For NaNoWriMo: The Field of Blood, part 8

This portion was written on Nov. 9.

Captain Hamilton finds surprising evidence in his investigation of the death of J. Oscar Rett ... how exactly did Mr. Rett get so rich, so fast? You can get caught up on part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7 to catch up on all the twists and turns!

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Interestingly, Captain Hamilton found Mr. Rett's Rolodex and phone books, but not his cell phone, and he didn't have a house phone. The captain methodically photographed all cards and then pages of the phonebook, and then went through the remainder of the desk.

Mr. Rett had been the treasurer for the Lofton County Black Historical Preservation Society, and he had kept the working files for the year in excellent order in his desk. It was November 2, and so, the last item Mr. Rett had prepared was a tentative estimate for the close out of the year – there would only be one more collection of dues in the month, and an estimate of Christmas and Kwanzaa-related expenses was already prepared from October, so Mr. Rett had projected the year-end revenue in order to likewise do a tentative budget for 2020.

In going back through the year's working files, Captain Hamilton could see that the society's treasury ran like a well-oiled machine, with clear indication of who donated in addition to dues, the totals, and what went out every month, with totals. Another drawer had the bank statements, and again, everything matched to perfection. Nothing out of the ordinary.

In one of the remaining two drawers, Mr. Rett had items related to his work at Wells Fargo – paystubs and such, nothing out of the ordinary, except that they confirmed Mr. Rett's base salary as $39,450.

On his desk, Mr. Rett had a computer – password-protected, but that would only be a temporary hurdle, because in the remaining drawer Captain Hamilton had found a book marked “Backups,” and on the first page of this book was a little key pointing downward to a phrase – “First Key password,” and then the password.

Yet Captain Hamilton noticed … the key was old and dull, but there were bright bits where the key had rubbed up on the side of the lock, and, the tape that secured the key had been recently replaced.

Captain Hamilton looked around – nothing visible that would fit that lock, but it had to be somewhere. Captain Hamilton went back to the bedroom – he had looked into the walk-in closet and saw all those gorgeous suits and coats and jackets, and he had noticed that the pole on the center rack was somewhat more forward than the two side racks. He returned to it and parted the clothes in the middle, and revealed a file cabinet nearly as tall and fully as wide as he was. The key fit the locks.

The file cabinet had five drawers; the bottom two were full of older financial documents for the Society – same precision as ever. In the middle drawer, Mr. Rett had made room for that year's documents to go in next to those of the year before.

In the second drawer, Mr. Rett had copies of court documents – both the case in Tinyville and previous cases. He had highlighted particular portions of said documents and made notes about weak points on his society's side of the argument – although he was just the treasurer, he seemed quite engaged in the matter. The challenge was that he was late; these documents had already been entered into the court record by the time he had extensively marked them up and added detail.

Because he had anticipated looking at documents, Captain Hamilton had brought his portable scanner with a paper feeder on it in his army backpack. Once the scanner was set up,Captain Hamilton scanned all the marked-up court documents to his thumb drive, stack after stack going into the feeder before he returned all the documents to the file cabinet.

While the stacks were going through the scanner, Captain Hamilton opened the top file drawer and found more financial documents – the precise treasurer kept his own bank statements there, and they were in two categories: “Real Work” and “Side Job.” Interestingly, the regular payments – every two weeks from Wells Fargo – were coming in under “Side Job.” “Real Work” had several other sources of income, and they were much greater – “Side Job” was low five figures, and “Real Work” was low sevens! Mr. Rett had become a millionaire in the previous five years!

Captain Hamilton did not spend his brain power on all that documentary evidence at the moment – there were enough payees on “Real Work” to research, but it was enough for the moment to add the documents to the scanner and return them to the file cabinet.

Part 9 is up