Page 57 of The Catcher
“What I’m saying is this is personal.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know right now, but…”
“It’s done. Okay? Terry is on it. He’ll be working with Porter. They want you off.”
“Really? And what’s the accusation?”
She removed a folder from her jacket and handed it to Noah. Noah opened the folder and looked at photos of him passed out and an empty bottle beside him. As he was looking at the snapshots, he noted the date and time stamp. He recognized what clothes he was wearing. They were from the night he’d gone to see Natalie Ashford.
“You were on duty that night,” she said.
“I was soaked. I went home to change my clothes. Porter and McKenzie were handling matters. There wasn’t mention of a third victim. As far as I was concerned, it was just wrapping up the details. They both said they couldhandle it.” He looked at the photo again. “Damn it! She threw me under the bus.”
“Who did?”
He groaned. “Natalie Ashford. This is what they do. Don’t you see? They got to Luke, they got to Ray, they got to Alicia, hell, they even got to my father. And now me. Alicia warned me about this. She knew. She fucking knew. Why didn’t I listen to her?” he said as Savannah took back the photos.
Savannah placed a hand on his back and leaned in. “Press is watching. Don’t make a scene. That’s exactly what they want.”
He looked at her, confused.
“Go back to the office. On my desk, there’s a case that I think will interest you. Take your mind off this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Noah. Please.”
He closed and opened his eyes, nodded, and walked away. There were few people he truly trusted in his life. He could count them on one hand, but one of them was Savannah. Whatever power move someone had pulled, they knew to go above her head and keep her out of the decision-making.
One thing was for sure: there were some influential people behind the latest chess move, and if he was going to stay in the game, he needed to know how to outplay them.
18
Noah entered Savannah’s office, his thoughts flipping through past conversations. Despite being taken off the case, he couldn’t resist the pull of curiosity when Savannah mentioned a box in her office, paperwork from another investigation.
A framed photograph on Savannah’s desk caught his attention, drawing his gaze to the smiling faces of Savannah and her partner Cora, captured in a moment of joy. Despite the situation, a fleeting smile formed as he remembered happier times before Cora’s diagnosis of cancer.
Turning his attention to the rest of the office, Noah’s eyes landed on a weathered banker box nestled amidst a sea of modern equipment. It stood out like a relic, its faded label hinting at forgotten files.
Curiosity piqued, Noah approached the box, his fingers tracing the edges of the worn cardboard.
It was a rare sight in the digital age of law enforcement,where most open or unsolved cases had been transferred to digital archives. Yet, here it sat, a tangible reminder of a bygone era of investigative work.
Many backup copies were tucked away, others discarded as time pushed cases to the back of society’s mind. Some of it was the product of shoddy police work, though mostly because they needed more evidence or leads. Attorneys wouldn’t move forward unless they had a slam-dunk case. Too much was riding on it. Their reputation mostly. If leads in cases hadn’t dried up and gone cold, the case was still considered active, even if it hadn’t seen eyeballs in decades. Not that anyone from the department would tell the public that.
Nope, an investigator was looking at them weekly. Yeah, bullshit. They were too snowed under by anything that was front and center.
Noah lifted the lid, revealing a treasure trove of old case files and folders. Each item held a piece of the past, a thread waiting to be unraveled.
As he thumbed through the contents, Noah’s eyes darted from one file to the next, absorbing the details etched into yellowed pages. It was chaotic. Names. Locations. Nothing familiar at first. But the sight of one particular folder caught his attention, causing his brow to knit together in confusion.
Ashford Royale Casino.
He flipped through it, and his eyes widened. Long before Noah had returned to High Peaks, a BCI investigator was involved in conducting a background investigation into money laundering. The investigation focused onpatrons allegedly hired to lose illegally obtained money provided by the Ashford family. The funds would be commingled with cash received from normal casino operations. From there, the money would be placed into the financial system, and additional schemes would be used to eliminate the auditing trail and the origin of the funds. The funds would then be transferred through various jurisdictions and businesses to decrease the ability to trace the source. Once that was done, the money could be accessed through clean accounts to purchase real estate, luxury items, and other investments.
It all made sense.
