The Judge

by Randy Singer

  “That’s a rhetorical question, of course,” he said. “The title of the chapter is ‘Bloody Band-Aids and Telltale Hearts.’”

  “So he used the Poe cipher,” Nikki said.

  “Exactly.”

  That established, Nikki pulled out the sheet of paper where she had recorded the capital letters from Finney’s Westlaw search. “Let me read you the capital letters so you can tell me what they mean using the Poe cipher,” she said.

  “Um . . . it’s not that easy,” Wellington said. “It’s a complicated cipher using six different alphabets to encode the text. It uses regular capital letters and small capital letters and lowercase letters and even upside-down letters, though it appears Finney tried to avoid the inverted symbols where possible. That’s what made it so hard to solve—several different code letters for each plaintext letter. Frequency analysis didn’t work.”

  “So what does that mean?” Nikki asked, checking her watch.

  “I’ll need to see the Westlaw searches myself,” Wellington claimed. “Just to be certain.”

  Nikki hesitated, a small voice urging her to be careful. There was something about giving Wellington the password to Finney’s Westlaw account that bothered Nikki. It wasn’t just that this would take her out of the driver’s seat; it was something more than that, though she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  But she couldn’t think of any logical reason to deny Wellington the password. After all, Finney was the one who told her to get Wellington involved in the first place. Yet her emotions were generally more reliable than her logic.

  “I can meet you at the usual place on my way to work,” she said. “I’ll pull up the search requests on my laptop and let you look at them.”

  “Cool,” Wellington said.

  Forty-five minutes later at the Starbucks, Wellington handed Nikki the decoded message.

  NEED RELIGIOUS BACGROUND ON MURPHY MCCORMAC AND AVITTS

  Nikki felt a surge of disappointment. She kept expecting some big revelation from Finney and instead kept getting more research assignments. It felt like her law-clerking days all over again. He would send her off on some wild-goose chase of research and never tell her why. Then, when he had all the information necessary, he would wink and unveil some dazzling resolution for the case.

  But there was another issue that bothered Nikki about this cipher. She placed the paper on the table between them. “You sure this is right? Several of the words are misspelled, and the judge is usually pretty careful about things like that.”

  “It’s the nature of Poe’s cipher,” Wellington explained. “There were certain letters not contained in the writing submitted by the mysterious Mr. Tyler. Since his underlying document didn’t use the letters J or K, for example, there is no code text for them. In Judge Finney’s book, he just substituted an asterisk for those letters, but he can’t do that using the Westlaw searches since we key in on capital letters. That’s why a few of the words containing those letters appear to be misspelled.”

  That made sense to Nikki, at least as much sense as the decryption process usually made. “What do you make of all this?” she asked, thinking out loud. “First we get this message that things are tense and Finney needs our help. Then we’re told to check ties between Murphy, Javitts, McCormack, and the speedy-trial cases. Then Finney wants to know the location of the island and whether William Lassiter is connected to the show. In the meantime, Preston Randolph calls and he’s all bent out of shape about what’s happening on the island. And then, this morning, we get this message asking us to check the religious backgrounds on these guys.”

  Wellington thought for a long time, and Nikki could imagine the big brain cranking away like a high-speed computer. He stared into space, processing the bits of information they had stumbled across—the secret messages, the shows they had watched, Preston Randolph’s concerns. Nikki took a sip of her drink and watched Wellington’s brow furrow deeper and deeper like a software program freezing your computer until you reboot it.

  “Wellington?”

  He shook out of the haze. “I’m not sure what’s going on, Nikki. Seems to me that Judge Finney is suspicious about the guys running this show and thinks they’re out to get some of the contestants. Maybe Judge Finney wants to know if he’s their target, so he’s having us check their connections to the speedy-trial cases and their religious backgrounds.”

  Duh, Nikki thought. She didn’t need a computer to tell her that. She found herself wondering why God never seemed to combine book smarts and common sense in the same package.

  “Out to get him?” Nikki echoed Wellington’s words. “You mean make the judge look bad and make sure he doesn’t win the show, or you mean really out to get him, as in eliminate him?”

  More thinking by Wellington, but this time the computer didn’t freeze up. “I don’t think the judge is in any real trouble,” he said. “Otherwise, he would have just sent a message for us to get the cops involved.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Nikki said. Maybe it was just Finney being Finney—figuring out a way to outsmart the reality game producers. In that context it would make sense for Finney to inquire about their religious backgrounds. But their connections to the speedy-trial cases? Nikki had a much harder time explaining that one.

  48

  After the snorkeling conference, Finney raced back to his condo so that he would have time to run some new Westlaw searches. In less than two hours, he was scheduled to be in Paradise Court, where the contestants would start their cross-examinations of experts from their own faith groups, albeit experts whose beliefs varied dramatically from those of the contestants on Paradise Island.

  Finney shaved, showered, and changed, mulling over his options. He faced the classic reality show dilemma: Whom could he trust? Whom could he believe? Hadji had made some good arguments, but Finney had no reason to doubt Kareem’s integrity. What was real? What was fake? Living inside the television could play games with a person’s head.

