by Trace Conger
“No,” she was shaking now. “Are you going to kill me?” she repeated.
“No, I’m not. But we have a lot to talk about.” Connor returned from the back bedroom. He shook his head indicating it was clean.
I nodded to the other side of the room. “What’s over there?” I said.
“My bedroom and a sewing room,” she said.
Connor crossed the living room with his Glock up and examined both rooms on the other side of the condo. He returned a moment later with the same head shake he’d given me earlier.
“Do you know why we’re here?” I said lowering my weapon and tucking it back behind me.
Jamie Burns looked about forty years old. She was maybe five-foot-three and one-hundred-ten pounds soaking wet. Her shoulder-length brown hair was stringy and frazzled, like she had something more important to focus on than her appearance. Her eyes looked tired, like she’d either been crying or fighting off sleep. She wore blue jeans and a faded long-sleeved, gray t-shirt. She let a deep sigh escape, and for the first time, I noticed she looked relieved.
“You’re looking for my father?”
“William Burns,” I said putting two and two together. “He’s your father?”
“Yes,” she said.
Connor extended a hand, helped Jamie off the ground, and led her to the couch in the living room. “Where is he?” he said.
“Why? So you can go kill him?”
“Nobody wants to hurt your father,” I said. “But he’s holding onto something that doesn’t belong to him, and we’re here to get it back.”
“You’re working for some criminal then?”
“You must know about his business.”
“I know enough to know that someday it was going to get him killed.”
“Do you work for him?” said Connor.
A sneer crossed her lip. “No. I don’t. I like to make my living legally. I run a small sewing business. I don’t condone my father’s work.”
“Where can we find your father, Jamie?” I said. “It’s important that we find him before anyone else does.”
“Who else is looking for him?”
“I’m not sure, but the man I work for hired me to retrieve his money because your father’s been AWOL for a few weeks. I can only assume that your father’s other clients are getting anxious as well. It’s only a matter of time before they come looking for him.”
She didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the look on her face she was running through whatever options she thought she had.
“Where is he, Jamie?” said Connor.
She stood up and walked to the kitchen. Connor placed his hand on the Glock holstered under his jacket and followed her with his eyes.
She picked up a folder from the kitchen table and returned to the living room. Connor relaxed his hand and leaned against the doorway to the hallway that led to the bedroom and sewing room.
“You’re two weeks too late,” she said handing me the folder.
I opened it to find a funeral handout. A copy of the photograph from the Banker’s desk, the one with him, the blonde, and the teenager was on the handout’s cover. Behind the handout was a smudgy black-and-white photocopy of an obituary from a local newspaper. Behind that was William Burns’ official death certificate.
“He’s dead?” I said.
“Lung cancer. He complained of chest pains and I took him to the hospital. He was dead in less than a week. Never even got a chance to go back home.”
I looked over at Connor who stared back at me with a what-the-fuck look. Death was always a possibility, but I figured if the Banker was dead it was because one of his clients popped him. Not cancer.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Really? Just makes your job easier.” She snatched the folder from my hands. “Now you don’t have to kill him.”
“We were never going to kill him.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter anyway,” she said.
“But we still need the money,” said Connor. “That’s what we’re here for. Do you know where it is?”
“I know where it is,” she said walking back toward the kitchen. She opened a drawer in a small hutch next to the kitchen table. I watched as Connor placed his hand back on his weapon. Jamie pulled a thick black book from the drawer, walked across the living room, and handed it to me.
“It’s all in there. Everything about his business. Who he worked for, withdrawals, and deposits.”
I thumbed through the pages. Fine, sharp pencil lines told the Banker’s history. The ledger was divided into sections, each section contained detailed information on the Banker’s clients, deposits, withdrawals, account balances, and the Banker’s commission. It was all there in gray and white. I found the tabbed section that contained Holbrook’s information. The dates went back for years and the current balance was $5,105,317.
“Where is the money now?” I said.
“It’s in a storage facility. Before he died my father told me that I needed to contact his clients and give their money back. That they’d come looking for him and for me if I didn’t.” She looked up at me. “And here you are, just like he said.”
“Why didn’t you return it?” I said.
“What was I supposed to do? Call these guys and tell them I was driving up in a truck filled with millions of dollars and please don’t kill me? I never planned on keeping it, but I didn’t know how to give it back and not get killed in the process.”
“Maybe you were keen to keep it for yourself,” said Connor.
“I didn’t want it. It’s not my money, and I had no interest continuing my father’s business. I’ve got my own business to run. A legal business.”
“Sewing?” I said.
“You’re damn right, sewing.” She studied my face. “Look, you can believe what you want. I wasn’t going to keep the money, but I didn’t really want to give it back to them either. I know the type of people that my father dealt with. He might not have seen anything wrong with it, but I did. I’d just as soon stuff the money in a furnace than give it back to them.”
“While I’d love to sit around and debate the ethics of all this, we really don’t have the time,” I said. “I need you to take us to the money.”
“Are you going to kill me afterward?”
“I already told you, we’re not here to kill anyone. My client hired me to find his money, and that’s what we’re here to do. You take us to it, we’ll get his share, and you’ll never see us again.”
“What about the rest of it?”
“I don’t care about that,” I said. “Do whatever you want with it. It’s not my problem.”
“But, I don’t want it,” she said. “Take it with you. You’ve got the names in that ledger, so you know who gets what. You can take my father’s commission. I don’t want anything to do with it. I just want it to go away.”
The last thing I wanted to be was a delivery boy for the Indianapolis mob, but Jamie had a right to be scared. They’d eventually track her down. It would be easier to return the money, explain what happened, and let everyone go their separate ways. Of course, showing up unsolicited with a truck full of money, even if it was their money, was asking for trouble. It was a shitty position to be in, but then again I was getting used to being in shitty positions.
“I’ll consider it,” I said. “Get your keys and let’s go.”
She snatched her car keys from the kitchen table and took another key ring from the same drawer that contained the ledger.
“I’m Finn by the way.”
WE ARRIVED AT S&F STORAGE, an RV storage complex on South Centerline Road in Mt. Pleasant, Indiana, about 15 minutes after leaving Jamie’s condo. A brown corrugated metal building with a dozen garage-style storage units sat in the middle of the complex. About 30 more units arranged in a horseshoe configuration surrounded the center building. A black metal fence with a sliding gate wrapped completely around the property. The only structure outside the gate was the ren
tal office, a small building that displayed a large red and white banner advertising that units were still available.
Jamie pulled her Subaru Outback to the front gate, and grabbed the key she’d taken from the drawer out of her pocket. She read the four-digit code written on the keychain tag, and punched the code into the keypad. The keypad beeped with every press of her finger and after the fourth digit, the black gate slowly rolled to the right, allowing us to pass into the main area. Jamie drove to the back of the complex and stopped in front of unit 33.
“That’s his,” she said, handing me the key.
“Let’s go,” I said, pointing to the unit.
Connor stepped out of the back seat and surveyed the lot. He nodded toward a security camera attached to the building across from William Burns’ rental unit. I kept my back toward the camera, inserted the key into the lock attached to the unit’s doorframe and turned. The garage door raised until it settled smoothly into the ceiling.
Jamie crossed her arms and shook her head at the white box truck parked in front of us.
At about 35 feet long, the box truck was larger than it appeared on the traffic footage I’d watched earlier. I walked toward the cab and noticed the faded Miller Moving logo on the truck’s side. It hadn’t been visible on the traffic camera footage. I checked the cab, but it was empty. Returning to the rear of the truck, I noticed the unlocked shrouded padlock on the truck’s bumper. Connor stood in the open doorway with an eye on the parking lot and a hand on his holstered Glock.
I yanked the truck’s locking lever up and pulled open the two rear doors.
The back of the truck was empty.
“Jesus Christ,” said Jamie, her hands covering her mouth as they did back at her condo. “It was here! I swear. This is where it was.”
I climbed into the empty truck and studied the inside. Blue painter’s tape segmented the floor into seven sections. Each section contained several empty wooden pallets, which I assumed at one point housed the Banker’s stash.
“You saw the money in here?” I said.
“Yes. I checked it after my father gave me the key.” She pointed into the back of the truck. “The money was stacked into piles. All along the walls. On those wooden things.” She sensed my hesitation. “It was here. You have to believe me.”
She ran her hands through her hair and gave me the same look, part surprise and part terror, which she had worn when Connor and I burst through the front door of her condo. She was telling the truth.
“I believe you,” I said.
“Oh my God!” she drew her hand to her mouth again. “What are we going to do?”
I looked past her to Connor, who now had his hands on his hips. “The only thing we can do,” I said. “Find that money.”
Forty
MOST PEOPLE ARE HELPFUL, ESPECIALLY when it comes to investigating a crime. It’s in our nature to help others, as long as we don’t put ourselves in danger to do it. Over the years, when I’ve interviewed someone to further a case, no one has ever refused to talk to me or told me to “go get a warrant.” At least no one who didn’t have something to lose as a result of my investigation. I’ve had plenty of people who didn’t share anything useful because they didn’t know the information I needed, and I had a few who told me to go fuck myself when I pushed them for information, but chances are they were trying to obstruct my investigation to protect themselves or someone close to them.
In reality, if they have nothing hide, most people will bend over backward to help. Most never even ask to see a badge. Others might be skeptical of my intentions, but as long as I came off confident and non-threatening, they usually answered my questions. I think there’s also a mystique about private investigators, and people get excited about the idea of helping catch a bad guy. Time to test my theories.
Connor stayed in the car with Jamie while I walked to the office on the other side of the black fence. A middle-aged balding man met me inside the office. As he stood up from his desk, an eager grin crossed his face. He probably saw dollar signs thinking he could sell me a storage unit for an RV I didn’t own.
“Afternoon,” he said. “Paul Boyle. How can I help you today?”
“Hi Paul, I’m Roger Mathers,” I said. “I’m hoping you could help me with a criminal investigation.”
“A criminal investigation? What happened?”
“My client rents a storage unit on the other side of the complex there. He recently had some items stolen from his unit, and I’m investigating who might have done it.”
“When did this happen?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but I believe it was sometime in the past two weeks.”
Paul Boyle sat back down at his desk, opened a black three-ringed binder, and flipped through the pages. “It doesn’t look like anyone filed a loss claim with us recently.” He looked up at me. “What unit was it?”
“Unit 33.”
His eyes widened and he shifted in his chair. “That’s Mr. Coyne’s unit.”
“Yes, it is.” I couldn’t tell whether the look on his face was concern, surprise, or anxiety, but he knew the Banker’s public identity. “Do you know him?”
“Not really, but he’s very peculiar.”
“How so?”
He hesitated for a moment. “Look, most of these units store seasonal RVs, so we rarely see the owners. They pop in at the beginning of the summer to get them road-ready and then they’re gone. We see them again later in the year when they winterize the RVs and then lock ‘em up until next year. It’s pretty much the same with the boaters, but Mr. Coyne was here every day.” Boyle pointed to the black security gate. “He drives that truck out in the morning and rolls back in at 8:00 pm. Every day. You could set your watch to it. Been doing it ever since I’ve been here, and that’s been five years. Nothing wrong with it, of course. Just odd behavior compared to everyone else.” He scratched the back of his head. “Do you know what happened to him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t see him in a few weeks. Thought maybe something happened to him. When someone’s that consistent, you notice when they’re not around.”
“Thomas Coyne passed away. Cancer.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“It was very sudden. His daughter hired me, which is why I’m here. She had an inventory of his unit and I was going through his items to confirm we had everything when I noticed that several items were missing.”
“Are you sure the items were in the storage unit? Maybe there was a mistake on the inventory?”
“No, they were accounted for only a few weeks ago.”
“Okay,” said Boyle. “How can I help?”
Paul Boyle was on the hook, but if I started asking too many questions I could lose him. So, I decided to lay on the honesty to ensure that hook went as deep as it could go. It was a carefully orchestrated dance I’d used time and time again.
“Paul, first I have to tell you that since I’m a PI, and not a law enforcement officer, you’re not legally obligated to help me.”
“If it protects our lessors, I’m happy to help.”
“I noticed a security camera across the lot from unit 33. Do you have any archival footage that I could review?”
“We do, but it’s on our internal system, so there’s nothing to take with you. You’ll have to review it here.”
“That’s fine.”
Boyle waved me over to a second desk and took a seat in front of a desktop PC. “Let me pull it up.” He clicked on the computer and opened a video player. “Do you have a specific time frame in mind?”
“It probably would have been sometime over the past week, but I’m sure that doesn’t help you much.”
“It’s okay. Like I said earlier, we don’t get a lot of traffic around here. I can run the footage to stop at any motion on the camera.” After a few of Boyle’s keystrokes, we watched the high-speed camera footage fly across the black-and-white screen. It looked like a Benny Hill chase scene but w
ithout the scantily-clad women or saxophone soundtrack. A minute or so later, the footage slowed to a real-time playback as a pickup rolled past the camera. A man stepped out of the cab, opened the door to unit 37, and stepped in.
Boyle clicked the mouse and the footage sped up to almost comical speeds. The pickup was gone and another three days of footage passed in a matter of minutes. The footage snapped back to real time again as a dark Jeep Grand Cherokee pulling a U-Haul trailer stopped in front of the Banker’s unit. A man got out of the vehicle, opened the garage door, and then backed up the vehicle so the back of the trailer was inside unit 33. Whatever he did next was off camera.
“What do you think?” said Boyle.
“That’s not my client’s vehicle. Can you speed this up a bit?”
Another click of the mouse and we watched the footage race by at 60 times the normal speed. Whoever was in the unit walked out, stepped back into the driver’s seat, rolled forward a few feet, closed the unit’s garage door and then left. I noted the timestamp as 1:13 pm on Friday, the same time Connor and I were rummaging through William Burns’ home.
Boyle was about to click the mouse again when the SUV reappeared on the screen. At first I thought I was watching the same footage over again, but ten minutes had passed on the timestamp.
“He’s back,” said Boyle. What Boyle didn’t know was whoever was in that SUV had piled the Banker’s money into the back of the trailer. He made several trips, because there was a lot of cash to move. The driver probably took the payload to the parking lot and transferred it to a larger truck, and then came back for the rest of the cash. We continued to watch the high-speed footage and counted as the SUV made three return trips.
“Do you have a camera at the front gate?” I said.
“Yeah. Do you want me to pull up the footage from the same timeframe?” Boyle cracked a smile, and I knew he was getting the rush that came with finding a crucial piece of evidence. He was as deep on the hook as he could get.
“Yeah,” I said. “I want to see who else is in the main lot.”
