Guilty Minds

“Who’s it up to, then?”

“Sounds like her boss is the one who’s going to make the decision on whether to run with it or kill it.”

“Who’s her boss?”

“A bastard named Julian Gunn. He’s the editor in chief of Slander Sheet. Supposed to be a real asshole. He’ll run whatever makes the page views blow up.”

“Even if it discredits his own website?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t want to knowingly trash his own creation by breaking a ‘news’ story that’s going to turn out to be false.”

“Right.”

“But he won’t have a problem running a sleazy story that can’t ever quite be disproven. Like those adhesive stickers that always leave a gummy trace, no matter how hard you scrape.”

“So what does Mandy Seeger think, you’re flat-out lying to her?”

“She must truly believe I’m trying to sell them a crock. That we’ve, I don’t know, manipulated the hotel’s computer system. Deleted the digital records.”

She laughed. “I’d believe it. I’ve seen it done. I know how to do it.”

I was quiet for a few seconds. Was it possible? “You think someone might have done just that? Hacked into the hotel’s property management system to make it look like the justice never stayed there?”

“Someone working for the justice?”

“Right.”

She shook her head. “That’s nutty. If you’re going to mess around with the hotel’s property management system, why not delete the whole guest record? So it looks like no one named Jeremiah Claflin ever checked into the hotel?”

“Fair point.”

“You don’t seriously think that, right?”

“I consider all options. But no, I don’t seriously think that.”

“Good.”

“But the fact remains that somebody made off with my laptop and my iPhone, and I don’t think that happens very often inside the Supreme Court building. Someone was very interested in who I am and what I’m up to. Which means that somebody was tailing me.”

“That doesn’t entirely surprise me. The stakes are huge. We’re talking the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Whoever’s setting this up wants to make sure no one pulls it down. Who was following Kayla Pitts?”

I took the wallet from my back pocket that I’d grabbed from the guy whose balls I’d kicked. “An ex-DC cop named Curtis Schmidt.”

“You got his phone, too, right?”

“Right,” I said, and I took that out and handed it to her.

“Cheapo burner piece of crap,” she said, turning it over. “Disposable phone you buy at Costco, comes with a prepaid half hour of phone time or whatever. You think this ex-cop is protecting her, or spying on her?”

“My gut says he’s protecting her. Making sure nothing happens. They’re going to need her.”

“You mean, to do interviews and such.”

I nodded. “That girl was frightened. Like she’s signed on to do something she wishes she never had.”

“Whether she serviced Claflin or not, she’s about to face an avalanche of publicity, and it will not be fun.”

“Whether she slept with him or not?” I said. “She didn’t. It didn’t happen. That I’m sure of.”

“If you say so. When it comes to men and their sex drives, as far as I’m concerned all bets are off. Anything’s possible. I don’t care if you’re the president or the pope.”

“Fair enough. But it never happened.”

“Okay.” She held up the flip phone. “The call history on this thing will be very illuminating.”

“He only called one number.”

“His boss, I’m betting.”

“No doubt.”

“So what do you want to do with it? Are you going to call it? Call the boss?”

“First I want to find out whose number it is.”

“You already tried?”

I nodded. I’d tried the usual databases-Skip Smasher, Tracers Info, TLOxp, IRBsearch-where you can look up mobile phone numbers and find who owns them. All I learned was what I already knew, that it was a prepaid phone. Unregistered. No name associated with it. “It’s a drop phone, that’s all.”

“What about Montello?”

Frank Montello was an “information broker” who lived and worked in suburban Maryland. Not a friend, but a valuable contact. I didn’t know exactly how he practiced his dark arts. I just knew that if I needed to find an unlisted phone number or someone’s home address, and I’d had no luck with the traditional databases, he was the guy I’d reach out to. He knew how to dig deep. He could find out whether someone had had psychiatric problems or was an alcoholic. He could get anyone’s birth certificate or motor vehicle records. I used to find it creepy how much he could find out for me, but I’d gotten jaded. In any case, he was extremely expensive, and sort of unpleasant to deal with. He was usually overworked and slow. I used him selectively and reluctantly.

“He came up empty, but I asked him to keep working on it.”

The doorbell rang, and I opened the door for room service. The woman rolled in a warming cart and began to set up my dinner. The porterhouse looked perfectly cooked. I thanked her, tipped her, and she left.

“You realize I scarfed down pizza at the airport,” Dorothy said, “while you’re dining out on steak.”

“Happy to split it with you. I don’t need the whole thing.”

“I’m not hungry. Just giving you a hard time.”