Page 13 of Griffin
“Yeah.Diesel told me.”
“Three dead.One guest coming for a conversation with you when you’re ready.”
Knuckles nodded once, his gaze moving to me.“You hurt?”
I shook my head.“I’m fine.”
Griffin cut in.“She’s got a cut on her hand.”
Knuckles gave Griffin an annoyed look.“It should’ve been looked at already.Don’t let it happen again.”
“It’s fine,” I said, looking between Knuckles and Griffin several times.I had no idea what game they were playing, but I refused to be part of it.“Modern medicine pretty much guarantees I’m not going to get gangrene and die as long as I have it seen before it gets infected.”I gave them an impatient look.“Can we move along?”
Griffin gave me a crooked smile.“Honey, Knuckles believes that we all look out for the women and children we protect.That includes you.You can show them where to start and what you found.OK?”
I sighed.“I can agree to that, I guess.”
“Good.”Knight gestured to the table.“Let’s see what you’ve got.”
I stepped forward, setting the three ledgers down one by one.The first was a printout of Carl’s original.The second was my handwritten copy, bound in a three-ring binder with color-coded tabs marking each section.The third was another printout, this one with the pages covered in a shorthand I’d developed over four months of surveillance.
Knuckles picked up Carl’s ledger, flipping through it with practiced hands.“What are we looking at?”
“This is Carl’s actual book,” I said.“The one he kept.The other two are mine.”I tapped the second ledger.“This one is a copy of every entry in Carl’s book, organized by business, not by date.And this one…” I opened the third ledger, revealing columns of coded entries and what looked like random strings of numbers.“This one is what Carl was hiding.It’s the real operation.The cover ledger has a system built into it.Look at the margins.”I flipped through several pages of Carl’s ledger, pointing to the seemingly random notations along the edges of each page.“Each of these is a key.The letters correspond to specific entries in this book.”I tapped the third ledger.“And the numbers next to them are dates, while the other numbers represent the merchandise.”
Knight picked up the third ledger, studying the coded entries with narrowed eyes.“You cracked this?”
“I’m an accountant,” I said.“Not by profession, but by training.It’s what I was doing at the tax office three blocks fromÉclipse.Carl’s system was complicated, but it wasn’t genius.He wasn’t hiding it from the NSA.Just the vicious sociopath who killed him.”
I flipped to a page in Carl’s ledger.The entries here looked legitimate with column after column of names and payment amounts, with dates in the first column and what appeared to be service descriptions in the last.“This page is all regular club transactions.But see this?”I pointed to a small, almost invisible notation in the margin of JM/4158.
“JM is Justice Marlin,” I said.“A judge.The number is a date, but not the one on this page.April 15, 2018.And this number here…” I pointed to the amount in the far-right column.“That’s a payoff.Five thousand dollars.”
I turned to the third ledger and found the corresponding entry.“And this is what he was paying for.The service entry.”The line read simply TD-CR-2, followed by a seven-digit number and another five-digit figure.“TD means ‘transport date.’CR is ‘collected by road.’The 2 is the number of passengers.The seven-digit number is the transport itself, probably a car or a van.And the five-digit number is the delivery fee.”
Knuckles went still.“Passengers.”
I nodded.“The terminology is consistent.Service providers, deliveries, clients.Everything’s coded, but it’s not hard to break once you see the pattern.Every week, at least one transport.Sometimes two or three.”
I flipped to another page in Carl’s ledger, this one water-stained across the bottom third, the ink in the last few columns blurred but still legible.“This is from three months ago.See this entry?”I pointed to the name Tessa Garrison.My voice caught on her name.“My sister.She started working atÉclipseas a server.And then she disappeared.”
Knight pulled up the corresponding entry in my decoded ledger and read it aloud.“SC-O-1.Client request.Approved.Special handling.”
“SC means ‘special collection,’” I said.“I haven’t figured out what the O means.And the 1 is one passenger.”
Knuckles’ jaw worked.“Who’s the client?”
I pointed to the amount in Carl’s ledger, and then to the client code in mine.“DW.”
“That’s Darius Webb,” Griffin said, his voice flat.“A justice on the state supreme court.”
Knuckles and Knight exchanged a look I couldn’t read.Knight turned back to his laptop.“Keep going,” Knuckles ordered, his voice grim.
I turned another page.“The names form a pattern.Politicians, business owners.Some are out of state.A few are international.”With each name, the silence in the room deepened.
“This one,” I said, pointing to a page with a torn corner.“He started to rip this out, then stopped.”
The entry readFM-3-5.Urgent.Priority.Full fee.
