From Filth & Mud (23 page)

Sarah had broken from a mediation session that had begun early in the morning. It was now nearly 1 p.m., and the parties had succumbed to their hunger. While the parties dined and unwound in their respective conference rooms, Sarah stole a few moments in the solitude of her office to scarf down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that Nathan had left on the breakfast table that morning. She couldn’t really blame him either, peanut butter and jelly was Jacob’s specialty, and only dish. She would take over whenever she had time to put together something different, but that was becoming less and less frequent, plus she resented Jacob’s lack of imagination and effort.

She had approached Jacob about taking Nathan and Luke to stay with her parents for a couple of weeks while the two of them got away for a much needed vacation. She was busy, but she was long overdue for a vacation and besides she had earned some free time in the eyes of the firm. However, Jacob was concerned about Nathan’s headaches. They’d gotten more frequent. The doctor believed that he was suffering from migraines. The tests and the labs would be back in a few days so there was no use in getting worked up at this point, though she worried as only a mother could.

Sarah’s stomach lurched as the peanut butter landed heavily in her gut. She threw the second triangle of the sandwich into the wastebasket, and reached into her desk for her bulk-sized container of Tums. She swallowed a handful of the calcified tablets before she began the painful process of reviewing her morning emails; mostly messages from stressed out junior associates and overbearing clients. She always put these on the backburner to review any emails from prospective clients first. That was the reality of being a successful attorney in a big firm. Longevity and salary depended on your ability to attract new clients.

Her cell vibrated on her desk and she leaned over to check the Caller ID. It was unknown. The phone buzzed again announcing that the caller had left a message. She decided to listen to it after the mediation, perhaps it was a new client. Sarah exited her office after her truncated lunch and ran back down the hall to resume the methodical trench warfare that was mediation. She poured all of her effort into resolving the solitary issue that had proven to be the sticking point between the parties, a question of license fees, one party wanting two percent, the other party willing to concede one and three quarters percent. These moments drove Sarah to the brink of insanity. She had often dreamed about bringing Jacob’s treasured Colt pistol into the mediations, and threatening horrible violence against incorrigible parties. However, her cool demeanor had always helped her in the toughest cases. It would come in useful again today.

Sarah returned to her office a few minutes before 6 p.m., tired but triumphant. It was Thursday evening, and she was looking forward to a long weekend with Jacob and the boys. She checked her cell quickly and noticed four missed calls, one from Jacob and three from an unknown number. There were three messages and Jacob never left any.

A quiet, young, female voice introduced itself as Dr. Karen Mayfield, with a question regarding a potential intellectual property matter. Mayfield left her number and hung up. The next two messages were also from Mayfield, but her tone was more desperate in these.

Second Message:

“Attorney Harrington, sorry to bother you again, but it’s really important that you call me back as soon as possible. I know that you’re probably very busy, but it’s important and concerns a really important patent issue. I’m sure that my research institution can pay your legal fees. I guess we can get to that later. Thank you.”

Third Message:

“Attorney Harrington, it’s Dr. Mayfield again. Please call me as soon as you can. I know how these cases work. I’m afraid that the other party is reaching out to every patent firm out there to discuss the case, or put you on retainer, or something. I know their tactics. Please call me. I know that they’ve already called some of the biggest firms out there. Thanks.”

The despair in the young doctor’s voice was tangible and it bothered Sarah enough to seriously consider calling her back. Though it sounded like paranoia, what Mayfield was describing was the legal, but wholly unfair tactic that large companies used all too often against smaller, less sophisticated litigants. They would remove the best lawyers from taking a case by creating conflicts of interests with them, or their firms. The practice was not much more sophisticated than picking grade-school kickball teams, except the company got to make the first nine picks of the best athletes in the grade while the individual got to pick from the leftover asthmatics of the chess club.

Sarah replayed the messages, and decided to research Dr. Mayfield. Her resume was instantly impressive and ruled her out of being a delusional lunatic as many individual litigants who fancied themselves great inventors often were. She had seen her share of quack, garage tinkerers who swore that they had invented the smartphone in their backyard long before the tech companies stole their design. Dr. Mayfield was no quack. Sarah was curious and reached for her office phone then paused. Something made her uneasy and she retracted her hand from the phone. Sarah closed her office door and called on her cell instead. Calling clients, or conducting any firm business, on a personal phone was generally frowned upon at Bodner James not because of any ethical or nefarious big brother issue, but because the firm feared losing track of billable time. Any time spent communicating, researching or even thinking about a client, or their issues, was to be charged.

