Chapter 8: The Warrant
Grace called while I was in a meeting with two clients the next morning.
I excused myself and stepped into the hallway.
"They executed it at seven fifteen," she said.
"His apartment — he'd been staying at a hotel near the airport, but he moved three days ago.
Kowalski's team got the financial server records, his personal laptop, and a secondary phone they found in a jacket pocket."
"A secondary phone."
"Prepaid.
Kowalski says it's the one he used for the transfers."
I leaned against the hallway wall.
"Is he in custody?"
"Not yet.
He went in voluntarily for questioning with Fitch present.
Fitch is trying to manage the optics.
But Kowalski says the server records alone are enough.
She expects formal charges by end of week."
"What charges?"
"Wire fraud.
Financial @buse of a domestic partner — that's a state charge.
And they're looking at whether the Marsh transfers qualify for a federal count.
If they do, Fitch's leverage disappears entirely."
I looked through the glass at my clients waiting inside.
They were talking to each other, relaxed, unhurried.
"Grace," I said.
"The secondary phone.
Do they know who else he was in contact with?"
A brief pause.
"There are messages to a third account," she said carefully.
"Not Diane.
Someone else.
Kowalski didn't give me a name, but she said it's someone connected to his current employer."
I closed my eyes for a moment.
"He was doing it again," I said.
"It looks that way.
Early stage.
Kowalski thinks he started the new pattern about four months ago."
Four months ago.
While we were still married.
While he was still sl*pping me for oversalted soup and his mother was still telling me I provoked him.
"Tell Kowalski I want to know when he's formally charged," I said.
"I will."
"And Grace — the third person.
The new one.
Do they know?"
"Kowalski's team is reaching out today."
I nodded, even though she couldn't see me.
"Okay," I said.
"Thank you."
I went back into the meeting.
I sat down and answered my clients' questions and reviewed their portfolio with the same focus I always brought to that room.
When the meeting ended and they shook my hand and said they didn't know what they'd do without me, I smiled and meant it.
After they left I sat alone in the conference room for a few minutes.
I thought about the woman Kowalski's team was contacting today.
Someone who didn't know yet.
Someone who was probably in the same place I had been eighteen months ago — noticing small things, being told she was imagining them, starting to believe it.
I hoped Kowalski reached her before Marcus did.
My assistant knocked and opened the door.
"Your eleven o'clock is here."
"Send them in," I said.
I straightened the folders on the table.
Picked up my pen.
The door opened.
The day kept moving.
Three days later, on a Thursday, Marcus Harlow was formally charged with two counts of wire fraud, one count of financial @buse of a domestic partner, and one count of fraudulent misappropriation.
Fitch released a statement saying his client intended to cooperate fully with the investigation.
I read the first paragraph of the news item that appeared in the Chicago financial press and set my phone face-down on my desk.
May you like
I didn't read the rest.
I didn't need to.
