Blood Money

Chapter Twenty-Two

Rene’s death changed everything. Almost everything.

“This won’t change us,” said Jack. He had wanted to sound sure of it, but it probably hadn’t come across that way. “We can’t let it,” he added.

They were in Andie’s car, driving to Jack’s house on Key Biscayne. For five minutes and without a single interruption, Andie had listened to Jack’s full explanation-how Rene had contacted him after Celeste was admitted to Jackson, how she’d been his source for the Laramores’ lawsuit against BNN, how their coffees in Little Havana had had nothing to do with rekindling a romance. Jack was certain that Andie had heard it and understood, but whenever there was work to be done, Andie’s ability to put personal moments on hold was unmatched. At her behest, a couple of FBI agents were already on the way to Jack’s house-a tech guy, a surveillance expert. She was in full-fledged FBI mode, focused on stopping a killer.

“Jack, I don’t have it in my head that you were chasing an old girlfriend two minutes after I said we should take a step back, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She reached across the console and brushed the back of her hand against his face, a proxy for not looking him in the eye while driving. “I know you better than that.”

“Thank you.”

Her attention was on the road, and Jack’s gaze locked onto her profile. It was little more than a silhouette in the dark car, but against the sparkling Miami skyline in the distance, it was like a work of art. The views of downtown Miami and the financial district were killer from the causeway to Key Biscayne, especially at night-the south Florida version of Manhattan as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge.

“I also know the mind-set of Rene’s killer,” said Andie. “He didn’t leave that message because he thought Rene was ‘someone you love.’ He’s like a shark. He draws closer and closer to his prey, tighter and tighter circles. Each one of those circles allows him to live out the perfect fantasy he has created in his head. Eventually, he’ll move in for the ultimate kill, the fulfillment of the fantasy.”

“Someone I love?”

“Not exactly.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“My take is that he probably believes all the BS on BNN that you and Sydney couldn’t wait to rip off each other’s clothes the minute she got out of prison. Yeah, he threatened to hurt someone you love, which could be anyone from me to an old girlfriend. But if you ask my professional opinion, he isn’t taunting you just because he thinks you know where Sydney is hiding. He could threaten her parents, if that’s all he wanted out of this. His anger-his hatred for you-is driven by his belief that you’ve actually had your way with Sydney.”

“Someone he loves.”

“Someone he’s obsessed with. Got nothing to do with love.”

That all made sense to Jack. Andie always made sense. “I love you,” he said.

“Of course you do,” she said.

That drew a little smile as they pulled into his driveway behind the “bucar”-FBI lingo for the bureau’s standard-issue sedans. The agents Andie had summoned were already there. Jack invited them inside, and Max greeted them at the door, wagging his tail and jumping up and down as if it had been five hundred years since he’d last seen Andie. Jack let him loose in the backyard, and the humankind gathered in the Florida room to take care of an entirely different kind of business.

Jack took a seat beside Andie on the couch. Special Agents Burns and Waters sat across from them. They were “tech agents,” which meant that Jack was the proverbial old man in the room. As a general rule, not many techies hung around till retirement age. A good one with a few years of law enforcement experience on his resume could make a fortune in the private sector, and Jack guessed that the bureau would have the services of these two crackerjacks for maybe another six months.

“Truth is, I should have listened to Andie sooner,” said Jack. “I resisted the idea of having the FBI monitoring my phones. Obviously, this changes things.”

Burns spoke for the tech team. “There are ways to make this work and still protect the privacy of your clients.”

“You may be right from a technical standpoint,” said Jack. “But good luck trying to convince my clients of that.”

Burns opened his bag of electronic toys and showed Jack his new cell phone. “Wireless is never the most secure option, but if you have to use a cell phone, this one is encrypted. Use it when you are not in the office and absolutely have to speak to one of your clients. Agent Waters and I will set up encrypted landlines for the calls you make from home and the office, which is of course the most secure option.”

“What about e-mail?”

“Best thing is to tell your clients no e-mail.”

“Can my clients call me on the encrypted lines?”

“If you give them the number, yes. But don’t do that. The basic rule you should live by is, ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’”

“That’s impossible. What if they need to reach me?”

“They should call your existing cell or landline. They should say nothing but ‘call me,’ and then you return the call on the encrypted line. I know that seems cumbersome, but the minute you give the phone number to anyone, you run the risk of compromising the security on the encrypted line.”

“Won’t they see the number when I call them?”

“Your encrypted phone is impervious to caller ID. That’s pretty basic, Mr. Swyteck.”

“It may be basic to you,” said Andie, “but you’re talking to a guy who started practicing law when Post-its were still a technological marvel.”

“Not quite, honey. But almost.”

Burns continued, “The overall objective here is for Rene Fenning’s killer to remain under the impression that your existing cell phone, landlines, and e-mail addresses are still in use, still fully operational. So long as he has that impression, we can intercept, trace, and react to any message he sends you.”

“How do I know the FBI won’t be monitoring the encrypted line?”

“That won’t happen,” said Andie. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Jack wanted to believe her, and he knew it was greater assurance than most people got. He was still skeptical, but again, Rene’s death had changed everything.

“Okay. Let’s go with it.”

“Great. We’ll start here in the house. Where do you want the line?”

“My home office, I guess. Down the hall, right next to the bedroom.”

“You got it.”

The techies got up and went to work. Jack’s gaze drifted toward the window. Max was in the yard, digging the Key Biscayne version of the Grand Canyon.

“I guess I’ll need to send Max away,” said Jack.

“He’s still a puppy,” said Andie. “Digging is what they do.”

“I mean send him away for his own protection. It may be a bit of stereotype to think that all sociopaths like to hurt animals, but I already lost one dog to a pissed-off client.”

