by Steve Levi
“But not with cash?”
“I supposed I could, but I haven’t. When there’s a cash run, a senior does the paperwork.”
“Who actually signs the log-ins?” Noonan pointed toward the logs.
“The senior actually signs the log.”
“When you are riding security, do you see the senior sign in the log?”
Muhammed chuckled. “No. I don’t know if it’s protocol or not, but when I ride security, I wait outside the garage. There’s a lot of activity in there, and the bikes would just get in the way. I wait outside, and when the armored would come out, we’d go.”
“So when you are riding security, you don’t check to see if the armored has cargo?”
“If you mean money, no, we don’t check the armored. That’s the senior’s job.”
“Do you stop at the front gate?”
“No. We just leave.”
“How about coming back in?”
“There’s no reason to stop at the front gate when we come in. We just drive into the garage and unload.”
“When you come in with a load—I mean, when you are riding security—do you drive your bikes into the garage?”
“No. We drive over to the mechanical shop. We check the bikes in, fill out any work orders for repair. Then we walk over to the time clock and punch out. Then we just walk out the front gate.”
“You don’t check the armored at all?”
“No. We ride security. That’s it. When the truck makes it into the garage door, we’re through.”
Noonan looked at Delgado and the young Swensen. “Anything Muhammed said not accurate?”
Both men just shook their head.
“OK.” Noonan looked at Delgado. “Have you ever done a check-in with money?”
“One or two. I was senior for the day, so, yeah, I did the check-in.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“No idea. The money was in bags. I signed for the bags and put them in the truck.”
“You never looked in the bags?”
“No reason to. I was given a bag; I signed for the bag.”
“Who gave you the bags?”
“It didn’t happen often. I’ve gotten bags from President Swensen, two or three of the vault people, Steigle, and once from an auditor.”
“An auditor?”
“Yeah, there are auditors in and out all the time.”
“Why would an auditor give you a bag of money? It would mean he was in the vault.”
“She. The auditor was a she. Actually, I know why I was given a bag of money. And it was a big box, not a bag. It was old money on its way to be destroyed. It happens once every six months or so. The money is put in boxes and sent to an office of the Federal Reserve. It’s just a delivery.”
“But you signed for every one of those times you got money from the vault?” Noonan pointed to the logbooks.
“Every time. It’s protocol.”
“Every withdrawal from the vault should be in here?”
“Every single one.”
“How about you?” Noonan looked at the young Swensen. “Do you want to add anything?”
“The only thing I could add, and it’s something which just happened, my name is now on the vault list. That is, to get into the vault and check out money.”
“Really? When did that happen?”
“Two days ago. After the armored truck went missing. John . . . er . . . President Swensen has been through chemo, and he’s stepping back from the business. I’m getting increased responsibilities, so he added my name to the log in personnel.”
“Have you actually logged any deliveries out?”
“Not yet. I was just promoted, if that’s what you want to call it, two days ago. Since then we’ve been up to our ears in deliveries with the Jacksons gone.”
Noonan looked at the three. “Do any of you know where the GPS is located on the trucks?”
All three looked at each other and then back at Noonan. All shook their heads.
“So the GPS is not an electronics something you turn on when you leave the garage and then turn off when you get back?”
“I know all the trucks have GPS,” Muhammed said. “But I don’t know where the bug is located.”
“How about you two?” Noonan looked at Delgado and the young Swensen.
Both men shook their head.
Noonan waited a long moment and then said, “A lot has happened since you’ve been on the road. Last night about 10:00 p.m., Steigle’s armored truck went ghost. The GPS went off, and he could not be reached by radio or cell phone. Any idea where he is?”
This took the three young men by surprise.
“He’s missing?”
“The GPS went off?”
“Was there money in the truck?”
“Steigle’s not the crooked type.”
“Has he called in?”
Noonan waved the men silent. “All we know now is Steigle checked in with a load at about three p.m. and took another load out. He was out the door on the second run and has not been seen since.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say,” said a shocked Delgado.
“I don’t what to say either.” Muhammed shook his head. “Sounds like a robbery. I hope Steigle’s OK?”
“There’s more,” Noonan said slowly. “About four p.m. yesterday, the missing armored showed up.”
This also took them by surprise.
“Nnnnooooo way,” said the young Swensen. “The missing armored? The one that disappeared in the Pamlico Tunnel? It just appeared?”
“Like black magic.” Noonan made a poofing gesture with his right hand. “Poof, and it was here.”
“How do we know it’s the missing armored?” Delgado asked.
“The GPS for the missing truck suddenly came on. It was in the garage.”
“In the garage?” Muhammed shook his head in disbelief. “As in, someone drove it in?”
“Yup,” said Noonan.
There was a moment of silence. Then young Swensen said, “Someone drove the missing truck into the garage? Do we know who drove it into the garage?”
