Dead Lawyers Tell No Tales (14 page)

AS SHE DROVE NORTH
on Interstate 95 early Saturday morning, the day after Elias King’s federal court arraignment, Kerri couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Saturday mornings had become a bone of contention in the Reed household. Kerri normally had the weekends off and resented the fact that Landon was now expected to be at McNaughten and Clay on Saturday as if it were any other working day. That new schedule left Kerri to get up and take care of Simba and Maddie, sacrificing her one day to sleep in. It also meant that Landon’s father-daughter time with Maddie was gone—the latest sacrifice offered to the firm.

The issue had sparked an intense argument after Kerri’s phone call from Sean Phoenix Thursday evening. This could be her break, she had told Landon. She had to go to D.C. Saturday morning. She would be gone for a couple of days. Landon would have to watch Maddie.

Friday night, after the indictment, Landon asked her to postpone the trip. “I’m meeting Harry first thing in the morning,” he said.

“Then you better pack some crayons,” Kerri said. “Because I can’t take Maddie with
me
.”

They traded barbs for a few minutes, both convinced that they were the one always making the big sacrifice. They had fallen asleep last night facing opposite walls. Now, as she drove north in silence, her stomach clenched when she thought about the way they had treated Maddie like some kind of disease—“You take her!” “No, you take her!” In truth, she was a great kid and Kerri missed her already.

So maybe she was a horrible mother and wife, but Kerri still knew she couldn’t turn down this opportunity. Sean had thanked her for the news story she had done on Cipher Inc. after their previous interview. He’d said it was the first balanced story he had seen about his company in years. And then he had asked if she wanted to see the real inner workings of the place. This weekend he would be directing an international espionage assignment so confidential that she couldn’t release the story unless he gave her written permission. If she was interested, she should pack for a two-day trip and meet him at Cipher’s headquarters at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning.

If
she was interested?

There were hundreds of reporters just like Kerri, toiling away in small-time media markets, hoping one day to land the Big Story. They were all good-looking, eloquent, young, and ambitious. Those were the givens. They were also highly competitive and extraordinarily bright.

But none of that guaranteed success. The news business, Kerri had learned, was not a meritocracy. Survival of the fittest didn’t necessarily apply. They were all fit. They all would have made Darwin proud. But the ones who made it to the top needed a little luck. A local story that blew up on the national news. A confidential source nobody else had. Somebody in power who entrusted them with an exclusive.

Kerri could sense that this was her time. As she sped north in the early morning darkness, she worked hard to convince herself that it wasn’t just about her career. She wanted this for her family, too. Landon was work
ing at McNaughten and Clay because he had no other options in the Hampton Roads market. But there were better firms out there in D.C.—which also happened to be the Holy Grail for television reporters.

As she took the bypass around Richmond, her melancholy thoughts about family faded and she started feeling some unmitigated excitement about the day ahead. She knew there was more to Cipher Inc. than she had previously reported. More to Cipher than
anyone
had reported. How many people got to see the inner workings of an international espionage operation?

At the same time, she didn’t quite trust Sean Phoenix. He was, according to all reports, a notorious ladies’ man. The comparisons to James Bond reached beyond the fact that they were both spies. But Kerri was a big girl. When it came to men, she could handle herself.

It was 6 a.m. In another hour, Maddie would wake up, and she and Landon would fix chocolate-chip pancakes before heading to the office. They would spend the day together in Virginia Beach. Meanwhile, for all Kerri knew, by the time the sun set on this day she could be on the other side of the world.

///

Harry McNaughten greeted Landon with a frown when he saw Maddie trailing in her dad’s wake.

“Hey, Mr. Harry!” she said. “You want to watch a movie with me? Or play hide-and-seek?”

“Sorry,” Harry said dourly. “I’ve got lots of work to do. And so does your dad.”

“Why do you have so many whiskers?” Maddie asked.

Landon had noticed that Harry didn’t shave on Saturday mornings and that his gray stubble grew in at an alarmingly fast pace. But leave it to Maddie to ask about it.

“Men have whiskers,” Harry said. And then he turned to Landon. “When you get her settled, I’ve got a boatload of work for you on the King case.”

Landon reached down and picked Maddie up. It was always easier to control kids when you were carting them around. “Come on, girlfriend, let’s get you set up in Daddy’s office.”

Once Maddie was out of the way, Harry morphed into mentor mode. Landon had seen it a few times on Saturday mornings, when there was less time pressure than during the week. Harry would act like Socrates, quizzing his young pupil and dropping pearls of wisdom here and there. Along, of course, with a few choice words about the harsh realities of life as a criminal-defense lawyer.

“How do you think we should handle the preliminary hearing in state court?” Harry asked.

Landon hadn’t really thought about it. He knew that preliminary hearings were generally used by defense lawyers for discovery—to learn as much as possible about the prosecution’s case while showing almost nothing about their own case. He also knew that judges generally had no problem finding probable cause so the case could proceed forward, especially on evidence as strong as the General had here. He said as much to Harry and suggested that he and Harry should probably not even call any witnesses, to avoid tipping their hand.

