Executive Privilege

The morning after her meeting with Rickstein, Dana called the lawyer at his office to find out when he was going to meet with Claire Farrington. Dana figured that Rickstein would hand over the envelope in the first ten minutes of the meeting along with her message. Once Dr. Farrington got a glimpse of the photograph she would ask Rickstein to leave because she wouldn’t want to risk the lawyer seeing it or overhearing her conversation with Dana. Dana calculated that the first lady would begin studying the picture about fifteen minutes after Rickstein’s arrival. That’s when she placed the call. She wanted Farrington to see the picture, but she didn’t want to give her a lot of time to think before making her demands.

The first lady answered the phone after two rings.

“Dr. Farrington?”

“Who else would have this phone?” Farrington asked angrily.

“Getting upset won’t solve your problem. This is strictly a business proposition for me. I tried to explain that to Dale Perry and your husband but they decided it would be better to kill me than meet my very reasonable demands. Look where that got them. Dale’s dead, and your husband is probably going to be out of a job come November. I can guarantee he’ll lose the election and you’ll go to prison by selling the photos of you at the Dulles Towne Center lot to Exposed, but they don’t pay nearly as well as you will.”

“What do you want?”

“Three million dollars wired today to the account number you’ll find in the envelope. If the money is safely in my account you get the pictures.”

“I have no idea what you think these photographs have to do with me. They just show someone in a sweatshirt opening a car door. You can’t see the person’s face. I can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman.”

Dana laughed. “I can see you’re worried that I’m taping this conversation. I’m not. But if it makes you feel better I won’t ask you to say anything incriminating.

“Getting back to the reasons you’ll pay, there’s no question that the person in my pictures is identical to the figure in the stairwell at the Theodore Roosevelt Hotel. More important, there is a very nice photograph I didn’t give you for fear that Mort Rickstein’s curiosity would get the better of him. In this photograph, the hood is back just enough to see you staring menacingly into Charlotte Walsh’s car. Enlarge that baby and you’re assured of a date with the executioner.”

“I don’t believe you have pictures that would affect me in the least. But even if I wanted to purchase your pictures, there’s no way I can get three million dollars together today. And I certainly wouldn’t pay a blackmailer a red cent without seeing these pictures you claim are so incriminating.”

“If you want to see the pictures before paying I’ll meet you tonight at midnight in the Dulles Towne Center lot at the spot where Charlotte Walsh parked. It’s wide open at night, and I’ll be able to make sure that you’re alone.”

“It would be extraordinarily difficult for me to get to you without a Secret Service escort.”

“Tell them you don’t want an escort.”

“It’s not that simple. The Secret Service won’t follow my orders if I might be in danger. An agent will have to come with me.”

“All right, you can have an agent drive you, but if you’re pla

“Your demands are ridiculous. If I was concerned about your insane accusations I would also be concerned that you’d ask for more money as soon as I paid you. Blackmailers never stop their demands once they’ve got you hooked.”

“Good point, but you have no choice but to trust me. I don’t think you’d enjoy being perp-walked out of the White House on national television. And if you’re still pissed off, think of our transaction this way: the three million is for the mental distress I’ve suffered from trying to stay alive these past weeks. I’m sure a jury would award me more than that if I sued you. But a lawsuit would take years. I prefer one fast transaction.

“And you really don’t have to worry about me coming back for more. If you’ve been briefed on my background you know why I quit the police force. Pay me and I’m out of your life. All I want is to be left alone. Three million dollars will set me up for life.”

Claire Farrington held the cell phone in her hands for several seconds after Dana Cutler ended their call. Then she laid it down next to her on the couch and stared at the photograph of the hooded person standing next to Charlotte Walsh’s car. The photo looked as if it had been taken from a distance from the driver’s side of Walsh’s car. It showed a hooded figure standing next to the driver’s door. Something about the picture bothered her. She didn’t see it for a few seconds. Then she realized that the hooded figure in the photograph was identical to the hooded figure in the surveillance photo taken in the stairwell of the Theodore Roosevelt Hotel.

Claire stared intently at the picture for a few more moments. She smiled. Now she was certain that the picture was as phony as Dana Cutler’s story. The hooded figure was standing so that her right hand appeared to be on the door handle. That was wrong. When she killed Walsh she had grabbed the handle with her left hand so she could pull the door past her left side. If she’d opened the door with her right hand it would have been between her and Walsh.

In Cutler’s last voicemail message she’d said that she was finished following Walsh. That had been the truth. Cutler had not been in the lot when she killed Walsh. The first lady breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t know how Cutler had faked the picture, but she knew the picture wasn’t real. Claire buzzed Irving Lasker.

A few minutes later, Lasker was seated next to Farrington.

“Irv, do you know how to fake a photograph or do you know someone who does?”

“I know a little bit about it.”

Farrington handed Lasker the photograph. “How would you make the person in the hood look like he was standing next to this car if he really wasn’t?” she asked.

“You’d use Photoshop software. First you’d scan the photo of the car and the photo of the man in the hood into your computer. Then you’d use a technique called feathering to manipulate the pixels on either side of the images. Feathering will make an image blurry at the line where the images are being pasted together. You take one or two pixels on either side of the image and feather them together. The image will look real.”

“Is there a way to tell if feathering has been used to join the hooded person to the scene with the car in this picture?”

“Sure. You just magnify it. If the picture was created with feathering, the pixels won’t look clear and crisp like they would in a real photo.”

“Please have someone check this photograph and get back to me. And I need this done immediately.”

As soon as Lasker left the room, the first lady smiled. Ignoring Dana Cutler was the wise course of action, but Dana had crushed Chris’s chances of keeping the presidency when she went to Exposed. She had to pay for that. If the photograph turned out to be a fake-and Claire was certain it would-she would meet Dana at midnight. But the meeting would definitely not go the way Miss Cutler thought it would.