Inadvertent Disclosure (14 page)

It was time. He thumbed through
his contacts list and highlighted Molly Dougherty’s name. He selected her
number at the Bureau and waited for the call to connect.

“Dougherty. Anti-terrorism.”

“Molly, it’s Leo.”

“Leo Connelly,” she said,
drawing out his name the way she always did. “Are you calling for business or
pleasure?”

“A favor.”

“Hit me. Heaven knows I owe
you.”

“Can you tell me anything about
a Daniel J. McAllister, III, or an outfit that goes by PORE? Stands for
Protecting Our Resources and the Earth.”

“Cute,” she remarked.

He could hear her fingers
flying over her keyboard, calling up the information while they chatted.

“How’ve you been, Molls? Still
a fan of red wine?”

“Our weekend in Napa got me
hooked, Leo. I’m thinking about investing in a vineyard in Virginia.”

He ignored the purr that had
crept into her voice.

“That seems like a lifetime
ago.”

“Mmm-hmm. Oh, wait.” She
snapped out of her reminiscing and was all business when she said, “Sorry, Leo.
No can do.”

“Pardon?”

“I can’t tell you anything
about that particular case.”

“So there is a case?”

“Knock it off, Leo. If I could
help you, I would, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She’d already told him all he
was going to get: there was an active file on either McAllister or PORE and the
domestic anti-terrorism unit could access it.

“I got it. Thanks anyway,
Molly. Send me a bottle of your first vintage when you become a vintner, okay?”

She laughed. “Sure, so you can
share it with your little attorney, huh?”

He blushed. News of his
relationship was making the rounds.

When she spoke again, her tone
was serious.

“And, Leo, whatever you’re involved
in, be careful.”

CHAPTER 21

Sasha and Deputy Russell peered
into the open evidence locker, which to Sasha’s disappointment looked to be no
different than a wall locker at any gym, skating rink, or day spa.

She checked the Sheriff's
Office inventory sheet that detailed Judge Paulson's personal effects.
Set
of keys
was on the list as item number 3, right between number 2,
men's
watch, silver
, and number 4,
dictaphone
.

"Gloria's sure this is the
judge's set and not a copy?" Russell asked, waving the keys in the air.

"She's sure."

"No one could have taken
them from this evidence locker. Sheriff Stickley and I are the only ones with
access."

"And yet, here they
are."

Sasha and Gloria had agreed in
the kitchen that it was almost impossible Deputy Russell was dirty. Gloria
based her view on having known "young Gavin" nearly his entire life;
Sasha based hers on the belief that anyone who could create such a heavenly cup
of coffee had to have a good soul.

They'd further agreed that
someone in the sheriff's office had to have been the intruder. That left the
stout female receptionist or the odoriferous sheriff himself. Unless Claudine
had a partner, it had to be Stickley, because the shadowy figure trying to gain
entry to the apartment had been a man.

Neither Sasha nor Gloria had
found it too much of a stretch to believe the sheriff had stopped by chambers
to rummage through Gloria’s desk and the filing cabinets and then taken a run
at sneaking into what he'd thought would be an empty apartment.

Russell seemed to be having a
harder time accepting it.

He threw her a skeptical look.

"You don't really think
Stinky stole the keys. Why would he? He's the sheriff. If he wanted to search
Gloria's office or the judge's apartment as part of his investigation, he could
just do it. In the light of day. It doesn't make any sense."

He rejected the idea with a
sharp shake of his head.

"It does if he's looking
for something he doesn't want anyone to know about."

"Like what?"

She had no idea.

She stared into the evidence
locker. There were no keys inside, of course, but the other items on the list
all seemed to be there: the watch; an iPhone; a wallet; and the dictaphone.

The voice-activated dictaphone
was a tiny handheld recorder. She could picture Judge Paulson at his window
with the slim rectangle in his hand, surveying his town in the late afternoon light
while he handed down orders and set forth his opinions in a measured, solemn
tone.

She squinted and leaned into
the locker to get a closer look.

"Like the mini-cassette
that should be in the dictaphone."

Russell snaked his hand into
the locker and pulled out the recorder. He popped the cassette deck. No tape.

"What the devil?"

