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CHAPTER TWO
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"I don't know why this counts as a major crime," Provenza half-asked irritatedly.
"It's the amount of money taken," Mike Tao explained. "Seven million dollars. Cash. Taken from the safe of a famous music industry mogul. It adds up."
The crime scene was clean. The building had no security, and either the thief knew the combination to the safe or it had been left unlocked. There were no fingerprints and no other physical evidence. They'd suspected the victim himself, but he had a rock-solid alibi and no motive. A security camera two blocks from the building gave them a shot of who they thought was the thief, but it was so grainy, it was practically unusable.
Major Crimes had spent three days trying to trace the $7,000,000, but all they found were dead ends.
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"I got something," announced Flynn, and everyone gathered around. He brought a piece of paper to the white board at the front of the room. "I thought I'd analyze the suspects we eliminated, and five of the twelve have one thing in common: Western Community Bank with fifty branches in California, Nevada and Arizona. Eighteen locations are here in L.A.. Somehow, almost half of the people we've suspected have an account with this bank."
"What if every one of these people is just one person?" Sykes asked. "Can we even put faces to the suspects? Haven't we just followed paper trails?"
"Right!" Tao chimed in. "It could explain how the money just seemed to vanish. Suppose it's not being laundered in one transaction but through fifty different bank accounts?"
"Excellent work!" Sharon praised them. "Mike, see if you can find that $7,000,000 among recent deposits to the bank. Concentrate on the dead ends," she nibbled on the end of her glasses and grinned at Andy, "which don't appear to be dead at all."
Flynn smiled and nodded at her compliment.
"Next, let's concentrate on these branch offices and hope our suspect went to a teller to make a deposit. Andy and Amy, split the ten branches closest to the recording label office with Lieutenant Provenza and Julio. We need as much footage as we can get from their security cameras. Buzz…"
"Yes, ma'am," Buzz nodded, "I'll set up multiple screens to view the footage."
"And, Buzz," Sharon said thoughtfully, "we may be looking for more than one suspect."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I'll check with our FBI liaison to find out if they have unsolved thefts with ties to Western Community Bank. Thank you, everyone!" Sharon said cheerfully and then walked to her office to report to Chief Taylor.
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Late the next day, the team had a conclusive report.
Buzz started first and rolled security footage he had edited together. "Captain, you said to look for more than one suspect. You were right. Turns out there are a man and a woman who appear on the security footage. They come in separately to different branches at different times of the day. They appear to know the tellers, too, because both of them have friendly conversations while making the deposits."
Flynn went next, "Buzz pulled shots of the suspects, and we took them to the banks for identification." He nodded to Julio.
Sanchez read from his notes, "So, Captain, these two people have different names at each branch: Sally Johnson, Nancy Price, Janice Noble, and so on. And they make cash deposits of $1,000 to $3,000 daily into business accounts for fake, cash-only businesses, like food trucks and donut shops. They're actually able to move a lot of money without attracting any attention."
"We suspect they have inside help, and the banks are cooperating with us in getting us the records they used to open the accounts," Tao said. "We've asked them to continue to accept the deposits, so the suspects won't know we're on to them."
"Can we visually identify them?" Sharon asked.
"Oh, yes, ma'am," Sanchez replied, with the rest of the team nodding.
"Excellent! Choose the best location or locations for stakeouts of the bank and follow these two around first thing tomorrow."
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Provenza was consulting with the Captain in her office about possible stakeout locations an hour later when Andy poked his head in the door. He gave Provenza a grin before he addressed Sharon.
"Excuse me, Captain. A guy out here says he's madly in love with you and wants to take you to dinner."
Sharon was wistful. "I'm sorry, Andy. I haven't seen Rusty in three days, and he threatened to find a new mother if I didn't make time for him tonight."
"Aww, it's okay," Andy said gently and started to turn away, "I understand."
"Oh, Ann-dee!" chirped Provenza in an awful Valley Girl impression, "Like, I'm available tonight, and like, don't we have some shopping to do, you know, like, at The Mall?"
Yeah, Andy thought. Louie could help him look at engagement rings.
"Like, for sure, like, awesome! Pick you up at seven?" he chimed in, his Valley Girl impression even worse than Provenza's.
Sharon eyed each of them suspiciously, trying not to laugh out loud. What in the world were they up to? And would she have to file a report about it before it was all over?
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