LIES OF THE PHOENIX (A Lieutenant Cassidy Mystery Book 1)
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After several hours she looked up at the clock and was surprised to see it was after noon. She felt hungry and decided it was time to get something to eat. She also was ready to get away from her desk for a little while. She neatened up the piles of papers she had been working on and walked out to the front desk.
“Annie, I’m going out to grab a sandwich. I won’t be gone long. If anyone calls, just put them into my voicemail.”
“O.K., Mrs. Lawrence.” Annie watched through the glass door as Sarah left the office and walked toward the bank of elevators.
A minute later Ben walked through the office door and was standing in front of the reception desk. “Hi, Annie. Could you call for Sarah? I thought I would surprise her and take her to lunch,” he said with a smile.
“Oh, I’m really sorry, Mr. Taggert. She just left a minute ago to get something to eat. I’m surprised you didn’t run in to her at the elevators.”
“She left? Did she say where she was going?”
“No. She said she wouldn’t be gone long, though.”
Ben raced back towards the elevators. He punched the elevator button and the doors miraculously opened. He was hoping to catch her before she went out on the street by herself. The elevator coursed to the ground floor without stopping and he jumped out of the car as soon as the doors opened. Sarah was nowhere to be seen. He ran out onto the sidewalk and looked up and down the street, but she wasn’t there.
* * * * *
Sarah’s plan was to run to the deli, pick up a coffee and a sandwich, and then return to the office to work on the mountain of papers still cluttering her desk. She pushed the elevator button and waited. The doors opened almost immediately and she walked into the vacant elevator car. She watched as the doors slowly started to close. Her mind started to drift into that vegetative state that people enter into when they ride elevators. Suddenly a hand reached in between the doors and the doors sprung open again. It startled her. She hadn’t seen anyone in the hallway when she entered the elevator. A large brutish man in a dark coat and a hat pulled low over his eyes pushed his way in and stood off to the side as the door closed again.
Sarah and the new passenger stared vacantly at the front of the elevator as it started to descend again. His presence made her uncomfortable and she hoped someone else would get on the elevator. She didn’t look at him and just wished the elevator would speed to the first floor. Suddenly the stranger’s arm shot forward and hit the emergency stop button. He whirled toward her, grabbed her around the neck, and forced her face first into the wall of the elevator. Her face hit the hard surface with such force that blood began streaming from her nose. The next thing she knew there was a knife pressing against her throat and she was pinned against the wall by an arm the size of a tree trunk. She could not see her attacker’s face. All she could see was the back of her assailant’s right hand that was holding the knife pressed against her throat. An ugly scar snaked across the back of his hand. In the corner of her field of vision she could see the knife hilt. It looked to be made of ivory or bone with some type of etching on it.
“Don’t scream, don’t move, don’t do anything, Sarah,” the stranger growled. “Tell me where your husband is. Tell me now or the rest of your day is going to get very unpleasant.”
She was terrified, but tried to compose herself and think.
“I don’t know where he is. I wish I did!” She could barely get the words out. “He walked out on me without a word.”
The pressure on her back eased some, but the knife remained at her throat. She could feel a trickle of blood running down her neck from where the blade bit into her skin. Droplets of blood dripped from her nose onto her blouse.
“He has something that doesn’t belong to him. I’m here to get it. Then he’s a dead man.”
She could feel the vapor of his hot breath on the side of her face.
“He’ll contact his pretty little wife. I know he will. And when he does, you find out where it is. Tell him I will kill you if he doesn’t produce it.” He leaned close to her ear and hissed, “And Sarah, that is a promise I will keep.”
“He never told me anything. I don’t know what you are talking about.” Her voice quivered and she was shaking as she said it. She was hoping that her attacker would believe that she knew nothing of Jordan’s involvement.
He pressed the knife into her neck and she could feel another wet trickle of blood run down her skin.
“It’s information, Sarah. Financial account information he stole in L.A. Something very small, a computer flash drive. And you’ll have to convince him to give it up, or find it yourself.”
He shoved her face against the wall again with a crushing force and blood smeared across her cheeks. “If you know what’s good for you, you will ride this car down to the ground floor. I’ll be in touch.” He released the emergency stop button and exited the elevator at the next floor. She never saw his face.
The elevator raced to ground floor without a stop and Sarah stumbled out. Blood covered her face and blouse. She had put her hands to her nose to stem the bleeding and the blood now covered her hands. People in the lobby looked at her in horror. A security guard rushed over and helped her to a bench. Someone thankfully gave her a handkerchief that she was now pressing to her nose.
Just then Ben came back into the building from the sidewalk where he had been looking for her. He saw the commotion in the lobby and went to see what was going on. He pushed his way through a throng of people blocking his path and then he saw her. Within a second he was at her side.
“Sarah, are you alright.” She didn’t answer, she just sat there shaking. He put his hands on either side of her face and looked for any wounds. He saw the blood still oozing from her nose, a small cut on her neck and one over her right brow, and then some bruising just starting to develop, but no other major injuries. He was relieved. There was a lot of blood, but it seemed to have come mostly from her nose bleed. He took out his phone and called 911 and then sat down beside her. She buried her face in his chest and started to cry.
