Flinch Factor, The (17 page)

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 what?”

“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

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?”

“Both of them?”

“Yep.”

“But the third vote?” My mother frowned. “There was no Corundum building permit issued to that one.”

“Right.”

“What's that mean?”

“I don't know. His name is Kirkton. He's actually the mayor. I had Dorian do a title search on his house. There were no building permits on his house. In fact, he hadn't had any work done his house that required a permit for the entire eighteen years he'd owned the house. But that Amity stuff got me thinking about whether there might be a similar pattern in any of the other towns where we'd found Corundum building permits. We had a list of seven city officials with permits—two each in three cities and one in the fourth. I asked Dorian to do some research—to figure out whether there'd been a TIF project in that city in the past few years, and if so, the name of the developer and the votes of the city counsel on the motion to approve the TIF.”

“The evidence is all here,” my mother said, looking toward the documents.

“All four towns?”

“All four. And the developer on all four projects was Ruby Productions.”

“So we're five for five.” I leaned back in my chair and frowned. “That sure sounds like more than a coincidence. And the seven city officials? Did each vote in favor of their city's TIF proposal?”

“They did.” She stood. “Take a look for yourself. I'll pour tea. I made us some fresh cookies.”

It didn't take me long to confirm what my mother had told me. Four cities, four TIFs, all involving Ruby Productions. Four city council approvals, with all seven of the city officials with Corundum Construction building permits voting in favor of the TIFs. But just as in Amity, the city officials with Corundum permits were in the majority but did not constitute the entire majority. In the three cities where we'd identified two city officials each, the vote had been three to two in one of the cities and four to three in the other two. As for the city of Edgewood, where only one city official had a home renovated by Corundum, the vote had been three to two in favor of the TIF.

My mom poured us each a mug of tea and set down a plate of her oatmeal raisin cookies.

Another flash of lightning, another crack of thunder. The rain was coming down so hard now that the gutters above the kitchen windows were overflowing. A translucent sheet of water cascaded down the eaves outside the window.

“So?” my mother said.

I sighed. “This is not what I wanted.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm not an investigative reporter here, Mom. I'm just trying to find out what happened to Nick. That witness from Forest Park helped make the Corundum Construction connection through a license plate number, and since then I've just been trying to follow that trail to someone in the company who can tell what, if anything, they know about Nick's death. This—” a gestured toward the documents “—is entirely different.”

“But maybe part of the same trail,” my mother said.

“I don't see it.”

“What did Corundum and Nick Moran have in common, Honey? They both did renovations. Maybe Nick had some connection to that Corundum outfit. A friend, maybe. A boyfriend. Someone he did drugs with.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe that big fat guy will give you the answer.”

“Maybe.”

“You don't think so?”

“He was panicky when he left the office yesterday. Freaked out. I was hoping we'd hear from him today. Nothing.”

“Maybe tomorrow?”

I shrugged. “With each day it gets less likely.”

“What then?”

“If we can't get him to talk, we have the name of his supervisor. We could try to track him down, see what he knows, but he's probably the wrong guy. We need to get higher up in the company.”

“How do you do that?”

I shrugged. “Since we can't find any information about the company, we need to find someone who had dealings with the higher ups. Like those city council members.”

“Who won't talk to you.”

I sighed. “Correct.”

“Which means you need to figure out a way to convince one of them to talk to you. You need to find some…what do you call it?”

“Leverage?”

“Exactly. So, how can you get some leverage?”

The idea arrived in synch with a flash of lightning outside.

“You're a genius, Mom.”

“What?”

“Leverage.”

“So?”

“Cloverdale.”

“What about it?”

“The vote on the Brittany Woods TIF. It was four to three. We never searched the Cloverdale City Hall records for Corundum building permits.”

My mother's eyes widened. “Oh, my God.”

“If the pattern holds true in Cloverdale, there should be at least one.”

“You might be right.”

“I'll know tomorrow.”

“What if you are? What will you do?”

I smiled. “Use a little leverage.”