Every Kind of Wicked (A Gardiner and Renner Novel Book 6)

Not even being booked on an assault charge could dim Hayes’s elation at having finally found and confronted Shanaya Thomas. Jack and Riley turned him over to his attorney, who planned to get him released that same afternoon with minor bail. All Hayes wanted to know was if they were going to arrest Shanaya as well.

“Her interrogation is next on our list,” Jack promised, purposely using the harsher word. Hayes smiled, satisfied, no doubt imagining a much more unpleasant future for her than Jack or Riley could most likely provide.

They took a break at their desks to regroup and rest their eardrums. Rick’s autopsy had been completed and had provided no more information than they’d already surmised. Rick had no injuries other than a fatal stab wound, made by something long, relatively thin and pointed and yes, extremely similar to the weapon used on Jennifer Toner and Evan Harding. An unusual weapon, the pathologist had told the attending officers. Nearly every stabbing he’d ever seen had been with a knife. He’d seen a few accomplished with screwdrivers or even a piece of rebar, and he couldn’t be 100 percent sure this could not be one of those, but it resembled an ice pick . . . a tool from a bygone age that shouldn’t even exist anymore.

Shanaya Thomas paced in an interview room, having nagged the officer assigned to watch her every five minutes to be allowed to leave. He told her that she could but would then most likely be arrested. He plied her with coffee, snacks, the Wi-Fi password, anything to keep her happy—with obviously limited success to judge from the pleading look on his face when Riley and Jack snuck by.

Rick’s murder case had been officially assigned to the unit’s star detectives, Patty Wildwood and her partner, Tim. Technically it should have been Jack and Riley since they had already been working a related case, but no doubt the higher-ups felt that since Jack reportedly dated the victim’s ex-wife, well, the appearance of bias in any direction could be a problem. This was fine with Jack.

He fought the urge to check in with Maggie. She would only ask questions he couldn’t answer, and he could do nothing to help her through her current tangle of emotions. Denny and Carol would look out for her. Still, he could drop by the lab for a minute or two, maybe ask about that powder—

Riley said, “The connection between Rick and Jennifer is obvious. Same place, same time, so the killer had to take them both out.”

Jack said, “But which one had the killer gone there for?”

“Had to be Jennifer. If he’d wanted to kill Rick for some reason, he would have done it on the street or in his car, anyplace but an occupied building.”

“True.”

“But where does Evan Harding fit in? He had no connection to either, other than a brief conversation with Jennifer Toner.”

“We need to go back to that.”

“What?”

Jack tried to organize his thoughts. “We have to assume all three were killed by the same person. Jennifer wanted to track down the people responsible for supplying her brother with opioids. We’ve found nothing to suggest that Evan Harding had anything to do with the drug trade.”

“Although it would be easy,” Riley said, and it became Jack’s turn to ask what he meant. “A check cashing store would be a great cover. They’re passing small items over the counter, lots of cash changing hands, security cameras, great protection from rip-offs.”

“Huh. I didn’t get any hint of that—”

“Me neither. Not from our buddy Ralph. But Harding could have been a different story.”

Jack said, “True. Either way, as far as we know there is no connection between Evan Harding and Jennifer Toner, except for her visit to the check cashing place.”

Riley pondered this and came to the same conclusion Jack had. “We need to go back there. We need to look at more tapes, see if Marlon Toner had been a frequent visitor, or if Jennifer had shown up more than once.”

“And what Evan Harding had to do with her brother.”

“If the stuff ever gets out of his system, maybe he’ll tell us himself.” Riley rubbed his face, premature wrinkles more prominent around his eyes than they had been only a few days before. “There is one person still alive who could probably tell us something. And won’t. And we can’t even punch her in the stomach.”

Jack said, “Maybe instead of a stick, we need a more persuasive carrot.”

Monday, 3:00 p. m.

She began speaking as soon as they opened the door. “If you’re going to arrest me, do it. But you can’t keep me here. I know my—”

“Sorry for the wait,” Riley said. “We were retrieving Evan’s property for you.”

She stopped midsentence, gazing at the clear, labeled bag he held as if it were Medusa’s head. A diamond-encrusted Medusa’s head.

“Please sit down,” Riley said.

She did.

