Time slowed down, softening the edges of Georgia’s awareness. All that was real was the night, the barrel of the shotgun, and her Sig. “Drop the fucking gun,” Sechrest ordered, “or I’ll blow your head off.”
Despite the harsh words, the woman’s voice was high-pitched and full of fear. And frightened people do irrational things. If she didn’t lay down the gun, Sandy Sechrest might do exactly what she threatened. And while Georgia might get off a shot herself, a bloodbath wouldn’t serve anyone’s purpose. She chose her words carefully.
“Okay, Sandy. Let’s not either of us do anything we’ll regret. I’ll put down my gun if you’ll do the same. Like I said, I’m not here to hurt you.” Georgia bent over to lay down her Sig.
“Hands up,” Sechrest said.
Georgia straightened, her hands in the air. “You’ve got to be pretty freaked out, Sandy. I understand. I’m here to help.” She wanted to get a look at her, see what her face showed, but the door was ajar only about eight inches, and all she could make out was the outline of Sechrest’s body. She looked to be about as tall as Georgia, but heavier by twenty soft pounds. Her cop instincts told her she could take Sechrest if she had to. But she wasn’t a cop. She was a PI, following a lead. She prayed the woman didn’t have an itchy finger.
How much time had passed? A second? A minute? An hour? If the woman didn’t back down in another second, she’d have to act.
“Sandy, I did what you wanted. Now put the shotgun down. We have to talk, and we don’t have much time. Someone else may be coming for you.”
“Who are you working for?” The woman asked.
“I told you. Terry Messenger. Chris Messenger’s ex-husband.”
There was an intake of breath. The owl screeched again. Georgia heard small creatures scuttling deep in the woods. Suddenly the woman’s face collapsed. The shotgun pointed at the floor. Sechrest’s shoulders started to heave, and Georgia heard repetitive, wrenching sobs that were oddly similar to the owl’s cries. “I knew it wasn’t an accident. Oh god.”
Georgia sagged in relief. “I’m coming in now, okay, Sandy?”
The woman nodded and turned away from the door. She was still carrying the shotgun. Georgia walked in, but not before slipping her Sig back in her holster. “Sandy, do me a favor. Put the shotgun down. I’m a former police officer. I get nervous around guns.”
“But what if... what if we need it?”
Georgia smelled fear on Sechrest’s body. Was the woman still rational? “Just put it somewhere safe while we talk.”
The woman hesitated, looked around, finally laid it on the kitchen table.
“Now, can you turn on a light?”
“No way!” Sechrest’s voice was laced with panic. “There aren’t any curtains on the windows. Anyone can see in.”
“Did you forget your Honda’s out front? How do you think I found you?”
“That’s just a car... it doesn’t mean I’m here too.” But she sounded less certain.
Georgia forced herself to remain calm and not tell her how naïve she was. “Listen. You heard me drive up, right?”
“Of course. Heard you way down the road.”
“So if we hear anything, we’ll douse the lights before they get here.”
“I don’t know.”
“Sandy, I know you’ve been alone. But I’m here now, and I’m on your side.”
This time it seemed to work. Sechrest moved heavily to the couch and switched on a small lamp. Georgia blinked. The room was a combination living room, dining area, and kitchen. A narrow hallway led to an open bathroom door and a bedroom. A cracked leather couch was draped with a plaid tartan blanket. Beside it was a Lazyboy that had seen better days. The kitchen table was not much bigger than a card table, with four folding chairs around it.
Georgia sat on the couch and patted the seat beside her.
Sechrest sat. Her long blond hair was dirty and disheveled. She was dressed in flipflops, sweat pants and a black t-shirt with the outline of a panda bear on the front. She started to rock back and forth. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“I can’t do this any more,” she sobbed. “It’s like a horror movie. I keep wondering when I’m gonna wake up. But I never do.”
Georgia gave her time to pull herself together. “Start at the beginning.”
Sechrest looked up and wiped a sleeve across her face, then settled back against the cushion. When she spoke, her voice was stronger. “Right before the Fourth of July people started complaining about the service charges.”
“How did you get involved?”
“I get computer generated logs of most of the bank’s transactions. My job is to look them over and check for any unauthorized entries. After the calls came in, the CFO of the bank asked me to look into the matter.”
“And what did you find?”
“It took me a while to find the right log. But once I did, I discovered that every account in the bank had been assessed a ten dollar service charge.”
“Which is unusual.”
“Highly.” A look of impatience paged across Sechrest’s face.
That was good, Georgia thought. She was regaining her bearings.
“It just doesn’t happen that way. The thing is, the amount was so small. Only ten dollars.” She sniffed. “Our commercial accounts, which are on analysis, probably never even saw it. But all the little old ladies who bank with us have eagle eyes. You wouldn’t believe the calls we get. They always think the bank is out to screw them. Then again, any unexpected charge does have an effect if you’re on a fixed income.”
“What day were the charges levied?”
“Wednesday, June twenty-fifth.”
Molly Messenger had been released by her kidnappers that afternoon.
“At first I thought it was a computer glitch. You know, someone in data processing was tinkering with some software, and it got screwed up.”
“Right.”
“So I called Chris Messenger. She’s—she was the IT Director.”
Georgia counted back the days. Christine’s fatal “accident” was on Friday, July fourth. “When was that?”