“Sometimes stereotypes are true,” said Andie. “Jeffrey Dahmer used to love up the neighborhood dogs, lure them into his kitchen-and then send them yelping home with their testicles sliced open. Just for grins.”

It made Jack cringe. “My neighbors spend their summers in Charleston. Their son RJ loves Max. I’m sure they’d take him.” Jack took another gander out the window. Max was covered in dirt, still digging. “Maybe Max can hook up with the Army Corps of Engineers and widen the harbor while he’s up there.”

“What are you going to do with Abuela?”

“She has a brother in Tampa. She’ll feel safe there. Then there’s my dad and stepmother. I guess they should just extend their vacation, stay in Europe.”

Andie looked at him with concern. “These are all just precautions, you understand. Like I said before, I don’t think the targets would be Max, Abuela, your father, your stepmother. With Rene, he was acting out a sexual fantasy that will lead him to the big moment with Sydney Bennett.”

“I can’t believe this happened to Rene,” Jack said, but the regrets quickly turned into concern. “What about you?” he said. “Aren’t you at risk?”

“I would say yes. But you don’t need to worry about that.”

“What do you mean I don’t need to worry? You’re my fiancee.”

“Your fiancee is an FBI agent. You don’t have to worry about protecting me.”

It was intended to put him at ease, but it didn’t sit entirely well with Jack. He didn’t fully understand why, though deep down he realized that there was still enough of the caveman gene in every male to make it unpleasant to hear that he didn’t need to protect his woman.

Jack’s cell rang. He didn’t recognize the incoming number.

“Is this a test, or should I answer it?” he asked Andie.

Agent Burns shouted from the next room, “Go ahead and answer it.”

Jack took the call.

“Swyteck, this is Ted Gaines.”

It was the first time Jack had heard from opposing counsel since their meeting in New York, and the last thing Jack felt like talking about at the moment was the lawsuit against BNN. “Not really a good time, Ted.”

“This is not a discussion. We’ve seen the postings on Celeste Laramore’s Facebook page. Remove them immediately.”

“What?”

“I fully expected you to claim ignorance.”

There was a beep on the line, and suddenly there was a third voice. “Good evening, gentlemen. Judge Burrows here.”

Judge? Jack didn’t know the voice, but he certainly knew the name: Burrows was the judge in Celeste Laramore v. Breaking News Network.

Gaines took control. “Thank you for agreeing to conduct this emergency hearing telephonically, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Swyteck, it would appear that there has been a violation of my order to keep the allegations of the complaint in this action confidential and under seal.”

“Honestly, I have no idea what this is about,” said Jack.

Gaines said, “It’s about the posting of confidential information on Celeste Laramore’s Facebook page. Judge, if you’re at your computer, I can get you to the proper Web page.”

Jack followed along on his iPhone and pulled up Celeste’s Facebook page.

The judge said, “I’m looking at the page now. What postings are you talking about?”

“Right there on her wall. It’s the only information posted since Celeste Laramore went into a coma.”

Jack scrolled down, knowing that the judge was doing the same. Sure enough, there were a series of status updates from that afternoon, bubbles of information stacked one on top of the other. Jack read the first, the second, the third-then skimmed the rest. Each status update was a few sentences in length. Collectively, the updates-sixty-seven in all-repeated, verbatim, the substantive allegations of the complaint in Celeste Laramore v. Breaking News Network.

“This is very troubling,” said the judge.

Gaines jumped on the sentiment. “Your Honor, this is a blatant violation of a court order to file the complaint under seal and keep the allegations confidential. We demand that Mr. Swyteck remove the posts immediately.”

“Mr. Swyteck, how soon can you make that happen?”

“I’ll look into it as soon as this call is over.”

“Look into it?” said the judge in a reproving tone. “Counsel, you need to remove it.”

“Yes, Your Honor. But I want to be clear that I don’t know how this information even got here. It’s never been my practice to monitor the Facebook pages of my clients, and that’s especially true in this case. Obviously, Celeste didn’t do this.”

“Obviously,” said Gaines. “But it doesn’t take a computer genius to know that these postings could have been made only by someone with account-manager status for Celeste’s Facebook page. Ruling out Celeste doesn’t rule out a single other person in her camp who had access to her username and password.”

“That’s a ridiculous accusation,” said Jack.

The judge intervened. “You’d better hope so, Mr. Swyteck. Because if this violation was willful and done at your direction, the sanctions against you and your client will be severe.”

“Judge, we would like a hearing on the issue of sanctions as quickly as possible,” said Gaines.

“We’ll deal with that in due course,” said the judge. “For now, I’m ordering Mr. Swyteck to remove these postings by midnight tonight. Further, I want a written certification delivered to my chambers no later than nine A.M. stating that the plaintiffs and their counsel are in full compliance with the confidentiality order. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” said Jack.

“That’s all for this evening, gentlemen,” the judge said. A beep confirmed that he had dropped from the conference call.

“I’m checking that page at twelve-oh-one A.M.,” said Gaines. “It had better be clean.”

Gaines hung up. Jack took a deep breath and tucked his phone away. Andie came to him and massaged his neck.

“That didn’t sound good,” she said.

It would have been easy to unload on the spot and tell Andie what he would have liked to have told the judge-that the five horrendous days between Sydney’s release on Sunday and Rene’s murder on Thursday had been the personal and professional equivalent of a tsunami, and that the last thing any human being in his position should be held accountable for was the Facebook page of a client in a coma.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” said Jack.

“Really? Isn’t there anything I can help with?”

Jack appreciated the sentiment, then actually considered it. “Well, maybe there is.”

“Tell me.”

“What do your tech agents know about Facebook?”