Sasha asked, "You're sure
you got to his body first yesterday? Before anyone else?"

Russell nodded, still staring
at the empty tape recorder.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Gloria
called from his chambers phone when she saw him sprawled on the floor. I ran
right over. She was still there, no one else was in the room. His keys were on
the rug beside him and this--," he waved the dictaphone, "was still
in his hand."

"I don't suppose you
noticed if it was empty?"

He looked down at the floor,
embarrassed probably, and said in a thin voice, "No. I assume it had a
tape in it. I mean, he was dictating when he was shot. Gloria said he stood at
the window and dictated every afternoon. Why else would he be holding it? I
just never thought to check. It was so . . . surreal, I guess. I mean, there
was Judge Paulson with a huge chunk of his face blown off, right there in front
of me."

“I understand.”

He looked up at her. "I'm
a deputy sheriff in Springport, Pennsylvania. I serve eviction notices and
bench warrants. I don’t investigate assassinations."

She kept her voice gentle.
"I'm not suggesting you screwed up, deputy," she said, although they
both knew he had. "I just wonder if the sheriff might be looking for a
tape that went missing after you took possession of the judge's corpse.”

It made sense, she thought.
Stickley had no more experience securing a homicide scene than Russell. If he
noticed the tape was missing, he might have panicked. Incompetence wouldn’t win
him reelection, So, maybe he hung around until Gloria left, checked her work
area and found nothing, then decided to take the keys and give the judge’s
apartment a look.

As a theory, it hung together
okay. It was far from airtight, but it was a start.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sasha had talked Russell out of
formally interviewing Gloria again, but he'd insisted on sitting in on her chat
with the secretary.

So the three of them arranged
themselves in Judge Paulson's chambers: Sasha behind the desk; Gloria in the
guest chair Sasha had occupied the previous afternoon; and Russell in its mate.

Connelly, who had completed his
walking tour of town in all of ten minutes, had been chatting with Gloria at
her desk and had trailed into chambers behind them. He took up the post the
Attorney General had taken day before, sitting in the chair in the corner.

Russell tried to catch her eye.
He tilted his head toward Connelly to indicate he wanted her to ask him to
leave.

She ignored it. This was her
investigation. Connelly had extensive training in detecting deception during
interviews. Besides, his interrogation techniques and her witness examination
style made for some lively personal discussions between the two of them; she
might as well get the benefit of his training.

“Do you remember seeing the
judge’s dictaphone when you found his body?”  Sasha leaned forward over the
massive desk to get a closer look at Gloria.

The secretary’s eyes flicked
toward the ceiling and then to her right.

“Yes, it was still in his hand.”
She closed her eyes briefly at the memory.

Sasha nodded to Russell.
Gloria’s statement squared with his recollection, and her behavior was
consistent with the pointers Connelly had given Sasha about eye direction. She
was telling the truth.

“Did you happen to notice if
the tape was still in the recorder?”

The eyes went back to the
ceiling, but this time they flitted to the left.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t
remember.”

Sasha’s chest tightened. Gloria
was lying.

She pressed on. “Did you touch
the recorder?”

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know. Did you?”

Gloria looked straight at her.

“Actually, no.”

“Okay, more generally, what’s
the system with the tapes. The judge would leave a tape on your desk for you at
the end of the evening?”

“That’s right.”

“After you transcribed it, then
what?  Did you keep them? Reuse them?”

Russell shifted in his chair.
She could tell he was itching to butt in.

“We had eight tapes—numbered 1
through 8—two weeks’ worth. On Fridays, the judge didn’t dictate; he reviewed
the drafts from the week. After I drafted an opinion or order or whatever was
on the tape, I’d set that tape aside until the judge had reviewed and signed
off on the document, just in case I needed to go back to the recording during
the edits.”

Sasha nodded. “Makes sense.”

Comfortable now, explaining the
minutiae of their routine, Gloria kept going.

“We really only needed four
tapes, but it just seemed more prudent to have a week in reserve. On Mondays
while he was on the bench, I would input his edits and finalize the documents.
He’d sign them before he went over to Bob’s for his pie. Then, I’d give him
four tapes for the week. The four we had just used would stay in my desk drawer
until the following Monday.”

