“And that, of course, is their problem,” I say. “If their only sanction is to have her held in contempt and jailed if she refuses to talk, since she’s already in jail they have to know we’re going to tell her to sit tight and say nothing.”
If they didn’t know it before, they know it now.
“And besides,” says Harry, “that way she gets the upgrade to the five-star room at the federal detention facility.”
Harry looks at me, shrugs a shoulder, and glances at the ceiling as if to say, Can you think of anything else?
I raise a finger. One more point.
“What’s troubling to me is why Templeton invited us to file the Brady motion immediately. Why not wait? He knew the feds would be forced to come out of the shadows, to show their hand the minute it was filed. You have to wonder why.”
Unless I’m wrong, this little tidbit will have Rhytag and his underlings looking for a stick to tie the Dwarf to so they can burn him at the stake. The quick Brady motion was Templeton’s idea. The feds had taken the photos from his files, but they wouldn’t tell him why. The curiosity must have been killing him, so he stirred the pot to see what would happen.
“We need to talk to Katia about everything, go over it all one more time, everything she told us, and we need to do it soon.”
“It’s already been arranged,” says Harry. “She’ll be on the morning bus day after tomorrow with the early arraignments. We don’t meet with Quinn until one in the afternoon. That gives us all morning to huddle with her and pick her brain.”
And it gives Rhytag two days to wire the courthouse holding cell where we will talk to her. He’s going to be very disappointed when Nitikin’s name never comes up. But we can convey Templeton’s offer to her, the LWOP, and make sure the judge is satisfied she understands all the terms before she turns it down. Harry is convinced it’s the only way we’re going to get Templeton off my back.
“We can’t get her in any sooner? Why not tomorrow?” I say.
“I already tried. Quinn’s not available,” says Harry. “That’s as soon as we can do it. So what’s next? Where do we go from here?”
“We go back to where we started. Pike was killed for the photographs. They’re still the key to our case. We go after the pictures.”
“And just how do you propose doing that?”
I check my watch. It’s just after ten thirty in the morning and our script has run dry. But it’s always best to leave them with an unanswered question. “How about an early lunch?” I say. “For some reason I’m hungry this morning.” I give Harry a wink.
“Sure, why not?”
As we head out of the conference room, Harry turns toward his office. I grab his arm.
“I need to get my jacket,” he says.
“Let’s take a walk.” We go out through the front door of the office in shirtsleeves. Instead of turning left toward Miguel’s Cocina, through the little plaza and out under the arch onto Orange Avenue, we turn right and go out the back way, past the trash cans, to a small gate that leads to the parking area behind the buildings.
“What’s going on?” says Harry.
“You asked me how I was going to get the photographs. Rhytag thinks he has the only copies. It’s possible that he doesn’t.”
“If you’re gonna tell me you got Pike’s laptop,” says Harry, “I’m going to start thinking the Dwarf may be onto something after all.”
“No, it’s not the laptop. But the day I met with Katia alone out at the jail, I think you were busy with something else. She told me something and I let it slide, because at the time I didn’t think it was important. She told me that her camera, the one her mother used to take the shots down in Colombia, is at her mother’s house in San José. She told me that as far as she knows, the original images that her mother took are still in the camera. Pike told her that he didn’t erase them from the media in the camera when he copied them to his laptop.”
“That’s assuming we believe him,” says Harry.
“If we’re going to get the photos, it’s the only shot we’ve got.”
TWENTY-SIX
If he ever got drunk and unruly in a bar, Herman Diggs would be the bouncer’s worst nightmare, though you wouldn’t know it from his smiling face and glistening bald head as it pops around the corner of my office door this morning.
“Understand you got something for me,” he says.
I have never actually put a tape measure on Herman, but as he comes through the door he fills it with only a few inches to spare at the top and nothing on the sides. Herman is our investigator. African American, in his thirties, he is a human brick. A blown knee in college crushed Herman’s dreams of a football career and left him with a slight limp, though if you ever saw him run someone down and bury him from behind, you might question this.
“Let’s go grab a cup of coffee,” I say.
Herman and I stroll out to Miguel’s Cocina, under the palm fronds over the patio. We sit at one of the small tables.
“I don’t think they’re open yet,” says Herman.
“Harry and I have decided that certain things shouldn’t be discussed in the office,” I tell him.
Herman gives me a sideways glance.
“The walls have ears,” I say.
“Who would do a thing like that?” he says.
“You don’t want to know. But be careful using your phone or talking in your office concerning the matter we’re about to discuss. Harry and I are using nothing but notepads and carrier pigeons for the moment,” I tell him. “Don’t send any e-mails or leave any voice mail on any of our office systems, or for that matter, our residential phones or e-mail. We’ll have to find other ways to keep in touch. And forget the cell phones because they’re now party lines.”
“Federal government,” says Herman.
I nod.
“What did you do, forget to pay your taxes?”
“How’s your calendar?” I ask.
“I’m booked tomorrow afternoon. I got a court appearance for another client. After that I’m open for a few days. How much time do you need?”
“It depends on how fast you can work and whether you can find what we’re looking for. It’s the Solaz case.”
I pull my wallet out of my hip pocket. I open it and fish out a tiny folded slip of paper. It’s the one I gave to Katia that day at the jail so she could write down her mother’s address. I folded it up and put it in my wallet. I kept forgetting to put it in the file. It is part of the reason the camera had slipped my mind.
“It’s not a street number. They don’t use street numbers the way we do. It’s in Spanish. It’s a written description of how to get to the house. She wrote it on this slip of paper.”
“ Costa Rica,” says Herman.
“How did you know that?”
“Only place in the western hemisphere doesn’t have mail service,” he says. “Been there, know it well. What city?”
“ San José.”
“No problem.”
It’s the thing about Herman. He knows the central and southern part of the western hemisphere like the back of his hand. He and I first met in Mexico on a case that turned violent. When we finally popped up our heads, we realized we were the only two people in sight who could trust each other.
“What is it you’re looking for?”
“A camera. I don’t know what it looks like or where it’s located in the house.”
“Still or video?”
“Still-point-and-shoot, probably something small.”
“Can you talk to your client and get a description?”
“I’ll see her tomorrow in the lockup at the courthouse. I’m sure I can get a description, the problem is how to do it without having the world listening in.”