Mortal Crimes 1

by Various Authors

  “So. What they do care about—or at least what someone cares about—is making sure you don’t stand up in court and mention those conversations for some other reason that has nothing to do with the FCPA charges. Mitch and I agree, it’s the only explanation for everything that’s happened to you.”

  “Mitch and you agree?”

  She didn’t know why she cared that Rosie and Mitchell had been talking about her string of bad luck, but she suddenly felt self-conscious.

  Rosie arched an eyebrow at her, and she flushed.

  Anyway, it wasn’t the only explanation. For all she knew, her condo was built on her ancestors’ burial ground. Or maybe Mercury was in retrograde. But, she had to concede, if she was honest, that Rosie’s suspicion didn’t sound ridiculous against the totality of events.

  The lawyers representing the named defendants, while on the lazy side, were widely viewed as ethical and upstanding. She doubted very much that they would be involved in anything shady.

  Their clients, however, were criminals. Criminals, by definition, commit crimes. So while she might not be able to conceive of a reason to destroy federal court papers, commit arson, or attempt murder, there was no denying that a sizable population justified those very acts every day. If they didn’t, the Department of Justice wouldn’t exist.

  She closed her eyes to think. Her very first case as a special prosecutor had involved a local politician who’d murdered a judge to prevent him from issuing an opinion that she’d mistakenly believed would hurt her business interests and a state attorney general who’d helped her in exchange for a slice of the pie. The politician’s sister committed perjury multiple times to have her elderly patients declared incapacitated for her own financial gain. And that was in Nowhere, Pennsylvania, where the stakes were low, and the living was easy.

  “What are you thinking?” Rosie asked.

  “I’m thinking we need to pull a Woodward and Bernstein.”

  “Pardon?” Rosie threw her a blank look.

  “All the President’s Men? You know, Deep Throat? Watergate.”

  “Follow the money?”

  “Follow the money.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Wednesday morning

  Joe’s head was in a vise. It was being crushed inward. His mouth was sour; his tongue, lined with fur. He cracked one eyelid open, and the weak winter sun seared his eyeball. He squeezed his eye shut.

  A jumble of memories from the night before swam through his headache on waves. The voicemail from Aroostine. The beers. The girl. More beers. The girl.

  Her name was … Jen, maybe? Her hand on his thigh, warm through his jeans. The curve of her throat when she threw her head back to laugh. Walking out of the Hole in the Wall, hip bumping up against hip.

  Where had they gone? What had they done?

  He remembered the rush of cold air. Nausea rising in his throat like a wave. Stumbling into the cab of her truck. Then … nothing.

  Could he really have blacked out? He’d never had a lost evening—not after drinking grain alcohol punch in the cornfield behind the high school; not in college; not when the band had played some crappy club that paid them in shots; not even after his bachelor party.

  This was going to be one helluva hangover. His stomach cramped in agreement.

  He sucked down the chilled air and breathed it out slowly.

  Jen’s bedroom was really cold. And her bed was unusually hard.

  He eased his eyes open again and blinked against the onslaught of brightness and pain.

  Jen’s bed was no bed. He lay sprawled on a thin mat spread out on a bare wood floor. A scratchy wool blanket was tangled in a heap around his knees. He turned his head to the side and stared at the wood, forcing his dry eyes to focus on the grain.

  He stretched out a hand and ran his fingers along a plank. Aged oak, four inches wide. His eyes traveled up to the walls. More old-growth oak. Hand-hewn logs. His woodworking brain fought through the fog and estimated them as having twenty-inch faces. The rafters on the ceiling were more of the same—with hand-hewn chestnut joists.

  He was in an artfully restored log cabin. He’d place its original build date at sometime around 1800. Maybe a few years earlier. The coloring of the oak and the craftsmanship were slightly different from what he’d seen in old Pennsylvania barns and cabins. He pegged both as native to western Maryland. He’d bought similar boards from a dilapidated bank barn in Emmitsburg once.

  Professional excitement overtook his queasiness. To a master carpenter, this place was like heaven.

  He’d have to ask Jen about the cabin’s provenance. Assuming she was still here. The small room was still and there was no evidence of a woman. There was no evidence that anyone used the room as a bedroom. Aside from the mat, it was empty. No dresser, no table, no lamps. Nothing.

  There was a small square window carved high into one wall. It was bare. No curtain, no blinds. The adjacent wall contained a door. It was closed. He couldn’t tell if it led outside or to another room.

  He exhaled and pushed himself to standing. His legs shook beneath him, and sweat beaded his forehead from the effort of moving. He steadied himself and shuffled toward the door, trying to keep his head motionless.

  He palmed the door. It was the same temperature as the rest of the room, so it couldn’t be an exterior door. He ran a hand through his hair to smooth it down and tucked his shirt back into his pants, steeling himself for the awkward morning-after conversation.

  He pressed the curved, iron handle down and pushed outward. It was locked. From the other side.

  His heart thumped.

  He swallowed and tried to call out but his voice was nothing but a croak.

  He wet his lips. “Jen?” His voice was hoarse and husky but audible.

  He listened hard. No response.

  “Jen?”

