Chapter 6 - The Law Firm's Audit
The office of Thorne & Associates, Family Law, occupied a modest brick building on Courtland Street, just three blocks from the county courthouse. It was a traditional space—dark oak bookshelves, leather chairs that smelled of cigar smoke from the nineteen-eighties, and stacks of active files that looked like small monuments to human misery.
On Thursday afternoon, the day before the preliminary hearing, the small conference room was filled with paper. Clara had spent the last thirty-six hours executing an emergency forensic audit of Anthony’s financial connections to the firm.
"It’s worse than we thought, Steven," Clara said, setting a fresh stack of bank ledgers on the table. She looked older under the fluorescent lights, her reading glasses hanging from a silver chain around her neck. "When Anthony bought the house on Cascade Drive two years ago, he didn't use his personal savings for the down payment. He drew fifty-five thousand dollars from the Skyla Thorne Educational Trust."
My hand froze over the legal pad. "He did what?"
"He signed the withdrawal notice as the secondary trustee," Clara said, pointing her pen at a line on the ledger. "He listed the expense as 'primary structural development for the beneficiary’s residence.' But look at the title transfer. The house was registered entirely in his and Natalie’s names as a joint tenancy with right of survivorship. Skyla isn't listed on the deed, the equity line, or the home insurance policy."
A cold, heavy rage settled into my stomach, the kind of anger that doesn't make you want to scream, but makes you want to work until midnight to ensure someone loses everything they own.
"He stole from her," I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous whisper. "He stole his adopted daughter's college fund to buy a house for his biological son's mother."
"Natalie's name is on every single withdrawal check from that account for the last six months," Clara added. "They used the trust dividend payments to pay for the Disney vacation package, Steven. I verified the merchant codes with Delta and the Grand Floridian this morning. The matching Mickey Mouse shirts? Paid for by Skyla’s inheritance from her grandmother."
I stood up from the table, walked over to the window, and looked down at the street below. A few lawyers were walking toward the courthouse, their briefcases swinging at their sides, their lives orderly and predictable.
Anthony had been my pride once. When his mother died twenty years ago, I had spent every evening sitting on the edge of his bed, telling him stories about the law, about justice, about the way a good man carries his responsibilities. I thought he had listened. I thought the lessons had taken root in the clay of his character.
But he hadn't learned about justice; he had learned about the appearance of it. He had watched me use the law to solve problems, and he had assumed the law was just a set of keys you could use to open doors whenever you wanted something inside.
"Call Detective Vance," I told Clara, without turning around. "Tell him we have an additional count of grand larceny and fiduciary fraud to add to the state's custody brief. And Clara?"
"Yes, Steven?"
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"Have the locksmith change the codes on the firm's central server. Anthony still has a legacy access key from when he did our accounting work three years ago. I want him entirely locked out of this building by five o'clock."
"It’s already done, Steven," she said softly. "I took his key off the peg yesterday morning."
