Free Damage Control by John Gilstrap Page B

dollars.”
    “Now, give me a minute or two,” she said before disappearing into thought while her fingers pounded the keyboard.
    Confident that the results would be impressive, Dom waited quietly with Gail while Venice worked her magic.
    “Oh, now this is interesting,” Venice declared when she was done. A new image appeared on the screen, this one showing two lists of names. “The list on the left shows the various contributors from twenty months ago, back when Crystal Palace was in its heyday. On the right is the list of donors from five months ago, during the darkest of their dark days. You can see there are way, way fewer donors.” She stroked the keys, and after only a few seconds, the computer spit out the number 0.992.
    “Okay,” she explained. “Of those remaining die-hard faithful, ninety-nine-point-two percent of them were on the original list of donors.”
    “Isn’t that to be expected?” Dom asked. “I can’t imagine that accusations of statutory rape are going to bring in a lot of new donors.”
    Venice pointed to the priest as if to indicate that he was her brightest pupil. “You just made my point,” she said. “Because look here.” More clacking and another screen change. “This is a list of the donors over the past three months, when they were making money again. If we match them against the original faithful, we get ...”
    More tapping and a new number on the screen. “Zero-point-four-six-four. That means that of the one hundred twelve recent donors, only forty-six-point-four percent gave money before the scandal.” She looked up. “Put another way, fifty-three-point-six percent of the newly inspired donors never gave to the Crystal Palace before.”
    “You tell us that with such grave emphasis,” Gail said. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
    Venice looked like she didn’t want to speak the thoughts aloud. “I think someone paid the church to allow the kidnappings to happen.”
    Gail’s jaw dropped. “ What? ”
    “I’ve heard Dig say it a thousand times,” Venice pressed. “There are no coincidences. How convenient to receive unique donations just before such a huge outlay. That money was given for a reason . The timing is what it is for a reason . Because of timing alone—the contributions coming right before a major outlay of ransom money—the two have to be connected somehow.”
    More furious typing. “Here it is. Those sixty new donors represent nearly ninety percent of the donations received, and wouldn’t you know it? While the individual amounts are all over the board, those sixty, isolated out and taken together, come to just north of six million dollars—almost exactly twice what the ransom was.”
    Dom squinted at the numbers. “It’s six-point-two,” he said. “I think you’re stretching.”
    “You have to correct for random givers,” Gail said. “Not all of them are going to be a part of whatever plot this is.” She turned to Venice. “What can you get us about those sixty donors? Almost all of them appear to be corporations.”
    Venice turned back to her friend the keyboard. “Give me a few minutes. Talk quietly among yourselves.”
    Dom watched, fascinated by the speed of Venice’s fingers, and by the variety of expressions on her face as she plowed through whatever databases she was invading. Her big brown eyes cycled among frustration, amazement, surprise, and awe.
    Ten minutes later, she was done.
    “Sorry that took so long,” she said. “Especially since I didn’t come up with anything useful. I’ve got All American Industries, CEO Dennis Hainsley, no record of either beyond individual white pages listings. I’ve also got a Global Transformations Inc., with an equally invisible CEO named Harold Scolari. Interestingly, it appears that Global Transformations is a subsidiary of All American Industries. I’ve got Tiger Creek Industries, also invisible, and Big Daddy Carpet Cleaning, run by an apparently nonexistent person