Sarah dialed Mayfield’s number. The phone had yet to finish its first ring when it was answered. Mayfield’s familiar and nervous voice answered.

“Hello? Attorney Harrington, I was expecting your call.”

“Please, call me Sarah. You left a series of interesting messages. I was hoping that you wanted to discuss them.” Sarah tried to sound soothing, protective, and confident, a trick she had learned when dealing with anxious clients.

“No. Not now. I’d rather we meet.”

“Okay where?” Sarah wasn’t sure if she would actually meet with her in person without knowing more about her, her mental state, and the legal issue that was worrying her—a standard modus operandi of hers, especially when dealing with someone who might be emotionally or mentally compromised.

“I can be in the city tomorrow morning.”

“Great why don’t you stop by my office? I can set aside half an hour to discuss your issue. How’s 11:00 a.m. sound?”

“No. No. I’d rather not meet in your office. I want to be discreet about this. Can we meet at Union Station at the second floor café? I’m going to need some time to fill you in.” Sarah was now picking up on fear not just nerves, and this started to worry her. Fear was contagious. It led to paranoia, and paranoia led to compromised clients and to compromised counsel. The lawyer had to be careful to remain emotionally detached from her client. Sarah had made a good career out of keeping that in mind however she had probably made her greatest strides by listening to her gut, and knowing when to jump with full conviction into her client’s corner. She was getting that feeling now with Mayfield.

“Okay. I will clear my schedule tomorrow morning and will meet you at 8 a.m. at the café.”

“Thanks. Oh and just call me, Karen.”

The line dropped and Sarah wondered what could possibly make Karen so nervous. Whatever it was, she was starting to feel it too. Sarah looked at the grandfather clock just as it sullenly rang in the new hour, 6 p.m. She sighed heavily, another late night awaited her. She would have to postpone her day off tomorrow. At least she would try to enjoy the rest of the day once she finished her meeting with Karen. Maybe she would take the boys to the zoo. The thought did little to stay the unease that was building inside of her.

- - - - - - -

Sarah walked up the marbled staircase of Union Station’s main concourse at 10:30 a.m. just as the sun began to bathe its high-arched interior in warm, morning light. The walls carried the echoes of a thousand conversations. Hurried and measured footsteps clapped on the intricately laid marble tile work, masking the din of the tracked locomotives below. Sarah made her way through the throng of travelers and sightseers to the café counter which overlooked the concourse. It was a great vantage point to spot anyone approaching. She ordered two cappuccinos and waited for Karen.

Her wait was short-lived as she noticed a bright-red head of hair emerge from the restroom of the café. She waved to Karen who scampered to a table, sat down, grabbed a baseball cap from her bag, and pulled it onto her head and low to her ears. Sarah approached with reserve, and eased into the chair across from her.

“Goddamn it! I forgot to put this fucking thing on!” Karen’s nerves had clearly not alleviated since the previous day, and her darting eyes were making Sarah more uneasy than she already was. Sarah could tell that she was clearly not a pro at handling herself under duress. Her awkward getup and melodramatic attempts at searching her surroundings reflected an academic understanding of cloak and dagger TV shows.

“Karen, listen to me. You need to relax and look at me for a second.” Karen obliged momentarily. “You need to be normal. Don’t
act,
just be your normal self, right now. We are just two girls here in a café, drinking some coffee, chatting, and catching up on old-times, that’s all. What you can’t do is act uptight like you are right now. That attracts attention. People are subconsciously programed to notice odd behavior. It has something to do with an old evolutionary holdover from our mammalian ancestors who needed to pick up on queues from the other members of the herd to know if there was a predator in the area. Normal behavior doesn’t trigger that. We could stay chatting here for the entire day, and if you asked anyone if they saw us, nobody would remember ever seeing us because, in fact, their minds would not have registered our presence. Fascinating stuff huh?” Sarah smiled, picked up her cappuccino and sipped it slowly savoring every drop.

