Chapter Three
When Roarke came back in, she was deep into it.
“These guys have their thumbs in a lot of pies.”
“It’s usually fingers in pies.”
Looking up, she frowned. “I thought you stick in your thumb.”
“If you’re Little Jack Horner, but otherwise, fingers.”
“Little Jack Horner is not, at this time, a suspect.
Anyway, Calvin Banner, age seventy-nine, is still basically running the show as far as I can see.
Jacob Wyst, age seventy-six, seems more like the public face.
The one who does the hyping, the digging up federal grants for research, touting whatever that research comes up with.
You know, those bigger tomatoes, reducing cow farts, space exploration and colonization, medical innovations.
“They send people to third world countries, or areas suffering from floods, droughts, disease, and work to rebuild, rehabilitate.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
She knew that tone. “Okay, what did I miss?”
“You’d need to look a bit deeper to see they often—in the name of rebuilding, rehabilitating, teaching such things as regenerative farming, water purifying—acquire land. And in acquiring, often displace the local population, or transfer them to areas they already own, have already rebuilt.”
“Okay. And?”
“There’s a school of thought that this relocating, displacement result in a kind of serfdom.
Farmers, for instance, don’t own the land they farm.
They have housing, food, schools, and so on, but own nothing.
They work for Banner-Wyst, are educated by Banner-Wyst, they see the company doctors, and so on. ”
“Are they paid?”
“They are, and a portion of that payment goes into the communal pool to pay for the schools, medical centers, roads, the infrastructure. Some, of course, are satisfied to have all of that. But if they want something else, they leave with, basically, nothing.”
“Is it legal?”
“They’re careful to stay on this side of the line.
” He picked up her cooling coffee, drank some.
“And their marketing, their messaging is first-rate. They are, no doubt, helping people in desperate need of assistance. But in exchange for that help, they sacrifice their home, their culture, and in a very real way, their freedom to choose.”
“You don’t like them, not even a little.”
He shrugged. “I admire some of their work, some of the progress made in medicine, in environmental strides, and in other areas. At the base of things, Eve, I’m still an Irishman. You take the land, you take the heart.”
She sat back. “So maybe Chu found something at work that fell on the other side of the line, threatened to blow the whistle. But. You saw the scene, Roarke.”
“I did, yes.”
“Overkill, brutal, messy. Personal, in my mind. A big organization wants to take down a whistleblower? Lots of ways to do it that aren’t any of those. If there’s no paying off or discrediting—”
“You dispose of the problem, quietly, or in a way that looks like tragedy. We can toss in the victim’s finances, and the fact that roughly thirteen years ago he opened an account in the Caymans under the name Lawrence Pope—his mother’s maiden name.
He opened it with a deposit of two-point-five million. ”
And that gave her a nice buzz. “That’s a tidy sum to anyone who’s not you.”
“At the same time he received a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus from Banner-Wyst.”
“Which rounds up to the even tidier three million. Even I can do that math.”
“Within the year he was given a promotion and a five percent salary bump. Twice a year he deposits a hundred thousand in the Caymans account, which doesn’t come from his annual bonus of two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“Rachel Chu said they’d lived at that location for over twelve years.”
“Yes, and with the five hundred K as down payment thereon.”
She nodded because it was a nice, steady buzz now.
“Work bonus so it was legit, no red flags on it.”
“He’s pulled small sums out here and there, eight, nine thousand at a time.
But he’s careful with it, and careful to live within their means, or appear to.
He and his wife have a joint account for household expenses, which both contribute to, both utilize.
And each has individual accounts. The household and individuals look clean, though he occasionally trickles in a few thousand extra, which match withdrawals from the secondary. Nothing that would lift an eyebrow.”
“Well, mine’s lifting now.”
“I thought it might. They own the house outright,” Roarke continued.
“Have a second home in the Hamptons. They’d started college funds for both sons in the sons’ infancy, added to it considerably with the windfalls, and put them through college, the eldest through medical school, the younger they helped start up his business. ”
Slipping into her kitchen, he got them both cold tubes of water.
“I’ve run the first son’s financials, and they’re clean. In addition to his hospital work, he volunteers twice a month at Louise’s clinic.”
“So maybe Dr. Dimatto has some insight. I’ll tag her on it.”
