Residence of the Williamson Family, NYC:
Mrs. Williamson was seated on the bed, in her room. Her palms felt clammy and the air around her felt cold. She was suffering from anxiety, and she knew it, and she also knew why. She had called her son thrice, but her son had not answered. He was currently in London, sent there by his father for business purposes and he was due to come back the next day, but she could not wait. What she had to tell him was important. There was a knock on the door and her husband entered, walked over to where his wife was sitting and sat down beside her.
“Alice, are you feeling all right?”
“Oh yes, just tired, I suppose.”
“Well, you certainly look the part. Why don’t you lie down? If you want, I can call the doctor.”
Alice placed a hand on her husband’s arm and said, “No need for that, I’m quite all right, although I think lying down would be a good idea.”
Harold stood up and said, “I’ll leave you to it then. Take care.”
Harold kissed his wife’s forehead and then exited the room. Alice’s head had just hit the pillow when her phone rang. The call was from her son. She received the call at once.
“Where have you been Jack? I have called you thrice.”
“Relax Mom, I was in a meeting. What’s the matter?”
“You need to come back.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow evening.”
“You need to come back today.”
“Mom, you’re scaring me, is everything all right?” asked Jack in a concerned voice.
“No, nothing is all right, it’s about the Animalia.”
Now the tone of Jack’s voice changed. “What about it?”
“Just come back.” Alice implored her son.
“I’ll be on the next flight out of here,” said Jack, and hung up.
Alice placed the phone on her bedside table and tried to sleep. After ten minutes she sat up in bed with a frustrated sigh. Her mind was far too disturbed to be able to rest. She reached for the drawer in her bedside table and extracted a medicine from it. She took a tablet with a sip of water and then lay down again. This time her worries were neutralized by the soothing effects of the medicine, and she was soon in a deep slumber.
A luxury Hotel, London:
Jack Williamson was sitting in a chair and thinking. He had just called his secretary to his room, as he needed to clear his schedule for the day. He had more important things to address, things that could not wait.
The secretary knocked on the door and then entered. She was a woman in her late twenties. She was dressed smartly, as always, in a business suit.
“How may I assist you, sir?”
“Janice, I want you to clear my schedule for the day and book a ticket to New York, I’m going back home.”
“But sir, you have two meetings today, your father…”
“I can deal with my father. You need to deal with the people who were scheduled to meet me today.”
“What reason should I give for your unavailability sir?”
“Tell them anything, just make sure that they don’t bother me.”
“Right away sir, what time would you like to leave?”
“As soon as possible.”
The secretary exited and Jack fell into thought once again. His father would not be happy with his decision. He wanted everything to be perfect and cancelling the meetings was far from it. But then there was the other thing, the Animalia, if his father found out about that, then things would get very bad, very quick. He dialed a number on his phone, it was a number he had not saved, rather, one that he had memorized. He even deleted the call from the logs later. Jack was a careful man, if he didn’t want to leave a trail, he didn’t. The man he was calling received the call on the third ring.
“Where are you?” asked Jack.
“At the property, Sir.”
“Is there any problem?”
“None at all Sir, everything is perfectly fine.”
“Very well, I’ll be dropping by soon to check on everything.”
“Sure sir, anytime.”
Jack terminated the call and got ready. His mother was right, this thing was worth going back immediately.
FBI Field Office, NYC:
Sam had been patient for a long time but now he was starting to lose it. The reason for his irritation was sitting right in front of him, namely, Olivia Andrews. She was one of the people who could do other things while concentrating on their work the whole time, unfortunately, she decided to use this ability to make fun of her immediate partner. Whenever Sam said something or did something, she would not misbehave, rather she would reply very sweetly, a little too sweetly, as she talked to Sam as though she was talking to a dim-witted child. Her manner clearly indicated that she saw Sam as an intellectually inferior being, although this was not true. In the little time she had spent with Sam, she had realized that he had potential, but the problem was that he was a federal agent. Had he been anything other than a fed, Olivia felt sure that they could have been friends, but his occupation was such that Olivia could not help but dislike him, and this dislike resulted in her tendencies to make fun of him.
That was what was going on in the interpersonal relationship area. But on the work front, their progress was quite remarkable. They had dug into old files and internet records of the entire Williamson family and had amassed the history of every existing member, namely, Harold, Alice, and Jack. Harold came out clean, he had a few run-ins with the law here and there but they were all business-related occurrences. To sum it up in a few words, he was as clean as a businessman could be. His wife was as clean as her husband. Before marriage she had been the only daughter of a rich family, the marriage did bring in some financial benefits for Harold, but it was evident from their various social media posts that the husband and wife were still head over heels in love with each other. She was very well educated, but after marriage, she had chosen to become a housewife rather than choose entrepreneurship which was the obvious choice for anyone with her qualifications.
The most interesting member of the family, from the investigative point of view, was Jack Williamson. Like both of his parents, he had been well educated and had taken in his father’s footsteps to expand the business. Initially, there had been some media reports about the strained relationship between the father and son but over time, it appeared, their relationship had improved. The son had become more sincere towards work and the father had decided to cut him some slack. That was where the normal part ended. If one looked upon the man’s financials from the eye of an officer or a detective, one would not have found anything, but when his financials were scrutinized under the eye of a skilled thief and a con woman like Olivia, his secrets were no longer secrets.
