High Crimes by Joseph Finder Page A

family, Claire, Jackie, and their mother, who always seemed to look tired. A lot of pictures of Claire on a vacation in Wyoming with some college friends. Shots of her college graduation (she’d had a miserable outbreak of acne and had gained a lot of weight during spring semester senior year, and so never allowed herself to look at these pictures).
    And Tom’s photos?
    One baby picture, a small black-and-white with a scalloped border. It might have been any generic baby; it looked nothing like the adult Tom, but baby pictures often bear no resemblance to the adult.
    And photos of him as a boy? None.
    High school? Nothing.
    College, too. Nothing.
    There were no pictures of Tom except that one generic baby picture. No high-school yearbook with pages defaced by long goodbye notes in loopy handwriting from girls who had had unrequited crushes on Tom.
    What kind of person had no pictures of himself growing up?
    Why had she never wondered where all his photographs were?
    *   *   *

    Returning from class late that morning, trailing two insistent students who’d attached themselves to her like limpets, Claire gracefully asked them to return later in the day. She had a meeting, she told them. They were nervous about finals; she’d be happy to spend time with them later on.
    Connie was at her desk doing correspondence. She looked up, started to say something.
    Claire smiled, gave a nice-to-see-you-but-I’m-too-rushed-to-stop-and-talk-just-now wave, went into her office, and shut the door behind her.
    Ray Devereaux was sitting in her chair.
    “The shit has hit the fan,” he said. He was dressed in a gray suit, surprisingly well cut, a white shirt, a pale turquoise tie.
    “Tell me about it.”
    She sat down in one of the visitor chairs, dropped her briefcase to the floor. “Your sources are good?”
    “Not especially. I’ve been calling around, but everyone’s awful tight-lipped. This isn’t a rinky-dink operation. This is big stuff.”
    “How big are we talking?”
    Devereaux leaned back in the chair, which creaked alarmingly. She half expected him to topple over backward. “They’ve accelerated the surveillance. They know he left a voice-mail message for you at home, and they’re approved to get your office voice mail at Harvard. They have no idea where he is, but they’re waiting for him to contact you. They have people outside his office downtown. A couple of guys outside this building. Everywhere you drive, they’ll follow you, in case you might be driving to meet him somewhere.”
    “Like that song by the Police, right?” Claire smiled grimly. “‘Every Step You Take.’”
    Devereaux looked blank. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.
    *   *   *

    They went for a stroll through the Law School quadrangle. She noticed the two plainclothesmen following at a not-so-discreet distance.
    “Nice day, huh?” Devereaux said. “Real late-spring day.”
    “Ray—”
    “Not yet, honey. I’ve always thought those long-range directional microphones they got are overrated, particularly on a crowded street. But I don’t want to take a chance. I mean, we could walk along Mass. Ave. and drive them crazy trying to pick out our voices from a hundred other babblers, but why chance it? Let’s take a ride in my car. I just picked it up this morning, and I know I wasn’t followed, so it’s not likely they put a bug in it. Yet.”
    Devereaux’s car was a new Lincoln. One of his clients ran an auto-leasing agency and let him lease cars for free, as compensation. She sank back in the comfortable, well-cushioned leather seat while he drove around aimlessly.
    “You mentioned his father,” Devereaux said. “Nelson Chapman. You said he lives in Florida.”
    “You talked to him?”
    Devereaux shook his head slowly. “No such person.”
    “I’ve met him. We visited him at his condo on Jupiter Island.”
    “You’ve met a man who called himself Nelson Chapman. The condo you said you visited is owned by someone