The Deposit Slip (16 page)

Jared wandered into the dark living room. A stack of Jessie’s typed document summaries sat to one side of the computer monitor. Jared picked the top sheet up and held it close in the darkness.

Tomorrow—no, today—was Monday. Five witnesses to go. Maybe this week would be better.

Even standing, Jared felt himself slipping into sleep and shook his head hard. Too much more work to doze off again just yet. Maybe another hour, then he’d catch some sleep before showering for today’s depositions.

As he turned to go back downstairs, Jared’s eyes were drawn to a thin line of light slashing across the carpet in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. He walked toward it. The light came from his father’s bedroom, the door barely ajar. Jared pushed it gently to open it.

In the dim light of a bedside lamp, his father lay asleep, splayed across the bed, his head angled across a pillow in surrender. Strewn over the bed were half a dozen piles of documents, each neatly organized and covered in sticky notes. A notepad lay near his father’s hand, a pen near his open fingertips. One of his father’s accounting manuals lay open nearby.

At the base of the bed were four bankers boxes, three with stacks of typed sheets on top. The fourth was open and empty and, Jared saw, the source of the papers on the bed.

Jared stood for a full minute, disoriented by the vision. At last, he turned away and headed back to the basement stairs.

In the basement, Jared walked along the stack of unreviewed bankers boxes. At the farthest corner, he looked behind the front stack.

Here, in the darkest corner of the basement, at least thirty bankers boxes had been removed from the back rows. Jared sized up the other side of the room once again, where the finished boxes stood.

How many days had this gone on? How completely had he lost control?

He had answers for neither.

Powerless, Jared headed up the stairs and to bed.

A
couple hours later, Jared showered and grabbed an untoasted Pop-Tart for breakfast. Before walking outside to his car, he glanced into his father’s bedroom. His father—and the boxes—were gone.

In the night, Jared had planned his confrontation with his dad for this morning. The more he thought about it, the more the sight of his father and the boxes tore at him. He would not be grateful to this man. He could
not
let his father insinuate himself back into his life this way. His resentment fired, and he concluded in one instant that he would threaten to move out if necessary—though he realized in the next moment how empty such an ultimatum would be. He knew he had no money to move out. Clay’s betrayal had seen to that. Now his dad was taking advantage of his need.

In his confusion, frustration, and bewilderment, Jared felt mostly relief that Sam was gone before he got up. That meant he could deal with this later.

Ten minutes later, Jared parked his CR-V in front of the bank. There was too much riding on these depositions, he told himself. He had to focus. Later, he and his dad would have this out.

Fred Carrington cleared his throat loudly for the third time in as many minutes.

“Well,” he began his answer, “as I said, the number on that slip is not for any account in the Ashley State Bank.”

Jared listened to the gentle tapping of the court reporter’s fingers on the keys of her transcription device, completing Carrington’s response. He gazed at a copy of Exhibit 1—the deposit slip—in his hands. What was he missing here?

“You agree, Mr. Carrington, that it has the same number of digits as a typical Ashley deposit number?”

The elderly vice-president brushed his graying moustache with his left hand, then nodded agreeably. “Yes.”

“And that the form of the deposit slip—the information contained on it—is consistent with an Ashley deposit slip?”

“Yes.”

“Did you check both current and closed accounts?”

“Yes, I did.”

Jared stared at the sheet in his hand as though he could will it to talk.

Shelby and Mrs. Huddleston had been right with their assessments so far. Although these witnesses seemed nervous and had been prepped with a strong hand, he’d not deposed one yet who appeared to be lying—including Mr. Carrington.

But if this wasn’t a current or closed account number, what was it? And how was this slip generated?

“Mr. Carrington,” Jared began, as another thought occurred to him, “could someone have input an account number for purposes of printing this slip, even if the account number was no longer—or never had been—in the bank database?”

The witness coughed more deeply this time before speaking. “I suppose that could be done.”

“Without leaving a permanent record?”

“Yes.”

“How.”

“Don’t speculate,” Whittier interjected, leaning close to the witness.

Mr. Carrington winced, but went on.

“Well, they would need to input the account number on the deposit template screen, but then erase it instead of saving the data like they’re trained to do after printing. You would also have to decline to save it in the system or print a copy for the bank records.”

“And would the depositor—the bank customer—have any way of knowing whether their deposit had actually been saved in the bank’s system after the deposit slip was generated with this number?”

“Objection,” Whittier began. “Calls for speculation.”

“I, well, perhaps not,” Mr. Carrington blurted quickly.

Jared paused, then tried another tack. “How long are closed account numbers kept in the system?”

“I don’t understand.”

“After an account has been closed, how long would your database even keep a record that the number had been in use at one time.”

“Ten years.”

Jared turned to Whittier. “We’re going to take a break.”

Standing on the lawn outside the bank entrance, beneath the American flag snapping in the breeze, Jared called Jessie.

“Yes?” Jessie answered. Jared heard a cool crispness in her voice.

“Jessie, call Erin please. Ask her whether she has come across any records for closed bank accounts of her father that are older than ten years.”

“Okay.” Jessie hung up without asking the reason for the request.

