Stolen Prey

just shaved off a mustache, then said, “About a dozen people in Systems. In my department. There’s a vice president named Tiger Mann, I don’t know his real first name…. He and his assistant could do it, but their access is also verylimited, and they’d leave tracks. Everything is designed to make sure that people leave tracks. We haven’t had time to look, but if it was either of them, we’ll know in an hour. We’re looking now. If it was somebody in my department, I don’t know how they would have found out about the account. Maybe just stumbled on it. The important thing is: somebody had to have access.”
    Rivera frowned and said, “Wait. Could it not be that this money man, who moves the money, the man who talked to you, this Gutierrez. Could not somebody have spoken to Gutierrez with, say, a blowtorch in his hand, and convinced him to give up the codes?”
    Vaughn seemed to go a whiter shade of pale: “Yes. That would be another way. But…”
    “What?” asked Shaffer.
    “Then, wouldn’t Gutierrez be dead? If somebody forced him to give up the codes? And if he was killed or disappeared a month ago, wouldn’t the narcos have done something to protect their account? Maybe even stop putting money in it?” Vaughn was tentative, uncertain of his ground when talking about criminal behavior. He added, “If Gutierrez himself was stealing it, would he do it this way—actually depositing it in an account, then stealing it back? That seems way too complicated … too risky, when you’d have other ways of doing the same thing. You could just send it out to your regular investment accounts, but then divert a check to an anonymous account somewhere.”
    “These are very good points. I congratulate you,” Rivera said. “But it seems that you are arguing that the criminal here is in your department.”
    “I’m not arguing for it, I’m
afraid
of it,” Vaughn said. “These killers … do you think they’re after all of us?”
    Rivera smiled and said, “Yes, that’s likely. If twenty-two million dollars went away, plus more money that they can’t ask about, I believe they would be very angry, and would continue their investigation until they got to the bottom of it.”
    Martínez said, quietly, “I think they would have some reason to come after a specific person. These people are somewhat crazy, but not entirely stupid. If they were stupid, all we’d have to do is watch each of you, and they would come to us. This, I do not think will happen.”
    That was the first time that she’d ever said anything that in the slightest way contradicted her boss, as far as Lucas remembered. He looked at her for a few seconds, then turned back to Vaughn. “So let’s rip up the systems department. Mr….?”
    “Vaughn.”
    Lucas continued, “Let’s get a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers for the systems people, from Mr. Vaughn, and start running them through the mill. If he says that somebody must have known, I’m willing to believe that.”
    Shaffer said, “My guys can handle it.”
    “Okay,” Lucas said. “You might want to work out some kind of cross-checking strategy, get them to rat on each other.”
    “We can handle an interrogation,” Shaffer said.
    “Great,” Lucas said. “Let’s get it on the road.”
    T HE WHOLE discussion circled around Richard Pruess, but it would do Pruess no good at all. As they sat and talked, RichardPruess was already dead. He’d been effectively chopped to pieces by Uno, Dos, and Tres, and now the three killers sat and looked at the remains of the banker’s body and Dos sighed and said, “The cleaning up is always the hardest.”
    “True, but we have to do it,” Uno said. “The owner here, he’s a friend of the Big Voice. We cannot just leave it.”
    They’d killed Pruess in the basement, on a blue plastic tarp that they’d bought at a Home Depot. That kept the mess somewhat confined. Dos, who was sitting on the basement steps, pushed himself onto his feet and said, “So, let’s get it done. He is making a stink.”
    Uno was sitting in a lawn chair, a blood-spattered pruning saw next to his feet. He’d used it to cut deep grooves in Pruess’s shins. “They don’t know, do they?”
    Tres said, “They don’t know anything. Nobody could be this brave.”
    Pruess had denied knowing anything about the stolen money. Then, after a while, he’d agreed that he’d taken it, but they knew he was lying, to make the pain stop. So they