Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 19

Chapter 19 The Creep

Carmen got to the conference room the next morning at quarter to nine, and found Lauren deeply immersed in her laptop, with papers and print-outs all over the conference room table.

"Good morning. What's all this?"

"Go grab your coffee, and I'll tell you. I'm in the middle ..." her voice trailed off in concentration. Carmen got her coffee, and came back and sat down, letting Lauren work. Finally she looked up. "Stopping point," Lauren said. "I gotta piss and reload caffeine. Be right back." She skidded a sheaf of papers across the table to Carmen.

Carmen turned around the print-out so she could read it. It was half a dozen pages of some sort of elaborate spreadsheet of financial information. She looked at the top of the page and saw that the report came from a bank, and the bank accounts belong to Niki Stevens, "dba Party Hearty LLC." Paper-clipped to the back of the report were a couple of pages of legal boilerplate. Pursuant to LASD Warrant No. 12345 blah blah signed by Judge So-and-So, Court of Such-and-Such, County of Los Angeles, in re: the matter of Homicide Case 51039, etc. Letterhead, legal counsel Smith, Smith, and Smith on behalf of Bank of Blah Blah. Herewith please find the information requested in Warrant 12345, requested by Detective Sgt. Lauren Hancock blah blah. Signed and attested to this day Year of Our Lord, whenever wherever whatever.

Dba, doing business as. Niki's corporate shell. Carmen flipped back to the numbers. Nothing stood out on the first page, so she turned to the second one. Nothing. Third one. Three numbers in the third column, cash withdrawals, were circled in somebody's red marking pen, $9,950, $9,950, $9,950. In the next column the three dates of those transactions were underlined by the red pen. The dates were all on the same day of three consecutive months, October, November, December. Carmen turned the page. Two more amounts were circled, two more dates were underlined, $9,950, $9,950. January. February. Then came the month Jenny was murdered. Nothing. No more $9,950 cash withdrawals.

"Some of my financial warrants came back last night and this morning," Lauren said, entering and sitting down with her coffee.

"I see that," Carmen said.

"Interesting, huh?" Lauren said as Carmen studied the print-out.

"I don't know what it means," Carmen said.

"By itself, not much. But take a look at this." She slid another paper-clipped sheaf of papers across the conference table to Carmen.

Similar legal boilerplate. Pursuant to LASD Warrant No. 98765 blah blah signed by Judge So-and-So, Court of Such-and-Such, County of Los Angeles, in re: the matter of Homicide Case 51039, etc. Letterhead, legal counsel Jones, Jones, and Jones on behalf of So-and-So. Herewith please find the information request in Warrant 98765, requested by Detective Sgt. Lauren Hancock blah blah. Signed and attested to this day ... whenever wherever whatever. Different bank, though, First National Bank of blah blah, and different customer: Schecter, Jennifer D., dba StarryStarryNight Editorial Productions LLC.

Bottom of second page: $9,950, October. Third page: $9,950, November, December, January. Fourth page: $9,950, February. Cash withdrawals circled, dates underlined.

Carmen look at Lauren. "They each made the same cash withdrawals on the same days, of the same five months."

"Yep."

"Who does that?"

"Two people being blackmailed. Can't use your American Express card. Can't write personal or business checks. Blackmail tends to be a cash-only business. Small, unmarked bills, no sequence."

"Why that amount? And why monthly installment the payment plan?"

"Easy-peasey," Lauren said. "There's a federal bank law called the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, also known as the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, that requires reporting of any cash transactions of ten thousand dollars or more to the IRS. That's how they monitor drug dealers and the Mafia and so on. Big amounts of money. So if you keep the amount under ten grand there's no reporting and you don't trigger an alert. And if you are a patient, careful person but you want fifty or a hundred thousand, or whatever, you spread out the payments, easy to do if you know with certainty your victim isn't going to blow town. But there's a wrinkle."

"What's that?"

"The rule says a single payment of ten thousand, or two or more combined payments within a calendar year, going to the same person or company. So, the second time they make the withdrawal, it triggers the reporting. You have to fill out an IRS form called Form 8300, and so on."

"So in November they triggered it? And, let's see a calendar year. So they triggered it again in February."

