“Nuance?” Reggie repeated, clearly trying to justify his paycheck. “What does that mean?”
“A subtle difference or distinction.” Leigh pulled back on the sarcasm. “It means that, generally, you have to be very careful. Tammy will come across as extremely sympathetic.”
“Not when you tell them she nearly ruined a guy’s life in high school,” Reggie said. “And then killed his baby.”
Leigh pushed the pile of shit back in his lap. “Honestly, Reggie, everything will rest on your testimony. You’ll have to be flawless on the stand.”
Reggie’s mouth opened, but Andrew’s hand went up to stop him.
He told his lapdog, “I’d like a cup of coffee. Sugar, no cream.”
Reggie stood up. He left his laptop and phone on the table. He kept his eyes straight as he passed by Leigh. She heard a click, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the door closing or from Andrew’s finger picking at the corner of the file.
He knew that something was wrong, that somehow, at some point, he had lost the upper hand.
For Leigh’s part, all that she could think about was that she had not been alone with Andrew since their brief conversation in the parking lot. She looked at the pen on the table in front of her. She did an inventory of the objects in the room. The trophies on the credenza. The heavy glass vase with its wilting flowers. The hard edge of her phone case. They could all be used as weapons.
Again, she returned to her safe spot, which was the case. “We should go over—”
Andrew banged his fist onto the file.
Leigh jumped before she could tell herself not to. Her arms instinctively flew up. She expected Andrew to explode, to come across the room and attack her.
Instead, his expression maintained its usual icy composure as he shoved the file across the table.
She watched the pages flutter as the folder slid across the polished wood and stopped a few inches away from her notepad. Leigh dropped her defensive posture. She recognized the gold seal of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Black letters designated the file as from Student Mental Health Services. The name on the tab read KARLSEN, TAMMY RENAE.
Leigh’s inner siren started trilling so loudly she could barely hear herself think. HIPAA, the healthcare law guaranteeing that all medical data was kept private, fell under the purview of Health and Human Services. Violations were investigated by the Office for Civil Rights, and if they found criminal acts, they referred the case to the Department of Justice for prosecution.
Federal law. Federal prosecutor. Federal prison.
She bought herself time, asking Andrew, “What is this?”
“Intel,” he said. “I want you to study those records front to back and, when the time comes, I want you to use every detail inside to shred Tammy Karlsen on the stand.”
The siren grew louder. The medical chart looked like the original, which meant Reggie had either broken into a secure location inside Georgia Tech, a state institution that took federal dollars, or he had paid someone working in the office to steal the file for him. The list of crimes behind the theft or the receipt of stolen property were almost impossible to calculate.
And if Leigh used the ill-gotten gains, she could be setting herself up as a co-conspirator.
She straightened the pen against the edge of her notepad. “This is not A Few Good Men. The Jack Nicholson moment you and Reggie are looking for could turn the jury completely against me. They’ll think I’m a raging bitch.”
“And?”
“And,” Leigh said. “You need to understand that when I am in the courtroom, I am you. Whatever comes out of my mouth, however I behave, whatever tone I set, helps the jury form their opinion of what kind of man you really are.”
“So, you go after Tammy, and I stand up and order you to stop,” Andrew said. “That way you tear down her credibility and I look like a hero.”
Leigh wanted that to happen more than Andrew realized. The judge would probably declare a mistrial and Leigh could get kicked off the case.
Andrew asked, “Is that a good strategy?”
He was testing her again. He could go back to Cole Bradley and ask him to weigh in, and then Leigh wouldn’t just be dealing with an enraged psychopath. She would be looking for a job.
She said, “It’s a strategy.”
Andrew was smiling without the smirk. He was telling Leigh that he knew what she was trying to do, but he didn’t care.
She felt her heart skip.
Why didn’t he care? Was Andrew holding back something even more horrifying than stealing Tammy Karlsen’s most intimate therapy moments? Did he have a strategy that Leigh could not divine? Cole Bradley’s Netflix Detective warning came back to her.