by Paul Bishop
“The picture becomes clearer.”
“Quite,” said Longley, “But there are other factors.”
“And they are?” Fey asked.
Longley turned his attention toward her. “Whenever a customer withdraws a large sum of money from their account—I'm talking in excess of half a million dollars—or closes an account with a similarly amount, a manager takes it as a personal affront and wants to know the reason. First, because it hurts the assets of the branch. Second, because managers come to think the bank's money is theirs. We begrudge giving it up.”
Fey laughed. “How did you wangle your way into a manager's position?”
“My uncle owns the bank,” Longley said. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “Nepotism is a wondrous thing, don't you agree?”
Fey and Colby realized the question was rhetorical and waited for Longley to go on.
“Under normal circumstances, perhaps I wouldn't have thought to call you. I’m still not sure my Monica Blake is the same woman as in the photo. They look alike, however, and I have been unable to contact Mrs. Blake since she withdrew her funds. She has disappeared.” Longley checked his watch.
Fey shifted in her chair. Longley might be willing to cooperate, but it was going to be on his own time schedule. “You mentioned other circumstances surrounding the case?” she asked.
Longley looked up as the uniformed guard approached and signaled him.
Longley raised his hand in acknowledgment, then returned his attention to Fey. “Please excuse me. A circumstance has come to meet you.”
He walked away from his desk, fishing the front door key from the depths of his trouser pocket.
Fey looked at Colby and made a perplexed face. Colby shrugged. Their silent consensus was to await developments.
Longley returned in less than a minute with another man in tow. The second man was tall and thin. His gaunt face was ravaged with the pockmarks of traumatic teenage acne. Dark, hooded eyes gave him the appearance of a half-asleep bird of prey. He wore a good-quality, but ill-fitting gray suit, a starched white shirt, an expensive blue tie, and black wing tips.
Colby figured there were initials monogrammed somewhere on the cuffs or pocket of the starched shirt. He had no problem categorizing the guy as some kind of federal agent. Even Without saying a word, the walking stick figure practically screamed his occupation.
Longley brought over another chair. “This is Mr. Kyle Craven,” he said. “He's an IRS investigator.”
Fey and Colby felt fear move in their bowels. Neither knew any law enforcement agency in the country with more power and less oversight than the investigative arm of the Internal Revenue Service. Without effort, an IRS investigator could even scare hell out of agents from the government's ultrasecret National Security Agency.
IRS agents were God unto themselves. If you didn't want to find yourself at the wrong end of an audit, you meekly did whatever they asked and got out from under as quick as you could.
Craven's slow smile would have done credit to a corpse. He could smell the fear in the air and found it invigorating—a Hannibal Lector of the CPA set.
“Im from the government,” he said in a deep voice. “I'm here to help.” He sat down without offering his hand.
A comedian, Fey thought as she cringed inwardly. Colby had visibly paled at the disclaimer. Even Longley seemed affected by Craven's presence. He scuttled back to the minimal protection offered by the far side of his desk.
Craven produced his rictus grin again, enjoying the effect he was having. It was the effect he had on anyone with an inkling of the power of the IRS—an unconstitutional organization condoned by the government as a necessary evil.
“I really am here to help you,” the stick figure said, knowing no one would believe him. “No pressures, no hassles. If Monica Blake, Miriam Cordell, and Miranda Goodwinter are the same person, I've been tracking the woman and her financial dealings for twelve years.”
“Can we start from the beginning?” Fey asked. “I'm getting out of my depth.”
Longley sat forward, leaning his arms on his desk. “I'm sorry. I know all of this must be confusing.”
“Most cops do have IQs higher than Nerf balls,” Colby said, resorting to natural sarcasm when confronted by an awkward situation. “If you use words of three syllables or less, we can get on with things.”
A look from Craven almost froze Colby in midsentence, but he managed to get the words out. Fey was proud of the effort.
“I apologize,” said Longley. “From what Mr. Craven has told me, I can hardly believe it myself.”
