Every nerve in Fenway’s body was on edge, and her breaths came shallow and short. ada Kim was not a tall woman, but though she be but little, she is fierce, as Shakespeare would say.
Fenway drew herself up to her full height. “There’s no official investigation here, Jennifer,” she said as calmly as she could. “And once those doors are open, I’m more than happy to dump this whole murder case on someone else.” She pointed at Professor Virgil Cygnus’s dead body, still in front of the defense table, draped with her father’s suit jacket. “I’ve made a determination—hours ago, that you were party to—that the shooter was on the defense side of the courtroom. You’ve accused me of being the shooter, when I was so close to you that you would have seen me with a weapon. You accused me of taking money from my father so he wouldn’t be the shooter—when he was clearly nowhere near where he had to be.”
“But we’re all supposed to just take your word for it?”
“I’m a sworn law enforcement officer,” Fenway said. “You know me, Jennifer. You know my word means more to me than a bribe, or than ensuring a good relationship with my father. He’s pissed off at me for just about every arrest I’ve made since I’ve been appointed, so there’s no reason for you to think I’d just blindly support him.”
ada Kim was silent.
“Yes, Jennifer, you are only too right that taking a check from my father in the courtroom right now was an idiotic thing to do. I don’t know what I can do about that except tell everyone here that he’d made a promise to pay for my college and he didn’t. And he didn’t realize it until I blew up at him about ten minutes ago, so he cut me a check.”
Evans Dahl raised his hand. “I’m not a fan of yours, Miss Stevenson, but I was close enough to hear the two of you, and I can vouch for the content of the argument. And I’d be willing to swear that the check wasn’t offered as a bribe.” He paused. “Not unless you’ve got a very complicated con going on.” He looked out of the corner of his eye at Fenway’s father. “Which, I suppose, I wouldn’t put past our dear Mr. Ferris.”
Kim was silent.
Fenway turned around slowly, still feeling the daggers from Kim’s glare digging into her back. The path between the gallery gate and the witness stand seemed to take a month to navigate, and it felt like cement in her shoes with each of the three steps to the dais.
“Hey,” Piper said. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Fenway said, even though she had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Listen, before I forget—did you hear me say Leda Nedermeyer is taking divenamine for anxiety, right?”
Piper nodded. “I didn’t hear exactly, but yes, it was something like that.”
“It’s got some serious side effects for a certain percentage of the population. Violent outbursts, for one.”
“You think Professor Nedermeyer could have shot and killed Professor Cygnus?”
“She has motive if you don’t take her grandiose love for him at face value,” Fenway said. “With the medication’s side effects, it’s possible.”
“But—what about the premeditation? Contacting the audio contractor to have them hide the gun? What about the fact that her prints didn’t match?”
“I know, I know,” Fenway said. “Just—see if you can find any information on violent acts when people are on divenamine, would you?”
“As soon as the internet comes back up.”
“It’s still down? I thought for sure you had something for me that you just found on the internet.”
Piper stared out over the courtroom, as if surveying land. “I didn’t find it on the internet, I found it in the ledgers. I have two numbers that don’t match that should. And I want to know why.”
“What?”
“Okay.” Piper looked down at the monitor and pointed. “Money laundering is done so that monetary gains look like they were made legally, which means people pay taxes on that money, right?”
“Right.”
“So—tell me why, in this master spreadsheet, Central Auto Body has a number under ‘taxes paid’ that’s a full seventy thousand less than the check the Franchise Tax Board received?”
“Isn’t one of the spreadsheets the public one, and one the real ledger?”
“No. This is the master ledger. It says there was a tax payment made. But this number and the amount the tax board got? Seventy thousand dollars difference.”
“Seventy thousand exactly?”
“No. Seventy-one thousand, four hundred and six.”
Fenway’s mind was blank. “I have no idea.”
“Because that’s how they caught Al Capone, you know. Tax fraud.”
