Down the long dim hall, Tommy could see Brand waiting for him. It was going to be a hard conversation, and as Molto approached he was looking for words, wishing he had spent some time thinking about what to tell a man who was not simply his most loyal deputy, but also his best friend. When Tommy was about fifty feet away, Brand started dancing.
Too astonished to move any farther, Tommy watched as Jim did the kind of hip-hop juke that NFL players performed in the end zone. He knew Brand well enough to realize that Jim, who'd run back several interceptions for TDs in his time, had practiced these steps in front of the bathroom mirror, wishing he hadn't been born a generation too soon.
Brand's gyrations were taking him Tommy's way, and when he got closer, Molto could hear him singing, although you wouldn't call it much of a tune. He belted out a word or two each time he hopped from one foot to the other.
"Rus-ty.
"Gone down.
"Rus-ty.
"Gone down.
"Rus-ty.
"Gone away.
"Rus-ty.
"Gone away.
"Rus-ty.
"Gone to the Big House."
Despite being well off meter, he sang the last line like a Broadway performer with his arms thrown wide and at booming volume. Several secretaries and cops and other deputies had stopped to witness the performance.
"You go, girl," one of them remarked, which filled the hallway with laughter.
"What?" Molto asked.
Brand was too exultant to talk. Smiling hugely, he came up to Tommy and bent down to clutch the boss, a good eight inches shorter, in a fierce embrace. Then he walked the PA into his own office, where someone was waiting. It turned out to be Gorvetich, who resembled a scraggly version of Edward G. Robinson in his latter days.
"Tell him," said Brand. "Milo had an amazing idea last night."
Gorvetich scratched for a second at his yellowish goatee. "It was really Jim's idea," he said.
"Not even close," said Brand.
"Whoever," said Tommy. "You can share the Nobel Prize. What's the scoop?"
Gorvetich shrugged. "You remember when I met you, Tom, you were catching hell from the appellate judges."
Tommy nodded. "They didn't want us looking at the internal court documents on Rusty's computer."
"Right. And so we imaged the hard drive-"
"Made a copy," said Molto.
"An exact copy. And we turned the actual computer over to the chief judge there."
"Mason."
"Judge Mason. Well, Jim and I were talking last night, and we decided that just to be sure about this Christmas card, we should go back and look at the image of Sabich's hard drive we made last November, when you first seized the computer. And we did. And that object, the card? It's not there."
Tommy sat down in his big chair and looked at both of them. His first reaction was to distrust Gorvetich. The old man was no match for Brand and must have been pushed into a critical mistake by his former student.
"I thought the card was made up last September before Barbara died?" Molto asked.
"As did I," said Gorvetich. "It gives every appearance. But it wasn't. Because it's not on the image. It was placed on the computer after we first seized it."
"When?"
"Well, I don't know. Because the.pst file now bears yesterday's date."
"Because the defense opened that file in court when they turned on the computer," Brand said. He was too happy right now to remind Tommy that he'd warned against letting the Sterns do that.
"Exactly," said Gorvetich. "But the card had to have been added during the month the PC was over at Judge Mason's. It was shrink-wrapped and sealed right in Judge Mason's chambers the day Judge Yee ordered it returned to our custody."
Tommy thought. Somehow it was Stern's words yesterday that came back to him: 'Interesting case.'
"Where was the image?"
"The imaged copy of the hard drive was preserved on an external drive in your evidence room. Jim got it out and burned a copy for me last night."
Tommy didn't like that at all. "Sandy's guys weren't with you?"
Brand broke in. "If you're worried that they'll claim we screwed with the image, we gave them a copy when we made it. They can look at this themselves on their copy. The card won't be there."
Gorvetich explained that the image had been made with a program called Evidence Tool Kit. The software's algorithms were proprietary and the image could be deciphered only with the same software, which by design was read-only to ensure that no one could attempt to alter an image after it was made.
"I guarantee you, Tommy," Gorvetich said, "Rusty found a way to put this on there."
Molto asked how Rusty could have done that. Gorvetich was not positive, but after thinking on it all night, he had a working theory. There was a piece of software called Office Spy, a hacker's invention now available as Internet shareware, that allowed someone to go into a calendar program and recast the objects stored there. You could roll back the date on a reminder, erase an incriminating entry from the calendar, or omit-or add-the names of people who had been at a critical meeting. Once the new object-the Christmas card, in this case-had been inserted on Sabich's computer, Office Spy had to be removed from the hard drive with shredding software, and then that software itself also had to be deleted, which required manual changes to registry files. Not only was the object-the card-missing on the image from last fall, but now that Gorvetich had made the comparison, he'd noticed subtle differences in the debris remnants of the shredding software held in various empty sectors of the drive. The implication was that shredding software had been added and removed from the computer twice, once before Barbara's death and once after the computer had first been seized.
"I thought Mason had the computer completely secure."
"He did. Or he thought he did," said Gorvetich.
"I mean, Jesus, Boss. Rusty ran that court for thirteen years. You think he didn't have the keys to everything? It would have been better to examine the fucking drive again when we got it back, but Mason said he made a log of everything Rusty's people looked at, and Yee just ordered the computer sealed as a condition of returning it to our custody. We couldn't start arguing with him about that."
Tommy explained it to himself again. Barbara didn't create the Christmas card, because Barbara was dead when that happened. And the only person who had anything to gain from placing the card on the calendar was Rusty Sabich. So much for the crap that Rusty didn't know about computers.
Tommy finally laughed out loud. It wasn't glee he felt so much as amazement.
"Boy, am I going to enjoy my conversation with that arrogant little Argentinian," said Molto. "Boy," he repeated.
Across the room, Brand, who'd never sat down, lifted his hands.
"Wanna dance?" he asked.
CHAPTER 38
Nat, June 25, 2009
Just as Marta had foreseen, the prosecutors arrive in court this morning with a new theory about why my dad is guilty. Jim Brand stands up and tells Judge Yee that the prosecutors have decided overnight the Christmas card is a fraud.
"Your Honor!" protests Sandy from his chair. He paws like a cartoon character in his labored efforts to rise. Marta finally helps haul him to his feet. "The prosecution's own expert acknowledged yesterday that this so-called object was genuine."
"That was before we examined the image," Brand answers. He calls on pompous little Professor Gorvetich to explain his new conclusions. Before Gorvetich has stopped speaking, Marta gropes in her purse for her cell phone and is charging out of the courtroom to call Hans and Franz.
Judge Yee is clearly losing patience. The pencil started going about halfway through Gorvetich's lecture.
"People," he says finally, "what we doing here? Young Mr. Sabich supposed to be on witness stand. Jurors are by their phones. We trying this lawsuit or what?"
"Your Honor," says Stern, "I had hoped the prosecutors would terminate this proceeding today. I can hardly believe this. May I ask if they actually intend to offer evidence to support their new theory about the card?"