Chapter 4 - The Ledger of the Dead
It was 11:30 PM.
The bright fluorescent lights of Excel Fitness were turned off, leaving only the dim, blue emergency night-lights glowing over the long rows of dark treadmills and chrome weight machines.
Outside, a light winter rain lashed against the high glass windows, casting long, liquid shadows across the empty gym floor.
In the back office, Maya Lin sat alone at her desk. The only illumination came from the pale glow of her dual computer monitors.
She was not looking at membership accounts anymore.
On her left screen was an open file from the State Department of Health, bearing a red stamp that read: DECEASED – CASE NO. 4192.
On her right screen was a high-resolution photograph of Arthur Pendelton—taken thirty years ago.
In the photograph, Arthur was not wearing a grey cotton tracksuit. He was wearing the uniform of a Senior Inspector for the Federal Banking Oversight Commission, flanked by two armed federal marshals in front of a vaulted building in downtown Seattle.
Maya stared at the photograph, her fingers resting lightly on the edge of her desk.
Her mobile phone vibrated silently on the blotter. She picked it up without checking the caller ID.
"Is it done?" a cold, synthesized voice asked through the speaker.
"The public scene at the desk went exactly as planned," Maya replied, her voice entirely devoid of the gentle warmth she had shown Arthur two hours earlier. "Brandon played his part perfectly. The gym crowd witnessed the entire exchange, and the video was uploaded to three local community boards within twenty minutes."
"And the old man?" the voice inquired.
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"Arthur has no idea he’s being used as the catalyst," Maya murmured, looking at the old inspector’s mugshot on her screen. "He thinks he just got his four hundred dollars back. He doesn't realize that his reactivation opened the back-door ledger we needed."
"Good," the voice said. "The bank in Chicago has already flagged the four-hundred-dollar manual override transaction. They think it's an accounting glitch. They have no idea we just bypassed their firewalls using a dead man's clearance code."
