Ridley Pearson - The Body of David Hayes

“Can you put a guard, a human being, one of your security guys, on the doors to these processing rooms? Can we not rely on the technology so much?”

“It would cost. I’d have to check.”

“Check,” Boldt said. “And if you’re refused, let me know right away.”

He looked for cracks in his reasoning, absolutely certain that Hayes used the money drop as a diversion, but stumped to prove it. Witte pulled himself out of a chair and left the small conference room. Hartsmith’s intelligent eyes stared off into space, deep in thought.

“It’s problematic,” Hartsmith said. “A computer controlling its own security. But then again, it’s integrated. A closed system. You can’t get into the system to mess with it, because it guards its own door.”

“But if you do get through that door… ” Boldt could see Liz being forced to gain Hayes access to the servers, could feel her terror. Increasingly, it seemed to Boldt that if Hayes could not get her to cooperate, his only choice would be to kidnap her or someone else at the bank with the proper security clearance.

“Then we’re toast. Yes. You erase any record of your visit, and you dump any video that captured you. It’s brilliant, really, except that it’s putting the cart before the horse.”

“But how do we know absolutely?”

“There is no absolute way. But if you’re asking if I think someone raided the AS/400s today, I’d put a good piece of change on that not having happened.”

Boldt understood then that both Foreman and Liz were right: Hayes needed Liz for her palm print to gain access. Once inside the server suites, with access to the mainframes, he could not only steal his money back but erase any record he’d ever been in the building, clear himself of any charges, and he could do it using the very same computers that were supposed to catch him. Perhaps today, using Liz to make the money drop, to distract bank security and the police, was nothing more than a dry run, a chance for him to inspect the place, to get a lay of the land and refine his plan. If so, they’d pick him up on the security video.

Boldt caught up to Liz still being held in a small room off the bank’s branch offices located on the ground floor. He asked her to assemble a list of all WestCorp employees and executives with security clearance to the server suites. He intended to interview them all. He then called in the best eyes on his squad, unwilling to wait for video dubs from the bank surveillance cameras. Within the hour, he had six officers in front of televisions, carefully screening the jerky imagery-still images shot every four seconds and stored to video. At shortly after 11 P.M., one of the officers spotted David Hayes.

“Elvis is in the building,” the woman announced to her colleagues, a little punch-drunk from the hours of tedious viewing.

Boldt was telephoned and awakened at home.

Thirty minutes later, Boldt found himself waiting for Danny Foreman outside the First Hill brownstone belonging to one Thedona Rembrandt Wilson. He’d left two messages for Foreman, as well as sending a page, and felt confident that rain or shine, Danny Foreman would meet him there, given the gravity of the find. He tried Foreman’s cell phone one last time and finally elected to make the interview alone. He’d left Liz at home, with the kids, but not before placing a team of uniformed patrol officers, one on foot, one in the cruiser, to watch his own house. Boldt remained convinced Hayes intended to abduct her. He wasn’t about to leave her unwatched and unguarded.

Thedona Wilson, an African American woman with good bone structure and large hands, required Boldt not only to show his identification but to pass his credentials through her chained front door, allowing her to make a call downtown. By the time she admitted Boldt and showed him into the living room, she was dressed in a white satin robe tied tightly around the waist and was sipping herbal tea. She offered nothing to Boldt, viewing him with skepticism, until Boldt placed some photocopied images in front of her and happened to mention that Elizabeth Boldt was his wife. At that point she did, in fact, offer Boldt tea or coffee, but he declined, too edgy and high-strung, interested only in making some progress on the case.

“These images, captured on security video, show this man, the one in the hat, at your desk, do they not?”

“Yes, sir, they do.”

“Do you remember this man?”

“I’m a customer service representative, Mr. Boldt. I’m supposed to remember faces, make conversation, and cross-sell. This man here was in his late twenties, early thirties. Polite. Handsome. Soft-spoken.”

Boldt shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to hear Hayes described in any of these ways. “You leave your desk at one point. Then he leaves with you… ” Boldt shuffled the freeze-frame images.

“To his safe-deposit box.”

“Safe deposit,” Boldt echoed, yanking his notebook from his blazer’s inside pocket.

“That’s all I know. Don’t remember the box number. In the two hundreds I think-two-oh-six? Two-oh-eight? Or is that an area code?” She tugged her robe to ensure it stayed tightly closed at her chest. “It’ll be in the log.”

“A name?”

“Brindle? Binder?” She searched her memory.

Boldt felt all the blood settle out of him, like someone had pulled a cork. “Brimmer,” Boldt said.

She snapped her long fingers, cracking the air. “Brimmer! First initial, E. A funny name, Everest? Everett?”

“E. Brimmer,” Boldt said, this time dryly. “Not Hayes? You’re sure it was Brimmer?”

“He doesn’t gain access without signing in, without me comparing that signature card, and I’m telling you, it was Brimmer for sure.”

The signature card would allow an expert to compare handwriting. If it came back Hayes, as he was certain it would, then it would serve as probable cause for them to obtain a warrant and to drill the safe-deposit box. Boldt assumed this effort would prove fruitless: He suspected Hayes had kept the “cloaking” software-which he’d used to keep the seventeen million hidden in WestCorp’s system-in the safe-deposit box. He had it now, and with it, the ability to recover the money. Given use of the pseudonym, Brimmer, bank officers had failed to identify the box as registered to Hayes.

Boldt told Ms. Wilson he’d meet her at the bank at 8 A.M., Monday, and that together they would examine the safe-deposit logbook. An exercise in futility, he knew.

“That name, Brimmer,” she said. “Why the long face, Lieutenant?”

“It’s nothing,” Boldt answered, lying well. In fact, it was Liz’s maiden name: Elizabeth Brimmer. E. Brimmer , a false identity Hayes had established, no doubt, years ago while still a bank employee. While still infatuated. In love ? Boldt wondered. That name, that safe-deposit box, connected Hayes to Liz, and Liz to the past, and Boldt’s memory to that shared past as well.

Suddenly, he felt sick to his stomach.

“THE STRUGGLE IS NOT INsolving this case,” Boldt told Liz, who was still half asleep. “Because to tell the truth, I don’t care about the embezzlement, this seventeen million dollars. The struggle is to protect you and to save our marriage, it’s retaining or maintaining respect for each other, making it out the other side in one piece.”

“I didn’t know he’d used my maiden name.”

“It borders on worship, that kind of thing. I’m thinking he probably had a shrine to you in his jail cell.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m serious.”

“What if he did? So what? You don’t see any shrine on this end, do you?”

“I’m telling you, the battle I face right now is forgiveness. Finding forgiveness. That and protecting you. This money? I could care less!”