"But you think Mr. Thayer might be lying."
"Sean doesn"t think so."
"But you do."
"I can"t say. I haven"t met him."
Dorothy nodded. "I"ve gone through all the financials from Avery and Block and talked to the AUSA who prosecuted the case. No one can find the money, and that was the big sticking point in the government"s case. But there was no doubt that they had the mortgage scam in place and were profiting from it. The money disappeared."
"What I can"t find is what LeGrand did for the two years he was in Boston after he left his accountancy job, before he moved to New York and took a job on the stock exchange."
"That"s where I can help. If he filed taxes during those years, I"ll know who was paying him."
"Unless it was under-the-table."
"There are usually other clues. Most people don"t overtly cheat the system. They generally underreport, such as receiving bonuses and not reporting the income, or pad their allowable expenses."
"Don"t we need a subpoena for his tax records?"
"Yes, except he already gave us permission."
She frowned. "I don"t understand."
Dorothy pulled out the Avery & Block file. She flipped through to doc.u.ments in the back and pointed to IRS Form 8821. "As part of the FBI investigation into LeGrand"s claims, he gave permission for the FBI to pull his tax records for ten years prior. They never pulled them, but we have the authority, and I put in the request, then called a friend of mine at the IRS who processed the request immediately."
She flipped through several files. "Here are his returns for the second of those two missing years. That was the first year he authorized us to inspect."
"I never would have thought of this."
"You would have if you"d encountered this before. You look at that; I"ll go over the Avery and Block files. Fresh set of eyes." She slipped on her reading gla.s.ses.
The two of them read silently for several minutes. At first Lucy didn"t see anything suspicious on LeGrand"s tax return, which was now nine years old. He"d filed as self-employed. Paid taxes on a net income of $52,300. Had what looked like reasonable write-offs.
Though he was self-employed, he only reported income from one ent.i.ty. Lucy made a note of the company name, address, and tax ID number. "It looks like he worked for Obsidian Trust and Equity."
She turned to the computer and typed in the name. Nothing came up.
"Lucy?" Dorothy said. "Look at this."
She pointed to a computer-generated printout. It was extensive, listing all payments by Avery & Block the year prior to the FBI investigation.
"What am I looking at?"
Dorothy pointed to a name midway down the third page. Jansen Tech. The payment was for $10,000 and the memo read: Final Payment Network Upgrade.
"Jansen," Lucy said flatly. "Skye Jansen works for Colton."
Dorothy glanced at her watch. "It"s after five; I won"t be able to pull any business filings to confirm."
"I"m certain it"s her. It"s the connection-Colton told Sean he wasn"t at the carriage house when LeGrand showed up. He said he didn"t think anyone was there, but Skye is living there."
"What do you think Skye Jansen has to do with LeGrand? What"s her motive? Mr. Thayer and his group are hacktivists, according to Rick, and not violent. Could she be working something on the side?"
Lucy didn"t doubt it. "I need to get this information to Noah."
"Wait-" Dorothy flipped to another folder. "I can"t believe I missed this the first time. Rick asked me to quietly run one of the New York agents against all the names in this case. Here he is again."
"Who?"
"Agent S. Gannon. He was one of the investigating agents in the Avery and Block case."
"Does he know LeGrand?"
"I don"t know-he was a rookie, but it"s one more connection."
Noah was on the phone with the FBI personnel office when Suzanne stopped in front of his desk. "I see. Yes. Please fax everything you have. Thank you." He hung up.
Sometimes, being right didn"t feel good.
"What was that?"
"Let"s walk and talk. I have Steve Gannon in an interview room."
"Torres agreed?"
"Rick Stockton intervened. I was on the phone with the personnel office. Guess who gave Gannon one of his letters of recommendation?"
"I don"t have to. Paxton."
Noah glanced at her. "Is that a guess?"
"A guess from these." She handed him a slim file. "His phone records. He called the senator"s private cell number several times this month, including last night."
"Thanks." Noah stopped outside the interview room. "Do you have anything else?"
"I"ll be quick." She took a deep breath, then dove into her report. "First, Tucker came back from Corbett"s house-the dead guy in the warehouse with Nash"s laptop? Nothing of interest, but they snagged his computer and it"s in our tech unit with a priority. We"re checking e-mails first, then will go into the rest."
"Good."
"However, Corbett has a record. We have a list of his known a.s.sociates. He"s just a gun for hire, so he didn"t do this on his own. Spent a few years in prison, has been relatively clean since he got out two years ago."
"Anything come up yet on his a.s.sociates?"
"No, but Tucker has every cop in Queens shaking the trees. If anyone knows anything, we"ll know it."
"I appreciate their help."
"Yeah, well, I"m the one who has to pay them back."
She didn"t seem too upset about it. Suzanne went on, "Then, I got a call from a friend of mine in Trace. Twenty minutes before she was killed, Deanna received a call from a burn phone. We can"t get the number."
"How did she trace it?"
