FICTION
It Never Starts With A Body Part 8
A Sunny Alexander-Johnson and Henry James Series By P.G. & Sharon Barnett
My name is Sunny Alexander-Johnson, and I’m Henry James, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
The gentlemen who stepped out of the elevator’s on our floor and walked toward us Wednesday morning resembled Nathan Bertram, but then it was difficult to tell for sure. Clean-shaven, every strand of his long unruly hair brushed into place, he looked like a much more tidy version of the man we’d spoken with last night.
Wearing a dark pea coat over a green polo shirt with no visible signs of wrinkles and jeans which broke just so, at the tops of a pair of freshly-shined leather shoes, Nathan looked like he’d just stepped off the page of a GQ magazine.
“Uh, Nathan?”
“Yes, ma’am. Is there a problem? Didn’t you and Mr. James ask me to meet with you this morning and go over my notes?”
“Well, yes, but uh…”
“We didn’t expect you to get all fancied up just to meet with us.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose it’s a bit of a shocking transformation. As a freelancer, I really don’t get out much. What you two witnessed was me in hermit mode.”
Nathan held up a severely scuffed and ancient-looking tan rectangle briefcase by its handle.
“Would you like to get cracking at these notes?”
“You actually found them?”
“After you two left went straight to them, Mr. James. I have a wonderful filing system.”
“Uh yeah, we saw that. You drink coffee?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Well, some of us prefer hot…”
“Put a sock in it, James. Follow me, Nathan, we’ll get you a cup of coffee and find a conference room.”
“Yes, ma’am, lead the way.”
We located one of the smaller conference rooms, and while we sipped our respective beverages, Nathan popped the twin latches of his briefcase and withdrew a rather bulky manila folder.
Scrawled diagonally across the outside of the folder were the words Carlson embezzlement Crowley & Alcott.
“So, this is what I have. Feel free to take a look.”
While Nathan sat and sipped his coffee, we began pouring over the voluminous bits of information.
We were examining each item, each note whether it was fact or fiction as though we were a pair of archeologists studying an event that had happened years ago, studying a history neither of us had experienced.
“Here now, what’s this?”
“What is it, Henry?”
“It says here your contact at Crowley & Alcott approached you and not the other way around. Then you know who this person is, right Nathan?”
“No, I never met this inside person. It was all by phone, and the voice was disguised.”
“But he or she approached you, right?”
“Correct, Mr. James.”
“Henry.”
“Correct, Henry.”
“What’s this?”
“Oh, that Ms. Johnson is a copy of the bank account information. See there at the bottom? Supposedly, that’s Richard Carlson’s signature when he opened the account and began to funnel money from Crowley and Alcott into his account.”
“Supposedly.”
“What?”
“You said supposedly? Are you telling me this was not Richard Carlson’s signature?”
Nathan paused, put down his cup, and leaned forward to rifle through several sheaves of paper. When he found what he was looking for, he leaned back, scanned the document for a couple of seconds then looked up.
“This was an interview I had with the bank personnel just before I broke the story. Richard Carlson was supposed to have been there months before setting up the account.”
Nathan slid the paper across the table to us.
“Read what the bank agent said.”
“He was a wonderfully jolly man and a delight to work with. He talked about his twin boys and how he was going to ensure they both made it into some Ivy-league school. Said this was going to be their college funds.”
“Uh, not much there, Nathan.”
“I didn’t think so, either Ms. Johnson. As a matter of fact, the only point I was interested in was that Richard Carleson had actually opened the account. It was the key to my entire story.”
“Well, evidently, it worked.”
“Yes, ma’am, and I wished it hadn’t. After the story broke, they arrested Richard and used this evidence against him. See the copies of all those checks and deposit slips?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Johnson, Richard Carlson’s signature is on the back of every one of those checks made out to him from Crowley & Alcott’s bank.”
“I suppose back then it was enough to put him away.”
“Yes, it was Henry. He went away for ten years. His wife immediately divorced him, sold the house, and moved away.”
“Did he ever get to see his boys again?”
“I should have checked into that very fact, Henry. Had I, none of this would have happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Richard Carlson didn’t have twin boys. He and his wife had a girl, a three-year-old daughter. I never knew until I met Richard years later after he was released, and he showed me her picture.”
“So whoever framed Richard made all this up?”
“No, Ms. Johnson, they didn’t.”
“Nathan, you’re not making any sense. They either did, or they didn’t.”
“According to Richard the person who did this actually does have twin sons, and after showing me affidavits from expert handwriting analysts who inspected tons of examples of this person’s and Richard’s handwriting they clearly indicate all the signatures on the original bank documents and the checks were performed by this one individual.”
“Who Richard knew.”
“Yes, ma’am, who Richard knew.”
“Did he tell you who this person was?”
“No, he just said he knew, and he was going to take care of it.”
“And he ended up dead.”
“Right, Henry. I can’t believe I ever wrote this story in the first place. Ultimately, it killed Richard.”
“No, Nathan, your story may have sent an innocent man to jail, who, by the way, forgave you for that, but somebody out there killed him, not your story.”
“Thanks, Ms. Johnson. You two seen enough?”
“Yeah, Nathan, I believe so. Hey, thanks for coming in. If you can come up with anything else or think of anything, call us here at Dark Sides.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
We sat in silence as the man gathered his information, stuffed it in the folder, then tossed it in the briefcase. He nodded and stared at his coffee cup.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll get it. See you later, Nathan.”
“Goodby, you two. Good luck.”
After Nathan left we continued to sit in silence. It was clear we’d just taken three steps forward and four steps back.
“Now what, Henry?”
“I don’t know, princess. This shit is driving me crazy.”
Read On — It Never Starts With A Body Part 9
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© P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.