Watching the numbers light up, charting the detectives’ progress, he tried to imagine what had brought them here at this time of night.
Someone he was responsible for putting in jail must have been released. He would listen, nod, reassure the detectives that he was not only careful but was well guarded both in his luxury apartment on upper Fifth Avenue and in his downtown office. The city in the post-September 11th world did not take the safety of its officials lightly.
The elevator door opened and two men stepped off, their coats still flecked with snow. Alan nodded to them as they stood there stamping the last of the slush off their boots. He recognized both of them, welcomed them, and then ushered them inside.
He liked to watch people come into the apartment. Despite his high-profile job, it was his wife’s salary that paid for them to live floating above the city. No one was unimpressed by the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Central Park. At night, the view crept up on you, seduced you, pulled at you. The sparkling lights from thousands of apartments across the park, on the West Side, looked like stars.
Leightman led the detectives into his den and motioned to the seating area. Detectives Jordain and Perez sat down side by side on a couch. The judge took a chair facing them. A coffee table piled with papers and leather-bound books separated them.
“Would either of you like a drink? Coffee? A cigar?”
“I wouldn’t mind some coffee,” Perez said as he rubbed his hands together, warming them up.
Leightman nodded and looked at Jordain. “And you, Detective?”
“Sure, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“None at all. I just hope you’re not here about something that’s going to be too much trouble.” He chuckled.
“It may be, Judge.”
Forty-Three
Waiting for Leightman to return with the coffee, Jordain looked around the room, taking in the two walls of fine walnut bookcases.
“How many books would you guess there are in here?” Perez asked, following his gaze.
“More than you could ever read in a lifetime, my friend.”
Perez gave him a sideways glance.
“Okay, I’m underestimating you. About three thousand more than you could read.”
“That leaves how many that you think I could read?”
“Maybe ten.”
The sideways glance now included arched eyebrows. Perez was famous for looks that spoke volumes. Jordain laughed quietly. “That one I deserved.”
The judge came back with a silver tray that Jordain recognized as the classic Georg Jensen acorn pattern that had enjoyed huge popularity more than fifty years earlier. The teaspoons, sugar spoon and coffee service belonged to the same pattern. He wasn’t surprised. Not everyone could incorporate this kind of style into their lives, but in apartments like this, it was almost expected.
“It’s a little late for a social call,” Leightman said as he poured the coffee. “So I’m assuming this is urgent.”
“Urgent and a little uncomfortable, I’m afraid,” Jordain said as he took the fine bone china cup. Bringing it up to his lips, he tasted the steaming liquid, and over the gold rim, watched Leightman’s reaction: There was curiosity and concern but no panic, no looking away, no discomfort.
“Judge Leightman, is your e-mail bob205 at standard dot com?” Jordain asked.
Leightman hesitated. He only used that e-mail for accessing porn sites; how did they know about it? Why were they asking? For a moment, he ran through possible reasons to hold back this early in the conversation. Could they find out what his e-mail address was if he didn’t admit it? What would they think if he refused to discuss it?
“One of them, yes.”
Jordain and Perez didn’t look at each other, but a muscle in Jordain’s jaw throbbed and Perez nodded almost imperceptibly.
“We have e-mail that was sent from you to a woman named Penny Whistle, and e-mail that was sent from you to another woman named ZaZa, no last name. We retrieved both pieces of e-mail off the women’s hard drives.” As Jordain spoke, he watched the judge take in this new information. First, Leightman’s face expressed recognition. Next, relief, which was confounding. And finally confusion.
“You have e-mail sent by me to these two women?”
Before either detective answered, Leightman stood and walked away from the detectives, over to his desk, where a silver laptop sat open. He put his hand on the computer top and lowered it.
“Yes,” Jordain responded, the one word drawn out and definitive.
The judge stood eight feet away from them, looking down on them with a disdain that had not been in his eyes when he answered the door. “What do you want?”
“Do you know who these women are?” It was Perez’s turn to take over the questioning.
“Can you explain precisely why you have come to my home, in the dead of night, to question me about this?” Leightman asked.
“Because these women are dead and because there is e-mail on their computers from you to them.”
“Why is that relevant? There must be a lot of mail in those women’s computers.”
“The nature of the e-mail suggests that the person who sent it was involved with the women’s deaths.”
The judge opened and closed his mouth like a fish gasping for air, and then he regained his composure. “Someone is setting me up. Do you realize how many people know my e-mail address? This is clearly something you need to investigate, and I commend you for coming to me first, but I have nothing to do with this.”
“Judge Leightman, it will save us a lot of time and you a lot of embarrassment if you talk to us now-”
“No,” the judge interrupted Jordain. “I’d like you to leave. Immediately. I’ve never been so outraged in my life. How dare you come here and question me like this. You know how easy computer fraud is?” Leightman was whispering his shouts, so while they were not loud, they were resonant with fury.
“We’re going to need to take your computer with us,” Jordain said.
“Absolutely not. You won’t invade my privacy for some wild-goose chase. Now, please, get out. Tomorrow morning you can call my office and my secretary will give you the name of my lawyer and his phone number and you can pursue this travesty through him.”
“Judge, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. But we have a search warrant. We need your computer.” Jordain watched the judge’s eyes narrow and his lips purse into one thin line. A vein throbbed in his neck.
Jordain felt sick to his stomach. He hated doing this to a guy who had a reputation of being a fair judge.
“I’d like to see the warrant.”
Perez walked across the room and handed it to him.
For the next sixty seconds, Leightman read every single line as if he had never seen a court order before. “So. Larry Rosen signed this.” Leightman laughed viciously. “He must have loved that. Well, you can arrest me and put me in jail and deal with the repercussions, but I am not letting you take my computer with you no matter what kind of paperwork you have.”
Jordain and Perez had talked about the possibility of the judge pulling rank and flat out refusing.
If he was guilty, they’d figured he’d do something exactly like that. They had no choice but to insist. If they didn’t take the computer, the judge could easily erase his files or destroy the hard drive overnight. They couldn’t allow that to happen. Two young women had died. A third was still in the hospital. The only thing that they had in common was mail from a man whose e-mail address had been traced back to Alan Leightman. In both e-mails, he asked that the women use the gifts he’d sent. The gifts that had killed them.
Jordain nodded at Perez, who moved to the desk. Leightman lunged. They were well matched. Jordain ran over, pulled out his handcuffs and rushed the judge before he and Perez could hurt each other. The sound of the metal clicking shut stopped Leightman. He looked down, real horror on his face. “What the fuck are you-”