Free Night Talk by George Noory

mean?”
    â€œErased.”
    â€œAll of our caller files are gone—erased?”
    â€œJust Ethan Shaw’s calls.”
    Mond pulled a small transmitter from his side pocket and said, “Geronimo.” He tossed papers on Greg’s desk.
    â€œSearch warrant,” Batista said.
    From the entry and outer offices came the sound of doors flying open, a stampede of footsteps, voices yelling, “Federal agents!”
    Batista grinned. “You can save your place from being torn apart by giving us what Shaw gave you.”

 
    15
    â€œHave Mr. Nowell and his staff wait in the reception area,” Mond told Batista.
    â€œI’m calling my attorney,” Greg said.
    â€œFrom the reception area,” Batista said.
    Soledad, Vince, their assistants and the clerical staff were already gathered in the reception area. An officer whose blue jacket said INTERAGENCY was standing between them and the elevator.
    â€œThey think Ethan gave me something secret he was working on for the government,” Greg told them. “He didn’t give me anything or even offer to give me anything.”
    â€œHow could the calls have been erased?” Soledad asked.
    â€œNot just erased, but it was done with a surgical knife deleting only Ethan Shaw’s. Hang on,” he said, “I have to make a call.”
    He went to a corner to get what privacy he could and dialed attorney Liz Tucker. He gripped the phone tight and clenched his teeth as it rang ten times and took him to voicemail. Keeping his tone neutral, he quickly explained what had come down. “Call me as soon as you get this message. I need help.”
    Liz was the network lawyer for the show. She was smart and resourceful, the kind of lawyer that rolled with the punches but then hit back hard. She was also the only attorney he knew, except his tax attorney, who was out of his league with any issue beyond the tax code.
    â€œEthan Shaw’s calls getting erased. How could that happen?” Greg asked Vince, the broadcast engineer.
    â€œWouldn’t take much,” Vince said. “It’s just a cloud account with a simple password. Every caller is a separate file. Hell, we didn’t set it up to hide it from anyone, just as a convenient place to store the calls in case questions arose later. We only keep them for ninety days anyway, before they are automatically erased. We didn’t think a backup was necessary.”
    Greg was listening but his mind was spinning in the background about the accusation that he had paid Ethan for secrets. Anyone could have erased the calls but transferring money took effort because he was the only one on the account who could have done it. He would check his bank accounts when the feds cleared out but he didn’t think they were lying about the money transfer. A lie that easy to check would be stupid.
    His paying off Ethan also fit nicely with everything else that had come down—the strange accusation from Ethan, the missing calls, the fact that his show with its known theme of suspicion of overreaching governmental authority would be a perfect place to broadcast evidence of wrongdoing by the government.
    If someone wanted to implicate him—frame him—in a stolen-secrets incident, a money transfer to a hacker with a criminal record would quickly put the noose around his neck and kick the chair out from under him.
    He had no enemies. No, that wasn’t true. No one had actually been threatening him though it had happened in the past. It was hard to be well known and deal with controversial issues and not tick off someone. Even a bunch of someones, but stolen government secrets and clandestine money transfers were way over the top.
    Equipment was being carried out and Greg passed a message to Mond through an agent that they had better leave equipment necessary to go on the air or they would have the network going after them.
    Batista came out of an inner office.