up, I’d think,” Rich replied. “That’d actually support their case, you know?
“I think the room is just a mess.”
“Of course,” Martin said, sitting down in Tomas’ chair. “I’m surprised they didn’t just pay someone to do it for them.”
“Some people actually take pride in doing that kind of thing for themselves, Martin. You should try cleaning up your desk sometimes; you might get a taste for it.”
“Yeah, but then I’d never know where to find anything,” Martin said, turning over the documents on the desk. He searched through the drawers. “Does your mobile have a disc reader?”
“A what?”
“The thing where you plug the thing in and you can look at what’s on it.”
“Yes, Martin, it can read SCH drives. Why don’t you join us in the 30’s where we’ve stopped using discs?”
“Too much trouble. Here,” he replied, tossing a pair of SCH drives over to Rich. “See what’s on those.”
Rich plugged the first into the phone and swiped through the contents while Martin continued rummaging through the drawers. “Vacation pictures on this one,” Rich said, changing the drive, and tossing the first onto the desk. “They probably checked these when they were here yesterday.”
“I doubt it,” Martin responded, grunting. “They might have moved all of this shit out of here since they didn’t think it was part of the crime scene.”
“It’s not. It’s just a fucking mess,” Rich said.
“Maybe,” Martin said, closing the last drawer. “Is there anything good on the other disc?”
“Nope,” Rich said tossing it onto the desk, and shoving his mobile back into his pocket.
Martin felt the tail of his shirt billow behind him. He turned and looked at the vent. “I wonder,” he said, kneeling down. Rich leaned over the desk, and watched him yank the vent cover away, and reach inside. “I’ll be damned.”
Martin withdrew his arm, and tossed a small steel box with a magnetic edge to Rich. “When this is all over, I want you to tell Derrick that he’s fired. I didn’t even have to try to do a better job than his team.”
“I wish,” Rich said, opening the box, which contained another SCH drive. He plugged it into his mobile. “Bank records; at least he wanted to keep…his…holy fuck.”
Martin laughed. “Porn?”
“No. We’re in the wrong business.”
“I knew that when I went through training. Loaded?”
“That’s an understatement,” Rich said, exasperated, as he passed his mobile to Martin. “He has deposits going into his account weekly that amount to what I make in a year; shit, two sometimes.”
Martin took the mobile, pushed the information back and forth, seeing the numbers bounce back and forth for the same three dates. “Here, I can’t work this thing,” he said.
“What do you want to know?” Rich asked.
“Check the start date for the deposits, and see if they match when he gets a paycheck.”
“Those are his paychecks,” Rich said.
“I know,” Martin said as he stood. “They are numbered. I’m willing to bet that his normal paycheck would just be marked with a Four Nations generic account name.”
Rich fidgeted with the information for a moment. “And you’re right again. I think I might need to go to church this Sunday. The end is fucking nigh.”
“Like I said, I’m blessed.” Martin said. “So our corpse was on the take? That explains the corporate interest in the case.”
“Or they didn’t realize it until his wife stabbed him a few dozen times,” Rich said, leading Martin back out of the office.
They stopped at the kitchen. “That’s hardly a smoking gun,” Martin said. “He was stabbed up here, right?”
“Yeah, right in front of the door,” Rich responded.
They walked into the foyer, seeing the large misshapen bloodstain surrounding where the body markers were still jutting up the floor. The prism heel markers stood around them as a stopping point. “Does Nancy keep her heels next to the door?”
“She’d have to wear heels to leave them by the door,” Rich responded. “But I see where you’re going. No.”
Martin stepped into the stairwell. No markers rose from the narrow steps. He leaned down. “They didn’t check the stairs. Either the killer walked up here and ditched the shoes, or they weren’t wearing the same shoes.”
“How do you know?”
“Both heel marks are shaped like triangles, but the overall shape is completely different from the ones of the killer,” Martin said. He stood up, and followed them to the den, and then to the door, where they stopped. “I doubt she changed shoes to stab her husband.”
Rich knelt down in the hall, and compared the two. “Maybe you were right about Derrick getting the axe.”
