Headscratchers / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine S02E08 "Necessary Evil"

• The assassin is going to use a pillow to smother Quark, apparently to make it look like Quark died of complications from his injury, but the fact that he stabbed the guard to death would seem to make that ploy moot.
• Odo discovers that Vaatrik has recently received large payments in the exact same amount from eight random people, making it painfully obvious that she's blackmailing the eight people on the list. Did she just give her bank account number to her victims and make them transfer the money through official channels? She even knows that she's currently under investigation, so why didn't she use a payment method without a paper trail, like latinum?
  • A electronic transfer is automatic, converting a large some of money to hard currency and then back again is going to attract attention. Not to mention that a hard currency would require she meet with each of those eight people anyone of whom might decide to just kill her given the opportunity.
  • She also didn't know she was under investigation yet. Odo didn't go to see her until after she had already begun her extortions, since she had already received enough funds to pay her power bill. She was probably hoping that she would never be connected to Quark's murder in the first place, or that it would at least take longer.
• Is it ever explained why Vaatrik waited five years to retrieve the list? Did she only discover that her husband was a collaborator recently?
  • Possible, but the implication in the scene where Odo questioned how she received the money when she had just had her power turned off for lack of payment is that she didn't need the money until now. Hence, no need for the list or the blackmail, which also fits with her characterization, as she otherwise didn't seem to care her husband had been a collaborator (particularly since that's how he afforded a private room and lifestyle of luxury for her on the station).