The Judge

by Randy Singer

  “Something’s not right with Finney,” Wellington said. “We’ve got to break this code.”

  Even through the haze, Nikki could tell that Wellington needed a break. “Maybe you ought to get a little sleep,” she suggested, thinking that maybe she could use some herself, “and start again in the morning.”

  “I can’t sleep,” Wellington said emphatically. “Not until I figure this out.”

  Can we say obsession? Nikki was no psychologist, but she was pretty sure that her boy was beyond the point of being productive. You couldn’t stare for hours at a page full of symbols and keep your focus. Her own limit was about fifteen minutes.

  “You want to grab something to eat?” she suggested. “Maybe that would help.”

  When Wellington turned down food, Nikki knew they were in big trouble. “What can I do to help?” she asked, trying not to sound despondent.

  The question brought a look from Wellington that was hard to read. But if Nikki had to guess, she assumed he was thinking something like, I’ll never be that desperate. Eventually he shrugged. “Just give me a little more time.”

  She tried to focus again on the incomprehensible code from chapter 4 sitting in front of her. She had glanced at it earlier in the day but didn’t really give it a second thought, assuming that Wellington would solve it with no problem. Earlier tonight, even when she was completely sober, the letters and numbers had made no sense. Now, with a buzz going, they practically ran together.

  teAJ9EBQStsWoo5tvhhtt2N16

  ad8tep130Y6671E8ptzt2f5DN

  BCC5ra8eegO2Iid5ecq9

  “Maybe it’s another Poe cipher,” Nikki suggested. “Didn’t he use letters and numbers and some other stuff?”

  “He didn’t use numbers,” Wellington said flatly. “I tried breaking it down like a Poe cipher and got nowhere. Then I tried analyzing it like a substitution cipher and then a transposition cipher and then a combination of the two. One of the problems is that the message isn’t very long, so it’s harder to decipher. Plus, Finney didn’t just use the alphabet. He’s got small letters and capital letters and numbers, so it’s probable that the frequently used plaintext letters have more than one symbol representing them.” Wellington took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail, thereby solving one mystery for Nikki—why his shirt was half-untucked. “I just don’t know if this one is solvable.”

  “Nonsense,” Nikki said. “Think about it.” She took a sip of her cappuccino, hoping it would chase the alcohol away. “If Finney didn’t think you could solve this chapter, he would have told you to skip to the next chapter in his last coded message.”

  Wellington’s eyes brightened, and Nikki realized she had actually made a good point. Just like a sober person might. “You’re just too caught up in these little—” She motioned at the sheet in front of her, temporarily forgetting the name for those squiggle marks. What are they called? “You’re just all caught up in these cipher doohickeys,” she said. “Think about the big picture. What clues are in the book?”

  Wellington pointed at the air as if lecturing an invisible class. “You’ve got a point. The cipher in the last chapter was incredibly hard—it took a hundred and fifty years to solve. But we solved it in a matter of minutes once we realized it was one of Poe’s ciphers that somebody else had already solved.”

  “So what famous ciphers did he drop hints about in chapter 4?”

  “That’s just it,” Wellington said. “I didn’t see any.”

  Nikki tried to wrap her mind around this. They must be missing something obvious, something right under their noses. “What was chapter 4 about?”

  “The Pharisees and lawyers challenged Christ to give them a sign that He was the Messiah,” Wellington responded as if he had been over this point a thousand times already. “Jesus gave them the sign of Jonah, saying that just like Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the big fish, Jesus would be three days and three nights in the ground and then would rise again.”

  “I don’t suppose Jonah had any ciphers?”

  Wellington trotted out an are-you-crazy? look.

  “Okay, that might have been the alcohol,” Nikki admitted. “But I still think this is the right approach to solving this thing.”

  “Judge Finney says in the chapter that the case for the Resurrection is the most compelling case ever presented to a jury. Then he spends most of the chapter giving a closing argument, just like a lawyer would in court, arguing the historical proof that Christ rose on the third day, just like He predicted.”

