by Joseph Badal
Something had changed. Something deep inside him. At first, he thought he was just angry that he’d violated the oath he’d made to himself: to kill everyone responsible for Mary, Sara, and Elizabeth’s deaths. He’d broken that oath when he let Evan McCall live. And now he contemplated putting an end to his crusade.
He considered the possibility that he’d just gotten tired of killing. God knows, he thought, I’ve done enough of it. But something else came to mind, and it shook him to his very core. Before he flew to Dallas, he’d planned his next moves. He would eliminate Evan McCall, then fly back to Albuquerque and drive to California to murder Sylvan Tauber, the appraiser with Holmsby Rare Coin Valuations. If he had done that, he now knew he would have murdered an innocent man. The confidence that he’d had in his mission had been shaken by that near mistake. Without any hesitation, after wiping it of fingerprints, he’d disposed of his pistol in a dumpster near the Dallas airport. That action had seemed like a crossing-the-Rubicon moment.
He shifted the truck from PARK to DRIVE, but didn’t move from the parking spot. A wave of sadness rolled over him and tears sprang to his eyes. Then sobs overwhelmed him. His throat tightened and his chest felt as though a steel band tightened around it. He intoned the names of his wife and children. He thought about Eric Matus, about how he’d been responsible for his friend’s death. They’d started out to avenge their families’ deaths, but had moved on to something a lot bigger. Something more . . . consequential. He no longer felt angry about what Eric had done—lying to him and collecting fees from the people to whom they had brought some closure. What he had done didn’t, in Race’s mind, undermine all the support Eric had given him over the last three years.
Race wasn’t certain how long he sat there in his truck, but as empty as he’d felt before, it now seemed as though his mind and soul were void of meaning. For years, he’d nourished his very being with a quest for revenge. Without that quest, his life now seemed empty, without purpose. He suddenly felt useless and he drove to a motel on East Central Avenue and booked a room for the night. Although he had no idea where he intended to go, he planned to hit the road in the morning. He looked around the room and remembered what Eric had said to him about the way his life had changed. One thing he decided he would do in the future was to never stay in a rundown motel if he could avoid it.
Although he didn’t feel particularly hungry, he knew he should eat something. It had been hours since his last meal—breakfast in Cuba, New Mexico. He called a pizza place and ordered a delivery. While he waited for the pizza to arrive, he booted up his computer and Googled Farmington home invasion. He picked a local news channel’s posting. The lead-in was all about a ‘mystery man’—as the news commentator put it—who had shot and killed a home invader and saved an elderly couple. FBI agents, Bruce Lucas and Sophia Otero-Hansen, were then interviewed. At one point in the interview, Agent Otero-Hansen said, “Our thanks go to Detectives Barbara Lassiter and Susan Martinez of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office for their assistance. The Bureau’s policy is to maintain strong relationships with local law enforcement departments. This is a perfect example of how that policy pays off.”
When the camera panned on Agent Lucas, his mouth looked as though he’d just sucked on a lemon.
Something bothered Race while he watched the news program. No one mentioned the fact that coin collectors had been targeted by the home invasion gang. There wasn’t even a mention of Nicholas Franchini’s collection being the reason that Reese McCall had targeted the man. He felt frustrated and then that frustration turned to anger. If he’d been able to identify the rare coin connection to all the home invasions, surely the FBI would have been able to do so, as well. The police reports in each robbery would surely have included information about the stolen coin collections. The police must have forwarded that information for inclusion in the NCIC database. Then an idea came to him that made him shudder: What if someone at the FBI had suppressed the information about the coins? He tried to come up with a reason for that being done, but couldn’t do so.
“Damn, damn, damn,” Race rasped.
As far as he’d been able to discover, the first of the home invasions dated back five years, and there had been more than a dozen since then. If the FBI had been aware of all of the crimes and had not disclosed the coin collections as the common link, the Bureau might very well have been responsible for Mary, Sara, and Elizabeth’s deaths three years ago. In fact, by not warning other coin collectors, every murder and robbery since the first one might have been prevented.
Race had agreed that Jim Dunhill should inform the Worldwide Coin Collectors Association about his theory that coin collectors had been targeted by the Three Ghouls. That was unnecessary now that the last of the Three Ghouls was dead. But he wondered if the association was informed after the fact, if coin collectors all over the U.S., and the world, for that matter, might raise hell about what had been keep secret from them while murders continued to occur. He sent off an email to Dunhill and suggested he release the specific information they’d gathered two nights ago in Dunhill’s shop.
