Phillip Margolin - Executive Privilege

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.

By midnight there were no cars in the remote section of the mall parking lot where Charlotte Walsh had been murdered. Dana waited in the shadows behind a light several rows from the spot where she’d told Claire Farrington to meet her. An hour and a quarter after Dana began her surveillance a car pulled in near the spot where Charlotte Walsh had parked her car. Irving Lasker got out. The first lady waited in the car while the Secret Service agent scoped out the area. When he gave the okay she got out and walked to the spot where Charlotte Walsh had parked. Farrington was dressed in jeans and a lightweight tan jacket. A baseball cap with the brim pulled down covered her hair. Dana waited a few beats then walked over to them with her hands held out from her sides.

“I assume you want to search me for weapons,” she said. Lasker nodded then searched her thoroughly. When he was certain that Dana was unarmed he stepped away from the investigator.

“We need some privacy, Irv,” Farrington said.

Lasker joined the driver, who was standing next to the car and scanning the lot.

“Let’s see the photograph,” Farrington said without preamble when she was sure that her escorts couldn’t hear her.

Dana took an envelope out of her jacket pocket and handed it to the first lady. Farrington took a photograph out of the envelope and studied it. Someone had pasted a picture of her face into the hood of the sweatshirt. This job wasn’t as well executed as the first and the fakery was even more obvious.

Farrington held up the photograph and looked over her shoulder at Lasker.

“Can you hold this, please,” she asked, using the signal they’d agreed on earlier in the evening. Lasker and the other agent walked over casually. When he was a few steps from Farrington Lasker drew his gun, and the first lady stepped behind the other agent.

“You’re under arrest, Miss Cutler, for extortion.”

A triumphant smile lit up Claire Farrington’s face. “You must think I’m awfully stupid. I didn’t murder Charlotte Walsh, so I knew that the pictures you sent me were fakes. An expert has confirmed this.”

Farrington was about to continue when three cars appeared at the side of the mall and headed their way.

“Get in the car,” Lasker told his charge.

“You don’t have to worry about the first lady,” Dana said. “That’s the FBI. I arranged for them to be here.”

Farrington looked confused. Lasker ordered her to get into the car again and she obeyed, but her eyes never left the cars, which stopped moments later. Keith Evans got out and held up his identification.

“Hey, Agent Lasker, remember me?”

“What are you doing here, Evans?”

“Before I answer that, I have a few questions I need to ask you,” Evans said in a tone low enough so Farrington could not hear him. “How did you know where to go tonight?”

“The first lady told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She wanted to go to this mall.”

“What did she say or do when you got to the mall?”

“She directed us to a spot in the parking lot.”

“What were her exact words?”

“I don’t remember her exact words, but as best I can recall, she told us to drive around the corner of the mall and go to this row. Then she had us stop near this parking space.”

“She gave you specific directions?”

“Yes. Now what’s going on?”

“I’m afraid the first lady is in a lot of trouble,” Evans said.

“Hey, wait,” Lasker said as Evans and Sparks walked to the back of Farrington’s car.

“Please don’t interfere, Agent Lasker,” Evans said. The FBI agents from the other cars moved in on Lasker and the driver, and the Secret Service agents realized they were outnumbered.

Claire had lowered her window in an attempt to hear what was being said.

“Good evening, Dr. Farrington,” Evans said.

“Good evening, Agent Evans. We’ve just arrested Dana Cutler for trying to extort three million dollars from me for a set of photographs allegedly showing me murdering Charlotte Walsh. Unfortunately for her, I knew the photographs couldn’t be real and I had them examined by an expert.”

Evans smiled. “The photos are faked and we know Miss Cutler asked you to pay three million dollars for them, but she wasn’t extorting money from you. She was helping us prove that you murdered Charlotte Walsh.”

Farrington looked amused. “How would a set of phony photographs do that?”

“Oh, the photographs wouldn’t. We would never introduce them at a trial as direct evidence. On the other hand, they did lure you to this parking lot. Agent Lasker just told me that you knew the exact spot where Charlotte Walsh parked, the spot where she was murdered. Mind telling us how you learned that information?”

Farrington started to say something but she caught herself.

“That’s okay,” Evans said. “You don’t have to talk to me. In fact, you have a right to remain silent because anything you say can and will be used in court to convict you. You also have a right to an attorney. If you can’t afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one to represent you.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Is it? Charlotte Walsh’s body was found in a Dumpster behind a restaurant in Maryland. As far as the public knows that was where she was murdered. There were rumors that she was killed here, but we were very hush-hush about the location in the lot. We towed the car without the press learning where it was discovered. In fact, very few people knew the exact spot where she was killed.”

“Charles Hawkins…”

“Confessed to a crime he could not have committed. We can prove it was impossible for him to do it. He didn’t have time to go from the hotel to the farm, meet the president at eleven-fifteen, and murder Miss Walsh in this lot at eleven. But you had time to sneak out of the hotel after Dale Perry diverted the guard at the stairwell, come here, kill Miss Walsh, and return to the hotel before one.”