“Of course,” Gregor said, “given a couple of hours, someone who understood how those things worked could have deleted the video from the phone.”
“Those things are retrievable,” George said.
“With some work, an expert, and a court order,” Gregor said. “Well, you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting the court order. And assuming the person who took the video didn’t just throw his phone away. And assuming that the person who took the video is one of the people who was found in and around the judge’s chambers when the police got there. Do you see why it’s so important to understand the victim?”
“Understanding the victim will tell us who took the phone video?”
“Maybe,” Gregor said.
They had walked down the street some ways, and Gregor saw they were standing across from the courthouse where the murder had taken place. People were going in and out of it. It was not entirely shut down. There were extra police on the steps and at the door, and Gregor was sure that if he went inside, he would find the corridors leading to the judges’ chambers blocked off in all directions. He could just imagine how the other judges were taking that.
“I’m surprised the police didn’t shut down the whole building,” he said to George.
George shrugged. “They shut it down yesterday,” he said. “Then they spent the whole night in there. You want to go back and talk to Sam again?”
“Not now, no. Did you know Martha Handling? Personally?”
“Everybody in city government knew Martha, more or less,” George said. “I didn’t know her well, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did you know her well enough to tell me if Sam Scalafini’s description of her was correct?”
“You mean about her being crazy?” George said. “I don’t think I’d have said crazy as much as I’d have said bitch. I knew about the thing with the security cameras, though. Everybody knew about it. The first three or four times she pulled it, Scalafini got in touch with the mayor’s office and we looked into it. I got sent down to tell her that her chambers had no security cameras in it and the other security cameras were none of her business.”
“And?”
“And,” George said, “she gave me a lecture on how she knew what we were up to and how we couldn’t fool her no matter how hard we tried and how she had ways to make us look bad, and on and on and on.”
“That sounds like Scalafini’s description.”
“I guess,” George said. “It was just—less Looney Tunes and more Axis of Evil, I guess. She really was a bitch, Mr. Demarkian. A world-class, down-to-the-bone bitch. And that’s before you even consider the possibility that there was corruption going on. That she was selling out to Administrative Solutions of America.”
“But,” Gregor said, “you haven’t proved the allegations of corruption as of yet.”
“No,” George said. “We keep thinking we’re getting close, and the feds keep thinking we’re getting close, but it all keeps sort of falling apart. There’s enough on the table now to be pretty sure that something was going on, but we can’t nail just what. Or maybe not. Because that’s another aspect of this. I can’t help thinking that it might have been something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like sheer mean,” George said. “She really, really, really was a bitch, Mr. Demarkian. She set out to hurt the hell out of people. In little things as well as big ones. And for no discernible reason. If she knew you were vulnerable somewhere, she went right at you. She even went after John.”
“John? I wouldn’t think John had a lot of vulnerable points by now,” Gregor said.
“I wouldn’t have either,” George said. “And I didn’t get the reference. Something about a woman, I think, but I didn’t ask and I’m not going to. Anyway, John is not your standard victim. He let her have it, and as far as I know, she never tried anything on him again. But it goes to show, if you get my meaning here. The woman couldn’t keep an assistant for a year, and even the ones that lasted a year were few and far between.”
“And somehow this means she was less likely to be involved in corruption than otherwise?”
“Not that she’d be less likely to be involved in corruption,” George said, “just that the long sentences she kept giving those kids are less likely to be proof of anything except how unbelievably vile she was. She always gave harsher sentences than anybody else, even before we had privatized prisons.”