LITMIR.BIZ

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Or to your own account, of course. We receive the request, make sure everything is filled out and that the account the money come from is legit, and put the transfer through.”

      “So you have access to people’s bank account numbers?”

      “No, no. The site encrypts that part. It’s like when you put your password in to get your e-mail—all you see is row of dots? Same thing here. So we can’t see bank account numbers.”

      “Then how do you know they’re legit?”

      “Because funds go through.”

      During another quiet period on the recording as Evan Harding typed some more, double-checked his work on the screen, and then opened the cash drawer and counted out a stack of bills. These, he put in his own pocket.

      Again, his boss did not seem concerned. When Jack asked, he shrugged. “Probably cashing his own money. I let my guys do that, cash their checks, welfare, reimbursement. Why would I want some other boss getting my percentage?”

      “But he didn’t have a check.”

      “Online, then.” His head swiveled as he took in both cops’ expressions, sighed, and said, “I can look it up.”

      “Yes,” Riley said. “Please look it up.”

      He sat at his desk and used another mouse to search the previous day’s transactions, narrowing things down by the time stamp on the video. “Credit card.”

      “What?” Riley asked.

      “He took a cash advance on a credit card. Five hundred dollars.” He checked again. “Visa.”

      “Do your employees do that a lot?”

      One hand gave a short wave. “Sometimes. They need money and I don’t give advances.”

      “Did he have money problems? In need of cash for some reason?”

      “I don’t know. They’re my employees, not my friends. We don’t chat about personal things. I do that, they get comfortable. Start asking for more hours, less hours, more raises, bonus, that sort of thing.”

      Plainly, Ralph didn’t care what his employees did—so long as the books balanced at the end of the day.

      Jack had been keeping an eye on the video as they spoke. With the video running at two times normal speed, he saw Evan Harding once again take cash from the drawer after a computer entry. This prompted another check of the ledger, Ralph now more pensive. This cash withdrawal had been paid for by another credit card, a Discover. Four hundred dollars.

      They didn’t bother asking Ralph what his employee needed all the cash for.

      “So our victim left the store with nine hundred dollars cash in his pockets,” Riley said. “He might as well send a smoke signal to the Murphy’s Law gods saying, Now would be a great time for me to get mugged.”

      On the surveillance tape the time stamp now read 21:48, nine forty-eight p.m. Evan Harding had been leaning on the counter, chin on one hand, staring at nothing in particular, when the door opened and a young woman entered. Black skin, light-colored coat, a knit beret posed to keep her ears both warm and stylishly attired. She immediately crossed to the counter and began to speak. Forcefully, to judge from her unwavering gaze, the taut knuckles of each hand gripping the counter, the way she leaned so close to the plexiglass that her breath occasionally caused a faint sheen to appear on its surface. She had a purpose, and right then it focused on Evan Harding.

      From the cameras behind the counter, Jack watched Evan straighten, take one step back, eventually raise both hands in weak protest. He responded to the woman, though whatever he said neither appeased nor much slowed her torrent of words.

      Riley had been watching, as well. “Unhappy customer? Or psycho ex-girlfriend?”

      “Without words, it’s hard to tell.”

      She didn’t produce any paperwork to bolster a claim of funds gone awry, but Jack couldn’t quite see her as an ex, either. Evan hadn’t raised an eyebrow when she first walked in, hadn’t lifted his chin off his hand until she reached the counter. Jack had seen enough domestic disputes to know they usually involved a great deal of gesturing, with hands to the heart, head, stomach, sweeping angry swishes of the arms, back to the heart—all the places in which wounds were felt most deeply. This woman didn’t gesture much at all, though she was clearly very, very angry. So much so that, safe behind his plexiglass wall, Evan Harding took another step back.

      But no inching toward a phone or panic button and the woman had no weapon, so not robbery. Something personal.

      Finally Evan began to speak up. From his breathing and the tension in his neck he didn’t shout like the woman had, only spoke fast, pouring out words.

      Whatever the confrontation had been about, it had not been resolved. The woman kept shouting, Evan kept up his weak defense, and it ended when she marched to the exit, tossed one last thought over her shoulder, and threw the door open so that it bounced against the adjacent window and rebounded with such force it would have hit her had she not been moving so fast.

      Evan watched her go with a worried, wide-eyed expression, arms hugging himself.

      But he did nothing, didn’t call the police, didn’t—appar-ently—leave a note or an e-mail to inform his boss of the incident. Just watched her go. It took some time before his posture relaxed again.

      There were only two more customers after the woman, two men an hour apart, cashing routine checks. The first came and promptly went, the second wandered the lobby a bit, chatting, perhaps enjoying the last warmth he would feel that night, until it got too much even for him and he took his leave. About eleven forty-five Evan Harding began what must have been his closing routine, straightening stacks of forms, counting the cash in the drawer and locking same, exiting the building to go around and lock the outer door, and reentering the back to shut down the counter computer and turn out the lights.

      Then he left.

      The rear outside camera showed him stepping out onto the sidewalk, giving the knob one last shake to ensure the security of the door, and walking off to the west, the opposite direction of his apartment. The camera’s bubble eye caught only the portion of the sidewalk directly outside the door, but it appeared to be as deserted as one would expect at midnight on a very cold weekday.

      The cameras continued to record their dark, empty rooms.

      “Huh,” Riley said. “Where the hell was he going at midnight?”

      “And who was the woman lambasting him up one side and down the other?” Jack asked, then said to the boss, “Can we download a copy of that video? From the woman’s visit on?”

      Ralph had been typing on his computer, intently enough that Jack had to repeat himself to get the man’s attention. When he glanced over the boss’s shoulder the screen showed columns of numbers . . . he had been double-checking his stores, making absolutely certain that no money had gone missing, that Evan’s cash advances had been legitimate. The man turned with a satisfied sigh and said, “Sure. Only to USB, though. I don’t have a DVD burner in it.”

      “Okay. Do you have a spare USB drive?”

      Ralph scowled as if Jack had asked to date his teenage daughter. “No.”

      “Can you e-mail the video?”

      “No-oo. I tried that once, and it was too big.”

      “Can you break it into smaller videos?”

      “I look like Bill Gates? Or that Zuckerberg kid? I don’t know how to do that.” Ralph was losing patience, and Jack couldn’t entirely blame him. Evan Harding’s death didn’t appear, so far, to have anything to do with his work at A to Z. It wasn’t Ralph’s job to investigate, and no crime had been committed against the check cashing store. On top of that he now needed to hire a new employee, and finding someone he could trust around stores of cash would not be easy.

      “Okay,”

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