Guilty Minds

“Sure. There’s always some website that’ll publish anything. But the Claflin story hasn’t been picked up by the mainstream media yet. Meaning it hasn’t been validated. That usually takes a while.”

Gideon tilted his head like a Jack Russell Terrier listening to his master’s voice. “I hope you’re right. Go on.”

“You see, right now it exists only on the Internet. As long as it stays an Internet-only story-Slander Sheet, Gawker, TMZ, Drudge, Vice, whatever-it’s just gossip. It’s not news. It doesn’t become permanent until it’s validated by the old ‘legacy’ media. The mainstream media. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. The NBC evening news, NPR, CNN. At that point it’s written in ink. It’s permanent.”

“And when does that happen?”

“You probably know better than me. I don’t know the exact timing. Doesn’t the Times have a morning news meeting or whatever?”

Gideon looked at his watch. “At ten o’clock this morning, The New York Times has their front-page meeting.”

“There you go. Someone’s going to mention the rumor about Claflin and a call girl. They’re not going to ignore it.”

“No, probably not.”

“Who runs the meeting? There’s always one person. It’s not a democracy.”

“The executive editor. I’ve met him.”

“Okay, so the editor’s going to ask, ‘Who else is running with it?’ What they really want to know is, Is anybody else in the mainstream media covering it? Any of the other big dogs? But it’s not going to be any of them. Not this fast. Not in two and a half hours.”

“But this thing’s going to spread like gonorrhea.”

“No doubt. It’ll be picked up first by BuzzFeed or Drudge or TMZ. But that’s not enough to push it over the line into the mainstream. So maybe the Times assigns a couple of reporters to poke around the Slander Sheet story, see if there’s any solid evidence there.”

“But it’s also going to be picked up by some of the more respectable websites like Politico and Roll Call.”

“Maybe. But not the big dogs. Not yet. Does The New York Times have another front-page meeting today?”

“At four-thirty.”

“That’s the one we have to worry about. Four-thirty. Enough time will have gone by that they can at least do a piece about the reaction to this rumor.”

“You’re right. Four-thirty.”

“That’s nine hours from now. Not much time.” I got to my feet. “So what are we doing, sitting here, talking? Dorothy, come on. We’ve got work to do.”

22

Gideon gave us a conference room to use.

It was like every other office conference room I’d ever seen, only nicer. There was a long, coffin-shaped table, made of mahogany. Around it were arrayed high-backed chairs that seemed to be upholstered in leather. Starfishlike speakerphones were placed every four seats or so. Down one wall ran a long credenza.

Dorothy pushed a button somewhere, and a panel on the far wall slid away, revealing a large video projection screen. She hooked up her laptop to some port built into the table-she worked without hesitation, seeming to know what she was doing-and the bright red Slander Sheet logo came up on the screen.

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE IN CALL GIRL SCANDAL remained number 1 in the most viewed column. She clicked around to TMZ. The Claflin story had been picked up. The headline read:

UH-OH

DISORDER IN THE COURT

TOP JUDGE SCREWS AROUND

“Shit,” I said.

“That took almost an hour,” Dorothy said. “Longer than I expected. I have a feeling it’s just going to accelerate from here.”

She quickly went through a series of websites-OK! Magazine, RadarOnline.com, Star Magazine, National Enquirer, PopSugar, ETonline-and found nothing. She entered “Jeremiah Claflin” into Google and pulled up the British tabloid The Daily Mail.

“It’s here, too,” she said. “Does this count as a news site?”

“Not even close. But it’s on the border between gossip and real news. All right, look. We have an ironclad alibi we can’t use. So let’s focus on Kayla.”

“Nick, you’ve already shown that neither of them could have been at the Hotel Monroe. What more do you think we’re going to get?”

“Absence of proof isn’t proof of absence. We need to focus on proving a positive, not proving a negative. We already know Kayla wasn’t at the Monroe on those three nights. You have a backdoor into the Lily Schuyler website. See if she had any other clients those nights.”

“Nothing. I already checked.”

“Well, she must have been somewhere. What about her Facebook page?”

“That was the first place I looked. Nothing there either. I’ve looked on Tumblr and Pinterest and everywhere I can think of, and nothing. But I have an idea.”

I looked at her.

“You know how you can post a picture on Facebook and it auto-suggests the names of the people in the picture?”

“You know I don’t have a Facebook account.”