Karen followed suit; Sarah knew she would. It was a helpful bit of knowledge that she had gleaned from her avid interest in human psychology and behavior. A good way of controlling communication, a meeting, or negotiations was to disarm people with food or drink. People always looked for social queues, like the awkward way people mill about a buffet table during an office party and no one makes a move toward the food until an alpha personality breaks the social barrier by helping him or herself to a plate. Karen was looking for that kind reassurance before she dove into her story.

Sarah led her through a bit of small talk asking her about her trip into the District. It was uneventful. Sarah assured her that this was good. Sarah asked her about herself, her interests, husband, boyfriend, family life, and pets. All of the questions were designed to settle Karen’s restless constitution. Thirty minutes passed before Sarah came to the elephantine question.

“So why do you need my help, Karen?” Her tone remained as it had before, friendly and interested.

Karen recoiled slightly as she recalled the nightmare that had propelled her to seek Sarah’s help, but she nonetheless began recounting the story about her development of the chrysalis, her relationship with Manny, and the troubling events of the past few weeks.

Irina had kept tabs on Mayfield’s digital activity for the past few months, scouring through browser histories, social media posts, and most importantly her phone’s GPS, which she’d triggered remotely through a simple embedded code that would covertly ping her location. Mayfield had traveled from Boston to San Francisco, and had then returned to Boston before heading to Manhattan. Her browser history revealed a few searches on a private, biotech company called, BioSyn, and a few more searches on the company’s CEO, Paul Eckert. She had arrived at the BioSyn headquarters in Manhattan early the next morning. Irina listened in as Mayfield was questioned by the corporate counsel.  She was being strong-armed. The young doctor did not relent and insisted on meeting Eckert.

When Mayfield’s request was finally granted, her phone stopped transmitting. Irina checked the software, it all appeared to be functioning correctly; the phone had just stopped transmitting. GPS, audio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microwave, all signals disappeared. Irina accessed the building’s intranet through its open Wi-Fi network, and quickly mapped all of the computers in the building. All of the wireless nodes in the building responded, but the ones installed in BioSyn’s offices.

She drummed on her keyboard in search of another access point. Her fingers aggressively clicked the keys, systematically sifting through all of the digital signals streaming in and out of the building, searching for a subversive employee, one who was streaming music or video while they were supposed to be at work. She instantly found a few phones that were sucking large amounts of data. Luckily some of these data streams pierced right through the expensive security countermeasures installed by the company. She accessed the floor thanks to a country-music aficionado and Toby Keith’s
Red, White and Blue
. She wormed her way through the streaming audio file and into the phone’s memory. Next she searched to see if the phone was connected through its USB cord to any networked computer, it was. She loved crappy phone batteries. Et voila, Irina had worked around BioSyn’s multi-million dollar, high-tech, impregnable firewalls, and anti-virus software within seconds. A few minutes after that, she had complete access to every workstation on the floor and every networked device.

Irina activated all of the microphones on the computers and phones on the floor, and ran a voice analysis program on every conversation that was picked up. There, in a large room, Mayfield’s voice and a man, Eckert, introducing himself. She homed in on the transmission from the closest computer. She searched her database for Eckert, but his record was clean. He appeared to be just as he was, a highly-successful CEO, young, good looking, charismatic, and power-hungry man with all of the hallmarks of a psychopath. He’d never had anything more than a couple of speeding tickets, and even those were in his teens and early twenties. The first: when he was nineteen years old, driving a 1988 Toyota Corolla; the second: when he was twenty-five and driving a spanking-new BMW M3. He’d held steady jobs from twenty-one until thirty-five jumping from one investment banking job to another until he was hired by BioSyn as a junior executive in charge of special projects. He had bounded up the ranks over the last ten years to become CEO. No wife, no kids, no social life. The man had no credit cards or bank accounts in his name. All of his spending was done on company accounts like a good chief executive.
Why pay when you can have the company expense it?

Curioser and curioser
, she thought, the further she dug into Eckert. He had no personal life to speak of. There wasn’t even a trace of the typical escort service calls that men like him usually made—now that was curios indeed. The conversation between Mayfield and Eckert now concerned a project that his company was interested in, something that Mayfield had developed. Suddenly the transmission stopped. Irina checked her systems and they were all fine. It was Eckert’s office that had gone silent.