Final Exam: A Legal Thriller (6 page)

Ben was puzzled.
 
“Why would they ask you things like that?
 
I’m assuming you haven’t seen him in years.
 
I’m not sure I’ve seen him since graduation.”
 

“Exactly,” she responded, “I told them I couldn’t remember when I saw him last.”
 

“He said they found your name in his office.
 
What was that all about?”
 

“I don’t know.
 
They wouldn’t really say.
 
I got the impression that I may have been on the reunion list.”
 

“Reunion, what reunion?”
 

“You know, since this is now 2002 and we graduated in 1992, they’re planning reunions for the summer.
 
I got dragged in to be on this Reunion Committee.
  
I’ve been getting stuff from the administration about class lists and, you know, we’re in the beginning stages of planning for this reunion.
 
Apparently, from what I could gather, Greenfield had stuff about the reunion in his office with notations with my name on it.”
 

“That doesn’t sound terribly unusual.
 
I’m sure they’re just following up on loose ends they may have, just trying to gather information, things like that.”
 

“No, no.
 
It was much more than that.
 
They started asking me about, like where I was on New Year’s Eve, where I was the Friday before New Year’s.
 
What did I do on New Year’s Eve.
 
Where did I go.
 
Who was I with.
 
Things like that.”
 

“Is that when he died?
 
New Year’s Eve?”
 

“I don’t know.
 
No, well, I don’t know.
 
I don’t think so.
 
I got the impression they think he died on like Friday or Saturday, but the body wasn’t found until, I don’t know, the 2nd or 3rd, or something.”
 

“It must have been the 2nd,” Ben said, remembering the newspaper.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice shaking.
 
“I’m just so upset about this.
 
I’ve never been questioned by the police before.
 
This is unbelievable.”
 

“Look, Meg, just relax.
 
I’m sure they weren’t trying to upset you or anything like that.
 
They were just trying to gather information.
 
I’m sure it was nothing more than that.”
 
Ben tried to get the focus off of Meg.
 
He needed to talk her off the ledge.
 
“So they didn’t tell you how he died?”
 

“No, in fact, I asked, but they didn’t answer.
 
They kind of changed the subject.”
 

“Hmmm, that’s interesting.
 
It doesn’t sound like anything.
 
But the thing you’ve got to remember, you can’t tell them anything that isn’t true.
 
They always seem to find out in the end. Now, tell me, do you know of any other reason, any reason at all, why they would be questioning you about this other than what you’ve told me?”
 

“No, of course not.”
 

Ben sighed.
 
“Okay, then.
 
Look, you’ve got to remember, if we find out that Greenfield didn’t just drop dead at his desk, if you really and truly believe they think you’re involved somehow, you shouldn’t talk to them again without an attorney present.
 
If you want, call me, and I’ll be there when they talk to you.
 
But remember, you don’t want to say anything, even inadvertently, that may unduly cast suspicion on you, okay?
 
I’m not trying to upset you.
 
I just want you to know how these things work.”
 
There was a long pause.
 
“Meg?
 
Do you understand?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“I’m sure it will turn out to be nothing.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Again, I don’t think it means anything, but still, be careful.
 
These guys build cases through people saying the wrong things at the wrong time.”
 

They talked for a few more minutes.
 
Ben could sense that she was calming down a little bit and really needed to get this out of her system more than anything else.
 
Nevertheless, he couldn’t believe that she could really be a suspect in a murder, assuming it was a murder.
 
It just didn’t make any sense.
 

“Ben,” she finally said, “if it came to that and I needed a lawyer to represent me in this, would you help me?
 
Would you represent me if I needed help?”
 

Ben flushed.
 
“Of course I would,” he said, “but I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think you’re going to need anyone’s help.
 
I think you just misunderstood what they were trying to find out.
 
I’m sure it’s going to be nothing.”
 

A moment later they hung up and Ben sat in his office for a minute staring silently at the phone.
 
Scott Nelson.
 
That had to mean something.
 
His secretary, Nancy Schulte, poked her head in the door.
 
She must have heard him hang up the phone.
 
“So, what was that all about?” she asked.
 
Nancy had been with the firm for more than twenty years, and had more or less been Ben’s secretary since he arrived several years before.
 
Something of a refugee from the Sixties, who only became a legal secretary when she didn’t know what else to do, Nancy was fast, efficient and almost never made mistakes.
 
Ben considered her the best legal secretary he’d ever known and he liked working with her.
 

She also served as the unofficial gatekeeper for the firm.
 
She often had the task of breaking in the new people to ascertain whether or not they were truly competent to practice law with the firm.
 
Once they had passed this threshold and thereby earned her respect, a woman who at first glance appeared very difficult, suddenly became very easy to work with.
 
Ben crossed over that bridge fairly early in their relationship so that any hazing period he had experienced with her was relatively short.
 

The only problem with Nancy from Ben’s perspective was that Nancy also worked for Phil
Luckenbill
, the firm’s managing partner.
 
That occasionally put her in an awkward position and necessarily tended to divide her loyalties.
 
