More Twisted

couch, Muller paused for a moment to slip into a slightly higher level of wakefulness. It was five p.m. and he’d been gardening all day—until about an hour ago when a Dutch beer and the warmth of a May afternoon had lulled him to sleep. He now flicked on the pole lamp and walked unsteadily to the door, pulled it open.
    The slim man in a blue suit and sporting thick, well-crafted politician’s hair brushed past Muller and strode into the living room. Behind him was an older, burlier man in tweedy brown.
    “Detective,” Muller muttered to the man in blue.
    Lieutenant William Carnegie didn’t reply. He sat on the couch as if he’d just stepped away from it for a trip to the bathroom.
    “Who’re you?” Muller asked the other one bluntly.
    “Sergeant Hager.”
    “You don’t need to see his ID, Jake, do you?” Carnegie said.
    Muller yawned. He’d wanted the couch but the cop was sitting stiffly in the middle of it so he took the uncomfortable chair instead. Hager didn’t sit down. He crossed his arms and looked around the dim room then let his vision settle on Muller’s faded blue jeans, dusty white socks and a T-shirt advertising a local clam dive. His gardening clothes.
    Yawning again and brushing his short, sandy hair into place, Muller asked, “You’re not here to arrest me, right? Because you would’ve done that already. So, what do you want?”
    Carnegie’s trim hand disappeared into his trim suit jacket and returned with a notebook, which he consulted. “Just wanted to let you know, Jake—we found out about your bank accounts at West Coast Federal in Portland.”
    “And how’d you do that? You have a court order?”
    “You don’t need a court order for some things.”
    Sitting back, Muller wondered if they’d put some kind of tap on his computer—that was how he’d set up the accounts last week. Annandale’s Major Crimes Division, he’d learned, was very high tech; he’d been under intense surveillance in the past several months.
    Living in a fishbowl . . . .
    He noticed that the tweedy cop was surveying the inside of Muller’s modest bungalow.
    “No, Sergeant Haver—”
    “Hager.”
    “—I don’t look like I’m living in luxury, if that’s what you were observing. Because I’m not. Tell me, did you work the Anco case?”
    The sergeant didn’t need the glance from his boss to know to keep mum.
    Muller continued, “But you do know that the burglar netted five hundred thousand and change. Now if—like Detective Carnegie here thinks—I was the one who stole the money, wouldn’t I be living in something a little nicer than this?”
    “Not if you were smart,” the sergeant muttered and decided to sit down.
    “Not if I were smart,” Muller repeated and laughed.
    Detective Carnegie looked around the dim living room and added, “This, we figure, is sort of a safe house. You probably have some real nice places overseas.”
    “I wish.”
    “Well, don’t we all agree that you’re not your typical Annandale resident?”
    In fact Jake Muller was a bit of an oddball in this wealthy Southern California town. He’d suddenly appeared here about six months ago to oversee some businesses deals in the area. He was single, traveled a lot, had a vague career (he owned companies that bought and sold other companies was how he explained it). He made good money but had picked for his residence this modest house, which, as they’d just established, was nowhere close to luxurious.
    So when Detective William Carnegie’s clever police computer compiled a list of everyone who’d moved to town not long before the Anco Armored Delivery heistfour months ago, Muller earned suspect status. And as the cop began to look more closely at Muller, the evidence got better and better. He had no alibi for the hours of the heist. The tire treads on the getaway car were similar to those on Muller’s Lexus. Carnegie also found that Muller had a degree in electrical engineering; the burglar in the Anco case had dismantled a sophisticated alarm system to get into the cash storage room.
    Even better, though, from Carnegie’s point of view, was the fact that Muller had a record: a juvenile conviction for grand theft auto and an arrest ten years ago on some complicated money laundering scheme at a company he was doing business with. Though the charges against Muller were dropped, Carnegie believed he was let go only on a technicality. Oh, he knew in his heart that Muller was behind the Anco theft