Inadvertent Disclosure (17 page)

CHAPTER 27

Leo was glad he and Sasha were
caravanning back to Pittsburgh in their separate cars. Sasha was still smarting
from having been fired, and he hoped the hypnotic rhythm of highway driving
would soothe her enough that she’d be ready to talk about it when they got
home. Plus, he wanted to make a phone call without her in earshot.

As he followed her car over a
hill and down into a small valley, he noticed the scenery that he’d missed on
the drive up in the dark. Drilling equipment rose up among the trees, sitting
in muddy patches of earth, surrounded by large green tanks, pumps, batteries,
and vehicles. Sand trucks, trailers, pickups, and other trucks formed rings around
the derricks. Interspersed between drilling sites, capped wells dotted the
fields.

A lot of activity. And a lot of
activity meant a lot of money.

He picked up his phone and
dialed from memory a number at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation
Division.

“CID. Special Agent Ortiz.”

“Manny, it’s Leo Connelly.”

The clipped businesslike tone
that Manuel Ortiz had used to answer his phone dropped away, replaced by
genuine joy. “Leo! How you doing, man?”

Leo smiled. Manny Ortiz had
been a student in the very first class he had ever taught at the federal law
enforcement training center. Leo had stood in the front of the sweltering room,
cooled by a fan and an underpowered air conditioner that was no match for the
Georgia heat, looked out at all the serious, eager faces, and wondered what the
hell he’d gotten himself into.

His stomach had dropped when he
realized they were waiting for him to dazzle them with his brilliance. But
before his nerves had gotten the best of him, he’d been beaned in the forehead
by a sheet of ruled paper fashioned into the shape of an airplane.

The room had erupted into
laughter, and a slight, dark-skinned man sitting in the approximate middle of
the room had shot a fist into the air and shouted, “Yes! A direct hit on the
air marshal.”

Leo had managed to keep a
straight face, but he’d been grateful for the room’s lightened mood. So much
so, that when he asked Manny Ortiz to stay after class, it was to thank him,
not reprimand him.

That exchange had led to a
beer, which had led to more beer and some karaoke at a dirt-floored country
bar. And, like that, the man had become a fixture in Leo’s life. He always
thought of Manny as a Hispanic elf. Mischievous and jolly.

“Good, good. It’s been too
long,” Leo said now. “How’s Josie?  And the kids?”

Manny’s voice swelled with
pride and love as he detailed the achievements of his three children and his
wife’s work as an interior designer. He interrupted his own story about his
middle daughter’s exploding science fair project and said, “Eh, that’s not why
you called. Leo Connelly doesn’t make personal calls on company time. What’s
up, brother?”

Leo chuckled. Manny couldn’t
resist pointing out his more uptight character traits. “As it happens, I need
some information on an outfit called Big Sky. Know them?”

It was Manny’s turn to chuckle.
“Yeah, I know them. Huge player. Oil and gas giant out of Texas. What do you
need to know?”

“Are they dirty?”

Manny fell silent, thinking
about the question. For all his joking, Manny took his work seriously. Leo knew
whatever Manny told him would be accurate and well-researched.

Finally, he said, “Nah. We’ve
investigated them nearly a dozen times—including two cases I worked personally.
If they were dirty, we’d have found something by now, but nada. Every time, the
tip that started the thing just peters out. They play hardball, which pisses
people off, man, but nothing illegal. They go right up to the line but don’t
cross it. They don’t have to. Do you have any idea how many lobbyists they
have? Politicians are throwing themselves at the oil and gas industry.
Especially these guys.”

“Any chance they’re just that
good at it?  They’re playing dirty but getting away with it?”

Most law enforcement personnel
would have bristled at the suggestion. Not Manny. He gave it a moment’s
consideration.

“Anything’s possible, but I
don’t think so. We’ve crawled all over them, more than once. They have too many
employees; if they were breaking the law, someone would have slipped up
somewhere. They’re clean.”

“Okay,” Leo conceded.

“Can you tell me why you’re
asking?”

“No real reason. This isn’t an
air marshal investigation. You hear about the state judge who got killed up in
Pennsylvania?”

“Sure, out in the middle of
nowhere.”

