CHAPTER

38

 

Kerry Voss was often oblivious of the law enforcement aspect of RIO’s mission. Of course, she knew that people on the staff were former federal marshals and FBI agents and such, and they had authority to arrest people, though that seldom occurred. Arrests—and the credit for them—went to the “real” law enforcement agencies.

Voss liked what she did, as well as the fact that RIO was away from the noise and the stress of some other government agencies. She spent her days digging through financial records, she wrote reports, she turned them in. She’d made a couple of friends in the office, including Meg Tolman, and she went out to lunch nearly every day. At night, she was either with her kids or, if they were with her ex-husband, she had time to herself, time to read, to think, the occasional date.

Five o’clock came and went. The TV in the break room stayed on with more news about Chief Justice Darlington’s death. Hudson was gone, Tolman was gone, other people in the office were coming and going. Her children were with their father this week, so Voss stayed. She didn’t know how the strange request Meg Tolman had made tied in with Darlington, but she’d read the urgency in Meg’s voice and face.

Voss wouldn’t do an off-the-books inquiry for just anyone. She’d worked for the government long enough to know where such things could lead. The law enforcement people in the office made fun of the “career bureaucrats,” but the truth was, the word bureaucrat didn’t have to be an insult. It meant a sense of loyalty to the organization, an understanding that the government ran on procedures, and that without those procedures, the infrastructure could break down and nothing would ever get done.

But Voss liked Meg Tolman, as Tolman was a bit of an enigma. Voss smiled at that—she knew she presented her own set of paradoxes to RIO, as the newest member of the staff, and that suited her quite well. So Voss found AC/DC’s “Back in Black” on her iTunes and went fishing in her databases to see what she could find out about the possibly deceased Sergeants Standridge and Lane.

She first used the Social Security database to find the numbers for both names, checking the dates of issue to make sure the ages were right. Once she had them, she went into the Department of Defense’s section for active duty personnel. Voss had backdoor passwords into DOD that no one else in RIO had, though no one here—not even Deputy Director Hudson—knew it. Even more important, Voss still possessed the clearance to use those passwords.

Still, once she was inside the massive database, she couldn’t access anything having to do with Lane and Standridge. Electronic walls blocked her at every turn.

“Well, that’s not very nice,” she said, in the same sort of tone she would have used with her nine-year-old.

She found all the same information Tolman had found, and it matched, the dates of death in Taji in 2006, the units to which the soldiers had been assigned, their hometowns.

Voss stretched, went to the lounge area, and bought a Diet Coke from the machine. Tina, the receptionist, was gone, but lights were still on in offices down the hall, and the TV was still on HNC.

Back in her office, she started digging, first for Michael Standridge of Moscow, Idaho. His parents had been paid the standard benefit of one hundred thousand dollars within two days of their son’s death. There was another lump-sum payment of twenty thousand dollars that she tracked to an insurance company.

Kevin Lane of Pineville, Louisiana, was married at the time of his death, and he and his wife, Brianna Hailey Lane, had shared a joint checking account. They had a daughter, Skyler Marie Lane.

Voss confirmed that Brianna Lane had received the immediate death benefit payment from DOD. Sergeant Lane’s wife was also entitled to Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC), and her daughter received a monthly benefit as well. Brianna Lane had set up a savings account for her daughter in the fall of 2006, and the regular payments had been deposited like clockwork ever since.

Voss checked the numbers for both accounts, then stopped, her finger tracing a line on her computer monitor.

She scrolled down through the account transactions until she came to the previous month.

There it is again.

The number leapt out at her—$7,500.00 had been deposited in this account beginning in September 2006 and continuing monthly, right up through the last month.

So what? she asked herself. Maybe Brianna Lane was a lawyer or an investment banker or …

Not making that kind of money in a town the size of Pineville, Louisiana. It was way out of proportion for an army widow in her twenties in a very small town.

“Let’s just see about this,” Voss said.

She began tracing the deposits, following the digital footprints deeper and deeper. No money was completely clean—all transactions left a trail, no matter how hard certain parties might try to cover it. Voss had been down that road before as well, and with numbers much, much larger than this.

Voss kept following the trail. Lights clicked off in the offices around her. She called her ex-husband’s house, said good night to each of the kids as she always did, and turned back to her monitor.

The funds were transferred to Brianna Lane’s account in Pineville each month from a bank in Dallas, Texas. The account was registered to a company called Beasley Holdings. Its address was a post office box. The account was nothing more than a pass-through. The funds arrived in the Beasley account on the same day each month, and were automatically transferred out to Brianna Lane within one hour.

Voss took it back another step, which led to a New York bank and an account registered to Eastern Investments. Same thing as the Dallas account—funds arrived and left within one hour. It took Voss a little longer to find that the money came to New York through an offshore account in Aruba.

As she expected, the trail ended there, at least temporarily. Even RACER wasn’t able to immediately access foreign accounts. The account information was encrypted, and without some more sophisticated hacking, she’d never be able to break through the labyrinth and find where the money came from before it went to Aruba.

In her past life, she’d known just the person for such a job. He had the tools, he was a professional hacker, and he owed her several favors. Not wanting to use the office computer, she sent him a text message from her phone and asked him to call her. When he did, she told him what she wanted. He didn’t hesitate, just said, “Sweet!” and told her he’d get on it.

Voss’s eyes were blurry. She was hungry, and her butt hurt from sitting in the chair for so long. She reached for the phone, then pulled her hand back. She didn’t know where Meg Tolman was, just that she had left town quickly.

Voss didn’t have all the information Tolman might need, either. This was more than just a favor for an office colleague. With any luck, in the morning, Voss would know where that money had come from. Then she would call Meg Tolman.