A Fighting Chance

"At first, I didn't want to do that because I wasn't guilty of anything. Mr. Graves started explaining the evidence then, and I could see why he wanted me to plead guilty.

"What they had were several deposits into my checking account that were really deposits that should have gone into another account. A day after the deposit, there would be a check written to my account for the same amount, so my account balance was always what it should have been. I use my debit card a lot, and I signed up for paperless statements, so when I looked at my account on the website, all I ever looked at was the beginning and ending balance at the top of the web page. They always were the same as the records I kept, so I didn't see any need to look at each and every entry.

"What Mr. Grave said it would look like to a jury was that I'd been taking checks from people and using my account number for the deposits instead of theirs and then writing a check for cash and taking the money back out. He said the total amount was over nine thousand dollars and the bank had found out when one of the customers came in mad. He wanted to know how his bank account could be overdrawn when he'd just deposited his paycheck.

"I still didn't want to plead guilty, and Mr. Graves said he'd be willing to take my case to trial if I could prove I hadn't done it. He said that was going to be hard to do since my employee number was on every deposit and they had photocopies of every check and every check had my signature.

"I argued with him for an hour before I gave up. I pled guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison. I got out in three because of good behavior, but I still have a year of probation before I'm completely done. That's why I can't do this myself. I can't do anything even a little illegal or they'll send me back to prison."

I frowned when she said that last statement. There are a lot of people who watch too many TV shows about private detectives and get the idea we just do what the hell we feel like doing to solve a case. That's not true at all. We have to abide by every law and statue on the books, just like everybody else. If we don't we'll lose our license as well as probably go to jail.

"Miss Alexander, I don't want to bust your bubble, but I can't do anything illegal either."

She frowned.

"I thought...well, I guess I was wrong. I'm sorry to have taken up your time."

I stopped her when she started to get up. Every fucking criminal who gets sent to prison always says they're innocent, but for one main reason, I believed her. I knew George Graves because I'd seen him in action in court. The asshole would have let fifteen guys fuck him in the ass on the court house steps rather than say anything in court that might indicate he was trying to help his client. Most of the clients he got were guilty as hell, but he should at least have tried for a reduction in class of the crime or a reduced sentence even if the scumbag didn't deserve it. That's why public defenders get paid.

"Miss Alexander, sit back down and tell me everything you know about what happened. I don't know if I can help you yet, but I'm willing to listen."

The more I heard, the more the whole fucking thing smelled. At first glance, everything seemed to point to Diane being some master criminal who'd figured out how to take peoples money, but she didn't seem that way to me. She seemed like just a normal woman, a little wordy like they all are, but I couldn't picture her laughing hysterically while she stuck wads of cash under her mattress. I'd asked her if they'd recovered any of the money and she shook her head.

"No, and that's another reason I didn't want to plead guilty. I thought they'd have to find what I did with the money if I stole it, but Mr. Graves said they had enough evidence without the money. As far as I know, they never found it."

That didn't make sense to me. If somebody steals your debit card or writes phony checks on your account, the law says the bank has to reimburse all the missing funds except for fifty dollars if you notify them within a certain time period. Nine grand wouldn't be a lot for the bank in question to lose, but bankers tend to be tight-fisted bastards, and I didn't think any bank manager would let nine grand slip through his hands without trying to find the missing money.

In my experience, actually just one case where I did the investigating, the bank wanted to get as much information as they could on every bank employee. They had all the transaction records. I was looking for things like new cars, a new swimming pool, or an expensive vacation that didn't look right considering how much that employee was paid.

Two other things bothered me as well.

One was the fucking stupidity of trying to embezzle money from a bank. Banks don't have people running adding machines to keep track of accounts any more. They have computers and because of all the identity theft that's occurred, those computers constantly check every account for unusual activity. Some banks have been known to freeze an account if that activity looks very far from normal. At the very least, they'll send a letter or an email to the account holder and ask them to verify the account entries are valid. Any teller would know that, and only somebody dumb as a fucking rock would think they'd get away with it. Diane seemed to be a pretty intelligent woman.

