Flinch Factor, The Page 17

  “Is that money your money, Gene?” Jacki asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “Is it your cash or did you get it from Corundum?”

  “I don’t see why that matters.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you see. Just answer the question.”

  He looked down. “It’s the company’s money.”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “Rudy.”

  “Who’s Rudy?”

  “He’s the man your client talked to on some job site. Rudy used to be my foreman.”

  “What’s Rudy’s last name?”

  “Hickman.”

  “So Rudy Hickman gave you the money?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And he gave you the release?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And he gave you the instructions?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You don’t work for Rudy anymore?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You work for Corundum?”

  “No, ma’am. Not for a couple months.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “At the Chambers Warehouse on North Broadway.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Loading dock.”

  Jacki leaned back in her chair and glanced over at me.

  I nodded.

  “Gene,” I said.

  He turned to me, eyes narrowing. “Yeah?”

  “How’d you like to keep that seven fifty?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean by keep it?”

  “What if we could get you a signed release to give to Rudy but you could pocket the money? Does that interest you?”

  “Well.” He seemed both confused and tempted. “I’m not following your drift here.”

  “You can keep the money if you can give us the information we need.”

  “Information? About what?”

  “Nick Moran.”

  The way his head snapped back, eyes wide, you’d have thought I tasered him.

  “Moran? What do you mean?”

  “Tell me about you and Nick Moran.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “About what?”

  I sighed and shook my head, more for effect than anything else. “Gene, we have a witness.”

  His eyes widened. “Witness? To what?”

  “In Forest Park. The night Nick died.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “I didn’t say you did. But you were with him, Gene. We have a witness who saw you drive his pickup truck. He saw you park it on that lane in Forest Park. He saw you get out of Nick’s truck and get into the one that belongs to Corundum. Next morning the police found Nick dead in that pickup, which was parked exactly where you left it.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “He died that night, Gene. You were the last person to see him alive.”

  “No way. I never saw him alive.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He was already dead.”

  “He was already dead when?”

  “When I got in that truck.”

  “Which truck?”

  “His, I guess. That one I drove.”

  “In the park?”

  “No. Before.”

  “Where did you get in his truck?”

  Chase’s eyes were blinking rapidly, his face flushed. He leaned back in his chair and looked down at his thighs. He was tugging at his earlobe.

  “Where was his truck, Gene?” I asked in a gentle voice.

  No answer.

  “Gene?”

  “Hold on.” He held up his hands and shook his head, still looking down. “Gimme a second.”

  “How long had you known Nick?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know him. Not at all.”

  “Then how do you know his name?”

  “It was in the news.”

  “What news?”

  “The next day. After they found him.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t know his name until then?”

  He held up his hands. “This is going way too fast.”

  “We can slow down,” I said.

  “No, I got to think this over.” He stood. “I got to go off and think this over real good before I say anything more.”

  “Don’t you want to do this deal?” Jacki said. “We’re talking seven hundred and fifty dollars. Just give us the information about that night, keep the money, take back a signed release, and no one will ever know the difference.”

  He seemed torn as he stood there, shifting from leg to leg.

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said, to no one in particular.

  “What wasn’t?” I asked.

  “This here. I didn’t do nothing wrong that night. They asked me to come over and pick him up and drive him to the park and I done it and that was supposed to be all. And now this? Well, it’s gotten a little too complicated for me. I gots to think this over.”

  “You can tell us about it,” I said.

  “I don’t know about that.” His voice was almost an octave higher. “I got to go. I just do. I’ll talk to you all later.”

  And with that he dashed out of Jacki’s office. We heard him lumber down the hall.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Jacki and I stared at each other.

  “So he was already dead,” she said.“Not what we were expecting to hear.”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe it’s time to pay another visit to your police pal.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bertie’s convinced this was just a routine drug overdose.”

  “Now we know it wasn’t.”

  “All we know for sure—or think we know for sure—is that Nick OD’ed on heroin somewhere other than Forest Park and was already dead by the time Chase got into Nick’s pickup to drive it Forest Park.”

  “I’d call that some major new information, Rachel.”

  “True, but there’s still a semi-innocent explanation.”

  “Which is?”

  “That Nick died of an accidental overdose somewhere else. Maybe at someone’s house. Or in his pickup with someone else. And that someone panicked and called Chase and somehow convinced him to drive the pickup with Nick inside back to Forest Park.”

  “That’s still pretty shady, and probably illegal.”

