34
Cash tried to breathe through her mouth as Standish inclined backward in his chair, a grin plastered across his face, a fat file containing his Paradox results in front of him. They were in her office at CBI—a spartan room Cash rarely saw because she was so frequently on the road. Her entire office now smelled of baby oil.
“So, how’s the case going?” Standish said it in a way that implied, or so it seemed to her, that he thought the case wasn’t going well at all.
“It’s going just fine,” Cash said defensively. It was not, in fact, going just fine. Her business from Maine was all over the news. And despite all their efforts, the media was making hay with the idea that CBI and the sheriff’s office might be investigating aliens as murder suspects. There was a leak somewhere in the investigation. The witness she had visited in San Francisco, which the press was now saying she had “brought back” to Colorado, had turned up murdered. Plus, it felt like Colcord was now second-guessing every decision she made.
But as she looked at Standish swinging in his chair, she felt she had not been fair to him. He was, basically, a gigantic nerd. He got on her nerves, but nobody said he wasn’t a good agent. Even though she was annoyed that Holmes had put him on the case, his digital forensic skills were in fact needed. For better or worse, she was going to be working with him going forward.
“Just fine… okay.” Standish kept on with the infuriating smile, swinging back and forth in the chair like a goddamned marionette.
Cash took a deep breath. “Look, Standish, I think we got off on the wrong foot,” she said, with a tight smile.
Standish stopped swinging, his expression changing to neutral as he leaned forward with folded arms. He raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Yeah. I realize that it probably didn’t feel good to have me swoop in and take this case from you.”
Standish shrugged, but the tightness of his shoulders gave him away. “You’ve got seniority—I get it.”
“No, really. I’m sorry. I don’t usually do that—but this case means a lot to me, you know? I thought it might be a Neander case, and I wanted it. I just wanted to clear the air—and let you know I appreciate you helping out now.”
Standish smiled then—a genuine smile. “Thanks, Cash. I appreciate you saying that.”
“Good, well, let’s move on from that.” Cash let out a breath. She hated apologizing, but she felt guilty about her letting Standish get under her skin like that. It wasn’t professional. “What have you got for me so far on Paradox?”
Standish patted the file and flipped it open. “First of all, Paradox may be a 501(c)(3), on paper, but it is nothing more than a front. Period. The money goes in and then out. I traced the money through a chain of shell companies in different jurisdictions. It was time-consuming, but I finally tracked down the discretionary trust behind Paradox.”
“What’s that?” asked Cash.
“A company can be owned by a trust, with the beneficiaries being the actual owners. The trust allows them to remain anonymous. This would have taken some pretty expensive lawyering to set up. The takeaway is, these peoplereallydidn’t want to be found. That’s why they chose countries known for their limited regulations and strong privacy laws to run their shell companies through.”
As Standish spoke, Cash got a feeling that he admired these people.
“I initially went the legal route and requested a subpoena for the trustees’ records, the trust deed, the name of the beneficiaries through the bank accounts used by Paradox to receive and transfer funds from Brooksfield, but we simply did not have enough evidence for the judge to grant it. Paradox’slawyers did make one mistake, though, which I caught. Can’t pull one over on me so easily.” Standish paused, a self-congratulatory expression on his face. “The trust owns a property in Italy—an apartment in Florence—and under the Fifth Anti–Money Laundering Directive, Italy maintains a beneficial ownership registry for trusts that own real estate. It’s not technically fully open to the public, but there are some laws allowing individuals with a legitimate interest in preventing money laundering to access it—so long as they justify the request. It took some persuading, but I charmed my way in. I do, after all, speak Italian.” Standish smiled proudly.
Cash was surprised by this. “Italy. That seems to be a common thread here. What did they say? Who’s the owner?” She tried to keep impatience from creeping into her voice. Standish may be a pain in the ass, but damn, this was good stuff. She imagined he could find all her missing socks from the laundry if she put him to the test.
“Javi Castillo is just the front man to the public. ‘Board chairman’—except there is no board. The real owner and controller is Krikor Khachatryan, an Armenian citizen—he’s a total ghost, no digital trail anywhere. That’s your guy.”
