Judgment

by Joseph Finder

  “What kind of problem?”

  “The IP address doesn’t trace back to the law firm. It traces back to G Suite. Google. Gmail for business.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means someone is smart. They take precautions. They don’t use exchange server. The system is stovepiped.”

  That was gobbledygook to her. “Why is that a problem?”

  “Usually you can send phishing e-mail to anyone on company’s network, and you’re in everywhere. But the way the Miller and Payson network is set up, every employee has separate e-mail container. Hosted internally at company. No internal exchange server.”

  “Does that mean you can’t do it?”

  He shook his head. “It means if you want to get into this man’s e-mail, you have to send him something directly. Not anyone else. Just him. Every e-mail account is in its own silo. So it becomes social engineering problem. If you want this Noah’s e-mail, you have to send him e-mail that he will open. Some people are very suspicious and they don’t click on anything unless it’s from someone they know.”

  “He knows me.”

  “Ah. Maybe this is possible, then. But is not cheap.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  He told her. It was actually less than she was expecting. Hersh had said it wasn’t complicated, that all the software could be downloaded, prefab.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You can send him an e-mail and he will open?”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  “He has to download PDF. You think he will do this?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Will he click on link you send him?”

  “I don’t know. He’s more likely to open a PDF, but I may need to prepare the ground first. I have an idea for that.”

  “Okay. You write e-mail with attached PDF. This is payload.”

  “The payload.”

  “Keystroke logger. Credential harvester. It comes preloaded with the Kali Linux social engineering tool kit.”

  Juliana wasn’t totally ignorant about computer stuff, even though her son probably knew a thousand times more than she did. She wanted to understand what was about to happen. “A ‘credential harvester’ records everything he types?”

  “Right. It creates its own internal mail server on his computer and sends keystrokes in file to location we specify. Passwords and everything.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “An e-mail and the document you’re going to send as an attachment. I’ll embed the payload in the PDF.”

  “I can get you something tomorrow.” She looked at her watch. She had to get going. “But can you assure me that this will be undetectable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Absolutely?”

  “Yes,” Sasha said. “One more thing. I need payment in cash.”

  44

  On her way to Jake’s school, she spotted an ATM on Comm. Ave. She pulled over and withdrew the maximum, four hundred dollars, and then used a second bank card to withdraw another two hundred. She got to the school a few minutes late. Signs pointed parents in the direction of the auditorium.

  Duncan had saved her a seat next to him. They nodded to each other as she took her seat.

  The head of the school, Dr. Cole, was speaking, an introductory welcome. “A place devoted to diversity, equality, and inclusion,” she was saying in her deep contralto.

  She saw, under Duncan’s seat, a laptop bag. It was a Macbook Air that he hadn’t used in four or five years, but it still worked. She caught his eye, mouthed, Thanks.

  He nodded, didn’t smile. He handed her a sheet of paper with their names on it that listed the classrooms they were to visit this evening and the times.

  “A safe space for everyone,” Dr. Cole said. “An atmosphere of mutual respect.”

  Then finally the headmistress was finished, and parents were getting up out of their seats, some men in suits and neckties, others in windbreakers. The auditorium was filled with voices. Juliana and Duncan remained seated, talking to each other quietly, each looking straight ahead. It could not have been more awkward.

  “Did they take anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “They were searching for, like, two hours.”

  “File cabinets and the like?”

  “I don’t know what the hell they were hoping to find, but they sure as hell didn’t find it. This about the death of that Argentinian sleazebag?”

  “Yes.” She’d filled him in on everything, how she’d been blackmailed and her decision to hire a PI rather than give in to their demands.

  “What are they looking for?”

  “They want to know if I communicated with the guy. If I had a relationship with him.” She continued to stare straight ahead as she talked, at the now-empty stage. She couldn’t look at him.

  “What, they think they have to take the computer to read the e-mail? They do all that stuff remotely now.”

  “I think it was a display.”

  “Of?”

  “Like an alpha gorilla’s display of dominance.”

  “Who’s the gorilla?” he asked.

  “Kent Yarnell.”

  Duncan smiled unpleasantly. “How did that asshole get involved in this?”

  “The DA kicked the death investigation up to the AG’s office because it tangentially involves a judge.”

  “How much do they know?” he asked.

  “About me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not much. But Yarnell must think there’s blood in the water.”

  “Maybe because there is blood in the water.”

  “They can’t prove I had a . . . connection to this guy.” A long silence passed between them. Then she said, “Listen. I think we should go back to Dr. Ross.” Helen Ross was a therapist who did couples counseling. She was good, but Duncan didn’t like her. He thought she took Juliana’s side far too often, a kind of female-solidarity thing.

  “I’d see somebody else. Not her.” He got to his feet, and she did too. A woman took her forearm—Juliana smelled Jo Malone—and said excitedly, “You look fantastic.”

