Final Exam: A Legal Thriller (19 page)

“Thank you,” Ben said taking off his overcoat and placing it on a chair next to his briefcase.
 
He sat down in another chair.
 
Dorlund’s
office was cluttered and disorganized, books and papers everywhere.
 
“I don’t want to take up a lot of your time, Professor.
 
I’m sure we’re going to have a lot of opportunities to speak in the future.
 
The first thing I’d like to know now though is who should I be talking to about Professor Greenfield?
 
Who are the people on the faculty and staff of this place who could tell me about him, tell me about what was going on with him, what he was working on, that kind of thing.”
 

Dorlund
was a short, round man with a soft body that had long since gone to seed.
 
He had dark curly hair that never quite seemed combed or washed, bushy eyebrows covering slightly bulging eyes, a large, flat nose and thick puffy lips that would make a catfish proud.
 
He always seemed kind of sweaty.
 
Amazingly, despite these physical characteristics and a less than winning personality, he still considered himself something of a
ladies
man, although few ladies shared this perception.
 
He leaned back in his chair.
 
“Dan and I have been friends for twenty years and as you can imagine, his death has hit me pretty hard.
 
I don’t think anyone is as close to him …”
 
He hesitated.
 
“Or was as close to him, in this law school or outside of it as I was.
 
But if you want some other names, some of the professors who were here when you were here would probably be a good place to start.
 
I can’t think of anyone in particular.”
 

“Okay,” Ben said, “that’s what I figured.”

Ben spoke to
Dorlund
for about twenty minutes and
Dorlund
slowly opened up and grew a bit more cooperative.
 
He told Ben that Greenfield and his wife had divorced about three years earlier, but that Greenfield seemed to be handling it better and better in recent months.
 
Other than that, he knew of nothing in particular that had been troubling Greenfield recently, and suggested that Greenfield had been in a pretty decent frame of mind.
 
Finally,
Dorlund
told him that Greenfield had seemed particularly excited about a new law review article he had been working on in recent weeks.
 
The article concerned DNA testing and its use in criminal law, but
Dorlund
told Ben that he wasn’t really familiar with any of the details.
 

The two men shook hands when Ben got up to leave and agreed to talk again when
Dorlund
had more time.
 
Seeing that it was getting fairly late in the afternoon, Ben decided to forego a trip to Hyatt’s office - he probably would be gone anyway - so he could get back on the road before traffic became too unbearable.
 
As it turns out, it didn’t matter.
 
He’d waited too long.
 
He didn’t get back to the office until almost five and went directly out to the garage, where he found Mark working on some discovery matters.
 

“Hey,” he said walking through the door.
 

“You’ve become quite the little celebrity in this part of the world,” Mark said.
 

“Oh, really,” Ben replied.
 
“Isn’t that just great?”
 

“Well, I don’t know whether it’s great or not, but the phone’s been ringing off the hook.
 
You’ve got reporters calling all over the place.”
 

“Is Phil here?”
 

“I don’t know, but I’m sure the secretaries are getting pissed enough.”
 

“Okay, I’d better go upstairs and try to smooth things over.”

Ben went to take his medicine.
 
At the top of the stairs, he glanced to his right - Swift was on the phone again, but gave Ben a thumbs-up sign as he walked by.
 

“Hey, the celebrity is back,” Dianne Reynolds said as he walked into the room.
 
“We saw you on TV earlier.”
 

Hearing that, Nancy spun around in her chair and came out of her office to join them.
 
“Yeah,” she said, “you were pretty good, not stiff or anything.”
 

Ben shrugged.
 
“I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess,” he said.
 
“What were we on?”
 

“We saw it on WGN in Phil’s office,” Nancy said.
 
“The story only lasted for a couple of minutes.
 
They said who she was and that she lived downtown.
 
Then they showed the part outside on the steps where you said that she looked forward to clearing her name, or something like that.
 
You were good.
 
You made a good impression.”
 

Ben rolled his eyes.
 
“I understand from talking to Mark downstairs that you guys have been getting a few phone calls.”
 

Nancy growled.
 
“A few?” she said.
 
“The phone’s been ringing non-stop.”

“Well, today was the first day it was on TV.
 
Maybe it will slow down.”
 

“Hope so,” Nancy said returning to her office.
 

“It hasn’t been that bad,” Dianne added.
 
“It’s actually kind of exciting.”
 

“So what have you been doing?” Ben asked, “
dumping
them all into my voicemail?”
 

“Yes, but I think your voicemail box is full.
 
A couple of people have called back in the last hour or so saying they couldn’t get through, so we had to write down their messages.”
 

“Great,” Ben said.
 
Dianne handed him two pieces of paper with the names and telephone numbers of two people he didn’t know.
 
He looked at them and went into his office.
 
He dropped his stuff on the bench and sat down at his desk to check his e-mail.
 
Only a couple of new messages, nothing urgent.
 
“That’s good,” he said aloud.
 

He checked his voicemail next.
 
The female voice intoned, “Your mailbox is full.
 
You have nineteen new messages.”
 

“Shit,” he said.
 

He listened to each message - seventeen were from reporters or somebody asking for information about the case, while the other two concerned his other files.
 

Nancy’s voice came over the intercom.
 
“I’ve got Ken on the phone.
 
