Authors: Lisa Scottoline
Goddamnit!
“Maybe Kevin’s hiding inside,” Anne said, but even she didn’t believe it. She met Judy’s eye, and she looked almost equally bummed. Anne was feeling better about her since the red flyer. Almost.
“I’m sure they get everybody out before they close,” Judy said. “So if he was still there, he’s not anymore. I think we lost him, Anne. At least for now.”
Mary raised a small, manicured fist. “Don’t give up! We’ll get him yet. He will feel the wrath of girls!”
Bennie waved the associates into silence. She opened her cell phone and made a call. “Is Detective Rafferty in yet?” she asked.
But Anne was already thinking ahead. Mary had given her an idea, when they had all met, earlier in the office. Anne would start working on it as soon as she got back to the office.
She could hardly wait.
Bennie and Judy were meeting with the detectives in a conference room, giving them the reconstructed details of the sighting of Kevin at the gay bar. Mary had left for Anne’s neighborhood, to find any witnesses to what happened the previous night. Anne was sitting at her desk with Mel, making the last of her phone calls to set up Plan B. It had taken some doing, but she was pretty sure she could catch Kevin this time, especially now that she knew he was in the vicinity. She would have to tell the others about it, even Bennie, because she’d need their help. And she was trying to play well with others.
The office fell quiet except for the
shh-chunk
of the printer outside Anne’s office, spitting out copies to further Plan B. Anne’s gaze strayed to her office window, and the smoked glass reflected her latest incarnation. She couldn’t run around forever as Uncle Sam, so she’d chopped her hair into a short cut and dyed it Rich Sable, #67 from Herbal Essences. The box promised a “rich, dark brown” but Anne didn’t like being a brunette. It made her worry about her credit balances. Eek.
Mel sat upright on a stack of depositions, and Anne smoothed his whiskered cheeks. His green eyes elongated with each stroke, transforming him into the politically incorrect Chinese Cat. It was one of Anne’s favorites. She felt mildly fresher, having showered at the office and changed into clean clothes from the firm’s closet of spares; a khaki skirt from Banana Republic and a white T-shirt that read i make boys cry. She kept her Blahniks but wore no lipstick, caving in to peer pressure now that she had peers. Mental note: Progress brings its own downside.
Now that Plan B was almost in place, Anne wanted to find Willa’s family, to notify them. But where to begin? She took a last sip of cold coffee and logged onto whitepages.com, an online phone directory. She typed in “Willa Hansen” and “Philadelphia” for the city, but the answer came back:
Sorry, no people match the phone search criteria you entered.
Hmm. It meant Willa was unlisted. Anne felt her energy returning. It wouldn’t make sense to search under Hansen, because she didn’t know where Willa’s family lived. Then she got another idea. She picked up the phone and called her and Willa’s gym. A young man answered, and Anne tried the ditzy voice she’d heard on their solicitations: “Hi, I’m Jenny, the new massage therapist, in the spa? I’m the one who does the in-homes?”
“Jenny? I heard about you. It’s Marc. Wanna do my in-home?”
“Ha!” Anne forced a giggle. “Hi, Marc. I’m calling because I’m on my way over to one of the member’s houses, but I Iost the sheet with her phone number and address. Her name is Willa Hansen. Do you have her info?”
“Sure.” Keystrokes clicked on the other end of the line. “Willa Hansen lives at 2689 Keeley Street. The phone is unlisted, but she put it on her ap. You want it?”
“Please.” He read it off, and Anne took it down. The address was across town around Fitler Square. She knew only because she got her hair cut near there, when she wasn’t cutting it herself. “Do you have any other information about her in the computer? Anything in her member profile that would help me? I need to build up my client base.”
“Let’s see.” A few more keystrokes. “Not much, Jenny. Her account shows she’s a two-year member, but she never took any of the spinning, yoga, or cardio classes. She didn’t fill out the member profile. She checked ‘single’ on her application, but she didn’t sign up for any of the singles nights. She doesn’t sound very friendly.”
