Kingston Heart was the new dentist in town. He seemed to be a great guy so far, but I’d be upset if he saw me doing what Carter had been caught having to do. Kingston was slightly older than Carter, but he worked out and looked after himself, and it showed. Plus, all of the women in town had suddenly decided they had dental emergencies, so that pretty much said it all.
We had another ninety minutes until both of us would start locking up so we could get home, but I was itching to look in the box of stuff Gynnie Bane had given us.
“Want to have a look in the box?”
Carter jumped out of his seat and quickly crossed back over to the evidence safe. “Fuck, yeah!”
In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that exciting to look through. That was until we got to the slips of paper Mrs. Bane told us about.
It looked like her husband had been writing down amounts of money and dates, but he’d left off the dollar sign and had only put the day’s date next to it. The detective who’d investigated his disappearance at the time had gotten their financial records, so it didn’t take much to find the amounts on the statements.
“Do you think he was being blackmailed? If you think about it, today those amounts would be eye watering for the average joe, but almost two thousand dollars here and there wouldn’t look too suspicious. Back then, that had to be a major hit.”
Carter tapped his finger next to the first of the suspicious withdrawals from the account on the statement. Fortunately, there weren’t as many transactions on it as there would be nowadays with direct deposits and debit cards.
“Agreed. I also doubt that Judd’s dad would have deposited the money into his account if he was the one doing it. From what I know of the man, he’s a miser and a total asshole.”
“Seems logical he wouldn’t want to share that money with his wife and kid, then.”
“Especially if he didn’t think the kid was his.”
Carter snorted, but there was no humor in it. “And if it was the pastor?”
“It’s more likely the man would have deposited it in his account than Bailey, but maybe he donated it to good causes or back into the church? I doubt they’ll still have them available, but I’m wondering if their banks will have copies of customer's records in a central storage facility or system somewhere?”
“My aunt worked for a bank in Florida, and one of the major projects she took on when I was about thirteen was moving historical records from microfiche to an online system. They had to scan all of the microfiches and then create files for the customers to add data to as they went.
“The IRS was going through historical tax evasion cases at the time, and afterward, they knew they needed a more accessible system, so they came up with that,” he told me as he picked out a small photo album from the box.
The information he’d just given me gave me hope. Picking up the phone, I asked DB to find out from Judd who his dad banked with and requested approval to proceed with acquiring a warrant for Terry Judd’s banking records. I also warned him we might need the same for Perry Wise, too.
It turns out we wouldn’t need to go hunting for Judd’s banking records. The man had kept every last one of his statements going back to the day he’d opened the account.
It also turns out Judd was aware there were a lot of questions over whether Terry was his dad or not. It’d been used against him when his dad was in a shitty mood—on days that ended with a y—for as far back as he could remember.
Who his dad might be was the shock, and he was going to request a cross-match between his DNA and whatever they got back from Bane’s brush.
Once we’d found all of this out, it was over an hour past when we’d been meant to leave. Putting the box back in the safe, Carter came out with his phone in his hand.
“Damn it,” he sighed.
“Something wrong?” I asked as I opened the door for us.
“No, it’s just I was going to go and see Naomi and Shanti, but she’s at your woman’s house doing ‘female shit.’” He air quoted the last bit, making me laugh.
“Well, why don’t you come with me, then?”
Just then, DB came around the corner. “Dad, Tabby’s at your woman’s house doing ‘female shit.’” Both me and Carter started laughing at the air quote usage again. “I’ll follow you home.”
Raising my eyebrows at Carter, I waited for him to decide.
It didn’t take him long at all.
“Okay, I’ll drive behind DB.”
I doubt my invitation to him would have been any different if I’d known what we were going to walk into.