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“No. That’s not it.” He sighed and said, “Look, when I opened the file this morning, it was the first time I’d looked at it since the transaction closed. And, well, I didn’t find the copy of Mr. Scott’s driver’s license.”
“Maybe you forgot to make a copy.”
“My secretary has been with me thirty years, and she’s never forgotten before.”
“So maybe someone took the copy out of the file.”
“I don’t know what to think. It’s just not here.”
“Do you remember what Bob Scott looked like?”
“I really only saw him once, for a few minutes, at the closing. And I do hundreds of those a year.”
“Would you take a minute and think about it and try and describe him to me?”
The lawyer did so, and Michelle thanked him and hung up.
The description the lawyer had given was too vague for her to know if it was Bob Scott. And in eight years people can change a great deal, particularly those who’ve fallen out of the mainstream, like Scott. And she had no idea what Denby even looked like. God, she was going around in circles. She took several deep breaths to calm herself. Panicking was not going to help Sean.
Unable to move forward on any of her lines of inquiry, she started wondering about King’s. He said he was working on something—something that required extra research. What had he said? He’d gone somewhere. She racked her tired mind trying to think of it.
And then she had it. She grabbed her keys and ran for her truck.
CHAPTER
68
MICHELLE WALKED QUICKLY into the UVA law library and up to the service desk. The woman who was there wasn’t the one who’d helped King, but after Michelle asked, she was directed to the librarian who had.
Michelle flashed her Secret Service badge and told the woman she needed to see what King had been researching.
“I heard on the news about his home burning down. Is he all right? They didn’t say.”
“Well, we just don’t know right now. That’s why I need your help.”
The woman told Michelle what King had asked for, then took her to the same room and logged her onto the system.
“It was the Martindale Hubbell directory,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry, I’m not a lawyer. What exactly is Martindale Hubbell?”
“It’s a directory of all licensed lawyers across the U.S. Sean has a set at his office, but it was the most recent one. He needed a directory that went back some time.”
“Did he mention how far back?”
“Early seventies.”
“Did he mention anything else? Anything that would narrow it down more?” Michelle didn’t know exactly how many lawyers were licensed in the U.S., but she figured there were far more than she had time to look at.
The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, that’s all I know.”
She left, and Michelle looked at the screen with a discouraged expression when she saw that the directory contained well over one million names. There are over a million lawyers in the United States? No wonder things are so screwed up.
Not really knowing where to start, she ran her gaze over the home page and noticed a drop-down screen that made her sit up very straight. It was entitled “Recent Searches.” It listed the last few documents the user from this remote location had been working on.
She clicked on the first item there. When she saw the name of the lawyer listed, and where he was from, she leaped up and sprinted through the library, causing many aspiring attorneys to stare.
She was on her phone before she even got to her truck. Her mind was racing so fast, filling in the blanks at such a fierce rate, that the person she called said hello three times before she even realized it.
