not from Doctor Stevens,” the chief said.
Chase wanted to know how they knew that, but he figured now wasn’t the time to be asking more questions.
The chief snapped the file shut. "I'm not sure what exactly we're going to do about you yet. I have to send this before the ethics review committee." He turned and looked at Donnelly for the first time. "Mister Chase is suspended without
pay effective this minute. Now, both of you get out of here."
Chase silently followed Donnelly directly to his office.
The lieutenant held out his hand. “Your badge and gun.”
Donnelly had seen too many cop movies. Chase gave Donnelly his Boulder PD badge. He still had his Federal ID and badge. “The gun is my own. I have a license to carry it.”
A vein on the side of Donnelly’s jaw pulsed. “Give me your gun.”
Chase went very still and looked Donnelly in the eyes. “You’ll have to take it.”
The vein looked ready to exploded, but Donnelly’s eyes shifted, checking to see if anyone was witnessing this through the partially open door. “Get out of here.”
Despite this Pyrrhic victory, Chase knew he had finally made Donnelly happy. After four months. Chase didn’t slam the door on the way out. That would have like pissing into a tidal wave.
Chase went back to what used to be his desk. Porter was sitting across at his, looking at him with concern.
"How'd it go?"
"They're sending it before the Ethics Committee. I’m suspended without pay." Chase laughed bitterly. “They don’t even pay me, the dumb shits.”
"That’s true." Porter was trying to look at the bright side. "I’m sorry. Was I that stupid?"
Chase shook his head. "No. I thought about it all day. There were too many loose ends to the Stevens’ case. There was something going on and it wasn't just Rachel going to that club. We can't explain York's money and we can't explain Rachel's money either. There's a whole other level to this thing that we haven't even touched yet."
“So what now?” Porter asked.
Chase looked in the drawers and began pulling out the stuff he owned. "Well, we're not going to do anything. I just want to get out of this with my butt intact." Chase unlocked the bottom right drawer and pulled out the Book of Patriots. It felt much heavier than the few pieces of paper filed in it.