Ben appreciated this fact and found a way to work around it without ever forgetting it.
 
She sat down opposite Ben on the bench that served as the guest chairs in Ben’s office.
 
“So, tell me, what happened?”
 

Ben sat back in the chair and took a deep breath.
 
“Well, it appears that our Megan is being questioned regarding the death of one of our former law professors.”
 

“You mean that guy in the paper?”
 

“That’s the one.”
 

“What did she say?”
 

“Well, not too much.
 
I really don’t think it’s anything.
 
They just wanted to get some facts.
 
We don’t even know how he died.
 
They found her name on something in his office.
 
Probably nothing.”
 

“So that’s what you told her?”
 

“Yeah.
 
I told her I didn’t think it was going to amount to anything.”
 

She noted that he wasn’t making eye contact, unusual for him.
 
“But you don’t really believe that, do you?” she said suspiciously.
 
He didn’t answer.
 
Scott Nelson.
 
Homicide detective.
 
He merely looked at her, a gaze which spoke volumes.
 
“Holy shit,” Nancy said.
 
“Does she want to hire you?”
 

Ben nodded.
 
“If she needs to, I suppose.”
 

“And you think she’s going to need to, don’t you?”
 

Ben paused.
 
“Is Phil going to come in today?” he asked avoiding the question.
 

“I doubt it,” she answered.
 
“He’s got redistricting meetings all day downtown.
 
You can probably catch him on the cell phone if you want to badly enough though.”
 

Ben nodded getting to his feet.
 
“I’ll go over to the other side to talk to Casey.
 
I’ll be back.”
 

“A murder case,” she said to herself as Ben walked by.
 

As he reached the door, he turned, “Nance?”
 
She turned to face him.
 
Ben simply put his forefinger across his lips in the universal symbol for silence.
 
She nodded.

Ben was the last one left in the building that night.
  
He looked at his watch and yawned.
 
It had been a long day and he was tired.
 
He got up and walked downstairs and grabbed a beer out of the fridge in the kitchen.
 
It had been one of those days where he had been busy from the time he got into the office, yet what he had accomplished didn’t seem to amount to much.
 
Some days it seemed as though he could work for twelve hours straight and only bill for six.
 
Other days, far less frequent, he could work for six hours and bill for twelve.
 
Ben liked those days better.
 

He had Court in the morning in Wheaton and needed to get his stuff together before he could go on home.
 
As he took a long swallow of his beer, he couldn’t get Megan Rand out of his mind.
 
He couldn’t possibly fathom what evidence the police could have that caused them to link Megan Rand with the death of Daniel Greenfield, however that may have occurred.
   

He thought back to the day he first met Meg and Fran.
 
It was late August of 1989 when the Class of 1992 at the Chicago College of Law began law school.
 
Their first class was Property with Professor Gordon Hyatt.
 
Their second class was Criminal Law with Daniel Greenfield.
 
When Ben got to the classroom on the 4
^th
floor of the old building on
Wacker
Drive, many of the seats were already taken.
 
Greenfield hadn’t arrived yet and the students were milling about and engaging in quiet conversation.
 
Ben saw a seat on the aisle at the end of the second row and sat down.
 
A few minutes later, Megan Rand and Fran Fischer came in together.
 
Ben did not know either of them.
 
Meg took the lone empty seat next to Ben, while Fran took a seat in front of them in the first row.
 
It was apparent that the two women knew each other.
 
After a moment of small talk, Fran introduced herself.
 
“Hi.
 
I’m Fran Fischer.
 
This is my friend, Megan Rand.
 
We went to undergrad together.”
 

“Nice to meet you,” Ben said quietly with a nod.
 

A few minutes later, Professor Greenfield arrived and they began their study of criminal law.
 
It didn’t take long before they realized that all of the rumors were true - the more prurient and sensational the subject matter of a criminal case, the more likely that Professor Greenfield was to be interested in it and discuss it in class.
 
Thus, his class focused on assaults, rapes and murders, the more brutal and graphic, the better.
 
They also noticed Professor Greenfield’s habit of beginning his lectures by starting with a student seated at the end of a row and working down that row, class after class, before moving on to another row.
 
Although Greenfield was fairly Socratic in nature, he wasn’t particularly difficult to students, unlike some of the other professors in the law school.
 
He usually allowed students to embarrass themselves before moving on to the next person.
 
He apparently didn’t feel the need to pile on.

Many of the women in Greenfield’s class were embarrassed both by the subject matter and his need to hear them recite the specific facts of the crimes described in that day’s cases.
 
It was about three weeks into the semester and Ben and Meg’s row had yet to be called on in class.
 
They had been talking about it for days and knew that it was coming sooner or later.
 
One bright Wednesday morning, their time came.
 
They were talking about one particular case before class, and Meg was hoping that this would not be the day.
 
It was a case before the United States Supreme Court, a Justice Brennan opinion involving sexual assault.
 
Professor Greenfield introduced the case and turned to face them.
 
“Mr.
Lohmeier
,” he said, “can you give us the facts of this case, please?”