“Right.” Fenway stared at the spreadsheet over Piper’s shoulder, as if the numerals would rearrange themselves to magically provide the answer.
Piper rubbed her chin. “It just seems strange that this whole money laundering scheme was put into place to avoid things like tax fraud.”
“Could it be a genuine mistake? Someone using the wrong calculation?”
Piper sat up. “Or maybe someone was trying to steal money.” She clicked on the screen and the spreadsheets zoomed back into a grid with about twenty spreadsheets in small windows on the screen. “Okay, what do we know so far? We know that the spreadsheet from Central Auto is supposed to be accurate. But it’s not. Who was supposed to ensure that they were accurate?”
Fenway nodded. “Rose Morgan. But she fell in love with Domingo Velásquez. And now he’s fled the country.”
“Right. And he hasn’t taken any Central Auto Body money to do it.”
Fenway snapped her fingers. “Piper—you said he got money out of an atm. Can you find out how much that account has in it?”
“Well—no, not at this very moment, because the internet’s down. But when he got money, it had one hundred sixty thousand and change.”
Fenway paused. “That’s a lot more than seventy thousand.”
Piper smiled. “I’ve got it.” She clicked on two of the spreadsheet graphics. They looked identical, and then Piper clicked on the tab labeled recipients on the first spreadsheet, and did clicked the same tab on the second. She scrolled to the bottom on each.
“Hmm,” she said. “I guess I was wrong.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I thought the scholarship spreadsheet—the one with all the fake student names on it—would have a different number of entries.” She pointed to the screen. “But look. Exactly 1,428 in both.”
“Why did you think they’d be different?”
“Because I think that Rose Morgan and Domingo Velásquez stole about two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, give or take. If they planned to escape to Mexico, that would keep them comfortable for a while.”
“But the missing amount is seventy thousand.”
“Aha—but that’s the difference in taxes paid. I thought Rose might have made an extra contribution to the scholarship fund—it’s a non-profit—which would have reduced Central Auto Body’s tax burden. If you donate two hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, you don’t pay taxes on it.”
“Then where did that money go?”
“Well, that’s just it. I expected three, maybe four, additional students in the scholarship fund in the spreadsheet from the file that Amanda gave us, as opposed to the spreadsheet we had before.” Piper shook her head. “But there aren’t. Look—1,428 rows of names in both.”
Fenway nodded. “There’s got to be another way. Maybe each of the student names were issued an extra amount of money?”
Piper scrolled up. “Nope. The same in all of them—$74,580.”
“Holy shit. That’s how much it costs to go to Nidever?”
“Yeah. That’s not just tuition, though. That’s room and board, and a stipend for books, class materials, and all the fees, too—health center, campus rideshare, everything like that.”
“That’s still really expensive.”
“Almost no one goes to Nidever without some sort of scholarship, Fenway. That’s probably why no one blinked at a scholarship fund that’s worth so much.”
“It just seems insane. My master’s program wasn’t even that much.”
Piper shrugged. “It’s gone up since I applied, but it was pretty expensive even six years ago. I got a scholarship that paid for half the tuition, but it was still too expensive for me to accept.”
Fenway squinted at the screen. “Hang on a second,” she said. “Start at the bottom and scroll up. Slowly. So we can read the row numbers.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see if there are any hidden rows in the second spreadsheet.”
Comprehension dawned on Piper’s face. “Oh—so no one would notice a few rows missing.”
“Right. They added the rows in the middle instead of at the end—and then in the version sent back to—oh, I don’t know, let’s just call it ‘headquarters’—they just zeroed those lines out then hid the rows.”
“It’s kind of brilliant,” Piper murmured. “They took money from the Central Auto Body account and donated it to the scholarship fund, then dispersed that money to—I guess it was fake students.”
“And those students had accounts that Domingo Velásquez had access to.” Fenway rubbed her hands together. “So let’s see if there are hidden rows.”
Piper went up to the View menu and selected Unhide all rows. Then she began to scroll.