  His heart pounded even faster, and he dropped a hand to his back left pocket where he kept his wallet. Empty.

  He forgot about the splitting pain in his head and swiveled around to look for his jacket, sweeping his eyes over each corner of the tiny room. No jacket.

  On the other side of the door, he could hear shuffling and rustling. Someone was out there—someone who was ignoring his cries.

  His dry throat closed. He grabbed the door handle and pulled, shaking from the futile effort. Then, as his stomach roiled with nausea and bile, he hammered his fists against the door, over and over, shouting a wordless, primal cry until his voice gave out and his hands ached.

  Then he slumped against the wall and stared blankly at the slice of paradise that had just become his cell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Aroostine sat motionless at her desk and listened to the sound of her wristwatch ticking and her own breathing. She’d sent Rosie off with instructions to run down SystemSource’s corporate structure—an important and time-sensitive task—but her true motivation had been to achieve quiet and stillness.

  If she was going to find some critical piece of information that she’d previously overlooked, she’d have to change her perspective. That was Tracking 101: you only see what you’re looking for.

  It had been one of her grandfather’s first lessons. If you’re focused on finding the squirrel, you won’t register the bird. Or the edible berries hanging on the bush right in front of you. Or the slight depression in the earth where the last tracker had sat.

  He taught her not only how to see, but how to use all her senses. First, he showed her how to examine a scene from all vantage points—crouching on the trail; flat on her belly, propped up on her elbows; hanging from a tree. Then, he wrapped a bandanna around her eyes as a blindfold and told her to listen to the same scene. She learned to hear the difference between a caw of hunger and a squawk of pain; frozen ice thawing and water forcing its way through a chink in a dam. Next, she learned to smell the faint milky odor of a mammal nursing her newborns and the coppery scent of fresh blood to find a den or an injured animal. Her fingertips could tell if wood wa
s dry enough to start a fire. She could taste whether wild berries were at their peak.

  Most important, he taught her to be still and wait for an answer to reveal itself—a valuable skill in the wild, but not one she’d ever tried to transfer to her practice of law.

  At this point, what did she have to lose?

  She’d lived with the case file for weeks. She knew where the defendants ate breakfast; that Craig Womback preferred the aisle seat on airplanes; and that Martin Sheely always brought his kids gifts from the local street market or bazaar when he traveled. She knew who they reported to within SystemSource; that Womback had once had an affair with a secretary; and that Sheely always filed his travel expense reports the day after a trip. And she’d built a solid case against them for their attempts to bribe Senor Cruz. She’d mined the facts for every element she was required to prove, but that was all she’d looked for.

  If Rosie’s hunch was right, she’d obviously missed something that mattered a great deal to someone else. Time to stop searching for it, and let it come to her.

  She fiddled with the earbuds in her ears, and hit play on her audio player. Then she leaned back in her chair and listened to the recorded telephone conversations for what had to be the six hundredth time. This time, however, she would listen with no agenda, no purpose. Just listen.

  Her pencil traced the words on the transcript as they filled her ears:

  Mr. Womback: It’s me. Can you talk?

  Mr. Sheely: I have a few minutes. My flight’s boarding now. How’d it go?

  Mr. Womback: Time will tell. I met Cruz for drinks at some craphole authentic joint.

  [Laughter]

  Mr. Sheely: Did you talk dollars?

  Mr. Womback: No. He’s still skittish. You remember that dude in Poland, who freaked out when we brought up the specifics too soon?

  Mr. Sheely: How could I forget? That was close. So, you’re still dancing?

  Mr. Womback: Still dancing, but I think he’s game. He has the ultimate authority to choose the system; no sign-off required, so why wouldn’t he pick ours and line his pockets at the same time?

  Mr. Sheely: Let’s hope so. We have to get this contract. I got yet another reminder from those pricks back at HQ.

  Mr. Womback: [Snorts.] Let me guess—‘Our investor has made it clear that his interest is in our international footprint. Government contracts are the most lucrative, stable way to expand that footprint’?

  Mr. Sheely: They called you, too?

  Mr. Womback: Frigging bean counters. They think it’s so easy, let them pound the pavement trying to hit a sales quota month after month.

  Mr. Sheely: You got that right. Screw them.

  Mr. Womback: And screw that Ukrainian ball buster, too.

  Mr. Sheely: They’re gonna close the doors. I gotta go.

  Mr. Womback: Safe travels.

  Mr. Sheely: Yeah. Adios.

  [The phone call ends.]

  She stared down at the paper and digested what she’d heard. The meat of the call was that the two sales reps had kindly hit every element she needed to prove a violation of the FCPA and had even named the Mexican official who was the target of the bribe.

  But what else had they said? What was hidden in the call that someone wanted to keep buried?

  Not the attempted bribe in Poland. SystemSource had admitted that as part of its settlement, and the Department of Justice had agreed not to pursue charges against the individual defendants for that conduct.

  So, what?

  The company was pressuring them to produce because an investor wanted to expand globally? As far as she knew, unless movies had lied to her, corporate greed was hardly unusual.

  She nibbled her eraser and played back the recording in her mind. ‘The Ukrainian ball buster’ resonated. She circled the phrase on the transcript. Could it be a reference to another bribery attempt, one Justice hadn’t managed to uncover?

