Hindsight (Daedalus Book 1)

by Josh Karnes

  Chapter 41

  Isla de Vieques, Puerto Rico

  As soon as her boss had left to go back on the wild goose chase at Isla Roca, Morales made a call to California.

  “Burke,” the voice on the phone said.

  “Hey Des. Allison Morales. How's things?”

  “Allison Morales,” Burke said rhythmically like it was a song lyric. “I don't remember you ever making a social call. You need a favor. Lay it on me.” Burke sat back in his chair and a hint of a smile formed while he waited for Special Agent Morales to tell him why she really called.

  Desmond Burke was in Morales's class at Quantico. Twenty grueling weeks that was in small part Lord of the Flies but with way too many type-As all quietly competing. It was a bit like a high school football team in summer training camp, but with thirty quarterbacks and the rest a mix of linemen and tight ends wondering how in the world they'd make the team. Morales was one of the type-As. A quarterback. But she found it hard to fit in, being the only Puerto Rican woman in the entire class. A quarterback is not much good without a team, and Morales figured that, as usual, her naturally tough demeanor and atypical nationality would necessarily turn her into a lone wolf. She didn't make friends easily. Or, more accurately, others didn't find it easy to make friends with her.

  Desmond Burke was not one of the Quantico Type-As. At five-foot-six, Burke wasn't going to keep up with all of the alpha dogs so common to the FBI. His IQ was higher than his weight, and he had an open, almost innocent personality. He made friends with everyone. Some people who don't fit in grow up finding themselves outcast and they withdraw, become hard and private. Allison Morales had. But some go the other way. They become bubbly and open. They make friends when they can and always seem to find joy in those friendships even if they are mistreated. And that was Desmond Burke. The little geek who barely passed his weapons qualification but aced the academics at Quantico was just right to be Allison Morales's only friend at the Academy. He was the only one not repelled by her hard exterior.

  “Not much for chit-chat? Are you all-business now Des?” Morales was still manipulating the poor man. Teasing him. She couldn't help it. It was her way. It was actually the foundation of most of her friendships.

  “Come on, Allison. I'm not some noob you have to chat up in order to get me to help you. If you're going to use me, then get on with it.” Burke was grinning now. He was playing along, teasing her back. For a fleeting moment, Burke considered if Allison was the one that got away. But that only lasted a second until he dismissed it. No way, he thought. She was just a sad, mean woman he met a long time ago who never cheered up. She needed guys like him in her life, but he didn't need women like her, even if she was tall and kind of hot in a “don't look at me or I'll punch you in the face” kind of way.

  “Alright, you got me.” she said. “I do need a favor. We're working a missing person case, teenager, and I need to chase down some financials for the family.”

  “You think it's kidnapping. And I guess you're calling me because,” he hesitated, “it's a numbered account, SAC won't get a warrant, et-cetera, et-cetera.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You have me all figured out,” she said in mock offense, still playing along.

  “Details?”

  “James Allen Grady. Houston, Texas.” she continued giving James's details including social security number, date of birth, and place of employment.

  “Yeah, I got him,” Burke said after a string of rapid typing on his laptop. “Engineer... looks like... bought a house not too long ago, not cheap, paid cash.” Burke whistled at the thought of a plain-Jane engineer paying cash for such an expensive house. “Wife, Melissa, three kids.”

  “Yeah that's the guy. He says he got paid for a piece of work he did about two years ago and that's how he bought the house, also paid off some big debts. But he didn't say exactly what he got paid to do, or who he was working for. We figure he was working with,” she typed a few keys on her own laptop to bring up some notes, “Timothy Wayne—”

  “Timothy Chandler. Got him too. Looks like Timmy here performed a minor miracle in forex. He opens an account on March three, two years ago, a Monday. Two thousand bucks. Three days later, Thursday March six, three trades in a row, four hundred to one leverage, in just a half an hour, wee hours of the morning, and bingo, he closed the account and cashed out four point six million.”

  “Yeah, that, we already knew. What I need to know is how James Grady is connected.”

