Final Exam: A Legal Thriller (46 page)

Then Ben thought of jilted lovers and their spouses.
 
He looked at Nora Fleming’s name.
 
His gut told him no, but then again, she was in town at the time of the murder and knew her way around the law school.
 
He took the Sharpie and drew an arrow next to Fleming’s name and wrote, HUSBAND.
 
A more likely candidate?
 
He reminded Ben a little bit of Stephen Harper.
 
Possible.
 
But Andrew Scott wound up winning the prize.
 
Nora had married him after all.
 
Unless something came up and Greenfield wanted to get back together?
  

Ben stepped back from the names and paced around the garage.
 
He walked over and spun the dial on the safe.
 
After a moment, he climbed into the shoe shine chair and looked across the room at the list hanging from the easel.
 
Hands in his pockets, he got up and walked over to the door as commuters veered off the sidewalk from the train station and cut through the parking lot on their way home from work.
 
He watched them walk by, heads down and purposeful.
 
The sun began to sink low off in the horizon.
 
Ben turned and walked back to the conference room table, pulled out a chair and sat down amid the files scattered all around him.
 

Still, the names on the easel called out to him.
 
Personal life and work life,
he thought.
 
The work life could only mean students and fellow staff members.
 
How many law professors would be willing to get their hands dirty literally and figuratively by killing a colleague in his office?
 
Most of them became professors of law in the first place because they didn’t want to get their hands dirty practicing out in the real world.
 
They could enjoy the cushy life on the outskirts of reality, never really jumping into the fray, yet close enough to feel part of it themselves.
 
All the while,
lording
it over unsuspecting law students with the righteous air of expertise mixed with arrogance, wisdom borne of other people’s labors.

That could explain the scene of the crime.
 
Students and even some staff members might not know where Greenfield lived or maybe they were unfamiliar with his neighborhood and didn’t feel comfortable attacking him there, but they would know the law school and how it emptied out during the holidays between semesters.
 
Ben sat transfixed by the names for a long time before rummaging through a box and pulling out an expandable folder marked, “Jason Hahn.”
 
A while later, he pulled out a similar file marked, “Angela Harper”, studying the contents for the sixth, seventh or maybe tenth time.
 

Ben finished the last watery remains of a root beer poured hours earlier.
 
He felt spent, drained, like a child’s toy low on batteries.
 
Everything seemed to work, just not as quickly as usual.
 
He remembered reading somewhere, probably on the internet, that the human mind continually works on problems while sleeping, turning them over and analyzing them even as the needed rest refreshes and replenishes it.
 
Maybe that’s what I need,
Ben thought,
more sleep.
 
Sensing a plan, Ben tossed his pen on the table, stood and arched his back, his hands on his hips.
 
He stifled a yawn, then turned out all the lights in the garage and shut the door behind him.
 
He walked upstairs and checked his e-mail one last time before grabbing his briefcase, shutting off the lights and coming back down.
 

He punched in the code setting the alarm giving
himself
a minute or so to finish locking up and get out of the building.
 
He paused before hitting the final button on the alarm and tried to remember where he had parked.
 
Out back,
he thought, then hit the button, flipped up the lid on the control panel and walked briskly down the corridor through the copy room and out the back door.
 
He locked the door with a key on his ring.
 

It was now completely dark and the lamp light standing in the grass beyond the parking lot was out.
 
He still couldn’t figure that out.
 
Ben stepped off the back porch and down the five or six steps to the cobblestone walkway leading out to the parking lot.
 
Just as he reached the corner of the building, he glimpsed something to his left and flinched, startled by an unexpected movement.
 
Something black came at him from out of the bushes.
 
He recoiled and fell back to his right, his left arm instinctively coming up.
 
Something glanced off his wrist and struck him in the side of the head just above his left temple and Ben let out a, “Hey.”
 

A figure clad all in black was on him now and swinging something, striking at him with a club or large stick.
 
Ben tried to fend the figure off, but couldn’t.
 
In close, the figure, it had to be a man, smelled like a mixture of body odor, beer and cigarettes.
 
He was swinging wildly now, catching Ben solidly on the left forearm, then his left cheek, then his forearm again, then with a knee into his ribs.
 
Ben rolled on his back and tried to get his right hand up in front of his face.
 
The blow to the ribs all but knocked the wind out of him and his left forearm burned with pain.
 

Ben grabbed the man’s black shirt with his left hand and took another shot above the wrist forcing him to let go.
 
He gasped for air as he struggled to protect his face.
 
The blows came quickly, all aimed at or around Ben’s head, but they seemed to lack the power of the initial assault.
 
Ben lashed out with his left foot trying to kick the man in the groin and caught him weakly in the left hip.
 
He caught the man more solidly the next time in the left thigh and the man grunted.
 
Very few of the blows now got in solidly to Ben’s head.
 
He picked most of them off with his left arm causing searing pain to shoot down to his wrist and up to his shoulder.
 

Through it all, a raspy voice grunted at him through clenched teeth.
 
Then Ben heard a noise - a scream, followed by more screams.
 
Then footsteps.
 
Someone was coming.
 
Two commuters coming from the train station, a man and a woman, had seen the attack and had yelled out, “Hey you!
 
Stop that!
 
You stop!
 
Stop!” and ran at them.
 