“On Tuesday, July first. When I checked the Daily Transaction Journal for the twenty-fifth.” It came out quickly, as though Sechrest had already done the math and knew the two events were connected.
“A week after the charges first appeared.”
“Sometimes it takes that long for the customer to notice things. Especially when they only get a statement once a month.”
“Go on.”
“I called Chris, but she wasn’t there. She was at home with her daughter. After that horrible...”
“Kidnapping.” Georgia finished.
The knowing look in Sechrest’s eyes intensified.
“Did you leave Chris a message?”
Sandy swallowed. “That was the problem. I left my name. My extension. My title. Why I was calling. Everything.”
Georgia winced. If Chris—or anyone else—had listened to Messenger’s voicemail on that Tuesday, they’d know everything too. “Then what happened?”
“Well, like I said, the CFO was on me to get this thing cleared up. He was getting flak from the chairman. She shook her head. “Everyone was getting into the act. So I called Mr. Emerlich.”
“Arthur Emerlich.”
“He was the VP of Operations. The COO.”
“And Chris Messenger’s boss.”
Sechrest nodded.
“When did you call him?”
“The same afternoon. I couldn’t reach Christine. He didn’t know anything about it but said he’d try to get to the bottom of it.” A haunted expression crept across her face. “He died the next day.” She tensed. “But, here’s the thing. I came in early the next morning to work on the problem. Before I knew Emerlich was dead. That’s when I found it.”
Georgia found herself tensing, too. “Found what?”
“Any time you go into bank records, you leave a trail—your fingerprints, really—of what you do and when you do it. It’s supposed to be that way, so if there’s ever any questions or irregularities, we can track them and see who or what went wrong. Usually, it’s just carelessness. Someone enters the wrong numbers, so the totals are off, stuff like that.” She stopped and she tilted her head. Her face took on a fearful expression. “Did you hear something outside?”
Georgia was concentrating so hard on Sechrest’s words she hadn’t been paying attention. She quickly got up, turned off the light, and went to the window. Nothing was moving. Even the breeze had died.
“What kind of noise did you hear?”
“Something crunching on gravel.”
Georgia squinted. “I don’t see anything.”
“You sure?”
Nodding, she returned to the couch and turned the light back on. “So, you were saying...”
Sechrest hugged her knees and rocked forward. “Every employee has their own ID number. Whenever you log in—whether it’s to do a transaction, or even just to review them, it shows up. Anyway, when I checked the Daily Transaction Journal, I saw an offset for a lot of money had occurred the same day the service charges were levied.”
“An offset?”
“A credit to an account. Of course, that happens all the time, but this credit was exactly the same amount as the total of the service charges.”
“Which was?”
“Three million dollars.”
Georgia whistled.
“I was still thinking it was all just a mistake. But then I checked another log. Turns out the ID number of the person responsible for the credit to the account was Chris Messenger.”
“What are you saying?”
“It seemed as if Chris put all the services charges into a dummy account.”
“What’s a dummy account?”
“It’s basically just an electronic account. There are no paper files on record, no signature cards, no OFAC checks, no bank officer signature signing off on it. All that’s there is the electronic account.”
“And Chris opened it?”
“Not only did she open it, but she closed it, too.”
Georgia frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“The account was opened around the beginning of June. By Chris Messenger. At least, her ID number was on the paperwork.” Sechrest paused. “What’s more, she authorized three million dollars to be withdrawn the same day.”
“On June first?”
“That’s right.”
Georgia went quiet. That made no sense. Messenger couldn’t have embezzled three million dollars for a ransom three weeks before her daughter was kidnapped. Unless she stole the money for another reason. “What happened to the three million?”
“Three cashiers’ checks were issued from that account. Each for a million dollars. But, you see, there’s a catch.”
“What?”
“Technically, there wasn’t any money in the account to pay those checks.”
“No money? Now I’m totally confused.”
“It gets complicated. Especially if you don’t understand banking. Basically, what we had was an overdraft for three million dollars on the account that Chris opened.”
“Did Chris know?”
“Absolutely.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because in order to close an account, you either have to eliminate the overdraft, or the bank ends up taking a loss. Which, for a bank of our size, would be catastrophic. It appears that Chris monkeyed around with the computer system—she was the head of IT, remember—and issued the service charges which totaled three million, put them into the account so it looked like the account had been funded. Then she promptly turned around and closed the account.”
Georgia had so many questions she wasn’t sure where to start. “When was the account closed?”
“Wednesday, June twenty-fifth.”
“The same day the service charges were levied.”
“Right.”
The day Chris had been escorted downtown by the police, ostensibly to get her laptop. The day Molly was released. Is that when she’d “monkeyed” with the system? But why? None of it made any sense. “Who did the cashiers’ checks go to?”
Sechrest shook her head. “I don’t know. Recipients aren’t on the reports I have access to. Just numbers. We scan all our checks, so I was planning to look up the scanned images, but I didn’t have time.” She ran her hand up her arm. “But, you see, that’s not the end of it.”
“There’s more?” Georgia ran a hand across her brow.
“A lot more. But by the time I discovered the other pieces, Emerlich and Chris were both dead, and I knew I had to split.”
“Tell me.”
Sechrest rearranged herself on the couch “See, there was a—” She stopped short as a light flashed through the window. “Oh my god!”