Jack went right into it. “We think you know more—perhaps everything—about Evan’s activities. We’ll make you a deal. Tell us about the call center and the check cashing store, and we’ll give you the key.”

She didn’t even pretend it wasn’t the key she wanted, and took her time to consider this offer. Jack pictured her mind moving like mercury, pulsing forward, around, probing for hidden traps or gaps or vulnerabilities, debating possible outcomes.

“Okay,” she said.

“What do you do at the call center?”

She took them through it. An automated system dialed numbers and played a recorded message about lowered credit card rates or pain medication by mail, and if the person first answered and then pressed the number 1 or whatever, then the switchboard at the center routed it to a free headset. A red light appeared on her headset’s base, and she had to push the button to connect to the call. The base had four different red lights with masking tape labels corresponding to each narrative—interest rates, free medical equipment, IRS, whatever. They changed from time to time depending on what they were having success with and what had burnt out. When the light lit up, she had two seconds to connect the call . . . more than five and she’d hear it from the pit boss.

The IRS narrative she’d been working recently had one extra step somewhere along the line because the first call was made and then the people—

“Victims,” Jack couldn’t resist clarifying.

—would call back. But it remained the same process from her point on. When the red light lit up, she had to take the call, the point always being to get the card numbers. Credit card numbers, gift cards, iTunes cards, anything that had funds attached to it. When she got the number, any relevant info, the expiration date, the three-digit security code, address, zip code out, she put them on hold and called the 800 number for the credit card company to find out the available credit. “If they have a seven-thousand-dollar limit but they’ve already charged six thousand eight hundred, it’s hardly worth it,” Shanaya explained wearily.

“Of course,” Riley deadpanned.

This confirmed the card as valid. A good number of people tried to recite their card number from memory or elderly people had a hard time reading the embossed numbers and transposed digits, and Shanaya would get back on the line and tell them it didn’t work. But if they had a decent amount of available credit—in practice, if they had any at all—Shanaya would type it into her monitor and dispatch it to her boss—not the pit boss, whose entire job it was to pace up and down the aisles, and make sure each employee gave 150 percent effort—but the floor supervisor, who worked in an office on the second floor and did nothing but transfer funds. Then Shanaya would repeat the process with any other credit cards on which the person wanted lower interest rates. Once possibilities were exhausted, she thanked them for their time, told them they would see the new interest rate reflected on their next statement or their application for the equipment or the pain meds would be in the mail or the IRS would cancel the warrant for their arrest. Then she would hang up and wait for the red light to beam again. They didn’t leave their desks or take a break without signaling the pit boss. Ignoring the red light or waiting too long to answer would get them fired. “It’s pretty grueling,” she finished.

Jack held himself back from saying A real job can be pretty grueling, too. But with difficulty.

Riley said, “So when the floor boss gets the credit card or gift card numbers, what does he do with them?”

She seemed surprised by the question. “I don’t know.”

“What I mean is, how do those numbers translate into money for your boss?”

“I don’t know. That part of it, they handle. Once the call ends, I’m done.” Then she added, “But I get a percent. Of whatever they make, I mean. We’re all paid on commission only, there’s no actual salary or hourly wage.”

“There’s a work incentive for you,” Riley said. “What happens on the screen when you add in the victim’s information?”

“Nothing. When I have the numbers and amounts verified I click on ‘Dispatch’ at the bottom and it goes.”

He asked a few more questions about the name of the program itself, the browser, the brand of computers and headsets even, anything at all. But she had not paid much attention to that, or said she hadn’t. “There’s nothing else on the computers except the program. Internet access has to be granted by the floor boss and he can see everything you’re looking at.” There would be no surfing the web, checking your Facebook status or playing Candy Crush at work, she explained. One girl sent a quick e-mail to her kids’ day care center and a couple minutes later the pit boss came down, ripped off her headset, and escorted her off the property by dragging her to the door by one arm. Same went for any personal work on your own smartphones. A quick text before the red light came on again could be done, but once you had a person on the line you kept your full attention on the job.

Okay, Jack thought, maybe a little grueling.

“I had a bit of Internet access with the IRS narrative because I needed to search the people to make them believe I had all their information—like where they lived, worked, where their kids go to school.”

“Seriously?” Riley breathed.

