by Lisa Black
“That bitch, yeah. I had seen her before, knew she usually approached from east on Bolivar. I had gone to the Subway on East Eighteenth to get something to eat and I saw her cross the street. I caught up, asked her if she knew where a gas station was. Yeah, don’t ask me why a gas station, it was the first thing that popped into my head. She said no, but I couldn’t tell from that, I needed her to talk more. So I asked if she worked in the building. No answer. So I figured the hell with it. I got in front of her and told her I knew what they were doing, it was illegal, and she was going to be arrested instead of me. That got her to say more than two words! What was I talking about, leave her alone or she’d call the cops, she didn’t know what I was going on about. Then I knew. It was her voice. Especially the way she said that I would be arrested and not her. She’s got a funny way of saying it, like ah-rest instead of uh-rest.”
Jack skipped ahead. “And then you punched her.”
“No! I mean, well, yes, but that—I wanted her to admit it. I wanted her to admit she’s a thief, I wanted her to tell me who she worked for and what they were doing with all this money, and what she did with my four thousand dollars. But she kept up the innocent act and tried to dodge around me until I grabbed her arm. She wasn’t going to listen unless I made her, obviously.”
“And you pulled her into the alley because—”
“She kept saying she’s gonna be late, I’m gonna get her fired. I know her office or whatever you’d call it is right there on the corner so I thought if we hid so she couldn’t be seen from a window or something, she’d be more likely to talk. But then those two other girls saw us.”
“And,” Jack added, “you punched her because—”
“She kept trying to run away! I had spent two months looking for her! I wasn’t about to let her weasel out of it. I was going to keep her there until she either told me the truth or you guys got there. I was doing your job for you, actually.”
He sat back, arms crossed—as well as he could with the wrists still cuffed—and fixed them with a look both accusatory and slightly disappointed. And, Jack had to admit (only to himself), not completely unjustified.
But Hayes’s cool demeanor had a short shelf life. “Then those other two chicks showed up and waylaid me with the stick—that one’s got an arm, let me tell you. I’ll bet she plays hockey. But I’ll take a broken shin before letting that bitch get away. Only then, she’s trapped in the alley, right? You should have seen her trying to tell her little friends not to call the cops. She said it’s no big deal, then she says it’s a misunderstanding, finally she’s flat-out shrieking at them to hang up the phone. And they look at her like she’s nuts, like why wouldn’t you call the cops, this guy’s attacking women, yada, yada. And the one with the stick, man, she’s hot, she’s ready to take me out herself if you guys are a little busy or something. So my girl was screwed. Screwed, screwed, screwed.”
A grin split his face. He had won. He had a bruised shin and cuffs on his hands, but his target now rested in the custody of the police.
“Okay,” Riley said. “So you admit approaching and working to restrain Ms. Thomas?”
“Hell yeah, I admit it. As long as I can add why.”
“You can. Did she answer any of your questions? Anything about the money or her job?”
The grin faded somewhat. “Not a word. What was I talking about, she had to get to work, leave her alone. Nothing else.”
Jack said, “One thing, Mr. Hayes. You got your money back.”
“Yep. Took a while.”
“So you’re not really out anything, except the time you spent—”
“Doing surveillance.”
“To find the woman you think called you.”
Hayes nodded happily.
“Why?”
Hayes blinked. “Why? You’re asking me why?”
“It seems like an awful lot of time and effort, when you’re not even out the money.”
The scruffy man’s mouth fell open briefly. “Why? Because it needed to be done, that’s why! This chick and whoever she works for are parasites, feeding off the rest of us. Earlier this year, back before Easter I think, someone took my mother for two hundred bucks! Told her her computer was sending out error messages, that stupid crap, but my mom’s not a technical wizard. She still thinks e-mail is amazing futuristic shit. So this turd calls on the phone and she buys it! She—well, she does the same thing I did; she hands over her credit card number. I guess we’re lucky they only took two hundred instead of two thousand. And she’s only got a little pension from my dad! So why did I punch this bitch? Because she freakin’ deserved to be punched! She’s lucky I didn’t kill her.” He sat back, glanced up at the bubble camera, thought better of his last remark, and waved his fingers dismissively. “In a theoretical sense, I mean.”
“Got it,” Jack said. “Theoretical.”
Riley said, “You don’t think she works for the same people who scammed your mom.”
“Nah. But that’s not the point! They’re all people who would take a naïve old lady’s rent money! What kind of complete scumbags would do that?” Hayes crossed the arms, jerking the cuffs, and gave his parting shot. “And you guys aren’t doing much, that’s for sure.”
Jack said, “I’m not going to argue with you there.”
Chapter 26
Not even being booked on an assault charge could dim Hayes’s elation at having finally found and confronted Shanaya Thomas. Jack and Riley turned him over to his attorney, who planned to get him released that same afternoon with minor bail. All Hayes wanted to know was if they were going to arrest Shanaya as well.
“Her interrogation is next on our list,” Jack promised, purposely using the harsher word. Hayes smiled, satisfied, no doubt imagining a much more unpleasant future for her than Jack or Riley could most likely provide.
