Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3) by Brett Battles (ebook reader with built in dictionary txt) 📕

In the day job, if something goes wrong, we don’t simply abandon a mission. There are always exceptions, of course, but I don’t feel this qualifies as one. Yes, Evan knows we’re in Mercy. And yes, that is a problem. But if we’re smart about things, this evening’s hiccup will be the only time our paths cross with his.

I say as much to Jar. She looks as though she’s not completely convinced but doesn’t argue. I know she doesn’t want to leave, either.

“How did you get into their house without being seen?” I ask.

Turns out the answer is the drone, which she used to make sure the streets and nearby yards were unoccupied when she approached the Prices’ place. This did not eliminate the risk of someone looking out a window, but there are only three windows in other houses that have a direct view of Evan’s secret entrance to the Prices’ yard.

When I ask how it went, she opens her computer and brings up feeds from the cameras she’s hidden. She only had five, and placed one in the dining room/living room area, one in the upstairs hallway, one in the kitchen at an angle to also pick up some of the downstairs hallway, one in Chuckie’s home office, and one in the garage. She also had six audio-only bugs and used three of them—in the master bathroom, in the entryway, and at the far end of the living room, in case the camera can’t pick up conversations in that area.

I have to say, for the owner of a car dealership, Chuckie is not living as high a life as I expected. Sure, it’s a nice, four-bedroom house—five if you count the downstairs den—and the kitchen has been recently renovated, but I imagined someone in his position to have an even bigger house, maybe on the edge of town where he would have more acreage. The pandemic would explain a recent drop in business, but the Prices have clearly had the house for a while. Perhaps business has never been that good.

It’s something to look into, and I mention this to Jar.

The corner of her mouth slides upward in a mischievous grin. “I had some time, so I took a look through his office.”

“And?”

“I found many interesting things. The first being the door.”

“The door?”

“He keeps it locked.”

I frown, not fully understanding. Keeping an office door locked is not exactly unusual.

She adds, “With two deadbolts.”

“Oh. That seems excessive.”

“It is.”

“Is he just paranoid? Or is there a good reason?”

She opens the feed from the camera in his office. It’s a wide-angle shot from a side wall, with an entrance to the left, three cabinets—two filing and a closed-door metal one—straight ahead, and a wooden desk with a large executive-style leather desk chair to the right, in front of the window to the backyard.

I take a longer look at the closed cabinet. On the door is a numbered dial, and below this a three-spoked handle that can be spun, like the handle of a safe. Because that’s exactly what it is. Not for money, though.

A gun safe.

“Did you get a look inside?” I ask.

She nods. “Three shotguns, three rifles, and four pistols. The rifles are a .22 and two thirty-aught-sixes. The pistols, three 9mms and one .40 caliber. There are also at least three full ammunition boxes of each type.”

While that might explain the double locks on the office door, they still seem a bit excessive. The gun safe is a Marshall MN58, if I’m not mistaken. A good brand. Solid. Hard to break into without the appropriate skills. So more than secure enough on its own.

Which in my mind means the locks aren’t there just for the guns. They’ve been installed because Chuckie doesn’t want people—specifically his family—going through his stuff.

Speaking of…

“You said you found many things?” I say.

Jar closes the feed and clicks on a folder on her desktop. Inside are several image files. She opens them all and toggles through them.

Not photographs from a camera. Screen grabs.

“From Chuckie’s computer?” I ask.

She shoots me an annoyed look as if that should be obvious. “Like I said. I had time.”

Each image is of a different document. Loan statements, utility bills, insurance bills, vehicle information for several cars, brokerage statements, bank statements, and a few emails.

She enlarges one of the bank statements. It’s for his checking account from last month, and shows a beginning balance of $3,758.21 and an ending one of $3,141.98. In between, there are approximately thirty transactions. Only three are deposits, while the rest are withdrawals for bills or other payments.

On first blush, it seems normal enough. Money going in and money going out, and the difference in the balance from the start of the month to the end not too large, albeit in a negative direction.

Jar shows me statements for the four months before that. They each start with a balance between five hundred dollars and just over a thousand dollars higher than they end with, meaning the account has steadily been trending downward.

“Is he transferring money into his other accounts?” I ask. I know from her preliminary check a few days ago that he has both a savings and brokerage account.

She shows those statements to me. The savings account has $18,391.17 in it, and the brokerage $57,464.03.

“I looked at statements for each going back two years. Up until the summer before last, the savings account had $340,000 in it and the brokerage almost $700,000.”

“Whoa.” That’s over $960,000 gone in twenty-one months. “He must have other accounts.”

“It’s possible, but I have not discovered anything else.” Allow me to translate. That’s Jar speak for it’s highly unlikely.

“Then where did the money go?” I ask.

“I have been trying to discover that but have come up with nothing so far.”

“What about the deposits to his checking account? Maybe some of the deposits come from the missing cash.”

“If so, it was not done directly.”

“Then he must be using the money to keep his business afloat.”

“That is what I have been thinking, too.