Chapter 64 - The Paper Trail North
By midnight, Ross and I were in an unmarked Ford Explorer, crossing the Maine state line on Interstate 95 North.
The rain had turned into a wet, slushy sleet that plastered against the windshield. Ross drove while I had my laptop propped open on my knees, running hot-spot queries through the LexisNexis database, corporate deed registries, and utility cross-checks.
"Here's how Arthur engineered it," I said, turning the screen toward Ross. "In 1985, Vance Lumber was carrying a four-hundred-thousand-dollar line of credit through Bangor Savings. When the fire happened, the insurance payout didn't go to rebuild the mill. It went directly into an escrow account controlled by Vance-Pemberton & Associates."
"Under the guise of paying off creditors," Ross noted, keeping his eyes on the slick highway.
"Right. But look at the disbursement ledgers I pulled from the Maine Bureau of Financial Regulation," I pointed to the spreadsheet. "Arthur didn't pay the creditors. He bought up the secondary debt at twenty cents on the dollar through a shell corporation called Kennebec Timber Holding. Then he used Kennebec to foreclose on his own family’s land rights."
"And Thomas?"
"Thomas was the only one who realized the fire was intentional," I said, opening the scanned copies of the letters from the steel box. "In letter number four, written in 1989, Thomas tells my father: *The kiln didn't malfunction. The thermostat was bypassed with a copper shunt. Arthur had the night watchman turn off the mains before the shift ended.*"
"Arson for profit," Ross muttered. "And once Thomas threatened to go to the state fire marshal, Arthur turned the tables."
"Arthur had the local coroner in his pocket," I said. "He told Thomas: *You're already officially dead. If you come forward, you’re an arsonist who faked his death to defraud Boston Commercial Credit. Your brother will lose his house, his business, and go to prison as your co-conspirator.*"
"So Thomas disappeared into the North Woods," Ross said, gripping the wheel tighter. "And Arthur kept him alive with a small quarterly stipend to keep him quiet."
"Not a stipend," I corrected, clicking on a Bangor Savings wire transfer log from 1998. "An extortion payment. Arthur only paid Thomas as long as Thomas signed the proxy certifications Arthur needed to keep Shannon Timber legal under foreign trade exemptions."
"Until 1998," Ross remembered. "When your mother said the payments stopped."
"They didn't stop because Arthur ran out of money," I said, pulling up the final transaction record. "They stopped because Thomas refused to sign the waiver on Tracts Seven, Eight, and Nine. That’s why Arthur brought in Julian Sterling."
"Julian was the enforcer," Ross said. "Julian took the Massachusetts assets, squeezed your father, forced the family to the brink, and kept you all too broke to hire lawyers."
"And tonight, Julian turned state's evidence because he realized Arthur was going to let him rot in Devens while Arthur took the land," I said.
My phone vibrated on the console. It was a secure text from Assistant U.S. Attorney Miller in Boston.
*Emergency hearing set for 2:30 PM tomorrow. Judge Garcetti presiding. Arthur’s counsel has produced an original 1998 proxy certificate bearing Thomas Vance’s wet signature. If we cannot refute the proxy’s validity or produce the principal, injunction will be granted.*
"Fourteen hours," Ross said, checking the dashboard clock. "We're two hours outside Greenville. If this camp is empty, Marcus, Arthur walks away with everything."
May you like
"It's not empty," I said, looking out into the black, snow-dusted pine forests rushing past. "Thomas has been waiting for someone to come north for thirty-eight years."
***
