Page 87 of Dirty Judge

“Why would anyone need that many email addresses?”

“He has a degree in digital forensic science.” He shrugged. “I think he just does it for fun.”

I flipped open the folder, coming face to face with the list of addresses and stapled pages of emails.

“That’s just a small sample of what’s in every inbox,” he said. “He makes lists of everything and keeps records of conversations, lawyers he meets, et cetera.”

“There’s no way this is all you found,” I said. “When you hacked me, you found lots of interesting things…”

“No, I didn’t.” He scoffed. “Your vibrator purchases and constant Amazon returns weren’t interesting to me at all.”

I rolled my eyes.

“There was this one recurring thing, but it’s nothing.” He leaned over and flipped to a back page. “See?”

He pointed to a bank statement.

“He makes monthly payments to a ‘Ryan L.’ in the amount of three thousand dollars, and the payments go back years.”

“Maybe that’s the name of his retirement account?”

“Nah, I checked that.” He shrugged. “I think it’s just an old friend, but...”

“But what?”

“He named the account ‘From your parents,’” he said. “His real name is nowhere on it, though. Does he have a secret kid somewhere?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not that I know of…”

“I figured,” he said. “It’s probably just another charity, then.”

“Probably…” I flipped through the other pages. “So, over a three to five year span, this is it?”

“Yeah.” He tapped his chin. “He recently spent over two million on a bunch of designer clothes, but I’m thinking that might be signs of a mid-life crisis.”

He spent two million dollars on me?

“Uh… Yeah, maybe that’s it.” I refused to walk down that line of conversation. “Did you even search for ‘Grant Jenkins’ in all this?”

“Uh, duh.” He stood up. “That was the first thing I searched for. Nothing came up except the dockets, notes with lawyers, and alerts he got from news places.”

“You might find something else if you look hard enough, but I doubt it’ll be anything other than his notes.”

“Thanks, Max.”

“You’re very welcome.” He zipped his jacket and started to walk away, but then he turned around.

“I need you to make me a promise,” he said. “One you have to keep for the next twenty years.”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Whenever you make it big—whether it’s in law or via literature—and you have enough to pay off all your friends’ mortgages, and make sure I’m one of them.”

“That’s…random as hell.”

“Nah, that’s one nice thing I forgot about in his inbox.” He smiled. “He paid off twelve different people’s mortgages a few years ago, and then he gifted two of them an extra seventy-five thousand for repairs.”

“Did you saytwelvepeople?”