Chapter 18
Alvin Yan watched Dvora Schacter and Jack McDonald leave his office. Both of them were trained athletes. Dvora’s duck-footed walk would only be a giveaway to someone who knew dance. Others might assume that Mr. McDonald was a little soft because of his size. He moved in the special way of dangerous men that had nothing left to prove. Jack McDonald was a trained and experienced killer. He moved silently and stayed in perfect balance. Much useful information can be discovered simply by watching people as they walk away.
Buy ReWire today on Amazon for only $3.99
After watching and listening and interacting with the two, Captain Alvin Yan of the San Francisco Police was sure of two things. One: Dvora Schacter was unaware of any motives other than robbery for the violent attack on Meghan McDonald. The only wild card was her concussion. Two: Jack McDonald knew something that he thought was important to the case and he was not sharing this information. Of the first, he was very certain. Of the second, Alvin Yan was completely certain. There was a third thing that he was certain of more than the first two. The physical evidence in the case was bull pucky.
Yan put the third thought away for a few minutes and reviewed the summary of the intelligence report his team assembled.
McDonald: Troubled family, difficult youth with juvenile crimes, mostly property and battery related, that were legally sealed and are not supposed to be available to us. He is a master Judo player, gives time and money to youth groups through Judo camps, is a decorated and combat wounded Special Forces soldier who left the Army to take care of his brilliant sister when their parents were killed in a car wreck. He was censured and his broker’s license suspended for insider trading when his timing was too good as the tech bubble burst. The censure was later dropped. He is divorced, with a net worth of around $75 million.
Part of the report didn’t ring true. Alvin couldn’t picture this man violating insider-trading rules. At least he couldn’t imagine him getting caught violating insider trading rules. Yan himself had made a small fortune simply observing CEO’s press conferences. When they lied to keep their stocks from being takeover targets he bought the stocks or calls on these stocks. When they played cheerleader, glossing over risks and underestimating the downside, he sold short or bought puts.
Yan had asked people he knew in the competitive martial arts world about Jack McDonald’s character. One learned so much observing someone being choked into submission. Perhaps even more was learned when that person had the upper hand, as was Jack McDonald’s position almost all of the time. The three people that Captain Yan respected, two of whom he admired, all said that it was inconceivable that McDonald would have broken trading rules. Two of the people had used the same phrase to describe the man. Virtuous was not a word one heard often lately. This was a good thing to hear. It meant that Yan could appeal to his virtue and predict the outcome.
Ms. Schacter was just as remarkable in different ways. Because he did not feel that these differences would give him ammunition in his investigation, he did not ponder them long. Instead he pondered the physical evidence and wondered at the too-complex nature of the plan to deceive that needed this level of obfuscation. He then tried to deduce the reason for such a complicated plan. He did not have enough data. He did, however, have enough information to make arrests of the people who were designed to take the fall for the crime. By doing this he would make it appear he had been taken in by this charade.