"Right. But here's what I think. I don't think either Jenny or Niki gave a shit about alerting the IRS. For one thing, they wouldn't get caught at it for almost two years, at a minimum, and even then I don't think anyone at the IRS would tumble. A movie star? A writer? Nobody gives a damn about their withdrawals. And that would be, you know, a year and a half or two years after the blackmail payments were made. And anyhow, how are they going to report them to the IRS? 'We paid a blackmailer fifty or a hundred grand, please let us deduct it as a business expense. No, I don't think the payment had anything to do with the Bank Secrecy Act. I think they were hiding them from just about everybody else, specifically, people close to them."

"I don't follow."

"They each have accountants, for one thing, and people who file their taxes. And here's the other thing. If you look at the bank records, they made the withdrawals at different branches of their own banks. I figure they did that so no one branch manager or branch bank teller would remember the transactions several months in a row. So they were covering their tracks with the bank people they dealt with, going in and asking for a big pile of cash, and I'm guessing not-sequential numbering, small but mixed denominations, and so on. They weren't hiding from the IRS, they didn't want their accountants and financial advisers to spot the pattern. You see, each month you get a bank statement, right? Well, each month, their banks statements would only show one single withdrawal of ninety-nine fifty, instead of some lump sum of fifty grand or a hundred grand, or whatever. And both of them spent money like sailors on shore leave. So a single withdrawal once a month wouldn't stand out among all their other expenses. Shit, they could both say it was just walking-around money. One more thing."

"Yes?"

"Forget everything else, just focus on this one single thing. Why in the world would anyone do their banking from five different branches? Have you ever in your life used more than, say, one or two branches to do your banking? Maybe if you go out of town you stop in at the branch one time, maybe. But regularly? Hell, no. Now, that's one normal person. What are the odds of two women closely associated with each other making the same withdrawals on the same day from no less than ten branches? That's crazy, unless they were specifically instructed by someone to do this."

"So that's what we think? They each paid out--" Carmen stopped to do the math, but Lauren already had.

"Forty-nine, seven fifty. Times two, ninety-nine five. Almost a hundred grand. All cash. And you know what else is really smart?"

"What?"

"Just like most everybody else, Jenny and Niki tended to get paid in regular increments, usually monthly installments. Sure, they both had some really big income checks, too, from time to time, for contract signing agreements and things like that. Jenny got a flat half-million for what looks like that screenplay treatment Alice says Jenny stole. Niki got a big check when she signed up for Lez Girls. But mostly they get monthly royalty checks, Jenny for her books and Niki for her past movies, endorsements, and so on. Jenny got salary while she was directing, and Niki while shooting the movie. So every month, both of them have big paychecks coming in. That makes it easier for them to make a cash withdrawal, rather than have to pay out a much, much bigger one-time lump-sum blackmail payment."

"Didn't Jenny have other cash withdrawals?"

"Oh, sure, but most of them seem explainable. Most of them were smaller, and just seem to be for walking-around money. Both of them had financial advisers handling investments and accountants who paid most of their bills, and they spent most of their money by credit card. But remember when Jenny got the big check for the screenplay treatment and went out and bought the Beemer? She took out a big, big pile of cash so she could pay cash for it, which let her avoid interest payments, and probably even lowered the cost of the car a little, since then the dealer doesn't have to pay any credit card company for the purchase. She pulled out $67,923, which seemed like a lot of money, but I checked the date of purchase of the Beemer, and it was that same day. I called the dealership, and they confirmed: Jenny gave them the $67 grand whatever in cash and drove the Beemer off the lot. The thing is, the cash withdrawal was duly reported by the bank, and nobody cared because it was all above board and perfectly legal, beginning to end, and reported to the IRS on a Form 8300. Half a mil in, sixty-seven and change out, new car, trade-in, the whole shebang. All the paperwork, nice and legal. Nothing to see here, folks."

"But the blackmail payments are different."

"Right, they are. Not individually, but when Jenny has five withdrawals and Niki has five withdrawals, then we have a pattern. Then we have something going on."

"Got any ideas?"

"I do," Lauren said. "Look at the date of each withdrawal, the day of the month."

"Uh," Carmen said, studying the printouts. "October 6, November 6, December--" She switched to Niki's printout. "October 6, November 6, December 6. All ten withdrawals on the sixth of each month, and like you said, each from a different branch location."

"Right. Now look at March 6."

"Uh... nothing."

"Nope."

"They didn't make the March withdrawals. So ... they both stopped paying?"

"Looks like it, unless the blackmailer only wanted about fifty grand from each, and was then happy to let them off the hook."

