Corus and the Case of the Chaos

by Mark Hazard

  “It’s real enough,” Adam said. “They did quite a few successful trades for PacTrust. Four, five, six percent sometimes. Smaller amounts, from $600,000 up to $4.3 million. Looks like one transfer a month for the last fourteen months or so. A little more sporadically before that.”

  “Aha!” Fletcher said. “I got you, you porky bastard.” He finally put his phone away and sat down in the booth, shoving Adam over. “Now lemme see.”

  Fletcher ran a finger over the screen. “Greely, Colorado? That’s out of the way for such an institution.”

  Adam did an internet search for the bank and found a one page website describing the bank’s services in broad terms. “There’s no contact info. Just an email form.”

  “That seems funny.” Corus scratched at his jaw. “If it’s money being laundered, how could we trace it?”

  “These Oversight Management folks will be redirecting it overseas,” Fletcher said. “Oversight and the offshore bank take their cut along the way.”

  “But Oversight is paying it all back to PacTrust, plus a return,” Corus said. “How is the money growing if people are taking their bites? How is it being laundered if it’s all coming back to PacTrust, and not their mystery client?”

  Adam stared at his screen. “I can think of a couple of ways. When you take a deposit – say there is a million in someone’s account – I sort of create a million dollars that I go and use to invest, backed if you will by your real dollars.”

  “So it’s electronic money?” Corus asked.

  “More or less. Yes. It only exists in bank computers. To launder your dirty money, I have to make an investment and find a way to get some profit back to make it seem legit on the bank’s end. So I could use electronic bank funds for the fake investment, then take a million dollars out of your account, route it to my intermediary bank, then use that as my supposed return. It’s complicated, but plausible. In reality a client would flip out if you closed their account and didn’t give back their money. It’s a built-in alarm for misdeeds, but what if that client never got their money, but they never complained either? Who would know?”

  “Yeah, but the supposed profits are still coming back to the bank,” Fletcher said. “That doesn’t give the laundering client a credible income.”

  “So how does Oversight Management pay Pacific Trust back that money plus profit but also get clean money to the client?” Corus asked.

  Fletcher piped up again. “I would get the dirty money to Oversight Management along with the bank funds. Never having the client funds be more than four or five percent of the total. Then Oversight Management can send it overseas where the real magic happens.”

  What kind of magic?” Corus asked.

  “It’s different in every territory,” Adam said.

  “It could be different at each bank in said territory,” Fletcher said. “There’s a lot of brilliant minds trying to think up ways to use red tape to mask their greedy deeds. I bet a new idea is born every day somewhere.”

  “So, I’m a criminal who needs to launder my money,” Corus said. “I smurf my cash deposits to get the money into the bank. The bank takes that money, closes my account, and sends it to a fake broker who sends it to a different bank who makes five and five turn into eleven? This… this all just makes my head hurt.”

  “It’s not supposed to make sense,” Fletcher said. “Otherwise, you all would figure out what we banker fucks do.”

  Corus was having a hard time visualizing it all. “I’m beginning to wonder if you bankers have more control than we could possibly ever imagine.”

  “It’s not all below board or so convoluted,” Adam said.

  “Yeah,” Fletcher said with a smile. “Not all of it.”

  Corus handed Adam a napkin and a pen. “Draw it for me.”

  Adam pushed his laptop to the side, drew an oval and wrote “PacTrust” in the center. “So, here we have the bank.” He drew a curving line and a smaller circle at its end and labeled it “OM”. “We think this we think is a semi-legitimate bank, a brokerage front called Oversight Management.” He added another curving line away from the top of PacTrust’s oval. The circle at the end he entitled “Foreign Bank”. Then he drew two arrows pointing up into the PacTrust oval. “Here are the smurfed deposits coming into the bank from the laundering client.”

  “I see,” Corus said.