“Please, Mr. Longley,” said Fey forcefully.
“Sorry.” Longley took a pause to compose himself. “Whenever a customer extracts a large amount of cash, there are forms to be filled out for the IRS and other entities. The forms filled out on Monica Blake alerted Mr. Craven, who then contacted me.”
“How long ago?” Fey asked.
“Five weeks.”
Cordell had been paroled six weeks ago. It looked as if Monica Blake—aka Cordell, aka Goodwinter—put on her running shoes as soon as she found out. “What was so strange about Monica Blake's withdrawal it came to your personal attention?” she asked Longley.
“You mean besides the amount?”
“Yes. But for the record, how much did she withdraw?”
Longley cleared his throat and pulled a sheet of paper from under his blotter and consulted it. “Three million, five hundred, and seven thousand dollars.”
“Holy cow!” Colby said.
“Ditto,” said Fey, slightly stunned by the amount. She remembered the new checkbook from another bank, which was at the crime scene. There had been a freshly deposited two hundred dollars added to the one thousand dollars used to open the account. She also remembered the million dollars in cash in the dryer.
Either amount was a long way short of three million.
“The problem was,” Longley continued, “Mrs. Blake's account was minimal by our standards. Rarely did she have a balance in excess of five thousand dollars.”
“How did she expect to withdraw three million dollars?” Colby asked.
“On the day before, we received a three-million-dollar wire transfer to her account.”
“From where?”
“The Cayman Islands.”
“Hello, offshore banking,” Fey said.
“Exactly,” Craven chipped in, and then went silent.
Colby and Fey glanced at him then returned their attention to Longley.
“As Mr. Craven says, exactly. When a bank receives a deposit of over ten thousand dollars, they are required to fill out a form notifying the IRS. There are large fines and penalties for noncompliance.”
“Did the transfer surprise you?” Fey asked.
“Mildly, until Mrs. Blake requested to close out her account the following day. She requested two million transferred to a brokerage house to purchase bearer bonds. She took the rest in cash.”
“Bearer bonds?”
“Yes. Basically a monetary draft payable to anybody who has the bonds in their possession. As good as cash, only in far higher denominations for easier transport.”
Fey and Colby exchanged glances. There was a million dollars in cash in Miranda Goodwinter's dryer, but no bearer bonds. The bonds surfaced at Cordell's crib either. If he'd been stupid enough to bring the murder weapon back to his room, why not the bearer bonds if he had taken them?
Fey shifted in her chair to get a better look at Craven. “How do you fit into this scenario?” she asked.
“I've been chasing this woman for over twelve years. I've tracked her forward through six different personalities—seven if you count Miranda Goodwinter—and backward through at least four identities. Much the irritation of my professional pride, I have never established her true identity. Now, somebody else caught up to her before I did.”
“How can you be so sure this woman you've been tracking is the same person as Miranda Goodwinter?” Fey a
sked.
“You have established Miranda Goodwinter and Miriam Cordell were the same person?”
“Yes.”
“Miriam Cordell was an identity assumed by the woman who plagued me.”
“How did you tie all of these women together?”
“Money and murder, Detective Croaker. One makes the world go round and the other stops it.”
Chapter 26
“Nobody likes the IRS because everybody cheats on their taxes,” Craven said, stating the obvious in his oddly modulated style of speech. “Even people who don't think they're cheating on their taxes always fudge a bit. It's the American way.”
“Are you expecting sympathy?” Fey asked, showing surprise. “The role of poor misunderstood Internal Revenue Service investigator doesn't suit you.”
Craven laughed. Threw back his head, opened his mouth, and guffawed. Fey liked him better when he was serious. He was more menacing when amused.
Craven got a grip and wiped his eyes with the tip of an index finger. “Detective Croaker,” he said. “I enjoy my job.”
“Really?” Colby said softly, but everybody ignored him.
“However,” Craven continued, “it doesn't reduce the necessity of my job.”
