“Not in so many words, but it looks like they’re going to retrace our steps. Do everything we did—and learn everything we learned.”
“Fucking waste of time.”
“Their time to waste.”
“Still … the family has been dead for three years. Except for the kid.”
“Kid’s probably dead, too. They just haven’t found his body.”
Garrett frowned.
“Call them,” Carl said. “They want to talk to you anyway. Said the file is incomplete or some such thing.”
“Pricks,” Garrett mumbled. “They can stew for today, I’ll call them in the morning. It’s not like I don’t have a hundred other things to do more important than jumping through federal hoops.”
“Don’t I know it,” Carl said. “I have to go follow up on that robbery at the school. Back in a few.”
* * *
On the way to Henry Kiefer’s business, Lucy fielded an irate call from Ash.
“The fucking sheriff’s office never called the family!”
Lucy had never, in the two years she’d known Ash, heard him swear.
“When we were done at the gravesite, I called Denise Albright’s parents because they’ve been paying the mortgage. They co-signed for the family twenty years ago and were still on the deed. I just talked to them as if they knew what was going on … and they didn’t. No one called them. I feel like shit.”
“I’m so sorry, Ash. If I’d known, I would have called—”
“The sheriff’s department promised me they were on top of it. Hours ago. This is what happens when you have a multi-jurisdictional clusterfuck.”
“How did they take it?”
“I didn’t tell them. The ME’s office is going to call them—probably talking to them now. I backtracked, said we had a lead and were investigating the family’s disappearance and wanted access to the grounds. They were more than happy, said we could go in the house as well, that they’ll call the tenants.”
“They’re renting out the place?”
“Yeah, though I doubt there’s any need to go inside. All the belongings are in storage. Personal property paid for by the family, Kerr County has papers, books, computers, that stuff, in their evidence locker. But here’s the thing: The parents—Betty and Martin Graham—said they never believed that their daughter fled the country.”
“Parents sometimes have a hard time believing ill of their children.”
“They didn’t comment on the embezzlement charges, just that they wouldn’t have taken their kids to Mexico. None of them spoke Spanish. They don’t have property or friends who live down there, and they never even vacationed there. The only reason they had passports is because they went to England for a cousin’s wedding a couple years before they disappeared.”
“And now that we know they are buried close to home, you think they never left at all.” Like Nate, Lucy thought.
“It makes no sense that they’d leave and return a week or two later.”
“Unless they left, felt guilty, and returned so Denise could turn herself in. But someone stopped her. A partner, maybe.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely possible, you’re a good cop, you’ll find the truth,” Ash said. “Anyway, the detective here told me he would call the parents, and he didn’t, and I’m frickin’ mad about it. These folks are incompetent. They saw only what they were supposed to see and nothing more. They were manipulated by the killer, and finding justice for this family is going to be an uphill battle three years later. I gotta go, unless you need something?”
“No. Call if you find anything.”
She ended the call.
“He’s heated,” Nate said.
“He’s taking it personally.” She’d reach out to him after work, listen to his frustrations. She understood how he felt—she often took cases personally. Sometimes, she couldn’t avoid it. But she recognized that the more personal, the more likely one could make mistakes—that tunnel vision could cloud judgment or how one viewed evidence.
Nate continued, “While you were talking to Ash, I tracked down Henry Kiefer. He’s now the general manager for a quarry in Bandera. Used to run a multi-million-dollar construction company, now makes mid–five figures working for someone else.”
“Because of the embezzlement?”
“I skimmed a couple news articles, but I don’t think they explain the whole picture. In essence, he took a contract from the federal government for a major public works project. He’d already ordered supplies and paid for permits and fees and a bunch of stuff, hired additional staff, and started work. When the bills came due, there was no money to pay for them—I don’t know if that was why he hired the auditor, or if that was just standard practice and it spooked Albright.”
“And he kills her whole family?”
“Don’t know, but we’ve both seen worse.”
Nate was right about that.
They decided not to call ahead. While on the surface it didn’t seem plausible that Kiefer would kill an entire family out of rage over stolen money—and not get the money back—they couldn’t discount that he might be violent. It was sometimes better to get a first reaction.
It was less than thirty minutes to Henry Kiefer’s workplace. They arrived just after eleven that morning and showed their badges. Kiefer was out in the quarry, and it took a good ten minutes before he arrived in the crowded, but functional, office.
“FBI?” he said, and shook their hands. “Henry Kiefer. What can I do for you?”
“Is there a place we can sit and talk?” Lucy asked.
He glanced around. “I have a desk in that room, but it’s tight. This would be better.” He leaned against a table piled high with papers, then he suddenly stood straight, his face ashen. “Did something happen to my girl?”
“No, sir,” Nate said. He nodded toward a family photo on the wall with Kiefer and a young woman in a Marine uniform. “Your daughter is a Marine?”