Four rows were blank with zeroes in the total.
“Match those to the rows in the other spreadsheet,” Fenway said.
“Then we’ll have the names on the accounts—and maybe we’ll be able to see who found out about the fake students.”
Fenway shook her head. “Skimming money from a laundering operation,” she said. “There really is no honor among thieves.”
“I’ve got the four names,” Piper said. “As soon as the internet is back up, we can cross-reference these bank account numbers—and maybe if Domingo Velásquez hasn’t drained all of them yet, we can freeze these assets. Make him come back home. Or at least, make it so Rose Morgan can’t join him.”
Fenway nodded, looking across the courtroom. Judith Cygnus was sitting down, slumped to the side, the half-drunk bottle of water in her hand. She looked pale. “Mrs. Cygnus isn’t looking too good,” Fenway said. “When you get internet access back, make sure you tell McVie that she needs her medicine.”
“Good idea. Maybe we’ll get that door unlocked sooner rather than later.”
“I see she’s been drinking her water.”
“What? Oh—yes. Everyone has.” Piper looked to the back of the room. “Heissner looks like he’s done with his. So does Rose.”
“This might work after all,” Fenway said. “Come with me.” She walked over to the cabinet in back of the bench, emptying the remaining bottles from the flat, just leaving the cardboard and the hard plastic wrap with a gaping hole in the top. “Grab as many bottles as you can.”
“What, you take the empty flat and I try to juggle eight bottles of water?”
Fenway shot Piper a look of warning. “Trust me, Piper. Take as many bottles as you can.”
“Do you have something up your sleeve?” Piper asks, piling seven bottles into her arms.
“Absolutely. Fenway turned and walked down the steps. “Any one need more water?”
“Me,” said Leda Nedermeyer, tripping up the center aisle with Xavier supporting her. She dropped her empty plastic bottle into the hole in the cardboard flat Fenway carried, and took a second bottle out of Piper’s arms.
“I’m fine for now, thank you,” said Cynthia Schimmelhorn, slipping her empty bottle inside the plastic. A few people took another bottle—Judith Cygnus, Nathaniel Ferris, and Amanda Kohl. Rose Morgan nodded in thanks and returned her empty bottle to the cardboard flat, and then turned and sat in the back row in the corner. Fenway watched her slouch in her seat as everyone else put their bottles in the flat as well.
“You didn’t touch any of those,” Piper whispered to Fenway as they turned back up the aisle.
Fenway nodded. “Excellent observation, Piper.” They walked through the gallery gate and then up the steps around the witness stand to the dais.
“My heart was beating really fast,” Piper said. “I was afraid someone would figure out what we were doing.”
“Yeah, I could have gotten in trouble with ada Kim. Again.” Fenway put the cardboard tray full of bottles on the floor, and then opened the fingerprint kit.
“No,” Piper hissed. “Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“Not unless you want the smell of the fingerprint dust to give us away.” Piper paused. “Wait a few minutes, and then go find something else you can fingerprint in front of everyone, so it doesn’t look like we just grabbed everyone’s water bottle and then started fingerprinting something. People will put two and two together very quickly.”
“Right. Good call.”
“If Rose’s fingerprints are on the gun—”
Fenway smirked. “We hadn’t gotten Evans Dahl’s prints, either, remember. I didn’t run Jennifer Kim’s prints either.”
Piper’s eyes widened. “That’s how you can get the bottle fingerprinting done without calling attention to it. Use me.”
Fenway furrowed her brow. “Didn’t I get your prints earlier?”
“Yes, you did, but Jennifer doesn’t know that, does she? I’m surprised ada Kim complained about your father and Charlotte, and insisted on doing those herself, but didn’t mention me.” Piper drummed her fingers on the desk. “Actually—I’m really surprised by that. Why didn’t she?”
A chill ran down Fenway’s spine. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“Maybe—maybe Jennifer Kim doesn’t want to call attention to the fact that she hasn’t had her fingerprints taken either.”
