“I can’t understand it,” Marianne Stephenson said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“The document numbers were al mixed up,” Lehane said. “We filed electronical y and we just picked up the motions through the document management system. I filed most of them myself and I made damn sure I had the right document name and number. But I just happened to open a document today—I was going to crossreference a section in a motion I’m writing today—and I realized it was al wrong. We’ve filed a bunch of old motions from the federal case.”
Parekh stood up. His fury was unmistakable but he kept it in check. Barely. “How. The fuck. Did this happen,” he said.
“Marianne?”
“I’ve cal ed in IT,” Marianne said, her face and voice tight with anxiety. “But it’s the col ege system. It wil take them days to look at it. I’ve tried to figure it out myself. We run backups on the system every night. I was going to go back over them to see when the document naming system went wrong, but the backups seem to be corrupted. I can’t load them.”
“Christ,” Parekh said. “This is . . . unforgivable. We have to be better than this.”
“We are better than this,” Lehane said.
Marianne was wringing her hands. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. You know that. I am so careful. I don’t understand . . .”
“We have no backups?” Parekh asked. “We’l have to rewrite the damn things from scratch.” His face lost color, and he sat back on the desk. “That’s days of work. We’l never get the judge to accept them.”
But Lehane was shaking his head. “It’s not quite that bad,” he said. “I’ve got versions on my laptop. Most of them, at least. They’re not final versions, but I think they’re pretty close. We’l have to go through them al , check them, make final edits again, I guess. Then see if the court wil accept late filings.”
Parekh stood up. “Bring in your laptop, Jim. Let’s get to work. I’l cal the clerk. See if I can sweet-talk her into al owing a late filing. But I’m not holding my breath.”
Lehane left the room. Marianne Stephenson stayed.
“I’m so sorry, Rob. I don’t understand . . .”
He held up a hand. “We don’t have time for this, Marianne. Just see what you can do about getting to the bottom of what went wrong, okay? And from now on the Dandridge files stay off the main system.”
Marianne swal owed. She looked like she was close to tears, but she left the room with purpose in her step and her head held high.
Parekh seemed to realize in the same moment that Hannah, Sean, and Camila were stil sitting there, frozen.
“Let’s go, people,” Parekh said, irritated, and they hurried out of his office.
“MAN, I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. IT’S NOT LIKE MARIANNE TO SCREW
UP like that,” Sean said, once they were out of the office and walking down the corridor.
Camila was frowning. “You’re assuming it was Marianne. It might have been Jim. Just because he went in there shouting the loudest doesn’t mean it wasn’t him.”
“Right,” said Sean.
“Or maybe it wasn’t anyone. Maybe it was just a glitch.” Camila’s frown deepened. “If it was a glitch, it’s not going to be isolated to one case. I’d better go and check my stuff. As if I didn’t have enough to do today.” She sighed. “Do you have anything you want me to look at for you, Sean? If you’re going to be on the road today?”
He shook his head. “I’l bring my laptop, check it tonight. But thank you. That’s a nice offer.”
“Do you think they’l get permission to file late? In the Dandridge case, I mean,” Hannah asked.
Camila shrugged. “Who knows? I guess we don’t have any friends in Yorktown right now. There’s a lot of politics with this case.
But Rob Parekh is pretty smart. Maybe he can find a way to put pressure on the judge.”
They were quiet for a moment before Sean spoke again.
“Do you mind, Camila? Not going to North Carolina, I mean. It was your lead. Yours and Hannah’s.”
She shook her head. “Not real y. Taking another day or couple of days would be hard right now. I just wish Parekh wouldn’t cal us girls. It’s patronizing.”
“I’m not sure he means it the way it sounds,” Sean said. Camila cast him a look, and he held his hands up. “Okay, okay.”