Dying to Tell (5 page)

nine

Shaking off my trip
down someone else's memory lane, I went looking for Angel and found her sitting in the annex's conference room alone. She sipped a cup of coffee and stared away at nothing—her deep-thinking pose. In her hand was the thick manila folder from William Mendelson's safety deposit box and several pages were spread out in front of her.

I slipped into a chair across from her. “Wait until I tell you about Cairo. It was great. I was at—”

“Shush. I'm going through the evidence Bear gave me.”

Shush? Wait, did she say evidence?
“So now you're his evidence consultant? I thought you were a university professor.”

My wife ignored me and opened the file. In it were several pages of handwritten notes and some computer printouts similar to those spread across the table. “That's why Bear wants me to go through all these notes. Now quiet, I have a lot on my mind.”

“Like Captain Charming? Major Majestic? General—”

“No, like the evidence and William's murder.”

Oh, right. Well, I still had a secret. “Okay, I won't tell you about the Shepheard Hotel or the weird guys drinking tea. Well, they didn't actually drink tea, they passed secret—”

“Professor Tucker?” A woman poked her head into the conference room behind us. “May I speak with you?”

Angel looked relieved. “Certainly, come in.”

I said, “I guess when you're a police evidence consultant, everyone wants to consult with you.”

“Please, sit down,” Angel said and gestured to a chair. “What can I do for you?”

The woman took a chair across the conference room table from Angel. “I'm Karen Simms, the head teller. I heard you were a friend of William's. I thought I might be able to speak to you—you know, woman to woman?”

“Of course, Karen. How can I help?”

Karen stared at the documents spread across the table. “Is this what was in that file I gave Mr. Thorne earlier? It looks like the same one I helped get from the safety deposit vault.”

“It's evidence, Angel,” I said. “Don't tell her too much.”

“Yes.” Angel scooped up the pages from the table and replaced them in the file. “But I cannot talk about it. What is it I can help you with, Karen?”

“Well, I'm not really sure how to handle all this.” Karen folded her hands on the table and tried to find something between them to focus on. It ended up being the manila file. “But William trusted you, right? He called you to a secret meeting and had this file for you.”

“Well, I'm not sure the meeting was secret, but …”

“Of course it was.” Karen looked down for a long moment. When she looked back up, her eyes were round and scared. “I'm afraid of this place—of what's happened in the past and of what is going to happen.”

“What does that mean, Karen?”

“That damn vault is what.” Karen's voice lowered. “With William dead, I heard there might be an audit. And I could get into trouble if I don't tell someone. And I don't know if I should tell Mr. Thorne or Marshal yet, or the police. So I'll tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Angel asked. “What's got you so upset?”

Karen slumped back in her chair. “About eight months ago, William had me open a new account. And since then, I've been moving money in and out of it. A lot of money.”

I said, “Moving money in a bank isn't unusual, Angel. There's more to it.”

Angel said as much.

“The account was someone else's business account—not his. He was very secretive about it. Money moved all the time, but not the way a normal business does. You know what I mean? And on the withdrawals, there was never enough for me to have to file a CTR.”

“A CTR?” Angel asked.

I knew that one. “It's a currency transaction report. Banks have to file them for any transactions over ten grand.”

Karen said that, too, adding, “It's to monitor for possible money laundering, fraud, and other suspicious activities—and of course for taxes. I guess William didn't want anyone looking into the withdrawals on the account. And that's all I'll say. You have to do the rest yourselves.”

Angel asked, “What did he tell you about this account?”

“Nothing. He told me when I opened it for him that it was a confidential, personal matter with a special client.” She lowered her voice again. “I was never to discuss it with anyone—under any circumstances. He promised I'd be ‘taken care of' when the board took up the vacant Vice President position next month. If I helped him, the job was mine.”

Oh, sure. There was nothing suspicious about that.

“Karen,” Angel said, “I'll need the name on the account.”

“There's something else, too.” Karen shot a glance toward the doorway and then turned back to Angel. “I checked this morning and someone locked me out of the account last night after I left work. I can't even see the account register—it's been totally secured. Now only whoever has the password can get in. Then—”

Someone knocked on the conference room door and we all looked up.

Thorne stood in the doorway with a big wolflike grin on his face. “Ah, Professor Tucker, I see you are busy.”

“Yes,” Angel said. “What can I do for you?”

“I hoped to have a private word with you.” His smile was disarming. “Perhaps in my office later on? I'll go see Detective Braddock first.”

I said, “Gee, Angel, first William wants you early in the morning. Then Karen, now the Masked
Manly-Man
…”

“Yes, of course. I'll find you soon as we're done here.” She shot me a quick glance that wasn't hard to interpret—thumb screws, electricity, hot coals. She waited for Thorne to leave before turning back to Karen. “I need more information, Karen.”

Karen's face was pale and she was still staring at the doorway when she slipped a folded piece of paper across the table. “Here's the account number—I don't dare give you any more.” She stood up. “Please, don't tell Mr. Thorne or Marshal. You have to make something up about me speaking with you just now.”

An icy finger traced my spine. “Angel, there's something big she's not telling you.”

“Karen, you should tell the police about this.”

Karen hesitated and bit her lip. Her voice was but a whisper. “Marshal will tell you that William kept lots of secrets. Like his private vault—even though everyone in the bank knew about it. He'll even say that William went senile or crazy or something. He wasn't. William is a good man—
was
a good man. But he was scared of something … or someone. He was terrified.”

“Who? What was he scared of?” Angel motioned for her to sit back down, but Karen didn't budge.

“William was a strange man but kind to the staff. A few months ago, he became very bitter and
short-tempered
—terrified of something. Then he opened this account and began working all night long. Sometimes he never went home. But that's not what I'm worried about, Professor.”