“What is your job?”
Craven paused before replying. “My job is tracking down individuals who seek to avoid paying any taxes. In doing so, they show contempt for other citizens who do pay despite their petty attempts at cheating.”
“What about organized tax protest groups?” Colby asked.
Craven winced. “Spare me. Fanatics are not my bailiwick. They are misguided scum. My quest is the individual, the criminal with no political agenda, the man or woman who holds up their middle finger to society as they rob us blind.”
Fey wanted to cut to the chase. Craven was having too much fun atop his high horse. “How does this apply to Miranda Goodwinter?”
Craven's features darkened. “A pariah with no conscience and an insatiable greed for money.”
Craven described how he tracked Miranda Goodwinter for years. He was always an identity behind her, able only to use her paper trail to another identity after she moved on. In each shed identity, she left behind a chaos of murder and financial gain.
“Are you saying Miranda Goodwinter was some kind of black widow killer?” Fey asked, the scenario becoming clear.
“Exactly,” Craven said. “Twenty-two years ago, as Marsha Wallace, she picked up a tidy sum of fifty thousand dollars when her first husband fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. She also inherited his minor estate and disappeared without a trace.
“Next we switch to twenty years ago when, as Madeline Fletcher, she picked up a hundred thousand dollars when her new husband was killed in a drunk driving accident. This time she plundered the estate before leaving behind a penniless thirteen-year-old stepdaughter to be raised by impoverished grandparents.”
“Sweet lady,” Fey commented as Craven plowed on.
“Fifteen years ago, as Mavis Curtis, she cops a cool five hundred thousand when yet another husband has a sailing accident and drowns. The poor guy couldn't swim. He didn't even sail before she came into his life and insisted on buying the boat.” Craven paused briefly for breath.
“Then there's the Miriam Cordell identity, with which you're already familiar. She picked up her first million-dollar payoff in the scam, although it ran a little differently than her usual MO.”
Craven reached into a slim valise and withdrew several computer printouts. He checked them quickly.
“Our lady went underground after the Cordell affair. My theory is the high profile of the case threatened to tip over her apple cart. Still, I bought the scam—believing she'd pushed things too hard and was sleeping with the fishes—until six years later.”
“I’ll bite,” said Fey. “What changed your mind?”
“I inherited a case from another investigator involving a female suspect whose first name started with M—May Wellington—and the chase was on again.”
“You knew she was alive, but didn't do anything to clear Isaac Cordell?” Fey asked.
“I couldn’t prove she was alive. Anyway, Isaac Cordell's father had a history of delinquent tax payments. Having the son behind bars for the debts of the father had ironic appeal.” The death's-head grin came and went with startling speed.
Please, Fey thought, save me from the self-righteous.
Craven looked at his printout again. “After May Wellington there was Mona Ford. After Mona there was Maxine Trent. With each identity, Lady M put a husband six foot under. Each husband had provided for her in advance should they die unexpectedly. The cycle was an obsession with her. Men kill for sex—women for money.”
Fey had a headache. “The trail eventually led you to Monica Blake?”
“Except something spooked her before I got there.”
“Spooked—because there was no dead husband left behind.”
“Yes. Frustrating…”
Colby saw the trend playing out. “Then the Miranda Goodwinter persona was killed before she had the chance to get established.”
Fey was bothered. “How does Miriam Cordell’s scam fit the pattern—it’s not the same MO?”
“Consider the situation objectively. On the surface, Isaac Cordell was the perfect candidate for a black widow. I believe she bumped off Cordell’s mother to gain access before realizing the estate was already drained—not enough left even to buy a good-sized life insurance policy on Cordell.”
Fey's mind was racing. “Instead, she took a policy out on herself...”
Craven picked up the thread. “Using money from prior scams.”
Fey took the ball back. “Seducing Cordell's business partner into helping fake her own death. Then the business partner—as the second beneficiary—picks up the million secondhand when Cordell gets convicted on manufactured evidence”
“Top marks,” Craven agreed.
