Corus and the Case of the Chaos

by Mark Hazard

  “What sorts of classes did he take?”

  “Rosen is getting transcripts right now.”

  “Got anything more on him?”

  “He has an arrest for drunken disorderly with a Minor-in-Possession.”

  “Kids will be kids. Doesn’t tell us much. Any military service? Social Media?”

  “He has a Twitter account, but doesn’t seem to use it much. Nothing else. No military service.”

  “Really…”

  “You seem disappointed.”

  “Everything from the crime said military precision to me.”

  “Maybe he had other training.” Chu shrugged. “On the job so to speak.”

  “Could be. We get any W2s?”

  “Not yet. I asked Prangnathong to look into it.”

  Rosen stepped into the room, holding papers up. “I got two different community colleges to fax me his transcripts. He studied web-design, networking, programming.” He paused, mouth open. “He’s… he’s a computer geek.”

  Corus brows furrowed at odd angles.

  “Whoa now,” Chu said. “Never underestimate us geeks.”

  Corus’ phone rang, and he answered.

  “So I asked some innocuous questions to a buddy who used to work at Pac-Trust,” Adam said. “With a little better knowledge of their systems, I dug around via Badcocke’s computer. Found a couple dozen closed accounts, many whose balances were over 100k, roughly one for every transaction with Oversight Management. Give or take.”

  “And the amounts?”

  “Close enough.”

  “Names on the accounts?”

  “Each account was corporate, but there should be public records.”

  Corus and Rosen drove to Olympia to find the public records. By closing time they had a list of names. By 8pm they found that every one of those names was a fake identity.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Do that thing to my scar again,” Corus said, “and gimme the biggest needles you got. Use goddam knitting needles if you have to.”

  Eugene Simms motioned to the table and said “Why don’t you get ready, and I’ll be back in a minute.

  “You know, Chu says he doesn’t have to take off his clothes.”

  “What Chu sees me for, I don’t need much access.”

  Corus did as he was told and pulled a towel over his rear.

  Eugene returned a minute later holding a box. “So how’s the great battle?”

  “The case I’m working on… it’s become rather complex. And ever since you did that thing to my scar, I’ve been making gains. Now all my leads went cold again. I just feel all stuffed up.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “I just wish I could see again. I just wish I could be my old self.”

  “Do people tell you you’re different?”

  Corus had to think about that. “No, but I suppose it hasn’t come up.”

  “You say you are making strides. Is that not you being a good detective again?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Let’s just say I’m doing things differently than I used to.”

  “How so?”

  “I used to be able to find perpetrators by the book. But this is the most frustrating case I’ve dealt with, and on top of that, I don’t have my…my…”

  “Your old mojo?”

  “Yes. Goddam it. My mojo.”

  “So, you’ve been coloring outside the lines.”

  “That, or I just see a different, darker set of lines now that take precedence.”

  “Like what?”

  Corus thought for a moment, wanting to express himself clearly to Eugene, to get his perspective, without revealing too much. “Like… order being different from law.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “The law, it’s good. I would never disparage it. We need it, but procedure isn’t order. Order is the goal we seek to attain through things like law and procedure.”

  “You seek mastery.”

  “Mastery? I don’t think I’m above the law…”

  “No. No. That isn’t what I’m saying. You were very good at what you do, yes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You played by all the rules.”

  “Yeah. I was a model detective.”

  “And now, to do your job, you feel constrained by those rules. You’re willing to break them for the greater good?”

  Corus was silent.

  “Sounds like a master artist.” Eugene paused and began placing needles in Corus’ legs. “They apprentice themselves. They learn for years how to obey the rules of painting or sculpture. Then one day, once they have internalized them beyond all fault, they become masters who create the greatest works of art by breaking all the rules when they see something greater.”

  “I’m not an artist.”

  “You sure talk like one. You talk like a writer with writer’s block, like a painter who lost his muse.”

  “Never thought of it that way.”

  “Lemme ask you this,” Eugene said. “Do you think the caterpillar chooses when to become a butterfly? Or does it just change one day, and the caterpillar has to try and keep up with it?”

  “Nature forces the change.”

  “I think you’re right, not being a biologist myself. But I see it in seasons, in animals, in people. Sometimes we change, we grow, and we become very unhappy, because we cant go back to what worked, and we don’t know how to fly when we’ve been crawling all our lives. Some of the most depressed people I ever met were the most capable.”

  Corus laughed. He always laughed when someone really made him think.

  “Something happened to you,” Eugene continued, “and it took your world and shook it around. It might have shook out old things. As great as those were in that season, maybe there are wings you haven’t unfolded yet.”

  “So, you’re telling me I’m a beautiful butterfly?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You don’t think I can get it back. My mojo?”

  “Man, you want the truth? I’m not sure your mojo ever existed. I think you had faith.”

  “Faith?”

  “Faith that reason underpinned everything, that order prevailed, always established itself. You believed in that order, and your identity was a part of that. You were like a kid who had been told all his life he was smart, and you always took tests with confidence and faith in your ability to do school work. You probably knew what the teacher was gonna ask before you even took the test.”