They took a break at their desks to regroup and rest their eardrums. Rick’s autopsy had been completed and had provided no more information than they’d already surmised. Rick had no injuries other than a fatal stab wound, made by something long, relatively thin and pointed and yes, extremely similar to the weapon used on Jennifer Toner and Evan Harding. An unusual weapon, the pathologist had told the attending officers. Nearly every stabbing he’d ever seen had been with a knife. He’d seen a few accomplished with screwdrivers or even a piece of rebar, and he couldn’t be 100 percent sure this could not be one of those, but it resembled an ice pick . . . a tool from a bygone age that shouldn’t even exist anymore.
Shanaya Thomas paced in an interview room, having nagged the officer assigned to watch her every five minutes to be allowed to leave. He told her that she could but would then most likely be arrested. He plied her with coffee, snacks, the Wi-Fi password, anything to keep her happy—with obviously limited success to judge from the pleading look on his face when Riley and Jack snuck by.
Rick’s murder case had been officially assigned to the unit’s star detectives, Patty Wildwood and her partner, Tim. Technically it should have been Jack and Riley since they had already been working a related case, but no doubt the higher-ups felt that since Jack reportedly dated the victim’s ex-wife, well, the appearance of bias in any direction could be a problem. This was fine with Jack.
He fought the urge to check in with Maggie. She would only ask questions he couldn’t answer, and he could do nothing to help her through her current tangle of emotions. Denny and Carol would look out for her. Still, he could drop by the lab for a minute or two, maybe ask about that powder—
Riley said, “The connection between Rick and Jennifer is obvious. Same place, same time, so the killer had to take them both out.”
Jack said, “But which one had the killer gone there for?”
“Had to be Jennifer. If he’d wanted to kill Rick for some reason, he would have done it on the street or in his car, anyplace but an occupied building.”
“True.”
“But where does Evan Harding fit in? He had no connection to either, othe
r than a brief conversation with Jennifer Toner.”
“We need to go back to that.”
“What?”
Jack tried to organize his thoughts. “We have to assume all three were killed by the same person. Jennifer wanted to track down the people responsible for supplying her brother with opioids. We’ve found nothing to suggest that Evan Harding had anything to do with the drug trade.”
“Although it would be easy,” Riley said, and it became Jack’s turn to ask what he meant. “A check cashing store would be a great cover. They’re passing small items over the counter, lots of cash changing hands, security cameras, great protection from rip-offs.”
“Huh. I didn’t get any hint of that—”
“Me neither. Not from our buddy Ralph. But Harding could have been a different story.”
Jack said, “True. Either way, as far as we know there is no connection between Evan Harding and Jennifer Toner, except for her visit to the check cashing place.”
Riley pondered this and came to the same conclusion Jack had. “We need to go back there. We need to look at more tapes, see if Marlon Toner had been a frequent visitor, or if Jennifer had shown up more than once.”
“And what Evan Harding had to do with her brother.”
“If the stuff ever gets out of his system, maybe he’ll tell us himself.” Riley rubbed his face, premature wrinkles more prominent around his eyes than they had been only a few days before. “There is one person still alive who could probably tell us something. And won’t. And we can’t even punch her in the stomach.”
Jack said, “Maybe instead of a stick, we need a more persuasive carrot.”
Monday, 3:00 p. m.
She began speaking as soon as they opened the door. “If you’re going to arrest me, do it. But you can’t keep me here. I know my—”
“Sorry for the wait,” Riley said. “We were retrieving Evan’s property for you.”
She stopped midsentence, gazing at the clear, labeled bag he held as if it were Medusa’s head. A diamond-encrusted Medusa’s head.
“Please sit down,” Riley said.
She did.
Jack went right into it. “We think you know more—perhaps everything—about Evan’s activities. We’ll make you a deal. Tell us about the call center and the check cashing store, and we’ll give you the key.”
She didn’t even pretend it wasn’t the key she wanted, and took her time to consider this offer. Jack pictured her mind moving like mercury, pulsing forward, around, probing for hidden traps or gaps or vulnerabilities, debating possible outcomes.
“Okay,” she said.
“What do you do at the call center?”
She took them through it. An automated system dialed numbers and played a recorded message about lowered credit card rates or pain medication by mail, and if the person first answered and then pressed the number 1 or whatever, then the switchboard at the center routed it to a free headset. A red light appeared on her headset’s base, and she had to push the button to connect to the call. The base had four different red lights with masking tape labels corresponding to each narrative—interest rates, free medical equipment, IRS, whatever. They changed from time to time depending on what they were having success with and what had burnt out. When the light lit up, she had two seconds to connect the call . . . more than five and she’d hear it from the pit boss.
The IRS narrative she’d been working recently had one extra step somewhere along the line because the first call was made and then the people—
“Victims,” Jack couldn’t resist clarifying.