“Where is Roark, the business partner, today?” Fey asked, still trying to absorb all the implications. asked.
“Disappeared never to file a tax return again,” Craven told her.
“How did you come by all this information?” Colby asked.
Craven looked at Colby as if he’d urinated on his shoe. “Taxes are my life. I use numbers, forms, and obscure rules and regulations to tie people up in knots too tight to wriggle free. I scan thousands of computer printouts a day to make sure Uncle Sam gets his fair share out of your pocket.” He waved his hand around the bank's interior. “I’ve tracked drug dealers, money launderers, and organized crime racketeers until the thrill is lost. But occasionally, someone like Lady M puts meaning back into the chase. When it happens, I pay attention. I savor the case…” He held up a hand and squeezed it into a fist. “Until I squash them!” Craven's voice hopped an octave, and he realized his mask of civility was slipping. With effort, he stabilized.
“Apparently, this one got away,” Fey said.
“In this life,” came the stoic reply.
Chapter 27
By the time Fey and Colby arrived, the promotion party at Two-Step Tilly's was in full swing. Tilly's was a country-western club on the border of Pacific Division and West L.A., frequented by coppers from both areas. It wasn't the traditional cop bar—run by a retired blue-suit with an all-gun-toting clientele—but an eighties urban cowboy version providing a safe haven for cops to let loose.
The party was in honor of Paul Trotweiler, a young P-III Detective Trainee who had been promoted to full detective. The upgrade unfortunately came with an transfer to the ghettos of Southwest Division. In a year or two, he could get a transfer out, leaving a bad billet for another promotion chaser.
In the euphoria new promotions bring before the reality sets in, Trotweiler coughed up six hundred bucks to Two-Step Tilly's bartender. The beer and liquor would flow until the tab ran out. Everyone would then leave except for a hard-core group of serious drinkers.
Sponsoring your own promotio
n party was a tradition as important as bringing doughnuts on your first day in a new division. You weren't forced to do it, but life became socially awkward if you didn’t. Anyway, you owed for the free drinks and fat pills supplied by others.
Fey waved at the raucous group of detectives sequestered in a corner near the dance floor. Colby moved toward the men's room. Fey headed for the bar.
On the way, they had chewed through Craven’s information dump. Ultimately, it was interesting, but they couldn’t see how it got them closer to Miranda Goodwinter's killer.
Craven’s input defined and confirmed motive for Cordell, but it didn’t add anything new. The sordid history of Miranda Goodwinter didn’t stop the current evidence from evaporating. New clues or leads were still evasive.
Fey's head spun with the implications. Her subconscious needed time to process the input. Meanwhile, getting mildly drunk had definite appeal.
Vance Hatcher made room and Fey sat down with relief. She raised her glass to Jake Travers, who was at another table. He winked back. People knew about their relationship, but they played it cool in public.
“Any word on Cordell?” Cahill asked from across the table.
Fey shook her head. She'd put Cordell being loose out of her mind while listening to Craven. Thinking about it now, she decided she would get more than mildly drunk.
“Any good stuff from the bank manager?” Hatch asked.
“Maybe,” Fey said. “But there’s too much to recap tonight.” She finished off the second half of her beer while waving to a waitress. “Let me have more beer and talk about something else.”
“I agree,” said Monk from her other side. He took a fresh beer for himself from the waitress's tray.
The jukebox was cranked up and the voice of Clint Black boomed from ceiling speakers. Couples headed for the dance floor, including several pairings from the gathered detectives. Slacks, ties, and shoulder holsters had been exchanged for Wranglers, cowboy boots, and hidden backup guns.
Fey took in the scene. The chatter rose to compete with the music. Mike Cahill's thigh was being massaged under the table by one of the station's record clerks. If his wife found out, she would skin them alive. At another table, a robbery detective had a lip-lock going with a female burglary detective. Fey figured their spouses wouldn't be happy either.