Race decided to undress and try to sleep. He emptied his pockets and found the cell phone and little notebook he’d taken off Vitaly Orlov. He thumbed through the notebook pages and found names at the top of each page—one contact per page—for about fifty individuals. Below the names were phone numbers and email addresses. From the country codes and area codes shown, the names were in countries all over the world. There were no physical addresses. The pages had been arranged in alphabetical order by contact name. Below the contact information on each page were what Race assumed were transaction data, with dates and dollar amounts. He flipped back to the first page and studied the information there for a Siegfried Bauer. On October 22, five years ago, Bauer appeared to have consummated a transaction with Orlov worth seven million, eighty thousand dollars.
He went through each page and found similar entries, except, on a number of pages, there were multiple transactions. After Race read the information on a page near the back of the notebook, under the name of Farhad Zubeida, he turned to the next page and found an untitled page. In fact, the next four pages were the same—no title, just several columns on each page. The first column showed dates. The next column included dollar amounts. The third column showed what appeared to be two-to-five-letter abbreviations. He ran a finger down the column and recognized some entries as abbreviations for foreign banks. The fourth and last column listed number sequences.
Race’s pulse accelerated when he realized that Orlov had written what could be bank account names and numbers. Orlov must be one of those people, he thought, who apparently loved to be able to look at his assets at any time on any day. A quick mental calculation told Race that the Russian had deposited something on the order of forty-two million dollars in the accounts.
He noted the first deposit date from five years earlier—July 17, then paged back through the notebook until he found a transaction date—July 13. By the time he’d compared the first five deposits with the transactions listed in the notebook, and had found that those transactions coincided closely with home invasions around those same dates, Race was confident that the notebook catalogued the loot from each of the robberies, the subsequent sale of the stolen items from those robberies, and the deposits of Orlov’s proceeds from those sales. He wondered why there were about fifty pages of transactions and not only enough to match the number of home invasions. But then he found duplicative dates on the transaction and deposit pages. Apparently, Orlov had split up the stolen items among multiple clients.
If he could track deposits from their source to Orlov’s accounts, he would have proof that the stolen goods had gone from Orlov to the individuals shown in Orlov’s notebook. Because of the dollar amounts involved, the clients must be heavy-hitters. Race felt a rush of excitement over the possibility of taking down four dozen, or so, wealthy, immoral bastards who had played significant roles in the deaths of innocent people. The
n he wondered if any charges could be brought against these people. They could plead ignorance about the source of the coins. Race thought about that for a minute and came to the conclusion that, even if charges couldn’t be brought against the buyers, at the very least he could release their names and embarrass them.
He assumed the buyers had wire-transferred monies into Orlov’s accounts. With their locations all over the globe, that would have been the only logical method of payment.
“Come on, Race, think,” he chided himself.
After he paced for a few minutes, he couldn’t come up with a sound way to track deposits into Orlov’s account. Without passwords, he couldn’t get into the bank accounts. And attempting to hack the Swiss bank’s server would be difficult, at best, and could expose him to their security personnel.
“Shit,” he muttered as he crossed the room for about the hundredth time. Then he remembered how angry Orlov had been when one of the bodyguards gave up Karl Swenson’s name. Race researched Surety Collectors Insurance and found that the company, a subsidiary of an insurance conglomerate with nearly six hundred billion dollars in reserves, was headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, with offices in twenty states. He wondered how Karl Swenson had covered up the losses his company must have sustained from the thefts of the coin collections. Insurance companies had intensive loss mitigation and underwriting systems. Eight digit losses over five years must have raised red flags inside Surety Collectors Insurance, despite the huge reserves of the parent company.
Race delved deeper into the Surety website and found a section on specialty insurance products. Under the NUMISMATICS/ARTIFACTS link, he discovered that the company insured over eight hundred thousand collections worldwide with total annual premiums of almost nine billion dollars. “Sonofabitch,” Race whispered. “That’s how Swenson covered up losses. The company insures so many collections that the losses are inconsequential to the total amount insured. And any losses could be recouped by raising insurance premiums charged to clients.” Race remembered how the insurance premiums on his collection had gone up at least five percent annually. If every one of Surety’s clients had experienced the same rate increases, then the incremental premium revenue to the company more than made up for any theft losses incurred.
Perhaps Swenson was the key source of information in the entire scheme. Without an insider at the insurance company providing coin collection information to Orlov, there would have been no scheme. Race’s blood seemed to boil. Over the past three years, he had concentrated his hate, anger, and lust for revenge on the men who had murdered his family. But he now focused on Karl Swenson. The insurance executive, like Orlov, Evan McCall, and the Three Ghouls, was ultimately a cause of all the murders.
The rage that Race had lived with for the past three years returned. The need for revenge returned. Except his need for violence and retribution were more intense than he’d felt before. And it was all narrowly focused on one target: Karl Swenson, the CFO of Surety Collectors Insurance.
DAY 11
CHAPTER 52
Barbara called Susan at 8:30 a.m. and asked, “How did things end last night?”
