Richard closed his file. “That’s right. Or it could all be completely unrelated to the killings, and could just be one of those weird coincidences that can pop up. Personally, that seems like a stretch. There has to be something to all this. I just don’t have enough information yet to know what I’m looking at. But now all of you know everything I do, so I’m hoping that your collective brain trust will be more powerful than just me sitting in a cubicle,” Richard concluded.
After some back and forth discussion amongst the agents, Silver could feel the agenda slipping into tangential areas. She let them have some room for conjecture and then skillfully guided the room back on point, away from speculations and back to the hard facts of the case.
The meeting went on for another hour, as the minutiae of the forensics report were digested by the group and every element of the evidence was re-examined. When Silver stood and thanked everyone for coming, she was drained. It felt like they were standing still, waiting for the next ugly shoe to drop. For all the titillation of Richard’s bombshell and the promise held by having a potential evidentiary gold mine in the single strand of hair and its DNA, they were still light years from keeping the killer from striking again. As everyone filed out, she pulled Richard and Seth aside, and waited until the room cleared before tackling the next subject.
“The partner. Do you think we have enough to justify putting him under surveillance — for his own protection?” she asked.
“Boy, that’s where you earn the big bucks, chief,” Seth said.
“It’s not clear cut. I’m asking if we have enough to make a credible argument that he may be in imminent danger from the killer. If so, I’ll ramrod this up the ladder and get it done. So what do you think?”
“I think that the connections in their backgrounds are interesting and certainly inflammatory, but not a lock. In the end, it probably couldn’t hurt to put him under relaxed surveillance, but I wouldn’t count on it leading anywhere. My entire presentation was a loose interpretation of partial data, not a coherent case for the partner being a target. If it was me, I’d wait to see what else we discover, and keep my powder dry,” Richard advised.
Seth nodded grudgingly, and Silver ran a hand through her hair, combing it back with her fingers.
“You’re probably right. But I think I’ll put a team on him, just in case. Richard, it really feels like you’re on to something with all the connections in their backgrounds. How did we miss this?” she lamented.
“All due respect, this is a pretty specialized area we’re talking about. Half of the agents in Financial Crimes might not have connected these dots. The only reason I did is because market fraud is sort of my hobby — I actually wrote a paper on it, many moons ago, comparing the financial raiders of the Roaring Twenties to those of modern times. And one of the last cases I worked was peripherally associated with terrorist money laundering by a group of related pawn shops and restaurants in the Midwest, so when I saw the names involved my antenna quivered. Otherwise it would have just flown completely over my head.” Richard hesitated. “I just hope I’m not tilting at windmills here. One of those cases of where you see zebras everywhere…”
Silver nodded. “Understood. But sometimes there are actually zebras everywhere.”
Chapter 9
Silver walked out of the bank almost in tears. The loan officer had been understanding and supportive, but ultimately couldn’t help her. With the debt she was carrying on her credit cards, along with the tuition for Kennedy’s private school and the cost of daycare and all the rest, there simply hadn’t been sufficient income left over to make a decent-sized loan even with the flat as collateral. She’d suspected as much, but to have the door slammed in her face when she needed it the most still threw her.
She stood on the sidewalk, taking deep breaths, trying to slow her heartbeat. What was she going to do now?
Her thoughts turned to her mother. That was out of the question. Since her father had passed away three years ago her mom had been comfortably ensconced in a condo she’d purchased in Austin, Texas, where she was taking art classes and trying to make a life for herself in her late sixties. Although her mom would do whatever she could to help, she didn’t have much — she’d sold the house shortly after the funeral and used the profit from it to buy the condo and subsidize her social security and her pension. She needed every penny she had and was working a part-time job in a bookstore to make ends meet more comfortably.
There was no way Silver could lean on her.
After a few minutes of thought, she took her cell phone from her purse and called Ben. He took her call immediately and assured her he would set aside time for her in twenty minutes.
It was midday, and the lunch rush was over, although there were still plenty of people clogging the sidewalks. New York was a chaotic tangle of crowds wherever you went — she’d gotten used to it after living in the city for over a decade. At times it was energizing, but today it was only annoying as her mind raced over possible solutions to her problem.
She rounded a corner and checked the time as she made her way to Ben’s towering edifice — one of the more sumptuous in the area. Being a divorce attorney in the city clearly paid well. He was one of the top dogs in his game, highly recommended and well thought of, so he was never hurting for business. Which gave her hope. Perhaps there was an accommodation she could make with him to carry part of the case costs. She knew he wasn’t a bank and that it was asking a lot, but she wasn’t sure where else she could turn.
Silver waited in the cool air conditioning of the law offices, flushed from making her way uptown in so little time. Surprisingly, Ben was immediately available, and Silver followed his severely-coiffed secretary to the rear conference room.
Ben rose from his chair to greet her when she entered. “Silver. Good to see you. A nice surprise,” he said as he shook her hand. “What brings you to my neck of the woods on a work day? Am I a suspect for something?” he joked.
“Thankfully, no. They haven’t caught on to you yet. But it’s coming,” Silver fired back.
“Good. Then my evil plan is working. Nobody is any the wiser.”
“Your secret’s safe with me. Always.”
“Good to know, Silver. Now seriously. What’s up?”
“I’m worried about the money, Ben. How are the expenses running on the case, and what are they looking like they’ll add up to by the time you’re done?”
“I don’t honestly know. At this point it’s all on a spreadsheet. We’ll send you a monthly statement showing the drawdown and balance remaining. Why? Do I need to call someone to get you a total right now?”
“If you could, I’d appreciate it. I’m especially interested in what you think it’s going to cost to get it to the finish line.”
Ben paused, eyeing her thoughtfully. “What happened, Silver?”
She was holding it together well, but then her resolve failed her, and she could feel her eyes brimming over. A single droplet fell, tickling the contour of her cheek before settling in the corner of her mouth.
Without saying anything, Ben slid a Kleenex box across the table to her. She plucked out a tissue and blotted her lids, hating her own weakness, but unable to stop the tears.
“It’s been one of those days, Ben. I’ve been trying everything to come up with a way to fund this fight, but I just came from the bank, and they declined my loan.” She went on to tell him everything, feeling better as the story came spilling out.
Ben leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, peering thoughtfully at the ceiling. “I can probably absorb some of the costs, but I’d be lying if I said I could do it all. My partners would never allow it. I’m sorry, Silver. As to your inquiry, I think even if I bit off, say, twenty-five grand and held it in-house, you would still burn at least another fifty to a hundred. The investigators, the paralegals, responding to the filings, making motions, hiring expert witnesses…victory usually goes to the best-funded army, I’m afraid. The fairy tale of the lawyer working out of his briefcase taking on the system and winning is just that. You don’t want to go into this without enough money to see it through, Silver. You’re fighting for your family here, and Eric is throwing the kitchen sink at this. I only know one way to fight that fire, and it’s with fire.”
She nodded. That was what she had expected. “If I have to take you up on the matching twenty-five, how far will that take us?”
“Not that far. I’ll need to look at the numbers, but the investigators are burning money like they’re the