“Sasha’s mixed up in it. Or she
was. Anyhow, the whole town’s divided over fracking and Big Sky seems like the
biggest player in town.”

“Almost certain to be,” Manny
said. “They’re the big dogs in the industry. Their Marcellus Shale strategy is
very straightforward: they just sue everybody who interferes. They tried the
whole PR blitz and got mixed results, so now, anybody who complains about the
drilling, they just sue ‘em. Sick kids, contaminated water, noise pollution,
whatever. People start griping and Big Sky runs to court to get an order declaring
whatever they’re doing is legal. Gotta keep the lawyers fat, eh?”  Too late, he
remembered Sasha was a lawyer and added, “Not to insult your lady, man.”

“No worries.”

“What’d you mean, anyway—she’s
mixed up in the murder?”

“She has a case up there and the
judge appointed her to represent some local guy on an unrelated matter. Then
the judge happens to get killed on a day she’s in town. Next thing you know,
she’s appointed special prosecutor because there’s a theory the shooter was a
member of the local bar.”

Spelling it out like that, Leo
realized Sasha’s appointment made zero sense. At least for the stated reason.

“And she thinks, what, Big Sky
hired somebody to kill this judge?”

“She doesn’t even have a
working theory. The sheriff announced this environmental protester as his chief
suspect and the state AG shut down Sasha’s investigation about twenty-four
hours after he appointed her.”

Manny’s confusion beamed up to
a satellite and into Leo’s ear. “The sheriff’s running the homicide
investigation?  Are they in the Old West?”

“It’s a mess up there, Manny.
But, I was thinking maybe this protester was a plant, like Big Sky sent him in
to cause trouble and maybe got a little too enthusiastic. He has no ties to the
area, he’s vanished, and . . .” Leo paused.

He didn’t want to share with
Manny that he’d run an unauthorized search of the Guardian database.

He went on, “My contacts can’t
or won’t tell me anything about this group. Something’s up.”

“Nah, nah,” Manny said.

Leo could picture him shaking
his head, his dark hair flipping from side to side.

He got thoughtful, dragging out
his words. “Not their style.”

Maybe not, Leo thought, but he
knew whose style it was.

CHAPTER 28

The road had rolled out ahead
of Sasha in a ribbon leading her away from Springport and back to Pittsburgh,
and her headache had eased with each passing mile. By the time she swung the
car into a parking spot at her condo at dusk, she felt almost human. She turned
off the ignition and watched Connelly’s headlights rise over the speed bump and
fall, before turning in to the spot next to hers.

She stepped out of the car,
ready to apologize for her earlier crankiness. He stayed in his car but buzzed
the window down and waved her over.

“Listen, Connelly, I shouldn’t
have—”

He put his hand up like a
crossing guard. “Forget about it, okay?  You’re under a lot of pressure. But, I
need to run out to the field office to take care of something. I won’t be
long.”

He reached across to the
passenger side floor and lifted a soft-sided cooler he’d borrowed from Gloria.
It held his long-delayed Thai chicken. He handed it to her out the window and
spoke slowly, “Are you listening?”

She nodded.

“Okay, in the cabinet under
your sink there’s a stainless steel slow cooker. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

She huffed. One time, one time,
she mistook his rice cooker for the slow cooker and she was never going to hear
the end of it. It wasn’t her fault all his appliances were sleek, modern, and
had the same shape.

“Of course I do.”

His raised an eyebrow but just
pressed ahead. “Put the chicken and the peanut sauce in the slow cooker. Plug
it in. Set it to the lowest level. Put the noodles in the refrigerator and then
walk away. Don’t touch anything else. I’ll finish dinner when I get home. I’ll
be two hours, tops. Probably less.”

Home?  Had Connelly just called
her loft home?

“Sasha?  Do you understand?”

“Yes, I’m not a moron.”

“No, you’re not. You are,
however, an unmitigated disaster in the kitchen.” He said it like he meant it
but softened it with a crooked smile.

“Whatever. See you later.”

She gave a little wave and
turned to gather her bags as he put the car into reverse and backed over the
speed bump.

