Broken Trust (Badge of Honor 13)

“McCrory’s second meeting with the Morgan woman’s assistant didn’t go worth a damn,” Harris said. “She told him that after their first meeting she had called the lawyer in Florida to notify him of Morgan’s death. He specifically ordered her, as a company employee, not to answer any more questions without a lawyer from the company present.”

“Damn it.”

“She did, though, give McCrory the list of those registered to attend the gala. Just over three hundred names. Frankly, I don’t see them as high-priority, and, short of just seeing who’s who, vetting them at this point would be a poor use of resources.”

“And risk the real possibility of analysis paralysis,” Payne said, glancing at Krowczyk.

Harris nodded, and said, “At least until we’ve run down other leads.”

“What about names from the bar and her condo?” Payne said.

Harris shook his head. “Lawyer told her no. But—”

“What’s this lawyer’s name?” Payne interrupted.

“Grosse. Michael Grosse. He’s got offices in Miami and New Orleans and Houston. McCrory has more details.”

Payne pulled out his smartphone, and, as he typed an e-mail, said, “The old man offered to see what he could find out about him.”

“But, as I was saying,” Harris went on when Payne had finished, “thanks to the advent of social media and our attention-starved society, we don’t need no stinkin’ lawyer to give us names. At least, ones from the bar.”

“What’d you turn up?” Payne said.

“You got it handy, Krow?”

Krowczyk put down his cake and typed rapidly. Payne and Harris looked up at the left bank of nine monitors. The individual images of Philly streets and traffic were replaced with one big image that also appeared on Krowczyk’s computer screen.

“I found this picture posted on four social media sites,” Krowczyk said, “the first belonging to that PR chick’s.”

Three women and three men, all with broad smiles, were leaning together in front of the fireplace in the Library Bar.

“I’ll be damned,” Payne said. “Nice group shot. And they even tagged names to the faces. How accommodating. Not that we don’t know who they are.”

“Yeah,” Krowczyk said, placing the cursor over the head of each person, triggering a text box containing their name to pop up, “so there’s Camilla Rose Morgan in the middle beside Sue Thomas, of Sweet Sue’s Homemade Pies—man, I love those pumpkin whoopies she sells. And John Broadhead, the architect. Aimee Wolter, the smoking-hot public relations chick, who’s obviously queen of spreading her face on social media. And City Council President Willie Lane, mugging it up with Anthony Holmes, quarterback of our beloved but besieged NFL team.”

Payne grunted. “I was wondering where you were about to go describing Wolter’s spreading . . .”

Harris and Krowczyk chuckled.

Payne added, “Well, I wouldn’t exactly rush to get the district attorney on the phone and announce that we have the short list of doers.”

“True,” Harris said, “but hope springs eternal that through them we’ll unearth the proverbial stone under the stone. Kennedy is down at his desk working on getting in touch with them all.”

“So, nothing on who in the bar crowd could have gone to her condo?” Payne said.

“Hank Nasuti managed to track down the head bartender,” Harris said. “Woke him up.”

“Here, I’ll pull up the interview,” Krowczyk said.

The group image on the monitors was replaced with a close-up of Detective Hank Nasuti, who was looking into the camera lens. The thirty-four-year-old was a second-generation Philadelphian, his grandparents having moved to Philly from Italy in the 1920s.

The camera panned and eventually fixed on a narrow-faced male with disheveled dark hair and tired gray eyes in his mid-twenties. He held a Wawa to-go coffee cup. Payne saw that the timer box at the bottom indicated the interview was just over twenty-one minutes long.

“Guy’s name is Harvey Wolfe,” Krowczyk said, and began dragging with the curser to advance the video, the male’s head moving in fast motion for a few seconds. He stopped when the timer read 14:50. “Here’s the meat of it.”

The video then played at normal speed, and Nasuti’s voice came from the IBM computer’s speakers. “Okay, so you said Miss Morgan had been in the Library Bar since ha

ppy hour?”