"Do we think that's what happened? The blackmailer clocked out happy and went away?"

"We do not. We most certainly do not think that."

"Because ... because Jenny was murdered two days later," Carmen said.

"Bingo. Like we said, cops hate even somewhat explainable coincidences, but there's no fucking way somebody pays blackmail for five months, misses the six month, gets murdered, and the murder and the blackmail are purely coincidental, completely unrelated. No, period. Fucking, period. Way, period. Exclamation point. Also, they could both afford way more than fifty grand. Any competent blackmailer would know that. Niki especially. Big, famous movie star. Know what she got paid for that movie about the bitchy Valley Girls? Eight million up front, and that's before the residuals and royalties and whatnot. Fifty grand was walking-around money for her."

"What were they being blackmailed about?" Carmen asked. "Has to be that goddamned sex tape they made."

"The one where every single copy was destroyed?" Lauren asked sarcastically.

"The one nobody except half of Hollywood had a copy of."

"If half of Hollywood had it, it would have surfaced on some TV show by now. But yes, somebody had a copy, and had a plan on what to do with it."

"This bumps up Adele as a suspect, don't you think?"

"I do."

"But we think Adele may have been at the scene with Niki."

"We do think that, but so what? First, we have no evidence to suggest either Jenny or Niki knew the identity of the blackmailer, and it could still have been Adele, if she's as sneaky and underhanded and cunning as she has shown every sign of being. Second, we don't yet know why Niki was at Jenny's house that night. If it was Adele who came along, maybe it was to find out what was going on and why her two blackmail victims had missed the March payment two days earlier."

Carmen sighed. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." She looked up at Lauren. "It all gets worse and worse. Both murders get more complicated. We have more suspects and more motives, good solid motives, but they don't seem to tie Jenny to Max's murder in Bakersfield."

"No, not that we know of. But the night is still young, even if it's only ten after nine in the morning." Just then her cellphone binged a message. Lauren looked at it. "Come on, we're being summoned for an audience with Her Royal Highness."

They got up and left the conference room, and met Shane as they were coming down the hall.

"Turn around, follow us," Lauren said. "We have much to report."

Shane fell in behind them as they walked to Marybeth's office. "What's up?" she whispered to Carmen.

"We're following the money," Carmen said. "It's bad."

Marybeth's door was open and she waved them in. "Auntie Carmie, Auntie Shay-Shay and Auntie ... Auntie ... "

"Anti-perspirant?" Lauren offered.

"Antidisestablishmentarianism?" Carmen suggested.

"Too long," Marybeth said.

"Antipasto?" Shane asked.

"Not bad," Carmen said.

"I haven't had breakfast," Shane said.

"I hear there's been a break," Marybeth said, pretending not to be amused.

"A couple of my financial warrants came back," Lauren said. "It looks like Jenny and Niki were both being extorted or blackmailed." She started briefing Marybeth and Shane.

Marybeth looked at Shane. "I'm guessing you had no suspicion Jenny was being blackmailed? She never said anything?"

"No, no clue whatsoever."

"She didn't act funny or strange in some way?"

"Shit, Jenny acted strange for the six years I knew her. And those last few months, there was just so much other shit going on, her book being made into a movie, directing it, fucking Niki, breaking up with Niki, messing with all our heads and our lives. So, yes, Jenny acted funny. Does that help?"

"Point taken," Marybeth said. "I had to ask."

"I know," Shane said. "No problem. The thing to understand is Jenny didn't seem to care all that much about money. At first she had nothing, and although she had money problems and talked about it, and she got jobs to pay the rent, she never really obsessed about it. Money was just something she needed to live, but she was never this money-grubbing freak, you know? And then when it started coming in, when she sold her book and stuff, she spent it pretty freely, but even then you couldn't exactly say it was money that drove her."

"I agree," Carmen said. "She liked money, like a lot of people do, but I wouldn't say it made her crazy. Everything else, maybe, but not money. The worst you could say about her with money was she spent it almost carelessly, sometimes, and maybe she used it as a social marker, a symbol of her success. 'Look at me, I'm rich.' But exactly how rich, or what to do with it, no."

Lauren's cell phone chimed an incoming call. She glanced at it, and let it go to voicemail. Two minutes later it chimed a text message: "Please call ASAP when free. Urgent. Have important info re Schecter murder."

"Uh, sorry. This says urgent. I think I need to take this," Lauren said. "Carmen, can you continue for me for a minute?"