“It’s a trick question,” Harry said, which pretty much went without saying because almost all of Harry’s questions were trick questions. “We’re going to waive the prelim. Know why?”

“I don’t have the foggiest idea.”

“Because we’ve got to try the state case before the federal case. It’s our best chance of winning, and we can’t afford to have Elias sitting there at our defense table having already been convicted of insider trading. That’s why we fast-track the state case and stall the Feds.”

“Daddy!” It was Maddie calling from down the hall.

Landon grimaced. “Be right back,” he said.

A few minutes later, with Maddie’s little crisis resolved, Landon was back in Harry’s office. This time the quiz focused on the best defense for Elias King.

“Lack of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Landon said.
“Circumstantial evidence. All those things you told me about how a prosecutor would know better than to leave this trail of evidence. Fingerprints can be preserved underwater. Drugs show up in hair testing. That type of thing.”

Harry grunted, which Landon took as a
not bad
grade. “Then who did it?” he asked.

“We don’t have to prove that,” Landon countered. “Could have been a lot of people.”

He hadn’t finished his answer before Harry was shaking his head. “No, no,” Harry said. “That’s what they teach you in law school.” He rubbed his hands over his face and back through his hair.

“If we’re going to claim some other guy did it, we’d darn well better tell them who did it and how they did it, and we’d better have a darn good motive.”

There were only two possibilities, Harry said: somebody set Elias up, or Julia King did it. And if Julia King did it, she would have needed help disposing of the body.

“We’re going to talk a lot about a setup in the first part of the case,” Harry said. “Starting with opening statements. ‘Did the prosecution even consider the fact that my client might have been framed? Do you know how many drug dealers and murderers would love to see Elias King spend the rest of his life behind bars?’ You see, Landon, that gives us a chance to highlight Elias’s good side—to talk about what he did as a prosecutor. But then, after the prosecution has presented its case and shown all the reasons it couldn’t have been a setup, we spring a surprise.”

Harry leaned back, pleased with his own brilliance. His elbows rested on the arms of his chair, his hands tented. “The wife did it. Sure, she needed someone to help dispose of the body. May have been Jake. May have even been Elias. But he’s not on trial for accessory after the fact.”

Harry motioned with a hand, slipping into closing-argument mode. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and all that stuff.” He grinned a little. “Trust me, Landon, I know.”

Landon didn’t like where this was headed. Too many holes. If Elias
was involved in disposing of the body, he wouldn’t have chucked it off the high-rise bridge. He wouldn’t have stuffed it in a bag with weights containing his own fingerprints. And Landon certainly couldn’t see Jake helping his mom dispose of the body. He just wasn’t that kind of kid.

“You know why it’s got to be Julia rather than an attempt by somebody to frame him?” Harry asked.

“No. I actually think that somebody framing Elias makes more sense.”

“Then answer this,” Harry said. “Why would somebody who was trying to set up Elias kill Erica? Whoever killed Erica knew about her meeting with the Feds the next day—that couldn’t have been a coincidence. And if they knew about that, they would have known that if Erica stayed alive, Elias would be spending the rest of his life in a federal pen for insider trading. Why would somebody who wanted to frame Elias kill the one witness who could have helped put him away for life?”

Landon thought about this for a second and couldn’t come up with an answer. Help came from an unexpected source.

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” Maddie said, standing in the doorway. Landon wondered how long she had been there.

“Okay,” he said, and shrugged at Harry.

An hour later, after Landon had scolded Maddie twice for running up and down the hall, Rachel Strach came upstairs and squealed with delight when she saw Maddie. She must have noticed the frazzled look on Landon’s face, and she offered to take Maddie off his hands for a few hours.

“Where are you going?” Landon asked.

“Shopping. Girls always go shopping.”

Landon protested a little—“You don’t have to do that”—but didn’t put up too much of a fight because he was worried that he might actually win. He made Maddie promise to behave and not ask for anything. Then he slipped Rachel twenty dollars so she could reward Maddie for good behavior.

As the two girls walked toward the stairwell, he saw Rachel push a strand of hair back behind Maddie’s ear. Earlier that morning, Landon
had tried to fix Maddie’s hair the way Kerri did, in a cute little ponytail that sat on top of her head and flopped around. But he had been wholly unsuccessful. The ponytail hadn’t stayed in place, and at the moment her hair looked like a rat’s nest with a rubber band hidden in there someplace.

He heard Rachel whisper to Maddie, just loud enough to be overheard by Landon, “What did your daddy do to your hair?”

Rachel glanced back at Landon, and he shook his head. That woman deserved better than Brent Benedict, he thought.

