Primary Justice (Ben Kincaid series Book 1) (5 page)

“S
O TELL ME THE
truth, Alvin,” Greg said. “Have you really computed all these demographics about the firm or were you just trying to impress us?”

Ben, Alvin, Greg and Marianne sat in a semicircle on the floor of Ben’s apartment. Not for the sake of togetherness but for the sake of necessity—Ben had no furniture, a fact that slipped his mind when he invited them over for a late-night pizza and first-day gossip fest.

“It’s the truth,” Alvin said proudly. “I take my career very seriously. And why not? Did you see all the new associates today? They were worried sick. Why should I waste my energy worrying when there’s a way to find the answers to the questions I’m worried about?”

Alvin turned to Marianne. “How much time have you spent in the last few weeks wondering what names the other female attorneys at Raven were using?” His gaze shifted to Ben. “And how much time have you spent wondering what associate salaries were at various stages of the eight-year associateship? Well, I didn’t just sit around speculating. I found out.”

Greg placed his hand over his heart. “Alvin Hager,” he said solemnly, “the All-American Boy.”

Alvin ignored him. “I stayed late today, watching everyone leave, trying to see if I could distinguish the associates from the partners.”

“Could you?” Ben asked.

“Easy. The shareholders all strolled out carrying a nice black leather briefcase, if anything. The associates all left loaded down with books and papers and legal pads. It’s their way of crying out, ‘Look how hard I work! Shouldn’t I be a shareholder, too?’ ”

Marianne eyed him suspiciously. “You may be a little
too
smart for my taste, Hager. You’re not going to be one of those associates who are always sucking up to partners, are you?”

Alvin waved the suggestion away with his hand. “Of course not. That’s not the ticket to success. The up-and-coming associate learns to blend devout servitude with the appearance of independence. You don’t want to make the partners uncomfortable, after all.”

Ben shook his head. “Too much for me to handle,” he said.

The doorbell chimed and, almost simultaneously, the phone began to ring.

Ben headed toward the door. “Greg, would you get the phone?” Greg nodded.

Ben opened the door to find the smiling, sweaty face of the delivery boy from Antonio’s. He passed the boy a check and took the pizza box.

“I don’t know about this,” Marianne said. “We’re young urban professionals now. Seems like we should be eating pasta in a classy restaurant with a maître d’ named François.”

Greg returned and dove into the pizza. “It was your mother, Ben,” he said. “She asked you to call her back later.”

“Which reminds me,” Ben said abruptly to Marianne. “What name did you decide to use on your doorplate?”

Marianne fixed her gaze on the pepperoni slice inches below her nose. “Well, none, actually. I went with initials. M. H. Gunnerson.”

Alvin nodded. “Very professional.”

Ben suppressed a grin. “M.
H
., eh? What does the H stand for?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Aha! Now here’s a puzzle,” Greg said, jabbing Ben in the ribs. “Must be really dreadful.”

“Harriet?” Ben asked.

“I’m betting on Hildegaard,” Greg said.

“Perhaps Hermione,” Alvin suggested.

“Stop,” Marianne said, giggling. “I won’t tell.” She reached for another slice of pizza. “I heard starting associates are expected to bill two hundred and twenty-five hours a month.”

“That’s
incredible
,” Ben said. “That can’t be right. Did your supervising attorney tell you that?”

“Nope. My secretary. So it must be true.”

“That’s over fifty hours a week!”

“What do you think we’re here for?” Alvin said with a sort of short. “We haven’t got any expertise or clientele. We’re here for one reason and one reason only. To make the shareholders rich.” He paused for effect. “And the only way we can do that is work, work, work—and bill them hours.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary to become a total workaholic just to make the firm profitable,” Ben said.

Alvin made a tsking noise. “Uh-oh. Attitude problem. Well, don’t worry, Ben, I won’t file a report with your supervising attorney. This time.”

“At this point, Alvin, there’s nothing that could make him think less of me than he already does.”

Greg took a bite of pizza and shook his head. “If you’re talking about that toupee incident, don’t worry about it. It’s not that big a deal. I bet he’s already forgotten about it.”

Ben looked at him, then at Marianne, then at Alvin. They looked back. Simultaneously, all four erupted with laughter.