“Yes, twelve years now, went through ROTC at Texas Tech with a double major in computer science and mathematics. She’s a smart girl, now a major. Major Paulina Kiefer. I didn’t think when they said FBI—”
“We’re not here about your daughter, I’m sure she’s fine,” Nate said. “Is she deployed?”
“She’s not in the country, that’s all I know. She doesn’t tell me where she goes. She tells me she can’t, so sometimes I worry. She sends emails every week, but doesn’t talk about her job. All I know is that she uses her degree, so I figure something like computer maintenance or maybe coding, something along those lines. At least, thinking that way makes me more comfortable.” He smiled nervously.
“We’re here about Denise Albright,” Lucy said.
He blinked, then frowned. “You found her. It’s about time.”
“We found her remains. She and her family were killed three years ago—at about the same time that she was suspected of leaving the country.”
He stared at her as if he didn’t believe her.
“She’s dead? Glen? Her kids?”
“You may have heard about the bones uncovered after the flood. Yesterday we learned that they belong to the Albright family. They were murdered and buried in a remote area of Kerr County, near the Kendall County line. They may have been there since the day they disappeared.”
Lucy was watching Kiefer closely—she didn’t know what to expect from his reaction, but he seemed mostly confused.
“You’re telling me that Denise has been dead for three years.”
“Yes.”
“And her family.”
Lucy nodded. She kept the information about Ricky Albright to herself, mostly to see how he would react.
“But how?”
“They were killed late September three years ago. We’re scrambling now that we have the bodies identified, and unfortunately, we don’t know much about the missing money or how you came to accuse Albright of embezzling funds.”
Kiefer took a moment to regroup. “I—well, I
went over this with the DA here in Kerr County, and again with the FBI a month or two later. I never imagined that Denise would have stolen from me. That week, I told her that I was bringing in an outside auditor. It’s not unheard of, and I do it every couple of years. With all the tax regulations changing constantly, I wanted to make sure everything was accounted for, especially since this was such a big federal project. Well, big for me. The new contract we’d received—it was one of the largest we’d had, and it would have brought hundreds of jobs to the area. Not just my company, but supporting companies, small businesses in the area. The three million she stole was only the initial funding—it would have been a thirty-five-million-dollar project for us.”
“So her work had been audited before.”
“Yes—at least twice since she’s been working for me. So when she didn’t show up to the meeting with the auditor on Monday, I thought she’d forgotten. He went to her office and grabbed the files—they were right where they were supposed to be.”
“When did she leave Friday?”
“She didn’t work in my office full-time, and I don’t think she was in at all on Friday. She was a CPA, had several clients. She worked out of her house to keep expenses down, though she had a small office with me because she spent so much time on my books and it was convenient for both of us. She was there at least one day a week, but because of this project she’d been spending more time in the office.”
News to Lucy. Why hadn’t Chavez given them that information? Why wasn’t it in the files she had?
“I tried calling her that morning, she didn’t answer, didn’t return my calls. I didn’t really think much about it until Wednesday morning—I think it was Wednesday—when the independent auditor said that the trust account was empty.”
“How did you come to suspect that Denise took the funds?”
“I—well, she was the only one with access to the trust account other than me. It was wired to another account in her name, and then wired to another account in a business name, and then wired to another account and closed. The FBI said they haven’t been able to trace it since. But it was her log-in and password. And she changed the protocols with the bank so there didn’t need to be a dual signature—the bank said that I signed off on it, but I didn’t. Either she tricked me and said I was signing something different than I was, or she forged my signature. I don’t see how else she could have done it.”
He paced the small, crowded trailer. “I lost everything. I couldn’t keep staff, I couldn’t fulfill my obligations to the federal government—it was a federal contract. I was lucky that the AUSA and the FBI agent who worked the case were able to prove I didn’t steal the money, otherwise I would have lost more than my business. I used my own money to pay off my creditors. That meant I had to shut down. But I shut down without debt. Still lost everything.”
He sounded bitter and angry, but then he looked at the picture of his daughter and his expression softened. “I knew Denise for years—I just can’t picture this…” He cleared his throat. “So what happened? I don’t understand why she was killed. Was she killed for the money?”
“We don’t know yet,” Lucy said. “We just got this case this morning when the bodies were identified. I want to go back to something you said—I was under the impression that Denise Albright was your employee.”
“No. She worked for me, yes, but I was one of at least a dozen clients. Mostly small to medium-sized businesses, it was her specialty. She worked for me for eight years—eight years! I trusted her. And then this. I’d wanted to leave a legacy, a solid business for my grandchildren. Now, I’ll be working here until I retire because I don’t have the heart or energy to start another business from scratch, not now. I’m not complaining—I have a job, a good job. Good, honest work. But it’s not my company, my people. And I’ll never forgive her for stealing that from me. My reputation and my legacy mean more to me than the money.”