  Corus inhaled then exhaled. He pondered Eugene’s words.

  “And now,” Eugene said, “you come to find that what you were taught in school might have been wrong, even though you had all the answers right.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Kirilov’s nowhere to be found,” Chu said pacing behind his desk.

  Corus set their coffees down and passed them out.

  Rosen pulled the lid off his and blew on it. “We pulled out the stops to find him, but to no avail.” He took a careful sip. “The last job he held on the books was three years ago, working as a network admin for a web startup company in Seattle. His address of record was the home of an aunt.”

  “I called saying I was a bill collector,” Chu said, hands on hips. “She said in a thick accent that they hadn’t seen or heard from Andre in months.

  “So after our numerous revelations…” Corus swept a hand out. “…nothing.”

  “Is there really nothing we can do?” Rosen asked.

  They all thought silently, until Corus pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “It’s a low percentage play, but it’s all we got. Call Andrew Garvey.”

  Rosen met Garvey and led him to holding room B. Another fifteen minutes passed before Corus let himself into the detention room. He silently strode to the table without looking at Garvey and placed a picture of lasagna on the table. Next to it, he placed a screen shot of the Oversight Management home page. Next to that he placed a picture of David Griffin’s mangled head. Lastly, he set down an enlarged image o
btained from Andre Kirilov’s DMV photo.

  Garvey’s smile faded and he breathed harder.

  Corus crossed his hands at his waist and remained silent. After a moment, he laid a list of fake identities used to license the shell corporations who opened accounts at Pacific Trust.

  Garvey’s body language grew more uncomfortable as his eyes scanned the page. His gaze flickered from image to image, then to Rosen and Corus. Then, as if he realized now dismayed he appeared, he eased his shoulders and asked, “What can I help you with, Inspector?”

  “You aren’t here to help me. You are here to help yourself.”

  “I don’t see what any of this has to do with—”

  “Cut the shit.” Corus leaned forward, hands on the table. “Garvey, I am about to pull a thread. And when that thread unravels, you are going to want to make sure you come out the other side alive.”

  Corus tapped on the crime scene photo of David Griffin.

  “Miles Griffin crossed the people he was laundering money for. The people you were and still are laundering money for. And it got him killed. They killed his whole family. To send a message. To make absolutely sure no one would find out what he knew. What do you think they are gonna do to you once the feds descend and rip apart your bank?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “This man says that you do.”

  Garvey’s eyes grew wide. “He what? You have him?” There was genuine shock in his voice.

  “So, you do know this man?”

  “I… no…”

  “Mr. Garvey. The net is closing. You need to decide which side you are on.”

  “I… I think I better have a lawyer present, if I am being considered a suspect in a crime.”

  “Fine. Fine. A lawyer might help protect you from the judge, but,” he laid a hand on Kirilov’s picture, “he won’t be able to protect you from him, his friends or his employers.”

  “Am I free to go?” Andy asked.

  Corus paused a moment before nodding.

  “Well?” Chu asked. Corus sat in the chair by the office door.

  “I know he is involved. He indicated that he might know Kirilov, but then he ran out demanding a lawyer.”

  “So you didn’t get anything?”

  “He might cooperate. He seems scared.”

  “Scared is good.”

  “We shall see.”

  “So, otherwise the case is dead?”

  “Unless Garvey spills something useful, or Kirilov shows up. We have no way of knowing who really opened those fake shell corporations and we have no way of tracking how Oversight Management moved its money.”

  “Do you think we’re gonna have to make the call?”

  “The FBI?” Corus shook his head. “God, I hope not.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  At 9:20 that evening, Corus sat at home, enjoying a fine dark beer and watching a documentary about brewing. He was considering learning how to homebrew when his phone started buzzing. Corus saw it was Chu and answered, “No, L-T for the last time, I do not want to watch the Smurfs movie with your family.”

  “Corus, I need you.”

  He made a face. “Say what now?”

  “1524 Dreisler Ave. Bellevue. Come now.”

  “You know I’m not supposed to take on other cases, L-T.”

  “Just come now!”

  Corus hung up, shook his head and set his beer down. He thought a moment before picking it back up, taking it to the kitchen and resealing it with a bottle stopper clamp.

  One winding road led to another in the swanky residential area just south of the town. He caught a couple of shadowy glimpses of Lake Washington and the equally expensive neighborhoods on Mercer Island, which sat in the middle of the lake. Their lights shimmered dully on the water. A misting rain dotted his view, and Corus turned on his windshield wipers.

  His phone told him to turn left onto Dreisler Avenue, a street full of luxurious homes sat on large, wooded lots. Homes on one side of the street backed right onto the water. Blue and red flashing lights lead him the rest of the way to number 1524. Corus parked across the street and walked up to the yellow tape that ran from the edge of the house, along the driveway and out into the street. Neighbors stood on their stoops and lawns, angling for the best view they could get.

