Fighting Chance(93)
“I stand corrected,” Gregor said. “Police officers can get through that door with weapons. What about cell phones?”
“We keep all our communications devices, yeah,” Tony Monteverdi said. “It’s a safety precaution. In case something happens.”
“Also, I’m not sure it matters about the weapons,” Ray said. “She wasn’t killed by a weapon brought in from the outside. She was killed with one of her own gavels.”
“I agree,” Gregor said. “But maybe not in the way you think I should. Just note. First, you can’t get a weapon or a cell phone in through this door if you’re coming in, but there would be no problem with getting either through this door if you were going out. This may seem like a minor issue, but it isn’t.”
“It explains how somebody took away that other cell phone,” Tony said. “But we know that.”
“The other issue are the security cameras,” Gregor said. “Did they get fixed, by the way? Did somebody come in here and clean them off.”
“The city is getting around to it,” Tony Monteverdi said dryly.
“Wonderful,” Gregor said. “Then I can stay in the present tense. The security cameras along this corridor were all working properly, right down to the one just in front of the restrooms. But the one after that, and all the security cameras leading down to Martha Handling’s chambers, and all the ones in the two corridors leading from Martha Handling’s chambers to the back door where the judge’s parking lot is, and the one at the back door that is supposed to catch whoever’s coming in or going out of the building that way, all those have had their lenses spray-painted with black paint. That means that anybody could walk past the restrooms into the corridors beyond without being spotted, and anyone could walk in through the back door and to the judges’ chambers without being spotted. So far, so good?”
“You gave us this speech before,” Ray Berle said.
“I gave it to you, I didn’t give it to everybody,” Gregor said. “I didn’t give it to Father Tibor here, for instance. I just want to make sure we’re all clear.”
“For God’s sake, Krekor,” Tibor said. “We’re all clear.”
“I wish we were,” Gregor said, “but we’re not. Not yet. I’m getting there. Next thing: we have security camera tapes for movement in this corridor for the relevant times. There are a lot of people on those tapes, but we’ll stick to the ones we know were later in Martha Handling’s chambers. They included Father Tibor here, Russ Donahue, Petrak Maldovanian, and that woman, Janice Loftus—”
“But I’m here,” a thin little voice came from the back of the little crowd that had begun to gather around Gregor’s lecture. There was a rustling and a string of apologies and the squat little woman came to the front, panting. “I wanted to talk to somebody, and nobody would talk to me at the police station and nobody would talk to me at Pennsylvania Justice and nobody understands, nobody does, but it’s very important. And I thought there would be police here and I could talk to them because they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere if they were guarding it, and then—”
“You can stay here and follow along if you keep quiet until I’m done,” Gregor said. “In fact, you might even be a help.”
“But I have something to say!” Janice Loftus said. “And it’s important!”
“You can say it later,” Gregor said. “Now, where was I? Ah, people in the corridor who were also, certainly, in Martha Handling’s chambers later. There’s another person of interest in the corridor, but we can’t place him in Martha Handling’s chambers. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. That person was Mark Granby, the local executive in charge of operations for Administrative Solutions of America. Administrative Solutions of America is the company that runs prisons in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. They get paid by the ‘inmate day,’ as they put it. For each inmate, they get paid a set sum for each day the inmate is incarcerated. That means the more inmates, and the longer their sentences, the more money Administrative Solutions makes.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with Petrak,” Sophie Maldovanian said. Gregor looked up to see her way in the back, with Russ and Petrak himself. He hadn’t noticed her come in.
“I know you say Petrak was in the corridor and I understand he was in the chambers, but he was just looking for Mr. Donahue, and Mr. Donahue was in the chambers and so was everybody else. There’s no reason to think Petrak did anything he shouldn’t have done except go wandering back there.”