  He finally made up his mind and started focusing on the types of searches he would run to get his message across. There was so much riding on this next message, and Finney worried that even Wellington might not be able to figure out the key for chapter 4. Finney considered several alternatives but rejected them all. Wellington would be expecting a message encoded according to the key hidden in chapter 4. Changing the encryption method now would be confusing, but the young man was smart. Real smart. He would figure it out.

  It was now Tuesday. Finalists would be announced Friday. Finney would give Wellington twenty-four hours to solve the encryption. If he didn’t get some kind of confirmation by then, Finney would resort to other methods.

  He logged on to Westlaw at 9:05 local time. Court started at 10:00. He racked his brain and typed in his first request. He would have to leave off the dates for these requests and hope the person monitoring his computer wouldn’t focus on that minor difference. Unlike his prior search requests, these would contain no capital letters—an intentional clue to Wellington that this cipher was different.

  christ’s miracles and liberal responses to the accounts

  Finney looked at a few of the documents responsive to his search request and then immediately entered another:

  evidence for the evangelical view of the person and teachings of jesus

  This request generated a mountain of information, none of which interested Finney in the least. He was too busy thinking up his next request.

  end times and the various prophetic issues and orthodoxies

  No documents satisfied this request, and Finney worried that his searches weren’t making enough sense. But constructing clever searches took time, and Finney had none. He plowed ahead with his next search request.

  the essence of christian teaching and ancient creeds

  There. That was better. Several documents popped up. At this rate, he would barely make it to court on time. His computer started slowing down, causing Finney to worry that the people monitoring h
im had figured out Finney’s system. He clicked to view the next document, and the page took forever to load.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Finney mumbled. He clicked the same page again. Another sluggish response. He clicked the Back arrow. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered.

  The pain gnawing at his stomach made him irritable and impatient.

  Why did the computer have to slow down now? What kind of cruel trick was this? He wanted to smash the machine into the wall.

  The page finally loaded, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Exhausted. Hungry. Wired. Stressed. Finney thought up another search request and typed it in.

  Westlaw started searching immediately. They were back in business. A thought hit Finney. What if the show’s producers weren’t even monitoring the computers? What if he could just type a message in a Westlaw search without even encrypting the text?

  Too risky, he knew. When you’re on the third day of a fast, you don’t always think clearly.

  Focus, Finney demanded of himself. He had been known to give himself some pretty good pep talks. The cavalry will soon be on the way.

  Nikki hit pay dirt on a phone call with Murphy’s third ex-wife. Sheila Browning was a twenty-three-year-old actress doing commercials when she met Murphy; he was thirty-seven and an ambitious associate producer. The sex was nothing special, Browning admitted without being asked, but she fell in love with his dreams. Murphy would have his own production company. Sheila would be a star. As soon as Murphy completed the movie he was working on, they headed to Las Vegas to tie the knot.

  They started fighting, Browning said, as soon as they returned from the honeymoon.

  “Was he abusive?” Nikki asked.

  Sheila laughed. “Only when he was drunk or high or under pressure, which is to say—all the time.”

  “Did you report him?”

  “I basically had the cops on speed dial. First-name acquaintances with half the precinct.”

  “Then why doesn’t it show up on his record?”

  Sheila hesitated. “Did you say you were a lawyer?” she asked skeptically.

  Now it was Nikki’s turn to hesitate. “I said I was associated with a law firm investigating Mr. Murphy.”

  “Oh,” Sheila said. “I thought you said you were an associate with the law firm.”

  Busted, Nikki thought. But Sheila didn’t seem to be bothered by it.

  “If you were a lawyer, you’d know,” Sheila said. “Murph would hire a good defense attorney, promise to get counseling, pay a fine, and promise not to do it again. Hollywood producers don’t get records for slapping around their wives.”

  Sheila’s caustic analysis took Nikki back a little. But she recovered quickly, asking Sheila to play the amateur psychologist and explain what made Murphy such a scum.

  “His father,” Sheila said immediately. “He’s got serious need-for-approval issues. You know, an Oedipus complex or whatever that thing is called.”

  Nikki thought Oedipus was the guy who married his mother, but she let it pass. Rule number one for interrogating ex-wives: when they want to talk, you let them talk. “Tell me about that,” Nikki said.

  And Sheila did. For nearly twenty minutes, she trashed the men—father and son—in equal measures. According to Sheila, Pastor Martin abused his kids both physically and mentally, including his oldest son Jason, who later in life changed his name to Cameron Murphy. Nikki sensed that the reverend never really approved of Sheila, so that might have been part of the issue, but Nikki could sift the facts from fiction by conducting other interviews.

  According to Sheila, Cameron Murphy was now a hard-core atheist, driven from the church by his father’s hypocrisy. Cameron had tried Buddhism and also quoted liberally from the Dalai Lama—anything to make his old man mad—but in his heart of hearts he didn’t really believe there was a God.