“Yeah, right,” Ben said, wiping his eyes. “What’s to remember?”

The phone rang again. Ben frowned. Greg started to rise.

“That’s all right,” Ben said quickly. “I’ll get it.” He took three slow steps to the telephone, then lifted the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hello, Ben. It’s Mike. Your brother-in-law.”

“
Ex
-brother-in-law. You divorced Julia, remember?”

“Let’s not dredge up painful memories, kemo sabe.” In the background, Ben could hear the sounds of traffic. Mike must be calling from somewhere outdoors. “How long have you been in town?”

“Just since Saturday night. I’ve been meaning to give you a call—”

“Yeah, right. So, you busy right now?”

“Well, I’m snarfing a pizza with some fellow associates.”

“Very upwardly mobile,” Mike said. “Why don’t you come meet me—”

“Mike, I’d really like to see you, but I think it would be rude—”

“This isn’t a social invitation,” Mike interrupted. “I’m working. I’ve got a corpse here that looks like he got the bad end of an argument with a Cuisinart.”

“My God,” Ben muttered. “Who is it?”

“Beats hell out of us. I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Me? Look, Mike, I know I helped the police a few times when I was at the D.A.’s office in OKC, but it’s almost eleven and I have to be at work at eight in the morning—”

“You don’t understand, Ben. We’ve got clues.”

Ben hesitated. “What clues?”

“Well, just one, really, but it’s a zinger. The murderer stripped this poor slob clean—no wallet, no I.D. But he missed something. Something we found in the corpse’s shirt pocket behind one of those plastic pencil pouches you see on nerds and accountants. A business card.” He paused. “Actually, it was
your
business card, Ben.”

Ben said nothing. The air seemed to become very heavy. “I think you’d better come out here, Ben. On the double.”

B
EN STOOD IN A
dark alley on the north side, the Bad Part of Town in the common parlance, wondering how he got entangled in something so seedy on his very first day on the job. On the street, a red neon sign identifying the Red Parrot Café and a smaller sign providing the key information
BEER
blinked on and off. A small crowd of disreputable-looking people was beginning to form. Their faces were illuminated by the whirling red and blue lights atop the police cars and ambulances. Ben watched as the paramedics and coroner’s office interns lifted the stiff, blood-caked body onto a stretcher. It had taken them nearly fifteen minutes to lift the body out of the garbage Dumpster where it had been found by a street person.

Ben gazed at the hideous, mutilated corpse, barely recognizable as the remnant of a human being. The body was coated with thick black blood. A violent blow had crushed the left side of the face and left precious little of the right. The jaw was broken and limp, dangling freely from the upper part of the skull.

The body had suffered numerous other blows as well. Something had smashed the knees from the front. Something had split the scalp above the right ear, and again at the base of the skull. And there were numerous puncture wounds, blotted and stained with repulsively large quantities of coagulated blood.

There was no question: these were the remains of Jonathan Adams. True, his face was mutilated beyond all hope of recognition, but he was wearing the same clothes he had worn in Ben’s office, with the same distinctive pencil holder. And he had the business card, the only one Ben had ever dispensed, precisely where Ben had seen him place it. But the sense of bearing, of quiet strength, Ben had perceived before was utterly erased; the body had collapsed in on itself like a popped balloon.

The police photographer, a man who must possess a stainless-steel stomach, was photographing the corpse from all heights and angles. Ben winced and looked away.

“Have you found a weapon?” Ben asked.

“No.” The man who summoned Ben, Lieutenant Mike Morelli, struggled to light a pipe against a strong headwind. He was wearing a hat and an overcoat—rather heavy gear for summer weather—but Ben knew that for Mike, an important part of being a detective was looking like a detective. “I’ve got my men combing the area, but I don’t have high hopes. Not a cooperative neighborhood. I’m lining up a crew to look for bloodstained clothing. Once morning breaks, they’ll be searching refuse collections and dumps throughout the city.”

“Think you’ll find anything?”

“It’s possible. Assuming the killer is from around here and doesn’t have the smarts to burn his clothes. Our best shot is to find the knife that made the puncture wounds.”

“What kind of knife was it?”

“I can’t say for sure. Might know more after the coroner’s report. It was a big one. Thick. Sharp. Might be a kitchen knife.” He puffed twice on his pipe. “The kind you can find in every home in Tulsa.”

