Chapter 6: What Paul Garrett Knew
Diane called at seven forty-five the next morning.
I was already at the kitchen table with coffee and the folder of bank records spread out in front of me.
I had been awake since five.
"The forensic accountant finished his overnight pass," she said.
"You need to come in."
"How bad?"
A pause.
"Come in, Rachel."
Her office was on the fourteenth floor of a building on Michigan Avenue.
I was there by nine.
The forensic accountant — a quiet man named Gerald Webb who wore reading glasses on a cord around his neck — had printed everything out and arranged it in neat stacks on the conference table.
He walked me through it without preamble.
"The Delaware company — Garrett-Hale Consulting LLC — received a total of two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars over twenty-two months.
Your business account contributed ninety-one thousand of that.
The remaining hundred and twenty-three thousand came from two other sources." He tapped the second stack.
"One is a real estate holding company based in Phoenix.
The other is a personal account belonging to a woman named Sandra Okafor."
I looked at Diane.
"Who is Sandra Okafor?"
Diane slid a single page across the table.
It was a photograph printed from a social media profile.
A woman around my age, dark-haired, professional-looking.
Below the photo, a name and a job title.
Sandra Okafor.
Senior Loan Officer.
Midwest Regional Bank.
The bank where Marcus and I had our joint account.
The bank where my business line of credit was held.
I set the page down carefully.
"She approved my credit line," I said.
"She approved three credit line increases on your business account over eighteen months," Gerald said.
"Each increase was followed within two weeks by a transfer from your account to Garrett-Hale.
The timing is consistent across all three cycles."
I looked at the numbers.
The dates.
The pattern laid out in clean columns.
"He had someone inside the bank," I said.
"It appears so," Diane said.
"And she was also sending him money from her own account."
"One hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars over the same period."
I sat back.
"She thought she was in a relationship with him," I said.
It wasn't a question.
The shape of it was already clear.
Diane nodded.
"We believe so.
We've flagged her involvement to the financial crimes unit.
She may be a victim as well as a participant — that determination is theirs to make, not ours."
I thought about Marcus at the door the night before.
*There are people connected to that account who are not going to be happy about this.*
He hadn't been warning me about dangerous men.
He had been warning me about Sandra Okafor.
He had been afraid of what she might say if this unraveled.
"He was running the same play on two women at the same time," I said.
"At minimum two," Gerald said quietly.
The room went still.
Diane refilled my coffee without being asked.
"The financial crimes unit wants to speak with you this afternoon," she said.
"They've already been in contact with Marcus's attorney.
Ferris called me this morning to ask whether you'd consider a private settlement."
"No."
"I told him that.
He called back an hour later with a number."
"What number?"
She told me.
It was more than everything Marcus had taken from me.
Considerably more.
I looked at the photograph of Sandra Okafor still lying on the table.
"He's trying to make this go away before it gets to her," I said.
"Yes," Diane said.
"Because if it gets to her, she talks.
And if she talks, whatever else he's been doing comes out too."
"That's my read," Diane said.
"Gerald?"
Gerald nodded once, glasses catching the light.
I pushed the settlement figure back across the table.
"Tell Ferris no," I said.
"Tell him we'll see him in the inquiry."
Diane picked up her pen.
"There's one more thing," she said.
"The financial crimes unit ran Marcus's name through their existing case files last night." She paused.
"He's already in there, Rachel.
Not as a subject.
As a person of interest in a separate matter.
Something that started two years before you met him."
She slid the last page across the table.
I read the first paragraph.
May you like
Then I read it again.
My coffee went cold while I sat there, trying to understand how I had spent two years living with someone and never known the first thing about who he actually was.
