The Murder Rule(39)

“I’m not sure we can take him at his word about that,” Parekh said. “There are a hel of a lot of gaps in his work.”

“Okay,” Hannah said. “But we know that Prosper essential y disappeared after the murders. There’s no record of him online, on social media. That might have made sense if he was stil a drug user or an addict, living at the edges of the system. But if he is living in an expensive house, with a family, going to work every day—Wel , I think it’s very hard for people to have absolutely no internet presence at al in those circumstances.”

“Did you check the property records for the address? Find out whose name it’s registered under?” Parekh asked.

“I tried,” Hannah said. “The property is registered to a corporation and I didn’t have any luck in tracing the ultimate owners.”

“You don’t think, if he changed his name, that Beth would have said something about that?” Camila said.

Hannah shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. She might not know. He could stil be Uncle Neil to her. Or I could have it al wrong. It’s only a theory.”

“Okay,” Parekh said. “Wel , I guess we’re going to find out one way or the other shortly.” He clapped his hands together. “Great work, girls.” He looked at his watch. “I have a lot to get through today, so I need to wrap this up. Are you up for another road trip? To check out this address?”

“I can’t,” said Camila, shaking her head. “I have a test this afternoon, and my mom has some stuff going on at work. She needs me to check in at home.”

“I can go,” Sean said.

“Hannah?” Parekh asked.

Hannah nodded. Her reaction to the request confused her. She was worried about the outcome of the trip—it was always possible that they would uncover something that could help Dandridge in court—but she also felt an unexpected little boost of happiness. She could go to North Carolina without worrying about Laura’s routine or thinking about anyone but herself. That felt good.

“Okay, wel , that might be better anyway. I think I’d like Sean along in case Prosper reacts badly.”

Hannah looked at Sean, and wondered exactly what Parekh expected him to do in the event that Prosper got aggressive.

“Sean, I’d like you to squeeze in a visit to Michael too, if you can.

Maybe on the way back from North Carolina. He’s getting antsy with the hearing coming up next week, and I’m needed here. Introduce yourself. Spend some time with him, al right? Boost his confidence a little. Bring Hannah with you if you like. It would be good for you to meet him too, Hannah.”

Before Hannah or Sean could respond, the door to Parekh’s office burst open and Jim Lehane and Marianne Stephenson came in in a flurry of anxiety and paperwork.

“Rob, the goddamn filings are messed up,” Lehane said. He tried to thrust some papers into Parekh’s hands. Parekh was slow to take them.

“What?” he said.

“The filings. The motions,” Lehane said. “In the Dandridge case, I mean. We filed the wrong motions and now the deadline has passed.”

“I can’t understand it,” Marianne Stephenson said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“The document numbers were al mixed up,” Lehane said. “We filed electronical y and we just picked up the motions through the document management system. I filed most of them myself and I made damn sure I had the right document name and number. But I just happened to open a document today—I was going to crossreference a section in a motion I’m writing today—and I realized it was al wrong. We’ve filed a bunch of old motions from the federal case.”

Parekh stood up. His fury was unmistakable but he kept it in check. Barely. “How. The fuck. Did this happen,” he said.

“Marianne?”

“I’ve cal ed in IT,” Marianne said, her face and voice tight with anxiety. “But it’s the col ege system. It wil take them days to look at it. I’ve tried to figure it out myself. We run backups on the system every night. I was going to go back over them to see when the document naming system went wrong, but the backups seem to be corrupted. I can’t load them.”

“Christ,” Parekh said. “This is . . . unforgivable. We have to be better than this.”

“We are better than this,” Lehane said.

Marianne was wringing her hands. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. You know that. I am so careful. I don’t understand . . .”

“We have no backups?” Parekh asked. “We’l have to rewrite the damn things from scratch.” His face lost color, and he sat back on the desk. “That’s days of work. We’l never get the judge to accept them.”

But Lehane was shaking his head. “It’s not quite that bad,” he said. “I’ve got versions on my laptop. Most of them, at least. They’re not final versions, but I think they’re pretty close. We’l have to go through them al , check them, make final edits again, I guess. Then see if the court wil accept late filings.”

Parekh stood up. “Bring in your laptop, Jim. Let’s get to work. I’l cal the clerk. See if I can sweet-talk her into al owing a late filing. But I’m not holding my breath.”

Lehane left the room. Marianne Stephenson stayed.