It appeared that Stier wasn’t going to let himself be sidetracked by the discovery of Lori Bradford or the murder of Eugenio Ruiz. He had three other witnesses tentatively scheduled to appear whose testimony, Hardy knew, closely adhered to that of Cheryl Biehl’s about Maya’s collusion with both Dylan and Levon in the marijuana business in college.
But since Stier had skipped from Biehl straight over to Jansey Ticknor, Hardy thought he was probably going to abandon any more discussion about Maya’s distant past. Everybody in the courtroom probably believed by now that his client had dealt drugs in college. What Stier had to get to next was her current involvement in Dylan’s operation, and to that end, as soon as Braun had taken the bench, he called Michael Jacob Schermer.
Schermer, in his mid-sixties, might have been an athlete in his earlier life, or even still a long-distance runner in this one. Tall, thin, white-haired, and very well dressed for the courtroom in a light green Italian suit, he projected a quiet confidence as he took the oath and went to the witness chair.
“Mr. Schermer,” Stier began, “what is your profession?”
“I’m an accountant.”
“And for how long have you been in accounting?”
Schermer, genial, sat back to enjoy the experience of testifying, which he’d clearly done many times before. He broke a small smile that he shared with the jury. “About forty years.”
“And have you developed a specialty over these years?”
“Yes, I have. It’s called forensic accounting.” Again, bringing in the jury. “It’s kind of like a superaudit, with a lot of computerized analysis and other bells and whistles, if you want to put it in lay terms.”
“And you are licensed in this field?”
“Yes. I am licensed and accredited as a CFE, or certified fraud examiner.”
“And what do you do in this line of work?”
“Well”-Schermer shrugged-“as the name implies, I’m basically trained to identify fraudulent business practices or financial transactions, embezzlements, misappropriation of assets, questionable bankruptcies, and so on.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Well, it gets a little complicated.” Here he paused for the jury and gallery to chuckle with him. “But basically I analyze both physical and computerized accounting records to document I and E to-”
“Excuse me, Mr. Schermer, what is I and E?”
“Oh, sorry. I live in a world of jargon, I’m afraid. I and E is income and expenses. So I basically analyze I and E and movement of assets. I also reconstruct I and E to find hidden or illicit income. Stuff like that.”
“Money laundering?”
“Yes. That’s more or less my subspecialty.”
“Good. Thank you. Now, Mr. Schermer, have you had occasion to examine the financial records of Bay Beans West for the six months ending November first of last year?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And did you discover accounting irregularities?”
“I did.”
Hardy, sitting back in his chair, knew that this was not going to be a high point for the defense. His only early hope had been that the financial testimony itself would be so dry and technical that the jury’s interest would flag after five minutes or so. But Schermer’s chatty and agreeable style looked like it was going to trump the material itself. A quick glance at the jury verified this view.
“Could you summarize these irregularities for the jury?”
“Well, there wasn’t just one kind.”
Hardy thought he might as well get in a lick or two if he could, and he objected. “Nonresponsive, Your Honor.” And much to his surprise Braun sustained him. Irrationally buoyed by the tiny decision, he straightened in his chair, pulled his yellow legal pad over in front of him, perked up. But only slightly.
Stier turned back to the witness. “Starting from what you consider the most significant irregularity, can you tell the jury what your analysis uncovered?”
“Well, I always start in this kind of a retail business with the cash register, since it will have a record of the primary sources of income.”
For most of the next two hours Schermer put on a pretty compelling course-complete with charts and graphs and regressive analyses of cash flows-that to Hardy’s perspective, and he was sure to the jury’s, proved that BBW was not run, to say the least, according to strict adherence to established accounting procedures. It wasn’t simply the personal checks that Maya had written to cover expenses or the lack of traceable reimbursables. During the course of his testimony, in the six months before Dylan Vogler’s death, Schermer identified no fewer than sixty-seven individual transactions-cash in or out, payroll discrepancies, simple checking errors, food and beverage cost, and use analysis-that painted the business, and of course Maya as its owner, in at best an unflattering light.
And at worst, of course, as a sophisticated criminal.
And all this before it got personal. “Mr. Schermer.” Stier had put away the latest graph and now stood again in front of the witness in the center of the courtroom. “At the time of Mr. Vogler’s murder, what annual salary was he drawing as manager of BBW?”
“Ninety thousand dollars.”
Though jurors had heard about the salary before in Stier’s opening statement, still this number seemed to nearly knock a couple of the jurors out of their chairs, and sent a ripple of noise through the gallery as well.
Stier, knowing he was on to some juicy testimony, pressed ahead. “And what was the approximate gross income of the coffee shop over the past fiscal year?”
“Well, going on the tax records the business filed, the shop brought in, gross, four hundred sixty-one thousand ninety-two dollars and fourteen cents.”
“Now, Mr. Schermer, was the salary of Mr. Vogler typical of other employers working similar jobs in the same business?”
“No. It was approximately double the city average.”
“Double. And were other employees at BBW similarly compensated, in terms of multiples of the city’s average pay for those jobs?”
“No. They made about the norm, which was essentially an hourly rate slightly above minimum wage.”
“Let’s take the assistant manager, for example, Mr. Schermer, an employee named Eugenio Ruiz. Did he work for an hourly rate, or was he on salary?”
“He was hourly, making twelve dollars and eighty cents an hour, plus tips. About five hundred dollars a week at forty hours.”
“So two thousand a month, about twenty-four thousand dollars a year? As opposed to Mr. Vogler’s ninety thousand dollars?”
“Yes, that’s about right.”
“Mr. Schermer, in your professional opinion, was Mr. Vogler’s salary as a percentage of the coffee shop’s gross income defensible as a viable business practice?”
Hardy knew he could object, but also knew that it wouldn’t do him any good. Schermer, with the credentials of a recognized expert witness, was allowed to give his opinion. The jury didn’t have to believe it, but the court would permit the testimony. He sat, his hand on Maya’s arm, and both of them seethed.
“No,” Schermer said. “It was an irregularity of a dramatic nature.”
“So would the business running on this model be sustainable over the long run?”
“In my opinion, no. Not given the business’s gross income and this salary.”
“And as a forensic accountant, does this type of irregularity raise a red flag for you of a certain kind of financial malfeasance?”
“Yes, it does.”
“And what is that?”
“Most commonly, it would be money laundering.”
“Could you explain to the jury how that works?”
“Certainly.” Schermer turned in his chair to face the panel. “Let’s say that there is an unreported source of illicit income in a coffee shop such as BBW, such as the sale of marijuana, for example. An employee can ring up any number of coffee drinks on the cash register and not actually pour any of these drinks. So that in the course of a day you might have an extra two or three hundred dollars, or more, or less, on the till. Then you simply supply the cash into the register that you’ve made on your illicit business and entered as regular coffee income, and it becomes part of the business’s legitimate cash flow. Now the dirty money is so-called clean, or laundered, money, and since you can account for the income, it can be redistributed as dividends, profit sharing, or salary.”