Robert Crais - The Forgotten Man

Brasher made an abrupt right turn into a small, windowless office and went behind the desk. A small square of construction paper was pushpinned to the wall facing me. The paper was filled with yellow and blue lines that might have been a cat or a tree, and a red message written in a child's hand: I LUV U DADY.

He smiled at me nicely.

"Do you mind if I make a copy of your identification? Marjorie will want it for our records."

I gave him my DL and investigator's license. He placed them on a copy machine behind his desk, and pushed a button. He smiled at me some more as the machine made its copies. The smile made him look like a guy who wanted to sell me aluminum siding. I didn't like all the smiling.

I said, "Is everything all right, Mr. Brasher?"

"Marjorie will be right down."

That wasn't the answer I wanted to hear, and I suddenly had the feeling Marjorie wasn't anxious to share her information.

"You spoke with Beckett. I'm sure he told you he's trying to locate the next of kin."

"Oh, yes. Marjorie spoke with him, too."

"The man was murdered. He was living in a motel under an assumed name with no way to trace him until now. You guys were sending him checks. If the police can find out why he was using an assumed name and why he came to Los Angeles, it might give them a line back to who murdered him. Someone at the receiving end of his checks might know those things."

Brasher glanced at the door, but Marjorie still hadn't arrived. The smile faltered as if he wouldn't be able to hold out much longer without her.

"We intend to cooperate to the full extent of our legal responsibility, but there are issues to be resolved."

"What issues?"

He glanced at the door again, and suddenly looked relieved. The aluminum-siding smile returned.

"C'mon in, Marjorie. This is Mr. Cole. Mr. Cole, this is Marjorie Lawrence from our legal department."

Marjorie Lawrence was a short, humorless woman in a blue business suit. She nodded politely, shook my hand, then pulled a chair as far from me as possible before she sat. She was carrying a thick file that looked dingy and old.

She said, "We were told Mr. Reinnike made a dying declaration that you were his son. Are you?"

She stared into my eyes, and I let her. I felt awkward and surprised, but I didn't want her to know it. I hadn't mentioned that part of the business to Brasher because I didn't know and it didn't seem relevant. Beckett must have told them.

He did, but I have no reason to believe I am. I never mot the man."

She nodded, and everything in her body language said that all the power in the room was hers.

"Regardless. I'm sure you can understand our position, you possibly being an heir."

They thought I had come to chisel. I looked from her to Brasher, then shook my head. An heir.

"All I want is to know where the checks were going. I'd like to get that information from you now because that will speed things up, but if you don't share it with me, you know you'll have to give it to the police, and I'll see it then. If you'd like me to sign something releasing you from any claim by me, I'll sign it."

She glanced at Brasher, and Brasher shrugged.

Marjorie had already prepared the paper. She slipped it out of the file, and I signed it on Brasher's desk. While I was signing, he gave back my licenses. When I finished, we went back to our seats. Easy come, easy go.

She opened the file again, studied the top page, then looked up at me.

"In 1948, this hospital-through our insurance supplier at that time-entered into a settlement agreement with Ray and Lita Reinnike-George Reinnike's parents-in their son's name. Rather than a lump-sum payment, we agreed upon a monthly payment in the patient's name that would span thirty years. The payments would have ended in nineteen seventy-eight."

"Seventy-eight."

"Yes."

I felt a dull sense of defeat. If the payments had ended in nineteen seventy-eight, then the most recent address they had would be almost thirty years old.

"Just because I'm curious-why did I have to sign a release? Any money would have been long gone."

"Mr. Cole, it's a bit more complicated than that."

She opened the file again, fingered out another sheet, and handed it to me. It was a payment record for George L. Reinnike showing addresses, check numbers, and dates of payment. It was cut-and-dried bean-counting except for a stamp affixed at the bottom that didn't seem part of an accountancy record: EXHIBIT 54.

"You can see for yourself that checks were sent to Mr. Reinnike at three addresses, the first being the original home address with his parents in Anson, California- "

She leaned closer to point out the Anson address at the top of the sheet. I was still thinking about the exhibit number.

"Why is there an exhibit number here?"

"Checks were sent to Mr. Reinnike at the Anson address until 1953 when he filed a change of address to Calexico, California, where he received checks for five years and seven months before moving to-"

Her finger traced down the page.

"- Temecula, California. He filed an appropriate change of address, and his checks were redirected to Temecula, where the checks continued until 1975, at which time we discovered that a theft was taking place and terminated the payments."

I looked up, and discovered Marjorie and Brasher watching me.

"What theft?"

Brasher said, "Reinnike moved in 1969, but failed to file a change of address. A man named Todd Edward Jordan moved in, and banked Reinnike's checks-"

Marjorie interrupted. She was guarding the hospital's liability base like a Gold Glove third baseman.

"If Mr. Reinnike had filed a change of address as was required, or contacted us to inquire about his payments, we would have acted immediately to resolve the problem. We were as much the victims here as Mr. Reinnike."

Brasher went on.

"Right, so we continued sending the checks to Temecula, only Reinnike wasn't getting them. Jordan got them. Jordan forged Reinnike's name, and deposited the money into his own account. People do this kind of forgery with Social Security checks all the time. We discovered the theft in 1975, and that's when we terminated the payments, and contacted the police."

"Reinnike just moved away?"

"So far as was known, yes. All we know is what we've read in the file, Mr. Cole. None of us were here at that time."

Marjorie said, "I was in junior high."

I stared at the page as if I were studying it, but mostly I was giving myself time to think. George Reinnike would have gotten a check every month for another nine years, but he had walked away.

Marjorie Lawrence opened the file again, and this time she took out a bound collection of newspaper clippings.

"These were in our files. They're news clippings of Jordan 's arrest and prosecution. Maybe they will help you, Mr. Cole."

Marjorie Lawrence brought me to an empty conference room, and left me with the file.

The file contained eleven yellowed newspaper articles, all clipped from the San Diego Union -Tribune and filed by date. The first piece reported that an unemployed electrician named Todd Edward Jordan had been charged with theft, forgery, and mail fraud for cashing insurance-settlement checks intended for a former tenant of the house Jordan rented. The facts were light, indicating that the reporter had filed his piece before he knew of Reinnike's disappearance. The next story was more interesting. Investigators had been unable to locate George Reinnike, and sources within the Sheriffs Department suggested that Reinnike was a possible homicide victim. Some of the speculations read like lurid noir potboilers.

The next story stopped me cold-

Forgery Victim Still Missing