Broken Trust (Badge of Honor 13)

Harris picked up on that and shrugged. “I’m a sucker for sick kids—what can I say?”

“She’s got more of these camps on the coasts of California and North Carolina,” Krowczyk said, “and one up on the Delaware River outside New Hope. That’s eighty mil total, if each one’s worth the twenty she said. What’s going to happen to them now?”

“I’m guessing that their board of directors would carry on the mission,” Payne said as he felt his phone vibrate. “As long as there’s the money, that is. Which likely makes tomorrow’s fund-raiser all the more critical.”

He checked the smartphone’s screen and saw that Daffy Nesbitt had replied: “I heard the terrible news about Camilla Rose. And, yes, I knew her. Why do you ask? It was from the fund-raising last year for the hospital. Chad was involved through the company. I thought she was delightful. Such a big, kind heart. We had plans to attend her gala tomorrow. Oh, and did you know Terry is coming back in town for it? With that horrid actor from here.”

And another positive note for Camilla Rose, Payne thought.

Daffy can be cutthroat. She would not praise her unless she really meant it.

Payne gestured with the phone.

“Well,” he said, “a back channel pretty much just confirmed that Stan Colt will be in town for the Camilla’s Kids fund-raiser. Oh joy.”

“Yeah, he’s on the dignitary list,” Harris said, then tapped a couple keys on the notebook computer next to Krowczyk’s. “Meant to tell you on the phone that it came in while you were gone. Got it here. It’s short.”

Payne leaned over to look at the list. It detailed each VIP’s biography and contact info

rmation and itinerary.

“Not as many as I’d expected,” Payne said, tapping the keyboard’s down arrow while scanning the scrolling screen. “A few actors; three, no, four pro athletes; and a mix of politicians. All with egos off the charts. I want no part of holding their hands.”

Payne stood straight and looked between Harris and Krowczyk.

“Okay,” he said. “So, what else? What was that WAG?”

“Right,” Harris said. “Krow here, digging through the data points, found one bit of data—”

“Datum,” Krowczyk interrupted. “Data is the plural form.”

“Datum that eventually led him to a really interesting article.”

“And that datum led to other data,” Krowczyk said, “all of it open-source info.”

Payne looked at him.

“You said something about a suicide?”

“That’s right, Sarge,” Krowczyk said, pointing toward the screen with his half-eaten sponge cake, yellow crumbs scattered across the keyboard of the four-thousand-dollar computer. “But first you should see some of these from the chat room on one investor website. They’ll give you an interesting perspective.”

“Remember how this guy Benson was the head cheerleader for his start-up?” Harris said.

“Yeah,” Payne said.

“Well,” Krowczyk picked up, “he also berated his stockholders and anyone else who did not blindly worship the company. For the Benson case file, I put together a ton of those comments. These are just a few examples.”

The Camilla’s Kids website was replaced by one filled with multicolored lines of text, each date-stamped posting a different hue. At the top it read PLEASE LOG IN HERE TO COMMENT ON NEXTGENRX.

“Okay,” Payne said, “so tell me exactly what this is we’re looking at. Looks like some sort of Internet electronic bazaar.”

“It’s definitely got a carnival atmosphere,” Krowczyk said. “This is one of the chat rooms on the Investors Insider website. It has chat rooms for practically every stock and investment topic, and they’re mostly used by day traders, though, in reality, anyone can post.”

“That one says it was posted by Bull$Ball$,” Payne said. “How do you know who’s who?”

“You really don’t,” Krowczyk said. “While some people actually use a name, most are obviously made up, and there’s no way to really know if those using what look like real names are actually who they say they are. Some, in fact, can be trolls.”

“And these particular trolls are doing what here?”