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“You think she’s orchestrating all this?” Alex asked.
“I can’t be sure without hard evidence, but if I were him, I’d hide behind a lawyer. Attorney-client privilege is a brick wall that’s all but impossible to scale.”
“What do we know about her?” Wander asked.
Ryan clicked the projector remote, and a picture of Coldrick appeared on the wall. She was beautiful by any standard, with shoulder-length raven-black hair, a sharp aquiline nose, and subtle makeup, displaying an air of refined elegance. Everything about her radiated class and money.
“She grew up in a struggling, working-class family but managed to do well in school and get a full ride to Boston College, then to Princeton to study law. That opened doors with Boston’s leading legal firms, and after her graduation, she started working for Tate, Taylor, and Tripper.”
“Colloquially known as Triple T,” Roman said with an eye roll. “They’re one of the biggest firms in Boston. The most expensive too.”
“She’s now forty-four, single, never married,” Ryan said, “and she owns her own firm, Coldrick Law. Parents are deceased, but she has two younger sisters she’s close with.”
“I suspect they may be the only two people in the world she gives a damn about,” Roman muttered. “Though maybe she actually likes Whitman. I don’t know.”
“She liked him well enough to have an affair with him when she was twenty-five,” Ryan said.
What? That was news to Roman. “How did you find that out?”
“As private investigators, we can ask questions and use methods unavailable to you or the Feds. I was curious about their relationship and discovered they met when she worked for Triple T, which had Whitman as a client. They started an affair soon after that. We talked to a former legal secretary for Triple T, who confirmed it.”
An affair. That was an interesting bit of information that changed things. So Coldrick wasn’t merely loyal because Whitman was her client or because he paid her bills. They had a personal connection. “Are they still sleeping together?”
Ryan shrugged. “My guess is from time to time, but not consistently. He has a varied collection of mistresses, one-night stands, and paid sex workers he cycles through.”
“That does explain why she’s proven to be such a tough nut to crack. She won’t crack, not unless we find a way to make her,” Roman said. “She’s his shield, and they both know how to exploit that.”
“A man like Whitman is too smart to get his hands dirty, so everything would have to run through her, since she’s protected by attorney-client privilege,” Lowell said, scratching his scruff. “So focus on her and keep digging into her background. If she’s the linchpin, as you suspect, you should be able to find who she’s using to do the actual work. Because, no offense, but she doesn’t look like the type to do menial work herself. I don’t see her sending threats through text messages.”
He was right. “The FBI has been looking into her, but again, it’s complicated for us. We’re bound by strict legal guidelines.”
Ryan grinned. “We’re not. Well, to a certain degree, we are, but not like you.”
Wander leaned forward, his fingers interlaced on the table. “We need eyes inside Whitman’s circle. Someone who can bypass Coldrick and get us what we need.”
“Agreed,” Ryan said. “We’ve got to play this smarter, not harder. Coldrick’s a fortress, but every fortress has a crack.”
“Perhaps there’s a way to exploit her professional network,” Alex mused, tapping a pen against his lips. “Get someone on our side close enough to overhear something incriminating.”
“Or we could try to flip one of Whitman’s own,” Ryan suggested. “In my experience, men who instill fear rather than loyalty have more weak links than they realize. We may be able to turn one of his pawns against him. Find the weak link in Whitman’s chain and exploit it until it breaks.” He met Roman’s eyes. “My concern is this, though. Do we have to worry about evidence being admissible in court? Because with some of our methods, it wouldn’t be, which would pose a problem for you during the case.”
Roman leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. Ryan raised a crucial issue. If they found evidence Coldrick was involved but discovered it through nonlegal means, Roman wouldn’t be able to use it in court. It wouldn’t be the first high-profile case that disintegrated due to inadmissible evidence, and few things were more frustrating than having cold, hard proof that someone was guilty, only to have it thrown out on technicalities. It was every DA’s nightmare.
“I think the biggest question is a different one,” Wander said, and Roman opened his eyes again. “It’s not between Whitman or Coldrick. It’s about whether we’re going after the source of these threats head-on or continuing to dig into Whitman’s dirt. Do we want to prove Whitman is corrupt, or do we want to make the threats stop?”
Wander always had a way of cutting through the fog, and this was no exception. He was right. Roman had to make a call on whether he wanted Wander’s team to investigate the threats or go after Whitman himself. Admissible evidence wasn’t nearly as much of a concern in the first case as in the latter. He wouldn’t necessarily go to trial over the threats against him, but he sure as fuck planned on facing Whitman in front of a judge one day. And he’d better make sure he had the proof to put the man away for a long time.
“Can I say something?” Caleb asked. “And maybe I’m off target here, but I keep thinking about the FBI. You said they haven’t been able to find evidence against Coldrick, right?”
Roman nodded.
“And they weren’t able to trace any of the threats?”
Oh. Roman saw where Caleb was going with this. “You’re thinking Whitman has bought off the Feds on the case.”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like they’re doing a great job, so it does make me wonder.” Caleb gestured at the file containing evidence of all the threats. “Tracing anonymous text messages is a fairly routine process for law enforcement because they can subpoena the necessary tracking information from phone companies, VPN providers, and other sources. It may take some time, but I find it hard to believe they weren’t able to trace them at all.”
“Even if they used burner phones or prepaid cards, those are traceable back to the store that sold them,” Lowell said. “They would’ve at least known where the phones or cards were bought, which would’ve meant security camera footage. Show me a shop that sells those and doesn’t have security cams.”
