Page 26 of Go Alone

Deborah Holt’s office was located in a brick two-story in East Columbus, a neighborhood just north of Bexley. Like Deborah’s home, the office screamed middle-class. Not wealthy, not struggling, just precisely in the middle.

The building manager was a short, balding man whose remaining hair formed a coarse, jet-black horseshoe around a badly sunburnt and remarkably smooth pate. He greeted Marcus with a firm, rapid double-pump and rather than offering his name, asked if the FBI was going to assist in resolving the tenancy issue that Deborah Holt’s untimely death had caused him.

“No, we don’t do that,” Marcus said.

The manager, still not deigning to offer a name, rocked back and forth on his heels. “We had a lease agreement that extended through the end of this year, but our payment arrangement was ah… unconventional.”

Marcus rolled his eyes. “I don’t want to know anything about that, sir. I just—”

The manager’s eyes popped open, horrified. “Oh, no. Nothing like that! She would pay half up front and half at the six-month mark.”

Marcus stared at him. “All right.”

“I was wondering if the FBI could write a statement that I don’t owe Deborah Holt’s survivors the portion of rent for the months of April, May, and June.”

“That’s not covered in your rental agreement.”

“Well, ah…” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “As a matter of fact, it’s… a little unclear. I’m afraid my attorney neglected to make certain parts of the contract airtight.”

Marcus sighed. “Well, then you need to talk to your attorney. I need to get into Debora Holt’s office. Can you do that?”

The manager hesitated. For a moment, Marcus feared he might try to use his bullshit rent situation as a bargaining chip before letting him in, but the manager eventually nodded and said, “Yes. Of course. I had to ask.”

Did you, though? Marcus thought. Did you really? Why the hell does everyone have to be so damned greedy?

He thought of his killer, of the exasperated tone in the messages he left at the scenes. Exasperation and defeat. He’d given up on people getting over their greed.

Not that he had an excuse to kill people over it, but Marcus could understand the exasperation. He just needed to find out what prompted the guy to go from being frustrated to being murderous.

Deborah’s office was exactly like her home and her building. It could have popped out of a dictionary entry for “middle-class.” The furniture was all good quality but not name brand. The computer was a midrange Hewlett-Packard.

Most interestingly, the only decorative items were a framed bachelor's degree in finance and a master's degree in business administration. Nothing else. No pictures of her family. No vacation photos of snorkeling, skydiving, or selfies taken at the Grand Canyon. No stress balls. No fish tank.

Deborah’s home had been the same. No pictures of her children or her ex-husband. Her desktop background was the standard Windows screen. Marcus hadn’t logged into her streaming accounts, but if he had, he was sure he’d find a watch history full of documentaries and TED talks about the finance industry.

Her entire life revolved around her job, and her entire job revolved around profit. Was that why she was so obsessed with more? After all, she hadn’t achieved much. Twenty years of slogging her way up the chain of command to a mid-level mortgage broker’s position at a national chain bank before finally opening a modest financial consulting business in Ohio’s most middling of middle-class neighborhoods was hardly the success story that sold New York Times bestsellers.

Maybe she was starting to feel her age. Maybe she was starting to realize that she was on the back nine and had nothing to show for it but a cookie cutter life.

He opened her computer using the password Oliver Holt gave him. He’d warned Marcus that there was a chance she had changed it, but he didn’t think it likely. In Oliver’s words, “She knows I’d never dream of threatening her work.”

Considering what had happened to the Garfields, Marcus didn’t blame him.

He started with the Garfields. The snafu over their house came six years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Earl and Sylvia were one year from retirement when the virus shut down most of America for nearly a year. Their jobs were considered non-essential, and like so many others, they had been forced into early retirement. Their company was bought by a new owner who decided their pensions were no longer vested and withdrew the money into the new company's pension fund. They'd sued the company, but the judge had ruled the new owners didn't need to honor the original agreement. Earl and Sylvia had their Social Security, and that was it.

It wasn’t enough to pay their mortgage. They’d contributed the max amount to their pensions and lost close to three million between them. What they were left with was enough for groceries and utilities. Even their health insurance was lost, converted to the minimum provided by the State of Ohio.

Marcus gleaned all of this from the detailed notes that Deborah kept about their conversations together. It seemed that when all else failed, the Garfields appealed to the bank to renegotiate the remainder of their mortgage. Deborah was the officer who handled those conversations.

The rest of the notes contained no personal information. Deborah had a detailed analysis of the Garfields’ finances and a brief conclusion that they were extremely unlikely to be able to pay the balance of their loan. Despite owing less than ten percent of the remaining principal, the bank chose to foreclose.

So far, there was nothing really illegal here. Immoral sure, but Marcus could see how Deborah’s hands might have been tied. Banks tended to frown on bleeding-heart employees making exceptions for anyone, no matter how old or what their circumstances were.

It was what happened after the foreclosure that was really sleazy. Deborah, a compulsive record-keeper, outlined meetings with the bank’s legal team where she noted that she pushed for a breach-of-contract suit against the Garfields and insisted that the bank was entitled to the entire sale price of the home, not simply what was needed to cover the loan.

Twice, the legal team—according to Deborah—had refused, and twice, she had presented research that proved they had a case. This went beyond business. Like Oliver said, this was personal.

But he still didn’t know why. Nothing on Deborah’s personal computer or her work computer hinted at what the Garfields might have done to anger her so much.