BOOK ONE: DECEPTIONS
Chapters One to Twenty Six
Vignettes 1 - 140

BOOK TWO: YESTERDAY ECHOES
Chapters 27 to
Vignettes 141 -

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Vignette #201: Sparky Jarvis

“I’m not sure I like you being involved in this.” Billy said with a slight scowl on his face.

“I have a new job. That’s it.” His sister looked up from the files and paperwork piled on Kellen’s desk.

“It’s more than that, and we all know it.”

She turned to face him. “Look at it this way, Billy. I’m enjoying being here. I love the work, and I’m a little extra ears and eyes for the Scooby gang. I’m a reporter…deal with it.”

“I’m dealing with it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Billy kissed Sparky on top of the head. “Your kind of blind eyes and deaf ears and that’s what bothers me the most.”

“And that’s why I’m here trying to get all the information I can find so maybe I won’t be so deaf and dumb.” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “And thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m not real thrilled about it myself.” Kellen added to the conversation. “But Ian’s was right, dangle a wide eyed innocent with a connection and the shark is gonna circle the bait trying to figure out what the game is. That will give the real hired gun a chance to catch him off guard.”

“Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better.” Billy said.

Reese put his arm around Billy. “There are a number of us who know what’s going on. The more the better, safety in numbers, blah buh blah buh blah.”

“Is this everything?” Sparky looked up and asked.

“Every scrap I have.” Kellen affirmed, pointing out piles. “Ian’s case, files on everyone who works at HRT and that pile are the files with the info on all the connecting crimes.”

“Just the one pile?” Sparky looked up.

“And the three boxes at your feet. Six connected cases in all.”

Sparky pursed her lips together and checked her notes. “My question is the missing connection.”

“I thought if we knew the missing connection the case was solved.” Reese said.

“What I mean is, do we know for sure who the perpetrator in each case is. Is that a positive?”

Kellen sorted through the stacks of folders finally pulling one out. “Here is the one person from each scam that disappeared with no trace; pictures, names, stats everything we could find. Each person has no past and disappears off the face of the earth.”

Sparky took the file from his hands and started leafing through. “I don’t see any notes as to how the bank accounts were closed.”

“Bank accounts?” Kellen looked at her.

She nodded. “Did they walk into the bank and withdrawal the earth shattering sum of cash they’d swindled? Did they have it transferred?”

Reese sat up a bit on the couch. “Yeah, that makes sense. You can’t just walk in a bank, close an account with hundreds of thousands of dollars in it, tuck it in your pocket and walk away. Sometimes you have to wait at least thirty days or more.”

“Where did all that money go?” Billy said out loud.

“It’s not like some one who went to all the trouble to skim that amount of money from a business is just gonna leave it all in a bank account and move on…empty handed.”

“Unless he was afraid he was going to get caught.” Billy said.

“Not a chance.” Kellen said. “This guy is too good. He gets several others involved to do all the dirty work. He disappears when the work is done and disposes of the accomplices. He’s cool, calculated and has the timing down to an art form.”

“And yet somehow he leaves a little trace of something behind.” Sparky said as she turned the next page.

“It’s always something minute and stupid.” Kellen said.

“I doubt that.” Sparky flipped another page, tossing the file on the desk and making a note in her pad. “I think it’s his calling card. This dude is a serial killer disguised as a scam artist. He’s rubbing it in everyone’s face. What he leaves behind for a connection is his calling card.”

“He’s brilliant.” Kellen began looking over her shoulder. “That’s for sure.”

“Do you know if all the social security numbers and names have been run through the FBI data base?”

“They’ve been thorough.”

“No connections?”

“None as far as anyone can tell.”

“I have a question.” Billy piped in. “How is this guy getting all the names and the social security numbers? Especially if they all seem to check out.”

“Stole them?” Reese answered the question with a question.

“It’s easy to do. Identity theft is the biggest crime in the country.” Kellen confirmed.

Sparky shook her head. “Too easy.”

“What do you mean?” Kellen asked her.

