Dead Secret

expense.
    “I meant that Mother isn’t the kind of person who should be in prison. He could see that you clearly aren’t the criminal type. I was trying to tell him that Mother isn’t either.”
    Diane wasn’t entirely truthful. What she had wanted to convey to him was that her mother was naive, like her sister, and it was imperative that they get her out of Tombsberg Prison as quickly as possible.
    “Oh.” Susan paused for a moment, intently watching the traffic. “I’m glad you’re here. Dad and I have been beside ourselves, and . . . well, frankly, I felt Alan was taking too long to get anything done about getting this mess resolved.”
    Ah, the first crack in Alan’s armor. Maybe Susan would stop believing that Diane’s ex-husband had hung the moon. Diane decided to be nice, sensing that disagreement would make Susan turn around and defend him.
    “Alan’s very good with finances. It’s just a different world from the criminal justice system,” Diane said. Fortunately her cell rang then, saving her from having to heap any more praise on her ex. She looked at the name on the display and smiled broadly. It was as if the sky cleared and the day was going to be sunny after all.
    “Hi,” she said to Frank.
    “Hey, babe, how are you doing?”
    “We just saw Daniel Reynolds. I feel better about the whole thing.”
    “He’s good. I’ve seen him in action—up close.” Frank chuckled; then his voice became serious. “I have some news. I looked up your mother’s arrest warrant in the federal system. It was there with her name, address and Social Security number.”
    “How did you know her Social Security number?”
    “I’m a detective.”
    Diane could almost see him smiling on his end of the phone. “That’s right, how could I forget?” she said.
    “Okay, it says she robbed the Bessemer Branch of the First Southern Bank of Birmingham on June fifteenth, 2004. She was captured just over a month later, on July sixteenth. Plea-bargained and escaped on the way to prison.”
    Diane looked over at Susan. “That just didn’t happen. I’m sure Mother will know what she was doing on those dates. She keeps a diary.” Susan nodded in agreement at the mention of the diary as she stopped at a red light. “Did you find anything else?” asked Diane.
    “Yes. There are several interesting things about the warrant. The dates cluster—both months start with J, all the dates are numbered in the teens. When people make things up, they tend to unconsciously stick to patterns. It’s something about the way the brain works. It won’t convince authorities there, but it’s a tell for me when I’m looking at documents. The thing that should convince the authorities, though, is that I haven’t been able to find an incident report of the robbery, a bail report, or any of a host of other paperwork that should be on file and isn’t.”
    “Frank, that’s good. That’s really good, isn’t it?”
    “It is. I sent the fingerprints and mug shots via e-mail to your crime lab for them to check the fingerprints—that’ll be faster than if I try to do it here—more discreet, too. David should be calling you soon with the results. I’m expecting that the fingerprint images were lifted from some felon’s file and won’t be your mother’s. I’m also betting that if they look for the actual physical paper file, there won’t be one—her record will turn out to exist only on computer.”
    “This should make it easy to get her out, shouldn’t it?”
    “I think Reynolds will be able to take care of it without much of a problem, provided nobody gets pigheaded, which sometimes happens when bureaucrats are told they’ve screwed up big-time.”
    “Do you think they can discover who created the bogus records?”
    “I don’t know. They naturally will not want me looking inside their computer system, so it will be up to their experts. The easiest way for the perp to have done this is to have someone on the inside. I’m sure they’ll be looking into that possibility.”
    “I’m really grateful, Frank.”
    “It was easy. No one tried to do a really slick job of this. It was just enough to get your mother picked up and sent away. She wouldn’t have even been sent to prison if they’d done the proper checks.”
    “I owe you one.” She smiled into the phone as she said good-bye and hung up.
    “That sounded like good news,” Susan said.
    “It was. I’ll explain in a minute, but first I need to call