  “No, you’ve got it all wrong.” Fletcher picked up the napkin and made a face. “Besides, you’ve just drawn the female reproductive organs. These are the ovaries, fallopian tubes. You’ve got your uterus here in the center and woooop.” Fletcher made an upward motion with a finger. “You’ve even included a vagina. Nice Adam. Very nice. But sadly it’s wrong.”

  Fletcher took the pen and scribbled out the fallopian tube leading from the foreign banking ovary to the PacTrust uterus and drew a line from the “OM” bubble to a box he entitled Foreign banks. “The foreign bank won’t make transfers back to PacTrust. They’ll route the principal and profits back through Oversight Management. OM takes their portion of the profits and makes the transfer back to the PacTrust bank. The foreign bank takes the client’s laundered money out of the profits and sends it to them directly. Probably as a foreign direct investment in a company.” Fletcher drew a swooping line to the base of the diagram.”

  “So the smurfed money gets buried in a larger amount?” Adam asked. “Yeah,” he said to himself. “Yeah, you take the money to be laundered, fold it into a much bigger piece, send it overseas for investment, make a profit larger than the client’s sum you are laundering, then remove the client sum and send it to them as an investment.”

  “Give me an example,” Corus said. “Round numbers.”

  “So, let’s say we are sending a million total dollars. $50,000 of that is the sum we wish to launder.”

  “Then we ship that overseas via Oversight Management,” Fletcher said. “They turn a profit of seven percent. So we have $1,070,000. They take out the original $50,000, take let’s say a fee of thirty percent and remit the remaining $35,000 to the laundering client.”

  “That’s pretty steep,” Corus said.

  “It’s cheap compared to prison,” Fletcher said

  “Of course, they would underreport their earnings,” Adam said, “and send back $1,020,000, a two percent profit to Oversight management. They take a point and send the final sum plus the remaining profits to Pacific Trust.”

  “They would probably close the client’s accounts where the $50,000 came from,” Fletcher added, “in order to make seemingly better profits for the bank and the conspirators.”

  “Is there any way we can see if the account closures are happening?” Corus asked.

  “Sure, there will probably be some evidence of it.” Adam pointed to his laptop.

  “None of this will be admissible,” Corus said. “I won’t get anyone on the banking crimes. I just need to find shooters.”

  “I’ve been thinking about our friend Miles,” Fletcher said. “So what is it? Did Miles steal? Skim a little off the top?”

  Adam spoke up. “I think maybe he caught on and wasn’t supposed to know. Or was coerced.”

  Corus could have laughed at how neatly their suspicions reflected their character.

  “Those are my thoughts, too,” Corus said. “Stealing and whistle-blowing are the two best ways to get killed by bad men.”

  “Are you any closer to finding the killer?” Adam asked.

  “Bit by bit.” Corus stood. “Thank you all. If you find any way to link this suspicious activity to a recipient, don’t hesitate to call.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Corus drove to his townhome in Covington, one of a few affluent suburbs southeast of Seattle. He’d bought it with Karen after he joined the King County Sheriff’s office, over a decade ago. Both of their lives left irremovable traces in the home, not that Corus had tried to remove any of them. Karen was serving the second year of her sentence, but the house still remained much the same as the day she’d le
ft it.

  Corus put down his keys and took off his coat. He hung it on the pegs behind the front door, pegs that still held Karen’s coats and scarves.

  After the shock of her arrest and conviction, Corus re-examined their relationship. He’d always known Karen had some issues, but didn’t everyone? Wasn’t adulthood simply learning to manage them? He’d assumed she was just wired with no filter, and with little ability to distinguish acts from their consequences. His acceptance of this characteristic had allowed him to give her a lot of leeway. He never complained when she took on a new passion, be it painting, long-boarding, or even a multi-level marketing business. After all, she’d only be at it for so long before the next thing came along. Karen had difficulty keeping a job for the same reason.

  Corus walked through the living room and into the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of juice and chugged it. He realized how hungry he was, too. It’d been a long damn day, and he’d been so focused on the case, he hadn’t even thought to eat at the diner. Made sense that he was so drained, as he only ever thought much about Karen when he was exhausted.

