Riley and Cruz rolled their eyes at each other in a can you believe this guy look, but they pulled out their chairs and sat down.

“You’ve already seen the CCTV from building management?” Culligan said.

The cops nodded like the effort was costing them something. You clowns work for me, Barrett felt like telling them. But he held his tongue as Culligan opened his laptop and hit a button. “CDMI has its own surveillance system in all the public areas of our space,” Culligan said as an image opened on the screen. “This is the corridor outside Lucy’s office.”

Cruz leaned in to read the time stamp. 02.02.14 20.36.48. “About eight thirty last night?”

“Correct. Watch.”

Culligan pushed another button and launched the video. The detectives leaned forward to watch as an office door opened. “It’s motion-activated,” Culligan explained.

On-screen, Shay Lambert stepped out of the office into the corridor and closed the door behind her. She sagged against the wall with her hands over her face. The image resolution wasn’t perfect, but when she took her hands away, tears were visibly rolling down her cheeks. She drew a breath and scrubbed her fists across her cheeks, then she hurried down the corridor, turned a corner, and disappeared.

Culligan paused the video.

“Lucy had just terminated her employment,” Barrett said.

The detectives leaned back in their chairs. Cruz folded his arms over his chest. “How do you know that?”

“Because I told her to do it.”

“Because—?”

“I discovered that Shay lied on her résumé. We had plenty of highly qualified applicants for this position. I hired Shay for one reason and one reason only. Her résumé listed a clerkship with Judge Wendell Arnold on the Second Circuit. Judge Arnold had an amazing knack for picking the best and the brightest and training them well. All of his clerks went on to brilliant careers. I know because I was one of them.”

“But she wasn’t?”

Barrett shook his head in disgust. “The judge passed away last year, and we had a memorial for him Saturday night in the city. Fifty of us former clerks made the trip, from all around the country. I asked Shay if she was going, but she said she had a prior engagement. At the party there was a slide show of all of Judge Arnold’s clerks through the decades, and when Shay wasn’t in it, I went looking for answers. Turns out she never clerked for Arnold. No one had ever even heard of her. She made it up to get her foot in my door. So I called Lucy at home yesterday. I wanted this impostor out before the workweek began.”

“We knew from Lambert’s keycard swipe that she was in the office yesterday,” Culligan said. “So Ms. Carter-Jones agreed to go in and take care of it.”

Cruz looked at him. “You’re the security chief, right?”

“Right.”

“And you involve yourself in personnel matters?”

“It’s protocol in a discharge situation. I had a team standing by.”