The other thing was that the bank didn't find the problem until a bank customer reported it. I was sure the bank computer would have flagged the account because of the number and type of transactions. If that flag wasn't discovered, it had to be because no one was looking, or they saw the flag and didn't say anything.

Diane finished and then frowned.

"I haven't convinced you, have I?"

I smiled.

"Actually, you have. The whole thing stinks."

"So you'll help me?"

I nodded.

"Yes, I'll help you. Uh...my fee is three hundred a day with two days in advance. Can you manage that?"

Diane was still frowning.

"They took all my money to pay the bank back, and I don't have a job yet. I'll have to borrow some money from my mother, but she believes I didn't do it so that shouldn't be a problem. Can I bring it to you in a couple days?"

I said that would be fine, and while she was waiting, she should write down the names of all the bank employees and bring the list with her. Diane was smiling a little when she left.

Normally, I'd have waited to start until I had that two-day advance in hand. There are some people who change their mind and decide six hundred is too much to pay to get what they want. I do run a business even though most people wouldn't consider it a real business, and I do need to get paid for my time when I'm working on a case.

This one bothered me though. After a lot of years of talking to people, I can pretty much tell when I'm being lied to, and I hadn't seen any of the usual signs with Diane. Her body language told me she was telling me the truth, or at least the truth as she knew it. There can be a difference, but what she'd told me she'd been accused of didn't seem like something she'd do.

There was a quick and easy way to check part of her story. I picked up my cell phone and called Dave Mitchell, a PI who manages one of the biggest agencies in Nashville.

I asked Dave if a woman had asked his agency to investigate a case of bank fraud. He said yes, but they'd told her they didn't do that sort of investigation and she should go to the police.

I didn't bother to call any other agencies. One was enough to tell me Diane was being as honest as she knew how to be.

Diane showed back up the next afternoon with six hundred in cash and a list of bank employees. We didn't talk very long because she'd found a job and she had to go to work. It was just working tables at a bar across town, but she said if she got as many tips as the other girls said they did, she'd be able to pay her mother back in a month or so. I guess she figured I'd have her case solved in two days. I wasn't quite that optimistic.

I started this case just like I did the other bank case. I looked up the address of every person on Diane's list and then spent a few hours one evening driving by where they lived. I didn't see anything I thought was unusual. I mean, all the houses were nice houses, but they weren't extravagant. I'd picked the evening to do my drive-by because it was a Tuesday and everybody would have been home. Most of the cars in the drives were late models, but not new. It was true that three years had passed, so maybe one of the cars had been bought with the money, but the more I thought about it, that didn't seem plausible.

Nine grand probably seemed like a lot of money to Diane. It was probably about a quarter of what she earned in a year, but in reality, nine grand won't buy you much in the way of luxury. Anymore, nine grand just makes a decent down payment on a luxury car or truck unless you want to finance it until the wheels fall off, and nine grand sure as hell won't make a down payment on a house. Hell, in some parts of Nashville, nine grand wouldn't even make the down payment on a building lot.

No, if the money had been spent, it probably went to something smaller and easier to hide. Art was a possibility, but with the exception of the bank manager, a Mr. Todd Burke, I didn't figure any of the other employees would spend money on art or anything else that wasn't at least a little practical. There were a lot of possibilities for practical things the thief could have bought, but I'd have to get into each house some way to find out if they had a giant screen TV or some other thing that cost a lot more than it looked like they could afford.

On Saturday, I started doing what I usually do when I want to snoop in somebody's house. I put on my white uniform shirt that says "CUMBERLAND PEST CONTROL" on the back and has my name, Harry, over the right front pocket. I drove to Rosie Clark's house, picked up my clipboard and put on my ball cap with the big cockroach on the front, and then rang her doorbell.

