Authors: William Bernhardt
“Well, then you know how difficult it would be—”
“How much do you owe, Ben?”
Ben suddenly felt rather hot under the collar. “I don’t know exactly…Two thousand, something like that?”
Christina nodded in agreement.
Hamel withdrew a checkbook from his suit jacket, filled out a check, and handed it to Ben. “Would that about cover if, Ben? Consider it a signing bonus.”
Ben stared at the check made out for five thousand dollars. “That would definitely cover it. And my other outstanding debts as well.”
Christina pressed in between them. “How do you know so much about Ben and his business, anyway?”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Ms. McCall—we’re not the FBI. Still, you must realize that a corporation the size of Apollo would hardly make an offer of this magnitude without investigating the offeree.”
“Sounds Big Brotherish to me.”
“Not at all. It’s just smart business. You don’t buy a used car without trying to find out where it’s been. Ben, we’re acquainted with your past employment at the D.A.’s office, and your current relationship with Clayton Langdell and his animal rights organization. We’re aware of your successful representation of Ms. McCall a few months ago. In short, we’re familiar with the total package and we are very favorably impressed.”
“Really,” Ben said. “How impressed?”
Hamel flipped over one of his business cards, wrote a number on the back, and passed it to Ben.
Ben took the card. He tried to mask his reaction, but it was impossible. The number after the dollar sign had six digits.
Before
the decimal.
“Not bad, eh?” Hamel said. “And no, to answer your next question, we don’t make offers like this to anyone. Just to you.”
Ben coughed. “I…I don’t know what to say. I’ll have to think about it.”
Hamel slapped his thighs, then stood. “I understand. Take all the time you want. And when you decide to accept, call me at the number on that card. I’ll send some boys over immediately to collect your files and anything else you’ll require.”
“So soon?”
“Why wait?” He nudged Ben in the ribs. “Might as well start bringing home those big bucks as soon as possible.” He hoisted his briefcase. “Enjoyed meeting you both. I’ll be waiting for your call, Ben.”
“Y
OU’RE NOT SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING
his offer, are you?”
Ben and Christina sat at opposite ends of a table in the back of Louie D’s, beside the grill and beneath the Renoir prints and Native American art. Ben was in the process of finishing his cheeseburger—the best in downtown Tulsa as far as he was concerned.
“How can I not seriously consider it? It’s a very serious offer.”
“Yeah—six digits serious.”
“That’s not the only advantage, but it’s a definite selling point.”
“I thought money wasn’t so all-fired important to you.”
“It isn’t, but I’ve got to live. Think about it—I’ll make more money in two months than I made all last year.”
Christina frowned. “Do you know anything about this job you’re so eager for us to latch on to?”
Ben hedged. There was no point in trying to bluff Christina. She always had the inside skivvy.
“No, of course you don’t. Well, before you bid adieu to private life, let me provide a few hard facts. First, if you imagine you won’t have to keep time records, you’re wrong. They say it’s for internal management, but really it’s the same old same-old. The big bosses are checking up on you, ensuring that you’re sufficiently profitable. It’ll be just like the late unlamented days at Raven, Tucker & Tubb.”
“I doubt it, unless my old boss steps down from the bench and goes corporate. And I can live with filling out time sheets.”
“Do you realize who your boss at Apollo will be?”
Ben shook his head.
“Robert Crichton, one of the biggest, most sexist SOBs who ever lived. From what my friends tell me, he’s the five-hundred-pound gorilla of Apollo Legal. Rules the department like a tinhorn demagogue. Total creepola.”
“I’ve dealt with second-rate bosses before.”
“You remember Emily Gozonka, don’t you? She was a lawyer at Apollo—till they dumped her. She told me sexual harassment was everywhere—practically
de rigueur
. She had to put up with all kinds of crap-nicknames like ‘Legs,’ indiscreet fondling, comments about her bra size, being accused of having PMS every time she dared to disagree. You get the picture. She didn’t play along, so they canned her. How, you ask? They gave her an assignment to work with the legal department’s hatchet man, Harry Carter, another creep who’s at least fifty—but acts fifteen. Drives a Camaro, dates teenage girls—the whole works. That’s how they fire people like Emily; they give them an impossible assignment from Harry, and Harry rants and raves about what a horrible job they’ve done, thereby creating a record for the file to justify the firing. If the woman decides to file a lawsuit later on, they’ve got a perfect paper trail to back them up.”