  “Hey, Suz.” Susan and Barry Marshall were both friends of theirs. They both worked at Fidelity and had a son in Jake’s class he didn’t like, which was a little awkward. She gave Susan a hug. The husbands shook hands. They had a superficial friendship based entirely on basketball.

  “Are you still seeing that trainer?”

  “No time,” Juliana said.

  “Well, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

  “Thanks.” Juliana couldn’t resist giving Duncan a quick look. He gave a smile that left out his eyes. He’d told her he wasn’t near ready to let her back in the house. It both stung and pissed her off, that he got to say who lived in their house. A house they owned jointly, the house she loved and had found and insisted they buy. On the other hand, she could only imagine how Duncan was feeling about her, the resentment he was accumulating the way a bear stores up on food before he hibernates. And there they were, acting like a happily married couple for the sake of appearances.

  “We should have dinner!” Susan said.

  Just then, Juliana’s phone rang: Hersh. She excused herself and walked off to a dark corridor where the school administration’s offices were located, all of them closed. “Hi,” she said.

  “The janissary,” Hersh said.

  “Eugene Brod, right?”

  “Right. I followed him home from work this afternoon, but he made a detour before going home. He went to the Mandarin Hotel, went right up to someone’s suite there.”

  “Whose?”

  “I don’t know. No luck on that yet. But there were a couple of bodyguards sitting outside the hotel suite, talking to each other in Russian.”

 
* * *

  —

  Martie Connolly was lying on her sofa reading Jane Austen when Juliana returned. Martie gave her a wave. “How was parents’ night?”

  “Fine. His English teacher is pretty great. I’d even be willing to read All Quiet on the Western Front again if I had a teacher like that. Too bad Jake’s not doing the homework.”

  “So what is he doing?”

  “Drugs, I think. I don’t want to talk about it. Hey, Kent Yarnell is on the warpath.”

  “How so?”

  She told Martie about the search warrants.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Martie said, sitting up and putting the book down. “That’s harassment.”

  “That’s what I think.” For a few seconds she was quiet, contemplating. She and Martie were dear friends who trusted each other completely. It wasn’t right for her to hold back.

  She told her about her meeting with the hacker.

  When Juliana finished, Martie said softly, “Well, now I’m starting to worry.”

  “About . . . ?”

  “I think you’ve just crossed a line. With hackers and whatnot.”

  “You do?”

  Martie nodded. She looked sad.

  She didn’t like hearing it put that way, but she knew Martie was right. She’d crossed the border into some foreign country where the rules were different. Where she was different. What she was doing, what she was willing to do. How far she was willing to go.

  But it hadn’t just happened. She’d crossed that border the night she met Matías.

  “You know,” Martie said, “you stare too long into the abyss . . . Point is, honey, you go down this path and they’ve done what they wanted to do. They’ve corrupted you. Turned you into an ends-justify-the-means type.”

  “It’s not like I’ve got a lot of choices,” Juliana said.

  “Honey.” She shook her head slowly, a disappointed woman. “Do you really think the law is for other people?”

  * * *

  —

  In the guest bedroom later that night, she took out Duncan’s old laptop and turned it on. While it was booting up, she noticed the knife in her purse. She took it out, grasping it in her right hand, feeling its weight. Gingerly she pressed the button, and the blade shot out the front with surprising force. She touched the blade, amazed at how sharp it was. It glinted. Then she pulled at the nub in the handle and retracted the blade. A dangerous instrument. She was scared of the thing. She wondered whether she’d ever have occasion to use it, whether she’d need it, whether she’d ever have the courage.

  It took her a few minutes to get onto Martie’s Wi-Fi—password certiorari—and then she checked her e-mail. She’d heard back from an old friend from Albany giving her the thumbs-up on the favor she was asking.

  She was breaking the law, and she knew it. She was a Superior Court judge who was about to commit a crime, paying for a sketchy computer hacker to try to break into someone’s e-mail. That wasn’t much different from hiring a burglar to break into someone’s house. If she was caught, that would be the end of her judgeship, and that was the least of it. But if she didn’t do it, she knew the blackmail wouldn’t end. Her life wouldn’t be hers anymore.

  And she’d gone too far to stop now.

  45

  In the morning, shortly after she got to her lobby, she picked up the phone and called Noah Miller’s office. It wasn’t quite eight thirty. His secretary put her right through. Of course he was in already.

  “Judge Brody,” he said, picking up. “This is twice in a month. To what do I owe the good fortune?”

  “I’m glad I ran into you,” she said. “Your name came up in an interesting conversation I had recently with an old sorority pal of mine.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I had dinner at Nine Park with my old Sigma Kappa sister Joan, who was visiting from Springfield. So Joan runs a state pension fund, I’m sure you haven’t heard of it, the Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System, out of Springfield? Anyway, it’s this enormous fund, assets of almost two hundred billion dollars or something. She’s the chief investment officer.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of it.” He sounded suddenly alert.

