“I hadn’t heard about a meeting. Do you think I can be in on that? When? Tomorrow morning?”
He couldn’t help himself. “That’d be okay, if you don’t forget your place.”
She leaped for the bait, coffee sputtered out. She wiped a napkin over her mouth and gave him a look to fry his liver.
He quickly raised his hand, smiling. “You gotta learn control, Barbieri. You can’t lose it every time someone makes an innocent comment rubs you the wrong way.”
The jerk, but he’d done it on purpose, and she’d been ready to go for his throat. She dredged up a smile and a sneer. “And when do you interview the Cahills? Can I go with you for that?”
“Savich and I planned to do that in the morning. That actually is why I followed you home tonight, so I could ask you about the trial. I’d wanted to be there from the beginning, since it was my case, but something else came up. Since Judge Hunt isn’t in any shape to tell me about it himself yet, could you tell me exactly what was happening to make him so suspicious about Mickey O’Rourke?”
Eve said, “Ramsey never talked to me about it directly—of course he wouldn’t—but I can tell you what I saw.
“The trial was still in the final pretrial motion stage. They hadn’t impaneled a jury yet. Milo Siles, the Cahills’ defense attorney, had been making all sorts of motions for discovery. He’d demanded proof of everything the government accessed from the murder victim’s computer, especially anything that was considered top secret. He kept going on about the Brady rules giving the defense the right to any documents it needs to defend their clients, even in the case of espionage. It was pretty obvious, really, Siles was trying to force the government to disclose exactly what Mark Lindy—the murder victim—did for them.”
“Yeah, I know all about Mark Lindy, since it was my case, like I told you. So it sounds like Siles was trying to get the government to drop the case rather than have what Mark Lindy was working on compromised? That sounds nuts.”
“Just you wait. There was a lot of talk then about the Classified Information Procedures Act that provides protection for the government and for defendants in these kinds of cases. There were a bunch of conferences, some of them in camera—that means in Ramsey’s chambers—and after that, Ramsey started getting more and more hard-nosed with O’Rourke. You see, Ramsey had ruled some of that information admissible, but O’Rourke had repeatedly failed to provide it to the court. At first his excuses seemed reasonable, but then he had no more excuses, even bad ones.
“I’ll tell you, it was quite a sight seeing Ramsey lambaste a federal prosecutor like that. He said the court would have to impose sanctions, possibly dismiss the federal indictment, and you could tell that really burned Ramsey, and that’s when he suspended the trial, the same day he was shot.”
Harry nodded. “Since Judge Hunt’s known O’Rourke pretty well after working with him for years, he realized he wouldn’t behave like that—ignoring the judge’s directives time after time—if something weren’t seriously wrong. No way would a federal prosecutor want a case dismissed, except if there was bad stuff going on, and he was directly involved. Yes, that fits nicely.
“Thanks, Eve. I’ve got a better handle on it now. About the Cahills: Savich wants to meet with them as soon as possible, before they have a chance to talk all this through with their lawyer. We’re going to offer them a chance to spend some time together if they’re willing to talk to us immediately, without waiting for Siles. They’re going to want to see each other real bad, one reason is so they can both be sure they can still trust each other. A lot has happened in two days. Who knows what they know? What they’ve heard? What they’re thinking? Maybe they’re ready to deal.”
“Maybe,” Eve said.
Harry rose. “Gotta go. Thanks for the coffee.”
She followed him to the front door. “Do you think I could go interview the Cahills with you?”
“That’ll be up to Savich.”
Eve didn’t think her chances were that good. Besides, there was so much to do, best not to overload anywhere. She dropped it. “Hey, what tree are you heading for?”
An eyebrow went up, and then he grinned. “Yeah, yeah, my street name. I live on Maple—my house is in the center of the block. I’m really close to pizza and Szechuan, and the dry cleaner’s. All the comforts, lots of people driving around, parking to shop or eat. The cops love to ticket in that neighborhood.”