Instrument of the Devil

by Debbie Burke

  He also noted her look of admiration at the BMW he had rented. He downshifted through the curves on the highway to the Hungry Horse Dam and felt the Z-4’s power surge. A prior search of vehicle registrations revealed the Jeep Wrangler he’d seen her drive, aging and utilitarian, lacking glamour. He’d chosen the convertible, hoping its sportiness might appeal to her, in bright contrast to her sensible, dull vehicle. Soon, he hoped, she would be riding beside him, the top down and her titian hair blowing in the wind. The image caused a stir in his belly.

  He felt especially pleased with the inspired tale of his wife dying in childbirth, adding pathos. The facts were much different, no child involved, Maryam blown to bloody shreds by a drone. But the factual version would not be as effective with Tawny. The proper emphasis needed to be on sorrow, not pity, or, worse, horror.

  Death, loss of family, abandonment—tools he knew intimately that wielded awesome emotional power. It had turned out to be elegantly simple to use her kindness, unlocking her vulnerability.

  He had chosen well.

  Chapter 3 – The Joys of Technology

  Over the next few days, Tawny and Kahlil met several times, always in public places, always too casual to be considered a date. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. He was too young and she wasn’t ready for romance yet, if ever. But a longing almost like hunger pulled her toward him.

  Sunny mornings, they sat on a bench in the park where she posed more questions about the phone. He figured out the trumpeting noise came from the pedometer, signaling she had walked 10,000 steps. He demonstrated how to find businesses on the net. He playfully tested her skill with GPS directions as they wandered downtown streets, seeking out restaurants, sports shops, and bakeries.

  She still struggled with mysterious screens that popped up without prompting, preventing her from making a phone call or directing her to a website she didn’t mean to access.

  “It does stuff automatically that I don’t understand,” she complained to Kahlil on Friday morning. “How can I make it stick to only the tasks I want?”

  He smiled and patted her knee as they sat side by side near a low rock waterfall. “Be patient. Look how much you’ve learned in only a week.”

  “Ninety percent of what Lucifer does is no use to me,” she exclaimed.

  He gave her a puzzled look. “Lucifer?”

  Tawny held up the smartphone. “This instrument of the devil. I named it Lucifer.”

  Kahlil chuckled, a deep throaty sound that made her tingle. “That’s very funny. You are a delight.”

  She pulled down the pushed-up sleeves of her rust-colored hoodie, hoping he hadn’t noticed the gooseflesh on her arms from the compliment.

  A blue pinpoint of light blinked from the phone, reminding Tawny of more questions. “This light. Sometimes it’s blue, sometimes red, or green. Sometimes it doesn’t flash at all. What does it mean?”

  “Red, it needs charging, green, the battery is full. Blue might mean a new voicemail or an update is available. Also, it may mean the phone is searching for hot spots. Or it’s pinging off a cell tower. Nothing to worry about.”

  “What about all the noises? It beeps, it trumpets, it clicks like a cricket.”

  He swiped until the clicking tone sounded. “That means you have a new text message.”

  She twisted her braid. “I’m scared to get the bill. It’s got to cost a fortune to perform all these tricks.”

  Using his thumbs, Kahlil worked silently for a few moments. “You said your son sent this to you?”

  She nodded.

  He held the phone for her to see the display. “Well, it appears he already paid for the service a year in advance.”

  Tawny’s throat swelled and she blinked hard. That boy of hers. Neal had given her a gift any other mother would be thrilled with and all she did was gripe about it. “I must sound horribly ungrateful.”

  Kahlil gave her a slight smile. “Not ungrateful. Just overwhelmed.”

  She shook her head. “That’s the truth. There’s too much to remember. Can’t you disable all these extra tangents and just make it do the functions I need?”

  “You think functions are useless only because you haven’t learned what to do with them yet. Say you need to find out the balance in your checking account. Would you consider that useful?”

  Tawny thought for a moment. In the back of her mind, a warning from Dwight echoed about potential dangers of banking online. “Yes, I suppose so. But what about hacking? I don’t want thieves to access my account.”

