Death of a Bankster (7 page)

“How could this have happened, Sergeant?” Barbara Davis asked. “I mean a man’s … body can’t just up and vanish.”

Sue answered Ms. Davis. “Literally speaking, that’s true. Still, Phoenix, Arizona, the world, for that matter, is a big place. We knew nothing of this until the fourth days after the occurrence. In those four days, your son-in-law could have been taken anywhere. We hope to find answers, but it’s simply unrealistic for you to expect them this afternoon.”

Paige leaned forward and put two crackers and some cheese on her plate before pushing the tray closer to Maddie and Sue. “I do understand that,” Paige said, “but this is all … so hard. One day he is here. Then he is dead. Then his body disappears. Then I learn the FBI agents were imposters.” Paige stiffened. Her eyes shut tightly, her delicate lashes long and perfectly colored. She ran her hands down the legs of her black slacks and crossed her legs at the ankles. Then she looked up. “I’m sorry. My life didn’t prepare me for … such things.”

Maddie nodded, but neither she nor Sue said anything. Then Maddie spoke. “Mrs. Crawford, I’m sorry we can’t offer more. For now, the department is treating your husband’s disappearance as a murder.”

“I’d like you to explain what you mean by, ‘for now.’ I saw my husband shot dead. Carla Roth witnessed it as well. You have our formal statements. What the hell does, ‘for now,’ mean?”

“It means we have no body, two witnesses, and evidence that only confirms your husband lost a fair amount of blood on the floor in your foray. There is no evidence and no witnesses which take us further.”

“You mean you don’t believe us? Do you imagine that Carla and I had some nefarious plan to murder my husband and cover it with this story?”

“It is not a matter of believing or not believing you. It is our opinion that you are telling the truth. It is that belief which brings us here this morning, and keeps us handling this within homicide where cases without bodies are rare indeed. Still, our Lieutenant has authorized us to work this as a homicide only until close-of-business tomorrow, Thursday.”

“Then what?” Paige Crawford asked. Her words floated to Maddie on a wave of anger diluted by confusion.

“Friday morning, with no change by then, I will contact our Missing Person’s department and arrange for you to meet with them.”

For a minute the room was awash in silence, dense, hard silence. A second minute passed before Barbara Davis broke the lock of tension by setting her coffee cup in its saucer, none too gently. “Isn’t it unusual to have a detective team of two women?”

“Traditionally, perhaps,” Maddie said to answer Paige’s mother. “A few years ago that could not have happened, but things are changing in today’s department.” She didn’t say that Sue, who had come in third in the department’s unofficial arm wrestling championship held impromptu at one of the cop bars, could likely lick most of the men who might have become Maddie’s partner, or that Sue held a brown belt in Karate. Still, despite her physicality, Sue Martin was a very attractive woman, divorced like Maddie, but without children.

“So,” Paige began, “just what needs to happen to get you what you need by tomorrow night?”

Maddie reached out to refill her iced tea, and Sue’s after she extended her glass toward Maddie. “The big objectives remain the same: find either your husband’s body or the two who posed as FBI agents.”

“Could they be real FBI agents?” Paige asked. “Isn’t that possible?”

“No ma’am. We checked with the local and national offices of the FBI. There are no agents by those names and no FBI case involving your husband. We need to find the imposters, as well as the man who impersonated our medical examiner. Concurrently, we will be trying to locate your husband’s body, and the elusive motive for his murder.”

“You have released my home back to me so I take it your evidence techs, whatever you call them, are through. What did they find?”

“Unfortunately, nothing that helps much more than confirming some things. They found no fingerprints beyond people we were able to identify, folks who move in your circles. By the way, Ms. Davis, thank you for giving Bill Molitor your prints the other day so we could add yours to Paige’s and Sam’s. Please pass on our thanks to Carla Roth who gave us her prints as well. We got Sam’s from his time in the military.”

Paige’s mother spoke next. “I’m sorry, weren’t the prints of the FBI imposters found? I mean, they should help you find those men which in turn could lead to the support you need to stay on the case.”

“That would be nice, Ms. Davis,” Sue Martin said. “However, Carla Roth told us they both, acting as FBI agents would, wore protective latex gloves.”