"We don"t have Deanna"s phones, but we can still track incoming and outgoing calls." She handed him a slip of paper. "I weeded through the c.r.a.p and came up with this interesting number from Sat.u.r.day."
Meredith White.
"I know her."
"Thought you might. Her name was in Deanna"s notes on Lucy."
"She sat on Lucy"s hiring panel." This might explain why Deanna went to Quantico to talk to Lucy and how she obtained the notes from the panel.
"I"ve been going through all Deanna"s s.h.i.t, and it"s pretty sad and scary how obsessed she was with Sean. I"m no shrink, but it borders on psychotic."
Considering that she"d shot at Sean without provocation, Noah had to agree.
"To be honest, I don"t see Steve Gannon killing his partner, or any cop for that matter."
"He could have set her up."
"Why?" Noah didn"t buy it. He held up his phone. "Text me if you learn anything else important to the interview. I"m going to talk to Gannon."
Noah stepped into the room and put the file in front of a nervous Steve Gannon. He sat down across from Gannon and said, "We know you"ve been talking to Senator Paxton. We know that you"ve known him since before you were hired into the FBI. We also know that he gave you a letter of recommendation. I will remind you that you are a sworn federal agent and if you lie to me you"ll make the situation worse. Cooperate, and I"ll make your cooperation known to OPR."
At first Noah thought Gannon was going to stonewall him; then he let out a sigh and said, "What do you want to know?"
"When did you start talking to Senator Paxton?"
"Since I became an agent. He would call me and ask questions. At first I didn"t think anything of it."
"What were the calls about?"
"Mostly chitchat. Then he asked me to look up a few things in the system. Stuff we"re not supposed to give out, but he was on the Judiciary Committee and the Public Safety Committee, and I thought he was looking for statistics and anecdotal stories that would help him get the FBI more funding, or change laws. At least, that"s what he led me to believe."
"When did you suspect he had another motive?"
"A few months ago. May, early June, I think. He asked me to get him a list of prisoners set to be released. It was way out of my area of expertise-I"m in White-Collar, not Violent Crimes. I said I could get someone in VCMO to do it, and he said absolutely not. That"s when I got suspicious."
"But you still helped him."
Gannon shrugged. "I guess. He told me to find a way to partner with Deanna. That wasn"t hard-no one wanted to work with her."
"Why?"
"She"s short-tempered, arrogant, and not a team player. She cuts corners. Don"t get me wrong-Deanna is real smart, and she sees connections faster than most people. She just gets frustrated by the system."
"Did Senator Paxton tell you why he wanted you to work with Deanna?"
"Not at first. But last month he said that Sean Rogan was in New York and he wanted Deanna to find a reason to arrest him."
"And you didn"t find that suspicious?"
"I already knew about her obsession with Rogan. She doesn"t make it a secret, at least not in our unit. I helped her create a file that showed Colton Thayer was involved in a mortgage fraud scheme so that we could get the time and resources to pursue Thayer, knowing that Rogan was working for him. But Thayer is clean, at least with regards to financial transactions. Cybercrimes had a file on him, but they"d never been able to build even a minimal case. Torres gave us some leeway. But Deanna let everything else suffer."
"Why did the senator want Rogan arrested?"
"He didn"t want him working with Thayer."
"Do you know why Senator Paxton hired Thayer to steal information from a pharmaceutical company?"
Gannon was surprised Noah had that information. "You know about that?"
"Obviously, so do you."
"I don"t know details. All Senator Paxton said was that his longtime friend was getting cold feet and he was in too deep to back out. I think-I don"t have any proof-that Joyce Bonner had something incriminating on him. What, I don"t know."
"Do you know what Joyce Bonner was getting cold feet about?"
"No."
"Did you give Deanna Sean"s address?"
Gannon shook his head. "I couldn"t find him anywhere; Paxton wanted Deanna to detain him. I couldn"t follow him-I was doing the work of two agents because Deanna was solely focused on Rogan."
"When you followed him, how did you do it?"
"The only place I knew he would show up was at Colton Thayer"s. But he must have the subway map imprinted in his head, because he always lost me in the subway system. To be honest, I gave up."
Someone else-someone who knew Sean would go to Colton"s eventually-could have followed Sean. Or put a GPS on him. Someone inside Thayer"s criminal family. Or Thayer himself.
And then given the address to Deanna and set her up.
Noah put a tablet in front of Gannon. "Write down everything you just told me. If you"ve forgotten anything, include it. Everything that you know about the information Paxton wanted you to get, everything about Deanna"s obsession with Sean Rogan, everything about PBM. I"ll be back in an hour."
But an hour later it was nearly eleven and Noah got a strange message on his cell phone: Plan moved up 24 hours. Hurry.
It had to be Sean. Noah almost texted back, except that the number was unrecognized and he didn"t know if someone else had access to it. He called Rick. "Sean just made contact. They"re at PBM now. I need a SWAT team ASAP."
"You got it."
But even so, they wouldn"t arrive at PBM for at least forty minutes.
"I"m going now."
"Not without backup."