Chapter 5: What Warren Fitch Didn't Know
We had maybe forty-eight hours before Pruitt moved the footage again or destroyed it entirely.
Bishop had already traced the server to a data facility on the eastern edge of the city — a private commercial operation that rented rack space to businesses and individuals who wanted storage without questions.
The kind of place that accepted payment in cashier's checks and didn't keep visitor logs.
"Can you pull the data remotely?" I asked.
"Not without triggering their intrusion detection.
Whatever Pruitt set up, he had help.
The security on that server is not campus IT work."
"Fitch," Mitchell said.
"Almost certainly.
The encryption architecture matches a firm Fitch's office has used before on sealed case files."
I thought for a moment.
"What do we need to access it legally?"
"A warrant.
Or consent from the account holder."
"Pruitt won't consent."
"No.
But the facility owner might have a different opinion when he finds out what's stored on his servers."
Park was already on his laptop.
"Facility is registered to a man named Carl Odum.
Clean record.
Small business owner.
He's been renting rack space to a shell company connected to Holbrook's attorney for about two years.
I'd be surprised if Odum knows what's on it."
"Can we get to Odum before Pruitt does?"
"We're already there," Park said.
He turned the laptop toward me.
Lawson was on a live video call, sitting across a table from a heavyset man in a work shirt who looked deeply uncomfortable.
"Lawson's been with him for the last twenty minutes."
I leaned toward the screen.
"Mr.
Odum," I said.
The man looked up.
"Who are you?"
"My name is David Miller.
I'm going to be direct with you.
The server space you've been renting to a company called Meridian Data Solutions is being used to store evidence in a violent crjme.
Evidence that was stolen from a university security system.
The victim is my nineteen-year-old daughter."
Odum's face changed.
"I didn't know anything about — "
"I believe you.
That's why I'm talking to you instead of letting the federal attorney make this call.
If you voluntarily provide access to that server and cooperate fully, you are a witness, not a subject.
If you wait, and Pruitt or Fitch gets to you first and that footage disappears, the conversation becomes much more complicated."
Odum looked at Lawson.
Lawson said nothing.
He didn't need to.
"What do I have to do?" Odum asked.
Forty minutes later, Bishop had the footage.
It was worse than I expected.
Not because of what it showed — though what it showed was damning enough to end all three of their futures — but because of what was visible in the background.
A fourth person.
Standing near the edge of the frame.
Not participating.
Watching.
"Bishop," I said.
"The fourth individual.
Can you identify him?"
Keyboard sounds.
A long pause.
"His name is Preston Hale.
He's a graduate student.
Also the personal assistant to Dean Raymond Carver — the university's chief academic officer."
"Carver knew."
"If Hale was there, Carver knew."
I sat with that for a moment.
The dean of the university.
Not just a corrupt security guard.
Not just three wealthy students and their fathers' lawyers.
The institution itself.
"How far up does this go?" Mitchell asked.
"Far enough that we need the federal attorney today," I said.
"Not tomorrow.
Today."
I called a woman named Grace Okafor.
She had been a federal prosecutor for eleven years.
I had met her once, briefly, through a contact I trusted completely.
I had her number in a place I rarely looked.
She answered on the second ring.
"Grace.
It's David Miller.
I have video evidence, a cooperating witness, a corrupt university official, and a sitting attorney who has been sealing violent crjmes for a defense contractor's family for nearly a decade.
How soon can you be in the city?"
A pause.
"I'm already in the city," she said.
"I've been waiting for someone to call me about the Holbrook family for two years."
The line went quiet for a beat.
"Mr.
Miller," she said.
"Don't move anything.
Don't contact anyone else.
I'm on my way."
I hung up and looked at Mitchell.
"She already knew," he said.
"Yes."
"That means someone else tried before us."
"Yes."
"What happened to them?"
I didn't answer.
Because just then my phone buzzed.
Not a text this time.
A call.
May you like
The number was one I recognized — the main line for Kensington Construction.
Richard Kensington himself was calling me.
