She bobbed her head several times. “Everyone who comes in is talking about it.”
“We know that he was at the Rabbit Hole the night he disappeared. We were told that you’re a regular.” Mitch held up Maddox’s photograph. “Do you recognize this man?”
She stared at the picture and bit her lip. “I haven’t seen him recently. I’d remember, because he has nice glasses.”
“In January. It was a Sunday night and it was raining pretty badly.”
She brightened and nodded. “Oh, yes! I remember. I think.” She bit her lip again. “I think so. But it was a long time ago. But I have a good memory.”
“You think you might have seen this man in the bar?”
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “I think he came in late, after dark.”
That didn’t help-in January it was dark before six in the evening.
“Do you know if he met with anyone? Maybe had an argument?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide. “I just remember what he looks like. I’m good with faces. And he was sitting in his car a long time after he left.”
“His car? Do you remember what kind of car?”
She shrugged. “Not really. Tip was walking me home. It was raining pretty hard and we were walking really fast. I thought maybe he didn’t want to drive in the rain.”
Steve asked, “Did Tip see the man in the car?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”
Mitch retraced the conversation. “This man came in after dark, and how long do you think he stayed in the bar?”
“I don’t know. Long enough to have a drink.”
“Did he seem nervous? Agitated? Angry?”
Lora Lane frowned, her eyes worried and confused. Mitch backtracked. “Did this man act strange?”
“I don’t remember.”
“But you remember him having a drink?”
She blinked in confusion. “I got to bring him his beer. Tip lets me do that sometimes, especially when it’s slow, and I like to help.”
“Were there any other strangers in the bar that night?”
She looked worried. “I don’t know. Should I know that?”
“No, not necessarily.”
“If you have a picture I might be able to remember. I’m very good with faces,” she repeated.
“You’ve been a big help already, Ms. Lane.”
“I have?”
“Yes. Thank you for your time.”
They left.
“Who did Maddox call at the Rabbit Hole?” Mitch asked. “Directions? And why the second call?”
“Maybe it was a mistake, a misdial,” Steve suggested.
“A rainy Sunday night. No other strangers. Barney has the only connection to Maddox through Frank Lowe. But why?”
“Maybe he followed Maddox out of town. Ran him off the road.”
“Maybe. But why was Maddox sitting in his car?”
“Waiting for Barney to leave, maybe. Want to go back and push him?”
“We need something else. Lora Lane is not a reliable witness. Something definitive, otherwise we’re just fishing and if he is guilty, then we’ve tipped our hand.”
“No pun intended,” Steve said as he unlocked the car.
Mitch rolled his eyes and slid into the passenger seat. “Let’s get the background check on Mr. Barney and see what we can find. We can always come back.”
“Great,” Steve said sarcastically as he turned onto River Road. “I hate driving this road.”
“Could be worse.”
“How?”
“It could be dark and raining.”
Lora Lane liked pretty things.
Ribbons for her hair. Shiny jewelry for her fingers and ears. Manicures and pedicures and keeping her boring brown hair blond.
She didn’t like working in the dirty tackle shop, but she liked the money she earned every Friday. Her mama always said she was a pretty little girl without an ounce of common sense. Daddy let her live at home because she wasn’t very good with her money and he said people would take advantage of her.
She knew she wasn’t a smart girl, but she was smart enough to know that people thought she was a retard. She’d heard them talking. Her daddy shut them up right quick, but she heard them sometimes. She ran the tackle shop almost all by herself, knew the difference between a night crawler and a butterworm, and made the world’s finest lures. Her daddy said so himself, and everyone came into the shop to buy them because they worked.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew how to mind her mouth. She didn’t tell those nice men about her agreement, did she? No, she didn’t. She kept it to herself like she’d sworn on the grave of her grandmama that she would.
For two years, Lora had watched Tip Barney like she was told. Every night she went to the Rabbit Hole and watched him. She kind of liked him, he was nice to her and didn’t treat her like she was dumb. He talked to her like she had something important to say, even when she didn’t say anything. He was nice-looking, too. Had nice blue eyes and a pretty smile.
When the men came to her house, Daddy wasn’t home. He was working. He had an important job, just like she did. He was a policeman. The chief policeman in Isleton. At first she was scared, but then the pretty man smiled at her and she felt all fluttery inside.
She had a job. And it was as important as her daddy’s job. She was undercover for the Department of Homeland Security. She reported back to Agents Smith and Jones everything that happened at the Rabbit Hole. Everything. She took very good notes.
She liked Tip, but he was a terrorist. As Agent Smith said, not all terrorists look like terrorists.
She was protecting her friends and neighbors from being killed like those poor people in New York. Lora was important.
When the two nice men left her tackle shop, she called the special number she was given for emergencies. Only to be used if someone was asking questions about Tip’s Blarney.
“Harper.”
She frowned. “Agent Smith or Agent Jones, please.”
There was silence, then several minutes later there was a click. “This is Agent Jones.”
