TWENTY-TWO
The intercom buzzed in my front hall. I looked up, bleary-eyed, annoyed at the interruption.
I’d been up all night, sitting at my kitchen table, working feverishly on my laptop, creating spreadsheets and budgets and lists, typing in all the scribbled notes and strategies I’d begun jotting down following the forty-five-minute phone conversation Lassiter and I had had last night.
The intercom buzzed again.
I thought about pretending I wasn’t home, but Dennis knew everything.
I sighed, glancing at the clock on my cable box.
Who showed up unannounced at ten thirty on a Saturday morning?
Honestly, it was uncivilized. I was in a camisole and pajama bottoms. I hadn’t brushed my teeth.
I set down my sixth cup of coffee and padded into the hall, pulling on an old cardigan as I went.
“Hello?” I said warily into the intercom.
I was half-expecting an eviction call any day now.
“Hey, Ingrid. There’s someone here to see you,” said Dennis. “Okay to send him up?”
“I’m not expecting anyone,” I said. “Can you find out who it is?”
I heard a muffling noise and Dennis saying to someone in the background, “She says she’s not expecting you. What’s the name?” A silence, then a mumbling.
Dennis came back on the line. “His name’s Justin Keating.”
Unbelievable. What was he here to do, gloat?
“Please tell him to go away,” I said. “I don’t want to see anyone right now.”
More muffled voices. Dennis sounded adamant, but the mumbling persisted.
Dennis sighed into the receiver. “The kid says it’s really important. Says it’ll only take a few minutes.”
Three minutes later, Justin rang my doorbell.
I opened the door a crack, without undoing the chain. “Well,” I said. “This is quite a surprise, Justin. What do you want?”
Justin looked around nervously. He was wearing jeans and a gray hoodie. His hands were shoved in his pockets, as usual, but today he wasn’t smirking. He looked stressed out.
“Can I come in?”
I sighed, then undid the chain and opened the door wider.
He stepped inside and looked around cautiously.
I closed the door and then turned around to look at him, folding my arms across my chest. “Okay. So now you’re in. What do you want?”
He looked surprised. “Did you not get my e-mail?” he asked.
I exhaled impatiently. “Justin, the firm took back my BlackBerry. I no longer even have a Parsons Valentine e-mail account.”
He shook his head. “I know. That’s why I had to ask Margo for your Gmail address.”
“I haven’t been checking any e-mail, Justin. I’ve been taking a much-needed break.” I looked him square in the eye. “Why’d you need to get in touch with me so badly?”
“I have something to show you.” He reached inside his jacket and produced some kind of long computer printout, handing it to me.
“What’s this supposed to be?” I said, not reaching for it.
“Just read it,” he insisted, giving it a shake.
I sighed. I took the piece of paper from him and smoothed it out. It was a log from the Parsons Valentine mainframe servers. A running table showed dates, times, usernames, hardware IDs, document numbers, and computer workstation locations.
“So?”
“Down here.” Justin pointed.
Two lines on the printout had been highlighted. I peered closely at them. It had a document number, Doc 235986, version 12, next to my username, isyung, and the time, 11:44 P.M. The line directly underneath said Doc 235986, version 12, next to the username, jdmurphy, and the time, 12:08 A.M.
I looked up at Justin, amazed.
“Where’d you get this?”
He looked at me and shrugged. “The servers record every single time anyone accesses any document. This shows that Murph went into the SunCorp term sheet after we both went home that night. And we didn’t proof it again when we printed it out the next morning.”
“But I already tried looking up the doc history myself, and I didn’t see anyone else’s usernames on the document except ours.”
He shook his head. “When you look it up at your own workstation, it only shows you who accessed it the normal way on one of the firm’s computers. It doesn’t show who may have accessed it remotely, checked out a copy, then checked it back in. But the servers record everything.”
I stared at the log in amazement. “How do you know all this, Justin?”
“Eh. No big deal. I majored in comp sci. Some buddies and I are actually trying to launch a tech start-up, but my dad made me get a ‘real job’ in the meantime. That’s how I ended up at the firm.”
“I didn’t know you were a comp sci major.”
He shrugged. “You never asked.”
I looked at him. “No, I guess I didn’t.”
“Anyway, IT prints out the server logs every week, and then they just leave them out in the bin to be recycled. This wasn’t hard to find.”
“But how’d you even know to look for anything like this?” I asked, still clutching the printout like I didn’t quite believe it existed, like it could still flutter away if I blinked.
“I saw Murph there late that night. So I kind of had a hunch. Especially after I saw you and Murph together, and then everything that happened. You know.”
“Justin. I could kiss you.”
He smiled. “You don’t have to,” he said quietly. He turned toward the door, preparing to leave.
“Justin,” I said again.
“Yeah?” He looked over at me. His hands were still bunched in the pockets of his hoodie, and his shoulders were all hunched up, as if he were cold. He looked so young, standing there at that moment, much younger, in fact, than his twenty-three years.
“I was just wondering, I mean, I’m curious . . .” I stopped and began again. “I’m just wondering why you’re doing this for me. I was always—kind of hard on you.”
He paused and thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “I guess maybe because you never seemed to care who my dad was. You weren’t just pretending to like me because of him.” He looked at me and smirked, and some of the old slyness crept back into his face.
“You were the only lawyer at the firm who treated me like crap, just like I was any other paralegal.”