—would call back. But it remained the same process from her point on. When the red light lit up, she had to take the call, the point always being to get the card numbers. Credit card numbers, gift cards, iTunes cards, anything that had funds attached to it. When she got the number, any relevant info, the expiration date, the three-digit security code, address, zip code out, she put them on hold and called the 800 number for the credit card company to find out the available credit. “If they have a seven-thousand-dollar limit but they’ve already charged six thousand eight hundred, it’s hardly worth it,” Shanaya explained wearily.
“Of course,” Riley deadpanned.
This confirmed the card as valid. A good number of people tried to recite their card number from memory or elderly people had a hard time reading the embossed numbers and transposed digits, and Shanaya would get back on the line and tell them it didn’t work. But if they had a decent amount of available credit—in practice, if they had any at all—Shanaya would type it into her monitor and dispatch it to her boss—not the pit boss, whose entire job it was to pace up and down the aisles, and make sure each employee gave 150 percent effort—but the floor supervisor, who worked in an office on the second floor and did nothing but transfer funds. Then Shanaya would repeat the process with any other credit cards on which the person wanted lower interest rates. Once possibilities were exhausted, she thanked them for their time, told them they would see the new interest rate reflected on their next statement or their application for the equipment or the pain meds would be in the mail or the IRS would cancel the warrant for their arrest. Then she would hang up and wait for the red light to beam again. They didn’t leave their desks or take a break without signaling the pit boss. Ignoring the red light or waiting too long to answer would get them fired. “It’s pretty grueling,” she finished.
Jack held himself back from saying A real job can be pretty grueling, too. But with difficulty.
Riley said, “So when the floor boss gets the credit card or gift card numbers, what does he do with them?”
She seemed surprised by the question. “I don’t know.”
“What I mean is, how do those numbers translate into money for your boss?”
“I don’t know. That part of it, they handle. Once the call ends, I’m done.” Then she added, “But I get a percent. Of whatever they make, I mean. We’re all paid on commission only, there’s no actual salary or hourly wage.”
“There’s a work incentive for you,” Riley said. “What happens on the screen when you add in the victim’s information?”
“Nothing. When I have the numbers and amounts verified I click on ‘Dispatch’ at the bottom and it goes.”
He asked a few more questions about the name of the program itself, the browser, the brand of computers and headsets even, anything at all. But she had not paid much attention to that, or said she hadn’t. “There’s nothing else on the computers except the program. Internet access has to be granted by the floor boss and he can see everything you’re looking at.” There would be no surfing the web, checking your Facebook status or playing Candy Crush at work, she explained. One girl sent a quick e-mail to her kids’ day care center and a couple minutes later the pit boss came down, ripped off her headset, and escorted her off the property by dragging her to the door by one arm. Same went for any personal work on your own smartphones. A quick text before the red light came on again could be done, but once you had a person on the line you kept your full attention on the job.
Okay, Jack thought, maybe a little grueling.
“I had a bit of Internet access with the IRS narrative because I needed to search the people to make them believe I had all their information—like where they lived, worked, where their kids go to school.”
“Seriously?” Riley breathed.
“It was not easy,” she told them, mistaking the disgust in his voice for interest.
“The man who attacked you said his credit card charge ended up on a gift card. Is that what your bosses do?”
“Could be. I told you, that part of it isn’t my job.”
Riley said, “Just for the record, you are aware that this is grand larceny, and a crime?”
She didn’t answer, her gaze flicking to the camera in the corner of the ceiling.
“Shanaya?” he pressed.
She wouldn’t admit it, not on record. “I had to have a job.”
Jack asked, “What d
id Evan have to do with the call center?”
Her head jerked up. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No. I worked there, he didn’t.”
“Did he visit you there?”
An unladylike snort. “No. Staff didn’t have visitors. Even the kids in the day care—if you checked them in, they had to stay the whole shift and leave with you. Nobody could have, like, the dads come get them when they got off work. No one ever in the building except us. I was amazed he let you in.”
“Mr. Hawking? He’s the floor supervisor?”
“No, he’s the boss. There’s a couple of floor bosses. I don’t know their names—I never see them.”
“Evan was murdered,” Jack reminded her, his voice firm. “If it had nothing to do with your illegal business, then why?”
“I don’t know,” she said, apparently miserable.
“What was he doing?”
“Evan? Nothing.”
“What was he doing at the check cashing place?”
“Nothing. It was a legitimate job,” she said in defense of her dead boyfriend. “I mean, he did whatever his job was, I guess.”
She looked up through her eyelashes, gauging their reactions. Apparently the look on Jack’s face told her she might want to do better than that.
“It wasn’t his fault,” she said at last. “He figured they were bogus, but what could he do about it?”
“What was bogus?” Riley asked.
She told them, “Every day a few guys would come in and cash checks for medical payments, usually checks, Medicare, private insurance. The guys would have the correct ID, claim numbers on the memo lines; the checks looked legit, so he’d cash them.”
“But the checks were faked?” Riley guessed.
“No, the checks were from the government. They were perfectly good.”
“So what was the problem?”
“Twenty-, thirty-, fifty-thousand-dollar checks,” she added. “Every day or two. The same maybe ten different guys cashing them.”