“So, no prints.” Ms. Davis said, before leaning back in her chair more from despair than for comfort.

“That’s correct, ma’am.”

Then Paige leaned forward, her eyebrows raised. “When they first got here, Agent Powell, well the man claiming to be Agent Powell had his hand on the front doorknob. Carla had closed the door just before they came in. He and this Agent Withers, the woman, were not wearing those gloves then.”

“No ma’am,” Sue said. “However, by the time our tech team got here five days after the event, that doorknob had been used by you and others multiple times. There were no recoverable prints from them on the knob or the door itself. It’s likely these guys wiped down wherever they had touched without gloves. From the description of the events of that evening, I’d say they had this well planned.”

Maddie took back over. “Molitor’s team did find clear blood traces to confirm your husband had lost a significant amount of blood recently in your foyer, right where you stated your husband fell. However, I should add, while we confirmed that blood was the same type as your husband’s, we have not conclusively established that the blood was specifically your husband’s. We expect that to be achieved soon, maybe today. They got DNA from the blood residuals on the floor and are matching it against DNA from trace elements Molitor’s team found here in your home. In real life, this DNA matching takes a bit more time than in the movies.”

“Trace elements?”

“Things like hairs from his brush in your bathroom. Earwax on a cue tip found in the bath waste basket. Stuff like that. Those tests are currently being run. We expect these tests will conclusively prove that the blood is your husband’s.”

“But, still, even that won’t prove Sam is dead, is that right?” Barbara Davis asked.

“Correct. But we are relying on the eyewitness reports, including Carla Roth who reported she confirmed that Mr. Crawford was dead. Carla Roth is a nurse and has checked this kind of thing many times. She would know.”

“If she’s telling the truth, right?” Ms. Davis asked, again drilling into the issue of the veracity of the witnesses. “We always come back to that. That’s really the point, isn’t it? The point you made earlier about the truthfulness of my daughter and Ms. Roth, or the lack thereof.”

“As unlikely as that is, yes,” Maddie said. “It is a loose end we must tie off. In homicide we’ve seen many things that have caused us to always remain skeptical until the facts are independently corroborated by unrelated sources. Yes, ma’am. That’s the part we currently lack, corroboration from unrelated sources.”

“Yours is nasty business, Sergeant.”

“It is. No doubt. Look, we … the department believes this went down exactly as you have represented. We are proceeding in accord. Still, we must remain open to all the possibilities, no matter how remote.”

“I don’t like the doubting of what we have said. Not one bit. But I guess I understand, sort of. Still, no one wants to be assumed a liar, even as a remote possibility.” Then Paige looked upward and pursed her lips, a deep slow breath followed.

“What?” Maddie asked. “Have you thought of something?”

“If you need more, about the blood I mean. Sam donated blood. We both did. About two weeks ago. Give me a moment.” Paige left the room and returned in little over a minute. “Here it is. I had a copy in our health file.”

Sue took it and read it. “I’ll follow up on this. Let’s hope they still have the blood in the blood bank. We may need a warrant, but, if so, I can alert them it’s on the way. They may cooperate on your say so. I’ll let you know. We may not even need it. As I mentioned, they are comparing what was obtained on the tile floor with the trace evidence from here in your home. We’ll take this donation information with us, but I really expect we will soon have confirmation the blood is your husband’s.”

Barbara Davis refilled her coffee and Paige’s. “But, as you’ve explained, even that will not be sufficient to keep this a homicide case.”

Maddie said, “I’m afraid that’s so. The core question remains. Who could be interested enough in your son-in-law to put his home under surveillance, to commit murder, to steal his body after they had killed him, and then gain access to his home to take his computer, smart phone, and search his desk and other possessions. Concurrent with that question is who would have the resources to do these things?”

“Can you hazard any guesses at this point?”

“No, Ms. Davis. It’s too early for guesses.”

“I’m sorry,” Paige said, “but it’s not too early for guesses. We have only until tomorrow night. Then you label us as kooks and hand us off to missing persons.”

“I would have said it more gently,” Mrs. Crawford, “but that’s the bottom line.”

