48

After the snorkeling conference, Finney raced back to his condo so that he would have time to run some new Westlaw searches. In less than two hours, he was scheduled to be in Paradise Court, where the contestants would start their cross-examinations of experts from their own faith groups, albeit experts whose beliefs varied dramatically from those of the contestants on Paradise Island.

Finney shaved, showered, and changed, mulling over his options. He faced the classic reality show dilemma: Whom could he trust? Whom could he believe? Hadji had made some good arguments, but Finney had no reason to doubt Kareem’s integrity. What was real? What was fake? Living inside the television could play games with a person’s head.

He finally made up his mind and started focusing on the types of searches he would run to get his message across. There was so much riding on this next message, and Finney worried that even Wellington might not be able to figure out the key for chapter 4. Finney considered several alternatives but rejected them all. Wellington would be expecting a message encoded according to the key hidden in chapter 4. Changing the encryption method now would be confusing, but the young man was smart. Real smart. He would figure it out.

It was now Tuesday. Finalists would be announced Friday. Finney would give Wellington twenty-four hours to solve the encryption. If he didn’t get some kind of confirmation by then, Finney would resort to other methods.

He logged on to Westlaw at 9:05 local time. Court started at 10:00. He racked his brain and typed in his first request. He would have to leave off the dates for these requests and hope the person monitoring his computer wouldn’t focus on that minor difference. Unlike his prior search requests, these would contain no capital letters—an intentional clue to Wellington that this cipher was different.

christ’s miracles and liberal responses to the accounts

Finney looked at a few of the documents responsive to his search request and then immediately entered another:

evidence for the evangelical view of the person and teachings of jesus

This request generated a mountain of information, none of which interested Finney in the least. He was too busy thinking up his next request.

end times and the various prophetic issues and orthodoxies

No documents satisfied this request, and Finney worried that his searches weren’t making enough sense. But constructing clever searches took time, and Finney had none. He plowed ahead with his next search request.

the essence of christian teaching and ancient creeds

There. That was better. Several documents popped up. At this rate, he would barely make it to court on time. His computer started slowing down, causing Finney to worry that the people monitoring him had figured out Finney’s system. He clicked to view the next document, and the page took forever to load.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Finney mumbled. He clicked the same page again. Another sluggish response. He clicked the Back arrow. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered.

The pain gnawing at his stomach made him irritable and impatient.

Why did the computer have to slow down now? What kind of cruel trick was this? He wanted to smash the machine into the wall.

The page finally loaded, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Exhausted. Hungry. Wired. Stressed. Finney thought up another search request and typed it in.

Westlaw started searching immediately. They were back in business. A thought hit Finney. What if the show’s producers weren’t even monitoring the computers? What if he could just type a message in a Westlaw search without even encrypting the text?

Too risky, he knew. When you’re on the third day of a fast, you don’t always think clearly.

Focus, Finney demanded of himself. He had been known to give himself some pretty good pep talks. The cavalry will soon be on the way.

Nikki hit pay dirt on a phone call with Murphy’s third ex-wife. Sheila Browning was a twenty-three-year-old actress doing commercials when she met Murphy; he was thirty-seven and an ambitious associate producer. The sex was nothing special, Browning admitted without being asked, but she fell in love with his dreams. Murphy would have his own production company. Sheila would be a star. As soon as Murphy completed the movie he was working on, they headed to Las Vegas to tie the knot.

They started fighting, Browning said, as soon as they returned from the honeymoon.

“Was he abusive?” Nikki asked.

Sheila laughed. “Only when he was drunk or high or under pressure, which is to say—all the time.”

“Did you report him?”

“I basically had the cops on speed dial. First-name acquaintances with half the precinct.”

“Then why doesn’t it show up on his record?”

Sheila hesitated. “Did you say you were a lawyer?” she asked skeptically.

Now it was Nikki’s turn to hesitate. “I said I was associated with a law firm investigating Mr. Murphy.”

“Oh,” Sheila said. “I thought you said you were an associate with the law firm.”

Busted, Nikki thought. But Sheila didn’t seem to be bothered by it.

“If you were a lawyer, you’d know,” Sheila said. “Murph would hire a good defense attorney, promise to get counseling, pay a fine, and promise not to do it again. Hollywood producers don’t get records for slapping around their wives.”

Sheila’s caustic analysis took Nikki back a little. But she recovered quickly, asking Sheila to play the amateur psychologist and explain what made Murphy such a scum.

“His father,” Sheila said immediately. “He’s got serious need-for-approval issues. You know, an Oedipus complex or whatever that thing is called.”

Nikki thought Oedipus was the guy who married his mother, but she let it pass. Rule number one for interrogating ex-wives: when they want to talk, you let them talk. “Tell me about that,” Nikki said.

And Sheila did. For nearly twenty minutes, she trashed the men—father and son—in equal measures. According to Sheila, Pastor Martin abused his kids both physically and mentally, including his oldest son Jason, who later in life changed his name to Cameron Murphy. Nikki sensed that the reverend never really approved of Sheila, so that might have been part of the issue, but Nikki could sift the facts from fiction by conducting other interviews.

According to Sheila, Cameron Murphy was now a hard-core atheist, driven from the church by his father’s hypocrisy. Cameron had tried Buddhism and also quoted liberally from the Dalai Lama—anything to make his old man mad—but in his heart of hearts he didn’t really believe there was a God.

Nikki could sense she was on to something. She obtained the Reverend Martin’s church number from the Internet. She called him and left a message with his secretary. She recalled the fact that he had been a vocal protester against Faith on Trial from day one.

She called the church a second time, her voice much huskier this time around. Nikki told the secretary that she was a big fan of Reverend Martin. “Do you know if he’s taking donations for that Faith on Trial boycott? I’m trying to decide what to do with all this stock.”

The secretary assured Nikki that the reverend was taking donations. “I’m sure he’ll be returning your call right away,” the secretary said. Nikki didn’t doubt it for a minute.

At that very moment, the legendary Murphy temper was in full bloom. He was pacing around the master control room, glancing occasionally at the huge bank of television monitors, all labeled according to the various cameras on the island, showing the different contestants as they prepared for court. On the other side of the room, one crew member sat in front of five separate computer screens, monitoring the contestants’ Internet usage. The only computer in use at the time was Finney’s.

Murphy had Juan Perez, the head of Paradise Island security, on his cell phone. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to lock the Hobie Cat?” Murphy snarled. “It almost ruined the entire plan.”

“We’ve locked the Hobie Cat every night, Mr. Murphy. You asked us to thwart any escape attempts, and that’s exactly what we were trying to do.”

“We stay up virtually all night Sunday night going over every last detail of this plan, and then you almost screw it up at the last minute.”

“Nobody informed us about this plan, Mr. Murphy.”

“Don’t put this on us!” Murphy barked. One of the editors sitting in front of the bank of cameras glanced over her shoulder. Murphy took a step away and lowered his voice. “You work for us, not the other way around. It’s your job to keep us informed about how you’re securing this place.” For the next several minutes, Murphy reminded Perez about what an unmitigated disaster it would have been if Finney hadn’t been dumb enough to make a run for it in the kayak. He ended with a stream of expletives strung together in trademark Murphy fashion.

“We apologize, Mr. Murphy. It was a breakdown of communication.”

Not surprisingly, Murphy had a few choice thoughts about communications breakdowns as well.