“Lay off, Rich, it’s Central 1. They walked in here with an opinion given to them. They just wanted the evidence necessary to get off their feet for the day,” Martin said. “Should we even bother recording it?”
“Probably,” Rich replied. “We might need it to further support our case that the Dekare woman is innocent. Want to look at anything else?”
“Did that SCH drive have all of their financial records on it?”
“I think so,” Rich replied.
“Did you copy it?”
“No.”
“Go take care of that real quick,” Martin said, standing up. “I’ll see if there is anything else worth looking at.”
Rich nodded, and walked back to the kitchen.
Martin walked into the den. There were gaps in the bookshelf, and a stack of paperbacks on the arm of a sprawling tan leather couch. The coffee table contained a few magazines on housekeeping, a bi-monthly jazz chronicle, and buried beneath them, a year old financial journal. A painting of magnolias hung across from the couch in a faux aged frame, suspended over wasted space. Martin crossed the foyer into another, smaller living area. The couch here was a dark green love seat, neighboring a matching recliner. An LED television hung from the wall. He picked up the remote, and turned it on to find a baseball game already in progress. He switched it back off.
Tomas Dekare could very well be the most boring person that he’d ever had to research.
Rich walked into the room. “Anything else?”
“Not in here,” Martin said, tossing the remote onto the couch. “Haven’t been upstairs yet.”
“I flipped through the contents of that drive again. It’s a solid record of their spending.”
“Let me guess; they eat in a lot, don’t spend money on decoration, and his wife buys a lot of books?”
“I didn’t look.”
“Might not have to, but hang on to that anyway,” Martin responded.
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know,” Martin muttered. He went upstairs, taking each step with a heavy thud.
“He would have heard it if she came from upstairs. He wasn’t obsessed with the market, but at some point he was. Do we know when they moved into the house?”
“Not off the top of my head. I’m sure Derrick’s team could tell me if I asked.”
“Don’t bother,” Martin said, his voice echoed through the house. Rich stepped into the foyer, and watched Martin look the house over. “The bed is unmade, the closet is still open. Someone knew he had the money, but wasn’t concerned with getting it back here. There isn’t anything of any value in the house. The other bedrooms look like they’ve never even been lived in. His TV isn’t top of the line, hasn’t even got a damned surround sound hooked up to it, so he doesn’t care about that.”
Martin walked down the stairs. “Why kill him? It’s not like he’s flaunting his money buying sports cars and fancy shit. His wife works, and it looks like she’s got her money in building a library out of their living room.”
“That just makes him smart. He knows to keep things modest if he’s hiding a nest egg,” Rich said.
“Not smart enough, I figure. Som
eone stabbed his ass.”
“Touché,” Rich laughed. “Are you satisfied? Can we go now?”
“Yeah,” Martin said, scanning the foyer one last time. “You want to get dinner?”
“Sure,” Rich said.
“Great. You can pay,” Martin laughed.
Michel Rojas waited outside of Jeff Franklin’s office, his hands laced together; the bronzed statue of bitter patience. Two other appointments took precedence over the urgent matter of his being questioning. He’d even stepped out to invite the last person in, and glanced at Michel before brushing his presence off. Michel wanted to be offended, but he assumed it would mean nothing soon. He ran his questions over while he listened to the guest’s laughter over a filthy joke, the emphatic “wow” over a quote he’d not been able to hear. Michel knew he couldn’t be above eavesdropping. It was a lesson he’d had to learn early on, giving him his earliest fraud catches in the company.
If he’d learned anything while working for Four Nations, it was that the staff wasn’t that bright, and the most flagrant disregard for the law was on the lips of everyone who had access to cash or a computer in the entire building.
The entire hall was deserted. Most of the other staff had left for the day, trying to avoid traffic caused by the storm, or simply out to a long lunch, or late afternoon meeting.
The door opened again, and Jeff stepped out, all skin, bones, and Armani, with a shining bald head meeting baby face chin, untouched by time at the age of twenty-seven. Michel resisted jumping to the conclusion that he’d spent much of his illegally acquired fortunes keeping his youth intact after dismissing his hair.
His guest was down the hall, and