“Well, Sergeant Richards,” Ms. Davis retorted while picking up a cracker and a piece of cheese. “I can make an educated guess.”

“Go ahead.”

“These were not street thugs and this was neither a random murder nor a violent burglary. This was a sophisticated effort by people capable of and prepared to present themselves as FBI agents. Fake FBI cards were printed. A van was in waiting with someone prepped to play the role of a medical examiner. Then they had the poise to take control of my daughter’s home, easing her out so they could search. This was all done using guile. These people were pros. Mafia? Ours or a foreign government? Those would be my guesses.”

“We’ll take a look at both those possibilities, ma’am,” Sue Martin answered while Maddie nodded.

* * *

Outside, Maddie said to Sue, “Did you notice how Ms. Davis took control of a large part of the conversation.”

“I had the same read,” Sue said. “So, what comes next?”

“This is the one-week anniversary of my son’s first report card with all A’s. How ‘bout we celebrate. Lunch is on me.”

After ordering a late lunch at In N’ Out Burger they settled into a booth. “Man, the birds were going crazy outside my window just before dawn.”

“Looking for mates,” Sue said.

“Or a morning quickie before their day got started. Curtis and I, back in the days before we split, used to start a morning like that at least once a week. Well, we did until he started carrying on with an old high school girlfriend.”

“You still miss ‘im?”

“Not so much anymore. But, yeah, in bed, you know. Not just the sex, the company, the not being alone. I’ve considered starting to sleep with Prince Valium, but he’d undoubtedly end up being as bad for me as Curtis. That’s about the only place and time I think about that man any longer.”

“You think the boys have any idea how much us girls talk about doing it?”

Maddie laughed. “As for me, in this my second round of single years, I want every man who looks at me to get a stiffy. But keep his distance until I pick the ones I want to have take the job.”

“Apply within,” Sue said. They both laughed.

After a few minutes of serious chewing, Sue said, “Why don’t I look into Barbara Davis like we did Sam and Paige Crawford? There is something about that Davis woman, her composure and matter-of-fact style. You recall Paige saying that her life didn’t prepare her for this kind of thing. Well, call it intuition, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that her mother’s life had prepared her.”

“I agree. Her mother didn’t seem shaken at all. Somber, but calm nonetheless. She’s a widow herself, and perhaps she just wasn’t all that fond of her son-in-law. God knows, she wouldn’t be the first mother-in-law with those feelings. My mother thought Curtis was just above nothing. Truth is she was right. Another truth is I didn’t listen to her. Yeah, do it. Throw in Mr. Davis too, Paige’s father. He may be dead, but as long as we’re grasping at straws, why not? Include their professional backgrounds. What did each of Paige’s parents do before they retired?”

* * *

Ryan Testler drove by the home of Maxwell Norbert, Sam Crawford’s boss at Nation’s First Bank and Trust. He had been going by several times a day for nearly two weeks, alternating between mornings, afternoons, and evenings. He had used different rental cars on different days to not appear memorable to the casual glances of neighbors. He had spent numerous hours watching the residence from a distant hill, using military field glasses. In that span, he had watched Maxwell Norbert back out two mornings and return home several nights. On six different occasions he had watched Mrs. Norbert back out of her garage. She was his main target of interest at this point as her movements were less predictable. Both spouses always closed the garage door as soon as their car cleared the garage while backing out, and as soon as they entered the garage upon their return. The after-dark departures confirmed his suspicion. When either of them backed out, they used an in-car remote to close the garage. When this happened, as the car crested the modest decline in the driveway, the headlights quickly rose to crush against the wall of the garage above the door. This meant the field of vision would allow the driver to see less than the top half of the garage opening as the door lowered, with even that measure quickly diminishing. While this happened they were looking in their rearview mirror or back over their shoulder.

Six days ago, Ryan had driven into their driveway and pulled ahead to the closed garage door. He sat tall in the seat, taller than the shorter Mrs. Norbert could sit, and began to back out at approximately the pace Mrs. Norbert did. As he had surmised, for him only the top half of the garage door was visible soon after his car began its descent down the sloped driveway, and Mrs. Norbert was at least six inches shorter than he.