Apparently not. He doesn’tknow. She picks up the paper and flaps it. “This doesn’t look familiar to you,Roger?”
“Familiar.” That stops Ogren. His eyes move to the ceiling,then back at her. “No.”
“You guys have her laptop, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve searched it-”
“We’ve looked at it, sure.” Ogren’s eyes zero in on her.“Help me out.”
“You haven’t read it.”
“Read what?”
“That story she was writing,” she says easily. “A new novel.Something called ‘
“And it will look familiar to me.” He reaches for a pen andpaper.
“Very.” McCoy opens her hands. “You guys don’t check thedocuments that are deleted from the hard drive? That’s the best place to look.”
“She deleted it.”
“Yeah, hell, yeah. Wouldn’t you to try to get rid of it? Youkill someone and try to manufacture an alibi, something you’re taking right outof a novel you’re writing? First thing you do is get rid of any trace of thatnovel. The only problem being, these days, we can find anything.”
“Jesus. ‘Revenge Is a Dish-’ ”
“I can’t remember exactly. I think the chapter was literallycalled ‘Alibi,’ though.”
“I don’t know how that was missed,” he murmurs, his jawclenching.
“Oh, in fairness, it’s buried in there. You’d have to readthe entire manuscript. Or maybe your techies haven’t gotten to it yet.”
Ogren, who has been writing notes, stops suddenly, his headslowly rising to meet her stare. “How do you know about this?” he asks. “Youknow the contents of her computer?”
“We were at her house, Roger. Remember? When we planted thebug.”
“Yeah, but that was without her knowledge. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“You can’t conduct a search without her knowledge,” he says.“At least after the fact.”
McCoy shrugs. He has her there, or so he thinks. He isassuming that the federal agents broke the law, because he isn’t thinking itthrough. It’s not his area.
“Oh. Oh, shit,” he says. “You went in under the PatriotAct.”
Under the Patriot Act, the federal government can searchcertain suspects without their knowledge, even after the fact. This isconfirming something Ogren probably already suspected, that this operationinvolves terrorism on some level.
“Sam Dillon wasn’t murdered because of anything related toterrorism,” McCoy says with confidence. “I like your story. The jilted lover.”
“I have to take your word for that.”
“Listen, Roger, if terrorists murdered Sam Dillon, we wouldbe all over you to take a pass on this prosecution, for now. Think about it. Wewould have been in your office, the day after Dillon’s murder, begging you tohold off. Or we would have assumed jurisdiction.” She opens her hands. “We’renot doing that. The two aren’t related. The only reason I ever came to you isbecause we were afraid you would detect the bug in Allison’s home, and wordwould get out.”
That makes sense, and the explanation seems to sit wellenough with the county prosecutor. He sees that he doesn’t have a choice, inany event. The only thing he could possibly do is drop the charges againstAllison, and he won’t do that.
“If Allison Pagone is a terrorist of some sort,” Ogren says,wincing at how ridiculous it sounds, “I have to know that. She could ambush meat trial.”
McCoy shakes her head. “It’s not like that. You won’t hearher say a thing like that at trial. If she discloses a single witness thatmakes your hair stand up, let me know. But she won’t, Roger. She won’t dothat.”
“She won’t,” he says, “because she wouldn’t be dumb enoughto admit to something like that at trial?”
McCoy doesn’t answer.
“Or she won’t,” Ogren continues, “because she doesn’t know?”
McCoy smiles. A quick study, this one. “She won’t, period.”She gathers her bag and heads for the door. “You’re on the right track withyour case,” she says. “The rest of this is way out there, totally peripheral.It has nothing to do with your prosecution. Okay?”
Ogren seems to be temporarily placated, but overall, he isstill probably feeling very much in the dark.
“Pull that deleted document off her hard drive,” she says.“You’ll like what you find.” She shows herself out. It is a bit troubling toher that she is getting good at this.
ONE DAY EARLIER…
Ron McGaffrey sits in Allison’s home, on her burgundy couchin the living room. He just received the files from the case-a case he hadundoubtedly read about, a case about which he has probably foamed at the mouthfor the chance to defend. So enamored was he with the prospect of beingAllison’s lawyer, he has paid her a call at her home. He read over the filethis past weekend, he has told her, and she listens to him complete his assessmentof the case.
“The case is a classic circumstantial prosecution,”McGaffrey summarizes. He is leaning back on the couch, an ankle crossed overthe other knee, waxing eloquent as lawyers often do.
“You were there, at some point,” he says. “You broke a nail.You lost a strand of hair. Lost an earring. You were there. It doesn’t mean youwere there on the night he was murdered. ”
But it does mean she was there, at some point. She told thepolice that she was not romantically involved with Sam Dillon. She has no otherexplanation for why she would have visited Sam Dillon’s home by the lake.
“The blood on your sweatshirt is a bit troubling,” McGaffreyconcedes. “But it’s not consistent with a spatter. It’s not very much blood. Itcould have come at other times, too.” He looks at Allison. “A nosebleed,perhaps. Something that just trickled on your sweatshirt.”
Allison nods.
“If you had a friendship with Dillon, or some other kind ofrelationship,” McGaffrey says, “that is an explanation for all of this. Itdoesn’t put you at his house on the night of the murder. The last time you sawhim was when you went to his office at the state capital.”
Allison winces. It is hard not to think about the last timeshe saw Sam Dillon.
At that moment, she was sure that she loved him. At themoment that he was gone, her feelings for Sam crystallized, moved from anintense passion, from her reawakening of feelings dormant for so many years, tolove.
“I love you,” she said to him. She reached for him but itseemed inappropriate. Her hand was only inches from his head, from the bloodthat caked the back of his beaten skull. She wanted him to see her one moretime, even if he couldn’t see her. She wanted to look into his eyes, but shewould not move him. His face was peaceful, defeated, his eyes closed but hismouth open ever so slightly.
She picked up the trophy from the manufacturers’ associationand placed it in a plastic freezer bag from Sam’s kitchen.
“You weren’t there,” McGaffrey repeats, as if to convincehimself. “And then there’s the issue of your meeting with Sam at the statecapital the day before he died. Friday. They’re saying he ended yourrelationship and you were furious. This is based only on your appearance-youseemed upset-and a few words from Dillon to you that were overheard. This isbased on one person’s brief overhearing of a part of a conversation that heknew he wasn’t supposed to be overhearing. Reliability is a question.”
Allison nods, as if she is on board. But the staff aideheard it accurately, more or less.