  “Right. Well I have Jimmy-boy talking to HSBC bank in Switzerland from his home computer, one of them anyway, I can't trace it to a specific one, just his house. His router's IP address. The data's encrypted and we don't capture it anyway, we just have transaction logs, so there's no way to get exactly which account he was talking to. But it's no stretch to connect the dots. A few hours after Timmy closed the forex account, there was activity from their office computer, TCP Compudyne, talking to HSBC. Can't be a coincidence. Two accounts opened at HSBC originating from TCP Compudyne's network. Without deep-packet inspection, no way to know how much was deposited in each account. And this was two years ago, so we don't have the data anyway even if we could look. Then you have a lot of transactions from James's home network to HSBC, cashier's checks out of one of the numbered accounts in amounts equal to big debts James paid, including the house and it looks like a debt settlement about three hundred thou. A bunch of other smaller cashier's checks written out of that HSBC account throughout the last two years, without running the math I'd have to guess a grand total less than two fifty K.”

  “Okay, so we have some idea how much he spent from the HSBC account, right?”

  “We can know exactly how much he spent, if you want it. That'll take a minute. But you want to know how much is in there now, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well I can make a good guess. See here the other account opened on the same day, we assume is Timothy Chandler, is still open but we have a two-point-three million or so transfer to a Caymans account. I can't follow the trail after that without opening a file and going deep. But I think it's safe to assume that's half of the four point six he made on the forex deal, and the other half must have been in James's account. James has withdrawn roughly a million from his HSBC account in cashier's checks, so I think it's safe to assume he's got a million three left in there. Give or take. I'm just making quick numbers in my head, but it's probably close.”

  Morales considered this. Just one point three million in a numbered account was not nearly enough to justify a kidnapping motive.

  “Anything else in there? Has James been getting cashier's checks from other accounts? Or making big deposits to his personal bank account in Houston?”

  “No. Looks like his paycheck gets direct deposited like clockwork into his personal bank account. They move a little bit around to a savings account, pay into a 401K, ordinary stuff. But nothing sticks out. No big deposits. And I don't see any other numbered accounts. Looks like your Bond villain is pretty boring. If this was my case, I'd start by guessing James was partnered with Chandler on the forex deal even though it was done in Chandler's name and he got an even cut. Chandler's on the run and did a good job hiding his tracks, but James is not really trying to hide. He put the money somewhere that we can't look without a warrant so it keeps the IRS off his trail directly and either IRS, Treasury or SEC would have to want to look into this to run him down for something illegal. He doesn't have a mortgage on that house so he's not taking a big deduction on interest, IRS may not notice. Whatever he did he probably got away with it. But it's small potatoes. Looks like a one-shot deal, James got a big payday for an engineer and packed it in. Sorry Allison. Looks to me like your guy is pretty clean. Not spotless, but unless he's a criminal genius who made his two million dollar deal only slightly hard to find while doing hundreds of millions of bad deeds totally off the radar, then I don't see how he's a target for kidnapping.”

  “That's what we thought too. Had to check. I just get
the feeling from the guy that he's not being honest with us. He's hiding something.”

  “Yeah, he's hiding something. He's hiding two million dollars that he got by some miracle of forex trading that was probably illegal to start with, and he probably owes half of it in taxes and penalties even if it was legal. But my guess is he's hiding this because he's not a criminal, generally speaking. He's probably more afraid you'll tell his wife about it than he is afraid of prosecution.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, Allison. Look, not everyone is a crook. There are nice people out there. Lots of them. If I were you, I'd give this guy a break. I mean, his kid is missing, right?”

  “Right. His youngest son, Joseph. Age seventeen.”

  “Geez, Allison! Go find the kid. Stop catching bad guys for a second and help some good people.”

  Morales felt the anger start to rise up. She began to craft a retaliatory response to Burke's admonishment. But then she softened before she said anything. After all, she had called the one FBI agent she knew who had a heart. And Burke was right.

  “Okay, Des. I hear you. Thanks for checking all this for me,” she said.

  “Glad I could help. Now I have to go, got real bad guys to hunt down. Take it easy, Allison.”

  “I'll try,” she said, and hung up.