Evidently Rosie liked to sleep in. It was about nine, but she was still in her pajamas, or at least, I figured they were her pajamas. What they looked like was a sports bra and a pair of men's boxer shorts. She didn't really need the bra because her little tits barely made a bump on her chest. Her ass was a different matter entirely. It was pretty wide, but her boxer shorts were wider yet, and it looked like if she moved very fast, they'd fall off. In front, they dipped low enough I was pretty sure she shaved her pussy.

I went into the spiel designed to get me a tour of the house.

"Miss Clark, I'm Harry Jones. We'uns down at Cumberland Pest Control are havin' us a marketin' campaign to git our name out in the city. We just got started after we quit one of them big companies to start our own. You know how them big companies work, don't you? Well, they bring termites or ants or spiders with 'em and let 'em loose when you're not looking. Then they'll show you them critters and you'll want 'em gone and they'll sign you up for them to come out every month for a year and spray their stuff around. Their stuff don't work all that good, but that's on purpose. Them critters they let loose don't go nowhere an' they get more critters getting' in your house, so you keep 'em comin' out to spray.

"That bothered me and Jake. I mean, we's both men who go to church on Sunday an' the Bible says it just ain't right to fool people that way. We quit and started us a business you can trust. To git your trust, we're givin' away a free inspection of your house for any kind of critter you can think of.

"Even if we find some critters, you don't have to sign up for nothin'. We'll even tell you what to buy at the grocery store to kill them critters. It won't be as good as if we do it, 'cause we can get stuff you can't, but that'll be up to you. What do you think? Wanna give me a look around?"

Rosie yawned, scratched her ass, pulled up her boxers, and then motioned me inside. As we walked from room to room, I took notes on my clipboard, but they weren't notes anybody but me would understand. As it was, I didn't take many notes at Rosie's house. She didn't have anything that looked new, and when I looked in the garage I didn't see a boat or anything like that.

When we got done, I said I hadn't found anything but she should call us if she ever did. The business card I gave her had the number of my desk phone, the same phone that would put the call to the answering machine that I'd put the Cumberland Pest Control greeting on that morning. If she called, she'd just hear what I'd already told her.

I spent the morning working my way through the list. I was trying to save myself some miles by working my way around the city instead of going from one side to the other, so the bank manager's house was next. The bank manager answered the door and wouldn't let me get into my spiel. He scowled at me and then said "Get your goddamned ass off my property before I call the police".

Well, that confirmed my general opinion of bank managers and also raised some flags. I was playing my pest control guy as polite and friendly, and I could have accepted, "I already have someone on contract", or, "Before you start, I should tell you I'm not interested", or some relatively polite response like that, but not a threat. I didn't know what Todd Burke was hiding, but he sure as hell didn't want me looking around at anything.

I had to pull my car up in front of his garage to get turned around, and when I did, I saw the garage doors were open. The night before, both had been open as well, and there were two cars inside. One was a blue BMW sedan and the other was a red BMW SUV. That day, both cars were still there, and there was a blue Chevy Impala parked on the drive as well.

I stopped and wrote down the license numbers of the two vehicles in the garage and the Impala, and then drove out the drive.

I hit three other bank employee houses that morning and didn't find anything that looked unusual. At about twelve thirty, I stopped by a burger place for lunch. I'd finished eating and was walking back to my car when I heard tires squeal. I looked in that direction just in time to jump out of the way of a black sedan. It went by me so fast all I caught was the fact the windows were blacked out and the license plate was missing.

Now, call me a paranoid son of a bitch if you want, but it seemed like that car was trying to run me down. That's what it had been the last time that happened. I'd gotten some pictures of a guy fucking his secretary, the pictures his wife used when she divorced him.

He'd been pretty pissed because his wife basically got everything he owned except his car and the clothes on his back. I was getting into my car in the alley behind my office when he raced by at about sixty. He didn't get me, but he crunched the shit out of his Acura when he hit the dumpster behind the pawn shop. He ended up with a citation for reckless driving after I gave his license number to the Nashville police.