“Two men came to my shop today. They were asking questions about Tip and another man.”
“Who?”
“That man you told me about. Mr. Maddox. The terrorist who was going to poison the river and kill all the fish.”
“Do you remember their names?”
“Of course. I got their business cards, too. They said they were from the FBI. Agent Mitch Bianchi and Agent Steven Donovan.”
Agent Smith had told her that a lot of people lie. She knew that. Her mama lied about a lot of things to her daddy. Mama didn’t think Lora knew, because she thought Lora was stupid, but Lora was smarter than that. She knew that her mama wasn’t at Book Club on Thursday nights.
“What did they say?”
“They asked if I remembered Mr. Maddox. I told them yes. He was in the bar. I told them the entire truth, except about the poison.”
“You did very good.”
“I did?”
“Yes. Lora, this is very important. If a woman comes to the bar who you don’t know, and starts asking about Mr. Maddox or a man named Frank Lowe, I want you to do the same thing to her that you did to Mr. Maddox. Can you do that for me?”
“Is she a terrorist too?”
“Yes. Her name is Claire O’Brien and she is very dangerous.”
“I promise. I can do that.”
“Thank you, Lora. There’s no one else we can trust with this very important assignment.”
She hung up and smiled, went upstairs, and closed her bedroom door. She locked it, even though she knew her daddy wouldn’t be home for a long time. She went to her closet, into the far back, behind all her shoeboxes. She pulled out the secret box where she kept things she didn’t want her daddy to find. She used to keep candy and the weekly magazines her daddy hated in the locked box. Now, the only thing inside was a large vial of poison.
Terrorists needed t
o die. And Lora knew how to do it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Greg Abrahamson was much harder to get an audience with than Claire thought. He was now a detective, and she left several messages trying to track him down.
She didn’t want to talk to him on the phone. She needed ten minutes in person. People were more forthright in person.
Claire took the opportunity while waiting for Abrahamson to return her call to stop by Rogan-Caruso and do more research, this time on Don Collier. He’d canceled his classes and seemed to have disappeared, according to Agent Donovan.
She typed in search parameters and pulled up far more detailed records of Collier than she could from home.
He’d earned tenure last year at Davis. Now eleven years as a professor, took pro bono cases, yada yada. Big do-gooder on the surface. His affiliation with the Western Innocence Project was noteworthy. He’d been written up in the paper many times. Philanthropist this, noble that. Blah, blah. But the more she read about his good work, the more she wondered if she was wrong about him. She dug deeper, using her PI license to do an employment background check.
Confirmed his tenure with UC Davis.
Six years with Madison, Bergstrom, Truedell amp; Smith. Three years with Johnson amp; Mather. One-year internship with Young, Blaine, Forsyth amp; Associates. Graduate USC law school, 1990. Graduate UNLV, 1987. Born 1964 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Her eye went back to Johnson amp; Mather. She recognized all three law firms, but that one. .
Her hand started shaking as she typed in another search.
George Prescott with Johnson amp; Mather was her father’s defense counsel. During the same time that Don Collier was on staff.
Don Collier had been responsible for reviewing her father’s case file for the Project, and rejected looking into it. Don Collier had been Oliver Maddox’s advisor. Had Maddox known that Collier had been with the same law firm that represented her father at trial? Claire had to assume he did. . he was a law student. He would definitely have known who represented her father. And if he was doing research, he would have figured out that Collier was there at the same time. That there was a huge conflict of interest. Collier knew more about the case than he’d admitted.
She dialed Randy Sizemore at the Western Innocence Project. It took several minutes, and a threat to come by and sit in the office until closing, before he came on the phone. “Ms. O’Brien, I don’t see how I can help you any more than I already have.”
“One question. Please.”
“One.”
“Do you allow the attorneys reviewing case files to assess cases they’ve worked on, or where one of their colleagues worked on it?”
“Of course not. That would defeat the purpose of our checks and balances system.”
“Do the attorneys know this?”
“Of course they do. They simply recuse themselves from reviewing the file. It’s not a problem. I have dozens of attorneys who review files for me.”
“Thank you.”
“May I ask why?”
“You told me that Don Collier reviewed State of California v. O’Brien and deemed it a just conviction.”
“Yes.”
“Collier worked for the same law firm as my father’s attorney. Johnson amp; Mather.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s not? Why?”
“Don would have told me.” Randy Sizemore didn’t sound so sure of himself.
“So you didn’t know.”
“Ms. O’Brien, I don’t know what you’ve found, but there must be a logical explanation.”
“Thank you for your time.” She hung up. She didn’t think that Sizemore had known about Collier, but since they were friends, she didn’t want him to tip Collier off that she was onto him.
“Claire?”
She jumped, turned, and saw her friend Jayne standing in the doorway.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“What are you doing?”
“Background check.”
Jayne frowned. “J.T. called me this morning about you. Asked me to monitor your database usage. He’s a little worried.”