She pushed through the front
door of her condo, her arms full of bags, and left her keys dangling in the
door while she dumped the bags on the kitchen counter and turned on a light.

Before she could forget, she
crouched and retrieved the slow cooker from its home under the sink. She slid
the chicken out of its container and into the vessel, dumped the sauce on top
of the chicken, plugged in the appliance, and turned it on. She stepped back
and waited for the beep to tell her she’d done everything properly.

She figured while the food
heated she might as well run over to her own office and catch up on all the
administrative details that she’d ignored while in Springport. She started up
the stairs to her loft bedroom and remembered the keys in the door. She
reversed course and fetched her keys then jogged up the stairs to change into
her running clothes.

Back in the kitchen, she eased
her laptop out of the briefcase and into her padded backpack. Wriggled into the
pack and clicked the straps closed across her chest. As she pulled her hair
back into a low ponytail, her eyes fell on Gloria’s recipe box, still in the
briefcase. She placed it on the counter, next to the slow cooker, so she
wouldn’t forget to give Connelly the recipes. She looked around for a piece of
paper to leave a note for Connelly, then decided there was no need; she’d
probably be back before he was.

She inhaled the aroma of the
peanuts and ginger, and switched off the lights.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sasha had poured her anger at
Griggs and Stickley into a speed workout. Now she caught her breath and waited
on the sidewalk, one hand on the wall while she stretched her hamstrings, until
there was a pause in the flow of pedestrians past her office building. Then she
cupped one hand around the keypad and punched in her access code with the
other.

Most random crimes were random
only in that the victim didn’t know her attacker. But they were targeted in
that criminals don’t generally waste a lot of energy gaining access to their
victims in a stranger crime. Two homes, side by side—one locked up tight, with
good security lighting, the other with open windows, overgrown hedges, and an
unlocked door—no contest.

With the first floor of the
building vacant, Sasha could have been a sitting duck. But, she took steps to
remedy that. Changed her key code regularly; used a different code for the pad
outside her office; locked herself in when she was working after hours. She
couldn’t do anything about the landlord’s lighting choices, she thought, as she
mounted the steps to her office in near darkness. She’d have to remember to
clip a flashlight to her backpack next time.

She moved cautiously through
the darkened second-floor hallway  and felt for the keypad by the door. She
tapped the numbers and the soft electronic click told her the door had
unlocked. She reached into the mailbox mounted beside the keypad and retrieved
a fistful of mail.

She hurried in, hit the lights,
and locked the door behind her. She removed a Nalgene bottle from one of the
backpack’s side pockets and filled it from the water cooler that sat next to
her coffee maker. Then she took out her laptop and booted it up, flipping
through the mail while it cycled through its startup processes.

A legal magazine, a pamphlet
advertising a CLE program, a Westlaw invoice, and an envelope containing a
check from VitaMight.

The payment from VitaMight
reminded her of Showalter’s bizarre inadvertent disclosure request. She put the
stack of mail to the side and rolled out her desk chair. She typed her password
into the start screen, and sat staring at the screen and tapping her nails
against the desktop while the electronic database that held a copy of the files
on Showalter’s CD launched.

“00476 through 00477,” she
muttered to herself as she scanned the database for the document bearing those
numbers. She hadn’t written them down when Showalter ambushed her earlier in
the day, but her memory was sound.

Her former coworkers had
insisted she had a photographic memory, but that wasn’t the case. She just had
a great memory—almost total recall. It was both a blessing and a hindrance. A
blessing because she could, at will, remember a line from a deposition
transcript, the amount of an outstanding balance, or her sister-in-law’s dress
size and favorite color. A hindrance because her mind refused to prioritize or
weed the information it retained. So, the pinpoint page cite to the leading
case on an important issue had to share space with her best friend from third
grade’s telephone number, which had been disconnected when her family moved to
Iowa in 1985.

Curiously, the one piece of
data she couldn’t seem to retain reliably was the names of men she’d dated.
When she ran into them, she’d panic—was it Jon or Joe? Mark or Martin? Someday,
she figured to make a therapist rich delving into the issue.

