The Psalmist (19 page)

 

Chapter 33

A
MY
H
UNTER WAS
at that moment sitting across a small white-­clothed table from FBI special agent Dave Crowe at the Old Shore Inn, an elegant hotel/restaurant on a tongue of land jutting into the Chesapeake. The room was lit only by candles and a fire in the fireplace across from the dining area. They were the only ­people in the restaurant. Having ordered drinks and dinners, Hunter still waiting for Crowe to “lay the groundwork,” as he'd promised. But she could tell he wanted the food to arrive before he got down to business. He drank a seven and seven, she a pinot grigio.

Dave Crowe reminded Hunter of her past. Of a version of herself she'd long since grown out of. It wasn't an entirely pleasant reminder, although some of it was. Crowe was still a persuasive and attractive man, but he seemed a little too sure of himself around her.

“So you're liking Tidewater County?” he asked again, his dark eyes dancing in the dim light.. Crowe had always reminded her a little of early Tom Selleck—­a smaller, less charismatic version.

She cupped her glass, nursing the wine. “As I say, it's a great place in the fall and spring. Particularly if you like sailing and crabs. Busy in summer. Politically, there's something a little disturbing about it. Something that feels kind of upside down. From another time. And maybe a little corrupt.”

“For example?”

“This case,” she said. “Kwan Park.”

“How so?”

Hunter looked out, marveling at how heavy the snow was coming down, and that it seemed to have turned a shade of blue. She wondered if the roads were still drivable. “The sheriff and the state's attorney have been pushing for a local solution from the moment the body was found,” she said. “Half of the county seemed ready to buy into it. A ‘necessary outcome,' the sheriff called it.”

Crowe nodded slightly—­the psychology of small-­town justice still interested him , Amy sensed, the quiet conspiracies and intrigues that seemed to go on everywhere.

The food arrived before she had a chance to explain—­grilled steak for Crowe, salmon salad for Hunter, and then a second basket of hot rolls.

“So, how were they going to do that?” he asked.

Hunter followed his eyes, saw that he was studying the waitress's derriere as she walked away.

“They had some evidence. Alleged evidence. A .22 caliber shell, supposedly. A strange local man named Robby Fallow and his son were the prime suspects. They were trying to hurry it along to the grand jury, even though it was a weak case.”

Crowe cut a piece of steak, his eyes on hers. “And what changed their minds?”

“We did.”

“How so?”

Hunter broke apart the salmon filet on top of the greens. “We found evidence that poked a hole in their theories,” she said. “Although I'm not sure I should be talking about that. You were going to tell me about your case first.”

Crowe laughed robustly.

“What, is this going to be a bartering session? I show you mine?”

“Could be.”

He laughed through his nose, then concentrated for a while on eating, chewing with what seemed like exaggerated bites. Hunter reached for a roll and tore it in half.

“It's okay by me if it is,” he said. “I mean, I'm sure we can help each other.” He looked up just long enough to seem suggestive.

“How's married life treating you, by the way?”

“Not so great, actually.” Before Hunter could come up with a suitable reply, he added, “I've got a little girl now.”

“Oh, I didn't know. Congratulations.”

“Yeah, she's my pride and joy. Makes everything worthwhile.”

Hunter went back to her salad, deciding it wasn't such a good idea to have broached this subject. The topic of marriage made her feel funny. Her own love life had been disastrous at times and she was fine not worrying about it.

Something about Dave Crowe made her feel vulnerable, though, even all these years later.

“What kind of evidence did you find?” he asked.

“Oh. Evidence linking this case to three others.”

Now he looked up in earnest, holding his fork above his food. “
Three others?
What are you talking about? Murder cases?”

“Homicides, uh-­huh.” The appearance of crinkles around his eyes surprised her. “You don't know that?”

He had stopped chewing, the corners of his mouth drawn down. “No,” he said.

Hunter didn't get it. “What's going on?” she said. “Isn't that why you came out here?”

But he was just looking at her, his face blank.

“Then what the hell are you investigating?”

D
AVE
C
ROWE ORGANIZED
the food on his plate with his fork, as if reconvening his thoughts, wanting to put things into some kind of proper order and context. Charm time was over.

“We're here because of a convergence,” he said.

“Okay, I don't know what that means. What convergence?”

“Kwan Park. Her body showing up in your church here. Which, unfortunately, we didn't know about until the ID went public this afternoon.”

“Why would it interest you?”

He patted his mouth with the napkin. “Because.” He glanced out at the empty dining room as if to make sure no one was in listening range. “We've been looking at Kwan Park for the past several weeks. We thought she had left the country.”

“ ‘Looking at her.' Meaning what?”

She waited, as he moved his tongue against his back teeth. “Look, here's the deal,” he said. “I'm in the middle of a major fraud and racketeering case right now. I can't go into a lot of details. But it's a big case, involving several agencies.”

“Okay.” Hunter had stopped eating now, too.

“But, just in very general terms: We've identified a criminal enterprise, which, for a long time looked like a number of isolated, independent entities. We now know they aren't. It's all connected in a convoluted way, through untraceable shell companies and banking havens. We're in the process of piecing it all into a whole.”

“Okay.” She took a minisip of her wine. “And where does Kwan Park come in?”

“Kwan Park worked for this organization. For the man running it.”

“Huh,” Hunter said, waiting for more. He enjoyed these circumlocutions, she knew, and dangling morsels of information while withholding the bigger pieces. Sometimes, when he'd had a few drinks, he used to say more than he should. “This is in Ohio?”

“In Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey. In Texas. Maybe elsewhere. It's a small organization with a wide reach.”

“But the fact that she turned up here, dead, was a surprise.”

