Thirteen

Lee explains the situation to Sarah and has a secret to admit...

Lee woke with a bitter taste in his mouth. Reaching up to his neck, he realised he had not had a good night’s sleep. The movement to do so aggravated his bruised rib. At once he sat up and hunched over, holding his head. He looked around his lounge, trying to recall what had happened the night before. As things became clearer, he felt a keen embarrassment. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed Sarah to see him like that. Surveying the room, his weary eyes settled in front of him on the coffee table. The note he had received was sitting, straightened out, right in front of him. It was a kind gesture from a woman who had no reason to look after him. It was quiet in the room and registering his headache, Lee stood up. He made his way to the counter in his kitchenette, and opened up one of the cupboards. He grabbed a glass and filled it with water, before sliding open one of his drawers, reaching in and pulling out the Vicodin he had been prescribed. He popped one in his mouth and washed it down with the water. An overkill for the headache, he knew, but if he was going to have to take it anyway, he might as well get it over with. Lee felt the tablet make its way uncomfortably down his oesophagus. He then turned and walked to his bedroom, opening the door he was surprised to see Sarah, sitting on his bed fully dressed, staring at his wall and sipping from one of his mugs. Her attention turned to him as he opened the door.

‘Good morning!’ She beamed, clearly ignoring the events of the previous evening.

‘Morning’ Lee replied wearily, the husk in his voice catching him off guard, ‘You stayed overnight…’. With this statement Sarah’s smile faded.

‘It’s weird isn’t it?’ she said quickly ‘I shouldn’t have stayed… you don’t really know me and…’, Lee interrupted,

‘No, no. Sarah it’s fine. Thanks for staying’. Sarah’s smile returned tentatively. Lee looked from the woman to the wall. This prompted her to speak.

‘It’s very impressive’ she offered,

‘Thanks’ he replied sheepishly, keen to deflect the compliment, ‘Listen I’ll walk you through it in a minute but…’ Lee feigned a smell of his armpit, ‘I’m gonna have a quick shower, you don’t mind do you?’ Lee pointed to the en-suite that jutted off the far corner of his room. He assumed Sarah had already used it.

‘No of course not, I’ll just leave…’

‘There’s no need for that. I’ll just close the bathroom door’ Lee made his way over to the bathroom. ‘Also, is there any chance you could make me one of those’ Sarah looked at him quizzically as he pointed to her mug and he returned a guilty look forming a ‘please’ shape with his hands. She rolled her eyes and stood up. ‘Thanks Sarah’ Lee said before ducking into the shower to clean himself.

Upon exiting the bathroom Lee saw the steaming hot cup of coffee he had requested waiting for him on his bed side table. This confirmed to him that his interpretation of this woman’s eye movement was correct. As he brought the mug to his lips he was thankful for the pick me up, and equally thankful for his heat resistant tongue, allowing him to slurp a hot drink as soon as he received it. Gulping down his first sip he turned to Sarah. She seemed not to be bothered by the limited covering he had on, just a towel wrapped around his waist. He supposed she had seen something far more embarrassing the previous night. She looked at him expectantly, clearly the cup of coffee didn’t come free of charge.

‘So….’ She finally said, ‘What is all this?’. She gestured at the wall, a collage of newspaper cut-outs, pictures, reports and post-it notes written by Lee himself.

‘Well…’ he said, readying himself for what would undoubtedly be a difficult explanation for the mental jumps he’d made, and recorded on this wall of his. ‘Let’s start with what you do know’, he hoped letting her start would tell him where to pick up on the holes in her knowledge. She turned to the wall and scratched her chin. This amused Lee as he did the same but only when he was sporting some stubble, which, of course, could not be said for Sarah.

‘Well, I managed to read some of the reports your partner filed before I came over…’ Lee hadn’t realised James had done any of the paperwork. He was obviously reliable when it came to things like that, it suited his meticulous nature. ‘So I know who this is’, Sarah’s finger landed on the first image Lee had seen in the case. The girl in dungarees as he knew her. The image was in the upper right-hand corner of the mind map and marked by a red question across her face.

‘Who she isn’t more like….’ Lee began, walking in front of Sarah, closer to the wall, as if giving a presentation.

‘Sure’ Sarah nodded, allowing him to take over and at the same time indicating her knowledge of the rest of the documents on the wall was limited.

‘Right’ Lee began, ‘So what we know is that at some point 10 years ago someone from the FBI...’

