were ruled solely by their need to win; the process was nothing to them.
“Can you prove the funds came from a legitimate source?” the sergeant asked formally.
Muller looked at Carnegie. “What happened to your other assistant, Detective? What was his name? Carl? I liked him. He didn’t last too long.”
Carnegie had gone through two assistants in the time he’d been after Jake Muller. He supposed that though the citizenry and the reporters were impressed with the obsessive-compulsive cop he’d make his coworkers’ lives miserable.
“Okay,” the detective said. “If you’re not going to talk that’s just the way it is. Oh, but I should let you know: We’ve got some information we’re looking at right now. It’s very interesting.”
“Ah, more of your surveillance?”
“Maybe.”
“And what exactly did you find?”
“Let’s just call it interesting.”
Muller said, “‘Interesting.’ You said that twice. Hey, you want a beer? You, Sergeant?”
Carnegie answered for both of them. “No.”
Muller fetched a Heineken from the kitchen. He continued. “So what you’re saying is that after you’ve gone over this interesting information you’ll have enough evidence to arrest me for real this time. But if I confess it’ll go a lot easier. Right?”
“Come on, Jake. Nobody was hurt at Anco. You’ll do, what, five years. You’re a young guy. It’d be a church social for you.”
Muller nodded for a moment, drank a good bit of beer. Then said seriously, “But if I confessed, then I’d have to give the money back, right?”
Carnegie froze for a moment. Then he smiled. “I’m not going to stop until I nail you, Jake. You know that.” He said to the sergeant, “Let’s go. This’s a waste of time.”
“At last there’s something we agree on,” Muller offered and closed the door after them.
The next day, William Carnegie, wearing a perfectly pressed gray suit, white shirt and striped red tie, strode into the watch room of the Annandale police station, Hager behind him.
He nodded at the eight officers sitting in the cheap fiberglass chairs. The men and women fell silent as the detective surveyed his troops.
Coffee was sipped, pencils tapped, pads doodled upon.
Watches glanced at.
“We’re going to make a push on the case. I went to see Muller yesterday. I lit a fire under him and it had an effect: Last night I was monitoring his email and he made a wire transfer of fifty thousand dollars from a bank in Portland to a bank in Lyon, France. I’m convinced he’s getting ready to flee the jurisdiction.”
Carnegie had managed to get level-two surveillance on Muller. This high-tech approach to investigations involved establishing real-time links to his online service provider and the computers at Muller’s credit card companies, banks, cell phone service and the like. Anytime that Muller made a purchase, went online, made a call, withdrew cash and so on, the officers on the Anco team would know almost instantly.
“Big Brother’s going to be watching everything our boy’s doing.”
“Who?” asked one of the younger cops.
“
Carnegie divided the group into three teams and assigned them to shifts at the computer workstations, with orders to relay to him instantly everything that Muller did.
As he was walking back to his office to look further at Muller’s wire transfer to France he heard a voice. “Hey, Dad?”
He turned to see his son striding down the corridor toward him, dressed in his typical seventeen-year-old’s uniform: earrings, shabby Tomb Raider T-shirt and pants so baggy they looked like they’d fall off at any moment. And the hair: spiked up and dyed a garish yellow. Still, Billy was an above-average student and nothing like the troublemakers that Carnegie dealt with in an official capacity.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked. It was early May. School should be in session, shouldn’t it?
“It’s parent-teacher day, remember? You and Mom’re supposed to meet Mr. Gibson at ten. I came by to make sure you’d be there.”
Damn… Carnegie’d forgotten about the meeting. And he was supposed to have a conference call with two investigators in France about Muller’s wire transfer. That was set for nine-forty-five. If he postponed it, the French policemen wouldn’t be available later because of the time difference and the call would have to be delayed until tomorrow.
“I’ve got it on my calendar,” the detective said absently; something had begun to nag at his thoughts. What was it? He added to his son, “I just might be a little late.”
“Dad, it’s important,” Billy said.
“I’ll be there.”
Then the thought that been buzzing around Carnegie’s consciousness settled. “Billy, are you still taking French?”
His son blinked. “Yeah, you signed my report card, don’t you remember?”
“Who’s your teacher?”
“Mrs. Vandell.”
“Is she at school now?”
“I guess. Yeah, probably. Why?”
“I need her to help me with a conference call. You go on home now. Tell your mother I’ll be at the meeting as soon as I can.”
Carnegie left the boy standing in the middle of the hallway and jogged to his office, so excited about the brainstorm of using the French teacher to help him translate that he nearly collided with a workman hunched over one of the potted plants in the corridor, trimming leaves.
“Sorry,” he called and hurried into his office. He phoned Billy’s French teacher and — when he told her how important the case was — she reluctantly agreed to help him translate. The conference call went off as scheduled and the woman’s translation efforts were a huge help; without his brainstorm to use the woman he couldn’t have communicated with the two officers at all. Still, the investigators in France reported that they’d found no impropriety in Muller’s investments or financial dealings. He paid taxes and had never run into any trouble with the gendarmes.
Carnegie asked if they had tapped his phone and were monitoring his online and banking activities.
There was a pause and then one of the officers responded. Billy’s French teacher translated, “They say, ‘We are not so high tech as you. We prefer to catch criminals the old-fashioned way.’” They did agree to alert their customs agents to check Muller’s luggage carefully the next time he was in the country.
Carnegie thanked the two men and the teacher then hung up
Which is why we’ll get him and you won’t, thought the detective as he spun around in his chair and began staring intently at Big Brother’s computer monitor once again.
Jake Muller stepped out of the department store in downtown Annandale, following the young man he’d noticed in the jewelry department.
The boy kept his head down and walked quickly away from the store.
When they were passing an alleyway Muller suddenly jogged forward, grabbed the skinny kid by the arm and
