Chris hustled out of the barn and went past the chicken coop, also well maintained. Ahead lay the two outbuildings, the first a white woodshed with a peaked roof. He went to the door, which had a galvanized turn handle, but stopped before he opened it. Going inside the shed was an unlawful search, and he never would have been able to get a subpoena. The fact that Trevor was on the baseball team, lived on a farm, and was the requisite height wasn’t sufficient for probable cause.
Chris couldn’t break and enter, under the law. Undercover ATF agents weren’t allowed to engage in otherwise illegal activity, OIA. If they needed to engage in OIA, they were supposed to get prior approval, which was laughably impractical. Chris remembered the time he’d infiltrated a human-trafficking ring smuggling young women from the Philippines, and he’d been offered one of the girls. It not only revolted him, but it would’ve constituted OIA. He’d declined, coming up with what became a classic line around the office—I never paid for it in my life. He took a special pride when those traffickers were convicted and sent to jail for twenty years.
But with the outbuilding, Chris was willing to bend the rules. It wasn’t locked, so he wasn’t breaking in, and it could prevent an impending bombing. He opened the door, stepped inside, and flicked on his flashlight. He looked around for fertilizer or anything suspicious, but it looked normal, even first-rate. Just an old tractor and a Kubota front-end loader with keys in the ignition. Hanging neatly were pitchforks, brooms, shovels, a hedge clipper, blowers, and the like.
He left the shed and hustled ahead to the other outbuilding, with a similar type of door, but it was padlocked. The shed could be used to store fertilizer, it was a cool location and it would be prudent to be kept under lock and key. He didn’t smell anything but ammonium nitrate fertilizer was odorless. Chris thought about breaking the padlock, but didn’t. It would be discovered, and even so, he made a distinction between going through an open door and breaking into a locked one. It drove him crazy that law didn’t always lead to justice, and often thwarted justice, like now.
Chris needed a work-around. The situation came up on undercover operations, and the way that ATF dealt with it was through a “walled-off” operation. Most common was when he knew there were suspects driving around with contraband or explosives, but they couldn’t be stopped without blowing an agent’s cover, so the higher-ups at ATF would call the local constabulary. The locals would then make a traffic stop on the vehicle, finding a broken taillight, cracked windshield, or expired inspection sticker. It happened every day, but Chris couldn’t do it without a call to the Rabbi, and he couldn’t get it done tonight. He turned from the door, which would stay locked another day.
And he ran back toward the Jeep.
Chapter Thirty
Mindy reached for her phone and touched the screen, which came to life—3:23 A.M. She had been awake since Paul had told her that the mysterious charge at the jewelry store was for Carole’s birthday. Mindy hadn’t been sure whether she wanted to know the truth, but she had reached a decision.
She thumbed to the calendar function, scrolled to March, and scanned the entries on her calendar, color-coded: red for family, blue for Boosters, pink for Hospital Auxiliary, and green for Miscellaneous. An entry for Carole’s birthday would have been, Miscellaneous, but she scanned the entries with a sinking heart. There was no entry for Carole’s birthday.
She scrolled to April, and there was no entry for Carole’s birthday there either. She searched the calendar under “Carole,” because she remembered entering the secretary’s birthday, and the entry came up, October 23. Mindy got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Carole’s birthday wasn’t last month. It hadn’t even come yet. No amount of staring at the phone would change that fact. Paul had lied to her.
Tears came to her eyes, but she was more angry than sad. What did Paul think, that she wouldn’t check the bill? How stupid did he think she was? Even brain-dead housewives can read Visa bills. Why did she let him handle all the money in the first place? In fact, she had offered to handle their household finances more than once, but Paul felt strongly that it was his money.
Mindy wondered how many other charges had gone unnoticed. Questions flooded her brain, and she had the sickening realization that it was happening all over again. Did he take her out to eat? Who was she? Was she married? The reason he’d gotten caught last time was that the nurse had started calling him. Maybe this time he’d wised up. Practice made perfect.
Mindy’s phone blinked into darkness, and she glanced over at Paul, snoring soundly away. Then she remembered something he had said.
I thought I paid cash for that, but now I remember. I was short that day. I guess I charged it.
Mindy thought it was an odd thing to say. It got her thinking. Maybe that was his improvement, that he started paying cash. Maybe that was why she hadn’t seen any other charges. He wasn’t charging anymore. Her heartbeat quickened. It made perfect sense. If he was paying cash, he would have been using his ATM card to withdraw cash. She never checked those before because she’d been so focused on the charges.
Mindy got out of bed, padded out of the bedroom, and went back downstairs to the kitchen. She flipped on the light and went directly to the drawers in a pocket office off the kitchen, where they kept bank statements, which she had rifled through only this afternoon. She’d been looking for the wrong thing, for canceled checks and charges. She should have been looking at cash.
She went to the first stack of envelopes, which she kept in chronological order with the most recent on top. March was the first statement, and she grabbed the thick envelope, slid out the three pages, and scanned for cash withdrawals that looked unusual. Paul generally withdrew cash in two-hundred-dollar amounts, and she saw one on March 7, March 14, then March 21, and then another on March 28, also two hundred dollars. In other words, nothing unusual or suspicious.
She felt stumped. She replaced the March statements, refilled the envelope, and reached back for February. She withdrew the February statements, another three pages, and scanned them as well. There was a two-hundred-dollar cash withdrawal on February 1, 8, 15, 22, and 28. She noticed they were all around lunchtime at the same ATM, Blakemore Plaza, at the hospital. Again, not suspicious.