Piper cocked her head and sat down in front of her laptop. “But that doesn’t make any sense. She couldn’t have shot him. She was standing right next to him.”
Fenway nodded. “I know. But maybe—maybe the killer had gloves on, and Jennifer’s the one who hid the gun in the first place?”
“Oh. So she’s afraid the fingerprint on the gun is hers?”
“That’s a possibility.” Fenway took the seat next to Piper. “Can you think of any other reason that ada Kim wouldn’t suggest that you need to be fingerprinted?”
Piper shrugged. “Maybe she thought I had.”
“Well, she didn’t take your fingerprints, so she would have assumed that I did. And she made a huge fuss over me taking my father’s prints—she even took his prints herself.”
“True—but I don’t have the money your father has. Maybe she figured you could only get corrupted by familial bonds and a pile of cash.”
Fenway blinked. The information refused to organize itself in her head. Piper was just as likely to take cash from Nathaniel Ferris as Fenway was. The only thing that made sense was that Jennifer Kim didn’t want her fingerprints taken. That might have even been the reason she volunteered to print half the people in the room—so that she wouldn’t have to give hers.
But something didn’t fit, and Fenway couldn’t figure out what it might be—then she missed what Piper said. “Oh—sorry, Piper. I was in my own little world. What did you say?”
“I said you should go tell ada Kim that you haven’t taken my fingerprints. Maybe say that you know she has trust issues with you, and offer for her to take the fingerprints so it doesn’t look shady. Something like that. Then you can come up here to run fingerprint tests on the water bottles and it won’t look so suspicious.”
Fenway nodded. “I suppose that might work.”
“And if she hears that you’re fingerprinting me, that’ll give her another opportunity to volunteer to fingerprint herself.”
“That’s smart,” Fenway said, grinning. “You’ll be a detective yet.”
Piper rolled her eyes.
“Should I have Jennifer come up here? She can watch me fingerprint you, she can watch the whole thing.”
Piper considered for a moment. “I think that’s the only way to do it. Otherwise you’ll have to get the kit back here again, right? And that might raise some people’s suspicions.”
“I don’t have to take the whole kit. We could just go down there with the ink pad and the fingerprint cards.”
“I’d actually rather have her come up here. This is starting to feel like my home court.”
Fenway nodded and stood up. ada Kim sat about halfway down the gallery seats, with her elbows on her knees, leaning forward, covering her face with her hands.
“Jennifer?” Fenway called. ada Kim didn’t move.
We’re all going a little stir crazy. When the even-keeled Jennifer Kim starts losing it, I know we’re in trouble.
“Jennifer?” Fenway called, a little louder.
This time, ada Kim raised her head, then looked left and right, and finally up to the judge’s bench. Fenway beckoned her.
Kim pointed to herself and Fenway nodded.
“Think we can pull this off?” Piper whispered.
“I believe in you,” Fenway whispered back. Piper elbowed her in the side.
Jennifer Kim walked through the gallery gate and started to turn to her right, toward the defense table, and then flinched at the sight of Professor Cygnus’s body. It’s bordering on cruel to leave him in here like that. Kim turned left and walked around the witness stand and up the steps.
“You okay?” Fenway asked as the ada approached.
“When are we getting out of here?” Jennifer asked. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“We’ve lost internet,” Piper said. “So I can’t get in touch with McVie.”
“There’s a spot in the nook where I got signal for a couple of minutes,” Fenway said, “but then I lost it.”
Jennifer took a deep breath. “Maybe I’ll try going in there. See if I can get a signal.”
“I asked you up here,” Fenway said, “because we didn’t get Piper’s prints. She’s agreed to get fingerprinted, but since you’re aware of the close working relationship Piper and I have, I thought you’d want to be here when I take her prints and when I compare it against the print on the gun.”
Jennifer nodded. “Yeah, okay. Then you’ll check for internet access again?”
