Sasha McCandless 02 - Inadvertent Disclosure

by Melissa F. Miller

Gloria nodded. “That’s right, Stinky—er, Sheriff Stickley—came by and sent him home not long after the bigwigs left the courthouse.”

  Connelly met Sasha’s eyes over the secretary’s shoulder and jerked his thumb toward the door, then pantomimed talking into a cell phone. Sasha gave him a curt nod, and he made his way out of the kitchen silently. She turned her attention back to Gloria.

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  She started to shake her head, then stopped and said, “Well, I called Jonas, of course, to let him know.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I had called the kids earlier in the day, to let them know about the judge. He was like a grandfather to them—he’d lived upstairs ever since they were wee little ones. I caught Linnea in her dorm room between classes, but I had to leave a message for Luke. He was in a meeting, so he called back here at the house while you were still finishing up at the courthouse yesterday evening. I believe I mentioned it to him.”

  “Did he happen to mention if anyone at Big Sky had already heard the news?”

  Tears threatened to spill over Gloria’s eyes. “No. You don’t think Big Sky was involved, do you?” Her voice quavered.

  “I don’t know what to think, I was just wondering. Even if they did know, it might not mean anything. They have cases on his docket; their attorney could have called and told them.”

  Sasha felt guilty about pushing her. She seemed to be veering toward a breakdown.

  * * * * * * * * * *

  Leo sat on the Burkes' porch swing and swayed back and forth, waiting for Sasha to finish interrogating Gloria. His eyes burned from lack of sleep and his throat was tight with worry. He considered his next step.

  His policy was to always, if possible, grant favors or requests for information, without regard to which part of the governmental alphabet soup they’d come from. Such generosity was rare in the federal agencies, where territorial directors vied with one another for power and budget dollars. As a result, everyone owed Leo one. He had chits spread throughout the federal government that he could call in when it was time.

  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?”

  “I do.” Russell sat a little straighter in his chair, glad to be consulted.

  Sasha was pleased to see Connelly and Russell were male bonding, because she really didn’t have the patience or the time to deal with any alpha male nonsense. She had a killer to catch.

  The issues swirling around the judge’s death were, unfortunately, multiplying. Why had the sheriff tried to break into the judge’s apartment? Where were the missing tapes? Who had been threatening the judge? Did Danny Trees and PORE have anything to do with any of it?

  And, most troubling, what was Gloria hiding and why?

  CHAPTER 22

  After cramming the good, but greasy, pizza from Sal’s down her throat, Sasha needed to take a constitutional of her own.

  Connelly and Russell had their heads together over the crime scene photos, not exactly her thing on a full stomach. So, Sasha told Gloria she’d be back in thirty minutes and headed out the door into the hallway.

  As she pulled the door shut behind her and turned left toward the stairwell, she narrowly avoided colliding into a pinstriped chest. She stopped short and looked up. A breathless Drew Showalter was applying the brakes, as well, one hand up to soften any impact.

  “Sorry,” Sasha said.

  “No, no, I apologize,” he said, “I was distracted. I’m glad to run into you, as it were.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I read about your appointment, of course. Front page of the Clear Brook Crier, you know. Congratulations; that’s quite an opportunity.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, but she wondered if the local lawyers had been put out by it. She guessed it really wasn’t her problem.

  “Thanks, I guess. I’m sure we’d all rather the judge be alive.”

  Showalter reddened and stammered, “Absolutely. And I’m sure you’re quite busy, but, as I mentioned in my voice-mail message last week, I do need to speak with you about our little discovery matter.”