Every transfer had a fingerprint.

The loan proceeds had not vanished into thin air; they had gone somewhere, in a sequence, on dates, and the sequence told a story more damning than any confession — because a confession can be recanted and a wire transfer cannot.

She showed me how Desmond had layered it: the money moving through an account he controlled but had papered to look like something else, then out, then back, each hop designed to tire a casual auditor into giving up.

“This is the part they count on,” she said, tapping a routing number.

“That it’s boring.

That whoever comes looking will get bored before they get to the bottom.