  She was smarter than the flake people took her for, though. Corus saw it every time she bounced from hobby to hobby. He’d seen her pick up new skills with remarkable ease. It was often enough for Karen to know she could do something. After that, she lost interest. It seemed only a matter of time before she got interested in something illegal. Corus had been too into his own world and career to see the signs forming.

  He walked back to the fridge and looked over the take-out menus pinned to it by magnets.

  He knew he had probably rushed into marrying her, as was so common in the military, but their relationship had been comfortable. They weren’t soul mates, but maybe not everyone needed one. Both held a certain level of respect for the other that made it last. They didn’t spend recklessly, and they didn’t ask the other to change. Her absence showed him how little he actively received from the relationship, though. He missed her at times, but only in the way he missed a good TV show that had been taken off the air. He could easily live without her.

  Now that he was being slightly reckless in the pursuit of his own sort of balance and order, he wondered if that was what she’d been after in her own way. She’d done a bad thing, organizing a cock-fighting ring with her girlfriends. But it wasn’t the most ridiculous thing she’d ever become obsessed with. and Corus was certain she wasn’t a monster seeking decay, seeking to see it all burn. Maybe she’d just wanted to find her own order in the chaos.

  Then again, maybe she really was just fucking nuts.

  Corus ordered Thai delivery and wandered his home aimlessly. He touched the photo of Jenny on the piano. A teacup poodle. Four pounds of love. He’d protested when Karen had brought her home to their base housing at Fort Campbell, which had been his final posting. She said she needed someone to keep her company while he was away on maneuvers. Corus would always remember the day he met Jenny: September 10th, 2001. He was gone for nearly all of the last two years of his active duty service in Afghanistan. Jenny was in their family to stay. She’d always been Karen’s dog, though.

  In the months after Karen went away, Corus had found a friend in that little dog. A bond he’d probably dismissed a hundred times as irrational and overly sentimental, but some things can’t be ignored. As much as it pained him to say it, for being patently ridiculous, she had nuzzled and yipped her way into his heart in a way no human ever had. Something about dogs could leave a man more vulnerable and honest that anything else in the world.

  “We don’t love them because they are loyal,” he muttered, “but because they accept us first.”

  Corus took off his blood-stained clothing, showered, and slipped on a pair of loose jeans and a dark blue t-shirt. He sat on the edge of his bed in the dark, mulling the case.

  Andre Kirilov was out there. He probably worked for the Russian mob, a loose affiliation of criminal families and small town syndicates that had moved their operations with them to America.

  Corus had no particular enmity for Russians. They’d started immigrating in his teens. In the years he was away from Seattle, thousands more had flocked to the Pacific Northwest. Entire villages practically picked up sticks and dropped them right back down in Spokane or Portland or Seattle. Most were hard-working folks who kept their heads down and didn’t make trouble. However, the criminal element that did exist was overrepresented by dead bodies. Be it from a turf war or personal beef, picking up the latest casualty often fell to King County CID. The worst of it was how the Russians held ranks and almost never talked to police.

  He touched the sewn up gash above his eye.

  Investigating Russians for their murders was notoriously difficult and sometimes came to nothing. When you did make any headway, it was two steps back for every one forward. This time he had hard evidence linking Kirilov to the crime. It wasn’t an airtight case, but it was enough to bring to the county prosecuting attorney, who’d been pleased with the evidence Chu presented that afternoon. The warrant would be issued for Kirilov’s arrest in the morning, but finding him wouldn’t be easy.

  Corus opened the drawer in the nightstand beside his bed and removed a Springfield 1911. He took out the magazine, verified it was loaded and reinserted it. He chambered a round and pulled back the slide a second time. A .45 caliber cartridge came pinwheeling out into the air, up and to his right. He reached over with his left hand and tried to catch it, but missed. The round clattered to the floor. Corus held the pistol with his left hand this time, pulled the slide back again and another round came spinning out and away from the gun. He reached out with his right hand and easily caught it.

