Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
FLINT
“Guilt explains why the Auditor might punish them,” I said. “It doesn’t explain why these specific people were available to be punished.”
Mallory looked at me.
She was standing barefoot in the middle of my living room, wearing my old Carter News T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants cinched so tightly at the waist it showed off her figure despite the t-shirt that hung nearly to her knees.
One sleeve kept sliding toward her elbow every time she lifted the marker.
The effect should have been ridiculous.
It wasn’t.
No, it was far too enchanting. And that was inconvenient. I pointed at the board before my attention could become any less professional.
“Chicago has no shortage of corrupt executives, predators, or people who bought their way out of consequences. Why these?”
She turned back to the board and wrote the first name.
Then beneath it: Procurement fraud. Bribery. Kickbacks.
The second victim, then their list of crimes from charity theft, falsified records, and diversion of funds.
We kept going.
A real estate developer who had paid inspectors to ignore structural violations.
A political consultant who had laundered campaign contributions through shell organizations.
A physician who had altered clinical-trial data after patients died.
A private-equity partner who had stripped pensions from a manufacturing company before forcing it into bankruptcy.
The details changed. The pattern didn’t.
Money.
Power.
Concealment.
Each victim had manipulated a system built to protect others. Each had profited. Each had escaped anything resembling meaningful punishment.
Some through settlements. Some through influence. Some because their victims ran out of money, time, or the will to keep fighting.
I took the red marker from the tray and drew three columns beside the names.
CRIME
BENEFIT
ESCAPE
Mallory studied the headings. “You forgot moral bankruptcy.”
“Too difficult to quantify.”
She snorted. “That’s never stopped cable news.”
“Cable news considers volume a unit of measurement.” They were all about the ratings. Network was too, but the baseline had always been news we could verify, not propaganda to support subscriptions.
Her mouth twitched.
We filled in the columns.
The work settled into an old rhythm, familiar enough that neither of us had to negotiate it.
Mallory reconstructed timelines from memory while I searched archived files and internal research notes.
She read aloud. I challenged her wording.
She revised it, usually after arguing long enough to establish that the revision had been her idea.
We spent seven minutes debating whether coercion belonged under crime or method.
She won.
I made us more coffee.
She ate the rest of her eggs cold without seeming to notice.
At one point she climbed onto the edge of the sofa to reach the top of the board, and my sweatpants began a slow retreat down her hips.
She caught them with one hand without interrupting her sentence.
I looked resolutely at my laptop.
By nine, the board had filled with names, arrows, dates, and blocks of color. By nine-thirty, the pattern looked cleaner than it ever had in the newsroom.
Mallory stood back, marker pressed against her lower lip. That expression usually meant she had found something she disliked.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s too clean.”
I glanced at the board, canting my head to the side to try and see it as she did. “That’s generally considered a positive development.”
“Not with people.”
“Not everyone dislikes organization.”
“Maybe not, but most resist it or at least pretend to resist it.” She waved the marker toward the rows. “Real patterns fray when you push at them. What makes a pattern is often the exception, so you will find exceptions even in the strictest patterns.”
She wasn’t wrong. Spend enough time studying human behavior and you learned that average was just the polite midpoint between several alarming extremes. “And this one?”
“It’s behaving.” She sounded so offended by the fact that I almost laughed.
“Let me ask you something.”
She glanced over her shoulder.
“Has anyone ever accused you of being suspicious?”
“Constantly.”
“Good, you’re too good at it for it to be a recent development.”
With a distracted hand wave that said, “whatever and shut up” in the same moment, she paced back and forth in front of the whiteboard. I could practically see the wheels turning in her head.
The Auditor’s victims aligned with near-mathematical precision.
Until Colin.
Mallory wrote his name beneath the others.
COLIN THORNE
Then stopped. The marker remained against the board, but nothing followed.
I rose and moved to stand behind her. The hesitation told me she needed a little help. “Go on.”
“Attorney.”
“What kind?”
“Civil litigation. Media law. Defamation. First Amendment work.”
“Criminal history?”
“None.”
“Accusations?”
“Nothing credible.”
“Financial misconduct?”
“No.”
“Secret settlements?”
Her shoulders tightened. “Attorneys handle settlements.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She glanced back at me. “No.”
“Are you sure?” I pressed, locking eyes with her.