I said, “Then what?”

Karen didn't wait for Angel's question. “I need that promotion—I'm in nursing school at the hospital but have to drop out. My whole life I've had to scrape by. My stepfather couldn't work and was a drunk. We never had anything. It killed my mom a few years ago. I've earned the promotion—I need it. You understand, right?”

“I do. But, you have to understand, too, Karen.”

“William trusted you, Professor. There are a lot of things going on here. And I know most of them.”

“Let me get Detective—”

“No.” Karen held up a hand. “Not until I have assurances.” Then, without another word, she left the conference room.

I watched her walk out. “
Assurances?
Somebody needs to cut down on the caffeine.”

“I need to get her confidence a little more.”

Something struck me odd. “Does it strike you odd that Karen calls Mr. Mendelson by his first name when everyone else—even Thorne—calls him ‘the Chairman' most of the time? But no one calls Marshal anything but ‘Marshal.'”

“I did notice.” Angel picked up the file from the table. “This bank always impressed me as an
old-world
institution. Like a men's society club that's all about status and position.”

“Old money can be like that—secret rings and handshake stuff.” I pondered that. “I think Karen wants her own club ring. And I think she has a few secrets to swap for it. I'm not so sure Marshal knows about them, either.”

“Do you think William knew?”

Oh yeah, William knew. “I'm pretty sure Karen got her secrets
from
William.”

ten

Bear needed to know
about Karen Simms's revelations. I went to find him. He was back in the sub-basement, standing near William's vault, talking with Thorne as the crime scene technicians gathered their equipment. The look on Bear's face was foul and I thought it best to stay quiet and let him work.

“We'll have to drill the safe unless we can find that combination,” Bear said when the tech signaled they were done with the scene. “We'll get to that this afternoon.”

“I'm afraid I still haven't found Marshal, Detective.” Thorne watched a tech tapping notes into a tablet computer. “He isn't answering his cell phone, either.”

“Keep trying.”

“Of course. I hope nothing has happened to him.”

“Yeah, me too.” Bear went into the vault and stood looking at William Mendelson's body. He spoke to Thorne without turning to face him. “Any talk from your staff? Any rumors? My men are interviewing, but we're not getting much.”

“Nothing.” Thorne hesitated a moment, then added, “Detective, I just learned that the entire staff knew about this vault. I had no idea. But, as I told Angela, they don't take to me very well.”

“No?” Bear said. “Why's that?”

“No one likes authority, Detective. And they like security and the police even less.”

“Yeah, I get that. I need William's home address and any close friends, contacts … the works. Can you get that for me?”

“I'll do what I can.” Thorne turned and went back upstairs.

I waited for him to leave and walked up behind Bear standing over William's body. “Weird, huh?”

He jumped. “Jesus, don't do that.”

“Do what?”

He lowered his voice so the crime tech couldn't hear. “Sneak up on me.”

“Sorry. I thought you saw me.”

He glanced out of the vault to ensure the crime scene team was out of earshot. “I was concentrating on the dead guy in the room.”

“Then you
did
see me.”

“No.” Bear rolled his eyes. “
Him
—the one who isn't arguing
with me.”

“Gotcha.” I took a long look at William's body and did what I used to do when I was a living, breathing detective—I tried to find what the body hid. “Want to hear what I think?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“A choice of what, Detective?” one of the crime techs asked at the vault door. “The medical examiner's done and said to call when you're ready. He'll transport the body.”

Bear looked back at him. “What did the ME say about time of death?”

Billy Villary, a seasoned crime tech, looked at his notes. “TOD is estimated at two a.m. The body's core temp was 86.6 degrees when he took it—down 10 degrees from normal. The body loses about 1.5 degrees per hour, and we figure the vault had a constant temperature, too. That sets TOD at just eight hours ago. Full rigor has set in and that's normally between six and twelve hours, so that fits, too—he died about two a.m.”

“Okay. Any evidence or prints so far?”

“No prints at all. Not even the vic's. The killer was real careful and wiped everything down. A few tiny fragments of glass and what you see on the table—blood, wound splatter, and a missing something from the table. Maybe we'll find more when we get into the safe.”

“Glass?” One of Bear's eyes narrowed like he had something in it. “No prints at all?”

“A few very small shards of plain glass—at least that's what it looks like. No prints, no fibers. We vacuumed up the shards and were about to bag the hands.”

I said, “I think I have something.”

Bear walked over beside me and waved Billy away. “Okay, Billy, I'll bag the hands. Tell the ME to take him out of here. Why don't you take a break until we get into the safe?”

“Thanks.” Billy clicked off his tablet computer and went upstairs.

Bear turned to me. “What did you find?”

I pointed to William's right hand, which was clenched in a fist. “He's got a small piece of cardboard or heavy paper in his fingers. Looks like something was ripped out of his hand postmortem.”

Bear retrieved a latex crime scene glove and a penlight from a kit on the anteroom table. He snapped the glove on and gently lifted William's hand—his body was almost in full rigor mortis and the arm was stiff and difficult to manipulate. Bear shined the penlight over the body's fingers at a tiny piece of dull, dark paper—perhaps an inch square—caught between the fingertips and palm.

“It's something, whatever it is. We'll let the ME remove it.” He retrieved two paper evidence bags from a kit in the anteroom and slipped one over each hand. Then he retrieved some tape from outside the vault and taped the paper evidence bags tight around William's wrists, sealing any possible evidence that might fall off his hands inside the bags. “You got anything else?”

I told him about Angel's conversation with Karen Simms. He was particularly interested in William's odd behavior. “Everyone around here seems to have secrets, starting with William. But I think he told some of them to Karen.”

“Then we better find out what those secrets are before someone else does.”