“Total. Not on any script we'd imagined. As I say, we thought she'd left the country.”

“Your case doesn't involve Tidewater County, then.”

“It
didn't
, no,” he said. “Now it does, sure.”

His eyes went to hers and stayed. Hunter wondered how much she should tell him.

“So
this
is what the media's been following?” she asked. “The story about this organization.”

“Right.”

“And you can't tell me how it involves Kwan Park?”

“Mm mmm.” He went back to eating, cutting his steak into small pieces, chewing them longer than seemed necessary. She continued eating too, but only picked at her salmon salad. When Crowe finished, he set down his knife and fork, one over the other, and surveyed the room again. They were still alone.

“I
can
tell you this, because it's public record, anyway: do you know where Kwan Park worked?”

“Of course,” she said. “Quik Gas, in Sharonville, Ohio.”

“Yes. Wonder why the lady worked in a convenience store?”

“A little.”

“Dig deeper, you might find that her store was in the news a ­couple of times in recent months.”

Hunter nodded. “You mean, for selling two multi-­million-­dollar lottery tickets?”

He blinked at her, and looked back at his plate. “It wasn't just the store, though. It was her. In January she sold a lottery ticket worth fourteen point four mil. Last month, same store, she sold a ticket worth eighteen point two. There were a few others, for smaller but still substantial, amounts. Last week she quit and—­we thought—­left the country.”

“Okay.”

“Last year,” he said, “a store in Texas sold three multi-­million-­dollar tickets. One for twenty-­one million. Same setup. Also a Quik Gas. Might've even been the same woman working there, using a different name, we don't know.”

“What kind of setup? And who's this man you're looking at?”

He smiled, reaching for his drink.

“You've heard the standard arguments about the government getting involved in the lottery business, I assume.”

“Sure,” Hunter said. “The lotteries are a regressive tax on the poor. They peddle false hopes. Etcetera, etcetera.”

“Right. You don't hear those arguments quite as much these days as you used to, of course, because gambling is more or less entrenched now across the country. The opposition softened in most places years ago. Funneling lottery revenues into education programs was pure PR genius. It's made government-­sanctioned gambling palatable just about everywhere in the country.”

“It
is
a regressive tax in a way, though, isn't it?”

He shrugged. “In the sense that the poor spend a larger proportion of their incomes on the lottery than anyone else, sure. I mean, there are some who say that gambling has corrupted the idea of the America Dream—­the old American Dream was about hard work; the new American Dream is about picking the right numbers or buying the right scratch-­off.”

“So are you saying this enterprise involves a conspiracy to steal from state lotteries? I didn't know that was possible.”

“I didn't say that.” He caught the waitress's eye and pointed a forefinger at his drink and then hers. “But, yeah, it's possible. It's been done. Of course, it's possible. Without giving away any trade secrets: Most scratch-­off lottery tickets are manufactured by a handful of companies. They create algorithms that determine the winning tickets. It's not random, it couldn't be. It has to be systematic, so at the end of the day the governments come out with a predetermined amount of payout and profits.

“Over the years, we've investigated several cases where individuals cracked the algorithms and funneled away hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's happened. Then things always tightened up. This one's a little different. This is the first organized deal we know about where the same group's been working it in five or six states, maybe more.”

“Presumably, they'd need someone inside the lottery commissions, then, to make it work?”

He nodded, finishing his drink. “Minimum of three ­people in each state. Someone who buys the tickets, someone who sells them, and, yeah, most importantly, someone on the inside, selling information.”

The new drinks arrived. Hunter poked at the remainder of her salad.

“So that's what you're working on,” she said. “That's what this organization is doing.”

“No,” he said. “That's a part of it. Half of it. The smaller half.”

“What's the larger half?”

He took a long sip of his new seven and seven. “Between us?” Hunter nodded. “What's the federal government's biggest vulnerability to theft right now? Have any idea?”

Hunter frowned and pretended to be thinking hard.

“Don't know?”

“Not sure.”

“Income tax,” he said. “Fortunately, not a lot of ­people know that. But enough do. This one's a little more embarrassing, of course. Each year, the government sends out billions of dollars—­on the order of three to four billion—­in fraudulent tax returns.”

“I didn't know that.”

“They don't advertise it.” His almond-­colored eyes seemed to harden. “But, just to give you an idea. The Inspector General's Office last year identified one and a half million tax cases where the government issued refunds on fraudulently filed returns. And, of course, once the checks have been issued they can't get them back. We're always looking at it, putting in more safeguards. But for years it was open season.”

“How do they do it?”

“Lots of ways. They steal identities, generate phony W-­2 forms. There are actually tens of thousands of individuals trying this kind of scam each year. Still.”

“But this group is doing it in an organized way, you're saying.”

“Right. And on a large scale.”

“So this organization is stealing millions of dollars from the government, you're saying. Through lotteries and through income tax fraud.”

“Right. And the thing about it is—­in their minds, what they're doing isn't really a crime. Because there's also an ideology behind it. They consider what they're doing a kind of payback. Retribution for what the government, state and federal, does to its poorest citizens.”

“Wow,” she said. “And so who's benefiting from all this stolen money?”

He smiled and straightened his knife and fork several times.

“I can't go into it. But I'll just say this: Six days after the winning lottery ticket was cashed in Delaware? Anonymous donations totaling three million dollars were received by a dozen homeless charities in a seven-­state region, okay?”

“Not a coincidence.”

“No. Two of the checks came from an organization called the Sherwood Forest Foundation, which was also the name of the company that purchased the winning ticket.”

Hunter nodded, getting it. “So instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, they steal from the government and give to the poor.”

“Something like that.” He reached for the roll basket. “Do you want this last roll or can I?”