“Not at all.” Anne couldn’t avoid the irony. It could easily have been her own member profile. “Anything else? Anything at all?”
“Let’s see, she rents her house and is self-employed. She didn’t fill in the blank for her yearly income, but that was optional. She’s a slow pay on the dues. I’m looking at her picture, we have it on file, but I don’t remember her at all, and I’ve been here three years.”
“Great. Gotta go.”
“Listen, Jenny, I’m having a party on Monday night for the fireworks. If you—”
“Thanks but no.” Anne hung up, thinking. 2689 Keeley Street. She had to get over there. Somewhere in the house would be something that would tell her about Willa’s family and how she could get in touch with them. She would tell Bennie as soon as she got free. It would make Bennie feel better, but it was having the exact opposite effect on Anne. She was the reason Willa was dead.
“Meow,” Mel said loudly. He was walking back and forth across the Chipster depositions, distracting Anne. She would need to memorize the deps for trial. It might do her good to work on the case and not think about Willa for now, or Kevin.
She edged Mel off the deposition of the plaintiff, Beth Dietz. Anne recalled Beth as reserved, with an engineer’s superior air despite her mellow smile, hippie clothes, and ratty Birkenstocks. Beth was smart enough to fabricate her case and so was her husband. The courts had become the real-life version of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
And the final answer was, everyone. Anne started reading:
Q: (By Ms. Murphy) Now, Ms. Dietz, you allege in your Complaint that Gil Martin forced you to have sex, during a meeting on September 15th of last year. Please tell me everything that happened in that meeting.
A: (Plaintiff) Well, I came into his office at about 8:15 that night. It was a Friday, and he asked me to sit down on this couch he keeps along the wall. I thought it was kind of weird, since his laptop was on the desk, and you can’t work on a web application without a computer.
Q: I see. What happened?
A: I sat down and right away he put his hand on my waist. Near my breast.
Q: How close to your breast?
A: About three inches. On my waist. Then he slid his hand up my shirt and put it on my breast. I pulled away and got his hand out, like pushed it away.
Anne knew not a word of it was true. No way in the world would Gil Martin tussle on his couch with a programmer, with his board in the next room and his funding for a $55 million IPO at stake. Anne had known Gil from law school, and he was always headed for great things; good-looking, witty, with a sharp legal intellect, but a technical mind as well. It didn’t come as a surprise when he quit after first year, started Chipster, and grew it into one of the frontrunners in web applications. Along the way, he’d married his college sweetheart, Jamie. In the credibility contest that was
Dietz v. Chipster
, Anne knew Gil Martin was telling the truth. This Tuesday, she’d have to prove it. She read on:
Q: Is there anything else that he said, or have you told me everything?
A: He said he thought about me all the time. He said he wanted me to let him make love to me, I had to let him. That I had to let him because he was the boss.
Q: That’s exactly what he said?
A: Exactly. I am the boss.
Boss?
Anne kept thinking about the word. She couldn’t imagine Gil using that word. It was so old-fashioned, she didn’t know anyone who used it. Then she remembered. Back in the Mustang, on the stakeout, Bennie had said, “
I am the boss.”
It was a fortysomething thing, not a twentysomething thing. What did it mean? Anything? Would it help? She returned to the dep.
Q: And what happened next?
A: He forced me to have sex.
Q: Right there, on the couch, in his office?
(Mr. Dietz stands up.) That’s just about enough! She just answered the question, lady! Why do you have to make her say it over and over?
(By Ms. Murphy): Matt, please have Mr. Dietz take his seat and remain silent during the deposition.
(By Mr. Booker): Mr. Dietz, please sit down. Please.
Mr. Dietz: This is absurd! He raped her! He made her fuck him to keep her job! Could it be any clearer? You have to make her spell it out?
(By Mr. Booker): Bill, please!
Mr. Dietz: She loves getting this dirt! She wants to hear every gory detail so she can have a good laugh. Her and that asshole, Martin!