“No. But as you have said, trucks are not checked when they drive in. So whoever drove it in, just drove it in. Parked it in the garage and flicked on the GPS.”
“Then just walked away?” Muhammed said.
“Appears to be the case,” Noonan replied.
“Not possible.” Delgado was now shaking his head. “There are not many of us around.” He pointed to Muhammed and then young Swensen. “It has to be someone who works here.”
“Not true.” Noonan shook his head. “There have been all kinds of people in here since Sunday: police, auditors, insurance folk. They come and they go. Since no one checks the trucks coming in, whoever it was just drove the truck in and parked it.”
“But there is a security tape,” Delgado said.
“True,” Noonan replied. “The police are looking at the tape, but so far they’ve got zip.”
There was a long moment of silence and then young Swensen said suspiciously, “The only person missing now is Steigle. You don’t think. . .” the sentence trailed off.
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Noonan finished his sentence. “But right now it makes no sense. There’s no reason for the missing truck to show up. If Steigle drove it in, why? Then Steigle drives another truck out? The other truck had money in it, but we’re talking peanuts. If there was a robbery, the bandits didn’t get much.”
“And we don’t know where the truck is?” Young Swensen shook his head in disbelief.
“GPS is off. So, no, we do not know where the armored is.”
“Or Steigle.” Muhammed mulled it more than said it.
“Or Steigle,” said Noonan.
Again, there was a stunned moment of silence. Finally, young Swensen said, “This does not make any sense. The missing truck shows up in the garage. There is no way to knowing who drove it in. Steigle leaves in an armored with a
few thousand dollars, maybe, and disappears. His GPS goes off. Seems obvious whoever is doing this knows how to turn off and on GPS. But other than that, there’s no link. There is no robbery because no money is missing.”
“So what is going on?” Delgado looked at Noonan questioningly.
“That, Mr. Delgado, is a very interesting question.” There was a long moment of silence, then Noonan finally said, “The three of you can go for the moment. Don’t leave town without telling me.”
Chapter 35
There are many old platitudes that are just old. But they are not necessarily truthful. “A stitch in time saves nine,” for example, is only true if what you are stitching is something of quality. You don’t stitch a T-shirt valuing just four dollars and ninety-nine cents. It is not worth a stitch if what you are saving has little value. The veracity of this platitude has also changed over time. Illustrating with an historical aside, one of the keys to understanding American history before the Civil War is the verb “to fix.”
In Colonial America, everything came from England, and it was expensive. The object itself was not the cause of the expense; it was the transportation cost. Something that was cheap in England was expensive in America simply because of the cost of transportation. As an example, if a merchant in London had a broken wagon wheel, he didn’t bother to repair it. He simply threw it away. That was because it was cheaper to buy a new wagon wheel than repair the old one. Americans did not have this option. A new wheel was very expensive, so it was advisable “to fix” the old one rather than spend the money on a new one. Thus did the verb “to fix” become synonymous with what made America great: doing the best you can with what you have.
Other platitudes stress logic. “There is no I in team,” but if you are a boxer, swimmer, track and field contestant, fine artist, or writer, you are the team and the entire team is I. “Good things come to those who wait” as long as stars are aligning, and you only “forgive and forget” until the next time those who you are supposed to forgive try to pull the same stunt again. (Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.) Money can buy happiness, and with great power comes great responsibility as long as you are not a spoiled brat.
The platitude that Noonan learned to be patently false Wednesday afternoon was “It is always darkest before dawn.” Well, it was certainly dark. What Noonan had was a collection of disparate facts that were like loose pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle, but they were all of different colors and textures. He could not be sure they were all part of the same puzzle. The only thing leading him to believe all pieces were parts of the same puzzle was because there were so few pieces. Worse, he had the nagging suspicion this case would be like no other. In most of the other impossible crimes he had solved, there came a light bulb moment where everything fit. When all the disparate pieces fell into place. He may not always have been able to prosecute the perpetrators, but he could solve the impossible crime.
This case, not so much. He had an empty armored car that had vanished and then reappeared. He had two drivers AWOL, and no bodies had been found and not a clue to their whereabouts. There was a senior security person who had gone ghost with another armored car that had very little cash, three auditors worried about a palette of cash they could not prove belonged to anyone specifically, along with the president of the armored-car company who was retiring because of cancer, dodging lawsuits by the wives of the missing drivers, and playing footsie with two federal agents who had no warrant for information they already had. It was a fine mess he had fallen into, to paraphrase Oliver Hardy.
Then things got worse.
It was pushing four when there was a knock on the breakroom door. Noonan looked up from the logbooks—all dozen of them—and said, “Come on in.” The door opened, and in walked Chelsea Edison.
She did not look happy.
“Why the long face?” Noonan smiled. “I expected you to have answers because right now I need a lot of them.”
“Well,” she said reluctantly. “I’ve got answers to your questions, but you are not going to like any one of them.”