“Where’d the judge keep his
four?”

“Well, one in the dictaphone,
of course. The others . . . I’m not sure. Maybe in his top desk drawer?”

Sasha rolled it open. It was
empty, except for a paper clip and a roll of stamps.

Connelly and Russell looked at
her expectantly. She shook her head.

“Huh. I don’t know, then.
That’s where he stored the dictaphone. I’d have thought he’d keep them
together.”

“Okay, have you checked your
drawer?  Are the four most recently used ones still in there?”

“I’m not sure, but I imagine
they are.”

“Let’s go see,” Sasha said, and
the four of them trooped from the chambers to Gloria’s desk outside the door in
a tight knot.

Gloria opened her top drawer
and took out a thin stack of tapes, rubber banded together. A yellow sticky
note was wrapped around the stack and secured with the rubber band.
Someone—Gloria, presumably—had written “completed tapes; opinions signed” on
the paper in slanted cursive writing.

She thumbed the stack. “They’re
all here,” she said. “Five through eight.”

“Yesterday was Tuesday,”
Russell spoke up. “Did that mean he was on tape two?”

Gloria smiled at the memory of
the judge’s methodical nature. “Oh, yes. Even though it didn’t matter at all,
the judge always used the tapes in consecutive order. He left number one on my
desk Monday evening.”

“Where’s that one?”  Sasha
asked.

She swiveled her desk chair to
the side return adjacent to her desk and pulled open a short filing cabinet
that sat beneath the desk. She took out a mini-tape recorder and her smile
disappeared. Tangled around the tape recorder were the wires from a pair of
earbuds.

She worked through the mess of
thin wires, unwinding them from around the recorder. Once the wires were out of
the way, she looked down at the cassette deck.

A hand flew up to her chest. “It’s
gone!”

She popped open the cassette
deck to show them it was empty.

* * * * * * * * * *

Gloria offered to drive out to
Sal's Trattoria on the outskirts of town and bring back a pizza for lunch.
Bob's would be abuzz with the news of Judge Paulson's death, and, she added,
Marie had confided that Bob was no longer ordering fresh produce or meat, as
the clock was ticking down to his closure and the launch of the Café on the
Square the coming weekend. It appeared Bob didn't plan to go out with a bang,
unless it happened to involve listeria.

Sasha, Russell, and Connelly agreed
eating in was the better choice. Plus, the errand would get rid of Gloria for a
while.

Once she’d left, they
reconvened in the judge’s chambers.

Russell spoke first. “So,
Gloria’s lying.” His tone was glum and his disappointment was plain in his face.

“She sure is,” Connelly agreed.

Sasha just nodded.

Connelly continued, “About some
of it, not all of it.”

“Right,” Russell said, “she
lied about whether or not she noticed if there was a tape in the recorder. Her
eyes shifted to the left.”

Connelly agreed again. “True,
but she told the truth about it still being in his hand. She looked to the
right then.”

Russell nodded and said, “I
guess you took a course in truth detection through a suspect’s verbal and
nonverbal cues, too, huh?”

“No,” Connelly said. “I teach
one.”

“Okay,” Sasha said, hurrying to
interrupt the chest-thumping. “So, we’re all in agreement that when she said
she couldn’t remember whether there was a tape in the recorder, she looked to
the left.”

The theory was a person trying
to recall a visual image looked to the right; a person trying to create a
visual image looked to the left. Assuming the person was right-handed. The
process was reversed for southpaws, but Sasha had already noted that Gloria was
a righty.

“She also lied about whether she
touched the recorder,” Connelly continued. “She evaded the question by
answering with another question—’why would I?’  An attempt to answer without
having to lie outright.”

Sasha jumped in. “And, then,
when I pressed her, she said ‘actually, no.’  Just about every time I’ve
deposed someone and they preface a yes or no question with ‘actually,’ they’ve
been lying.”

It amazed her, how much people
could disclose without meaning to.

“But all of the rest of it—the
process they used with the tapes, being surprised by the empty tape recorder—that
all seemed genuine.” Connelly said.

He made a point of soliciting
Russell’s input. “Do you agree?”