But focusing her bleary eyes on the computer screen was more than Melanie could manage. She’d gotten only so far as typing the cell-phone and ESN numbers into the caption before she’d wandered off into her mental torture chamber, reliving the events of last night. The expression on Steve’s face when he’d seen Dan. Worse, the expression on Dan’s when he’d seen Steve.
UH-HUH,” Steve had said, nodding so knowingly you would’ve thought he caught her like this every night and twice on weekends. “I’m obviously interrupting something. Your mother said you were working, Mel. Did you misinform her, or was she covering for you?”
“Steve, this is my friend Dan O’Reilly from-”
“I know who he is.” And he did. Steve had seen them kissing in a car once, months ago, right when he and Melanie had first separated.
Dan nodded at Steve grimly. “How you doing?”
“I was doing fine. Planning to have a little holiday celebration with my wife, if you don’t mind,” Steve said, gesturing with the two glasses of champagne in his hands.
“Your ex-wife. Almost,” Melanie said hurriedly. “That’s nice of you, Steve. And thanks for stepping in to watch Maya, but I have other plans right now.”
“Apparently. You might want to fix your lipstick.”
“Steve, come on, we’re separated. As a matter of fact, Linda told me she saw you at a club Saturday night with some-”
“Hey,” Dan interrupted, speaking to Melanie but eyes still on Steve, who stood there acting aggrieved in his expensive clothes and perfectly barbered hair. Melanie cringed inside. She knew Dan O’Reilly well enough to be pretty sure what was coming next.
“Dan…” she began, but he wouldn’t look her in the face.
“It’s late. Now that I got you home safe, I really gotta run, okay? Have a good night.”
“Dan-”
“Gotta go.”
“No, please, wait!”
But he’d already turned decisively on his heel and plunged through the fire door to the back stairwell, choosing to walk down eight flights rather than wait for the elevator.
RAY-RAY WONG strode in carrying a bunch of file folders. Melanie had been staring off into space, turning over in her mind what she’d say to Dan if he showed up first, alone. She had to admit she was kind of relieved to see Ray-Ray instead. Maybe Dan would just quit the case. But no, that would be awful. The fact was, she couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened in the elevator last night. Oh, God, his mouth, his body, the way he was in such a hurry that he was kind of rough with her. Muy erótico. What she really wanted was to get past all the awkwardness about Steve and head straight back to that elevator. Any elevator. Get stuck between floors with Dan, for at least an hour. Mmmm.
“Did you hear what I just said?” Ray-Ray asked.
Stop, Melanie Vargas. Stop this instant.
“I’m sorry. I was worrying about this requirement in the Title III statute, whether we meet the criteria or not,” she said.
“I’ve got something a whole lot more interesting, ma’am. Remember you told me what that guy Hogan said about Whitney Seward’s blog?”
“Oh, right.”
“Well, I located it last night, with some help from a friend of mine on the Tech Squad. It’s pretty unbelievable. I have the Web address. May I?”
“Please.” Melanie got up and came around the desk, and Ray-Ray went to sit in her swivel chair. “Just minimize my document. There’s an icon for Internet access,” she said.
Ray-Ray fiddled around with the computer. Melanie sat in a guest chair, trying not to think about Dan, which was only possible if she made her mind a complete blank.
After a few minutes, Ray-Ray frowned and said, “Huh.”
“What is it?”
“It keeps telling me the page isn’t available. Let me see if I can get my buddy from Tech on the line.”
Ten minutes went by, during which Melanie leafed through the file folders Ray-Ray had brought while he consulted by telephone with the Tech guy. Work always made Melanie feel better. She busied herself marking the various subpoena responses with yellow Post-its. The details of telephone billing records and flight manifests between New York and Puerto Rico soothed her overwrought mind considerably. At the very least, by the time she’d finished, she felt like she could face Dan O’Reilly without either ripping off his clothes or bursting into tears and running away.
Finally Ray-Ray hung up. “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said.
“What?”
“The blog’s gone. Vanished from the Web.”
“You’re kidding. Who did that?”
“Apparently somebody using Whitney’s username and password. Happened at 2317 hours last night.”
“Did you make a record of what was on it?”
“Naturally, ma’am. Copied everything to a disk in that folder there yesterday. That’s not the issue.”
“Yeah, I hear you. First, Whitney’s cell-phone memory was selectively erased, now this. Somebody’s out there impeding our investigation.”
“And based on the content of the blog, I have a pretty good idea who it is.”
Melanie handed the disk across her desk. “Okay, then, let me see what you downloaded.”
She walked around to stand behind Ray-Ray as he pulled up the blog. The main page popped up, boasting a picture of Whitney sitting on her bed in her Holbrooke uniform, leaning back against her pillows with her legs spread, smiling broadly, wearing no panties.
“Whoa!” Melanie exclaimed, startled.
“It gets worse. Or better, depending on your point of view,” Ray-Ray said, with a twinkle in his eye. “This girl was twisted, but you can’t deny she’s wicked hot.”
“Ray-Ray! I’m surprised at you.”
“My interest is purely professional, ma’am.”
“Yeah, right. Hey, is that the Holbrooke crest at the top of the page?”
“You bet. Whitney’s yearbook photo’s in here, too, and even copies of her term papers and exams. It’s partly the Holbrooke image that she was selling.”
“Selling?”
“Yup, that was the whole point. She posted lists of items she wanted visitors to her site to buy for her, and whoever bought her the stuff first would get an e-mail back with their own private smutty picture. Whitney had a personal shopper at Barneys handling the orders for her, and the…uh, customers, I guess you could call ’em, would phone in their credit-card numbers to buy particular items. When the purchases went through, she’d send out a JPEG with the new picture as payment. We were able to track the correspondence, and it’s pretty unbelievable. Men all over the U.S. and in other countries, too.”
“Wow. This raises all sorts of new possibilities for the case.”
“Like what?” Ray-Ray asked, frowning.
“First of all, this could be some weird kind of sex crime dressed up to look like a drug crime. To cover the bases, we should investigate every one of the men who visited the Web site.”
Ray-Ray shook his head. “That’s a shitload of names, ma’am.”
“I realize that. But it needs to be done. And that’s not all. If Whitney was running an Internet porn site trading on the Holbrooke name, I think we need to look more closely at Holbrooke.”