Ethan shook his head.
‘We don’t make the clerk our priority,’ he explained. ‘The bank heist is effectively solved. What we do now is start thinking about who else could have been involved on the inside and whether or not they might be targeted by the same person who killed Hicks, Reece and the clerk.’
‘You think there’ll be more killings?’ Karina asked.
‘There’s been no justice,’ Lopez explained. ‘The killings seem to be motivated by revenge. If it’s gone down the way we think, then the four thieves would have hired the clerk to alter, falsify or just plain lose the statements, rendering them inadmissible in court. That would have created the first big stumbling block for a prosecution. The whole set-up would be there ready just in case any of the men were captured, slowing judicial procedure and perhaps, ultimately, getting them off the hook.’
‘We’re thinking that maybe this is the gang that have been hitting banks all down the east coast,’ Ethan said. ‘Just that the brains behind the Pay-Go heist isn’t one of the actual robbers.’
Donovan raised an eyebrow. ‘A sort of mastermind, staying out of the limelight?’ he speculated.
‘It fits,’ Ethan said. ‘The heists are meticulously planned and go off without a hitch. It was only bad luck that the flatbed lost control on the bridge, but Hicks and Reece got away even then, suggesting they’d planned for every eventuality that they could. The latex masks, the waiting perhaps for days for the armoured truck to turn up because they run deliberately changed routes each day — all of it suggests that somebody must be behind the team actually hitting the banks.’
‘Okay,’ Karina agreed. ‘I can buy that. Question is. What do you want to do about it?’
Ethan looked again at the picture board in one corner of the office.
‘My thinking is that the chain of corruption might be bigger than just the clerk. What if the whole team had been captured on the bridge, before the money cases could be opened? The organizer of this little masquerade would need a guarantee that the thieves wouldn’t sell them out to avoid prison time. The mastermind would need a second line of defense, somebody who could keep his team of thieves out of the prison system.’
Jackson got it first. ‘The lawyer.’
‘Exactly,’ Lopez agreed. ‘His name was Eric Muir and he wasn’t a state attorney, he was privately hired and likely not cheap. Where did the money come from?’
‘The other bank heists?’ Glen Ryan hazarded.
‘Too soon,’ Ethan said. ‘They wouldn’t have had time to launder the money. Unless, of course, the attorney was willing to consider cash.’
‘If he’s crooked then cash is the best way because the notes are so hard to trace,’ Donovan agreed. ‘Anything else, there would be a trail to follow.’
Ethan nodded in agreement. Fact was, so many criminals were too damned stupid to realize that keeping cash tucked in a safety box or similar was by far the best way to commit the perfect crime. Whether by fraud or outright robbery, thieves too often splashed their ill-gotten gains in ways that made them conspicuous and easy to trace: fast cars, casinos, drug deals that brought them to the attention of other police forces and so on.
But the smart man who carried off a decent take from a heist or fraud and ensured that their life changed as little as possible, at least on the outside, held a crucial advantage. Sure, you might still have to hold down a day-job to cover your tracks, but, if a successful heist netted a man a couple of hundred thousand bucks and he was smart enough to use it for all of his cash purchases, things like gasoline, food shopping, household goods and such like, then even if he spent a thousand bucks a month that cash would last him more than fifteen years. And that didn’t even take into consideration the extra salary that would build up in his bank account, money that would otherwise have been spent on those same goods that could now be legally spent on the cars and casinos without attracting unnecessary attention. A wise man could double his available annual income for the majority of his working life off the back of a single successful heist.
‘We follow the lawyer, Eric Muir,’ Ethan said. ‘If he’s attacked by somebody, then maybe we get to catch our killer. If he isn’t but evidence is found of him doing deals to get these convicts off the hook for a price, then we still win. Either way, I’d be surprised if this guy’s completely clean: somebody had to hire him as the defense for this case.’
Donovan nodded. ‘Agreed, we’ll do it. You guys keep searching for evidence of this mysterious mastermind.’
Ethan shook his head. ‘We’ll all take part in the stakeout.’
‘What for?’ Donovan asked. ‘It only takes two officers to keep an eye on one man.’
Ethan thought fast. He wanted to be on site, because, if the mysterious photographer showed up again, he absolutely intended to corner them once and for all.
‘We don’t know if he’ll lead us directly to the main man,’ he said. ‘The more people we have on this the better, as it’s our only lead. Besides, putting cops on it costs money. We’re not on the department’s clock, remember?’
Donovan shrugged and nodded, and Ethan turned away and walked out of the office with Lopez and Jarvis.
‘This is getting in the way of things for us,’ Lopez pointed out as they walked. ‘Nothing’s being done about MK-ULTRA or our friends at the CIA.’
‘One thing at a time,’ Jarvis cut in. ‘Let’s get this case solved first.’
‘Nicola’s right,’ Ethan insisted. ‘Have you got anything from Major Greene’s list of names?’
‘The team’s on the case,’ Jarvis replied, ‘but these things take time. There’s a hundred years to work through, much of it from time periods when documentation wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. If there’s anybody here in the city descended from people on that list, they’ll find them eventually.’
‘The CIA were tracking Joanna toward New York,’ Ethan said, ‘and are likely here already. Just because we’re not under threat, doesn’t mean they’ll stop their mission. If we don’t find her fast, they will, and everything we’re trying to achieve will be over.’
‘I’ll stay on it,’ Jarvis promised.
Karina jogged up behind them as they walked. ‘Nice work back there. You want to tell me what you’re going to do if this wraith thing of yours turns up and kills that lawyer?’
‘We haven’t figured that part out yet,’ Ethan admitted.
‘Well, you might want to start thinking about it,’ she said, ‘because, sooner or later, Donovan is going to realize what’s happening here and, if he thinks you guys are crazies, he’ll have justification for claiming back jurisdiction of the case. Just sayin’.’
Ethan looked at Lopez.
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘or he sees what we saw. Then he’ll want us here.’
Jarvis stopped them both.
‘Look, before we go see Eric Muir, why don’t we take this to the people that we know for sure are involved?’
‘Earl and Gladstone?’ Lopez asked. ‘I doubt we can do that without further compromising the case. If that lawyer is crooked and we lean on his clients, he’ll use it against us in any trial and, besides, we already know that they’re not talking. Identifying Hicks and Reece probably won’t be enough to get them to sing for us.’
‘This is DIA business, nothing to do with the police department, so we keep it quiet,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Why don’t you pay them a visit and tell them straight that one by one their colleagues are being picked off by a crazed serial killer? Show them a few photographs of what’s left of Hicks and Reece? Maybe that, along with the fact that the money all went into the East River, will be enough to tip them over the edge and finger whoever is actually behind all of this.’