Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Keera Duggan) by Robert Dugoni

Author:Robert Dugoni [Dugoni, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Frank Rossi and Billy Ford had split the list of PDRT’s investors who, according to Thomas Martin, made threats against Sirus Kohl, and had been working the phone lines. Rossi spoke with Benjamin Cooper, one of PDRT’s largest investors. Cooper was likely emblematic of what Rossi and Ford could expect. Cooper had so much money he believed he was above the law, and therefore he didn’t fear speaking his mind to a homicide detective working an investigation into the murder of a man who had lied to Cooper and the other investors, costing them millions of dollars. As soon as Rossi announced who he was and the purpose of his call, Cooper got on the line to give Rossi an earful. He called Kohl just about every name in the book, and he went so far as to say he hadn’t shed a tear when he heard the news Kohl had been killed. Figured a guy like Kohl got what was coming to him. He was also all too glad to admit he’d threatened Kohl.

“I meant it, too, and I know a lot of other people hated that son of a bitch,” Cooper said. “And with good reason. Look, we all make bad business investments. Hell, it’s part of the process. For every business idea that hits, you have five or six that don’t. But nobody likes to be lied to, Detective. Nobody likes to feel like somebody pulled a fast one and left you holding the bag. But it wasn’t me who killed him. I was in Paris, France.”

“Business or pleasure?” Rossi asked. He had Cooper on speaker, so Ford could hear the conversation. Billy had turned down the volume on the overhead television.

“You can’t go to Paris and not have some pleasure. That’s just plain wrong. But since you’re asking whether I can document this alibi, I can. I can have the flight plan sent to you and the name of my pilot and his staff. I can also provide the person’s name with whom I was doing business in Paris.”

Rossi would ask Mark Upson to run down Cooper’s alibi and any loose threads that might indicate Cooper went out of town to secure his alibi but had someone else pay Kohl a visit.

But, again, Rossi didn’t think so.

Cooper was arrogant, but he wasn’t ignorant, and that likely applied to the other investors as well. In fact, Cooper sounded quite rational about his hatred of Kohl. He wasn’t going to put billions of dollars at risk, not to mention opportunities to fly to Paris for a croissant or to Barcelona for empanadas, to get even with someone for his loss of a few million dollars.

Rossi also knew from his accounting education that, to a guy like Cooper, losing millions was like losing a couple hundred bucks. And people with that much wealth also had the system rigged. Cooper’s team of accountants would write the money off as a bad investment and offset it against his taxable income, further reducing his overall tax liability.

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