  Corus reloaded the pistol and put it away.

  He didn’t sleep at all that night.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Early the next morning, Corus arrived at 2nd Precinct. He sat in a small classroom with three other officers, two in uniform, one in plain clothes. Corus wore his usual shirt and slacks under his light brown overcoat. The room had a chill, so he left the coat on.

  A barrel-chested sergeant paced the front of the room going through the procedures for safely gripping a loaded firearm. Corus sipped at his quadruple shot Americano and prayed for death.

  No, he admitted, he didn’t want to die, just to be anywhere other than here. To be back on the case, while things were moving. He wasn’t allowed to carry a gun on duty, though, until he completed this course, a course he had taken in different forms so many times in his life he couldn’t count. He wasn’t going even a step forward, to wade into the deep waters, without a weapon on him.

  A thought struck Corus for the first time.

  It seemed odd that someone who was laundering money for the mob wouldn’t even own a gun. Would Miles and his family be alive today if he had? Could Miles have at least gone down in a hail of brass in the defense of his family? Perhaps, Corus decided. Perhaps not. Corus had a fair idea of how things had played out. If Kirilov had pretended to be room service, he could have barged in and backed up whoever had opened the door for him, most likely the boy or the father based on position. If Kirilov was a professional, there just may not have been the time to decipher the ruse and retrieve a weapon even if the Griffins had owned one, even if Miles had had it sitting in his damn lap.

  Something else tugged at Corus. Would Kirilov also have spilled the food? Brandon Fife had said they ordered two servings of lasagna and two sandwiches, and that he had delivered them in a stack of Styrofoam to-go boxes. Wouldn’t they have been dropped? It would have been very difficult to brandish a 5.56mm rifle while backing the door-opener up and then gingerly setting the food down on the counter before gunning the family down. It was remarkable that none of the food had been left at the scene. However it was done, it was clear Kirilov hadn’t wanted investigators to know he had used the room service. Leave the cops with one more question. Professional.

  Chu and Rosen would have something on Kirilov by now. If he hadn’t ever served in the military, Ame
rican or foreign, Corus was going to be very surprised.

  The barrel-chested sergeant was now droning about proper holstering.

  Corus tried to see it in his head. A man holds a stack of white, Styrofoam to-go boxes in one hand, four high, and a semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle in the other behind his back. He enters the room, then brings the weapon from behind his back and starts shooting. Fully extended, it would have been unwieldy, especially with a suppressor on the end. The precision of the shooting would have been imp—

  “Inspector? Am I boring you?”

  Corus snapped out of his reverie. “No sergeant. I was just thinking about guns.”

  The sergeant eyed him suspiciously before continuing.

  If Kirilov had set the food down, he would have had to take three steps back from the counter to have fired from the position the clues at the crime scene indicated. That didn’t quite make sense, but it wasn’t entirely implausible either.

  The day dragged on, but Corus managed to keep his sanity and not say anything grumpy to get himself in trouble. He passed the written and practical test and received his certificate. He got in his vehicle and opened the glove box. He took out an ankle holster with a Beretta semi-automatic pistol chambered in .22 long rifle and strapped it to his leg. Next, he slid his side holster onto his belt. Corus hefted his service pistol, a Glock 17 9mm, in his hand. The last time he had used it, a vending machine had received the business end of an emotional breakdown. Now, the same gun might help him put the pieces back together.

  He arrived at his precinct around 1pm. Chu waved him into his office. Kirilov’s mugshot taunted Corus from the monitor on the desk, with its placid, almost mocking expression. Brandon Fife had done a remarkable job describing him to the forensic artist, no doubt a curious boon from the months that face had tormented the poor bellman day and night.

  “Andre Dimitrivitch Kirilov,” Chu said, “born 1984, near here in Federal Way, Washington. He attended Challenger High School in Spanaway and took classes at couple of community colleges, but never earned a degree.”