Page 39 of Filthy Liar

“Of course there are others.” I think hard about how much I want to share. Protecting my story isn’t just about getting the headline, or not wanting to be scooped. It’s about who gets to control the narrative. And these two are kings at twisting narratives to suit their purposes. “There are rumors Lively had a massive document collection. Video, photographs, emails. But it didn’t come out in discovery, and now that he’s dead there’s no reason for the Feds to keep it private—and from some of my sources, I’m told they have told survivors that they don’t have it. They believe it’s just a rumor.”

Jason’s jaw twitches. “Is that what Caroline was working on?”

“No.”

He eyes my rapid response with suspicion. “Are you sure?”

“She didn’t work on Lively’s case. Wrong jurisdiction. He didn’t have a residence here, none of the crimes were committed here. And you know that.”

“Not the sex trafficking,” he acknowledges. “But I’ve heard things too. Money laundering. Campaign finance violations. And those could be investigated in Virginia.”

I don’t respond to that. It’s off-topic, and a fishing expedition. “The Feds don’t have these documents. If they did, there would be no value in the blackmailing efforts with fakes.”

“So you know this photo is a fake?”

I nod grimly. “I sure do. I’ve poured over a lot of photos from Lively’s plane. See that bar in the background? That was replaced with an extra chair almost a decade ago. But this photo of Mayfair is newer than that.”

“It’s not a single image, at least not one that Mayfair has access to,” Wilson says. “I ran image comparisons against every photo I could get my hands on, and nothing pinged. It also has a couple of weird pixel spots where it could be doctored.”

“A composite image.” I think about my conversation with Detective Browning. “If they’re this good, it will make it very hard to trust evidence. That benefits chaos agents more than anyone else. And the mission discipline to keep this from exploding—this isn’t being outsourced. We’re looking at chaos agents who have the capabilities to do all of this in-house. International bank accounts, masking digital trails, and photo manipulation.”

Jason points to the photographs. “What if the entire rumored massive document collection that you’ve heard about is fake? Could these blackmail attempts be an effort to validate the existence of something which does not actually exist?”

I run that scenario through the loose connections I have in my head. “It’s possible. A red herring. But we know that Lively took photos—so it makes sense that there are more, a lot more. The red herring theory could be a red herring in itself.” I sigh. “But finding it is proving impossible. Whoever does could be leaking the biggest hack of documents since the Panama Papers.”

If that person is me, I’m going to call them the Pervert Papers. I keep that part to myself.

We run through the all the facts a few more times, coming at them from different directions, until my stomach rumbles.

Jason immediately offers to order in dinner. He points at Wilson. “You want something?”

“From where? That Filipino place?”

“Yeah.”

“Get me my usual.”

The deja vu is fucking with my head. And the ordinary office-ness of the whole exchange, when we’ve just been talking about blackmail and misdirection at the highest levels…it’s bizarre.

Jason turns to me. “And you?”

“I’ll have one of everything,” I quip. “No seriously, I’ll have whatever you’re having. And maybe whatever Wilson is having too. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“I hope because you were sleeping.” Jason gives me a look like he doubts that I was, except I was, and I don’t need to tell him either way.

I smile sweetly until he leaves. Then I turn back to Wilson. “Can I ask you another question?”

“Shoot.”

“Hypothetically, if this stockpile of incriminating evidence is so hard to get our hands on…could we assume it’s behind an air-gap protection? On a closed network?”

He gives me an impressed look. “Nice hypothesis. Do you have one in mind?”

“I was just wondering if there’s any data in the images that might give us a clue to how they were removed from that system.”

“You think maybe the fakes come from the same network? Why not keep the real documents in a secure location and not worry about the fakes?”

“Someone like Mayfair has all the resources in the world to throw at proving something is fake. You have to make it at least a little hard. So just in case…I wonder if there is signature data somewhere.”

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