Another man followed behind.
 
The attacker stumbled off Ben, who tried to grab him by the legs, tripping him slightly.
 
The man quickly regained his balance and tried to get away.
 
He ran around the back of the garage, while Ben staggered to one knee, then up onto his feet.
 
He threw his briefcase, which has been around his right shoulder the whole time, down to the ground and began chasing after his attacker.
 
Ben stumbled over a shrub in the lawn at the end of the parking lot and fell hard to one knee.
 
One of the male commuters overtook Ben in pursuit of the attacker and Ben followed him around the garage toward the other parking lot in front of the building.
 

Ben tried to keep up, but couldn’t.
 
The pain in his rib cage, coupled with the excitement of the moment made it impossible for him to catch his breath and he hobbled to a stop after rounding the dumpster in front of the garage.
 
Up ahead, the commuter also slowed as off in the distance the attacker jumped into a waiting car and tore off into the night.

Ben dropped down to one knee and a moment later, the three commuters surrounded him, soon joined by several more.
 
A man called 911 on his cell phone.
 
The woman, a brunette in her mid-twenties, leaned down, looked at him and said “Jesus, what was that all about?
 
Are you okay?”
 

Ben could feel the left side of his face swelling rapidly and his eye beginning to close, a hot liquid running down the side of his face, yet he looked at her and managed a weak smile.
 
“Thanks to you guys,” he said.

41

Ben sat in the examining room of the
Alexian
Brothers Medical Center and dabbed at his left cheek with the ice pack, now not nearly as cold as it had been earlier.
 
Libby stood in front of him and looked down on him, a look of anger mixed with worry crossing her face.
 
Once the Ithaca Police had arrived, they insisted on taking Ben to the hospital.
  
Knowing he wouldn’t be home for hours, Ben called his wife.
 
Although he insisted that he was all right and that she should wait for him at home, Libby got her mother to baby sit, hopped in the car and hurried over to the hospital.
 
When she arrived, the doctor on duty had just finished gluing a small cut above Ben’s left eyebrow. “About two or three stitches worth,” the doctor said.
 

She gasped when she first saw him.
 
“Oh my God,” she said.
 
“Who did this?”
 

He told her the same thing he told the police.
 
“I’m not sure.
 
He was wearing a mask, a black tee shirt and black jeans.
 
I even think he had black tennis shoes on.
 
He may have been Hispanic, but I’m not sure.”

“This must be about that damn case,” she said.
 

Ben shrugged.
 
“I don’t know.”
 
Same thing he told the police.
 
Truth is he did know.
 
What he hadn’t told the police, and what he wouldn’t tell Libby either, was what the man said to Ben as he pummeled him.
 

“Leave it alone, leave it alone, leave it alone,” spoken with a heavy Hispanic accent.
 
Ben couldn’t make it out at first, but literally had it beaten it into him so that he wouldn’t soon forget it.
 

Ben didn’t know whether a random assault in the middle of the western suburbs or his pending murder trial would cause more worry, but he chose to keep what the man said to himself, at least for the time being.
 
In addition to the cut over his eye, now bandaged, more ice packs were wrapped around Ben’s left knee and his left forearm, the latter of which had already been X-rayed, along with Ben’s ribs and the left side of his face.
 
The knee injury seemed the least significant of all, probably just a bruise sustained when Ben tripped and fell while trying to chase his assailant.
 

Once you got past the cut, Ben’s face was probably just bruised too, although bruised enough that he would no doubt have one hell of a shiner.
 
The arm swelled immediately and felt broken at first, but Ben had regained most of the use and feeling in his left hand, so that too might not be as bad as he first feared.
 
Of his injuries, the ribs clearly felt the worst and sent a throbbing pain which radiated around his side to his back.
 
The pain worsened whenever Ben breathed, which was difficult, and sharp pains like someone was stabbing him with a knife occurred whenever Ben tried to move too quickly or even breathe too deeply.
 
He knew the ribs would be a problem for days, if not weeks to come.
 

Ben sat awkwardly in the chair, pitched at an odd angle trying to get comfortable.
 
He felt like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
 
A few minutes earlier, a rugged looking nurse stopped by and gave him a small paper container with two
Vicodin
tablets inside, together with a small cup of water.
 
The pain everywhere but in his ribs began to deaden a little as the
Vicodin
took effect.
 
The ribs still ached like hell.
 

“Is it getting better?” Libby asked in a soft voice.
 

“A little bit,” Ben croaked.
 
He made a raspy wheezing sound whenever he breathed.
 
As he sat there trying not to talk about the incident in too much detail, Ben kept hearing the gravelly Hispanic voice of his assailant playing over and over in his head.
 
He could also just about smell the man’s body odor and the alcohol-soaked breath.
 
Libby could tell that he was thinking about something, but thought better of pressing him.

They sat in silence for several more minutes before a young doctor, Ben didn’t even know his name, pushed through the privacy curtain and stepped inside.
 
Ben studied him for a moment and said nothing.
 
He didn’t look old enough to be out of medical school, which didn’t do much to inspire Ben’s confidence.
 
He wore a white standard issue doctor’s coat over a yellow golf shirt and khaki pants, on which Ben noticed several drops of blood above the cuff on the right leg.
 
Was that his blood?
 
He didn’t know.