"Sure, go," Carmen said. She picked up the story and their theories about the blackmail payments while Lauren took her call outside Marybeth's office. Lauren talked for nearly five minutes, then came back in.

"Sorry," she said, sitting down.

"Something for us?" Marybeth asked.

"Yes. It looks like we may have a brand new suspect in Jenny's murder."

"No!" Carmen blurted. "Who?"

"That's the thing. We now have a potential unsub, a man. My phone call was from Gladys Wilkinson, the woman who bought Tina and Bette's house. In other words, the crime scene."

"And?"

"She says she and her neighbor across the back need to talk to us. It seems there was somebody hanging around in back in the house on the other side of the bushes a few days before the murder."

There was silence. Marybeth drummed her fingers on her desk, thinking and frowning.

"You have that look on your face," Lauren said to her.

"I'm not a happy camper," Marybeth said.

"We can tell," Lauren said.

"When momma's not happy, nobody's happy," Carmen said. "You said that."

"I think I said you don't want to piss off momma, but same thing."

"Care to share?" Lauren asked.

"We're on thin ice," Marybeth said. "We are now essentially working on two murders. I didn't like it when we had Alice in jail, Shane under suspicion, and only one murder, and I like it even less now with twice as many murders, Shane not under suspicion, but a handful of other worthy suspects, one of them about three minutes old, all running around lose."

"I'm not sure I follow," Carmen said. "You're the cops."

"We're not supposed to be investigating homicides," Lauren said. "We're the missing persons bureau. It's a turf thing. Stepping on another division's toes. Written rules and regulations."

"Oh. Right. I see that now," Carmen said.

"Fortunately, I may have a solution," Marybeth said. "Grasshoppers, remain silent, watch and learn." She picked up her phone and punched in four numbers.

"I love it when she does this," Lauren whispered, but loud enough so everyone could hear.

"Jack? It's Marybeth ... good, good ... yes, keeping busy, but not as busy as you ... uh-huh, speaking of you being so busy, I have a problem but it comes with a solution, and when I tell you what it is, you're gonna say, 'Marybeth, how can I ever thank you for lightening my burden' ... oh, Jack. What a cruel, suspicious mind you have ... may I remind you, I learned this kind of brown-nosing bullshit directly from you ... oh, now you want to cut to the chase. Okay, here it is. We caught a missing persons complaint, and when we looked into it we discovered it led to an old cold-case homicide out in Bakersfield. The guy we started to look for was deliberately hit-and-run two years ago. But it's an unsolved out in Bakersfield, and neither you nor I care, except that then we discovered it has links back to closed homicide right here, and in fact it's one of my old cases back when I was your star pupil and ace homicide cop ... no, the Schecter thing, remember? The screenwriter slash movie director found drowned in a neighbor's pool ... yes, that one, only they don't call them dykes any more, they don't like it and it makes them testy and difficult to talk to ... yes, I know they call themselves dykes, but you and I can't ... thank you. May I continue? Good. Anyway, my missing persons case went all hinky and now I'm looking at two homicides, one outside our jurisdiction and one in, and both colder than your ex-wife. How is Lorraine, by the way? Give her my love. The rules say I should now turn both cases over to you guys, and if I do you're just gonna stack it to your cold case table, where it will languish until it's even older and more decrepit than you. So what I'm saying, Jack, is how about letting us continue to run with it? We've already put in some work on it and we've made good progress ... yes, I have my best detective on it. You remember Lauren Hancock? ... no, Jack, I didn't steal her away from you, I just had her and Sean Holden on my team, and you got to keep Sean and I got to keep Lauren, fifty-fifty, what could be fairer than that? You're happy, I'm happy ... okay, you're not happy, okay, I stole her, nanny nanny boo hoo. So sue me. Anyway, what do you say, Jack? ... yes, I'm personally supervising the case ... no, I'm not fucking going to say pretty pretty please ... no, not that, either. You're disgusting, but I love you anyway ... yes, but not that way, more like a great-great-grandfather with Alzheimers and a skin condition ... well, wear a hat more often ... thanks, Jack, I owe you one. Give my love to Margot ... Christy? What happened to Margot? ... oh, I'm sorry. You get to keep the house this time? That's good, I don't need you sleeping on my couch ... in your dreams, buddy." She hung up the phone and sighed. "Hancock, now you see why I keep telling you to stay on the street and don't even think about admin."