Judgment

18

Outside the hotel, she looked at her phone and saw a series of texts that had come in from Duncan.

At 9:36 a call had come in on her phone, no voice message left.

He’d looked around for her, texted and texted, and finally had given up. He was probably furious and justifiably so.

And what could she possibly tell Duncan by way of explanation? She couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. She scrabbled around for something to say, came up with a story about a college friend she’d run into who was in a very bad way. Yes, she should have checked the text messages as they came in, but she didn’t, she couldn’t tear herself away from a very difficult conversation. She mentally rehearsed this lie, this one lie atop a pile of lies, and she felt terrible about it.

But what else could she do?

At 10:30, her cab pulled up to her house. Some lights were on, on both the first and second floors. Presumably Jake was awake, but she wondered about Duncan. She’d tried his mobile a few times but had gotten no answer. Either he’d turned his phone off, which would be odd, or he was ignoring her calls. Which would be even odder.

When she entered the house, she called out quietly for Duncan and Jake but got no answer. Upstairs, she saw that Jake was in his bedroom — she could see the light under the closed door — and Duncan was in bed with the lights off. She entered as soundlessly as she could, navigating by the moonlight that filtered in through one of the windows, where he hadn’t closed the curtains all the way.

“What happened?” Duncan’s voice in the dark startled her.

“Oh — I’m so sorry about tonight. I ran into an old college friend who was in really bad shape. We got into an intense conversation.”

She left it vague and hoped he didn’t ask more. She’d met her in the women’s room, she’d say, if he pressed. This old friend was attending some other function in the hotel, that’s what she’d say.

She undressed, placing her clothes neatly on the chaise longue.

“You didn’t get my texts?”

“I’m sorry — I heard my phone and ignored it. I didn’t want to be rude to this poor woman. I should have looked. I’m really sorry.”

A long silence. “A lot of people asked about you.”

“Oh?”

“Lynn Golding.”

“She was there? It was like I fell into a black hole. By the time we were done talking I checked my phone, and I saw you’d left. God, Dunc, I’m so sorry.”

She got into her nightgown, then went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and washed her face. By the time she got into bed, Duncan was softly snoring.

When Juliana arrived at her lobby the following Monday, Kaitlyn was already there. “I didn’t think you’d want them on top of your desk,” Kaitlyn said.

Juliana saw what Kaitlyn was talking about: four bankers boxes of documents were piled next to her desk, taking up valuable (and scarce) floor space.

“From the defense?”

Kaitlyn nodded. “It’s printouts of all chats that mention Rachel Meyers’s name.”

“That’s a lot of mentions.”

“In these boxes are actually two sets of documents. One is redacted, one’s unredacted. With a privilege log.”

Somewhere in those four boxes was the answer to the question of why she was being blackmailed. “Where’s the log?”

“On your desk.”

Juliana saw the manila folder on her desk next to the keyboard.

“Have you looked through the documents yet?”

“No, I wanted to wait for your instructions.”

“Okay.” She took off her jacket and hung it on the coatrack next to her black robe.

Sitting down at her desk, she opened the folder and began skimming through the privilege log. It listed all the chats the defense wanted to withhold, identifying each chat by date and time, sender and recipient, subject, and, most important, the reason they wanted to withhold it. Assembling a privilege log was tedious grunt work, probably done by some poor young associate.

At least one of these chats contained something so important, so explosive, that someone was willing to go to great lengths to bury it. So the privilege log was a useful tool. It singled out the important chats, the ones she had to pay attention to. She could ignore the hundreds — thousands? — of other chats in those cardboard boxes.

All she cared about right now was finding what was being concealed — why she’d been targeted. She glanced at her watch. She had forty-five minutes before the morning malpractice trial began.

She started reading.