  Nikki could sense she was on to something. She obtained the Reverend Martin’s church number from the Internet. She called him and left a message with his secretary. She recalled the fact that he had been a vocal protester against Faith on Trial from day one.

  She called the church a second time, her voice much huskier this time around. Nikki told the secretary that she was a big fan of Reverend Martin. “Do you know if he’s taking donations for that Faith on Trial boycott? I’m trying to decide what to do with all this stock.”

  The secretary assured Nikki that the reverend was taking donations. “I’m sure he’ll be returning your call right away,” the secretary said. Nikki didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  At that very moment, the legendary Murphy temper was in full bloom. He was pacing around the master control room, glancing occasionally at the huge bank of television monitors, all labeled according to the various cameras on the island, showing the different contestants as they prepared for court. On the other side of the room, one crew member sat in front of five separate computer screens, monitoring the contestants’ Internet usage. The only computer in use at the time was Finney’s.

  Murphy had Juan Perez, the head of Paradise Island security, on his cell phone. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to lock the Hobie Cat?” Murphy snarled. “It almost ruined the entire plan.”

  “We’ve locked the Hobie Cat every night, Mr. Murphy. You asked us to thwart any escape attempts, and that’s exactly what we were trying to do.”

  “We stay up virtually all night Sunday night going over every last detail of this plan, and then you almost screw it up at the last minute.”

  “Nobody informed us about this plan, Mr. Murphy.”

  “Don’t put this on us!” Murphy barked. One of the editors sitting in front of the bank of cameras glanced over her shoulder. Murphy took a step away and lowered his voice. “You work for us, not the other way around. It’s your job to keep us informed about how you’re securing this place.” For the next several minutes, Murphy reminded Perez about what an unmitigated disaster it would have been if Finney hadn’t been dumb enough to make a run for it in the kayak. He ended with a stream of expletives strung together in trademark Murphy fashion.

  “We apologize, Mr. Murphy. It was a breakdown of communication.”

  Not surprisingly, Murphy had a few choice thoughts about communications breakdowns as well.

  49

  Nikki called Preston Randolph and went through the usual number of screening secretaries and paralegals before she could talk to the great man. “I found out a few things about Cameron Murphy that weren’t in your investigators’ file,” she said. She paused a second for a compliment that never came. “Thought you might be interested.”

  “Okay,” Randolph said.

  “Abusive father,” Nikki said as if she had the court records to back it up. “When it was Murphy’s turn, he abused his wife.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I talked to his ex-wife—something your investigators didn’t bother doing.”

  “Good work, Nikki,” Randolph said, though he didn’t sound happy. She could see him in her mind’s eye, scowling at the thought that his prized investigators had been scooped by a law student.

  “That’s just the beginning,” Nikki said. “Murphy’s old man is a certified fundamentalist. Used religion as an excuse to pound on Murphy. So now Murphy, the executive producer of Faith on Trial, hates anything to do with the Christian church.” Nikki tried not to let her tone reflect how much she enjoyed telling Randolph about the things his lazy investigators had missed.

  “I still don’t understand why that would make him go after Dr. Kline. Seems to me that he ought to be trying to help her, not make her look bad.”

  Randolph had a point, though Nikki didn’t want to admit it. “We haven’t seen the last show yet,” she said gamely. “Maybe he does.”

  “Maybe.” Randolph didn’t sound convinced. “While you’ve been calling ex-wives, I did have some success in tracking down the location for Paradise Island. We called the director’s cell again and had the call triangulated while we talked. It’s not precise
, but we think they’re on an island in the Galápagos chain.”

  Impressive, Nikki thought. Even if Randolph did make it sound condescending—While you were talking to ex-wives . . .

  “Well, between my shop and yours, we’re making progress,” Nikki said.

  They sparred politely for a few more minutes, and then Randolph mentioned that Nikki’s job application must have gotten lost in the mail because he hadn’t seen it yet. That’s better, Nikki thought. Show some interest.

  “Maybe you should have one of your investigators run it down,” Nikki teased. “But first, teach him how to use a cell phone.”

  This brought a moment of uncomfortable silence on the line, and Nikki wondered if she had pushed too hard. “Did Sheila tell you about Murphy’s brief tryst with Buddhism?” Randolph asked.

  What? The remark caught Nikki speechless. And it had been a while since that had happened. “You knew about that?”

  Randolph laughed. “Of course.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Nikki, when we first met you, we didn’t know if we could trust you or not. Since you’ve now shared this information with me, I felt I could be a little more open with you.”

  “So your guys have talked to Sheila?”

  “We talked to her. And we promised to pay her if she told us when somebody else called.” Randolph paused for a second so that Nikki would have plenty of time to feel stupid. “And based on your questions to her, it appears you’re planning to call Reverend Martin as well. Or maybe you already have. Good luck on that one.”

  “Right,” Nikki said, realizing for the first time that she might be playing in the big leagues after all. “What else did you hold back about your investigation?”

  “If you want to stop by the office again, I’ll let you read the full, unedited reports.” Randolph’s voice now had an edge of authority. “But they have to stay in our office. We can’t let those kinds of reports out of our sight.”