the case against Jamal would have been a lock. There was only a hearsay problem because I recorded it to something as unreliable as my home answering machine.”
“You need to stop beating yourself up over that. The text message doesn’t convict Jamal. It actually proves his innocence.”
“How can you say that?”
“For one thing, McKenna would never have sent a text like that. Not that I knew everything about my daughter, but that much I did know. The man who killed her picked up her cell phone and texted Jamal. It was all part of setting up her ex-boyfriend.”
Vince paused, confused. “When did you decide this?”
“After I heard Jamal’s alibi, I did the math.”
“Math?”
“The time of death was a time certain. So was the time of the text message. We also know the severity of McKenna’s wounds. With a little input from medical and forensic experts, I was able to make a fairly reliable calculation of how long a healthy teenage girl of McKenna’s height and weight could survive those injuries. That gave me an approximate time of the attack. The bottom line is that McKenna was probably stabbed before the text was sent.”
Vince considered it. Some things weren’t measurable with mathematical certainty, but if anyone could do it, Chuck could. “So Jamal was framed?”
“That’s my calculation.”
Sam rested his head on Vince’s leg. Vince patted his huge head, then scratched him in his favorite spot: on the forehead, right between the eyes. Sam’s eyes. Vince’s eyes. “Which means that the son of a bitch who did this is definitely still out there.”
“Three years and running,” said Chuck.
“Which means Swyteck was right.”
“Yeah,” said Chuck. “So right that Jamal’s mother intends to sue me under some bullshit theory.”
“How do you know that?”
“Jamal’s uncle called me. He said he was hiring Jack Swyteck, and that it was going to be the courtroom equivalent of jihad.”
“Well, if it’s war they want…”
A puff of smoke hit Vince in the face.
“I got a better idea,” said Chuck.
“Tell me.”
There was another cloud of smoke, then Chuck turned into Marlon Brando. “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Jack entered the MLFC Computer Center through a fireproof door and in the company of Chuck Mays, Vince Paulo, and a security guard who made the other men look like Lilliputians.
“Watch your step,” said Mays.
Boxes of records and supplies cluttered the ramp, and it impressed Jack the way Paulo negotiated his way with just a walking stick. The guard left them at another glass door, which Mays opened with a passkey. It led to a large open space that was so well air-conditioned that Jack felt an immediate chill. Inside, rows of supercomputers hummed beneath an expansive drop ceiling with cool fluorescent lighting.
“This single computer center is bigger than my entire first company was,” said Mays.
Jack didn’t fancy himself a computer whiz, so rather than interrupt with a stupid question, he simply let Mays keep talking.
Mays continued. “If you pulled up these floors, you’d see miles and miles of cables. That’s our information pipeline. Every minute of every day we’re sucking in new names, ages, addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses. We get records on your marital status, employment, home values, estimated income. Your children’s ages, your ethnicity, your religion, the books you read, the products you order by phone or online, and where you go on vacation. And that’s just the purchase behavior and lifestyle data.”
“There’s more?” asked Jack.
Mays smiled. “Follow me.”
He led them around a pod of work cubicles to another row of smaller computers.
“Don’t let the size fool you,” said Mays. “These are my fastest ever, and they hold more information than you can fathom. Ever heard of a petabyte, Swyteck?”
“No, but I’m sure a shot of penicillin will clear you right up.”
“Funny. The computer memory here is measured in petabytes.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Imagine a stack of King James Bibles that’s fifty thousand miles high. That’s one petabyte.”
“That’s a lot of ‘thees’ and ‘thous,’ verily I say unto you.”
“We call it grid computing, which is basically a network of supercomputers. All day long we’re analyzing and matching the information we gather to create a detailed portrait of hundreds of millions of adults. And it all happens in seconds, because each portrait has its own sixteen-digit code unique to each person.”
Jack’s gaze swept the room. Each computer looked identical to the one beside it, except for a somewhat goofy motif that was unique to each machine. Some were marked with the characters from The Simpsons or SpongeBob SquarePants. Others were identified by muscle cars, like Maserati or Ferrari.
“What kind of information is collected here?” Jack asked.
“I can’t tell you,” said Mays. “But you might have guessed that the shark fins are for legal actions-divorces, foreclosures, and bankruptcy filings, mostly.”
Jack wondered what nuggets from his own divorce were in there.
“So that’s the end of our tour, ladies and gentlemen,” said Mays. “Now let’s talk settlement.”
“Settlement?” said Jack.
“Jamal’s mother wants to know who killed her son,” said Mays. “I want to know who killed my wife and daughter. My friend Vince wants to know who turned him into the only guy in the room who can’t see what’s going on. So let’s cut through this bullshit about Jamal’s mother suing my ass because it’s somehow my fault that her son is dead.”
“What are you proposing?” asked Jack.
“After you left my house the other night, something stuck in my mind. Basically, we shared information. I gave you a copy of a text-message exchange between my wife and the man who the police think was her killer. You told me something that Jamal said to you in private.”
“That his interrogators in Prague threatened to kill McKenna if he didn’t talk.”
“Exactly,” said Mays. “You said that it was technically still covered by the attorney-client privilege even though Jamal was dead.”
“Fortunately, it was something that Jamal had already authorized me to make public, so I was free to share it.”
“Yeah, brilliant,” said Mays. “Jamal’s dead. Now we want to nail the son of a bitch who killed him and the two most important people in my life. So fuck the attorney-client privilege. You have information straight from Jamal that I can’t get from any other source, am I right?”
“That’s a fair statement,” said Jack.
“Here’s the deal: We pool our knowledge. Everything Vince and I know about McKenna and Shada goes into the pot. Everything you and Jamal’s mother know goes right in with it. And I mean everything. Anything you learned from anyone about Mr. Chang who died at the Lincoln Road Mall. Everything you know about the girl who called you from London. And most important, everything Jamal ever told you.”
“It’s the broadest net possible,” said Vince. “We realize this might include some things that Jamal’s family might not want to tell the police. That’s why we’re doing this privately, through Chuck. Not through the
