2nite! The message popped up, with its little trill of arrival.
Tenley stared at it. Tonight? Tonight what?
Should she respond? Or did Brileen have more to say? She typed 2nite what? and a new message appeared.
We come get u! U home?
We? Tenley thought.
Yes. Tenley typed, because what else would she say? But Brileen didn’t know where she lived, so she’d still push for tomorrow. Tomorrow would be much easier.
But another message from Brileen appeared before Tenley could formulate her new plan, let alone type it.
K! On way. C U in 5 mins, k?
Tenley stared at the words. Was it okay? Was it?
“The murder? Is on the DVD? Did you see it? Who else has seen it?” Catherine yanked open the door to her inner office, waved Kelli Riordan to the guest chair.
Ward Dahlstrom was pacing, wiping his glasses with a white handkerchief. She noted how disheveled he looked, his checked shirt for once not starched to perfection, a lock of hair for once come loose.
Catherine punched the green button on her coffeemaker. Four A.M. She’d need a lot of damn coffee. Absolutely no way she was going to call Mayor Holbrooke, not until she heard the whole story. Her brain revved, questions piling on top of each other.
“The traffic room, right? So who pushed the twenty? When?”
She paused. No one had answered her yet. “So?”
Dahlstrom cleared his throat and waved toward the city attorney. “You want to take this, Kelli?”
“Take what?” Catherine selected an ultra dark roast from the spinning pod holder. Might as well go big. “Anyone else want coffee?”
“No thanks,” Riordan said. “Here’s the situation. You know how the traffic video works.”
Riordan always had to communicate step by agonizing step, as if listeners could not keep up with her agile legal brain. Faster to let her explain it her way. Even though Catherine simply wanted to see the video. In about one second, she was going to play it, explanation or not.
She worried, since it was a traffic cam, that Tenley might be involved. She was probably asleep now, shoes probably still on and arms splayed over her plaid bedspread. They’d solve the family issues in the morning. They were still family, after all.
“Sure, I know how it works.” Catherine poured sugar into her coffee. Maybe she could hurry this along. “It’s all what you see, live surveillance, not taped, unless someone hits the cache button. That was our compromise with the ACLU types. We don’t keep any traffic cam video. So like I said, who pushed the twenty? When?”
Catherine saw Riordan and Dahlstrom exchange glances. Clearly she wasn’t up to speed.
“What?” she said. “You’re scaring me here.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Riordan said.
“It’s fine.” Dahlstrom had moved a pile of files from Catherine’s wide windowsill, making room for him to lean against the wooden ledge.
“You want to fill me in?” Catherine’s patience evaporated. It was too late-or early-to screw around. “Kelli? Now?”
The lawyer shifted in her chair, uncrossed her legs, crossed them again. Moved her briefcase to the other side. “Bottom line,” she said, “we actually do tape.”
Catherine tilted her head, blinked, trying to understand. “Do tape what?”
“The traffic cam. There is no ‘cache,’ you know? It’s all-well, the bleeding hearts made such a stink over it, we had to agree not to tape. But according to the mayor, it was essentially a public safety issue. He decided public safety trumped the right to privacy-”
“If there is such a thing in this day and age,” Dahlstrom interrupted.
Riordan ignored him. “So the mayor made an executive decision that all traffic cam video would be recorded and stored.”
Catherine stared at the lawyer, hearing the buzz of the coffeepot, smelling the first fragrant note of dark roast. No matter what was said next, they were doomed. Their own miniversion of Watergate, Iran-Contra, Abscam.
Politics, lies, and videotape.
“Did you know this, Dahlstrom?” Catherine tried to calculate their exposure. Like trying to measure the temperature of the sun. Why even bother? Screwed was screwed. “Who else knows?” Catherine had to ask, even though she knew it was even too late for that. There were no secrets in politics, not unless everyone was dead. And these days, even that didn’t help. Because video never dies.
“No one knew, pretty much,” Riordan said. “Except me and Ward and the mayor. It’s all digital, transmitted to an off-site cloud storage company. The company has no idea what it’s getting, of course. And we can access it if need be.”
Riordan shrugged. “So that was our predicament today, as you can now understand. When the police subpoena said-” She clicked open her leather briefcase, took out a folded piece of paper. Scanned it, then read. “‘Any and all video surveillance footage of Curley Park on… blah blah today’s date, yesterday, actually, and blah blah a time span of ten in the morning until three in the afternoon,’ then we had to decide whether to hand it over. Or lie.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this? Why didn’t the mayor tell me?” Catherine’s brain churned with the possibilities, the conflicts, the legality. She almost wished she could talk to Greg about it. They used to discuss things like this, political dilemmas, and destiny, and the role of the truth. The goals of being a public servant. Who were you serving, really? But Greg was gone, who knew where, and she was on her own. With an epic can of worms.
“That’s a topic for discussion,” Riordan said, “but hardly the point right now, correct? We can’t admit, publicly, that we have video of anything that happened in Curley Park-or on any of our traffic cams. That’d be political suicide for Mayor Holbrooke.”
“It would show he’s a liar,” Catherine said.
Riordan didn’t answer.
“Which would be true,” Catherine said.
Riordan didn’t answer.
“So what’s your suggestion?” Catherine asked.
Riordan didn’t answer.
Catherine sank into her swivel chair, barricading herself behind her wooden desk, looking at the lawyer who was about to ruin the mayor’s relationship with just about everyone in the city. Constituents, cops-hell, who knew what other evidence those tapes might contain. Catherine shook her head as the choking possibilities unspooled. Lawyers. Crap. They’d start issuing subpoenas for every bit of video that existed. Reopen court cases, criticizing the city for withholding evidence. Which, if she was understanding correctly now, would be completely and devastatingly true. And the press. Double crap. The press would go completely nuts.
This was one of those moments where careers were made or broken. They’d taught her Pythagoras at the Kennedy School. “Choices are the hinges of destiny.” Which, okay, seemed a bit portentous for this occasion, but nevertheless, her choice right now would be massively important. It could even bring down the city government.
The mayor was an idiot. Even a fifth grader knew the cover-up was always worse than the crime. Not that there was a crime. Was there?
“What’s our legal exposure?” Catherine asked. “Can we claim some kind of public safety exemption?”
Riordan took a deep breath, blew it out in a long sigh. “Here’s how I envision-” she began.
“Wait,” Catherine said. No more explanations or rationalizations. Time for the main attraction. “That DVD. Before we decide anything. Let’s see it.”
29
Jane knocked the rumbling phone onto the floor. 6:04 A.M. Lovely. She scooped it up just in time to prevent the voice mail from kicking in. Private number, it said. It had better not be a sales call.