smiled. “What?” he said.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Go on, say it. You were going to say something.”
“Always the FBI agent,” she said.
“But I’m right, right?”
They sat in silence for a while, both watching as the Jaguar swallowed up the miles of road. “Daddy will probably ask again, you know?”
“He does every time we go around,” agreed Howard. “He won’t take no for an answer.”
“He’s used to getting what he wants,” said Lisa. She flipped the sun visor down and checked her make-up in the vanity mirror.
Howard knew she was nervous, as she always was when she was visiting her father. Howard had learnt from experience that it was the worst possible time to start an argument with her. Eventually she broke the strained silence, and her voice was softer. “And if he does ask again?”
Howard shook his head slowly. “The answer’s going to be the same, Lisa. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I like doing what I’m doing. I like being with the Bureau. I wouldn’t get the same satisfaction as your father’s head of security.”
“You’d get a lot more money, though,” his wife said. It was a discussion they’d had many times, and they’d both expressed their views so often that they talked about it almost on auto-pilot, as if the words no longer had meaning.
“I know, I know,” said Howard. “Maybe in the future; we’ll see. .”
“That’s what you always say,” said Lisa.
“But at least I’m not saying never,” said Howard. “I’m just saying not right now.” Howard’s stomach tightened as he drove off the highway and onto the single track road which led to the Clayton estate. White fences seemed to stretch for miles, enclosing paddocks where sleek Arabian horses stood proudly, their heads turning to follow the Jaguar. The first time he had seen the Clayton house he’d stopped his car and checked the directions Lisa had given him. He’d been going out with her for three months and while it was clear she had money she’d never given him any hint of the magnitude of Theodore Clayton’s wealth. They were both students — he was studying law and she was an English major — and most of their time was spent either in bed or hitting the books, and there had been little time for discussing their families. Howard had never forgotten how nervous he’d been the first time he’d driven his clapped-out Ford Mustang up to the front of the house, and how dry his mouth had been as he’d rung the doorbell. The wait for the door to open had been one of the longest in his life and it had taken all his self-control not to run back to the car and drive off. Even now, more than a decade later, he had the feeling that he didn’t belong and that the door would be slammed in his face.
The house had been designed in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, a two-storey home which curved around a teardrop-shaped pool. The twelve-bedroom house was made from stone ground on the site which blended perfectly into the desert setting, and had huge windows that took full advantage of the magnificent views of Camelback Mountain. It was a short drive to the Paradise Valley Country Club, where Clayton was a leading light, and he was only minutes away from Arizona’s finest golf clubs. To the left of the multi-million dollar home were stables which were twice the size of Howard’s own house, and a garage which contained Clayton’s collection of old British sports cars.
Howard parked the Jaguar next to Clayton’s Rolls-Royce as Lisa checked her make-up again. Jarvis, Clayton’s butler since before Lisa was born, opened the door for them and took them into the impressive drawing room where Theodore Clayton was waiting with Jennifer, his second wife.
Lisa’s mother lived in Connecticut, supported by five-figure monthly alimony cheques. Howard liked the first Mrs Clayton, whose only mistake had been to grow old, and he and Lisa visited her with the children every few months. But he could see why the industrialist had traded her in for a new model. Jennifer had long blonde hair, perfect skin and the firm figure of a cheerleader. She was wearing a tight white dress, cut low at the front to show her ample cleavage and the large diamond pendant which nestled there. She was, Howard had to admit, absolutely gorgeous, but there was a cold, predatory gleam in her eyes. Often it appeared that she looked right through Howard, as if only men with net assets of more than a million dollars were visible to her ice-blue eyes. She would be absolutely amazing in bed, Howard decided, but her performance would be in direct proportion to the wealth of her lover. It was the money she’d make love to, not the man. Clayton and Jennifer made a perfect couple, and like the horses outside it was as if they were posing for the effect: he with his right hand in the pocket of his blazer, she with her head tilted to tighten her jaw and show off her flawless neck. Clayton stepped forward and hugged Lisa while Jennifer watched with flint-hard eyes. When Clayton released his daughter and shook hands with Howard, Jennifer and Lisa embraced warily with little warmth. They complimented each other on their dresses and their jewellery while Clayton watched them with obvious pleasure. After all, thought Howard, he had paid for it all.
The rest of the guests arrived shortly afterwards: the owner of a local television station and his trophy wife, a white-haired oil man from Texas and a companion young enough to be his granddaughter, and a lawyer from Phoenix who, apart from Howard, was the only one there with a wife close to his own age.
Dinner, as always, was perfect, cooked by Clayton’s personal chef and served in the dining room by Jarvis and two maids in black and white uniforms. On the walls were several of Clayton’s Navajo rugs, some of them more than a hundred years old. The best of Clayton’s collection was on loan to Phoenix’s Heard Museum and the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. Clayton took great delight in telling his dinner guests how both museums had recently asked him to lend them more. With the top quality rugs worth upwards of $75,000, Howard reckoned that the industrialist was as interested in their investment potential as he was in their artistic quality.
Clayton loved Maine lobster and he took obvious pride in telling his guests that the crustaceans had been flown in from the East Coast on his private jet that morning.
Over coffee the conversation turned to a recent court case where a serial killer had used a camcorder to record the gruesome deaths of his victims and had then sent the tapes to local television stations. Several had refused to show the grisly tapes, but others, including the station owned by the man at Clayton’s table, had aired them. When the subject came up, Clayton smiled and nodded at Howard as if to reassure him that he knew the tape of the snipers was to be treated as confidential.
The lawyer suggested that the tapes were evidence of a crime and as such shouldn’t be made public as they could prejudice a later trial, an argument which Howard considered valid.
Clayton screwed up his napkin and dropped it on the table in front of him. He nodded fiercely. “This is the video age, and I’m not talking about the rubbish they show on MTV. There are about twenty million camcorders in this country. We’re getting to the stage now where there’s a camcorder on every street corner. Every time there’s a major disaster the camcorders get there first, we’re seeing them at crime scenes, plane crashes, car crashes, street fights. They’re being admitted in courts as evidence and used in insurance claims, but no-one has really thought through the ramifications of what it means.”
He lifted his wine glass to his lips and sipped. No-one interrupted. Clayton liked to sit and pontificate after a good meal, and his guests knew better than to try to spoil his enjoyment. Clayton slowly put the glass back on the starched cloth and gently ran his finger around the rim. He fixed his eyes on the lawyer.
“Eyewitnesses can be cross-examined and their veracity can be challenged, and as you and Cole know, no two witnesses ever see the same thing. That’s all going to change. Before long everything that happens in public is going to be recorded on tape, and the video recording will take precedence over all other forms of eyewitness evidence. It started during the LA riots in 1992 and the wave of prosecutions which followed. The camcorder is the silent witness. If you can show a jury a video, they’ll believe that over everything else. It’s the old truism: a picture is worth a thousand words. When Kennedy was shot, there was one black and white film of it, lousy quality and taken well away from the event. When Reagan took a bullet there was a videocamera there to record it. The next time they try to hit a President, there’ll be half a dozen camcorders there, and that’s not including the networks’ Death Watch cameras. Imagine what that’ll mean. Imagine what the Warren Report would have looked like if there had been half a dozen camcorders close to the motorcade in Dallas. Cover-ups become impossible. That’s what the video age means. The age of truth.”
He looked at Howard as if to make sure that he was listening. “But tapes can be altered, events can be faked,” he continued. “And the Government is only now beginning to realise the inherent problems in allowing juries to believe what they see. We’re one of several companies working on analysis of video tape, both in terms of improving the quality of recordings and in determining their fidelity.”