Jessie had sounded about as friendly as Whittier. It was going to be a very long week.

On his drive home, Jared listened to Erin’s message on his cell. She hadn’t run across records of closed bank accounts for her father—of any kind. “Dad’s main account at Ashley bank, the farm account he had when he died, goes back to the seventies,” she said. “So far as I can tell, he didn’t open or close another one. Sorry.”

Another dead end. As he parked the CR-V in front of his father’s house, Jared saw lights on in the living room and felt his mood drop yet another notch.

Through the deposition, he’d almost forgotten his resolve to confront his father. For a moment he considered letting it go another day. No. There was no point in putting this off. This wasn’t just about last night. It was a talk that should have taken place years ago.

Jared walked across the dark lawn to the front door and into the empty living room. “Dad,” he called out, “grab your coat. Let’s get some dinner.”

The Cellar Restaurant was tucked in the basement of a building on Main Street that once served as the town’s only hotel. Like so many businesses in downtown Ashley, the hotel was gone now, and the half-empty two-story building was converted to offices.

Through decades of change on Ashley’s Main Street, the Cellar remained, the only “formal” restaurant in town—and perhaps in the county. White tablecloths and linen napkins covered the tables. At seven, the lights would dim. The waiters, neighbors by day, were transfigured with their gleaming patent leather shoes and black bow ties.

Sitting here now, in the blackness of his mood, it seemed smaller than Jared remembered—the formality more contrived, the décor a decade out of sync. He wondered how it had survived all of these years.

Jared forced himself to concentrate on why they were meeting. But then he asked himself, why had he elected to bring his father here?
Here
, to the Cellar. The restaurant where his family had always gone to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays, special events like his father’s raise or promotion, Jared’s home runs.

That was it, he realized. This was where important moments were solemnized in the Neaton family. And this was one of those moments. This was the final chapter in his relationship with his father.

It had died the winter day his senior year when he skipped school, borrowed a friend’s car, and drove to the Mission Falls Courthouse. Sitting near the back, he watched as his father was led into the courtroom on the arm of a deputy sheriff, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. His dad’s head was down. He didn’t look around at the crowd of farmers and bankers, retirees and housewives, strangers and neighbors who filled the room. Jared listened as the judge asked for his plea.

His mother had forbade him from going. She didn’t understand that he had to be there. If he hadn’t gone, he never would have believed his father’s strained reply of “guilty.” That single word crushed the life and soul out of all the lectures, all the piety, all the lessons of a lifetime. Now all that remained was the burial.

“I haven’t been back here for years,” his father said.

“Why not,” Jared replied half-consciously, searching where to begin.

“I don’t go out too much, Jedee,” his father said, looking around the room.

Jared followed his father’s look. There were only a dozen couples and groups seated in the dining room this Monday evening. Most were engaged in conversation or sitting silently over their food. But he saw one—then two—who looked away at Jared’s glance.

Jared had planned a lecture. In his weariness, he couldn’t force himself to launch the preamble. Turning back to his father, he simply asked, “Why’d you do it?”

“Do what, son?” Sam looked at Jared’s face. “Oh.”

The waiter arrived with their orders and set them down. As he withdrew, Jared looked again at his father. His face was ashen.

Jared gave him several minutes, watching as his father picked soberly at his plate.

“If you’d asked me that in prison,” Sam began slowly, “I’d have had an answer for you. I worked on it every day. Polished it like a mirror.”

He pushed his plate away from him. “But I haven’t got an answer now, Jedee. Except this. I wanted the money. I wanted money I couldn’t get any other way, or at least as fast. Not just for you or for your mom.
Sam Neaton
wanted the money.”

He shook his head and exhaled a sigh like he was throwing down a heavy pack. “You never asked. Your mother didn’t either. At first I thought it was a kindness. Then, it seemed cruel. Finally, I saw it was a gift. Because the years passed and I forgot the answer I’d worked on so hard. Once I lost that, all that was left was the truth.”

It was the last answer Jared had expected from his father, the proud man who used to preach hard work and self-discipline like it was a holy writ. The man who never explained himself, just lowered his head and charged.

People don’t change, do they? Yesterday Jared was sure of it. No matter what Mrs. Huddleston might say, Jared would have responded that they twisted and contorted for a while, but people didn’t really change.

Jared’s speech had fled. They ate in silence. Whatever Jared expected to feel, this wasn’t it. Mostly he felt even deeper exhaustion.

Toward the end of the meal, Jared went to the restroom. When he came back he saw, in the dim light, a man standing next to the table. He looked like one of the men Jared had caught staring. He was leaning close to his father. Even as he crossed the room Jared could see the scowl. A finger was jabbing in the air close to Sam’s chest.

Sam’s face was calm. He was silent, nodding slightly. The man looked up. He saw Jared approaching and straightened. With a final jab, he turned and crossed the room to his own table.

Jared got the check and they left. All the way home, silence haunted the car like a baffled ghost. At the house, his father headed to his own bedroom, and Jared headed directly to bed as well. It was the first time in nearly two weeks that he hadn’t descended to the basement. Despite all the work that still awaited him there, tonight he couldn’t make himself go down those stairs.