  Corus ducked beneath the tape and walked over to two Bellevue P.D. collecting shell casings and placing them into plastic evidence baggies. He showed them his badge and picked up one of the bags. 5.56x45 was stamped onto the rim of the spent brass. Corus handed the casing back and walked onto the driveway, his shoes crunching on shattered glass.

  Lt. Chu stood next to the open door of a Mercedes SUV, watching a tall, grey-haired Bellevue P.D. detective take photos. Chu didn’t say anything when Corus approached, just acknowledged him with a small nod. Corus peered looked into the vehicle. The driver’s side windows were both shot out, as was the passenger side front. The windshield was shattered but still holding, and the rear window had gone untouched. Bullet holes riddled the driver’s side of the car, from the rear wheel well to the front. Slumped forward onto his seatbelt was Ashleigh Badcocke.

  His head and neck were awash with blood. The left ear hung on by a thread. A chunk of flesh and bone had been blown out of the base of his head behind it, and a gash-like bullet wound exposed the inside of his neck.

  “Are there more wounds?”

  The detective stopped taking photos and pointed to Badcocke’s thigh and back.

  “May I?” Corus asked before opening the rear door. Three bullet holes dotted the rear of the seat, and the headrest had one too.

  He left the door open, stepped back and looked around. “So the shots were fired from the street?”

  “Looks that way,” the detective said. A uniformed officer strode up to the detective holding a pen and pad of paper. “I talked to all the neighbors, nobody heard gunshots. One lady there,” the young officer pointed to the next house down, about a hundred feet away, “said she heard noises though, like glass breaking and then a car peeling out. Said it sounded like vandalism or something.”

  Corus looked at the side of the Mercedes, and counted nearly twenty bullet holes, which obviously didn’t account for those that passed through the windows.

  “How many casings will we recover there?” Corus asked, pointing to the street.

  “ Before the techs started bagging, I counted five or six,” Chu said.

  “Six?” Corus asked, incredulous.

  “The neighbor said a car peeled out. It was a drive-by,” Chu said. “Most of the casings probably flew into the car.”

  “I’m guessing this is the first drive-by shooting this neighborhood has ever seen,” Corus said.

  “They’ll have quite the story for the country club,” Chu said. “Too bad. This is like my dream car.”

  “You’d do better with an upgraded soccer mom van.”

  “Mindy’s last soccer game of the season is this weekend. You should come.”

  “I dunno,” the detective said, “this Mercedes did a pretty good job of stopping bullets. Maybe that’s why all those third world dictators prefer them.”

  “The dead guy here might disagree with you,” Corus said.

  “Well, yeah he’s dead. He got shot five or six times. Some of these rounds would have hit him, but they didn’t pass through. One deflected off the frame here. The door here stopped three, this door stopped a couple. The seat might have a couple in it too.”

  Corus counted the number of holes in the doors again, nineteen. Then he counted the number of holes on the insides of the doors, six.

  “Thirteen didn’t get through.”

  “That’s like a two-thirds,” Chu said. “If this guy had been riding in my Toyota, we’d be picking pieces of him up off the floor boards. This is quality German engineering.”

  The Medical Examiner’s van arrived, and two techs began the process of removing Badcocke from the SUV.

 
; “Make sure this guy goes to Willy,” Corus told the senior of the two.

  “Who?” the tech asked.

  “Dr. Wilhelmina Pooche. You know, squat, French Canadian…horny.”

  “Don’t know her, man. I just move bodies. I can pass it along, though.”

  “Much competition for your job?”

  “In this economy? Shit, yeah man.” He grabbed Badcocke under the shoulders while the other tech took the feet. They hauled him out and laid him in an unzipped body bag on a slab, which they then lifted onto a gurney. They zipped the bag close. The tech shook his head at Corus. “What the hell was I thinking, getting a Masters in Creative Writing?”

  Corus led Chu away from the bloody scene. “Does any of this look familiar?”

  “You mean does it look Russian?” Chu asked. “It sure as heck does.”

  “Do Russians do drive-bys?”

  “This wasn’t just a spray job. The shooter hit in a pretty good group.”

  “It was tactical,” Corus said. “They stopped to shoot.”

  “So, you bring in Garvey the younger and what, six hours later his boss gets whacked. It’s gotta be related.”

  “I was hoping that calling Garvey in would give me something to go on, but I wasn’t expecting it to be another body.”

  “You think Garvey told them you were onto the money laundering and Kirilov?”

  “Somehow they found out we were uncomfortably close to the truth. Maybe he told them, maybe they just found out he was talking to us. Or, maybe Badcocke said something to them.”

  “So they killed Badcocke to protect themselves.”

  Corus chewed on his lip. “I was going to call him in tomorrow and try to play him off of Garvey or visa versa. And we still don’t have Kirilov.”

  “More bodies, but no arrests. HQ and Captain Barbieri won’t like that.”

  “I’m getting used to disappointing people.”