He said he wants to talk to the TV star.”
 

“Tell him to wait in line,” Ben said.
 
“Unfortunately, I probably need to talk to him.
 
Tell you what, bullshit with him for a couple of minutes and then transfer the call to the garage.
 
I’m heading down there right now.”
 

“Okay,” she said.
 

“Did you fix it?” Mark said when Ben entered the garage.
 

“Not really.
 
They didn’t seem too mad.”
 

Mark laughed.
 
“That’s not the story I heard.”

“My voicemail box was full.
 
I had nineteen messages and seventeen were reporters.”
 

“That’s a lot,” Mark said.
 
“That’s one of the things I think you’re going to have to get used to on this case.
 
Handling the press.
 
That will take a lot more time than you think.”
 

“Maybe,” Ben said.
 
“Hopefully it will level out after the first couple of days or so.
 
I can’t imagine that this case will be that big a deal for the entire time.
 
Of course, I may be full of shit given that I’ve never really handled a case like this before.”

“It may depend on what the evidence is.
 
If Bridget Fahey starts alleging something really spectacular, the media could get all over this thing.”
 

“True,” Ben said.
 
Then the phone started ringing.
 
“That’s Ken.
 
I’ll put him on speaker.”
 
Ben punched the button for the speakerphone and said, “Hey, Ken what’s up?”
 

“Hey, Perry Mason, can I have your autograph?”
 

“Sure, anything for the Public Defender of DeKalb County.
 
Of course, I charge twenty bucks a pop now that I’m famous.
 
By next week, it’ll be up to a hundred.”
 

“Well worth it.
 
So, I hear you’re quite the TV star now.
 
I didn’t see it myself, but a bunch of people here did, and I heard all about it.
 
It sounded pretty good.”
 

“Yeah, I guess it went okay.
 
I didn’t drool on myself or anything.
 
I would have preferred avoiding the home confinement, but the judge wasn’t going to go for that.”
 

“Yeah,” Ken said, “sounds like he didn’t want to appear on Geraldo, so he gave a little something to everybody.”
 

“Pretty much,” Ben said.
 
“He basically called us into his chambers and told us what he wanted to do.
 
I think he’d made up his mind before we ever walked into Court this morning.”
 

“Figures.
 
Did we learn anything new today?”
 

“No, not really.
 
I didn’t have much chance to talk to the prosecutor.
 
The First Assistant, Bridget Fahey, showed up.
 
I knew her from when I was back in the office.
 
She’s a ball-buster.”
 

“Most of those female prosecutors are,” Mark chimed in.
 

“True enough,” Ken said, “but given that our client is a woman, they probably figured they needed to throw a woman prosecutor in there just to even their odds up with the jury.”
 

“You’re probably right,” Ben agreed, “although Bridget Fahey isn’t exactly the type that would automatically appeal to women.
 
Not that she’s not a good trial lawyer,
but she can be a bit on the cold side.
 
I know her pretty well, or at least I did years ago.
 
You can’t turn your back on her, that’s for sure.”
 

“Say,” Ken said, “did you hear any of McBride’s press
conference
?”
 

“No,” Ben answered, “I’d forgotten all about it.
 
I went over to the law school and the McBride thing pretty much slipped my mind.”
 

“Well,” Ken said, “I didn’t hear it either, but I guess he put on a big dog and pony show without giving any details.
 
You know, they can link her to the murder scene and shit like that.
 
He promised they wouldn’t try the case in the media, which means they’re probably about to try the case in the media.”
 

“I’ll have to make sure I get home in time for the news tonight,” Ben said.
 
“Did you hear we got Wilson as the trial judge?
 
We’re in front of him a week from Friday.”
 

“No,” Ken said, “I hadn’t heard that.
 
He’s about the best judge they’ve got down there in that division, so I’m not surprised he got the case.
 
I never have appeared in front of him though.
 
You know him, don’t you?
 
That should probably be good for us.
  
You wouldn’t think he’d
recuse
himself, would you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Ben said.
 

Ben knew Judge William Wilson from his days in law school when he was a member of the Chicago College of Law Trial Advocacy Team.
 
Judge Wilson served as the director of the Trial Advocacy Program at the law school and personally coached many of the trial teams as they prepared for various competitions.
 
Ben made the trial team at the law school in the fall of 1991 and spent a good two months working almost every day with Judge Wilson and some other former team members as they prepared for a competition.
 

“I haven’t really kept in close contact with anyone from the team like I probably should have.
 
In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen Judge Wilson since I was a prosecutor.
 
I appeared in front of him a few times when I was subbing for other guys in the office back then, mostly on status hearings, and he never
recused
himself then.
 
You know, it’s not like I’m close to him or anything.
 
I know other people have appeared before him over the years and I don’t think he ever
recuses
himself.
 
Besides, he’s not the kind of guy to give anybody any breaks if they don’t deserve them.
 
He is the straightest of the straight shooters.
 
If we have any edge at all, it’s in that he trained me as a trial lawyer and I know how he likes a case to be tried.
 
That’s how I like to try cases anyway.
 
That, and because he was probably the best criminal defense lawyer of his day, you know a defendant in his courtroom is going to get a fair shake.
 
He knows the law backwards and forwards, no doubt about it.”