Fenway cocked her head and looked at Jennifer. “Are you okay? You need more water?”
Kim shook her head. “No. I’m just—I’m just getting a little cabin fever. I’m hungry, too, so maybe it’s low blood sugar.”
Fenway’s stomach rumbled in empathy. “Yeah, I hear that.” She opened the kit, then set out the fingerprint cards and the ink pad. “Let’s see if this takes your mind off everything.” She paused. “Hey—you know, breathing exercises always calm me down when I’m stressed out. Deep breaths, focus on counting to ten in, and then ten out.”
Jennifer nodded. “Right. Yeah.” She closed her eyes and inhaled, then breathed out. Fenway didn’t imagine she got much past the count of five.
“Okay,” Fenway said, and Jennifer opened her eyes again. “Piper, let’s start with your right hand.”
Jennifer watched while Piper filled out first the right-hand card, then the left.
“Remember, the fingerprint we’re looking for is a tented arch,” Fenway said. “I don’t even have to take the print we found on the gun to see that none of Piper’s prints are a match. They’re all loops and whorls.”
“Pull out the print you found on the gun just to make sure,” Kim said.
Fenway nodded, and took a deep breath herself. “Sure.” She pulled out the baggie with the gun fingerprint and held it above the cards. “You want to compare the prints yourself?”
“Uh—yes, I guess so.” Jennifer stepped around Fenway and stood next to her at the desk, then leaned over the fingerprint array.
She stared at the cards for almost a full minute, though it seemed much longer. Fenway had to stop herself from tapping her foot or sighing loudly to get Jennifer Kim to hurry.
Finally, Kim pushed the cards away from her. “No, you’re right. It doesn’t look like a match.”
“Great, thanks,” said Fenway.
“Hey,” Kim said, looking at the laptop screen. “What’s this? Is this—is this the missing scholarship fund spreadsheet that we’ve all been looking for?”
Piper closed her laptop. “It’s client work for Mr. Ferris. I can’t show it to anyone but family members.”
Jennifer smirked. “Fine. But if it is the missing spreadsheet, I expect to be informed as soon as possible.”
“I still have some work to do to confirm… some things,” Piper said.
Kim widened her eyes. “If that spreadsheet has information identifying the head of the money laundering scheme, Miss Patten, you are legally obligated to release that information to us.”
“I don’t work for the county anymore—"
“So that’s almost everyone’s prints,” Fenway interrupted. “Everyone except Rose Morgan and Evans Dahl, who have both declined to comply.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh—we didn’t get your fingerprints, either, Jennifer. I looked at your fingertips, but we didn’t actually print them.”
Jennifer Kim shook her head. “Sorry, Fenway. I’ve changed my mind. I’m in solidarity with my fellow counselor on this one.”
“What?” Fenway narrowed her eyes. “You’re the one who insisted that I give my fingerprints. Isn’t that a little hypocritical?”
Kim shrugged. “Not when I’m pointing out your hypocrisy. You’re the one insisting on taking everyone’s prints—”
“You did it too!”
“Ah, but as an officer of the court, I’m required to serve the cause of justice. But I’m under no obligation to give up my Fourth Amendment rights because of it.”
Fenway set her jaw.
“Sorry if you don’t like my answer, Fenway. Feel free to talk to a judge who’ll compel me to comply.” Jennifer Kim took three steps back. “Or once we’re out of here, you can simply check my prints in the system. I had to be fingerprinted when I accepted this position.” She began to turn away, then stopped. “Was there anything else?”
Fenway folded her arms. “I guess not.”
“Thanks for volunteering to provide your fingerprints, Piper,” ada Kim said. “Maybe we should cross-check those fingerprints with the ones we found after the Central Auto Body break-in. I hear nobody’s been arrested in that case yet.”
Jennifer Kim turned her back and walked off the dais.
Piper shot her middle finger up at Jennifer Kim’s back.