Plaintiff: Bill, please, it’s okay. I’m fine.
Anne read it over again, flashing on the way Bill Dietz had morphed from hippie to psycho at the deposition, yelling in the quiet conference room. The businesslike Courier font of the deposition page, almost embossed on thin onion-skin paper, could never convey that he’d jumped enraged to his feet, stretched his full-six-two frame over the conference table and begun pointing, his finger almost poking Anne in the face. She had found it almost laughable when she took the deposition. Why was it bothering her so much now?
Of course. Kevin.
Anne was seeing the ponytailed Bill Dietz with new eyes. Finding abusive men everywhere. Still, she set the deposition aside and went to the accordion file for the Dietz deposition. She had deposed him for a day in connection with his loss-of-consortium claim, which meant that he was suing Chipster.com in tort, for loss of his wife’s companionship and sex during the marriage. He had kept his temper the whole time, answering even the most personal questions with a cool demeanor. She opened his dep, just to double-check:
Q: (By Ms. Murphy) Where are you employed at the current time?
A: I work at Chipster.com, a web applications company.
Q: In what capacity?
A: I write code for various web applications. I specialize in Cold Fusion, a computer language.
Q: How long have you been employed at Chipster?
A: Five years, since its inception. I was one of the handful of programmers who were there when Gil Martin started the company. It was just six of us, in his garage.
Q: And as such—I’m jumping ahead here—did you receive certain stock options, as part of salary?
A: No, I did not.
Q: Did any of the other programmers receive such stock options?
A: Three did. Basically, ones that Gil knew from his college days. He tends to go with people he knows. I didn’t know him then, and neither did another guy, so we were on the outside.
Anne didn’t like the sound of it. It read as if Dietz were resentful, which he hadn’t seemed at the time, when he had merely stated it as a matter of fact. But there had to be resentment there; those stock options would make its founders millionaires when Chipster went public. Did it matter? Did it have anything to do with the bogus case for sexual harassment? Did it motivate it? Anne hadn’t focused on Dietz before because his claim was derivative, frankly, bullshit. She’d had it dismissed under Third Circuit law, but she had taken his deposition before the dismissal, for free discovery. She thumbed through Dietz’s deposition, to the core of the claim:
Q: (By Ms. Murphy) Now, Mr. Dietz, you allege that as a result of the sexual harassment of your wife, Beth, you and she experienced certain difficulties with respect to intimacy in your marriage, is that right?
A: Yes.
Q: When did they begin?
A: When the harassment began. On September 15th.
Q: And how long did it last?
A: We are just now healing. The effects of sexual harassment are like those of rape. It takes the victim time to recover, and to trust men again. And Beth feels guilty, even though she shouldn’t, for what happened.
Q: And what exactly were the difficulties in your marriage, caused by the alleged sexual harassment?
A: Beth withdrew from me. She kept more to herself and became depressed. She slept poorly, she lost weight. She spent more time on-line, four or six hours at nights and on the weekends. She would be in the chat rooms, role-playing or playing Internet games, silly games. Popcap.com and the like.
Q: Specifically, how did the alleged sexual harassment affect your sex life?
A: She became uninterested in sex, and the frequency of intercourse went from once a week to less than that a month. It became unsatisfying. For both of us.
Anne read the rest of the dep, but it didn’t tell her anything more about Bill Dietz. But that wasn’t all she had on him. She had served him with interrogatories and a document subpoena, routine in employment cases. She reached for that folder, opened it, and skimmed his answers to interrogatories. The opening questions were background, and her gaze fell on the third interrogatory:
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVICTED OF A CRIME?
NO.
The veracity of the answers was attested to by Dietz’s signature on the next page, but he wouldn’t be the first person who’d lied in his interrogatory answers. He’d obviously lost control at the dep, almost violently. Had it happened before? Anne’s gut told her it had, and she set the interrogatories aside, turned to her computer, and logged onto the Internet, clicking onto one of the myriad snooper websites. Onto the screen popped a banner: