“Man, you was there. We was there. No way I knew you was a judge, man. Nothin’ like that. Only thing I heard is after, when we went to that lame puke who said he was gonna take it off us, and he’s goin’ like, ‘ Malo suerte, man, that ride, it’s been on TV, I ain’ gonna touch it.’ Even he didn’t say ‘Judge,’ man.” Hector shakes his head over his ill fortune.
“What about the guy you got the guns from?” George asks. “You didn’t talk about it with him?”
“Jorge? Can’t tell him nothin’, man. He’d come over and do you himself.” The kid frowns. “Jorge, man, that’s gonna be one vato loco ’bout losin’ them weapons.”
“How about this, Hector? Do you know the name Jaime Colon? El Corazon?”
George has asked the question in his best matter-of-fact tone, but it stops Hector cold. He rears back and delivers a narrow, disbelieving look.
“Corazon?”
“You know who he is?”
“ Ese. You thin’ I don’t know Corazon? Seen him plenty, man.”
The judge takes care to show nothing.
“Where have you seen him?”
Hector looks to the distance to fix the time.
“Tuesday night, man, ain’t it? My ma, man, she don’t never miss them damn telenovelas. She loves that guy, man. ‘Mira, mira, El Corazon.’ She’s straight loca about him.”
On the way out of the room, Gina grabs George.
“Did you believe him?”
“More or less.”
“I want three for him. And two for the little brother. The guns weren’t loaded.”
“That’s too light.”
“Come on, Judge. First adult offense.”
He remembers how he felt facing that pistol. His instinct is to say six, but that’s what the Warnovits defendants got for raping Mindy DeBoyer.
“Gina, my arm’s in a sling. And both those boys have chairs with their names on them in juvie court. Five and three sounds right to me. That’s what I’ll tell the P.A.”
Marina, who came speeding back from her conference after the arrests, missed the interrogation. She’s just entering from the receiving area as George and Abel are headed to the door. Grissom comes over, and together the three of them describe what’s transpired. Marina asks several questions before they leave.
“What do you think?” George asks her as they depart the station. She appears somewhat listless, without her usual brio. Then again, given events in the garage and her travel schedule, she missed a night’s sleep.
“I don’t think anybody in his right mind gives up Corazon-six, sixteen, or sixty.”
George tries not to react, but compared with Marina, Ahab barely gave a second thought to that fish.
“Not that it matters anymore,” she adds.
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
“I got a call from the FBI, Judge, while we were driving back. Remember I told you they were going to run forensic software on your hard drive? When I shipped Koll’s letter over, it sort of reminded them. They only picked up one thing, but it’s pretty interesting. The very first e-mail you got, Judge? They figured out what computer it came from.”
“And?”
Weary, Marina nonetheless manages to find his eye.
“It was yours. The one in your chambers.”
18
George stands on the sidewalk outside Area 2 with Marina and Abel, trying to gather himself. It’s shift change, and the black-and-whites are double-parked in the small lot behind the station while uniformed officers, usually in pairs, stroll in and out in the declining light of a mild late-spring evening. Across the street, in a ragged park, a few flowering trees remain in bloom on a lawn that is littered and unmowed. George’s arm is bothering him. He needs more ibuprofen.
“My computer?” he asks. “The first message came from my computer?”
“Yes, sir,” Marina answers. “They finally got around to running the forensic software and reconstructing your hard drive, so they could see everything that had been on it. I mean, it’s an obvious thought that a message returned to your computer came from there. But since the rest of the e-mails went through the open relay, the Bureau techies pretty much crossed that off. They only ran the forensic software to double-check on your copy of the message Koll received, to see if there was something about it they hadn’t noticed, but as long as they were doing it, the techs poked around to look at the very first e-mail-the one you thought you’d deleted?-and when they reconstructed the message, it was like, ‘Whoa!’ It was from your IP address, through the courthouse server. That seemed pretty weird because there was no copy in your Sent file. They figured it was a super-sophisticated spoof, and then one of them suggested reconstructing the Sent file too, and there it was. It’d been deleted.”
“And what about the other e-mails I got?”
“Nope. The Bureau says the first is the only one sent from your machine. The rest just mimicked your address-there’s no sign of them on your hard drive.”
“So what’s the thinking, Marina? I’ve been threatening myself?”
Marina’s mouth rolls around. “Are you asking me or are you asking the Bureau?” she answers finally.
“Oh, for Chrissake” is all George can say.
“I mean, Judge. It wouldn’t be the first time some attention-seeking meatball threatened himself. It happens all the time.”
That’s why the Bureau ran the forensic software. Because it dawned on someone that they hadn’t crossed the first logical suspect off the list. Even in his irritation, George realizes that, as a perpetrator, he probably makes more sense than Corazon.
“Marina, I was sitting there with John Banion when one of those early messages arrived. The one where we called you? I couldn’t have sent it to myself.”
She hitches a shoulder. “It can be twenty minutes, Judge, from sending to receipt.”
“And what’s my motive?” But that’s clear, when he reflects for an instant. He’s running for retention, after all, and can benefit from appearing a hero to the public. “Do they figure I arranged to get my arm broken too?”
“It’s a theory, Judge. You think I’d be talking to you like this if I believed it?”
Ten count, he thinks, and recites each number to himself slowly.
“But let’s figure out who it is,” she says, “and leave present company aside. We’re looking for somebody who had access to your computer.”
“No one has access to my computer. Seriously, Marina. Anybody who sat down in my chair and started typing would have a lot of questions to answer.”
“It wouldn’t take thirty seconds to type out ‘You’ll pay,’ when you’d stepped out.”
Trying to unscramble all of this, George thinks back to the initial messages.
“So if I understand,” he says, “the first e-mail, the one that says ‘You’ll pay,’ comes from my computer. And then someone sends me the identical message twice the same day from another computer?”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“Obviously, to get your attention.”
“No. I mean why use my computer in the first place? Were we supposed to have noticed this a long time ago? Is it like the messages to my cell phone? Or my home? Number One showing how easily he can invade my space?”
An eyebrow flares. “What messages to your home?”
“Just one,” George says, but for a second he’s afraid she’s going to slap him.
“You are a lousy, lousy patient,” Marina says finally.
“Duly noted.”
She takes another instant to calm down. Now they are more or less even, both aggravated and trying to put it aside.
“Well,” she says finally, “if you were supposed to notice that the e-mail came from your computer, Judge, why would somebody delete it? The techs say both copies-the received message and the retained copy of what was sent-were removed simultaneously. About six hours after it initially went out.”
“Meaning it wasn’t deleted by accident?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“I’m lost,” George says.
“Okay,” Marina says, “but let’s work this through. We’re talking about somebody who could walk into your chambers when you weren’t there and not be noticed. Twice that day. You tell me who that is.”