60

Nikki felt grubbier by the minute, but she had no time for hygiene. She barely had time, at the stoplights on her way to downtown Norfolk, to freshen up her makeup. She called Wellington’s cell a few times on the way—she wanted to tell him to pick up the pace—but even in a crisis of this magnitude, the boy apparently wouldn’t answer his cell phone while driving.

Nikki parked in her normal spot in the parking lot of the courthouse building and tried to wave Wellington and his minivan into a handicapped spot. But the kid was unwilling to bend even the tiniest rule and ended up parking in a public garage about a block away. Nikki waited for him on the front steps of the courthouse, growing more impatient by the minute as he lumbered toward her, making sure he didn’t cross St. Paul’s Boulevard against the light.

“C’mon, Wellington. We don’t have all day.”

“Sorry.”

Next, Nikki thought Wellington would have a nervous breakdown when she took his arm and forced him to cut with her to the front of the metal detector line.

“Man, I’m starting to love casual Fridays,” one of the deputies said, eyeing Nikki’s tight jeans and sheer top.

“How many times did you vote for Judge Finney this week?” Nikki asked as she cavorted through the detectors.

“Must have been a hundred,” the first deputy said.

“Double whatever he says,” the other chimed in.

“He’s with me.” Nikki pointed back to Wellington.

From there, it took Nikki ten minutes to locate Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Mitchell Taylor and another five to talk him into asking another attorney to handle his hearings that morning. In Mitchell’s office, Nikki and Wellington raced through the entire saga, including the fact that phone calls to the FBI that morning had confirmed that no Agent Rafferty worked at the FBI. There was an Agent Flynn, but he had not worked on this case.

“I told them I was calling from the commonwealth’s attorney’s office in Norfolk on your behalf,” Nikki admitted, “investigating a possible indictment for impersonating a police officer.” As she described it out loud, even Nikki had to admit that her conduct had been a little ironic. She had impersonated a prosecutor to investigate someone who had impersonated an FBI agent. She braced herself for a reprimand, but Mitchell just frowned, too deep in thought to get worked up about Nikki’s small lie.

“What are you asking me to do?” he asked.

“Indict Randolph. Save Finney. Get an arrest warrant.” Nikki was throwing out alternatives as quickly as Mitchell rejected them with a knit brow or subtle shake of the head. “I don’t know—do your prosecutor thing.”

Mitchell leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “Our prosecutor thing, Nikki, requires jurisdiction. I want to help—Judge Finney is probably my all-time favorite judge—but if we don’t follow the book on this one . . .” Mitchell grimaced. “Randolph is a powerful man. He’ll never serve a minute, and we’ll be facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.”

Nikki couldn’t believe she was hearing this from Mitchell Taylor. He had never shied away from a fight in his life, as far as Nikki knew.

“A judge’s life is at stake!” she blurted out. “And you’re worried about lawsuits.”

Mitchell didn’t blink. “I’m worried about making these charges stick. And doing it the right way so Randolph doesn’t make us all look like fools. To accomplish that, I need jurisdiction, Nikki. The problem here is that none of these things happened in Norfolk. You’ve got Judge Finney on an island who knows where—”

“The Galápagos,” Nikki interrupted.

“How do you know that?” Mitchell asked.

Oh yeah, Nikki thought. Randolph. “I guess we don’t.”

“Which is my point,” Mitchell continued. “We don’t even know where the judge is, but we can assume it’s not Norfolk. Plus, the only evidence we have that anything is wrong on that island are these cryptic messages from the judge—”

Nikki started to interrupt again, but Mitchell held up a hand. “Let me finish. We’ve got Randolph in DC presumably conspiring to help two other gentlemen impersonate FBI agents, but Randolph would probably just say that those men duped him, too—”

“But Randolph claimed to know them,” Nikki said. “Plus, I’ve talked to him about it on the phone from here in Norfolk—doesn’t that count for something?”

Mitchell shook his head. “That could make it a federal wire-fraud case—a phone call across state lines from DC to Virginia—but we’d have a hard time claiming jurisdiction. The impersonation took place in DC. This alleged conspiracy is taking place in DC and on some unidentified island.”

Nikki could feel her frustrations rising, the red tape of government prosecution strangling every attempt to act quickly and decisively. Mitchell Taylor was the one person in the prosecutor’s office who would shoot first and ask questions later. But even he was struggling to get through the red tape on this one.

They eventually agreed to call the DC prosecutor’s office. Mitchell tried to prepare Nikki beforehand, explaining that he had good relationships with the commonwealth’s attorneys in Virginia but didn’t know anybody in DC. His warning turned out to be prophetic. Despite Mitchell’s best efforts to explain the urgency of the case, Nikki could hear the skepticism bleeding across the phone lines in the gruff voice of an experienced DC prosecutor named Kenneth Bell. Mitchell at first pushed for an indictment on the impersonation charge, then dropped back and asked Bell to at least obtain a search warrant for Randolph’s computer and office.

“Tell me again the evidence that we would present to the judge in order to get this search warrant against one of the most powerful lawyers in DC?” Bell asked.

Nikki had heard enough. Even on a good night’s sleep, she wasn’t known for her patience. But this morning, with little sleep, no shower, and Finney’s life on the line, she couldn’t help but explode. She lashed out at Bell, sprinkling her tirade with enough profanity that Mitchell had to hit the Mute button.

“You done?” he asked when Nikki finally fell silent.

She snorted in response. Mitchell took the phone off mute and asked Bell to bring Randolph in for questioning.

“Don’t do that,” Nikki said sharply. “That will just tip him off.” She was practically pulling her hair out.

Mitchell looked at her with concern in his expressive green eyes. The look calmed her a little, reassurance that Mitchell was on her side.

“What do you want me to do?” Bell asked. “I know you’re frustrated, but you’ve got to give me something. I don’t know how things operate in Norfolk, but in DC we can’t get indictments based on coded messages.”

“Let me participate in the questioning,” Mitchell said.

“I can do that,” Bell said after a moment’s hesitation. “But I doubt that Randolph is going to voluntarily come in and answer a bunch of questions.”

Nikki shook her head vigorously at Mitchell and sliced her hand across her throat.

“Can we get back to you?” Mitchell asked.

When they got off the phone, Mitchell turned to Nikki. “What was that all about?”

“Where does Randolph live?” Nikki asked Wellington. Her partner had done some quick Internet research for Nikki earlier that morning.

“Fairfax,” Wellington said.

“How’s your relationship with the commonwealth’s attorney there?” Nikki asked Mitchell.

“Good. I know some folks in that office. But everything you’ve described occurred in DC.”

“Give me your cell phone number,” Nikki said. “And give me a few hours.”

Mitchell tried to pry more details out of Nikki, but she was determined. She left his office, with Wellington struggling to keep up.

“What are we going to do?” Wellington asked breathlessly.

“Do you know how to create a computer virus?” Nikki asked.

Wellington hesitated, but they both knew the answer. “They’re not that hard,” he eventually admitted.

“Good,” Nikki said. “I’ve got a plan.”