Say Nothing

by Brad Parks

  He sat. “How?”

  “Tell me who it is.”

  He leaned over, put his elbow on the arm of the chair, then rested his chin in his hand. I could tell he was thinking about it, and that he was tempted.

  I sweetened the offer. “I’ll give you an exclusive on the ruling. I’ll let you have it before I send it down to the clerk’s office.”

  Having the ruling early was gold for Politi, and we both knew it. In one post, he could begin to restore his standing with his readership. His head seemed to be bobbing. Then he stopped.

  “So, wait, you give me the ruling before it goes out, but I assume you want the name of my source right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No good. I’ve been jerked around too much already. I’m not telling you squat until I know what the ruling is.”

  Now it was my turn to take a little time sitting in silent contemplation. If he put the ruling out on his website too early, before we had Emma back, Alexi and Boris might spook. Or, worse, they might think the ruling had already been filed and decide it was time to dispose of their living, breathing bargaining chip.

  “I can let you see it right now. But you can’t post anything until I’m ready,” I said. “It would be disastrous for me in ways I can’t even describe if you posted something before I was ready.”

  There was no danger in giving him a glimpse. Right now his credibility was so tarnished, no one would believe what he was posting unless it came with a scanned version of the document anyway.

  “You already have it written? So the secret was true: You really did know what your ruling was going to be ahead of time.”

  “No, I didn’t. It . . . I can’t really explain it.”

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything once it’s filed. In the meantime, please understand if you post anything early, you’ll be doing harm you can’t understand. And, at that point, I’ll file a ruling that is the exact opposite, just to spite you. It’ll ruin you for good.”

  “Mutually assured destruction,” he mused. “I like it.”

  “So we have a deal?”

  “Okay. But you’ve got to give me at least an hour’s worth of an exclusive after you send it to me, and it has to be when the markets are open. Otherwise it’s no good to me.”

  “You got it,” I said.

  I reached out across the table and we shook hands.

  Then I went inside my desk and pulled out the document Mark had slipped under my door. I handed it to Politi and was immediately looking at the top of his bald head as he bent down and started skimming words and flipping pages.

  “You’re going for ApotheGen?” he said. “Well, now I’m officially confused.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I guess I should start by telling you who my source is. It’s Mark Lowe. He claims to be your brother-in-law. He showed me family photos and everything. But now I’m even doubting that.”

  “No, he is.”

  “Then explain this to me,” Politi said. “He said this whole thing was a scheme on your part to sell short on a bunch of shares of ApotheGen stock. He said you made him do it in his name so the SEC didn’t get wise to it. He even showed me a short sale contract for a hundred thousand shares that he signed when the stock was still at ninety-whatever bucks.

  “But then if that’s true, why would you rule for ApotheGen? Wouldn’t you want to see the price go even lower? I mean, unless you . . . Oh, you clever devil, you already executed the short sale, haven’t you? So none of this even matters anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, you know with a short sale, when the price goes down, the person holding the contract actually makes money. For every ten bucks ApotheGen stock lost in value, that hundred-thousand short sale contract is worth a million bucks. So you pulling the trigger, say, yesterday, before the markets closed, netted you a little more than three mil, am I right?”

  “I understand the mechanics of how short sales work,” I assured him. “When I say, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ it’s because I’m not involved in any kind of conspiracy with my brother-in-law. You have my word on that. Maybe he does have a short sale contract with my name on it. But I had nothing to do with it. Everything he’s told you about me was a lie.”

  “Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this point,” Politi said. “It’s pretty clear now the guy has been lying to me about everything else.”

  He shook his head at his own gullibility. “So we have a deal?” he said.

  I nodded. “We do.”

  SEVENTY

  With my fifteen-minute recess having already stretched into more like twenty-five, I had to get back into the courtroom.

  There wasn’t really time to consider everything I had just learned. But I did find myself thinking back to the moments Mark and I had been together the past few weeks. He had sat on decks—his and mine—and coolly shot the breeze with me. Essentially, he had been patting me on the shoulder with one hand while the other was ripping my heart out. That took nerve I didn’t know he possessed.

  Still, the rudiments of it made sense. Mark Lowe—his wife ever complaining about their upside-down house, their lack of cash, and his shortage of assertiveness—had put together a scheme to make a few million dollars. And he cared about those millions more than he cared about my children. Then he went out and hired the muscle and the know-how—Justina and the Turks—to pull it off.

  That meant finding him was now my top priority.

  After waiting for Politi to clear away, I cracked open the door to my chambers and stole a quick glance down the hall. If Mark was still serving as Whipple’s runner, he would be on one of the benches outside my courtroom.

  He wasn’t there. I might have assumed he was off somewhere, already counting his money, except Alison had seen him so recently. He was around. Somewhere. As quietly as I could, I crept down the hallway, to ascertain if perhaps he was just sitting in a different spot.

  But no. The hallway was empty.

