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SHE LEFT ANNETTE’S HOUSE IN COLUMBIA HEIGHTS AND DROVE straight to Lancaster & Jordan. The parking lot was empty that late at night. Even the diehards who lived in the den had given up by 9 p.m. Her phone was pressed to her ear as she rode the elevator to the ninth floor, hurried through the den, and entered her office, clicking on the lights as she went.
“Hold on,” Alex said into the phone. “I’m not there yet.”
On her way to the office she had called Kyle Lynburg, an old Alleghany friend whose savant-like computer skills had likely saved him from a life of violent crimes. He landed in Alleghany for armed robbery: at age sixteen he held up a 7-Eleven. Inside Alleghany, Alex had told him how very stupid it was to use a gun to get what he wanted. She was particularly touchy about that subject, and her words had resonated with Kyle Lynburg. After his release, he never picked up a gun again. Instead, he honed his computer skills and put them to good use. These days he made a living by farming his savant-like talents out to those who needed high-tech computer hacking. Alex was happy to have him on speed dial.
She told him what she needed him to do: scale the firewall that protected confidential and archived files at Lancaster & Jordan. The firm’s attorney-client privilege agreement called for inactive or retired files to be archived and sealed. Those files were accessible only by the attorney who handled the case. Active cases were not as protected. Many employees, including Alex, could use their password to gain access to those files. But once a case was concluded, the files were stashed in a digital vault, accessible only by the attorney who worked the case.
At her desk, she set Lane Phillips’s packet next to her keyboard and shook the mouse to bring her monitor to life.
“Okay,” Alex said, putting her phone on speaker. “I’m at my computer.”
“Enter your password,” Kyle said, “to get me into Lancaster & Jordan’s motherboard. I’ll do the rest from there.”
Alex typed her password and clicked ENTER.
“I’m in.”
“Okay,” Kyle said. “I’m taking control of your computer.”
Alex heard a violent flurry of keystrokes as Kyle went to work. Her computer screen turned black and a series of nonsensical code appeared in white font. For ten minutes the screen continued to fill and refill with gibberish until the monitor went completely dark for an instant before blinking back to life.
“In,” Kyle said. “Your IT guy almost knows what he’s doing. I had to back-end gerrymander a couple of firewalls, and I left a few digital footprints in the process. If a good IT geek looks, they’ll see that we hacked it. I still have time to turn around and erase everything, but only if we decide not to go any farther.”
“Not gonna happen,” Alex said. “I can get into the files now?”
“Yeah. Use ‘morsecode4’ whenever a file is password protected and you should be granted access. That password disappears in twelve hours and will then be useless. Until then, you’ve got free reign of any file you’re interested in.”
“Thanks, Kyle. I’ll call you back if I run into any dead ends.”
“You won’t. Wanna tell me why you’re hacking into your own computer system?”
“Not really.”
“Bill’s in the mail,” he said.
“It took you all of ten minutes.”
“Gotta eat, girl,” he said before the line went dead.
Alex concentrated on her computer and started pulling up archived files that held two decades’ worth of Lancaster & Jordan clients. She scrolled through until she found the year 2012. Listed alphabetically were all the clients Lancaster & Jordan represented that year. Alex scrolled to the Qs and found her parents’ names: Dennis and Helen Quinlan. Tears pooled on her lower lids as she stared at her parents’ names and tried to make sense of it all. She entered the temporary password and checked her parents’ file.
She wiped her eyes and grabbed Dr. Phillips’s research packet. She took fifteen more minutes to confirm that every name of every victim in the packet was also listed in the Lancaster & Jordan archives: Karl Clément, Robert Klein, and Nathan Coleman. She didn’t need to confirm Byron Zell. She printed a single page from each file—the client profile page—and laid them on her desk. She needed to see them all together in one space rather than toggling back and forth through the files. Printed at the bottom of each page was the name of the Lancaster & Jordan attorney who handled the case: Jacqueline Jordan.
Alex shook her head, trying to determine if what she was thinking was possible. She scooped up the files and placed them to the side of her desk before going back to her computer. She closed out of the Lancaster & Jordan database and pulled up the Internet. She typed Camp Montague into the search engine, and then narrowed her hunt by adding the camp counselor’s name. When she typed Camp Montague and Jerry Lolland into the search engine, she found several news articles chronicling the suicide death and the scandal that ensued.
“Alex?” someone said, startling her.
When she looked up, Jacqueline Jordan was standing in the doorway of her office.
CHAPTER 59
Washington, D.C. Tuesday, May 30, 2023 11:05 p.m.
JACQUELINE JORDAN PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT OF LANCASTER & Jordan and saw a lone car parked there. It was normal to see sporadic vehicles sitting in the dark, but even the hardest working scrubs packed things up by 10:00 p.m. Jacqueline rode the elevator to the tenth floor and looked around the office. Other than the emergency lights that glowed twenty-four hours a day, the place was dark and quiet.
She took a stroll through the hallways, eventually passing Garrett’s corner office and then making her way to her own. She spent a few minutes writing up what she’d learned from her jailhouse visit to Reece Rankin. The police were mostly satisfied that they had their man, but Matthew Claymore’s backpack was still an explosive piece of evidence that might require defusing in the future, especially if Rankin’s argument that he was a hired thug came to light and gained traction. But it was unlikely anyone serious would listen to Rankin’s story. Still, she needed to be prepared in case it became something from which she needed to protect Matthew.
Jacqueline finished her brief and shut off the office light. In the elevator she pressed the button for the ninth floor instead of the lobby, then walked out into the den, as it was called by the associates, paralegals, and investigators who spent their time there. One office glowed with light and stood out against the otherwise dark space. She headed toward it.