  “But not a homicide—and it might not be enough to get Bertie to reopen a closed case.”

  “What about the other truck? The one from Corundum that was parked on the lane? How is that innocent?”

  “I’m not saying it is, but maybe the truck got there because Nick hooked up with some guy from Corundum who was driving the truck at the time. Maybe they met in the park and then drove somewhere else in Nick’s pickup.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes.”

  “That’s all we have so far.”

  “Do you really believe the innocent scenario?”

  “No.” I shrugged. “But I need to find evidence that would at least suggest to a cop that it might not be innocent from the start. Until I do that, Bertie isn’t going budge.”

  “How are you going to find that evidence?”

  “Gene Chase obviously knows something important.”

  “How do we make him tell us?”

  “He seemed tempted by the money. He might come back on his own.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “He’s confirmed the Corundum connection. That’s important. I’ll just keep poking around, see what else I can find out about them.” I held up the release document Chase had brought. “This is a first step.”

  “To w
hat?”

  “To Corundum’s lawyer. Sometimes a lawyer will talk when a client won’t.”

  Jacki frowned at the document. “How is this a clue to Corundum’s lawyer?”

  “You see that number at the bottom left corner of the page?”

  “The document ID number?”

  “Exactly.”

  Jacki looked up with a frown. “And that tells you something?”

  “Read it aloud.”

  “Okay. S—T—L—D—O—C—S—dash—1—3—5—9—1—7—4.”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “So?”

  “That’s the ID number that the law firm’s document management system assigned to that document when it was created.”

  “Okay.”

  “All we need to do is match that document ID to the lawyer who created it.”

  “Good Lord, Rachel. Do you know how many lawyers and law firms there are in this city? Matching a lawyer to that ID number could take years.”

  “I bet I can do it in less than a week.”

  “How?”

  “Look at the first three letters: S—T—L. What’s that tell you?”

  “It’s an abbreviation for St. Louis.”

  “Exactly. And?”

  “And what?”

  “When I was a lawyer at Abbott & Windsor, the firm opened branch offices in about six American cities. Each office had its own document dataset maintained by the server in that location. Thus the document IDs always identified which office created the document. If it was the New York office, the first three letter were N—Y—C. Washington was W—D—C. Chicago was C—H—I.”

  “And St. Louis was S—T—L.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “But the only reason you needed those three initials was because the firm had offices in more than one city. That way, if you were in the Los Angeles office and you were looking for, say, an example of a motion to dismiss and your document search came up with one that started A—T—L, then you knew that if you wanted to review that document you had to open the document dataset for the Atlanta office.”

  Jacki stared at the lower left corner of the release. “Okay.”

  “The document ID on this release tells me that it was created at a law firm that has offices in more than one city. Otherwise, there’s no need to indicate the city on the ID number. That means the lawyer for Corundum who drafted this document works at a law firm that has multiple offices.”

  “Ah.” She smiled. “So that cuts the list of firms down to fifteen or so.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what are you going to do? Serve them all with subpoenas?”

  “Never. We couldn’t anyway. We don’t even have an existing case to issue a subpoena from. And even if we had a case, the firms would fight a formal subpoena. They’d claim attorney work product.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  I’m sure I know at least one lawyer at each of those firms.”

  “You think they’ll just tell you?”

  “It’s worth a try.” I checked my watch. “But not today. I’ll start calling them in the morning.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  For old times’ sake, I started with my former law firm, Abbott & Windsor. When I’d joined fresh out of law school fifteen years ago, A & W had about 300 lawyers—a behemoth of that era—with 270 lawyers in the Chicago office and a handful each in Washington, D.C. and London. Now the firm had about 2,000 lawyers and offices in most of the major business centers of North America, Europe, and Asia. Though I still knew dozens of lawyers in the Chicago office, I decided to start with a junior partner in the St. Louis office named Jeffrey Ames. He possessed three qualities that made him an excellent prospect: he was vain and pompous and a horndog.

  His secretary answered his phone—of course. Jeffrey Ames was too important to answer his own phone. She asked my name and I told her. She asked me about the nature of the call and I told her it was personal. Thirty seconds later, Jeffrey came on the phone.

  “Ah, the lovely Rachel Gold. How are you, my dear?”

  My dear?

  “I’m doing good, Jeffrey.”

  “Delighted to hear that. Long time no chat. To what do I owe this distinct pleasure?”

  “Possibly your skillful legal drafting.”

  “Is that so? Pray tell me more. I am most intrigued.”

