Her smile faded, and she put on her business face. "Where was Theo on Sunday morning between midnight and three a.m.?"
"He was working at his bar until the cops came looking for Isaac Reems. I told him to go somewhere. He ended up at his girlfriend's and spent the night at her place."
"Would that be Katrina?"
"Trina. She stopped going by Katrina when the hurricane hit."
Again, Andie showed surprise, but it wasn't about the name change. "They're still together?"
Jack wasn't sure how to take it, but her tone almost seemed to ask, How the heck did Theo and Trina outlast us? "Yeah, still together."
"Doing well, I hope."
"Doing just fine." Jack didn't bother with the tale of the Prince Albert.
"Can anyone confirm that he was with Trina that night?"
"Trina can."
She rolled her eyes. "Other than her, wiseguy."
"No, but let me save you a lot of time. Theo didn't kill Isaac Reems."
"I'm not saying he did. I'm not even here on a homicide investigation. Not my jurisdiction."
"It sounds like you're making it your jurisdiction."
"I'm just trying to find out who on the outside was able to get the guards on the inside to look the other way long enough for Isaac Reems to bust out of the TGK correctional facility."
"I hope you find out. But I'd really like to know why you're looking here."
"Because Theo and Isaac were fellow juvenile delinquents back in the 'hood. Because the first place he went when he busted out of prison was Theo's bar. Because the last time Reems was seen alive he was less than four miles from Sparky's Tavern. Because he was found shot on the same street that the Grove Lords used to cruise as teenagers."
"Based on that, you think Theo helped Reems escape from prison?"
"I know Theo, and I have a really hard time believing that he would do something so stupid. But I have to do my job. And there's one other thing in the mix."
"I can't wait to hear it."
"Theo's phone line was tapped."
Lawyer's instinct kicked in: Confront devastating news with righteous indignation. "You tapped his telephone?" he said in an angry voice.
I didn't say I did."
"I meant law enforcement."
"Ah, the 'royal you.'"
"The 'totalitarian you.'"
"Hold your horses," she said. "It's not what you think."
Jack hoped not. His deal with the state attorney was no searches of the premises, no taps on Theo's telephone. Things were going to get very sticky if the FBI knew about Reems's phone messages to Theo. Be cool, Swyteck. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"There was never an official wiretap of any of Theo's phone lines."
"I'm not sure I'm following this."
"One of the agencies – not me, mind you – sought a warrant, but things don't always move fast on weekends. By the time it was issued and the tech people started acting, it was early Sunday morning. They stopped as soon as they detected an existing power drain on the line."
"Are you saying that Theo's line was already tapped?"
She nodded. But it still wasn't clear to Jack if law enforcement had picked up Reems's messages to Theo. "Do you mean his home or his office?" he said.
"The plan was to tap both. The power drain was on his home line."
That was what Jack had feared. "Whose tap was it?"
"That's the big question."
"Some other branch of law enforcement?"
"No official wiretap would be that easily detected. This isn't the old days where telephone exchanges were mechanical and technicians had to link circuits together to route the audio signal from the call. It's digital technology and done by computer."
"So Theo's line was tapped by someone outside of law enforcement?"
She nodded again.
"You never did actually get a wiretap?"
"No. By the time all this was brought to my attention, Reems's body had already been found."
Jack breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Andie said, "I told you I was going to share something of interest.
"You are true to your word, lady."
"I'm glad you feel that way. Now let's see if you are. When was the last time Theo had any communication with Isaac Reems?"
"I'll have to check with Theo. Let me get back to you on that."
"You gotta be kidding me, Swyteck."
"Do I look like I'm kidding?"
"Do I look like I could kill you?"
"Like I said before, some things change." He crossed the room and opened the door for her. "Some things don't."
Chapter 16
Jack and Theo watched as Vinnie Acosta connected a TDR – a time domain reflectometer – to the telephone line outside Theo's town house.
Vinnie was a retired technical agent for the FBI that Jack had worked with during his brief stint as a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney's office. Vinnie had all the necessary toys to operate his own technical counter-surveillance company. He was high up on a ladder, accessing a junction box that received the telephone wire from a utility pole on the other side of the parking lot. Jack and Theo waited below in a typical three-men-at-work scenario: one guy actually doing something while the other two stood around watching.
An internal sweep of the town house for a radio tap or an induction coil attached to one of the phones had turned up nothing. They then moved outside to check for a direct-line tap. Jack understood the concept – a slight change in line impedance caused by the introduction of a tap or splice would show up on the screen of the TDR – but gadgets were not his forte.
"How hard is it to get an accurate reading?" said Jack.
Vinnie's focus remained on the junction box. "ATDR is essentially an echo-ranging device. It generates a short, very rapid rise-time pulse that travels along the wire pair at a speed determined by the velocity factor of the wire. When a discontinuity is encountered, the pulse is reflected back along the wire pair to the TDR and oscilloscope. All it takes to measure the actual distance to the discontinuity is a simple calculation on a calculator."
Jack looked at Theo. "What did he just say?"
"He says it's a hell of a lot easier than sticking a metal ring through your Johnson."
"That's what I thought he said."
Before meeting Agent Acosta, Jack would never have pictured anyone named Vinnie as a highly intelligent techno-nerd. This was due in part to Vinnie Testaverde's highly skilled but less than cerebral play at quarterback for the University of Miami in the 1980s, but it stemmed mainly from the fact that Rene's old boyfriend was named Vinnie. Once, Jack had even joked that Rene should write a spoof book called Duh Vinnie Code: A Girl's Guide to Understanding Brainless Hotties Who Talk Like Dis.
"Got your bug," said Vinnie, checking his calculator. "About forty-three feet from the box."
Theo looked up at the wire and made a rough measurement. "That pole by the Dumpster," he said.
"Good place for it," said Vinnie.
He climbed down and moved the ladder to the other pole. Jack and Theo resumed their all-important positions of standing around and watching. Jack felt as though he should be wearing a hard hat and earning about thirty bucks an hour.
"Yup, it's here all right," said Vinnie.
Theo looked at Jack. "I guess Henning wasn't bluffing."
"Don't touch it!" Jack shouted upward.
Vinnie said, "I can't remove it if I don't touch it."
"It's enough just to know exactly where it is. I want Henning to come out and get it and check for fingerprints."
"I should at least disable it," said Vinnie. "Just one snip of the wire."
Jack gave him the okay. Vinnie took care of it and climbed down the ladder. Jack said, "How sophisticated does the equipment look?"