“Sarah, tell me what happened.” He didn’t know what had occurred and Sarah didn’t seem to be able to answer. He looked around the lobby, “Did anyone see what happened to her?”
A woman stepped forward and said, “She just got off the elevator looking like that.”
“Did anyone else get off that elevator with her?” Ben asked.
“No, just her,” the woman said.
Ben reached down and put his hand under her chin and lifted her face from his chest, “Sarah, look at me. I know you’re upset. We’ll get you out of here as soon as possible, but you have to try to tell me what happened. ”
Sarah looked at him with her eyes brimming with tears. She whispered, “A man attacked me in the elevator. He had a knife. He wanted to know where Jordan is. He’s going to kill Jordan and me if he doesn’t get what he wants. It’s information on the financial accounts Jordan worked on in L.A. It’s on a flash drive.”
Ben could feel her whole body shaking. He could feel the rage rising in his own. Against his better judgment he left her on her alone last night and let her go to work today. How could he have been so stupid! It wasn’t going to happen again.
An EMS unit pulled up to the front of the building and two medical technicians came running in. Ben jumped to his feet and pulled one of them aside explaining that she was a victim of an armed assault and recommended they take her to the hospital to be checked out. After a quick assessment, they agreed. Ben then pulled out his cell phone and made a call to Lieutenant Cassidy as he road to the hospital with Sarah.
Chapter 18
NORA CASTLE HAD been on the phone for an hour with Lieutenant Paul Kozlow of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Organized Crime Unit. Vladimir Zykov had been on their watch list for some time and the news of his death and a possible Chicago connection had opened a new focus of investigation for them.
She was happy to have the L.A.P.D.’s help, but Lieutenant Kozlow was worth
his weight in gold. He had taken the case information and had run with it. His unit had been seeing an encroachment of organized crime into the international investment world and this was a lead that could break things open for them.
Kozlow had made contact with Lloyd Nash’s former Los Angeles employer, Markwall Investment Group. At first the investment firm closed ranks and refused police access to financial information citing privacy issue and stating that in-house accountants were more than qualified to identify any unauthorized access or theft. The firm promised to do their own in-house audit, but was confident that their routine accounting measures would have already turned up any suspicious activity. A few days after being contacted by the police, Markwall Investment Group reported back that their audit had shown no discrepancies.
Lieutenant Kozlow thanked them for their cooperation and then proceeded to obtain a court order from a sympathetic judge to allow a forensic accountant access to the Markwall Investment Group books. Kozlow had already found cell phone records linking Lloyd Nash to the Potestas crime organization known to be dabbling in high end financial crime. Nash’s mysterious disappearance from his life and job in L.A., his appearance in Chicago with a new identity, and his connection to the death of Vladimir Zykov, a noted L.A. crime figure, sealed the deal with the court and a search warrant was issued. The Markwall account books were now open to the L.A. police.
Nora listened attentively to everything Lieutenant Kozlow had to share. She updated him on the Chicago investigation and thanked him for his help. The pieces of the puzzle are coming together, she thought. She picked up her yellow note pad and headed to Lieutenant Cassidy’s office. As usual, his door was open and he was pouring over one of the stacks of paper on his desk
Cassidy looked up as Nora’s figure appeared in the doorway. “Come on in. Anything new to report?”
“Just talked to the L.A.P.D. Organized Crime Unit. They sent a forensic accountant over to look at the books at Jordan Lawrence’s old investment firm. They found some big discrepancies.”
“Let’s hear it.” Cassidy leaned back in his chair as if settling in for an interesting story.
“The forensic accountant said that there was a massive security breach in the firm’s computer system. It doesn’t show up in the current accounts, but in tracking unusual access pathways into the system through old archived accounts. That’s probably why the firm’s in-house audit didn’t pick up anything unusual. They were only looking at current account activity.
Some of the accesses were done from Lloyd Nash’s computer and some from other employees’ computers. The random accesses made it look like employees were just innocently looking up account histories. The time stamps for those other accesses, however, were mostly after hours or on weekends, not during normal business hours.
The forensic accountant said confidential data on almost all the big accounts had been accessed and compromised. That information would be worth millions on the black market. Electronic fund transfers could be made and no one would know until the account was drained of assets.”
“Our suspicions are proving correct,” Cassidy said.
“The forensic accountant is working with Markwall Investment Group to protect their accounts from any future unauthorized access, but that pilfered data presents a real threat to their present investments and clients. If the data is sold, it could send some big financial concerns into a tailspin that could crash the market. But Markwall can’t sell off the investments to protect assests either. There is such a large quantity of stock involved that dumping it into the market all at once would result in financial chaos and huge losses from which many of their investors would never recover.”
“Did the forensic account say whether there has been any unusual market activity to date?” Cassidy looked deep in thought.
“He said so far everything looks stable. It doesn’t look like Lawrence has sold the data as yet.”