  Kahlil grinned. “Excellent! I’m proud of you. You’re thinking about security. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime.”

  “So why would anyone want to leave themselves open to theft?”

  “Great question!” He beamed as if Tawny were a smart puppy mastering a new trick. “That’s why you need strong passwords to protect your private information. Only you know the password and only you can get into your account. Shall I show you?”

  “I guess.” Her doubts evaporated when his muscular thigh pressed against hers as he leaned closer to demonstrate.

  “OK. What bank do you use?”

  “United Bankcorp.”

  He flicked and tapped for a few seconds then a screen appeared with United Bankcorp’s logo. “I’ve downloaded their app to use as an example to walk you through the process. You do not want to perform financial functions unless you are at a secure wi-fi connection, like at your home. Please, do not ever do banking at a hot spot or unsecured connection.”

  She nodded. His advice rang familiar bells of Dwight’s cautions about using her laptop in public places.

  “Now I will enter a password. It’s not real, just for demonstration.” Tapered fingers touched the keyboard and dots appeared across the screen. “This is fifteen characters long. That’s a good length, with a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. You do not want to use your birthdate, phone number, or your children’s names, anything a criminal could guess or find out about you online. Make the password as random as possible.”

  Tawny put on her readers. “How will I ever remember it? I barely know my PIN for the ATM.”

  “Write it down and lock it in a safe place but definitely not in your wallet nor beside your computer.” He continued through the banking site. “Each institution will have different protocols but the instructions are step by step and easy to follow.”

  “Hope they work better than my bank’s phone system. You can’t ever get a human to talk to.”

  “The nice feature of electronic banking is you do not need to talk to a human. All the information is at your fingertips.”

  Tawny made a mental note to look into the strange deposit. Neither the manager nor the Helena branch had ever called back, despite her many messages. Maybe she could access information online that she couldn’t pry out of indifferent bank employees.

  “Are you still with me?” Kahlil asked.

  “Sorry, I was thinking about something else. Please, go on.”

  He wrapped up the lesson then glanced at the time. “I must go to work now. But I want you to call me if you need help setting up your banking.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  His green eyes twinkled. “And I will call you later, after you choose where you would like me to take you to dinner tonight.” With a wink, he was gone, striding to his convertible.

  A tickle of arousal startled her. A real date. Should she agree?

  * * *

  At home, Tawny tried out banking by smartphone as Kahlil had shown her. She invented a random password as he suggested, carefully writing down each character. To her amazement, almost instantly, Lucifer connected to her checking account.

  No, that had to be wrong. Now the balance showed over $68,000. She backtracked to recent transactions during the past week. Her cash withdrawal of $41,500 appeared, along with several checks that had cleared.

  Then, another deposit three days ago.

 
; $63,500.

  What the hell?

  How could the bank make two huge mistakes just days apart?

  She tried to find additional details about the deposit but the screen offered only the amount. Dammit! Not another trip to the bank. This was ridiculous.

  Tawny stormed out to the garage and jumped in the Jeep. She drove to the bank, parked, and checked herself in the rearview mirror. Eyes snapping, she looked ready to do battle. “This ends right here, right now,” she told her reflection.

  She rushed through the lobby, past the surly operations supervisor with black horn-rims, Ms. Garza, the loan officer, and the tellers, feeling a pang that Margaret no longer stood at her window. Tawny sensed curious stares on her back and heard murmurs of annoyance as she climbed the stairs to the mezzanine.

  The manager’s office was in the corner, encased in glass. He appeared to be in his early sixties, wearing a charcoal suit of shimmery silk, custom-tailored to his trim tennis player’s physique. A pale blue tie matched his pale blue eyes that stared at a monitor through rimless readers halfway down his Roman nose. A nameplate read, Branch President R. Hyslop. Snooty son of a bitch.

  Tawny thumped on the glass door. He startled and straightened his coat. She turned the knob and entered. “Mr. Hyslop, today you are going to handle my problem and I’m not leaving until it’s resolved.”