  “So what’s that got to do with a code?” Nikki asked.

  For the next hour, they kicked around that very question. Eventually Wellington speculated himself out and Nikki’s heavy eyelids got the better of her. She fell asleep with her head resting on an arm propped on the table. She woke when a door behind her opened and let in a muggy breeze. She gave Wellington a sheepish smile. The kid was scribbling on his pad again.

  “Do you need me to drive you home?” Wellington asked. She could see the concern etched on his face and sensed that a lecture on drinking and driving was coming.

  “I’m fine,” Nikki replied. “It’s just been a long day, that’s all.”

  Wellington looked skeptical.

  “Do you want me to recite the alphabet backward?” Nikki asked.

  “Sure.”

  Halfway through her slow but nearly flawless performance, Wellington acquiesced.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  52

  As if it wasn’t bad enough to be starving half to death and facing the Chinese water torture tomorrow, the show’s producers added insult to injury by placing Finney on a curfew. He couldn’t leave his condo between midnight and 6:00 a.m. They had electronically wired every door and window to make sure he didn’t violate his new restrictions.

  “Not even to go out on my patio for a smoke?” Finney asked.

  “Not even.”

  Because of the curfew, Finney called an end to the nightly card game at 11:00 p.m. The Swami protested loudly since he was down several hundred dollars. Though the ante was still just one buck, the betting had loosened up toward the end of the game. Horace, who had forgotten his sunblock earlier in the day and had a nasty sunburn on his round and balding head, lost nearly four hundred—a Paradise Island record. He didn’t want to quit early either. Gus didn’t say anything, which was par for the course. Since Finney broke even, he estimated that Gus came out about six hundred ahead.

  Though no real money would change hands until the week was over, Horace looked pale under his sunburn when Finney announced his total—$817 in the hole.

  “Maybe we should drop the ante a bit,” the Swami suggested. “Limit the bets.” Though it seemed like a nice gesture on the surface, Finney assumed that the Swami had made the suggestion because he’d been cheating all week and felt guilty about the $552 he had made.

  “Nah,” Horace said, forcing a smile. “My luck’s changing tomorrow night. I can feel it.”

  “No poker tomorrow night,” the Swami said. “Chinese water torture.”

  “Oh yeah,” Horace replied. “Then Thursday—our last night here. We ought to double the stakes.”

  The men put away the cards and rinsed out their glasses. Both Horace and Gus had quit bringing snacks once the contestants started fasting. Horace complained about it constantly, claiming that the lack of munchies affected his concentration.

  “I wanted to quit early so I could take a short hike on the beach,” Finney said to Horace. “Big day tomorrow.”

  Horace had finagled the system so he had been assigned nighttime camera duty for Finney. Gus had worked out the same assignment for the Swami, thus assuring that the foursome could be together for cards every night.

  Horace picked up his camera and dutifully followed Finney down to the beach. Finney grabbed a seat in one of the loungers, and Horace sat down next to him, placing his large camera on a lounger on the other side. It was a gorgeous night, with a warm a
nd salty ocean breeze blowing in their faces, the full moon and thousands of stars reflecting in the sea.

  “Beautiful night,” Finney said.

  “Yep.”

  “Can’t believe we’ve only got a few more days here.”

  “Time flies when you’re having fun,” Horace said.

  After the two men sat in silence for a while, Horace burped, reminding Finney that he hadn’t eaten in three days. Finney’s stomach had now started cramping, and he felt tired all the time. At this moment he wished he could be in bed.

  “I could use a brewski and a T-bone,” Horace said. He was probably drooling, though Finney couldn’t tell in the dark. “They haven’t been feeding us worth diddly-squat since you guys stopped eating.”

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Okay,” Horace said. Another burp. “Pizza,” he said instinctively as he tasted his own burp. Then he added, “How’s Swami doing it? It’s like he knows every card in my hand.”