“I thought you would. Bradley Chu’s wife’s a successful glass artist. I have the younger son’s running now on auto. I doubt there’ll be anything to add.”
Absently, she drank some water. “Because they don’t know. Chu knew something, hit on something about thirteen years ago. They paid him off, and kept paying him off.”
She got up to pace around her board. “Why kill him now, like this?” Shaking her head, she circled the board again. “If he suddenly got greedy—and I don’t buy it—they’d hire a pro, take him out like you said. Quietly or tragically.
“Not this way,” she said, tapping a finger on the board. “And why get greedy after thirteen years? The go-along guy, the compromiser? He’s got the big house, the vacation home, his sons are adults and established in their careers.”
She frowned, glanced at Roarke. “Side piece?”
“Nothing indicates through the financials.”
“I have to look there, but it doesn’t ring for me. Morris will tell me if he had an addiction, but what you’re telling me about his finances, he wasn’t draining them to pay for hits, wasn’t pulling from them to cover a gambling problem.”
“No, the Caymans account’s grown rather than diminished. He was careful with his money. Conservative.”
“A lot of good it did him,” Eve muttered. “Okay, he knew something they didn’t want going public, thirteen years ago. Paid him off, and he continued to work for the company. Which sounds like everyone’s satisfied. But if you cross the line once . . .”
Roarke tapped his tube against hers in toast. “You’ll likely cross it again.”
“So something else, something more. But he’s a company man, he’s sitting pretty. Why rock the boat?”
“Someone else may have wanted to.”
“And gone to him, as director. That person won’t be bribed or paid off, so discredited? Ruined career-wise, maybe personally? That’s an angle. Yeah, that could play. We’ll push on that.”
“Have a care there, Eve.” Roarke skimmed a hand down her back.
“I did some poking there while running the Chu financials. Banner-Wyst, they’re aggressive.
Under the humanitarian face—and they do good work, no question of it—there’s what strikes me as a kind of lust for power.
Not just wealth, but the power that comes with it.
Socially, politically. Banner guards his privacy, but Wyst, charming, outgoing, has made strong connections with power brokers, lawmakers, not just in East Washington but globally. ”
“Just doing my job,” she said. “They’d have to expect it.”
“Have a care,” he said again, and kissed her forehead. “Now, if you’re going to have a go at them, you need some sleep.”
“Yeah, probably.” But she took a last look at the board. “They didn’t do this. You don’t reach as high as they’ve reached, have the scope, the success they’ve got, and lose control this way.”
“I have to agree there, as you’d know the cops would come to the door, even routinely.” Taking her hand, he drew her away from the board, out of the room.
“They didn’t do this,” she repeated. “Or odds are low they’d order a hit on a loyal employee, certainly this kind of hit. But.”
“They may have a very good idea who.”
“That’s right. You know, it’s your own fault when I have to tell you that you think like a cop.”
“I beg your pardon, I believe I think like a man who owns and runs companies, and knows what goes on inside them.”
“All of them? All the time?”
“All of them, and if not minute-by-minute, eventually.”
They stepped into the bedroom, where the cat stretched out on the bed, taking up as much room as he could manage.
Eve took off her weapon harness, set it aside.
“It’s a lot of balls to juggle. Do you ever get tired of it?”
“Tired, yes. Tired of it, not a bit. It’s the very same for you,” he added as he undressed.
“A lot of balls you juggle as well. Running your division, knowing what’s going on inside it, heading investigations, talking to witnesses, survivors, suspects.
You get tired, as you are now, but not of it.
You don’t tire of the hunt, of putting pieces together, of taking down those who choose to kill. ”
Yes, she thought as she pulled on a nightshirt, she was tired now. But not of the job.
“Right before we met, I think I was in or heading for some sort of crisis. Something was starting to crack. Part of it had to be the memories I’d buried pushing back. Dreams, that room in Dallas, the red light flashing, blood on my hands. The little girl’s hands.”
Saying nothing, he went to her, folded her in.
“It wasn’t all that, but as hard as I tried to lock it away, Richard Troy kept eking through. And part, I kept myself closed off, no outlet. Well, Mavis, and she’s a hell of an outlet.”
“She is all of that.” He kissed her again before he drew her to the bed.