“Have you made any progress on the attorney?”
“I punted what I had over to Faith after lunch.”
“Luke Powell? Coordinating with the FBI? What’s next? You going to marry an agent?”
Luke didn’t acknowledge the teasing remark. “She has a contact at the Oregon State Bar from some case she worked early in her career. She volunteered, and it freed me to help Zane go over the security footage from the fundraiser where the counterfeit cash came from.”
“Tell me you found something.”
“We found something.”
They moved to the conference room, and Zane mirrored his screen so the video appeared on the large television mounted on the wall across from the framed photos of the president, secretary of homeland security, and the director of the Secret Service.
Luke pointed to the screen. “I talked to Tina, Ivy’s assistant, yesterday. She did a lot of the planning for the fundraiser, and she was a big help.” He grabbed a laser pointer from the cabinet under the TV, and the red dot traced a line from the parking lot into theroad. “They had booths all over the parking lot. Ivy managed to sweet-talk the city into allowing her to block off the street, and they set up a few carnival rides. I had someone in DC take a look, and they estimated between seven hundred and a thousand unique individuals were on the property throughout the course of the day.”
Great.
“The good news is that money changed hands in only three locations.” Luke pointed to a booth at one end of the parking lot, then another booth on the opposite side. Finally, he hovered over a large tent. “The actual flow of cash is hard to see at the ticket booths. The cameras are for the security of the building and weren’t placed the way we would have needed them for the security of the event.” Luke hovered over the tent. “Except for inside the food tent. There were two extra cameras installed, both near the vendors.”
“Why?” Gil asked.
“Tina spent thirty minutes explaining it, but I’ll give you the short version. Last year, near the end of the night, a food fight broke out when some students from UNC, NC State, and Duke got into an argument. They destroyed the tent and made a huge mess. Ivy”—Luke grinned at Zane, then turned the grin to Gil—“and, brother, this does not bode well for you, but Ivy lost her mind.”
“I’m well aware that she has a temper.”
“She waded into the melee, took tons of photos with her phone, and told them they either pulled it together and cleaned up the mess, or she’d give the photos to the press and their pictures would be splashed all over the news.”
“Smart play.”
“It was, especially since a reporter was still on scene, and she grabbed the photojournalist who was with her and had them come in and take video.”
“The guilty parties cleaned up the mess, but Ivy insisted on cameras in the tent this year.”
“This was the short version of the story?”
“It was. If you don’t like it, we can ask Tina to give you the long version the next time you see her.”
“I’ll pass.”
Zane froze the video. A teenage boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, handed two twenties to the attendant at the counter. “Most people paid with credit cards, which made it easier for us to narrow it down.”
Gil wasn’t fooled. Nothing was easy about narrowing this down. There were hundreds of people in and out of that tent. Luke and Zane had spent days staring at tiny clips of video and then looking for any sort of pattern they could find.
“We’ve narrowed it down to five suspects, but this is our number one.”
“He’s a kid.”
“Yep.”
“What makes you think it’s him?”
Zane forwarded the video frame by frame. The boy reached into one of his pockets and pulled out cash. The bills were folded in half, and based on their thickness, Gil would estimate he had a hundred dollars in that stack. He’d probably already spent the rest of the cash before he was captured on video.
The counterfeit bills that had been deposited had been folded at one time. But not folded individually. The crease was wide, like the entire stack of bills had been folded in half. What he was seeing now matched the evidence.
Zane stopped the video. “We’re going to go back through and look for him, but we’ve already caught one shot of him coming in. He walked in, and he was alone.”
“Thanks, guys.” The words were inadequate, but he meant them.
