Tess was disappointed that Michael had to go into work on the morning he was supposed to have off, but such was the life of an investigator with the DA's office.
She finished her shower and as she was dressing, planning on taking a run to the coffee shop and doing some work there, she got a text from Kate.
KATE: Just got a tip that the John Doe has been identified and so I'd like it if you could meet me at the office. We're trying to figure out what we can run and what we have to hold back on until we get official confirmation. We need to go over the story we put on the website and on the front page of this afternoon's edition.
Tess texted her back right away.
TESS: I'll be right there.
It was always exciting and stressful when they had to work on a breaking story. Someone in the PD must have leaked the info to Kate or someone on the editorial team. They had to go with the story even if they only had partial info. In the news business, you snooze, you lose.
She got into her car and texted Michael, wanting to give him the head's up that the story was out there now, even if unofficial.
TESS: Hey, just got a call from Kate that they know the ID of the John Doe found with his head bashed in. We're going to be working on our web article and afternoon edition.
Michael replied right away.
MICHAEL: I'll let Nick know it's out there. Someone has loose lips. Probably someone involved in the search. I'm spending the day in Bellingham.
TESS: I guess both of us are going to have a busy day. See you when you get back. I’ll pick up that thing we discussed. We can maybe take a trip and attach it later.
MICHAEL: Probably be here all day. Can you do it yourself?
TESS: Sure. I can make an excuse to go for another visit.
MICHAEL: See you much later. XO
TESS: XO
She smiled at the tiny show of affection and then drove off, excited for the hubbub of the newsroom and the meeting she knew would be filled with a debate over how much to reveal and what they could or couldn't say in their news piece. Before she did, she stopped at a local Radio Shack and picked up one of the small trackers on sale. She then dropped into a local hardware store and got one of those magnetic key holders and found some duct tape. She managed to attach the tracker to the magnet with some wire and duct tape, and then decided to stop off at Craig’s just in case his vehicle was still there.
Sure enough, it was parked in the parking lot, so she stopped beside it, got out and surreptitiously attached the tracker to the surface of the wheel well. She stood up, glancing around to see if anyone saw her, but the place was deserted.
Then she drove off to the Sentinel, feeling a bit like a member of the clandestine service.
When she walked into the newsroom, there was a palpable sense of excitement in the building.
"There you are," Kate said, leading Tess into the boardroom for the meeting. "I was afraid you were going to be late.”
“Sorry,” Tess said and glanced around, looking for a place to sit. “I had an errand to run before I came here.”
“We're just getting started."
Tess sat across the table from Kate and opened her laptop, ready to take notes. Kate gave Tess a look that said she was both excited and frustrated. Tess knew the feeling well. Kate would be excited that they had a break in the John Doe case in Bellingham that had a link to the case in Silver Lake. She would be frustrated because they knew so little, and part of what they knew was off the record.
Tess was excited as well, and she wondered what Kate knew and who her source was in the Seattle PD.
"So, we know from our sources that the John Doe found in Bellingham is a criminal lawyer from Seattle, who is apparently involved in a child porn ring."
The energy in the room increased noticeably at that bit of information.
"What's his name?" asked Kay Fitzgerald, a business reporter for the paper.
"Lloyd Ericsson. What we know about Mr. Ericsson is that he was disbarred in California, moved to Seattle, and has a large client list of Washington State's wealthiest and most powerful clients, is divorced with two adult children. We're talking businessmen and government execs on his list of clients of Elite Escorts, specializing in models and exotic dancers, all of them appearing much younger than the current legal age. This is going to get very dirty very quickly."
Kate listened to the others discussing Ericsson. Who was the mystery man who turned up down a seedy back alley with his head bashed in?
A pornographer, a child pornographer on top of it, who ran a child prostitution ring on the side when he wasn't providing legal advice to powerful rich clients in the Pacific Northwest.
One of the researchers gave a rundown on Ericsson, detailing his work in California for the film industry before he was disbarred and moved to Washington State. He wasn't involved in anything notable. Most of the films were pretty much soft-core porn and there were a few X-rated films that he was listed as an executive producer. Perhaps he got his start in the business representing some clients in the adult film industry. It was just a hop, skip and a jump into escort services and then, for the less ethically inclined, child porn and the child sex trade, which was incredibly lucrative due to the risk involved. Pedophiles, especially those in the one percent, paid a lot of money for their perversion.
"Why was he disbarred?" one of the other reporters asked.
"Fraud," the researcher replied. "Defrauded a mentally-disabled elderly client, using his trust fund as a personal slush fund. He was given a fine, paid back the money, and then was disbarred."
Tess wondered if he didn't see the escort business and child porn in particular as a fast way to become solvent again after he was disbarred in California.
"We need to find a list of his clients," Kate said. "That might give us some idea of who's involved in his less savory business ventures."
"Wouldn't that be pretty hard to come by?" Jerome, one of the writers, asked. "Isn't that privileged?"
Kent, their legal advisor shook his head. "Being a client of a particular lawyer isn't privileged. Just the content of their discussions. We can check with legal filings in the courts to see if he represented any particular clients. But there will be clients who had no legal filings made public, so they'll be entirely under the radar."
"We'll do what we can do," Kate said. "Let's start by looking at what businesses he registered, when and whatever we can find that's public."
For the next three hours, everyone in the newsroom worked extra hard to get as much information on Ericsson and his business as possible. Tess felt frustrated that they were in a sense repeating what Michael and the police and FBI were doing, only with fewer resources. Still, what she and the others did as journalists was important. The public needed to know what the police and FBI were doing on the case. Her work was important, even if she wasn't right there in the thick of things in the investigation.
Maybe in a year or so, if she was accepted into the FBI, she would be.