“Hey, Vitooch. We were at HQ, dispatch just radioed us the call. Got here fast as we could. Thanks for holding the fort,” Jake said. “Where’s…?”
“Hey, Jake,” Vitucci said. “Upstairs. With the sheriff’s deputies. It’s an eviction, right? Look, uh, Jake? Thing is-”
“Thing?” Jake said. “Thing” meant problem. Glitch. Snafu. “Thing” meant Jake’s day was about to get complicated. “There’s a ‘thing’?”
“Mr. Iantosca? Mrs. Iantosca?” Lizzie-Liz-came around from behind her desk, gestured her customers to the two new visitor chairs. They’d been delivered that very morning; in fact, no one had ever sat in them before. Liz spotted a paper receipt still taped underneath one of them.
“I’m Liz McDivitt,” she said. “Thank you for coming. May I offer you some water? Or coffee?”
Colleen Iantosca looked like she hadn’t slept in a year, thin as a memory, eyes red-rimmed. Her dark cardigan, buttoned high over a white blouse, had a tiny hole in the left shoulder. She gave Liz a wisp of a smile, shook her head no, then picked at the clasp of the flat black purse she clutched in her lap. Drew a breath with a little gasp.
Her husband reached out a hand, put it on top of hers.
“Honey,” he said. “Thank you, Miss McDivitt. No.”
“We’ll never be able to-,” Colleen Iantosca began. Then she stopped, looking at her husband again.
“My wife is right.” Christian Iantosca patted his wife’s hand, then clamped his palms on his knees.
His suit, a good one, had also seen better days. Liz knew from their records the husband had been a bakery manager before Scones and Co. went bankrupt; the wife still worked in the back of a West End dry cleaner. Reliable, trusting, honest people. Now with one big mortgage and one small salary.
“We understand why you’ve called us here. We understand the bank has no choice. But I do have some jobs in line, and I guess we’d hoped-well, you see our position.”
Liz remained standing, didn’t want to put the desk between them. She took a breath, smiled, and broke the law.
“I have some good news for you, Mr. and Mrs. Iantosca,” she said.
She paused, thinking it through one last time. She controlled these accounts, the foreclosure paperwork had not yet progressed through unalterable channels. She understood the work-arounds necessary to avoid the transparent and ridiculously vulnerable protocols the bank inserted to catch manually entered overrides. Numbers always did what she wanted them to. She almost felt her father’s presence. Hi, Dad, she thought. Guess what.
“It appears,” she said, “there has been an error in your records.”
“An error?” Christian Iantosca frowned. “We didn’t do anything wr-”
“What kind of an-,” his wife began.
The whisper of hope in the woman’s eyes almost broke Lizzie’s heart.
Yes. Lizzie-Liz-was doing the right thing.
She put up both palms. “I’m happy to show you the documentation, at some point, after our auditors have reassessed the financial essentials and fiduciary elements.” That was pure drivel, but they’d never know. “However, bottom line, as they say, the balance of your mortgage, with the calculation of the compounding interest and the escrow payments, as well as the federal allowance offered under Title M for first-time homeowners-” She stopped, as if this actually meant something. Sighed, as if clearing her mind.
“Getting to the point. We’re stopping the foreclosure.”
Colleen Iantosca made a sound, a gasp or a gulp. Her cheeks went pink, and she covered her mouth with two sinewy hands. Her eyes went wide, then welled with tears.
“How could-,” Christian Iantosca began. “But what about the-”
“I understand you’ll have questions.” Liz went behind her desk, sat in her new swivel chair, felt tall. She tapped on her keyboard, bringing up a blank spreadsheet, and turned the monitor so the Iantoscas could see. Not that it would show them anything. “I’ll be your direct and only contact on this,” she said, pointing to the empty grid. “Okay?”
Both Iantoscas nodded.
“Two things.” Liz thought of something. “Oh, first, you didn’t have a closing attorney, correct? You and the bank handled this directly.”
Both Iantoscas nodded.
Okay, then. “And your house is on the lis pendens list at the registry of deeds, the pre-foreclosure notice, you understand?”
“Yes, they told us that,” Christian said. “The bank’s real estate person came to see us. The man, Mr…?” He checked with his wife.
“Gianelli,” Colleen Iantosca said. “We had to show him the house, and he told us we might have to be out in eight weeks.”
Aaron. Liz couldn’t believe how perfectly this was going.
“I’ll speak to him,” Liz said. “Meanwhile, I’ll withdraw the lis pendens. Then I have to reorganize your debit situation in accordance with the overpayments you’ve been charged in the years past. When I recalculate your payments, I’ll inform you, in person, of your obligations.”
She stood, fingertips on her lovely big brand-new desk.
“But for now? Go home.” Liz smiled. In control. “Don’t worry. Find a job, Mr. Iantosca. But your home is your home. And so it shall stay.”
7
“‘Thing is’ what?” Jake said. Vitucci and Callum were fidgeting, the two detail cops getting in each other’s way. It obviously wasn’t only from the damn heat. The EMTs hovered on the porch. Jane, for sure, would soon be trying to get the scoop. No one seemed in much of a hurry to let Jake and DeLuca get to their crime scene.
“Yeah, well, the vic is on the second floor, rear bedroom, third of three.” Vitucci hitched up his pants. “Says the deputy. The two of them are up there now. I guess. But see, the thing is, they-”
“Show us this ‘thing.’” DeLuca put a hand on the banister, raised an eyebrow at Jake. “Seems like these two don’t want us up there, you think?”
“I hear you, D,” Jake said. “Vitooch? You got something to say? Now’s the time.”
“Okay.” Vitucci raked his hands through his hair, like this was the last crime scene he’d ever see. “So thing is, the deputies, you know, were clearing out the-”
“We decided to hang outside, in case rent-a-demonstrators showed up, you know?” Callum said. “And then the deps yelled out the window, but when we got upstairs-”
“Where we are going right now,” Jake said. “If one of you could manage to finish a sentence. Vitucci, that’s you.”
Vitucci’s shoulders sagged. “Seems like they’d gotten rid of everything. The deputies did, you know? Bleach, and disinfectant, all that. Sweeping. Apparently, the vic was in the last room they’d hit. In the closet. Which they didn’t open, until too late. Then she, like, slid out of it. That’s why she’s-like that. Sitting up. Sort of.”
“I see.” Jake could not believe it. A crime scene ruined by the sheriff’s own deputies. This was a new one. Jake and D reached the top of the stairs, took a left toward the back. “So fingerprints, trace evidence, whatever?”
“What I’ve been trying to tell you,” Vitucci said. “It’s like, gone. The deputies cleaned all of it, before they found the-”
“Female. Caucasian. Maybe. Mid-thirties,” DeLuca interrupted. “Dead since yesterday at most, who knows, just my guess.”
DeLuca’d stopped in the doorway, looking past a rusting twin bed frame, and down to the hardwood floor. No curtains, no rugs, no other furniture. Just a dead woman sitting in an empty closet. In a room where all the evidence was gone.
“Shit,” Jake said.
“Where are those two morons, anyway?” DeLuca said.
“Down the back stairs?” Vitucci said. “Maybe?”
“Find ’em for me, Vitooch,” Jake said. “Go. Take Callum with you. And look, no way you could have prevented this. Right? You did your jobs. You’re fine.”