There didn't appear to be any other explanation, and that meant I'd stepped on some toes that morning. Since the bank manager was the only bank employee who'd been an ass so far, he went to the top of my list.

I'd gotten through about three fourths of the bank employees by four and decided I'd had enough for the day. I headed back to my office/apartment and stopped for a take-out pizza along the way. I intended to spend my evening with the pizza, some good scotch, and a few smokes. No, not that kind of smokes. I'm strictly anti-drug. I only smoke regular cigarettes.

I'd finished the pizza and had poured myself another scotch when I saw the envelope sticking under my office door. After I opened it and read the single sheet of paper it contained, I sat the scotch down and lit a cigarette before reading it again.

I'd seen something like this in an old movie, but I didn't think anybody actually did it. The words were all words that had been cut out of a magazine and pasted onto the paper. Those words said, "Stop looking or you won't live to regret it".

Well, that put my case into an entirely different light. First, some asshole had tried to run me down, and now somebody was threatening to kill me if I kept trying to help Diane. That's when I laid the cigarette in the ashtray and pulled the Smith out of my bottom desk drawer. Like Walt had said, at least with the Smith, I'd have a fighting chance.

On Sunday, I drove over to the bank manager's house again at about seven in the morning. After parking up the street in a spot where I could still see the house and the garage, I saw the blue Impala was still parked in the drive.

About nine, the front door opened and a blonde woman walked out and down the walk. I used my camera to snap a couple of pictures of her and then watched her drive out onto the street and up the block. An hour later, a woman walked out of the house and got into the BMW SUV. I snapped a couple pictures of her too. She backed out of the garage and then drove out the drive. After another two hours, nothing had happened, so I went back home and called Diane.

When Diane got there, she apologized for how she looked.

"I didn't get off until three in the morning and I didn't get back to Mom's house until almost four. When you called, I'd only been asleep for about six hours and I was too tired to get dressed up."

I said she didn't have to apologize for how she looked, and it wasn't just to make her feel better. That first time in my office, she'd worn a conservative dress. When she walked into my office that afternoon, she was wearing a tank top that didn't try to hide her cleavage and jeans that looked more like they were painted on her round ass. I thought the heels were a bit much, but then, what the hell do I know about women's fashion. I figured she was going to do pretty well with tips. Hell, I'd have tipped her a couple bucks just for bringing me a drink and smiling at me.

Anyway, I showed her the pictures of the two women and asked if she knew either one of them. It took Diane all of two seconds to point to the blonde and say, "that's Julie Mason, the IT woman who takes care of all the computer stuff at the bank".

Diane looked at the other picture then.

"It's kind of dark, but I think that's Marge Burke. She's Mr. Burke's wife. I met her at the last Christmas party I went to."

Things were starting to make some sense now.

"Diane, did you ever hear anything about Mr. Burke and Julie?"

Diane thought for a second and then shook her head.

"No, nothing except a rumor most of us didn't believe."

"What was the rumor?"

"Oh, that Mr. Burke and Julie were having an affair, but nobody ever saw them together and they never looked that friendly at work. I don't think Marge would still be with him if he was anyway. She seemed to be pretty shy and quiet, like I am, and I'd never stay with a man who was messing around on me."

I sat back to think for a minute or so, and then asked Julie if she'd ever given her employee number to anybody. She looked shocked.

"Oh no, never. The first thing Mr. Burke told me was if I ever did, I'd be fired."

"Who else besides you would have known your employee number."

"Just Mr. Burke and Julie. Mr. Burke gave me the number and Julie had to enter all my data into the computer so she'd have to have it. Do you think they had anything to do with all this?"

I smiled. I didn't have it all figured out yet, but I had a pretty good idea of what happened.

"Yes, I do, and here's what I think happened. I think you did all those deposit transactions to the right accounts and Julie changed the account numbers to yours after you made them. I don't know if she did it on her own, or if she and Mr. Burke are in it together, but I think he probably knew about it."