White Rabbit

Nathan Comstock was showing an account balance of $8,876 in checking, $43,605 in savings. That seemed a bit high for a school administrator, but then what do I know about grownups and realistic amounts of money? That was also as far as I probably had time to check while crouched in front of Nathan Comstock's desk in his office in what could be described as a bubbling cauldron of law-breaking.

What I was after was his entire banking history, and fortunately modern banking websites make this easy by allowing you to download your transaction history log files to use in Quicken or Microsoft Money or whatever. I navigated to the Export option, selected an ambiguous filetype that wouldn't be restricted to some financial application, and downloaded it to the desktop.

So.. now what? Shoot, I probably should have thought ahead about these kind of things. I had to get the file out of there without leaving evidence. I could email it to myself but that would leave traces (you don't want to leave traces when you're infiltrating bank records), and I didn't bring a USB drive or a blank CD with me. Could this PC even burn CDs?

I moved some papers out of the way of the desktop's tower and examined the cover of the CD drive, squinting to make out the small little emblems. DVD, Compact Disc, CD-R/RW.

"Bingo," I said again to myself, soon thereafter realizing I need to stop saying bingo.

After some searching I found a blank CD in a desk drawer and stuck it in the CD drive. I started burning the file onto the disk, it seemed to be taking forbloodyever. I cracked my knuckles as I watched the progress bar drag across the screen. Amy was still standing outside the door, blocking the window. I saw her bobbing back and forth slightly, probably more nervous than I as she was on the front line.

While I waited I started fixing the items on the desk that I'd disturbed; I was wiping the keyboard keys off with the sleeve of my shirt when I heard a light tap on the door. I stopped moving entirely for a moment, then inched toward the door. Some lady was talking to Amy, I couldn't make out her voice. I heard Amy say "was supposed to talk to him about" something, her back still covering the narrow window, she began tapping furiously on the door with a knuckle. This lady must want in.

Nowhere to go, the window going outside didn't open and there were no closets to hide in. My heart began racing as I darted around the small office. I heard the doorknob jiggle, so the only thing I could do was turn off the computer's monitor and dash to the opposite end of the room, tuck myself against the wall that the door was now opening against.

The door opened swiftly, catching me off guard and pinning me against the wall. I grabbed the doorknob on my side and held the door open, if it closed I'd be standing there pressed against the wall of my principal's office for no good reason. I heard rustling papers around the desk. I peeked through the door's window and saw an office assistant hovering over Mr. Comstock's desk, lifting documents and folders as if searching for something. I ducked away from the window, and noticed that to my right, through the gap between the inside end of the door and the door frame I could see out into the hall, Amy was standing right there looking both confused and very nervous. I waved my free hand, as much as I could wave it in the few inches I had between the door and the wall, to get her attention. Her eyes, darting around, finally met mine. Her eyebrows shot up and she covered her mouth quickly to mask a gasp. I tried my best to mouth "hold the door open" but she couldn't read it.

I slid closer to the door frame and waved her toward me. She stepped across the few feet between us and I whispered, "hold the door open". The recognition came over her face, and she stepped forward and leaned in the office and extended an arm to hold to door. I slowly released the handle and felt her take the weight of it.

After a few moments, Amy said aloud, "Is there something I can help with?" Her voice trailed off as she seemed to realize she might have made a mistake, if she stepped away from the door and it stayed open it might look suspicious.

"Not really," the woman said, "just looking for Mr. Comstock's wallet. He needs his ID for a police report."
Behind the door, I was smiling but I knew Amy wouldn't be. Her voice shaking slightly, she asked "did something happen?"

Papers stopped rustling for a moment. "Oh, nothing serious. Just his car was vandalized. Oh, here it is!"

A few seconds later, she was out of the room and the door swung shut, and I uncompressed from the wall and finally began breathing regularly. Just then, the computer speakers made a slight jingle noise and the CD tray ejected from the computer. I grabbed the disk, returned to computer to where it was when I found it, and slipped out the door and fell into step behind Amy who was walking as casually as possible out of the office suite.

Returned semi-safely to the school's main hallways, I was about to laugh when Amy turned on her heel and hit my shoulder with her open palm.

"Ow," I said despite a general lack of pain.
"What the hell was that?" she grunted under her breath. "I thought she was going to go in there and catch you with your hand in the cookie jar."
I rubbed my shoulder, as society seemed to demand, and said, "That's not my fault. You did great, though. There and on the phone. That was really great."

She stood there a moment, looking cross. "I thought the call about his car being vandalized was just a distraction," said Amy.
I smiled again, "It was a distraction. But if it turned out to be a phony call it might have been suspicious coming just moments after a call luring him into logging into his bank account."

Amy sighed, and started walking again. "So how did you know about his car?" she asked.
"That it was vandalized? It became quite clear to me after I threw a hammer through the rear windshield."

Back in the library, where none of the librarians seemed to care that we weren't in class (so long as we weren't eating or shooting up the place), we headed to the computer lab and sat down at one of the open computers far enough away that the screen wouldn't be clear to passers by. I logged into a guest account inserted the disk I burned, noting that the CD was covered with my fingerprints, and navigated to the bank transaction history file. The file opened in Excel, and described every transaction in both accounts from now dating back as far as I could go (two years).

After some inspecting, I'd located his paycheck direct deposits from the school. They were clearly labeled as deposits from the Fredericksburg School District and were consistantly a $2200 deposit every two weeks.

"Almost $53 grand a year," Amy said, "that's.. I don't know. That's more than a teacher makes."
"Yeah, but it's not unusual for a principal I think. But he's almost got that much in his accounts right now. Between the $8,876 in checking and the $43,605 in savings that's almost exactly a year's wages. That's a lot to have accessible, and not in a retirement account or something." I'd done a bit of research into finances when I'd gotten a $500,000 check hand delivered to me by a bonded currier with an off-duty cop.

I kept looking through the transactions, sorting them by deposit amounts.

"Woah," I said.
"What?" Amy said, leaning closer to the screen.
"Look at this. Besides the direct deposits from the school, every month there's three other direct deposits in a row. Every month they're for different amounts each, but look if you add them up..."

I selected the three deposits from this month ($1301, $2134, and $2565), and and added them together (with a sum() formula in Excel), together they equaled $6,000 exactly. I did the same with the three deposits the previous months, all different amounts but totaling $6,000 together.

"So he's making an extra..$72,000 a year on top of his school salary?" Amy asked.
"That's what it looks like. These deposits go back as far as the transaction history." I said.
"Does it say who the deposits are from?"
"No. That's the weird thing. Direct deposits have to list the issuing bank's account holder. It's the law. All these have is an account number. The only people who could issue deposits without disclosure would be..." I paused when I realized what I was about to say. The weight of it bounded against my mind and pulled my jaw down.

Amy spoke up, "What, Chris?"
I closed my mouth and bit my lip. Finally, giving into the conclusion and seeing no alternatives, I said it.

"The government."