The question was, what came next? If Callaway moved through attorneys alone, if this became a civil proceeding, a securities fraud investigation, a slow, institutional grind, Celestine and Fletcher had time to complicate the evidence chain.
The physical documents in the East Wing could be removed or explained. The photograph of Celestine and Fletcher was damning but not definitive.
The forged signatures were strong, but handwriting analysis took months, and months was time that Fletcher-Voss, with his 40% equity stake and his apparently pre-positioned legal team, could use.
Imani thought about what she’d told the Tribune reporter she’d never actually contacted yet. She’d said it to Celestine.
“It’s already somewhere you can’t reach it.” And she’d meant the encrypted server, the attorneys’ files, Callaway’s legal team, but she’d also been thinking in the back of her mind about a journalism contact she’d made 2 years ago entirely by accident.
She’d been cleaning the office of a downtown PR firm and a woman named Adaeze Orji had left a business card on the desk she was dusting and later called the agency to say she’d left it intentionally because she was a Tribune investigative reporter who covered financial crime and she had a policy of leaving her card with service workers in financial offices because service workers, in her experience, noticed things that other people didn’t.
Imani had put the card in a drawer and not used it. She pulled out her phone now and found Adaeze’s number, which she had never deleted.
She texted, “This is Imani Osai. You left me your card 2 years ago. I have something.
Are you available today?” The reply came in 6 minutes. “I remember you. Yes. Call me.”
The call was 45 minutes long. Imani stood in the estate’s garden, the same garden where she’d made the eight-step walk 3 weeks ago, and talked to Adaeze Orji in the same even, precise way she talked about anything she needed someone to understand correctly.
