“These are the accounts before the money was removed. You can see that the amounts are huge. And then this is after they returned to where they should have been. Here is the transfer out. It doesn’t say the name of the bank, but there is a number here, and I’m wondering if that’s the bank routing number.” He paused and opened another window. Then he searched based on the number. “It’s a bank in the Cayman Islands. That means that the money has been sent to a tax haven.”
“So, we know where it was, and we know where it went, but we don’t know who made the transfers.”
“No. I can monitor the accounts, and I can make deposits, but I’m not authorized to make withdrawals and transfers. That is my boss and the head accountant, so it has to be one of them. There’s also another question: Where did the money come from? We don’t do that level of business. It would take a few years to generate that much cash.” Marty sat back as they looked at what he had brought them, then at him. He sure as hell hoped they believed him. But the more they looked at him, the more Marty wondered if he’d done the right thing.
ChapterTwo
He andBrian stepped out of the conference room and closed the door. “This sounds fishy to me. Maybe this guy is trying to get back at his boss for something. Yeah, he was scared, but I didn’t see anyone threatening outside when we found him. It was just a normal McDonald’s.”
Edward Frye shook his head. “No way,” he responded. “Marty? There isn’t a vengeful bone in his body. And as for making something like this up, he’s as honest as the day is long. Sometimes too honest. If Marty has a flaw, it’s that he doesn’t see the bad side of people. He found something and took it to his boss right away. If this guy is dirty, and there’s a lot of money involved, then Marty’s in trouble.”
“Seems like a stupid move to me.”
“Yeah, to you. But not to Marty. In his world, everyone is as honest and upstanding as he is. Marty always saw the good side of people.” Even him. “We need to look into this further and take it seriously. If he’s right, that means a lot of cash is being laundered through that business, and we need to figure out what’s happening.” He had no doubts about Marty’s honesty. It was the rest of this situation that concerned him.
Brian sighed. “Okay. A good detective follows facts and sometimes his gut. I’m going to let you make the call on this one, and we’ll sink or swim together. You finish with him, and I’m going to inform the captain.” He continued down the hall, and Eddie went back in with Marty, who turned as soon as he stepped through the door.
“Have you had your little pow-wow to try to figure out if I’m blowing smoke up your ass?” Marty asked.
Eddie narrowed his gaze. The Marty he’d known would never talk like that or even consider that someone wouldn’t believe him. Things had changed, and Eddie wasn’t so sure if they were for the better. There had always been something… not innocent or naive about Marty, but maybe pure, like his soul was still gentle and kind. He hated that someone had taken that away. It felt like a thing of beauty had been removed from the world.
“Well, I believe you, and we need to find out what’s happening quickly. Is there any way to determine where the money came from?”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. I have a work-from-home connection into the office. It’s still active, so no one has removed my access. I’m not going to try to access the accounts that I gave you because I think that would raise suspicion, but there are other accounts that I can check. If you’d use some, why not all of them?”
Eddie sat next to him as he worked. With each inhale, he caught a whiff of Marty’s scent, and damn…. The man always smelled sweet, like he had been dipped in chocolate, but what surprised him was how his body reacted. Desire—pure, simple, and instinctive—ran through him, and he blinked at its intensity, telling himself to get a handle on it. He was working, and Marty was off-limits. They’d been there, done that, and it wasn’t happening again. “How do you know that someone isn’t going to know that you’re looking?”
“I used an override account to log in. It won’t link directly back to me, and I’m only looking—no changes will be made, so the footprint will be minimal.” He continued working. “Okay, look here. This is the transfer out, and it’s almost a quarter million, but it’s going to the payroll account.”
“No, that makes sense. Gather things in a few accounts to transfer out. The question is, how is the money getting there inthe first place.” Eddie leaned closer as Marty went back a screen. “There…,” he said. “That deposit, nine thousand four hundred dollars. Banks have to report cash deposits of more than ten thousand dollars. So, there you are. They make a number of deposits under the limit into a bunch of accounts, then gather them together and send the cash offshore. But who is making the deposits?”
Marty returned to looking at the account activity, and it showed a number of deposits, all just under ten grand. “Look. They put the cash in after the statement date and take it out before the next one. The account balances in the system, and unless someone actually looks at them, like I did, nothing would be wrong.” He looked up from the screen, pale. “Am I working for a front company for the mob?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to have to find out,” Eddie said. “First, log out and put away the laptop. It’s late, and we should get home. I need to give this some thought and talk with Brian.”
Marty cleared his throat. “Are you and he… together?”
Eddie snickered. “Brian and me? No. We’re partners here at work. He’s a detective, and I was lucky enough that he was willing to take me on. Brian has a partner, and together they’re raising his nephews. That whole situation is sort of a sad-but-happy story that I’ll tell you sometime, but not right now.”
“Happy-sad?”
“You know, something sad happens, but it brings along with it something really good and happy. That’s Brian and Kerry. They’re both really great guys.” He waited for Marty to gather his things, then checked in with Brian and brought him up to date on what they found before they left the precinct and headed out to his car. “We’ll leave your car here and take mine.” He unlocked the door and waited for Marty to get inside.
The drive south to his home on the edge of town didn’t take too long. The freeway wasn’t too bad, and he exited and made his way home, parking in the garage. He led Marty inside and closed the door behind them.
The remodeled ranch-style house was smallish, but it fit his needs. “The living room is right through there, the kitchen there, and the guest room is the last door on the right. The bathroom is the first.” He didn’t dare follow him down there, but he did watch Marty until he thought Marty might turn back, and then he went into the kitchen.
He really needed to get his head and his libido under control. He stood in front of the sink, staring out the window as he tried not to remember how things had once been between them. Eddie had thought, back after college, that Marty was the one. He figured they’d get jobs, make a life for the two of them, and build a future.
But then he’d gotten a break. He was shopping downtown when a man approached him saying that he was a casting scout. There was a movie he was working on, and Eddie had the perfect look for the part.
Eddie had acted in school and in college for fun, so he went to California, auditioned, and got the part. He’d been shocked as hell. Suddenly, he had a great part in what turned out to be a huge hit, an agent, and a life down in Hollywood.
Marty had stayed here, in Olympia, in a job that Eddie knew he didn’t like.
For the longest time, he wondered if Marty hadn’t loved him enough to go. But with time and a little maturity, he now thought that Marty just hadn’t wanted that kind of life. And maybe he wouldn’t have been happy, because it turned out that in the end, Eddie hadn’t been. He’d made some money, did a couple of movies, and then television called, but the show didn’t run long. Suddenly, Eddie found himself “what once was” and endedup returning to Olympia and hiring on with the police force. Thankfully, he had used a screen name, so his past life wasn’t readily apparent unless someone went looking.
“Eddie,” Marty said from behind him.