She found the document in the
spreadsheet and double-clicked the numbers to open the image. An e-mail with a
PDF attachment filled the screen. It was an internal e-mail Keystone Properties
had sent to its employees inviting them to a pizza lunch for a candidate for
county commissioner. The attached PDF was a color flyer with a cartoon picture
of a stereotypical mustachioed Italian chef, holding a steaming pizza aloft. It
set out the time, date, and location for the lunch, which had occurred nearly a
year earlier.

Could she possibly have
misremembered the numbers?

No question, it was irrelevant
to her document request, but surely Showalter couldn’t seriously want this
document back.

She leaned back in her chair
and stretched her arms over her head to think. What was even remotely
interesting about this document?  Not the pizza. It had to be the politics. She
read it again. The candidate Keystone Properties was backing was Heather Price.

She knew that name. She played
back the previous several days’ interactions in her mind, spooling through her
conversations with Russell, Gloria and her husband, the sheriff, Attorney
General Griggs and Chief Justice Bermann, until finally she landed on Jed. Jed
had told her Heather Price was the commissioner who had held Big Sky’s permits
hostage until it contracted with her trucking company.

Could it just be a coincidence
that Showalter was desperate to get back an otherwise-innocuous e-mail that
showed his client had supported Heather Price’s bid for county commissioner? 
Maybe Keystone Properties was also playing ball with Ms. Price.

Sasha rocked back in her chair
and thought it through, chewing on the end of her pen as she did so. It hung
together. Showalter still wasn’t getting his document back, but at least it
made some sense.

She reached for the phone to
call and break it to him, then she froze. She thought she heard the jangle of
the bells over the exterior door downstairs.

The only other people who had
the code were Connelly and the landlord. Connelly, having learned the hard way,
knew better than to startle her. The landlord was best described as absentee.
It was unlikely to be either of them.

With her hand suspended midway
to the phone, she listened hard. Heard nothing. She was just spooked from the
incident in the judge’s chambers.

She picked up the phone and
began to punch in the numbers. She thought she heard the faint squeak of
floorboards.

She placed the receiver back in
its cradle, careful not to make any noise, and crept to the door. She strained
to hear over the thump of her heart.

There was no reason the
landlord would be there after hours and no reason he’d be sneaking up on her.

The door’s locked, she told
herself. Just wait it out.

She pressed her ear against the
door. The door to the street creaked on its hinge and the bells rang again. Someone
was there, and he was going back outside.

Her gut told her it was a trap.

She fought the urge to fling
open the door and run down the stairs, outside to perceived safety. The impulse
to flee was almost irresistible. But, of course, she was safer staying put.

She rushed over to the window
and looked down on the sidewalk below. There was no one walking away from the
building in either direction. She looked across the street, searching for a
lone figure. She watched for several minutes. Couples, holding hands, on their
way to dinner. A group of college students, loud and laughing. No ninjas.

She told herself it could have
been the wind. On a gusty night like this, it could shake the door hard enough
to dislodge the bells.

She picked up the phone to call
Showalter, but her hands were still shaking from the jolt of adrenaline. She
put the phone down and paced around the office like a trapped animal.

She considered calling Connelly
and asking him to come pick her up. He’d do it, of course. Then she tossed her
head, snapping her ponytail behind her. Don’t be pathetic, she told herself,
you are not going to call your boyfriend to rescue you like some hysterical
female.

She dragged the yoga mat out
from under her desk and unrolled it. A moon salutation would slow her heart and
calm her down.

She starting from standing and
raised her arms overhead. She did a deep backbend and imagined the anxiety and
fear rolling off her arms onto the floor. Then she folded herself forward,
hands interlocked and arms outstretched in front of her as she brought her
forehead as close to the mat as she could.

Her heart slowed to a normal
rhythm. She released her hands and came up into a high lunge. The fear had
vanished.

She worked through the rest of
the poses, finishing in the same standing mountain pose she’d started from.

She rolled up the mat and
returned it to its place under the desk, then she took a long drink of water.
She was glad she hadn’t called Connelly and blabbered about being scared.

She shut down the laptop and
stuffed it into the backpack. After she wriggled the pack onto her shoulders,
she turned out the lights and stepped out into the short hallway. She tested
the knob to make sure the door locked behind her then started down the hallway.