Claire straightened. J. T. Caruso was one of the principals of her firm. “Worried? Why?”
“He didn’t say, but, well, I did a little research and I think he found out your dad is in Sacramento.”
Claire’s stomach dropped. “How could he know that? How did you know?”
“The FBI has a surveillance tape of your dad in Redding. And then there’s the buzz around the D.A.’s office that he’s surrendering today. J.T. knows people there. And in the FBI.”
“I’m not doing anything illegal,” Claire said.
“Just watch yourself, okay?”
Claire didn’t want to be fired, she loved her job, but her father’s innocence and safety were more important than her career.
“I’ll be careful.”
Jayne nodded. “If you need me for anything, you know how to reach me.”
“I have a question. A computer question.”
Jayne sat down on the corner of Claire’s desk. “What?”
“How could a digital file disappear?”
“You need to be more specific.”
“Don’t ask me why.”
“All right.”
“There’re two missing coroner’s reports. They are archived digitally and kept in a data warehouse. They are in the log, but not on the tape.”
“Is there other data on the tape?”
“I think so.”
“Well, if there isn’t, the tape was corrupted. Someone didn’t check once they burned the tape or the disk that the data was readable or even there. It happens all the time because people are lazy. But if there’s other data on the tape, then those files were never copied over.”
“You can’t just delete them?”
“Most data warehouses store data on unrewritable software, to prevent accidental deletion of data. There are a lot of protections in place. Climate controls, backups of all data, and-”
“Backups? Why would they need a backup?”
“Most good archive systems have a searchable system, then a condensed data file that has everything they have in the searchable system. So if there’s some big catastrophe, they can re-create the data files.”
“Is there a way to erase some files and not the others?”
“There’s a way to do everything, Claire. But it wouldn’t be easy. They’d need access and everything leaves a trail. It’s easier to leave a false trail than no trail. Unless you’re really good.”
“Like you.”
Jayne smiled.
“But if it was never there. .”
“If it was never there, you can’t do anything about it, but then there shouldn’t be a record of the data in the log. Unless the log was manually created, which sort of defeats the purpose of eliminating human error. If there’s a log of the files, and they’re just gone, then they’re still there.”
“Stop. You’ve confused me.”
“Anything deleted isn’t really deleted. Unless the tape is completely wiped-and there’re ways of doing that-then the data is still there. It’s just hidden.”
“Could you find it?”
“If it’s there, I can find it.”
“Would you do me a favor?”
“Depends.”
“I have a friend in the coroner’s office. He has access to the archives. He’s the one who discovered the files were missing. If I clear it with him, can you help him find the hidden files?”
“Between you and me, right?”
Claire pretended to zip her lip and toss away the key.
Jayne nodded. “Okay.”
Jeffrey Riordan arrived in Sacramento just after ten that morning. He’d had to suffer through traffic almost the entire drive from San Francisco-it had taken three hours when it should have taken two. He drove directly to Richie’s house. Chad Harper answered the door.
“Clue me in, Harper. What t
he fuck is going on? Hamilton has called me a half-dozen times in the last two days. It’s usually Richie who panics, not Judge Prozac.”
“You know everything, except the latest news. Hamilton is on the phone with Richie. The district attorney is meeting right now with O’Brien’s attorney to arrange terms of surrender.”
“Good! Get him back into custody. Take care of him once and for all.”
“There’s a little problem.”
“What?”
“The FBI is involved.”
“Shit.”
They didn’t have a mole in the FBI office. Local government, local law enforcement, D.A.’s office-within reach, they had at least one person under their thumb. But the FBI? None. And it irked Jeffrey. He had one, but only in Washington. That sure as hell wouldn’t help him here in Sacramento.
He started up the stairs, but Harper called him back. “I had a call from Isleton.”
“Isleton? Who the fuck cares about-” He stopped. “Dammit, I knew we should have offed Barney when he moved back to Sacramento.”
“Jeffrey, sometimes murder isn’t the best solution. Barney knew nothing of Lowe’s arrangement with Taverton. He went to L.A., bought a bar, lost a bunch of money, returned to his hometown. Nothing strange there. Killing him? No. Maddox didn’t learn anything from him. He’s not talking because he knows shit. If he knew anything, our snitch would have heard.”
“That retard?” Jeffrey snorted.
“At least she follows orders and keeps her mouth shut.”
“So who’s down there snooping this time?”
“Two federal agents.”
“Shit.”
“They’re only following up on Maddox’s death. I don’t think they will be a problem.”
“You don’t know that! This is spiraling out of control again, just like with Maddox. If we’d taken Barney out of the picture with Lowe, or even two years ago, I’d be far more comfortable.”
“Barney knows nothing. It’s too late to do anything-killing Barney would only raise suspicions, and if he knew what Frank Lowe did, he would have talked or asked for money.”
“Maybe, but somebody tipped off Maddox about Tip Barney being back in Sacramento.” Jeffrey hated not being in control.
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