Curly warned me for a second time that I could have the charge of assaulting a federal agent added to anything else they chose to charge me with. I whispered to Deb for a few minutes.
She turned to the agents. “You apparently watched Ms. Warshawski’s office until she finished work for the day at five-forty-five. You then entered, using advanced electronic technology. We haven’t had time to inspect her office, but if it resembles the condition of her home, you acted without restraint in searching for material that you refuse to identify.”
Curly started to repeat his worn-out slogan about national security, but Deb held up an authoritative hand. “You took Ms. Warshawski’s hard drives; it would be easy to pretend you cared about national security, but you used that as a cover for theft. Ms. Warshawski is well known in Chicago. If she’s working on a case that overlaps a federal investigation, it would have been simpler for you to come to her with a warrant and an explanation. What were you looking for?”
It was their turn for a sidebar, this time with the assistant federal magistrate catching weekend duty. Deb and I couldn’t hear the conversation, but the magistrate looked startled, then angry. She said a few sharp words to the agents, then called Deb and me back to the conference table.
“Ms. Warshawski, you came in possession of some documents yesterday in Palfry, Illinois, that these agents are anxious to retrieve. If you can produce those documents, the agents will return your computers and proceed with their investigation.”
I could feel my eyes growing large. “My investigation has nothing to do with terrorism. It’s a sordid story of drug users and dealers.”
I gave a précis of Judy Binder’s story. “I went back to the meth house yesterday, hoping there might be something that would tell me why she was shot. I found an abandoned dresser with papers glued to a drawer; I was bringing them to a private forensics lab to see if they could restore any of the text. Someone broke into my car in the motel parking lot at four this morning and stole the drawer and the documents. The local sheriff’s police came out; you can talk to them to see if they’ve turned up any leads.”
“Pretty convenient,” Moe sneered. “It’s a great story.”
I ignored him and spoke to the magistrate. “If the agents had any inkling that the meth pit held secrets about terrorism, they had a week to go down there and excavate. Since they broke into both my office and my home, I assume they are the same guys who broke into my car.”
The prosecutor asked Moe and Curly what they knew about the theft from my car.
“Nothing. It’s a great story, but she had all day to dispose of the papers,” Curly said. “Of course we went to the Cheviot labs, but they claimed the perp—”
“The what?” Deb Steppe interrupted.
“The suspect,” Curly corrected sulkily.
“How about, ‘the detective’?” Deb said.
“How about, ‘Ms. Warshawski,’” the magistrate said dryly. “It’s midnight. Let’s adjourn this episode of ‘he said, she said.’ If the lab doesn’t have the documents, and Ms. Warshawski doesn’t have them, they are most likely in the possession of whoever took them from her car. If she scanned them into her computer, it should be easy to inspect the hard drives and sort out what’s there. I’ll talk to Judge Frieders, but I’m sure he’ll set a time limit on how long you can keep the drives.”
“Your agents have walked away with my client’s entire work life. They are destroying her livelihood for a fishing expedition,” Deb said sharply. “I’ll be in front of Judge Frieders first thing tomorrow morning myself to demand the return of the hard drives and the documents that they admit taking from Ms. Warshawski’s home.”
“We need the machine for at least a week,” the agents protested.
“Your computer division must be pretty pathetic if you can’t copy my drives and give them back to me right now,” I said. “Not that I want my confidential client information in your grubby—”
“Vic!” Deb rapped out warningly. “I thought we agreed that I would do the talking.”
The magistrate shut her eyes and rubbed a circle in the middle of her forehead. She was tired and she wanted this case to go away.
“I’ll talk to Judge Frieders, but Ms. Warshawski has a point: if you want to inspect the drives, just copy them.”
Deb hustled me out of the magistrate’s office before Moe or Curly actually charged me. Just as well: I was feeling pretty Mitch-like over the theft of the drives from my big office computer. I still had my laptop. At least, I hoped it was still in the briefcase I’d dropped on my way up the stairs tonight, but it couldn’t hold all my detailed reports and client data.