“How do you know that?” Noonan was being funny.
It didn’t last long.
“In what order do you want your answers: good, bad, or solid.”
“Solid?”
“I only have one solid answer. It’s about the foam. I’ve got goose egg.”
“That’s pretty solid. OK, let’s just go through the answers slowly.”
“It won’t work if I proceed in that manner, but I’ll give it a try. I checked with all gyms and places where you could work out from Hatteras to Rodanthe. Steigle and both Jacksons have gym membership. In Waves. Just far enough away from Sandersonville to be inconspicuous. How you guessed they had gym memberships I do not know, but they all do. The same gym, and they all pay their membership monthly dues in cash. All three have been regulars. I pulled up the check-in rosters, and they—all three of them—come in about the same time and stay two hours. I was able to talk to some of the attendants, and they know the three by sight. They don’t always work together, but often enough they are considered a team. They do weights primarily.”
“OK, hmmm . . .” Noonan said. “I expected Steigle to be a gym regular but not the other two. Go on.”
“Of the seven names you gave me, all of them are current on automobile and motorcycle registration. None of them have a pilot’s license. There are no liens on any of their properties—sort of.”
“What is ‘sort of ’?” Noonan asked.
“It gets very complicated very fast,” Edison said. “Let me finish with the solids before I answer that question, OK?”
“Works for me.”
“All seven have cell phones, and the two Jackson phones are off. The rest of the phones are on and operational. Other than the Jacksons, none of the others have a business license or are in a LLC.”
“The Jacksons are?”
“Another ‘sort of.’ Let me finish up with your other questions—and one of them is a lulu.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“Well, for my finish you’d better double strap your tutu.”
“Lulu and tutu. That’s quite an alliteration.”
“I know what alliteration means, and it will be the only thing you know for sure for the answers I’m going to give you.”
“OK. Go on.”
“I could find no reference to foam in the background of any of the seven.”
“Go on.”
“Of the seven, only President Swensen, John Swensen, and Ramon Delgado vote. John and Ramon have signed a few petitions over the years, mostly environmentally and LGBT related. All three are regulator voters. President Swensen is a registered No Party, and the other two are Democrats. If it makes any difference.”
“Probably not.”
“Now things get convoluted.”
“Hold on for a moment.” Noonan dug through the pile of logbooks until he found his yellow dog. “Shoot.”
“As I said, this will get very complicated very fast.”
“I’m ready,” Noonan said, pen in hand.
“First, with regard to the LLC, the Jacksons were hard to identify because there are so many Jacksons in the area. About five years ago, the Jackson clan and some scattered individuals put together limited liability corporations for land speculating. Basically, they were consolidating small pieces of property into large plots. The point was to be able to sell, say, twenty acres of land at one time to one buyer rather than having the buyer deal with twenty different landowners.”
“Makes sense.”
“Yes and no.”
“I hate those kinds of answers.”
“Yes, it made it easier to deal with one buyer, but no, not the way it was being done. What ended up happening was many people with small lots in every joint venture—” Before she could complete the sentence, Noonan finished it.
“. . . and some people were only in one joint venture. Which made them very unhappy.”
&
nbsp; “Correct. So making a long land title story very short, the two Jacksons—and I double-checked to make sure I had the right ones, and I do because their wives’ names are with them on the land titles—were part of a number of joint ventures until eighteen months ago. Then they bailed. Now they are not part of any joint venture.”
“They sold their land?”
“Oh, if it were so simple. No, they still own the land, but it has passed through two corporate shells. They still own the land, but it’s no longer listed as personal property; it’s corporate property.”
“So their names are not on any of the land titles?”
“Another yes and no. Yes, they still own it, but it is being held in trust to Curtis Jackson, a banker. And Curtis Jackson has the Power of Attorney for the land.”
“So if the land sells, Curtis Jackson can sign, but the money goes—”
“Back through the corporate food chain, and the two Jacksons get their money.”
Noonan chuckled. “Clever of them.”
“Not really. The paperwork was handled by Inganno, Inc., a sole proprietor legal corporation in Vanceboro. See if you can guess who the sole proprietor is?”
“George Steigle.”
“Oh, you are quick. Inganno, Inc. was established five years ago. There have been no complaints filed against it. It is listed as a general law firm. I found a few references to it on Google. Three of them were news stories where Steigle was quoted in support of his client’s lawsuit, and one was a reference to his pro bono work for a statewide hospice.”
“OK.”
“Keep the hospice in mind for a few moments. It is going to come back like a bad penny.”
“Go on.”
“Going back to the LLC and joint venture, eighteen months ago, just after the Jacksons left the fray, there was a change in attitude among the landowners. For some reason, they stopped fighting each other and formed an umbrella group. The umbrella corporation—and it is now a corporation—Jackson Land—is represented by . . . by . . . by . . .” Edison let the sentence drag.
“George Steigle. This is getting easy.”