Chapter Three
Lucy and Nate stopped at a small cafe in Bandera for a late lunch. While waiting to be served, Lucy called Zach Charles, the analyst for the Violent Crimes Squad, and asked if they had a list of Denise Albright’s other clients. “Laura Williams with White Collar might have that information,” she told him, “but it wasn’t in the file that Rachel gave us.”
Zach promised to have something by the end of the day.
As they ate, Lucy said, “While I think everyone is capable of killing under the right circumstances, I don’t see Kiefer hurting this family.”
“I agree,” Nate said. “Whoever killed this family is uniquely cold. Brutal. Absolutely no regrets—he killed three kids.”
Two, Lucy thought—two because they hadn’t found Ricky Albright’s remains. She still leaned toward the idea that he was dead, but until they found his body there was a chance, however slim, that the boy was still alive.
But if he’s alive, where has he been for the last three years?
She sent Zach a message and copied in Laura Williams, in case she already had the information, and asked if there was any evidence of Albright—husband or wife—having a gambling or drug problem, or any other addiction or debt that might explain the theft. Or a family member who had an addiction. It didn’t quite feel right, but it was something—a reason for her taking the money in the first place.
How does someone go from law-abiding to criminal overnight?
Denise Albright had no criminal record … but Lucy also knew that might not mean anything. Maybe she wasn’t as squeaky clean as she seemed to be. Yet … she had a family, roots, friends, a career. How did someone with so much to lose end up embezzling so much money?
She didn’t see drugs—on the little they knew about the family, she didn’t think one of them would have such a serious problem that it would cost millions to cover up. Gambling? That was possible. Gambling could incur huge losses that Albright may have been desperate to pay off. For her or her husband.
Or she could have been blackmailed—maybe having an affair, or she or her husband had done something illegal. She didn’t know the family well enough to know whether they were the type who might hit and run or gamble away someone else’s money. Albright was an accountant—maybe she did accounting for the wrong people.
And that was the crux of the problem. She didn’t know the family, not well enough to profile. All she knew was on the surface—three kids, two-income household, living an hour outside of San Antonio possibly for the quiet lifestyle, possibly because it was cheaper. House on a couple of acres. She had to look into the kids as well. Grades, disciplinary actions. If there was a sudden dip in grades it could signal something wrong in the house.
Until she knew who the Albrights were before they died, there was no way she could effectively work this case.
“What are you thinking?” Nate asked.
“We don’t know them,” she said. “We don’t know Denise or Glen or their kids. If we don’t know them, we can’t understand why she took the money—or who killed her.”
“We can assume that the three million dollars is the motive.”
“It appears to be … but that would mean she took the money for someone else.”
“Blackmail?”
“Maybe. But if blackmail, why kill her if she paid?”
Nate thought on that. “Let’s assume they left the country as everyone thought. Instead of paying the blackmailer, they decided to run. The killer tracked them down.”
“Then why not kill them in Mexico where their bodies wouldn’t be found?”
“Maybe the killer kept the kid as insurance, sent the family back to the US to get the funds.”
“But the money was all transferred electronically. It’s not as if they had cash buried.”
“Unless she converted the funds to something tangible—like gold or bonds.”
“Is that easy to trace?”
“Depends. Laura would have a better handle on that.”
“Still doesn’t explained why they were murdered.”
“Maybe she took money from other clients,” Nate suggested. “Maybe Kiefer wasn’t the only victim.”
“And then what? She worked for someone who would rather kill than file charges?”
“Especially if that someone wasn’t running a legal business.”
It was a possibility but seemed a stretch. This was why Lucy didn’t work in White Collar. Her husband, Sean, understood how financial crimes worked—and didn’t work—but she would much rather solve an old-fashioned homicide than figure out how money was laundered.
Lucy said, “We need to talk to friends, family, neighbors. The Young family that were the last known to have seen Ricky Albright. He was last seen hours after the girls and the parents. That in and of itself seems odd.”
“Because if they were planning to leave the country, they would have told Ricky to come straight home after school.”
“Exactly. Or picked him up at school, or at the Youngs’. He didn’t leave until six o’clock. I want to confirm everything they told the detectives three years ago, and ask the kids if there was anything Ricky said that made them concerned. Something out of character.”
“They would have told the original investigators.”
“If they asked the right questions. At the time, the kids were nine, going on ten. Fourth grade. Maybe the detectives didn’t even talk to the kids.”
“They might not remember three years later.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But when your best friend disappears, you tend to remember everything that happened the last day you saw them.”
That she knew from experience.
* * *
Lucy and Nate drove directly to the Youngs’ house from Bandera. It was exactly 1.3 miles from the Albright house using surface streets, but the neighborhoods were filled with ranch homes on large, unfenced properties. It would be easy to cut through open space or use dirt trails that zigzagged through the area. The trek would be closer to half a mile as the crow flies.
Cut and Run Page 3
