A month into studying the patterns, I had widened our search area to two states—and narrowed it to eight large clusters of withdrawals, four in central Georgia and four in South Florida. And what had begun as an analytical operation in PAR’s Miami office moved northwest to the city of Hambis, where the Florida money was being pulled out. There, a group of thieves was submitting false applications for unemployment benefits, all with the help of an employee in the Florida reemployment office who was rubber-stamping the claims. When the amounts withdrawn topped two million, we packed the case up—ready to go back to the attorney general. There was fraud. Racketeering. Interstate commerce violations. A lot of cash moving around.
And for us, the case was over. Florida law enforcement would step in.
Then, on the day we were about to send the files over, something unexpected happened. A man named Freddie Pecos was arrested for assault. Pecos’s name had been flagged as part of our investigation, and we had an opportunity to step in and speak to him.
Pecos did not want to go to jail for assault, so he made a deal, telling us the goal of the unemployment scam: to support a domesticmilitia group run by an arms dealer named J. P. Sandoval. This was something we had no idea about. And suddenly, all those boxes were unpacked, because now we had a different case. One the FBI was not turning over to anyone.
In the interview, Pecos told us that Sandoval was also using the cash to amass a supply of unmarked weapons with no serial numbers. To be used against law enforcement, specifically.
“Kill a cop. Drop the gun. And walk away,” the gang’s leader had allegedly told his men, including our C.I., Freddie Pecos.
I examined the disarray that made up Freddie’s bedroom. Six shirts and eight tees were on the floor. A leather jacket. Nine empty beer bottles on the dresser. But like the living area, the place did not look as if it had been rifled through. What I was looking for, in fact, was right in front of me, at the far end of the eight-by-twelve space. Three stacks of white plastic boxes, the translucent kind sold at your local Container Store.
I flipped the lid off the highest one. Ran my fingers across the tops of a hundred envelopes. Picking one out, I transferred the penlight to my mouth. On the outside of the envelope was a series of numerical notations, each in descending order, with the top two amounts crossed off:
$1100
$700
$300
Below the list, written on each envelope, was a four-digit ATM passcode. I flipped the top flap off the envelope and saw a bank debit card inside.
Sandoval’s men had set up false claims and chosen the debit cardoption for unemployment, allowing each card’s balance to build for four weeks before reporting that a job had been obtained. Then it was Freddie’s job to drain the debit cards over three successive withdrawals, each of which was noted on the envelopes.
Which meant that each card in this box still had three hundred dollars on it.
I studied the room. Considered how we’d found Freddie.
And something did not make sense.
“Inventory’s still here,” I hollered to Jo.
Shooter shuffled into the bedroom and stood behind me, the glow of her flashlight adding depth to mine. “Huh,” she said in a surprised tone.
She turned her body, looking both ways, in at the debit cards and out toward Pecos.
“If he’s dead…” she said, rotating back to the clear boxes of cards. “And his own people did it because they found out he was working for us…”
“Then these should be empty,” I said. “Taken by whoever killed Freddie. But they’re not.”
“And the grand total?”
I glanced at the plastic containers. Three stacks of boxes. Twelve boxes per stack. One hundred envelopes per box. Three hundred bucks left on each card.
“One million, eighty thousand,” I computed.
Shooter whistled. Again, I looked around the room. Beside the bed was a bucket filled with monofilament fishing line, a heavier weight than normal. Nothing else seemed out of place.
“Freddie’s injury was obviously lethal,” Shooter said. “But the way he’s sitting out there with the bottle of Jack beside him…”
“He didn’t see it coming,” I finished her thought.
The front door had also been unlocked, and whoever had shot Freddie hadn’t taken the antique rifle or the handgun we’d seen on the card table.
I followed Shooter out of the bedroom. She pulled a chair up to the table and sat down, inspecting the handgun.
Crouching beside Freddie, I patted my gloved hands down the side of his body. His limbs were stiff, and I tapped at a bulge on his right side. Reached down and removed his mobile phone. It was dead.