  “Joan’s just not happy with their legal representation, especially the compliance part. You do compliance work, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Anyway, Noah, I told her I really shouldn’t make any recommendations, given my position, but I said the conversation starts with Noah Miller.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Oh, it’s the truth. Nothing but the best for Joan, I figure.”

  “I’m sure we can do better for your friend—what’s her name?”

  “I’ll send you her bio and CV. The e-mail address on your website?”

  “Right.”

  Her sorority sister, Joan Pollock, was indeed the chief investment officer at a huge pension fund in Springfield, Massachusetts. It wasn’t true that Joan was dissatisfied with her legal representation, but she was willing to pretend so for one phone conversation.

  On the phone last night she’d told Joan, “Hey, this is complicated, but you’re gonna get a call from Noah Miller—yeah, that Noah Miller. I told him that your fund might be interested in pursuing new legal representation. Just a possibility. So just take the call, hear him out, and say you need to confer with your colleagues. Like that. And that’s the end of the road.”

  “What, are you pranking the guy?”

  “No. It’s actually kind of a long story. Let’s have drinks in a week or two and I’ll fill you in. Meanwhile, I owe you big time.”

  Juliana looked at her watch—twenty minutes until the morning trial began. She turned her attention to other matters for a bit—another decision, in a long queue, that needed more work—and after a respectable amount of time, she wrote a brief e-mail to Noah Miller, attaching the PDF that Sasha the hacker had prepared. The payload, he called it.

  There was no chance in the world that Noah wouldn’t download and open the attachment. He would probably do it immediately, the moment he saw her e-mail. It would be irresistible. Greed was fairly predictable.

  A few minutes later, she glanced at her watch, then stood up and put on her robe.

  As she was about to enter the courtroom, her phone made an unfamiliar sound, a sort of outer-spacey chime.

  A WhatsApp text. Sasha had instructed her to install the secure messaging app on her phone.

  She read the text.

  Her heart started thudding.

  It was from Sasha.

  We’re in.

  * * *

  —

  During a recess, she was back in her chambers when there came a knock on her door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Her clerk, Kaitlyn, entered, holding a thick manila envelope. “Judge, plaintiff in the Wheelz case just asked for an emergency hearing.”

  “Emergency?”

  Kaitlyn held aloft the envelope as if it were the answer. “This is unbelievable. This is revenge porn.”

  “Revenge porn? What are you talking about?”

  “Take a look.”

  She handed Juliana the envelope. It was from Craft & Connors, the firm that represented Rachel Meyers, the plaintiff. Juliana slid a hefty sheaf of papers out onto her desk.

  The first thing that caught her eye was a photograph of a nude young woman. You could tell right away who it was: Rachel Meyers.

  Underneath was another nude photo, with Rachel in a different position, but her face still visible. Then came printouts of text messages between Rachel and someone named Jason.

  She read one page:

  RachelMeyers: then you take me from behind or hold me down while you tease me.

  JasonCooke: I’m thrusting into you and you scream my name and you’re comin
g so hard.

  The ones that followed were more explicit.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  “Jason Cooke was her longtime boyfriend, but I think they’re broken up,” Kaitlyn said. “Most of those texts are between her and Jason. Some are texts she sent on Tinder. Sent on her personal account—but on the laptop Wheelz gave her for work.”

  “So it’s company property. Isn’t it kind of sloppy of her to leave all that on a work computer?”

  “She wiped the disk. But the Wheelz legal team hired a digital forensic expert to recover all the deleted files.”

  “And turned it over for what reason?”

  “Plaintiff asked for all correspondence to and from, and mentioning, Rachel Meyers.”

  “What the hell?” she said again.

  “You see what’s going on? They’re trying to slut-shame her.”

  Juliana nodded. It was a threat. A way to pressure Rachel Meyers to settle. By handing those highly personal, embarrassing files over to their opponent, Wheelz’s attorney was implicitly threatening her: Who knows, maybe something’ll leak to The Boston Globe or get filed as an exhibit to a motion. One way or another, it’ll get out there. Settle, or the world would see the most personal details about Rachel Meyers’s sex life.

  Meyers had refused to sign a confidentiality agreement, because she wanted the world to see what had happened to her at Wheelz.

  So now Wheelz was exacting its revenge.

  You won’t sign a confidentiality agreement, they were saying, fine. But it’s going to cost you big time.

  You will be completely and utterly shamed and humiliated before the world.

  46

  Juliana called both sides into her courtroom for the emergency hearing. Rachel Meyers was seated in the second row, wearing a green suit over a white blouse. Unusual for the client to come to motions, but it was her right. Her face was tight, and she looked exhausted. There were purple circles under her eyes. The poor woman. The trial hadn’t even begun.

  “All right,” Juliana said, “I’ve had the chance to read the papers. Plaintiff, what’s the issue here?”