Chapter 7 - The Forensic Freeze
By Tuesday morning, the trap had closed so tightly that the Calloways were beginning to turn on one another.
Tyler was the first to break.
At seven-thirty, while I was overseeing the installation of a new commercial-grade security system at Monument Avenue—sixteen four-K night-vision cameras covering every inch of the perimeter, with high-frequency glass-break sensors on every window—a beat-up Ford Ranger pulled up to the alley gate.
Tyler Calloway stepped out. He was twenty-nine, had the soft, doughy physique of an ex-high school quarterback who had spent seven years drinking microbrews on his father’s credit card, and was sweating through his flannel shirt despite the forty-degree drizzle.
"Audrey," he called out, his hands held high, palms open, like a soldier surrendering in an open field. "Audrey, please! Don't call the cops! I just need five minutes!"
I signaled to the security technician to pause the drill. I stood on the back porch, six feet above him, my arms crossed over my waxed-cotton jacket.
"You have two minutes, Tyler. Then the Henrico sheriff's dispatch gets the alert."
Tyler stumbled to the bottom of the porch stairs, his face pasty, his eyes darting frantically toward the alley. "It was Reid. Audrey, I swear to God on my life, it was Reid and Mom! They told me the money from Fenwick Cryo was a legitimate family distribution! Reid told me you had authorized a ninety-thousand-dollar sibling loan to keep my framing business from going into Chapter Seven!"
"You signed the invoices, Tyler," I said coldly. "Four different supply vouchers for structural steel delivered to the Kodiak Cold Harbor facility. You don't sell structural steel. You build garden sheds in Goochland."
Tyler dropped to his knees right there on the wet gravel of the driveway, his jeans soaking through with mud.
"Reid made me do it!" he sobbed, his voice cracking into high, pathetic whines. "He said if the framing company went under, the bank would attach Mom’s house in Midlothian because she co-signed the note! He said you were pulling in twenty-five grand a month and you’d never miss fifteen percent of the gross! He forged the shipping manifests, Audrey! I just... I just deposited the checks!"
"Where is the money now, Tyler?"
"It's gone!" he wailed. "The supplier in Powhatan took fifty grand for back lumber debts! And the rest... Reid took thirty thousand back in cash! He said he needed it for Julianne’s retainer!"
"Julianne Vance," I said.
"Yes! She was threatening to leave the firm in August! She knew about the money he was taking from your mother’s account! Reid bought her that BMW 4-Series to keep her mouth shut until the Hanover deal closed!"
I looked down at him. There was no hatred in my chest; there was only the cold, detached disgust one feels when lifting an old board in the woods and seeing the pale, blind grubs squirming in the rot.
"Get up, Tyler."
He scrambled to his feet, wiping his muddy hands on his thighs. "Are you... are you going to drop the civil complaint?"
"No," I said. "I am going to let you walk into the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office at eleven o'clock with Evelyn Vance. You are going to sign a sworn affidavit detailing every single manifest Reid forged, every check Pamela endorsed, and every single dollar that went from my company into that BMW."
"And if I do?" he stammered.
"Then Evelyn will ask the prosecutor to recommend probation instead of four years at the Greensville Correctional Center. If you don't, Tyler, I will make sure the federal tax fraud charges include Kate as a co-signatory on your corporate account."
Tyler’s face went completely gray. His wife, Kate, had just had their first baby six months ago.
"I’ll do it," he choked out, his knees shaking so hard he had to lean against the fender of his truck. "I’ll give them everything. I have the emails on an external drive in my glove box."
"Give it to Evelyn," I said. "And Tyler?"
He paused, looking back with wide, terrified eyes.
May you like
"Tell your mother that the Goochland conservatorship hearing was dismissed ten minutes ago. Judge Miller called the Goochland circuit clerk directly. Your mother has two hours to remove that Facebook post, or she will be served with a half-million-dollar defamation writ at her bridge game this afternoon."
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