This is a work of fiction and any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.
Chapter Seven
Kim dominated my mind over the course of the week since the Farley Houton was arrested in her back yard and teams of federal and state forensic crime scene investigators took hidden spy cameras from her property. But, unaccountably to my reckoning, I scarcely laid eyes on her during that time.
Most days she was gone before I awoke. Some mornings,, the sound of her Lexus starting and driving away would wake me before seven. And when she came home, usually after dark, she would head directly inside and not venture outdoors at all -- not for a glass of wine, not for a hot-tub soak, not to relax in her hammock. Nothing.
I had begun to despair that I had alienated her in some way, and that worried me tremendously. I had developed a genuine affection and protectiveness for her. I had promised her I was a refuge where she could turn, and I was surprised that she didn't more aggressively take me up on it.
It was a Tuesday, eight days after the day her world turned upside down, that I woke to see her car still parked in her driveway after eight o'clock. I figured it was a long-overdue day off, and I had planned to walk over with a carafe of coffee, ring her doorbell and see how she was doing. But before the coffee finished brewing, an official-looking SUV pulled to the curb in front of her house and a smartly dressed man and woman walked to her front door and entered. They were there for about an hour before they left.
Minutes afterward, my doorbell rang and there stood Kim. She looked like she was headed for a job interview -- conservative dress, hair neatly coiffed, new makeup and lipstick. She looked even more classically businesslike with a copy of The Commercial Appeal, the city's newspaper, folded neatly under her left arm.
"I was starting to think you'd entered the witness protection program, Kimmy. You're a sight for sore eyes," I said welcoming her inside.
Reading her expression was hard. Her lips were noncommittal, but her eyes sparkled. She walked to the center of my den, handed the paper to me and smirked. "Check out front page," she said.
I unfolded the paper, put on my reading glasses and my eyes went quickly to a six-column headline across the bottom of front page: "
Feds Indict 24 in Tri-State Fraud, Theft, Porn Ring
." The right two columns were filled with thumbnail photos of six of the suspects federal, state and local authorities had apprehended in raids the previous evening. One of them was Roger Rainey's worthless ass.
Turns out, according to a 17-count indictment, Roger had been a key figure in a crime ring based in the Memphis northside suburb of Frayser, that trafficked in jewelry, high-end electronics, valuable antiques and other valuables taken in home burglaries in at least 14 counties including and surrounding Memphis in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. That wasn't all the ring was doing: it had stolen papers such as insurance documents and bank statements and sold the data on the dark web to identity thieves. In some cases, it had planted small video cameras and connected them to unsecured residential WiFi hotspots, giving them the ability to monitor unsuspecting victims in real time and, when they recorded intimate moments, sell them as porn files in overseas countries that don't penalize illegally obtained video the way the United States does.
"The people at my house just now, the woman was from the U.S. attorney's office and the other was from the FBI. Serena set up the meeting last night. They informed me that Roger had been charged under something called a RICO law. That means he could go to a federal prison for a long, long time, and he loses any rights to property he used as part of the criminal conspiracy," Kim said.
Kim said the assistant U.S. attorney handed asked her for any documents, papers, records that Roger might have left behind in the house and then handed her a subpoena, something Serena had asked them to do to protect Kim from any claim that she had abridged Roger's Fifth Amendment rights. Kim showed them where anything Roger hadn't taken when she kicked him out or that she hadn't tossed in the trash would be. They recovered some old telephone bills/cable bills, a bunch of canceled checks and a couple of flash drives that they had sealed in individual Ziploc bags and marked with red and white stickers. She was told she might have to testify against him at his trial, but that it probably wouldn't be necessary. Otherwise, they had told her, she was in the clear as long as she didn't discuss what she knew about the case with the press.
"But the best news is this: now that he's in federal custody without bail, Serena says I can petition the court to expedite my divorce. I told her to do it and she said I could have it by Friday -- like the song says, signed, sealed delivered," she said, smiling broadly, giggling with delight and bouncing on her toes.