“It was not easy,” she told them, mistaking the disgust in his voice for interest.

“The man who attacked you said his credit card charge ended up on a gift card. Is that what your bosses do?”

“Could be. I told you, that part of it isn’t my job.”

Riley said, “Just for the record, you are aware that this is grand larceny, and a crime?”

She didn’t answer, her gaze flicking to the camera in the corner of the ceiling.

“Shanaya?” he pressed.

She wouldn’t admit it, not on record. “I had to have a job.”

Jack asked, “What did Evan have to do with the call center?”

Her head jerked up. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No. I worked there, he didn’t.”

“Did he visit you there?”

An unladylike snort. “No. Staff didn’t have visitors. Even the kids in the day care—if you checked them in, they had to stay the whole shift and leave with you. Nobody could have, like, the dads come get them when they got off work. No one ever in the building except us. I was amazed he let you in.”

“Mr. Hawking? He’s the floor supervisor?”

“No, he’s the boss. There’s a couple of floor bosses. I don’t know their names—I never see them.”

“Evan was murdered,” Jack reminded her, his voice firm. “If it had nothing to do with your illegal business, then why?”

“I don’t know,” she said, apparently miserable.

“What was he doing?”

“Evan? Nothing.”

“What was he doing at the check cashing place?”

“Nothing. It was a legitimate job,” she said in defense of her dead boyfriend. “I mean, he did whatever his job was, I guess.”

She looked up through her eyelashes, gauging their reactions. Apparently the look on Jack’s face told her she might want to do better than that.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said at last. “He figured they were bogus, but what could he do about it?”

“What was bogus?” Riley asked.

She told them, “Every day a few guys would come in and cash checks for medical payments, usually checks, Medicare, private insurance. The guys would have the correct ID, claim numbers on the memo lines; the checks looked legit, so he’d cash them.”

“But the checks were faked?” Riley guessed.

“No, the checks were from the government. They were perfectly good.”

“So what was the problem?”

“Twenty-, thirty-, fifty-thousand-dollar checks,” she added. “Every day or two. The same maybe ten different guys cashing them.”

“That’s a lot of cash,” Jack said.

“No, it wasn’t, because the guys would take only part of it in cash. They’d put the rest on a money order, and then wire the money order to a bank account.”

“Wait,” Riley said. “They’d get the cash, and then get rid of the cash?”

She ignored this interruption. “Evani did the math—the amount that the guys took out in cash of each check always equalled five percent.”

“Their fee,” Jack breathed.

Black hair fell over one eye and she batted it away. “He couldn’t tell what kind of medical condition they were supposed to have, or whether they really had it, of course. The checks only had claim numbers on them.”

“No doctor’s name?”

“No. But the funds all got transferred to the same bank account—something Therapeutics. That’s what made him realize it had to be some sort of scam.”

“Therapeutics?”

“Or pharmaceuticals, something like that. He said he tried to look it up once, but nothing came up.”

Riley said, “So a man comes in with a thirty-thousand-dollar check. What’s to keep him from cashing it and skedaddling?”

She hesitated, and Jack thought she might ask him to define skedaddling. “I don’t know.”

Jack said, “Because they’d never get another. They had to look at this as a job and play it straight or else their revenue stream would dry up.”

“Drugs,” Shanaya muttered. “A lot of people go in and out of that store. Evani said he could tell whether it was meth or painkillers or booze or only pot just by looking at someone. He thought painkillers most of the time.”

Riley said okay, but wouldn’t all these guys have to be over sixty-five to be eligible for Medicare? Maybe they really did have some heavy-duty medical conditions?

Shanaya tapped her foot, not particularly interested in the details.

Jack said, “You can also get it if you have a long-standing disability, like kidney failure. Same with Medicaid, especially for those with minimal income, children and single mothers. So, what did Evan do with this information?”

“Nothing,” Shanaya said, as if that should be obvious.

“He didn’t tell anyone, call the police, alert the feds?”

She laughed without humor. “No! He had no proof. It wasn’t up to him to decide that Mr. Smith didn’t really have diabetes. The checks were legitimate. He mentioned it to his boss one time and was told to mind his own business. As long as the store didn’t lose any money, it wasn’t a problem.”

“Then why is he dead?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you should ask Ralph.”