Cassidy’s attention snapped back to Nora. “Good. We want to keep the data breach under wraps. Tell Lieutenant Kozlow there should be no publicity on this. Have him tell Markwall Investment to keep things quiet for now. We want Jordan Lawrence and the L.A. crime group to believe their scheme is still a secret.”
“I don’t think there will be any problem with Markwall Investment keeping quiet. They don’t want anyone to know there was a security breach. There is something else though—”
Cassidy gave a nod to Nora to continue.
“The forensic accountant said that he found a very interesting embezzlement scheme going on as well. It involved a tiny fee of a few pennies being added to every share of stock that was traded or sold at the firm. It was identified as a transactional service fee, but it was so small and obscure it never attracted anyone’s attention. The in-house accountants never picked up on it because it looked like a legitimate transaction fee on every share sold over the last couple of years. Who’s going to question a fee of a penny or two on a share of stock selling for a hundred dollars or more in transactions of millions of dollars? The service fee was siphoned off into another corporate account that looked legitimate to pay firm expenses, but then bogus invoice billings were used to empty that account. The forensic accountant said that given the huge volume of trading done by Markwall Investments, those pennies added up over the last two years to more than $450,000.”
“Lawrence arranged a nice financial cushion to tide himself over while he worked out a multi-million dollar deal for the stolen account data.” Cassidy was thinking out loud as he sorted through this new information in his head. “He had a falling out with his L.A. crime associates and now he is on the run from them. Zykov was sent to collect on the deal, but Lawrence outsmarted him. One thing for sure, with Zykov dead, the L.A. syndicate will be sending someone else to do the job.”
“Yes, he—”
Just then the department clerk, Mark, appeared at Lieutenant Cassidy’s door. “Excuse me Lieutenant, there is someone named Ben Taggert on the line for you, he said it’s urgent.”
“Thank you, Mark. Go ahead and put the call through.”
The phone on Cassidy’s desk buzzed and he picked it up. “This is Cassidy. Ben?” Cassidy’s expression turned dark as he listened intently to the caller. After a few moments he said, “Stay there, we’re on our way.” He looked at Nora. “Sarah Lawrence was attacked at her work. She’s at the hospital. We need to get over there.”
* * * * *
Sarah sat propped up on an Emergency Room cart with Ben at her side. The ER physician had just been in and reported that x-rays showed no broken facial bones, but two black eyes were already blooming across her face. Her nose was tender and swollen, but not broken. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and could feel a gouge where her tooth had cut into the inside of her lip. She was glad that none of her teeth were broken. She had a small cut on the left side of her neck and one over her right brow, but the Emergency Room physician had said that the wounds did not require suturing.
Lieutenant Cassidy and Detective Castle stood at the foot of the ER cart. Cassidy had finished questioning Sarah. She had been unable to give a detailed description of her attacker aside from his clothes and general height, weight, and body build, but her description of the scarred hand and the ornate knife hilt were a start. Cassidy gave a nod to Nora and she immediately understood his meaning. She was starting to anticipate his thoughts.
She stepped into the hallway, pulled out her phone and called the precinct. “This is Detective Nora Castle, put me through to Homicide.”
Detective Jake Walski answered the call.
“Hi, Jake. Listen, I need you to contact Lieutenant Paul Kozlow at L.A.P.D.’s Organized Crime Unit. We have a new player in the Lawrence case and we need some help identifying him.” She gave Jake the meager physical description of Sarah’s assailant, along with the identifying hand scar and a description of the knife. “See if they can come up with anything and get back to me right away if they can I.D. our suspect. Thanks.”
“We know that your husband has access to a large cache of embezzled money,” Cassidy said. “It is how he has been funding himself since he came to Chicago. Are you aware of any separate bank accounts that he maintained? A safety deposit box, or any place where he might hide cash?”
“Please don’t call him my husband,” she said defensively. She sat up and ran a hand through her tangled hair. “I checked our bank accounts and credit card balances and everything looked normal.” She was quiet for a moment, then with a note of determination in her voice she said, “I want to get back to my house. Maybe I can find something that will help.”
Ben had been standing quietly next to Sarah letting Cassidy do his job. Now he jump in. “No, wait a minute. You are not in any shape to go anywhere today. And you certainly aren’t going back to your house!”
“I have to agree with Ben,” Cassidy said. “Our forensic team has already gone through your house.”
“I don’t mean to disparage your team’s efforts, but my house contains my stuff and I’m the only one that knows what should or shouldn’t be there,” Sarah said. “If your team is done rummaging around over there, it is my turn now.”
Ben was alarmed by her persistence, “Sarah, this is a bad idea. Somebody could be watching the house.” He looked to Cassidy for support, but there was none.
Cassidy stared off into space thinking for a minute and then said, “Alright. You and Ben can go tomorrow. I will send a uniformed officer with you. A squad car parked out in front should be a deterrent to anyone. You can have an hour or so and then I want you out of there. Do you understand?” He looked directly at Sarah and she nodded her agreement.