  “I have a corporate indenture document in my form file, but I have no idea where I got it. It’s a nice piece of draftsmanship, Jeffrey, which is what made me think of you. I thought it might be your work.”

  “Perhaps it is. Who are the parties?”

  “Don’t know. The names have been redacted. But there is a document ID at the bottom of the page. It looks like a St. Louis document.”

  “We can confirm that in a moment. Let me get into the document search mode on my computer.” A pause. “Okay. Give me the number.”

  I read it to him.

  He repeated it as he typed it in. “Let’s see what we turn up.”

  After a moment, he said, “An indenture?”

  “Yes. Is it your document?”

  “Unfortunately, no. We most definitely have a document bearing that identification number, but I am afraid it is a notice of appeal, and the author is Roger Bakker of our office.”

  “Oh, well. Thanks for checking, Jeffrey.”

  “My pleasure, Rachel. We really should get together. Perhaps you would allow me to buy you a drink after work one day.”

  “Maybe later in the year. My schedule is pretty crazy these days.”

  “I perfectly understand. I shall make a note to call you in a few weeks. It is always a delight to chat with you, Rachel.”

  Between client meetings, drafting a motion to compel, and other tasks that filled up the rest of the day, I was only able to reach lawyers from four of the other possible firms. All four had a document in their St. Louis datasets with the same ID number, but none was the Corundum release. Instead, the ID number matched, in order of my four calls, an assignment of copyright, a software license agreement, a loan guarantee, and a set of interrogatories—and none for a client named Corundum Construction Company.

  Five down, eleven to go, I said to myself as I hung up after call number five, which had been to a friend at Armstrong Teasdale, where the document ID matched the set of interrogatories.

  I checked my watch.

  5:25 p.m.

  Enough for today. I’d start calling again in the morning and keep at it until I made the match. What I’d do once I made the match—well, I’d cross that proverbial bridge when I reached it.

  I stood and gathered my stuff to leave. The rain had increased during the day from a morning drizzle to a steady downpour that seemed to be growing stronger.

  I noticed a manila envelope on the carpet by my office door, which I’d closed an hour ago to make a conference call on my speaker phone. There was a yellow Post-it on envelope. I recognized my secretary’s handwriting as I bent over to pick up the envelope:

  Rachel, I finished up the research. Guess what? You were 7 for 7!! Congrats!

  See you tomorrow.

  Dorian

  The envelope was sealed. From its heft I estimated there were thirty or so pages of documents inside, which was about what I expected. But not seven for seven. I was hoping for—or perhaps dreading—maybe three out of seven. That would suggest the possibility of a pattern. Seven for seven suggested much more.

  As I stared at the envelope, a wave of raindrops drummed against my window.

  I checked my watch again.

  5:33 p.m.

  I needed to get home. Dorian’s packet of information could wait until later.

  Chapter Thirty-six

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nbsp; By the time we finished dinner, the rainstorm had intensified into a thunderstorm. The flashes of lighting and explosion of thunder so terrified poor Sam that I stayed with him in bed, singing lullabies, until he finally fell asleep with Yadi curled up at the end of his bed. Even Sarah, who usually did her homework holed up in her bedroom with the door closed, was studying in the den off the kitchen.

  By the time I came back downstairs, my mother had already cleaned up the kitchen, brewed tea, opened the manila envelope, and examined the packet of documents, which were now spread across the kitchen table in separate piles. She looked up as I came in the room.

  “Is Sam asleep?” she asked.

  “Finally.”

  The window behind her flickered with a flash of distant lightning.

  I gestured toward the documents. “Well?”

  She shook her head, eyes wide. “You were right.”

  “All seven?”

  The rumble of thunder shuddered the house.

  “All seven,” she said.

  I took a seat across from her.

  She said, “How did you know?”

  “A lucky guess—or maybe unlucky, depending how this plays out. Benny was over here last week and we were trying to figure out whether the two Corundum building permits in Amity were issued to members of their city government. We went onto the Amity website and found a list of council members.”

  “And?”

  “Both were on the city council. But we also discovered something else: Ruby Productions had a project in Amity. Another one of those gated communities. At the time I just thought it was an odd coincidence—Corundum building permits in the same town as a Ruby Productions development. But it kept gnawing at me. Later that night, I got out of bed, went down to the den, and got back onto the Amity website. I found the minutes for the city council meeting where they approved the project. They were posted on line. The project passed by a vote of three to two. Guess who voted in favor of Ruby Productions?”