  The two men discussed the Swami’s probable cheating techniques as they surveyed the night sky. Finney thought about the long day tomorrow, checked his watch, and decided it was time. “Think I’ll wade out in the ocean a little,” he said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Finney didn’t move for a few seconds and then turned to Horace. “Do you have access to cell phones or e-mail or even snail mail?”

  Horace leaned up in his chair and looked at Finney. The pudgy little cameraman motioned toward the small of his back.

  “I turned it off,” Finney said. “That’s why I made that remark about going into the ocean—so whoever’s monitoring the mike wouldn’t get suspicious.”

  “I’m not sure anybody monitors it at night anyway,” Horace admitted. He leaned back in his chair again. “And the answer is no. I don’t have access to e-mail or cell phones or snail mail. The producers have cell phones and e-mail that work through that satellite uplink somehow. But they’re paranoid about the crew leaking the results. In fact, the network purposely scheduled us to shoot another two-week show on some other remote island as soon as this one is over. We don’t get back to the mainland until the final show airs.”

  Finney considered this complication for a moment. Oh, well, he knew things couldn’t be that easy. Even if he could trust Horace, there was no secure way to communicate with the outside world. It’s why he had already worked through plan B. “What do you do with the raw film you shoot?” Finney asked.

  Horace hesitated, and Finney could sense the little man trying to sort through his loyalties. “Uh . . . we make a first-edit pass ourselves and send any potentially good footage on to the team in the edit suite. They put the show together here on the island and then send it back to New York by satellite.”

  “Have you got a lot of footage on the tape that’s in your camera right now?” Finney asked.

  Horace glanced at Finney and stared for a moment, then turned back toward the night sky, his hands locked behind his head again. “Yeah. The one in there is almost full. But I’ve got another in my case. Why?”

  “Just wondering,” Finney said. He closed his eyes and said a prayer. This had better work. “You a religious man?” he asked softly.

  “I’ve been known to say a few prayers,” Horace admitted. “I’m pulling for you, Judge, if that’s what you want to know.”

  Not exactly, Finney thought, but close enough. He leaned forward in his chair and turned toward Horace. “If I asked you to put a new tape in that camera and record something as a personal favor to me, would you do it?”

  Horace furrowed his brow. “Something like what?”

  “What if I just asked you to trust me?” Finney replied, his voice so low it barely carried above the sounds of the waves. “What if I said that the reason would become clear in a few minutes?”

  Horace shrugged. He reached over and pulled a new tape out of his camera case. “I was thinking about changing tapes anyway,” he said.

  Finney stood and walked ankle deep into the water, then turned and faced Horace. “Can you tape this?” he asked.

  Still sitting in the lounger, Horace turned on his camera and blinded Finney with the bright light. “Okay, Hamlet. Just keep it PG.” The red recording light popped on.

  “My name is Oliver Gradison Finney, and I swear and affirm that the testimony I’m about to give is all true under penalties of perjury.” He looked directly into the camera, knowing that Horace was probably wondering what in the world was going on. He’d find out soon enough.

  “I’m about to state certain facts based on my own personal knowledge—things I have seen and heard. These facts should be enough to establish probable cause for conspiracy to commit murder. If you’re watching this tape, it most likely means that I am no longer around to testify and the conspiracy has therefore succeeded.” As Finney spoke, he watched Horace stand with the camera and move a few steps closer.

  For the next several minutes, Finney recounted the facts that led to his suspicions about a murder conspiracy. He started with the details of his own cross-examination and the stunning revelation that one of the speedy-trial defendants had killed an innocent young store clerk earlier this year. That revelation had been haunting him for the past week, he admitted. He could think of little else.

  Then he detailed each of his Hobie Cat conversations with Dr. Kline, recounting, as precisely as possible, her alleged conversations with Bryce McCormack. He told about the staged escape attempt on the kayak and the information discovered by Kareem on Cameron Murphy’s computer. He also relayed the background information that Hadji had pulled up on the various persons of interest. He detailed the conversations from the times when the contestants met together while pretending they were snorkeling. He even described, as best he could remember it, the looks on the faces of the other contestants when Kareem dropped his bombshell. Finney intentionally omitted any references to the secret messages he had been exchanging with Nikki.