  I returned to my chambers and approached Jeremy’s office door, still closed. I knocked softly, said, “It’s me,” then entered. Alison was sitting behind the desk, the gun now mostly assembled in front of her.

  “Almost done,” she said, continuing her work as she spoke. “I wasn’t liking the way it was dry firing so I had to go back and do it again.”

  “Mark’s not out there anyway,” I said.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Resume the hearing, I guess.”

  “Shouldn’t we just go find him now? You’re the judge. People will wait.”

  “Yeah, but he might be back outside the building. I don’t want to go chasing after him out there. We’d have to sneak the gun back in if he wasn’t there. Besides, outside, he might be armed himself. In here, I think we can be reasonably certain we’re the only ones with a firearm.”

  “Good point. So what’s your plan, again?”

  “Well, he’s going to come back inside eventually. His boss will be looking for him,” I said. “You can use the gun to coerce him to join us in my chambers. He’ll be trapped, unarmed, and without a cell phone to communicate with any of the men he’s working with. It’s as vulnerable a place as we’ll ever get him in.”

  She snapped one last piece in place on the gun, turned around, and aimed it at the window. She pulled the trigger twice. It made a snapping sound.

  “Perfect,” she said. “I’m good to go.”

  “Okay. Just sit tight. And keep Jeremy’s cell phone with you.”

  As I left Jeremy’s office, I felt Mrs. Smith’s curious gaze on me. I couldn’t begin to fathom what she was making of my actions or of the unusual guests. I made a display of looking down at my watch for
a moment, not actually taking note of the time.

  “You know what?” I said to her. “It’s Friday afternoon. It’s been a long week. I’ll be busy for the rest of the day with the hearing, so I don’t really need you here. Why don’t you knock off early?”

  “Thank you, Judge, but I have work to—”

  “Joan,” I said, which stopped her immediately. “Please just go. And tell the same to the rest of the staff. I’d really appreciate it.”

  She considered this for a moment, then said, “Sure thing, Scott.”

  * * *

  As the courtroom was called back into order, I was relieved to see Steve Politi was still in the room, because it meant he hadn’t scrambled out to post the big scoop he was sitting on. Blake Franklin was also hanging in. Perhaps he had already canceled all his campaign events for the rest of the day.

  Clarence Worth, who had little to complain about the way the case was going, was nevertheless looking exasperated. After an hour-and-a-half-long lunch recess, I had taken another half-hour break.

  I apologized for the delay, mumbled something about another matter that required immediate attention, then invited him to begin his case.

  His first witness was a neatly trimmed scientist. I had thought Worth might start slowly in his defense, like a symphony that begins with a single oboe player and then adds one or two instruments at a time until it builds to a thundering crescendo.

  But no. I could tell almost immediately, Worth was going for the fortissimo straight out. This was his smoking-gun witness, the one who had first caught Denny Palgraff’s big blunder. My tip-off was that Barnaby Roberts could barely contain himself as the scientist began walking through the explanation of just how flawed the plaintiff’s claim was. Worth’s laser pointer was back out. Defense Exhibit 58, the diagram of the true and proper PCSK9, stayed out the whole time. I was sure Worth was hoping I dreamed about it.

  As the next hour wore on, Worth worked methodically, leading his scientist through an explanation that built one layer of understanding on top of another.

  Then the witness hit what you might have called his highest note, revealing where, precisely, Palgraff had misstepped, and how it was possible an otherwise brilliant scientist could get the protein wrong and not know it. For those who had been following along closely, it was a riveting climax—the moment when all became clear.

  Then the moment I had been waiting for coincided with it. Right when the scientist got to the payoff, Andy Whipple twisted around and held his hands in a curious position.

  I had to restrain myself from jumping out of my seat. If Whipple was making hand signals, my assumption was that Mark was there to receive them.

  Barely bothering to disguise what I was doing, I buried my attention in my lap, where I had my cell phone, and hammered out a text to Jeremy’s phone:

  Mark is out there.

  Then I lifted my head up and went back to pretending to concentrate on the proceeding. I had to maintain a certain amount of blind faith that Alison was receiving my text, that she was acting on it, and that it was working out the way we hoped.

  Worth had finished with the witness. As Hemans began his cross-examination, I wondered if I was going to hear a shout, a gunshot, some disturbance. Or was Alison handling this quietly?

  Certainly, she had a considerable strategic advantage, one that came with nine-millimeter bullets. And Mark would know any of the Powell girls were not to be fooled with when it came to firearms.

  But I had already made the mistake of misjudging Mark too many times. Did he have other surprises for us?

  I took a glance down at my phone. Four minutes had passed since I sent my text. No word from Alison.

  The witness was reiterating the point that had exposed Denny Palgraff in the first place, doing it in even greater detail than the last time. Hemans was a good enough attorney to know he was actually making things worse, the longer he kept the guy on the stand. Every word was like another shovelful of dirt on his own coffin.

  Another peek down. Seven minutes. Still nothing.