“None that I’m aware of.” She didn’t add that if they were truly secret, why would she know? But I heard it loud and clear. “I trusted him. I still trust him.”
That told me so much more.
She faced the board again and wrote:
CRIME: ?
BENEFIT: ?
ESCAPE: ?
The question marks looked more judgmental as hell.
I moved beside her. “He represented people with money.”
“So do half the attorneys in Chicago.”
“He represented you.”
Slowly, she faced me. “The last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime.”
“Never said it was.” But I wanted her out of her head. Guilt nibbled at her, it reflected back at me from her blue and hazel eyes.
“Then what did Colin do?” She didn’t sob or even raise her voice. The quiet loss was so much more devastating.
As much as I hated to say it, I did. “Maybe nothing.”
The apartment seemed to contract around us. Somewhere in the distance, a siren rose and faded. The refrigerator kicked on in the kitchen with the subtlety of heavy machinery.
Mallory twisted back to the board and I didn’t have to follow her gaze to know she was staring at Colin’s name.
Her face changed. The strain gathered around her eyes and her fingers tightened around the marker.
Colin Thorne had been more than an attorney to her.
I knew that much.
He had returned her calls at impossible hours.
Talked her through subpoenas, threats, injunctions, and at least one deposition I knew of that had turned vicious when opposing counsel dragged her childhood into the room.
Colin had been the calm voice telling her which risks were real and which were designed to frighten her.
He’d had her back with Reardon, her contract, and the Auditor. Professional all the way, but he’d also been her friend.
Then he had died, allegedly a victim of the Auditor. We had accepted the connection because everyone had.
The killer had provided an accusation.
Obstruction.
Complicity.
Profiting from deception.
Words broad enough to sound damning when attached to an attorney. Words broad enough to mean almost anything.
The Auditor had never worked in almost.
He liked numbers.
Dates.
Transactions.
Specific victims.
A ledger detailed enough to prosecute the dead after he finished punishing them.
Colin’s accusation had been rhetoric.
“He didn’t fit,” Mallory said. “He doesn’t fit.”
I said nothing.
She circled his name once. Then again. “He never fit.”
“Not cleanly.”
“Not at all.” She looked at me.
I couldn’t argue.
Her gaze moved back to the board. “Why didn’t we see it?” Why didn’t I see it? She included me in there, but she was still blaming herself.
“Because he died under similar circumstances.”
“No.” Her answer came hard and immediate. “We don’t actually know how he died. We know his body was found. We were then told by the FBI—“ she didn’t say Brewster. “—that he was another victim and that they had the evidence left at the scene.”
The signature had framed the scene and defined it all at once. The body, the accusation, and the paperwork.
Mallory crossed out the three question marks.
Under Colin’s name, she wrote one word.
ACCESS
I read it.
“To what?”
“Me.”
Every muscle along my shoulders tightened.
She noticed. Of course she did.
Mallory noticed when someone changed breathing patterns from across a ballroom. My concern wasn’t going to slip past unnoticed in my own living room.
She kept talking before I could object.
“Colin had access to my legal files. My sources. My communications. Even some of my pending stories. He knew which threats I took seriously and which ones I pretended not to.”
“That makes him connected to you. It doesn’t explain why he was killed.” It didn’t matter what I said, she was going to keep blaming herself. So, I did what I could. I tore apart the story to make her see all the angles.
“It explains why his death changed my behavior.”
“You had already stopped reporting.” I folded my arms so I wouldn’t wrap them around her. “Brewster and the feds changed your behavior.” If anything, Colin’s death had been a catalyst to get her back to work.
“I disappeared.”
“You were in protection. I think Brewster’s a jackass, but he had the right idea.” Even if it killed me to admit it. “Colin’s death pissed you off.”
“Yes.”
“It was also when you started fighting to get back to work.” So, no, he hadn’t been killed to shut her up.
“Colin wasn’t punished,” she said. “He was used.” The words seemed to take something out of her. She stepped away from the board as though Colin’s name had become too close.
I picked up the red marker.
Around his name, I drew a box.
Then I wrote:
FUNCTION?
Not motive.
Function.
Mallory read it and went very still.
“What did his death accomplish?” I asked.
“It frightened me.”
“More.”
“It almost discredited me. Put me back at the center of every story.”
“More.”
“It drew the FBI closer.”
“More.”
She gave an exasperated huff. “I don’t know what more.”