“Not very well.”
“That’s too bad. Roger’s a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“Uh hmm,” Barbara said. “You hear anything from Leno Sanchez?”
“Why would I hear from him?” Barbara detected a hint of anger in Susan’s voice.
“I don’t know. Thought he might call to apologize for being an asshole.”
“That’s the problem with assholes; they aren’t capable of apologizing for their bad behavior.”
“Besides,” Barbara said, “he’s more than likely embarrassed about being cold-cocked by a guy as nerdy as Roger.”
Susan squinted at Barbara. “That was martial arts that Roger used on Leno, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Not bad for a Latin American Studies PhD. Henry told me Roger’s taken judo lessons for years. On another subject, a little bird called me this morning. You wanna guess?”
“It’s too early for twenty questions.”
“Lieutenant Salas.”
“What the hell did Sniffles want?”
“I think he felt badly about suspending us. I suspect he saw Sophia’s interview on television.”
“That was nice of her to mention us in such glowing terms. Did he revoke our suspensions?”
“Nope.”
“So, what did he want?”
“Told me he’d heard that two of his detectives were involved in an altercation last night at Blacky’s.”
“And?”
“I told him he’d received bad information. That his detectives were merely observers.”
“That’s it?”
“No.” He also said he’d heard that APD patrolman Leno Sanchez was involved in the altercation. That he was knocked cold by an unidentified man. He added that he knew Sanchez was a bully and has been disciplined before for brawling.”
“All of those bits of information are accurate,” Susan said.
“Apparently, the APD wants to identify the man who beat up Sanchez.”
“That’s not good. What did you say?”
“That I’d never lied to him and wasn’t about to start now. Then I asked him to do me a personal favor and not ask you or me any more questions about the altercation that happened last night. I told him that Patrolman Sanchez was one hundred percent at fault and there was no reason to damage the reputation of a perfectly fine man.”
“That’s it?”
“Oh, there was one other thing he mentioned. APD suspended Leno. The reason they want to talk to the guy who knocked him out is because they would like his statement to present to a disciplinary board. They’re not after Roger; just Sanchez.” She paused and then added, “But they probably have more than enough evidence already without—”
Barbara’s landline rang.
“Can you hold a sec? My home phone’s ringing.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
Barbara picked up her home phone. “Hello.”
“Detective Lassiter?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“I understand you helped the FBI on the Three Ghouls’ gang.”
“I asked you for your name.”
“I’m sorry, but I won’t give you my name. I could give you a false name, but what would be the point?”
“How’d you get this number?”
“You keep asking questions I have no intention of answering.”
“What do you want?”
“What would you say if I gave you information about why each of the Three Ghouls’ victims was targeted?”
“I would say that could be very interesting.”
The man laughed. “I see you’re a master of understatement.”
Barbara put the landline and her mobile on speaker mode and put them next to one another. “I hope you can provide proof.”
“Detective, answer a question for me. How would you describe your work ethic? Your partner’s, too.”
“What kinda game are you playing?”
“No game, Detective. I just want to be certain that if I turn information over to you you’ll do more than just sit on it. What I can give you will reveal incompetence at the federal level, the reason for the home invasions, and the names of the players in a scheme that was responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocent people.”
“To answer your question, my partner and I bust our asses every day. We don’t know what’s it’s like to sit on it, as you so eloquently stated.”
“Good.”
“And why have you decided to drop this gift of a lifetime in our laps?”
“Two reasons. Your names came up on the news last night about how you and your partner made the connection between one of the men who murdered William Brownell in Flagstaff and the man who kidnapped and murdered Heather Katz. That took skill and insight.”
“You said there were two reasons.”
“Yeah. I w
ant to see if you can bring justice for victims by making every person pay who had anything to do with this robbery scheme.”
“How about a hint of what you’re referring to?”
“Sure, Detective. After all, I plan to provide the press with some of the same information I’m about to send you.” He paused a beat. “Every one of the houses targeted by the Three Ghouls had a world-class rare coin collection on the premises.”
Barbara’s brain sparked with the comment Sophia Otero-Hansen had made in Farmington about coins. “Sonofa—”
“What was that?” the man asked.
“Nothing. Tell me something. You seem to be concerned about justice. What if we can’t bring justice for the victims when all is said and done?”
“Let’s hope that’s not the outcome. Someone else might try to do so.”
Barbara’s heart seemed to skip a beat. She took a deep breath and waited to slowly release it. “Like you did in Farmington for the Franchinis and in Albuquerque for the Graves? And in a lot of other places?”
There was a long hesitation on the other end of the line until the man said, “I can’t even begin to understand what you’re talking about, Detective. Why don’t you give me your email address? I think we’ve talked enough.”