  Soon, Hemans was done with his cross. The witness had been too sure-footed to give Hemans any chance to shove him off-balance.

  Worth was already calling his next witness. Another scientist. She came to the stand looking every bit as competent as the last witness. The annihilation of Denny Palgraff was turning to its next chapter. She was swearing to tell the truth and nothing but.

  Then I felt a buzz on my thigh and looked down.

  Got him. In your office.

  The witness had just passed “so help me God,” and Worth was asking her to state her name and occupation for the record when I interrupted.

  “You know what? Before we get into this witness, I think I need another quick break.”

  Worth’s face briefly flashed with you-gotta-be-kidding-me aggravation before he got it back under control.

  “Of course, Your Honor,” he said.

  “Fifteen minutes,” I said.

  Worth may have greeted this pronouncement with more disapproval. I couldn’t say for sure. Whatever dirty look he gave me would have been bouncing off the back of my robe.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  The scene that met me in my office belonged in a mob movie, not my life.

  There was a man sitting in the middle of the room, in one of the chairs that ordinarily fronted my desk. He was a man I obviously knew, having shared Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas Eve with him for the last twenty years. Yet I had never seen him looking anything like this.

  Mark Lowe’s wrists were tied to that chair by what appeared to be his shoelaces. His legs were bound by strips of a white dress shirt—also his own, judging by the fact that he was now wearing only a T-shirt. He had a gash by his left eye. Rivulets of crimson flowed down the side of his pale face. He was also bleeding from the mouth.

  There was a woman standing directly in front of him, glowering hatefully. I could say it was Alison, but really it was some translation of her. The new language in which she was being expressed was fierce and primitive, a dictionary filled with fire.

  Her arms jutted out of her sleeveless blouse, looking lean and sinewy. It was striking me again just how much weight she had lost. Stripped of a layer of fat, the muscle in her right forearm rippled from holding the gun. Her face was also red, although not from any wounds. Her flush came from exertion. And anger—a deep, boiling kind of hatred.

  Jeremy Freeland was in the room too. He was standing behind Mark, his face a grave mask.

  My best guess was that Alison had forced Mark in here at gunpoint. And Jeremy, the only staff member left in chambers, had helped tie Mark to a chair while Alison covered him with the Smith & Wesson. And then this new rendition of Alison, the woman who I had seen nurse two infants simultaneously, had brutally pistol-whipped him.

  And just to be clear: I didn’t feel a shred of sympathy for him. I only wished I could have gotten in a few swings myself.

  “What have I missed?” I asked.

  “He claims he doesn’t know where Emma is,” Alison said.

  “I don’t, I swear, I don’t,” Mark said.

  He was hunched over, flinching like the proverbial dog that had been beaten too much. This was the Mark I knew. Meek. Submissive. The Lowe Man. I still couldn’t fully square it with the guy who had turned our lives inside out.

  The only difference was, I now recognized it was an act, and I didn’t buy it anymore. If he was as innocent as he claimed, he would have screamed for help, knowing that there were legions of court security officers and US marshals who could rush to his aid. But he had remained quiet, because he understood law enforcement was no friend to men who kidnap children.

  I walked up to him and grabbed him by the throat.

  “We know everything already,” I said. “I saw the video of you sliding that ruling under my door. I know about the Turk
s you hired to threaten Karen and then snatch the kids. I know you were Steve Politi’s secret source. I know about the hundred-thousand-share short sale contract on ApotheGen stock. It’s all over. You tell us where Emma is or I swear, you won’t live out the hour.”

  As I squeezed, I watched his blood seep into the dark fabric of my robe. He made a gargling sound and tried to pull away, but I held fast. When I felt my point had been made, I released my grip.

  He coughed, trying to clear his windpipe.

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know,” he said, his voice now ragged.

  My hand went back to his throat. But this time, I used the other too, grasping both sides of his neck and choking him as hard as I could. He bucked and thrashed but couldn’t really get much leverage while tied to a chair.

  When I let go, he took a huge gasp of air, then said, “Stop. It’s not me.”

  Alison, who was next to me, drew back the gun and was going to let it fly at his head again.

  And then Mark blurted, “It’s Andy.”

  That stopped her.

  “Andy?” she said. “Andy Whipple?”

  “It was all Andy. Andy and Karen, okay? He learned you were going to be the judge on this case. I think someone at ApotheGen actually tipped him off about the whole thing. Andy gets insider tips like that from all over. How do you think he always manages to beat the markets?

  “Andy heard about the case and knew I was related to you. He approached me and said that if I didn’t go along with his idea, he’d not only fire me; he’d blackball me and make sure no one in the investing world would ever hire me. Then he laid it out for me, how he would load up with a ton of short sale contracts. That hundred thousand was just the tip of the iceberg. That was just the payoff to Karen and I for cooperating. Andy is in way bigger than us. As far as I know, he ended up selling short on something like ten million shares. The whole idea was to manipulate the price down, execute all those contracts at the bottom, and then buy ten million shares and ride the wave back up.”