  No, the context made it seem like the Ukrainian was an insider, not a government official. Someone in the company’s finance department? The investor?

  Her cell phone vibrated on top of a pile of papers on her desk. She ignored the buzzing. She imagined anyone who was texting her in midday on a Wednesday was either her mother forwarding a picture of her floppy-haired guinea pig or her mobile carrier letting her know her bill was ready for payment. In either case, the text was less important than the task at hand.

  She underlined the circled words. It was something. She’d ask Rosie to look for a Ukrainian entity in the web of companies that made up SystemSource.

  There was a soft rap at the door. She looked up.

  Mitchell leaned against the door frame.

  “So—are you Woodward or Bernstein?”

  “As long as I don’t end up like Archibald Cox, I’ll be happy.” She popped out the earbuds.

  “Cox? The special prosecutor who Nixon had fired. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure Sid isn’t going to fire you.”

  Of course he knew his political history. She bet his secret ambition was to someday be the Solicitor General—or maybe even the Attorney General.

  “I’m not worried about me. Did you forget the other victims of Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre? His attorney general and the deputy AG both resigned rather than carry out the order to fire Cox. I don’t need to drag you and Rosie down with me following some ill-advised hunch.”

  He shook his head. “There’s something to this. Take a look at what Rosie’s put together.”

  He crossed the room and handed her a printout. As she took it, his fingers brushed her wrist. Her pulse jumped at the contact, but she managed to keep her expression neutral.

  She looked down at the diagram of interlocking companies Rosie’d managed to find so far.

  “That’s a lot of companies. Are you guys making any headway?”

  She hadn’t realized Rosie was going to enlist help, but she couldn’t really fault her. They still had a massive amount of trial prep to get through. Every minute they spent playing investigative journalist was stolen from time that should have gone toward polishing their opening statement and nailing down the direct examinations of their witnesses.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, we’re finding lots of entities who could have an interest in the outcome of the trial or in preventing the tapes from becoming public. Too many.”

  Her eye trailed from the word SystemSource at the top of a blank page along a series of vertical lines coming down from the word, branches on the company’s family tree. It was a messy, overgrown tree. A jumble of subsidiaries, affiliates, joint ventures, divisions, and operating units spread around the globe, some connected horizontally, others branched off from a shared parent. A wholly-owned Croatian subsidiary sat next to a co-owned Swiss affiliate.

  Rosie had culled the names from the information statements that the company, as a publicly-traded corporation, was required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But those financial reports wouldn’t tell the whole story; business lawyers drafted them with the express purpose of providing the minimum amount of detail needed to comply with the reporting regulations. This was a tree without fruit. And, somehow, the corporate structure had never been tied down during the initial investigation into SystemSource.

  She felt a surge of irritation for the lawyer whose sloppiness had let that go undone, but she quickly dismissed it. The company had agreed to pay a big, juicy fine. What would have been the point of wasting taxpayer dollars on continuing to dig into its background?

  Wow. You’re really starting to sound like a government lawyer, she told herself with some measure of amusement. Aroostine Higgins, ladies and gentlemen, consummate bureaucrat.

  She coughed to cover her giggle.

  “What are the next steps?”

  “I just wanted you to sign off on this list of entities. I have a friend who works at the SEC in the Division of Corporate Finance. We have a standing lunch date. Rosie’s going to tag along and ask him to pull the files on all these interr
elated companies. Want to join us?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll just grab a sandwich here. You know, you don’t need to do that. We can get most of this stuff off EDGAR.”

  The Security and Exchange Commission’s electronic database was public and freely searchable.

  “Not all of it, though—only the information the registrants are required to report. Besides, it’ll be quicker for him to do. We’d have to run down each branch. He can just dig up the entire tree.”

  She frowned. He was right. But still. She didn’t like the thought of him and Rosie running around calling in favors all over D.C. She bit her lower lip but didn’t say anything.

  Mitchell looked at her closely.

  “Why is it so hard for you to ask for help?”

  She stared down at the desk for a moment. Because I grew up a charity case. The only thing I want in life is to be able to take care of myself. She swallowed the words and looked up.

  He waited.

  She shrugged. “You know, you don’t have to help us with this. You have your own caseload.”

  She winced as her words hung in the air between them. She sounded ungrateful, petulant. That wasn’t how she felt. Although she wasn’t exactly sure how she did feel. Conflicted. Cared for. Grateful. Embarrassed.

  A shadow of disappointment flitted across his face, and then it was gone. He leaned in close to her and tipped her chin back with warm fingers until she met his eyes.

  “I’m not trying to help you win your case. I’m trying to help you stay alive.” His voice was just above a whisper.

  “Why?” she managed.

  He stepped closer to her. For a crazy moment she thought he was going to kiss her.

  “I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

  He reached out and ran his fingertips along her cheekbone.

  She tried to ignore the heat that flooded her body.

  And then he stepped back. He watched her struggle for an answer. Then his mouth curved into a gentle smile.

  “I better go. Rosie’s probably waiting for me.”

  “Umm. Okay.”