‘Supposedly’, Sarah interrupted. Lee glared back at her, indicating his disagreement.

‘Someone from the FBI’ he continued ‘visited our man Harvey Aikley’ Lee rested his finger on the picture he had of Harvey Aikley, drawing in Sarah’s attention. ‘What we also know’, he moved over to the other side of the mind map, ‘Is that 50 years before that, this man was killed in the same house in what looked like a professional hit’ he pointed at a grainy black and white picture of the oil tycoon. ‘I decided to start with the FBI agent. If I can find out who he is….’ He didn’t finish the point, letting Sarah’s own imagination fill in the information they might be able to garner.

‘Great, but how in the hell are you gonna find that out?’ she asked. This question led to a smile worming its way across Lee’s face. His excitement obvious, he moved to the middle of the mind map. ‘That’s where it gets interesting. So first I just called and asked if they could tell me who made the visit to Harvey Aikley’s house, around the time Harvey had told me it happened. Unsurprisingly they said all that information was confidential blah blah blah. So I tried a different angle. All this classified stuff and data protection, you have any idea who it doesn’t apply to?’ Sarah didn’t follow, she just shrugged her shoulders. Lee’s smile turned into a full blown grin. ‘The IRS’ he said simply. ‘If there’s one thing which take precedence over even national security, it’s taxes’

‘I don’t understand’ Sarah said blankly

‘The IRS have access to the card statements of the FBI. Any expenses claimed have to be checked and re-checked. Expenses are exempt from taxation on salary. So all I had to do was request the data from the IRS on tax exemption for that year’

‘But there’s millions of pieces of data like that… hundreds of millions even… what can you do with that’ Sarah was asking the right questions.

‘This is where it takes a bit of thinking’, Lee continued, ready for the question, ‘So you’re right, receipts for tax exemptions of that month number in the millions, but we can whittle this down. First, we take only the state we are looking for’ Sarah nodded, following his statements. ‘This takes us down to 10’s of thousands, still too large a net but much better than before. The next trick requires a bit of outside the box thinking’ He pointed at a list, ‘This is a list of all the FBI agent’s cell numbers I could get a hold of, from my own contacts and from the stations. Notice anything about all the numbers?’ Sarah looked hard at the list, Lee didn’t really expect her to spot the pattern but to his surprise she quipped,

‘8! The fourth letter from the end is always 8’, Lee smiled at her, impressed.

‘Right! I assume it must be because all the sims were ordered at the same time and came off with a factory number at the end. Anyway, then all I did was cross reference all the phone records for that time of the month, with phones with that digit in that place. This gave me about a hundred hits’

‘I still don’t see where you’re going with this’ Sarah tutted impatiently.

‘Well then all I needed to do was attach one of the phone numbers with one of the accounts’

‘Yeah but how on earth did you do that?’ with this question Lee’s smile returned to its fullest.

‘You know something that can be claimed as a tax exemption?’ Sarah caught on.

‘Phone bills!’ she exclaimed

‘Damn right. So all I do is try and get the two to overlap and…’ He pointed to some numbers written in red at the top of the mind map.

‘I get these 3 numbers and accounts’

‘So what did you do with them?’ Sarah asked eager for the result,

‘Well, obviously when I asked for the bank or telephone company to provide me with information of the owners they refused. But then I asked for information on linked accounts or frequently contacted numbers and followed up on those.’

‘And…?’ Lee was building up the suspense.

‘I found this guy’ He pointed to the picture in the middle of the mind map. ‘George Taylor. FBI agent but well down the food chain. I hoped to go and speak to him, try to find out who the big players were…’

‘What did he say?’ Sarah asked eager to jump to the answers.

‘He didn’t’ Lee pointed to a newspaper cut out at the bottom of the mind map before sitting down, his smile vanished. It read “FBI search for missing agent”. ‘He went missing last week’ he finished, at which Sarah’s jaw dropped.

‘That can’t be coincidence…’ she suggested. Lee shrugged,

‘Maybe not. But that’s where my goose chase ended I’m afraid’, with that he got up and started sliding on a pair of boxers while Sarah was looking the other way.

‘And now the chest is missing, so where do we go from here?’ she asked, still not looking Lee’s way. As he finished getting dressed he turned and looked at her, then to his laptop.

‘Well….’ He began, ‘Can I trust you?’ the question caught Sarah off guard. At first she floundered for an answer before composing herself and speaking confidently.

‘Yes you can’, Lee nodded and pointed to the laptop.

‘The chest might not be completely gone…’