  Finney paused and took a step closer to the camera. “I hope I’m wrong about all this,” he said. “I hope this is just a very elaborate and callous ploy designed to get the contestants off focus. If so, it has worked.

  “However, based on my years of analyzing and deciding conspiracies in real-life cases, this one appears authentic.” Finney swallowed and coughed to the side, then turned back to the camera. “This tape should be enough to establish probable cause for a warrant to search every square inch of Paradise Island, including all e-mails sent and received from here. I have a theory about who is behind the conspiracy but will limit this taping to the facts, rather than confuse the matter with my opinions. Motives for the conspiracy will undoubtedly be revealed if you conduct an exhaustive background search on each of the contestants as well as Cameron Murphy, Bryce McCormack, and Howard Javitts. You should pay particular attention to the religious backgrounds of those persons as well as any possible links between them and the defendants I had to release under the speedy-trial statute several years ago.

  “If you’re watching this tape, it probably means you’re investigating my murder,” Finney said, smiling wryly. “So good luck.”

  Horace shut off the camera and blew out a breath. “Are you serious?”

  Finney just nodded.

  “Unbelievable,” Horace muttered to himself. And to Finney he added, “What do we do now?”

  “Let me have the tape,” Finney said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. It contained Nikki’s e-mail and a coded letter telling her about the location of the tape. “Send this message to the e-mail address on this sheet as soon as you get off this island. Don’t try to contact this person from here, okay?”

  Finney had thought long and hard about the best way to proceed. If he was the target of a vendetta killing, he didn’t want to alert the conspirators to Nikki’s involvement and force the killer to take her out as well. It seemed that every direct communication from the island was being monitored. The best he could do would be to alert Nikki to the
location of the tape as soon as Horace had a chance to send this e-mail from someplace other than the island and, in the meantime, hope that Wellington had deciphered the last message.

  The e-mail and tape would be necessary only in a worst-case scenario. Finney would be dead. But like Poe, perhaps he could speak from the grave.

  “Send the e-mail message exactly as I have it on that page, Horace. It won’t make sense to you, but this person will figure it out.”

  Horace wrinkled his face into a mask of concern. “You sure we shouldn’t just call the cops?”

  “How?” Finney asked.

  “Maybe I could steal somebody’s cell phone,” Horace said.

  It was tempting, but Finney knew his bumbling little friend would get caught red-handed. Besides, it wasn’t necessary. “The Feds are already working on it,” Finney said.

  Though he was beyond exhaustion when he returned to his condo, Finney went straight to his computer and accessed Westlaw. Because of a long afternoon court session that bled into the evening hours, a follow-up visit by the Swami, and the nightly card game, this was the first time Finney had been alone in his condo for any length of time since he sent his message to Nikki and Wellington that morning.

  He didn’t want to enter new searches and run the risk of confusing Wellington, but he had to know if Wellington had deciphered the prior message. His heart raced when he pulled up the search histories, as if checking his own previous research, and noticed some new searches. Finney was confident that whoever was monitoring his computer in the control room at this hour of the night would have no idea that these searches hadn’t been entered by Finney himself.

  It appeared that Wellington had used the Poe cipher, continuing the pattern of responding with the same cipher Finney had used in the original message. Finney quickly wrote down the capital letters along with a few bogus notes. He logged off the computer, and took his notes and Cross Examination book into the bathroom stall so he could decipher the message outside the presence of the cameras.

  Obviously, Wellington had not yet deciphered Finney’s latest message, or he would have used the code Finney had used earlier that day. The content of Wellington’s message confirmed this. He told Finney about Murphy’s legalistic Christian father and the location of Paradise Island as determined by Preston Randolph but made no mention of Finney’s last message. Finney finished decoding the message, brushed his teeth, and returned to his bedroom. He took off his shirt and lay down on his bed to consider this new information and his next move.