“Christina, Emily Gozonka is a world-class exaggerator.”
“Granted. But this time I believe her.”
“Well, I can’t believe that systematic sexual harassment of that magnitude goes on in this day and age.”
“You’re living in a dream world, Ben.”
“Then how do you explain yourself? You’re a woman who’s succeeded in a man’s world.”
“Because I’m a legal assistant, Ben—a subservient, clearly nonthreatening role. I could be at Apollo twenty years, but I’d still have to take orders from the greenest male attorney in the department. It’s different for women trying to make it as attorneys. When they start invading the old boys’ club, the old boys get nervous.”
“Christina, I’m not going to judge an entire corporation based on one isolated rumor.”
“Why not? That’s your biggest problem. Don’t you know that?”
“I didn’t even know I had a biggest problem. What the hell are you talking about?”
“You won’t trust your feelings. That was your problem in the courtroom today—you were planning to battle the expert on his own turf, challenging his empirical data. As a result, you missed what should’ve been apparent—that he was several irons short of a golf bag. Same here: all you see are the career advantages, the high-profile cases, the chance to be a corporate do-gooder.”
“And what am I missing?”
“You’re missing my gut feeling which says, in boldface letters:
don’t do this!
I can’t explain why. I just know it’s a mistake.”
“But what if you’re wrong?”
“What if I am? Your life is perfectly fine as it is. Why risk screwing it up? The key to success is to find something you enjoy doing and to do it. You already have that.”
Ben finished his cheeseburger and washed it down with the last of his chocolate milk. “I don’t know, Christina.”
She laid her head heavily on the table. “You’ve already decided, haven’t you?”
Ben didn’t reply.
The waitress came by and left the check. Christina scooped it up. “You’re thinking about your mother, aren’t you? How excited she’ll be that you finally have a respectable job.”
Ben looked away. “The thought did cross my mind.”
“Jeez. How old do we have to be before we stop ordering our lives to please our parents?” She examined the tab. “What about Jones? And Loving?”
“Loving’s private investigations are practically more than he can handle. We’ll let Jones secretary for him for awhile, just to hold down the office. If this new job becomes permanent for us, we’ll see about bringing Jones over.”
“I can’t believe I’m going along with this. Kincaid, sometimes you are almost more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Thank goodness for the almost.”
“Yeah.” She tossed him the check. “Here, pal, you can pay. After all, you’re about to be rich.”
S
ERGEANT TOMLINSON ENTERED THE
briefing room and took his assigned seat on the end of the first row. All the other officers were already there, but Morelli wasn’t, thank God. The last thing he needed was for Morelli to have another excuse to chew him out in public.
Tomlinson didn’t understand why, but ever since he requested a transfer to the Homicide Division, Lieutenant Morelli had been riding him, humiliating him in public, and taking every opportunity to make him look like an idiot. Maybe he wasn’t the brightest guy on the Tulsa police force. Maybe he hadn’t gone to college like Morelli and couldn’t quote Shakespeare at the drop of a pin. But he worked hard—harder than any of the other candidates. He did his homework and he never turned down an assignment. And once he took an assignment, he didn’t give up. So why was Morelli always ragging on him?
Tomlinson supposed it was because he was married. Very married. And he and Karen had a six-year-old daughter, Kathleen, to boot. For some reason, that really seemed to jerk Morelli’s chain. Once, in a booming voice in front of all the other officers, Morelli asked if Tomlinson had been playing paper dolls during the briefing. On another occasion he suggested that Tomlinson join a stakeout—
if
he could get his wife’s permission to stay up late. Tomlinson had heard that Morelli himself was married a while back, but that it dissolved into a bitter divorce. Now he was apparently down on any police officers with families.
Tomlinson thumbed through the briefing book that had been left on his chair. As he suspected, this meeting was about the mutilation-murders of the teenage girls. After three dismembered corpses, there seemed little doubt—they had a serial killer on their hands.