KERRI ARRIVED
at Cipher’s Manassas facility thirty minutes ahead of schedule and endured the same routine as before. The unsmiling guard at the gate popped her trunk and checked under the car with his mirror. He asked three new questions—this time about her childhood pet, her college major, and the name of her prom date.

The questions made her realize that Cipher Inc. wasn’t just snooping around the Internet gathering publicly available information about her. Somebody was digging deep. Querying friends or former teachers or maybe even family. She felt like telling the guard it was none of his business, but she knew she would end up kicking herself all the way back to Virginia Beach.

She drove down the tree-lined asphalt road and waved at a few of the security cameras. She decided to leave her overnight bag in the car but took her iPhone and digital recorder into the building. The devices were promptly confiscated at the front desk, where the guards wanded her and then called Sean Phoenix’s office. Fifteen minutes later, he stepped off the elevator.

They chatted on the way to his office about nothing in particular. He apologized for giving her such short notice for this adventure and asked how Landon was enjoying his work at McNaughten and Clay. When they arrived at Sean’s office, he offered her a seat at the small table in the corner, closed the door, and took a seat across from her.

“Kerri, I’ve never done this before,” he began. “We’ve never brought a journalist on the inside like this.” His voice was soft and level, almost confessional, and his intense, steel-blue eyes never left hers. “There are things we do in the service of our country that nobody else knows about. Those operations must remain secret. There are lives at stake. Big national-security interests. Those types of things.”

He paused, apparently searching for the right words. “Sometimes, we have to play a little fast and loose with the truth. We are, after all, an intelligence-gathering firm. You can’t do that without inside sources, and those sources require some elaborate cover. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Actually, Kerri wasn’t sure, but she nodded anyway. Sean hadn’t said anything of consequence, but the possibilities were tantalizing. She knew she had made the right call by coming here today.

“Everything you are about to see and hear from this point forward is confidential and off the record until and unless I say otherwise. Is that agreed?” Sean asked.

He knew the media lingo. And she knew she wouldn’t get another word out of him without agreeing to the request. “Of course.”

“The other executives in our company who know about this think I’ve lost my mind. No offense, but they’ve spent their entire lives not trusting people, and they don’t like the idea of an embedded journalist—even one I believe we can trust.”

“I’ve never burned a source,” Kerri said. “Never violated a promise of confidentiality. Never broadcast something that a source said was off the record. You won’t be the first.”

“I know all that,” Sean said. “That’s why you’re here.”

He leaned forward and reminded her again of their terms. Everything
she saw in the next few days had to remain confidential, even from her husband. She couldn’t broadcast a story about these events or even allude to them in another story without Sean’s express written permission. “There’s a substantial chance you might never get to tell the world what you’re going to see,” Sean said.

“I understand that.”

“But if something breaks bad down the line and we have to go public with the types of things we have been doing for the U.S. government, I want a fair and respected reporter to be able to say that she was there and witnessed this mission. That’s why we called you.”

“Because you couldn’t find anybody fair and respected?”

Sean gave her a courtesy smile, which quickly vanished. He took himself, and his work, pretty seriously.

“In many respects, today will be pretty boring. We’re going to be sitting around for hours, waiting and planning—all for thirty minutes of action. But that’s what our company does. Plan for months, even years, so that thirty minutes of life-changing events will go exactly as scripted. And I can promise you this—what you see in those thirty minutes will be worth the wait. You won’t be able to take any notes or record anything, but we’ll have everything well documented so that if you ever do have to run this story, you’ll be able to reproduce everything you see and hear today.”

Sean’s cell phone rang and he answered it. He said, “Excuse me,” to Kerri and paced around his office as he talked cryptically on the phone about some internal logistical matter. When he finished the call, he apologized and sat back down. “We’ve got to get going in a few minutes, so let me give you a quick briefing.”

He explained how Cipher Inc. had been contacted by a representative of the State Department to see if Cipher operatives could spring an Iranian pastor named Seyyed Hassan from prison so that he and his family could escape that country and be provided political asylum. Whether the operation succeeded or failed, the U.S. government wanted no ties to it.

Kerri knew that the president was taking a lot of heat for the situation. Hassan had been sentenced to death for apostasy based on his conversion from Islam to Christianity. People wanted the U.S. to act, and the president had issued some strong statements condemning Iran for its lack of adherence to “internationally recognized standards of human rights and religious freedom.” But strong words had not silenced the president’s critics.

“Our job is to extricate this pastor from prison so he can seek asylum in Great Britain,” Sean explained. “If we fail and our operatives are captured, the U.S. will disavow any knowledge of the operation.”

Kerri felt the type of adrenaline surge that made journalism so addictive. This was a reporter’s dream! She had been speculating about some potentially explosive stories during her trip to D.C., but this story exceeded even her wildest expectations.

And yet, unless something changed, she might never be able to go public with the biggest story she would ever cover.

“You’ve probably got a thousand questions, but most of those will be answered in time,” Sean said. “For now, we need to get down to the situation room.”