  The manager reached under the lip of his desk, then slowly rose, shooting his cuffs, maybe to ensure she noticed the gold Piaget watch on his wrist. He was short, probably three inches under Tawny’s five-ten. “Why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk about your issue.”

  She remained standing. “My issue is your bank has made two giant errors totaling more than a hundred-thousand dollars. You don’t answer my messages. Your employees blow me off. I keep getting passed down the line and ignored and I’ve had enough.”

  Hyslop looked over Tawny’s shoulder, held up one finger to someone behind her. Tawny turned to face a stout uniformed security guard standing in the door, hand on his gun.

  Her stomach flip-flopped. What on earth? She’d never even bounced a check and now an armed guard stood ready to draw down on her. Had these people gone nuts?

  “Mrs. Lindholm,” the manager said, “it happens I was just going to call you.”

  The man knew her name. How had he recognized her?

  The guard shifted a foot closer.

  A sour taste of anger rose in her throat. “Are you going to arrest me for being a dissatisfied customer?”

  Where had that come from? It sounded like something Dwight might’ve said. He’d always handled trouble calmly and never caved to intimidation. How she missed him at this moment. He’d know exactly what to do. She tried to visualize him by her side.

  Hyslop lowered himself into his chair. “Take a seat, Mrs. Lindholm. I have something to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  The manager clicked his keyboard for several seconds then rotated the monitor for Tawny to see. “This is a video recording of the deposit you claim you did not make. Please watch.”

  Grainy video played, showing the view of a drive-up window from a camera in the ceiling above a teller’s head. A green Jeep Wrangler with a tan top pulled in. The drawer slid out. As the driver’s window rolled down, Tawny gasped.

  A woman in sunglasses, wearing a ball cap, placed four thick rubber-banded stacks of bills in the drawer without saying a word. The crackly audio of a teller’s voice asked, “You want to deposit this to your account?”

  The woman nodded. The drawer slid in and the teller peered at a driver’s license, made notations on a deposit slip then gathered up the bills. She ran the cash through a counting machine. “Forty-one-thousand-five-hundred. Is that correct, Mrs. Lindholm?”

  The woman in the Jeep nodded.

  The teller sent a paper out the window, which the woman signed and returned. The teller printed a receipt then passed it out the drawer. The woman took it, rolled up the Jeep window, and drove off.

  Tawny felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. Her legs wobbled and she sank into the chair she’d previously resisted.

  She had just watched herself hand over a big wad of cash to the bank. The scene felt as real as the one a few days earlier when she’d withdrawn that same $41,500, now locked in her safe.

  “And please examine this.” Hyslop pulled up another screen, showing a bank form. He scrolled down the page. “Is this your signature, Mrs. Lindholm?”

  Tawny stared at the handwriting. Hers. Stomach flinching, she nodded.

  “So you agree you signed this form, on the same day of this deposit.”

  “No!” Tawny grabbed her glasses and shoved them on. Hope sank as she studied the writing closely. “It looks like my signature but I did not sign that. And I did not make that deposit.”

  “Well, Mrs. Lindholm.” Hyslop folded his arms across his chest. “The video shows otherwise. You have harassed my employees repeatedly, claiming the bank made an error, but this recording makes it look as if you are the one in error.”

  “Th-that can’t be me.” Tawny felt the manager and the guard exchanging glances over her head. “Play it again. Please.”

  Hyslop closed his pale eyes and stretched his brows high. Seconds passed, then he reopened his eyes and clicked keys. The video started once more.

  Unable to breathe, Tawny watched as the sequence repeated. The car looked like an identical twin to Dwight’s Jeep. The driver appeared to be her identical twin, a twin she didn’t have. Who was this woman, this double, impersonating her?

  She leaned closer to the screen and squinted, trying to find a flaw in the imposter. Although the ball cap was pulled low over her forehead and sunglasses masked her eyes, the profile matched hers, same mouth, nose, chin. An auburn braid fell forward over the woman’s shoulder, just like hers did.