Tomlinson pored over the materials, all of which he had seen before. He wanted badly to be assigned to this case, so he’d made a point of reviewing everything that came through the office on it. If he could track down this serial killer, he’d be transferred to Homicide for sure. Chief Blackwell would sign the transfer, even if Morelli wouldn’t. And who knows? Maybe Morelli would back off. At least for a day or two.
As if on cue, Lieutenant Morelli came stomping into the room in that ridiculous tan overcoat he always wore. What a pretense. It wasn’t even cold outside. Morelli gripped the podium and began talking, without any introduction or greeting.
“As you’ve probably figured out,” Morelli growled, “you’ve been selected to be part of a special task force to investigate—and solve—this recent chain of murders.”
Tomlinson grinned. A special task force. That sounded cool, very elite. The boys down at the bowling alley would be impressed.
“Don’t get excited,” Morelli said. He seemed to be looking directly at Tomlinson. “This is no great honor. You were chosen because…frankly, you’re all that’s available. We’ve got every able-bodied person on the force working this case, and that’s going to continue until it’s solved. Everyone’s in on this one—Homicide, Sex Crimes, the Special Investigations Unit—and just about anyone else we could round up. This could be the most grotesque crime spree Tulsa has seen since the race riot of the 1920s. I don’t have to tell you how we’ve been crucified in the press since the killings began. This bastard has killed three teenage girls—and I want him caught. Because if we don’t, he’ll kill again.
“There’s something else,” Morelli added, “and this will really curdle your blood. If we don’t solve these crimes soon, the FBI will be butting in. So far we’ve been lucky; all three murders have occurred within Tulsa County. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ve got a serial killer, so it’s just a matter of time before those federal bozos descend with their profiles and high-tech geegaws. I don’t care for that a damn bit. I want this case solved before it happens.
“Now open your books and follow along.”
Tomlinson opened his briefing notebook to the front page.
“You’ll find all the police reports, the medical examiner reports, and the forensic lab reports. Everything we’ve got is right in here.”
Morelli’s subordinates flipped to the next page, a photo taken at one of the crime scenes.
“As you probably remember, the first body was found on the morning of May second, the next was found on the fourth, and the third was found last night. In each case, the victims were teenage girls, found nude, with no identification”—he took a deep breath and stared down at his notes—“and with their heads and hands cut off.”
Tomlinson saw several officers flipping ahead in their notebooks to the morgue photos. They must have stronger stomachs than he.
“The bodies have been impossible to identify. No face, no fingerprints. We have yet to figure out who any of the victims are. If there is a connecting link among the three, we don’t know what it is.”
Tomlinson raised his hand. “Sir, may I suggest that we make the identification of the victims our number one priority—even over identifying the killer? After all, if we can figure out the pattern, we may be able to save future lives.”
“What a brilliant plan,” Morelli replied. “Are you sure you aren’t a lieutenant? Or maybe even a captain?” A mild tittering filtered through the room. “Or did you steal that idea from your wife?”
Tomlinson ground his teeth together. When would he ever learn?
Morelli resumed his briefing. “All the bodies have been found within a twenty-mile radius in an unpopulated area in the western part of Tulsa County. Everything has been neat and tidy; the killer hasn’t left us a clue to work with. Even the amputations have been effected with almost surgical precision.”
He looked up from his notebook and stared out into the sea of uniforms. “The bottom line is this: we’re in the dark. We have a major crime, no leads, and no likelihood of preventing repeat offenses. We’re looking for ideas, people. Any suggestions will be considered, and anyone who suggests something that helps will find some extra change in his or her pay envelope—and maybe another stripe on his or her shoulder. Even you, Tomlinson.”
Another mild chuckle from the crowd. Tomlinson realized the insidious reason he must’ve been invited to this briefing: so he could be the butt of Morelli’s jokes.
“On the next page of the notebook,” Morelli continued, “you’ll find an action plan I’ve devised in coordination with Chief Blackwell. Item one, as you can see, is to identify the victims. We’ll call that the Tomlinson Plan.”
Laughter again, even more unrestrained than before. What did the man want—his resignation?