Guilty Minds

22

Gideon gave us a conference room to use.

It was like every other office conference room I’d ever seen, only nicer. There was a long, coffin-shaped table, made of mahogany. Around it were arrayed high-backed chairs that seemed to be upholstered in leather. Starfishlike speakerphones were placed every four seats or so. Down one wall ran a long credenza.

Dorothy pushed a button somewhere, and a panel on the far wall slid away, revealing a large video projection screen. She hooked up her laptop to some port built into the table — she worked without hesitation, seeming to know what she was doing — and the bright red Slander Sheet logo came up on the screen.

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE IN CALL GIRL SCANDAL remained number 1 in the most viewed column. She clicked around to TMZ. The Claflin story had been picked up. The headline read:

“Shit,” I said.

“That took almost an hour,” Dorothy said. “Longer than I expected. I have a feeling it’s just going to accelerate from here.”

She quickly went through a series of websites — OK! Magazine, RadarOnline.com, Star Magazine, National Enquirer, PopSugar, ETonline — and found nothing. She entered “Jeremiah Claflin” into Google and pulled up the British tabloid The Daily Mail.

“It’s here, too,” she said. “Does this count as a news site?”

“Not even close. But it’s on the border between gossip and real news. All right, look. We have an ironclad alibi we can’t use. So let’s focus on Kayla.”

“Nick, you’ve already shown that neither of them could have been at the Hotel Monroe. What more do you think we’re going to get?”

“Absence of proof isn’t proof of absence. We need to focus on proving a positive, not proving a negative. We already know Kayla wasn’t at the Monroe on those three nights. You have a backdoor into the Lily Schuyler website. See if she had any other clients those nights.”

“Nothing. I already checked.”

“Well, she must have been somewhere. What about her Facebook page?”

“That was the first place I looked. Nothing there either. I’ve looked on Tumblr and Pinterest and everywhere I can think of, and nothing. But I have an idea.”

I looked at her.

“You know how you can post a picture on Facebook and it auto-suggests the names of the people in the picture?”

“You know I don’t have a Facebook account.”

“Right. Well, it freaks me out. Facebook is using facial recognition software for that, and for most people, those photos are visible to any of the billion people on Facebook. So I’m thinking there’s got to be a way to run a search of all DC-area Facebook accounts using a picture of Kayla and facial recognition.”

“Huh. Worth a try, I suppose. But you’re giving me another idea. Surveillance cameras.”

“Sure.”

“Traffic cameras, toll cameras, pharmacies, parking garages, supermarkets, gas stations, gyms, banks... that’s a lot of cameras. All we need is a time-stamped video of her on one of those nights.”

“You’re talking about searching all the surveillance cameras in her neighborhood? That’s impossible. In nine hours? We’d be lucky to get a gas station and a CVS and a Safeway.”

“No, we’d have to focus on places we know she frequents.”

“How?”

“Her credit card statements. See if she made any charges those nights.”

“And how do we get her credit card statements?”

There was a knock on the door. Gideon Parnell was now wearing a suit. “I think my e-mail in-box is going to crash our servers,” he said. “I’m getting e-mails from colleagues and friends and journalists from around the globe. This thing is really blowing up.”

“Hang tough,” I said. “This is going to go all over the web before the day is through. But as long as it’s slugged to Slander Sheet and doesn’t make the legit news websites, we’ll be okay.”

“I don’t understand, what makes you so confident you can still kill this snake?”

“Because the media establishment doesn’t yet own the story. Gideon, with all respect, let us do our work without interruption. Really, it’ll be better for all of us.”

After a beat he nodded at me. “Excuse me,” he said, giving me a long steady look. “You’re absolutely right.” He slipped back out and closed the conference room door behind him.

“Heller,” Dorothy said. “You don’t talk to Gideon Parnell that way.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“I won’t.”

“I was hoping you’d have a way to get into her credit card statements.”

“Well, she’s got an American Express card and a Citibank MasterCard, and I’ve tried to get in the usual ways. I tried guessing her passwords, tried all the obvious ones, but no luck. You think Montello might have a way in?”

I shook my head. My information broker, Frank Montello, had e-mailed me back last night. All he’d come up with on the number programmed into Curtis Schmidt’s flip phone was that it was another throw-away phone, a burner. That was no more than what I already knew. “I don’t think he can get it to us in time.”

“It’s worth a try.”

I nodded, reluctant.

Montello picked up his phone after six long rings. His voice was faint and muffled, as it always seemed to be, as if you’d just interrupted him doing something far more important than talking to you. He operated in the gray zone between law enforcement and private investigation, a place I tried not to go except in extremis. That was the place where money changed hands, where laws were broken: the sort of thing that could lose you your license. You had to be really careful.

Montello knew people at phone companies and credit card companies and banks, people who were willing to sell you inside information. I had no moral objection to paying someone off to get me information I needed. I just preferred to put some distance between the source and me. Montello’s neck was on the block, and he knew it, and that was why he charged so much and acted so squirrelly.

I asked him if he had any sources at Citibank’s credit card division or at American Express.

“No one I trust,” he said, and he disconnected the call without further comment.

I looked at Dorothy and shook my head.

She said, “Then we’re out of luck.”

“No, we’re not,” I said, and I explained my plan.