  If Tawny didn’t know better, she would have accepted the driver was her with a large stack of cash.

  The manager clicked his mouse to stop the recording. “Are you satisfied?”

  Tawny couldn’t find her voice.

  Hyslop rested his elbows on the desk and formed a steeple with manicured hands. “Mrs. Lindholm.” His voice dripped sympathy. “If you’re having trouble reconciling your account, I’d be happy to have someone assist you.”

  Through her numb shock, Tawny’s temper flared. She wasn’t a helpless ninny who couldn’t balance a checkbook. Dammit, she’d kept their business’s books for decades.

  Hyslop pushed on, “I understand your husband passed away less than a year ago. Perhaps the strain of his death…well, maybe you’re not remembering things you might have done.”

  “I’m a widow,” Tawny snapped. “I’m not insane.” But before her sharp denial faded in the quiet office, disturbing memories zinged through her head. The checkbook in the trash bin, her boots in the washer, the TV remote in the freezer. And finding herself fifty miles from home without knowing how or why she had driven there.

  Virgie had suggested those lapses were caused by depression. But what if they meant a breakdown? Could she have committed a crime without even knowing it?

  The manager’s temporary attempt at sympathy evaporated as the cold mask again stiffened his face. “If there isn’t anything else we can do for you.” He stood, indicating the door. The guard backed up, making way for Tawny to leave.

  * * *

  Kahlil sat on a picnic table, feet propped on the bench, near a boat launch ramp at the Hungry Horse Reservoir. He adjusted the hearing aid volume down after Tawny’s argument with the banker and concentrated on the screen of a throwaway cell phone. After completing several transactions, he ate a sandwich he’d stuffed in his jacket pocket.

  An old Ford pickup backed a boat and trailer down the ramp to the water line. Kahlil recognized the man dismounting the truck as the tech who’d replaced a faulty hard drive in his computer at work. Kahlil had studied him for weeks. “Hi, Skipper.”

  The man looked over, lifted his chin in greeti
ng. Under a John Deere cap, his nose glowed rosy and his steps wavered. “Hey, Kahlil.” He jerked his head toward the water. “Gonna go drown some worms. Wanna come?”

  “I would if I didn’t need to get back to work.”

  “Aw, screw ’em. I took the rest of the day off.” Skipper hauled a cooler from the pickup bed and hefted it into the boat. It landed with a loud thud.

  While trying to launch the boat, the man stubbed his toes against a tire, smashed a finger, and cursed several times. Finally, Kahlil felt sorry enough for the drunk to walk over and help. Ten clumsy, fumbling minutes later, the boat finally floated in the blue water. Skipper stood in the rocking vessel, holding the wheel to keep his balance. If he didn’t drown himself over the weekend, Kahlil expected he would call in sick, as usual, with another case of Monday flu.

  “Want me to park your truck?” Kahlil gestured at the pickup and now-empty trailer.

  Skipper blinked at the vehicle as if he’d forgotten it in his haste to go fishing. “Yeah, man, that’d be awesome.” He pawed in his down vest pockets for several seconds, wearing a puzzled expression.

  “Are the keys still in it?” Kahlil prompted.

  Relief washed over Skipper’s ruddy face. “Yeah, yeah, I guess. Just leave ’em on top of the front tire inside the wheel well, OK?” He continued to fumble in his pocket.

  “Sure.” Kahlil moved toward the still-open driver’s door but Skipper hailed him.

  “Hey, look at what I just won.” He held up a smartphone exactly like Tawny’s. “This thing costs five hundred bucks to buy. I don’t even remember signing up for whatever the hell drawing it was but damned if I didn’t win the grand prize.”

  “You are a lucky man.” And about to become even luckier, Kahlil thought.

  Skipper dug in the cooler and pulled out a beer. “Hey, some of the guys are goin’ to the Back Room later tonight for a couple of brewskis and ribs. Come along if you want.”

  Kahlil grinned. “I have a date.”