“This guy is too…uhm…layered…one of the things that makes him so brilliant and so hard to catch is every nuance seems so well thought out. Identity theft is too easily caught.” Sparky corrected Kellen.

“But only if they use credit cards. Social security fraud can take years to trace.”

Sparky nodded in agreement. “But that just seems out of character.” She pointed to her notes. “Everything is orchestrated in a definite framework, right down to the people he incorporates to use. Sometimes even the names are…wait…” Sparky leafed quickly through the papers.

“Did you find something?” Kellen leaned over her shoulder and the men on the couch in closer.

“That’s it.” Sparky said simply. She took her pencil and began to point. “Look at this.”

Kellen smiled. “Bingo. I’ll call Yancy. Maybe they saw this, maybe not.” He flipped open his cell phone.

“What?” Reese blinked. “What?”

“Okay just a possibility here, maybe leading to nowhere but…” Sparky turned around and showed them a sheet of paper with a series of typed names. “Here’s a list of all the identities we suspect to be the actual orchestrator.”

Billy and Reese looked closely. “So?”

Sparky smiled and laid a second typed list on top so both lists could be read. “Here’s a list of the people that were used and disposed of to scam the companies he/she worked for.”

Reese looked up from the list. “There seems to be a pattern of name combinations.”

“Huh?” Billy said.

“It looks like our Master Thief christens his new identity with variations of his former accomplices.”

Kellen put his hand over the phone. “Yancy’s running the names through his computer right now to see if by chance he’s using one of the victims social security number or id numbers of any kind.”

“Ask him if he has pictures on disk of all the identities.” Billy said.

“What for?” Sparky asked.

“We can put them on a program, run them all together and see if they’re all the same person. There’s a program that can match bone structures and check for facial features that are similar enough to be the same.” He said smiling.

Sparky smiled. “Oooh. I like that. I think there’s a photocopy of all the IDs here. Can we scan them all tonight?”

“I can scan them in and blow them up, but I’ll have to buy the program.”

Sparky frowned. “You’ve probably got to be police or something to get hold of that and it’s probably expensive.”

Reese grinned. “Not with my little brother around. I got the looks, he got the hacker gene.”

“Daddy? I’m bored.” Vonnie popped in the room. “Can I play with Ralphie?”

“Of course, honey.” Billy said, a little nervous that she’d popped in the room. “Give us a few more minutes and we’ll go home and get you ready for bed.”

“Okey Dokey.” Vonnie sighed and looked toward the corner to the dog. “Com’mon boy. Let’s go downstairs and play.”

Ralphie’s head perked up. He wagged his tail and eagerly followed the four year old out of the room.

“So what do you want to do?” she asked as they took their time going down the stairs. “You need to talk to Uncle Kel and tell him to get a TV. You must be bored outta your skull.”

Vonnie sat on the bottom step, Ralphie curling up beside her looking her straight in the eyes. “Granny and Poppy are out having a date night an’ ever one else is over here. I thought you didn’t date once you got married.” Vonnie sighed and put her chin in her hands. “Old people are confusin’.”

Ralphie snorted in response.

“I’d rather be over at Uncle Ian’s but that mean fat lady is there. She’s creepy.” The little blond turned to look at the dog. “But she did gimme a quarter to shut up an’ go away. I figure if I can stand it, I’ll be rich by the end a the week.”

The tot put her arm around Ralphie and hugged him close. He put his chin in her lap. “Hey, I’ll split it with ya if ya teach me your walkin’ through walls trick. Are you a ghost or somethin’?”

Ralphie bolted up and ran to the set of sliding glass doors. He snorted again and wagged his tail.

“What’s up Ralphie?” Vonnie asked as she followed him, putting greasy fingerprints on the freshly cleaned glass.

Ralphie barked and ran up the stairs.

“You gonna show me your trick?” She smiled as she watched him.

The dog stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to look at her. He walked in a circle wagging his tail. Vonnie’s eyes popped as Ralphie promptly showed her his trick. Being a four year old, she promptly did the same thing.

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