Heller and Shannon: The Hunt begins

“Do we know how many assailants there were?” McCafferty asked Singh. He already knew the answer but would rather have a subordinate share the bad news.

“No. We do not” Singh replied.

“OK, I want your team to focus on downloading images from traffic and security cams. We ought to be able to at least get a make-and-model of the get-away vehicle” McCafferty directed Singh.

“We are already working on that” Singh said. This was not his first rodeo.

McCafferty gave Singh a second assignment. “Touch base with the cell providers. I want a list of everybody who came within a quarter mile of Turner’s house yesterday.”

Singh tapped a few notes into his tablet.

Detective Lambert said “The Ann Arbor Police are already going door-to-door, but this neighborhood is the opposite of a trailer-park. Nobody is ever home and nobody sticks their nose into other folks’ business.”

“Tickle your local sources” McCafferty directed Lambert. “Find out if this guy was know to keep money or drugs in his house and who would know that. Find out if he had any enemies.”

It is an article of faith among investigators that passion and drugs/money are the root of 80% and 20% of all homicides respectively...and this had come to within a couple of units of lost blood of being a homicide. McCafferty was leaning toward money and the Cartel based on the viciousness. Restraining a victim with disposable cuffs before executing them is a Cartel M.O.

“Let me know when our Evidence Team is done with the house. I want to get Dr. Turner to go through it and start generating a list of everything that is missing” McCafferty said.

***

Shannon continued to move money.

Six hours later she was dripping with sweat as she logged off.

She popped the battery from the laptop and put it into her tote-bag. Then she calmly threaded her way through the building to the bus-stop outside. Boarding the next bus she rode it to a local, Christian College with a large base of student-commuters. She had re-arranged her head-scarf and stripped off her hoody, revealing a brightly colored tee-shirt while on the bus.

Shannon walked across campus to the Student Union Building and changed again in the restroom. She left wearing jogging shorts and a white tee-shirt. Waiting by the door, she casually joined a group of students and walked with them for a ways before peeling off from the group and heading toward the parking lot where she had parked her vehicle.

Heller had an old steel, truck-wheel he sometimes used for campfires. Shannon filled it with charcoal briquettes and lit them. Once they were evenly covered with gray ash, she added the laptop and the thumb-drive Heller had taken from Turner’s neck. She stood well away from the plume of toxic smoke from the burning device.

She and Heller had argued long and hard over what to do with any funds that they recovered from Turner in the two months they had planned the heist.

Shannon was adamant that it all be disbursed. Forensic accounting could track down every last penny and Shannon didn’t want to make their job any easier.

That really stuck in Heller’s craw. HE was taking the risk. Shouldn’t HE get some benefit?

Shannon gave him a stark choice: Give it away or get caught. It is hard to enjoy money from a prison...even if you hide it as physical cash buried somewhere.

They had come up with a plan. They picked a wide range of “charities” and give it away. The charities were chosen with the intent of expanding the pool of potential perpetrators. They picked radical animal-rights groups. They picked charities that provided service to the homeless, drug-addicts and to veterans. They picked soup-kitchens, food-banks and organizations dedicated to increasing food-security. They picked environmental advocacy groups and WOKE organizations with histories of violence.

Not only would the give-away vastly dilute the pool of potential perps, but the money would be almost impossible to claw-back. Not only would the money have already been spent but clawing the money back would be political suicide for any judge sympathetic to Turner.

Shannon had set up a drop-box under her fake ID and had purchased 100 thumb-drives online for $140. She was to partition the funds into individual sub-accounts and download the appropriate information on to the individual thumb-drives which would then be given to the charities.

The problem Shannon faced was the sheer magnitude of the amount of money she had moved. It is one thing to spread a million dollars between one-hundred organizations. Any competent charity can make $10k disappear in the blink-of-an-eye.

The problem was that the thumb-drive had unlocked accounts that netted a bit over $370 million. That was a whole ‘nuther kettle of fish.