“This is your thing. I’m just trying to help. Listen, I’ll send you the diagram later today. And I’m going to FedEx you a unit for your own vehicle, so I can keep tabs on you, too. Oh, and one more thing, what’s the name of the bank, the one Sabotny stopped at?”
“Northwoods Bank and Trust, why?”
“I might want to look at Sabotny’s accounts.”
“Don’t do anything that you can get caught at.”
She could hear Ken Lee chuckling as he rang off.
27
Sue released Simone from her grip and set a large insulated cup on the conference table. “Did you eat your way through the Zingerman’s box last night?” she asked.
Ray looked up from his computer and smiled. “That wonderful bread and perfect piece of Stilton got me through a no-cook dinner. The rest went in the fridge or freezer. I’ll have to organize a dinner party to share the bounty with friends. Thank you for going through the hassle of working through my rather extensive list.” Simone begged to be picked up, and Ray pulled her into his lap briefly before returning her to the floor and getting up himself to move to the conference table. Simone, used to the routine, headed for the overstuffed chair in the far corner of the office and her morning nap.
“Glad I could do it. Where should we start?” Sue asked.
“Vincent Fox. Let’s go back over what we have so far.”
“I read the preliminary autopsy report last night.”
“I thought we were going to try to have a life away from the office?”
“I was going through my e-mail. There it was. How could I not read it? Thank you for the summary and for disambiguating the medical jargon. The whole thing sort of creeped me out—the stun gun, the burning of his foot. What’s going on here? Who are these people? What’s this about?”
“We’re back to motive,” said Ray, pointing at his diagram. “We’ve been working with two possibilities. First, someone was after the money that Fox won at the casino—getting it from an old man would look like easy pickings. Second, a true believer in the Capone treasure story grabbed Fox with the idea of getting more exact information from him on the actual location of the stash.”
“How about this just being a random….”
“There’s always that possibility, but I don’t think so.” Ray pointed to his diagram. “We assume that Vincent Fox had $2,000 on his person or at his home. You didn’t find any cash there or on his body, right?”
“Correct. The money might have been taken at the time of his abduction or stolen from his house.”
“There are other possibilities. He might have hidden it so well that no one has found it, or he might have given it away the same way he did with the $4,000 to Tommy Fuller.
“Those two are a long reach,” countered Sue.
“Yes, they are.”
Sue scanned Ray’s graphic. “You don’t have Fox’s computer listed.”
Ray got up and added computer below the $2,000 cash. “Okay, so here’s a possible scenario. A couple of the Capone true believers have been keeping track of Fox’s movements. They grab him off the street or at his house. When he struggles, they use a stun gun. When they apply some torture, he dies. Later they grab the computer because it might contain information that would lead them to the treasure. The money was just an unexpected bonus.”
“Our perps are on a continuum from being sadistic bastards to totally weird psychopaths.”
“But is what we’re seeing all there is? Could something else be going on here?” asked Ray.
“What are you suggesting?”
“We’re running old scripts, things that have come up before. We’re pushing the Fox murder into a familiar paradigm. It’s not working. And then we have the Terry Hallen case. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever figure out what happened to him. Finally, perhaps coincidently, there’s the ten grand that Ma French found in the cemetery.” Ray sipped his coffee and asked, “So what did you think of the Hollingsford Estate and Perry Ashton?”
“I’m always surprised,” she responded. “Like I think I know this area well, and then there’s something like that place. Mind blowing. How many times have I rolled past that muddy road with no idea of what was hidden in those woods.”
“I’d heard about it some over the years,” said Ray. “It always seemed more mythical than real, but, yes, I was amazed, too.”
“What do we know about Perry Ashton? Has he ever been on our radar?” asked Sue.
“I checked this morning. Nothing recent. There are two DUIs and speeding tickets. All years ago.”
“So what we learned,” said Sue, “expands and confirms what we already knew. Terry Hallen’s naked body was found on the beach of the Hollingsford Estate. If he had indeed gone skinny dipping, the logical place for him to enter the water would have been closer to his home, 10 miles below where the body was found. As far as we know, his clothing was never recovered. Perry Ashton says the water was still very cold, and the victim appeared to be terribly thin. Those two things would delay the number of days it would take for him to become a floater. We’re probably looking at 10 days to two weeks. Mrs. Schaffer’s memory is that he was found a few days after he disappeared. We have no record of when he was reported missing or who identified the body. There’s no way to date anything. There was no autopsy, just a certificate of death. No evidence of any investigation. The mother is deceased, as is the grandmother, and his siblings disappeared shortly after his death. To top it off, there’s Perry Ashton’s memory that the body was high up the beach, higher than it might have been carried by waves. Lots of unanswered questions. Lots. And I wonder what was going through Dirk Lowther’s head.”
“Dirk wasn’t into heavy lifting,” said Ray. “If Terry’s people weren’t moxie enough to challenge the finding, nothing more would have been done. So it was open and shut, accidental drowning. Case closed. Dirk had better things to spend his time on.” Ray paused again and sipped his coffee, then pointed to the right side of the whiteboard. “What about Ma French and the $10,000.”
“I need to tell you about that, the money. I e-mailed the serial numbers from those bills to an agent at the FBI—I met her at that financial fraud workshop I went to last year. She forwarded my inquiry to another agent who works on cases involving currency, you know, things like money laundering. The guy’s name is Braeton Jackson. He could tell from the serial numbers that the bills were part of 12 billion in cash sent to Iraq right after the invasion to keep the provisional government running. He went on to explain that approximately eight billion of the 12 went missing. There was no chain of custody after the money was offloaded in Baghdad.”
Ray’s coffee mug had been hovering between the table and his mouth. He put it down as Sue continued. “Jackson says these bills have turned up all over the globe. He was curious how 100 crisp new C-notes suddenly turned up on a beach in northern Michigan after all the years they were out of circulation.”
They sat in silence for a long moment, then Ray asked, “What do we know for sure?”
“We have two tire castings that might be from the perp’s car.”
“And they might be from the meter reader. Iraq. Eight billion. Who knew?”
“Even more amazing than a lost estate, huh. So what do we do now?”
“You know the answer as well as me. We sit tight, turn our attention to our usual duties, and wait until something else happens. Or we have a sudden flash of brilliance.”
“Well, did you note that more root vegetables were reported stolen yesterday?” said Sue, smiling.
“Yes, carrots and potatoes,” agreed Ray, sighing. “Same M.O. Theft from an unlocked building. The farmers are unsure of when the robbery took place. They don’t go into the storage area more than once or twice a week during the winter, and they’re unsure of the quantity. They don’t keep a tight inventory. Assign this to Brett. He can work these into his road patrol duties. At some point, we should be able to figure this one out.”