“But why would anyone use a knife? It’s so …
messy
. Any idiot can get a gun from any pawnshop in town. Especially in this part of town.”

“You’re assuming someone planned this in advance,” Mike said. “Remember, Adams’s wallet was missing. The five-mile radius now surrounding us houses ninety-five percent of all the lowlifes, drug addicts, drug pushers, and pimps in Tulsa. Probably, Adams was just a stupid rich guy looking for some action who got robbed. The robbery got messy, or maybe Adams was really stupid and tried to fight back. The robber got mad and Adams got offed.

“Also consider, Counselor, that although a knife may be messier than a gun, it’s a hell of a lot harder to trace.” The exhaled pipe smoke formed a halo around Mike’s head. Ben wondered if he practiced that. “No registration numbers. No licenses. No paraffin or ballistics tests. And a knife is quieter, too. Despite the appearance of this neighborhood, it is still inhabited. Some people have been coming here all their lives, and they aren’t going to stop now. I understand a lot of older guys come here for a little nonspousal sexual activity.”

“Adams wasn’t the type to do that.”

“Says you. And you’ve known him for all of what? An hour?” Mike took another puff on the pipe. “This area has also become a favorite haunt for young professionals like yourself who think it’d be fun to go slumming for an evening and score some coke or something.”

Resentful? Ben shook his head. How did that happen? Just six years ago, Ben had been a groomsman in Mike’s wedding. They had met in college during Ben’s junior year, in a poetry-writing class, and discovered they had common interests. Pizza. Music. Saving the world.

They shared an apartment the next semester and started playing together at a local pizza parlor, Ben on keyboards, Mike on guitar and vocals. Mike met Ben’s younger sister, Julia, during that time. Two months later, Mike dropped out of school and announced that he and Julia were getting married. Any fool could see that, as they say in soap operas, they came from two different worlds. Ben and Julia’s father was an upper-middle-class cardiologist; Mike’s divorced and usually absent father was an oil well promoter. But they were in love. The differences didn’t matter. At first.

Julia was accustomed to the lifestyle of a successful professional’s baby girl. Constant entertainment and all the instant gratification money can buy. Mike got a part-time job as a prison guard and tried to save up enough money for them to pay the bills while he went through police academy training. An impossible dream, as long as Julia had breath in her body and plastic in her purse. Mike, through Julia, had to start asking for loans from his daddy-in-law. Family relations, never good, really started to feel the strain after that.

And, Ben reflected, I started law school and had problems of my own and lost track of my old best buddy and costar. One day Ben got a call from his mother telling him that Julia had left Mike and moved to Montana with an English lit professor. Mom and Dad were mortified. Naturally, they blamed Mike.

With no shopping addiction to feed, Mike had no problem completing the police officer training program. Ben assumed he dealt with the emotional blow in his usual tough-guy manner. Inside of four years, Mike was a detective working in the homicide department. Tulsa PD didn’t get near-college graduates that often.

Ben really had meant to call Mike once he got settled. Really.

“So you think it was a robbery that got out of hand?” Ben asked.

Mike took a deep draw on his pipe. “So it appears. The neighborhood, the victim, the missing wallet.” He paused for a moment. “But I don’t mind telling you, at the risk of sounding trite—something doesn’t seem right. One blow would’ve been enough to rob the old coot. Hell, two blows would’ve been enough to kill him. Why the hell did the killer feel compelled to turn the guy’s body into goulash?”

“Maybe the thief was a psycho. Or high on drugs.”

“Yeah, maybe. This is definitely the neighborhood for it. But something about this bothers me, Ben.”

A young uniformed officer walked up to Mike. “We had a heck of a time getting the body out of that Dumpster, sir, but it’s loaded into the ambulance now. We dusted the corpse, the Dumpster, and the surrounding area for fingerprints. No latents. We also searched for footprints or any other trace evidence. No luck.”

Mike exploded, apparently enraged. “Goddamn it, what kind of hack rookie are you?” He muttered a few choice curses under his breath. “I want you to take the whole goddamn squad and fan out for ten blocks in every direction. And
look
, damn it! That means you pick things up, you look around corners. And talk to people. Whether they’ve bathed recently or not. Don’t come back till you can give me something useful.”