The next morning, the White Collar Crimes Unit hummed with its normal subdued murmur one hundred miles away from Eaton. It never really got urgent crimes and its offices were filled with researchers, clever with computers and insightful with laws and regulations. It was because of those developments that Jack Hudson had been given the noble task of opening the department’s mail. He was not any good with computers because he was from a past era when the department was more like a police force than a research library. He didn’t care, he only had a few months to go before retirement and he had lost his boyish enthusiasm for the job so long ago he didn’t remember what real police work was like. He didn’t want to become a computer geek either.
Jack collected the stack of mail, all five pieces, filled his coffee mug and ambled over to his desk. His was the only one devoid of electronics save for the telephone that he rarely used, an old fashioned inbox and a neat stack of files representing his meager workload. He slit the envelopes one after the next, sipped his coffee and peeked inside one by one. When he came across the envelope with the three one hundred dollar bills he spewed a bit of coffee onto the desk and said “Whoa, what do we have here?” He said it to no one in particular and not a head turned. He was invisible to the kids as he called them and he reached into the envelope, carefully pinching out the bills and a letter. Jack carefully pried open the letter with the opener and his pen so he could read it without touching it any more than he already had. This is what it said:
To Whom It May Concern,
I am sure no expert, but at least I can spot funny money. Look at the font on the serial numbers. The wife and I were having a good time until this junk showed up, so I cashed us out to my account and used the rest to pay the hotel bill. These are the only bills I have left and I don’t want them.
We’re not ever coming back to this crooked casino so I don’t care if you slam their doors shut, just protect the town down the way from financial ruin.
One other thing, there’s a bread truck that makes a delivery at the back of the casino most nights at about 10:00pm. I was in the business; bread gets delivered just before dawn.
Concerned citizen.
Jack re-read the letter a few times to try to get more out of it. Here was a guy that didn’t want to get involved, saw the money and sent a letter to give him time to gain distance. He could be anyone and he could be anywhere. Unless there are fingerprints, Jack mused, there is no lead there. He would send the letter and the bills over to the FBI lab to check anyway. He carefully placed the letter and the bills in plastic bags and headed over to talk to the captain about going back out in the field.
“Hey, Cap, look at what the mail delivered to us” Jack said as he entered the captain’s office. The captain was a true bureaucrat dressed in an expensively tailored, mid-price suit, silk tie, silk shirt and manicured nails, close cropped hair and tidy mustache. Captain Bronson bristled at the familiarity which Jack used to address him and Jack always fought back a chuckle imagining Captain Bronson dressed in daddy’s suit playing executive. Other than being 25 years younger than Jack, he was an acceptable captain, and besides, Jack wouldn’t take that job on a bet. He just liked to tweak the guy.
Captain Bronson looked up from his ever present computer monitor, “What do you have Jack?”
Jack slid the bills and letter across the desk “Somebody out there thinks they found a counterfeiter.” The captain looked closely at the letter but glanced at the bills saying nothing. He had no background in bad bills so he just took Jack’s word. Jack waited in the guest chair while Captain Bronson read and re-read the letter, just as Jack had done.
“It looks like we have a concerned citizen, alright. No name, no contact, no salient information. What do you propose we do with this?” Bronson was patronizing, wanting his most irritating and oldest employee to go away as he held the letter at arm’s length and pushed it towards Jack’s side of the desk. Captain Bronson was not one to jump at investigations that did not involve computers. He was a true white collar kind of guy and wanted his department to provide the information to send the FBI or the Secret Service into the field.
“I guess somebody ought to mosey on down there to take a look” Jack said with a bit of a southern drawl. He enjoyed taunting his captain then continued a bit more seriously “The bakery truck is our only lead. It does make you wonder about the timing. I need to go out there to see if I can get some bills of my own and stake out the truck. At least I can verify what this guy said in the letter and get more information for the FBI.” Now Jack was overtly managing the captain to let him get out there one last time.
“We can just turn this over to the FBI” Bronson said. “They are the field operation.”
“But Captain, we are the investigative branch of law enforcement and wouldn't you think turning over an investigation to someone else will send the wrong message? This does seem to be our rice bowl.” Jack was trying hard to pull any bureaucratic string he could.
Bronson mulled it over for a few moments before responding. “Jack, we investigate from here now. There's not much that happens without an electronic signature and we'll find it. That's what we do.”
“As true as that is boss, we don't know yet if there is anything to investigate. This could all be a hoax” Jack offered. “Don't you think it would be prudent to verify at least part of this before sending the geeks on a wild goose chase?” Jack winced as he let out the geek comment. He didn't want to tweak the boss too hard.
Bronson seemed to not notice the comment but did consider the options before responding “Alright, no cowboy stuff. You’re not a swat team and I don’t want to read about it in the papers” Bronson said with a stern, no nonsense demeanor. “You are to go and observe without making contact. No contact,” he emphasized “Do you understand?”
“Sure thing cap” Jack politely replied. He did, after all, want to go out into the field again without antagonizing Bronson any more than he had to. “I’ll head out now and spend the night in a motel in town. I want to see if there’s anything to the delivery truck part of this.”