After looking over Jack’s financials for some time, Olivia said, “There’s something wrong here.”
Sam looked up from the file he was reading and said, “What?”
“The money he earns always goes into his bank account and usually this is the salary he gets from his father’s company, but look at this, there are some instances when his salary does not get credited into his bank account and it doesn’t even get compensated anywhere.”
Sam realized that Olivia was not talking to him as though he was a child. She was serious and that meant what she had found was of importance.
“So, what does it mean?” asked Sam.
“It’s highly unusual that he would not realize that his salary was not credited to his bank and that means he knows exactly where that money is going, and he had no problem with it.”
“You mean that it is possible that he is the one who is utilizing the money somewhere else.”
“Very good Sam, you are making progress!” said Olivia in an exaggerated manner.
Sam sighed. Now he was sure that she was one of the people who could not control themselves. When they wanted to do something, they just had to do it.
Sam said, “Can you not control yourself for two minutes?”
“What happened dear?” asked Olivia.
“That…” said Sam pointing towards Olivia’s mouth “…that happened. Can’t you talk normally and be serious for just five minutes?”
“I am serious, my dear, I always am.”
Sam was about to say something when Jefferson walked over to where they were working.
“I have some good news. Michael says that he may have the sketch of one of the thieves,” said Jefferson
“Brilliant!” exclaimed Sam. “How did he get it?”
“I don’t know the details myself, but he says that they are just reaching so we’ll get the entire story soon,” said Jefferson.
Olivia said, “Good. Even we have something.”
Jefferson looked at Sam and the latter shrugged as if to say, ‘Maybe or maybe not’.
“Okay, what have you got?”
“In a formal way, the results of our investigation indicate that the husband and wife are clear however the financial record of their son contains some discrepancies. In an informal way, we need to question the kid.”
“We can’t just barge in and question someone. We need to have proof. What sort of discrepancies?” asked Jefferson.
Olivia shook her head. “Police procedure, you need proof to question a suspect, you need warrants to search houses. No wonder you took so much time to get us.”
“Well, we prefer not to be called intruders or robbers or illegal detainers as those are the descriptions of the people whom we put behind bars,” retorted Jefferson.
Sam laughed and said, “Good one Jefferson!”
Olivia looked at Sam and said, “Would you like to do the explaining dear or should I do it? Seeing that I was the one who found the discrepancies.”
Sam frowned at her but did not say anything.
She said, “That’s what I thought.”
Olivia then proceeded to explain to Jefferson what she had found and what she and Sam suspected. After the explaining was done, Jefferson was quiet for a long time. Then he stood up and started pacing.
Finally, after fifteen minutes he said, “Nope. There is no way we can detain him just based on some discrepancies in his account. We need something directly connected to the case.”
Sam said, “But that would take time to find, that is assuming we do find anything.”
Olivia was silent. This was something that she did when she was thinking. Only then did she think that it was necessary for her to rest her lips and exercise her brain. After meticulously thinking over the problem, she made a connection.
“Well, we don’t know what he is guilty of, but he knows,” said Olivia. “And from what Jefferson told me, so does his mother.”
“How do you know again?” asked Sam.
“Because when I mentioned the collection, his mother paled but his father did not even flinch,” replied Jefferson.
“Precisely. So, we can assume that the collection has something to do with her son or more probably, her son owns the collection.”
“That’s good thinking,” complemented Jefferson. “But we know for sure that his father doesn’t know about the collection, and since the father is the strict one, we can assume that it is on the outskirts of the law if not entirely illegal.”
“If you are right and the collection is illegal, then even if it is stolen, he won’t be able to report it, that’s why the thieves told us about it. The thieves could have just stolen it without anyone knowing but they told us about the collection so that we uncover it and then when the thieves try to steal it, will be headlines.”
“All that is fine, but the question still remains, how do we get him to tell us where he keeps the stuff?”
Olivia, being the ex-thief, had a solution for the problem which was also ‘on the outskirts of the law’.
“We call up his mother and tell her that her son’s collection will be stolen,” she said.
“Call her up? We don’t have any proof that her son owns the collection or for that matter, any collection,” said Sam.
“We don’t call her up as feds…” began Olivia.
“You are not a fed,” muttered Sam.
Olivia chose to ignore this remark and proceeded, “… we call her up as the thieves.”
Jefferson looked at her sharply and said, “We are federal agents, we don’t resort to stuff like that.”
Olivia smiled and said, “Like Sam just said, not every one of us is a federal agent, in fact, some of us are cons…ex-cons.”
Jefferson looked at her and after a moment, said, “I didn’t know anything about this.”
“Nor did I,” said Sam.
Olivia rubbed her hands together and said, “I take that as a yes.”
Just as Olivia finished this sentence Michael and Brandon came in. They walked up to where the other three were seated.
Jefferson said, “Where’s the sketch?”
Michael was thinking hard. He absentmindedly handed Jefferson the paper, Sam noticed this and said, “You don’t look like you’re the one who has made a breakthrough.”
Michael did not reply, Brandon did. “That’s because he thinks he knows the man in the picture, but he cannot remember who he is.”
Aurum Regium 