Chapter 41

For Tom, the next week was very busy and even a bit strange.

After smoko with his team, he set each of them up to follow several leads for him. He said that this particular set of cases took precedence since he wanted them wrapped up before he left on Friday.

The team were all rather surprised that he had reopened two cases that had been relegated to the cold-case files. The investigations did involve both Sweeny’s and Carol’s departments, but they didn’t see how they were related to the other case Tom had been working on.

To Amanda’s knowledge, the two old cases were the only incidents that Tom hadn’t solved to his satisfaction. True, some of the cases they get can’t be solved to the point of prosecution.

However, Tom always had a who-done-it document in their database that showed the trail of evidence and pointed out what was missing. Should any new evidence or the people involved turned back up in the system at a future date, the old case would be flagged and could be resurrected.

Tom’s team knew that this had happened several times, and each time they had been able to solve several cases because of Tom’s work. These cases had been ones like that, but Tom had never put the who-done-it file in the database for them.

Tom often laughed that it took him ten minutes to find the evidence and fifty minutes to document how he did. Tom had dozens of scenarios for just about every sort of fraud or finance scheme imaginable. Over the years that he had worked in Fraud, he had built and perfected an app to help his team to investigate these types of crimes.

The team did the opposite because they simply followed Tom’s pop-up flow chart templates in his app to help them find the evidence in the first place. The team filled in the chart and then looked for the answers to the next set of questions until they had either completed the case study or hit a wall.

It often surprised the team just how unimaginative people were when it came to trying to hide, steal or cheat money from others. It wasn’t that often they were stumped, and they frequently found having someone else go over their logic or rechecking the evidence led to a path that they hadn’t considered or thought closed.

Tom also reminded his people that sometimes, time itself was the factor that will open old doors and even new ones. People’s greed and lack of patience also walked hand in hand with time. What is the point of stealing money if you can’t spend it?

While each member of the team had a specialised area, Tom ranged across them all. His ability to scan hundreds of documents, printed or on file, and to extract data from them and any computer system he could access to find anomalies, had some of his co-workers envious.

Interestingly, he always did it within the legal framework, and he documented everything he did and where he went if not always exactly how. He knew loopholes in laws that some criminals wished they knew. If he weren’t so bloody honest, he could have made millions without anyone ever working out how.

Tom didn’t think of himself as super honest. He could lie and evade questions as good as anyone. He just didn’t like people who stole from others, be it a con-artist, neighbour, family, worker, or a corporation. While he might bitch about paying taxes just like everyone else did, he still paid them to the letter of the law.

Unbeknown to his workmates, Tom did have a who-done-it document for the cases he wanted to be solved. He just needed a bit more evidence substantiated by others to make the charges stick. Hence, he had sent his friends to find the evidence he knew was there, so they could present the case after he left.

He was well aware that some people were going to be very unhappy about being outed, but Tom knew that the more people that could substantiate the evidence, the harder it was to hide or dismiss the case and the charges that would follow.

Also, more evidence meant less danger for his team should these people plan to retaliate. He knew that the hints and clues he had given his people would lead them in particular directions, but so be it.

The people he was chasing had tried quite well to hide the data. Even so, most people couldn’t remember everything and some still needed access to the information they had tried to hide.

Some even like to see it, particularly the video evidence, to gloat to themselves about how smart they were and how dumb cops and the general public were. Unfortunately for them, they left enough breadcrumbs for Tom and his team to follow.

Tom was quite sure that his people would find the answers fairly quickly with the hints he had given them.

Work aside, the other most interesting thing that happened that week was Tom’s testing and interview.

Despite his heavy workload for the last six months, when Tom had received the email from the GAMSAT website for his testing date in September, he had managed to get the time off to sit the tests. He knew it would take the better part of the day to get to the Uni and to do the tests, so he took a sicky.

It wasn’t like Tom took sick or even personal days often, in fact, at the time, he had to think hard about when he had last taken one. It was very rare that he got sick. If he took a sicky, it was most often due to an injury, and even then, he had always healed fairly fast.

In reality, he didn’t really want to have to explain to Sweeny why he wanted the day off. At the time, he still wasn’t sure if going down the medical path was the best thing for him. His father’s slow and painful death when Tom was a teenager, had affected how he viewed the medical profession.

However, when he was contemplating taking the exams, he was some nine years older, and by then he had learnt that a lot of things in life weren’t fair. So, the next morning, despite his reservations, he found himself taking the different buses to get to the Uni where the tests were being held.

Now you would have thought that after four years of not being in dedicated education that Tom would do rather poorly at the tests. However, he was one of those rare beings whose idea of fun was reading and research. It didn’t hurt that he was able to recall all that he had seen, heard, read, and learnt.

Tom did like a good science fiction story, but he was just as apt to pick up a non-fiction science book. His reading was broad as he liked to know how things worked. Biology, in its many facets, was probably one of his favourite subjects. Even so, he had never kept pets and had never filled his flat with plants either.

It was the letter he received in early December that requested he attend an interview to discuss his acceptance of a position to study that Tom didn’t do anything about. He was trying to work on three major cases at the same time, and half of his team had been given holidays. So, he had just ignored it.

When he had rung the councillor the Friday before, he was surprised by the response when he told her his name. The first thing she, being Pamela, did, was to berate him for not answering her emails.

Tom had to explain that he hadn’t received any emails from her, only the letter posted in early December. Pamela pulled up his application for the tests and read back the email address. Tom told her it was correct. He then suggested she checked what had been entered in his education file.

Pamala was not happy that his latest email address had been typed-in wrong. She then berated Tom for failing to follow through and that he should have rung or emailed her.

Tom sighed and reminded her that he had never gotten an email from her, and the only time they had talked on the phone, she came up as an unlisted number on his, so he couldn’t call her directly.

He also informed her that he had to ring through the exchange to get to her and leave messages. And that she, had never once returned a phone call from him. He was as surprised as she was that he had gotten through to her that day, considering how late on a Friday it was.

Pamela admitted that she was still at work because she had been trying to talk one of the potential students into accepting the position. She had thought that person was ringing her back, so she had picked up.

Tom asked her that if a position was now free, was it possible for him to start at the Uni this year. Pamela looked at her notes on Tom and asked if she could ring him back in fifteen minutes. Tom agreed and hung up after making sure she had had his current number.

When Pamela rang back, she asked him if he would attend the campus in Brisbane to do his interview and they wanted to retest him, as well. Tom thought that was odd, but since he had committed to helping Lorena, he agreed.