“But then, of course, there are things like this.”
Laramore looked at it. Jack could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t reading anything. He was staring at Celeste’s profile photograph-the way she’d looked just a week earlier.
“Beautiful, wasn’t she?” he said.
“Yes,” said Jack. “She is beautiful.”
Ben looked up, smiled sadly, as if appreciating Jack’s respect for the rule Virginia had laid down about using the present tense.
“I don’t really want to read this,” said Laramore. “If you say it’s all there, I’ll take your word for it.”
“It’s all there,” said Jack.
“But just so I understand: Anyone with a Facebook account can read a status update?”
“This one was designated ‘public,’ so, yeah, anyone with an account can see it. Anyone on the Internet, for that matter.”
“Still, I find it hard to believe that BNN’s lawyers are scrolling through Facebook updates. This just went up on Facebook this afternoon. How did they find it so fast?”
Jack considered it. “That’s a good question. But keep in mind that these status updates didn’t just appear on Celeste’s Facebook page. They went out to every single one of her friends. It’s possible one of them forwarded it to BNN’s lawyers.”
“Celeste’s friends wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, a Facebook ‘friend’ might.” Jack took back his phone and checked the page. “I see here that Celeste has almost four thousand Facebook friends.”
“So that means any one of four thousand people could have told BNN that the complaint was posted on Celeste’s Facebook page?”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Jack. “There’s another possibility, of course.”
“What’s that?”
“Whoever stole her username and password to access her account and send out the status update also told BNN that the information was all over Facebook.”
“What would be the point of that?”
“What’s the point of any of this? Someone is either trying to piss off BNN or get us in trouble with the judge. It’s one of the two.”
“Or both.”
“Or both, right. The immediate problem we have to address is getting this information down as quickly as possible. It’s not that easy if you and your wife don’t know Celeste’s username and password.”
“I could take a few educated guesses, but-”
Laramore stopped, seeing a doctor approaching.
“Mr. Swyteck?” the doctor asked. He had an urgent expression on his face, alarming enough to make Jack rise to respond.
“Yes, I’m Jack Swy-”
A crushing blow to Jack’s jaw not only cut off his words, it knocked him to the floor. Both Jack and Laramore were too stunned to retaliate, and the doctor himself seemed content to have landed just one good punch. He didn’t come at Jack. Jack rose up on one knee, looked up, and saw equal parts rage and grief in the doctor’s eyes. Then Jack noticed the hospital ID badge: STEFAN ROSS, MD. Rene’s boyfriend.
“That’s from Rene, you son of a bitch.”
Jack massaged his jaw back into place and said, “I’m sorry for-”
“Sorry?” said Ross. “No, you’re not. You used her, and you put her in a dangerous situation that she should’ve never been in.”
“Actually, she called me.”
“Don’t justify it. And don’t you dare show your face at the funeral. Spare us the phony sympathy. Please.”
Ross turned and walked away, so much anger in his step that his rubber soles squeaked on the tile floor. Jack climbed back into his chair.
“Are you all right?” asked Laramore.
Jack thought about it, thought about Rene, thought about the joy all this suffering must have been bringing to the sick bastard who had taken Rene’s life.
“I will be,” he said. “I suppose.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It had been Andie’s intention to be home for Jack when he returned from the hospital, but when the assistant special agent in charge of the Miami Field Office called and said, “Get over here now,” she didn’t even ask why.
“I’m on my way,” she told Schwartz.
Andie shot Jack a quick text to let him know that her tech agents had “successfully guessed” Celeste’s username and password. The FBI couldn’t lawfully remove anything from her Facebook page, but at least Jack had everything he needed to comply with Judge Burrows’ midnight deadline. Andie added a second text to tell him that something had come up, and that she didn’t know when she’d be back.
Speed limits be damned, she flew all the way up I-95 and reached the field office around eight thirty. She found Schwartz in the observation room. With him was an assistant U.S. attorney who was junior enough to be stuck with after-hours “confession duty.” The lawyer shook Andie’s hand, then quickly turned her attention back to the other side of the one-way mirror, where a two-agent team was in the make-nice phase of the interrogation of a handsome young man who looked scared to death.
“His name is Brian Hewitt,” said Schwartz.
Andie, Schwartz, and the federal prosecutor were facing the glass, watching. The audio was on, which allowed them to hear everything that transpired in the interrogation room, but nothing was being said at the moment. Hewitt was seated at a small table in the windowless room. One agent was leaning against the wall behind Hewitt. Another was seated across from Hewitt, who was eating a hamburger and french fries, compliments of the FBI. Andie could only surmise that the interrogators had already gotten what they wanted from him-or that they had simply transitioned into the good-cop phase of the age-old routine.
“Hewitt,” said Andie, searching her memory. “That name sounds familiar for some reason.”
“He was the foreman of the twelve-person jury that acquitted Sydney Bennett,” said Schwartz.
Mere mention of the Bennett trial was enough to make her heart skip a beat. Jack’s connection to it-more precisely, Andie’s connection to Jack-was an ongoing headache. “We arrested the jury foreman?”
Schwartz nodded. “Our agents followed him to a bowling alley. The subject walked into the men’s lounge empty-handed and came out carrying a bowling bag. When the agents stopped him and asked to see inside the bag, he complied. There was a hundred thousand dollars in cash inside.”
“A drop and pickup?”
“No doubt about it.”
“Somebody tipped us off, I presume?”
“Anonymous call came in this afternoon around three thirty. Said that the foreman of the Sydney Bennett jury was going to Bird Bowl at nine P.M. to pick up a hundred grand in cash. According to the tipster, it was payment for delivering a not-guilty verdict.”
It was suddenly hard not to be scared for Jack, even harder not to show it. “Can we prove that?”
Schwartz glanced at the interrogation team, then back at Andie. “There’s no denying that Hewitt was the foreman of the jury. There’s no denying that he went into the bowling alley with nothing and came out with a hundred thousand bucks. And according to his confession, he got paid to deliver the verdict.”
“He already confessed?”
“Yes,” said Schwartz.
“In his own handwriting,” the assistant U.S. attorney added.
Schwartz pulled a copy of the one-page confession from his sport-coat pocket and laid it on the table. With his finger, he skimmed past that preliminary language about the free and voluntary nature of Hewitt’s confession, all provided by the assistant U.S. attorney. Then he found his eyeglasses and read the operative language aloud for Andie’s benefit: “‘The offer to me was fifty thousand dollars in cash for a hung jury and one hundred thousand dollars for a verdict of not guilty.’ Those are Hewitt’s initials right there,” he said, indicating.
“The offer from whom?” asked Andie.
Schwartz turned his attention back to the work in progress on the other side of the one-way mirror. “That’s phase two of the interrogation,” he said.