Final Exam: A Legal Thriller (61 page)

Ben thought for a second.
 
“Okay, then give me his cell phone number.”
 

She did.
 
“Are you on your way back here?
 
Do you need me to stay?”

“No,” he said too quickly and too loudly.
 
He didn’t want that.
 
He wanted everyone out of there.
 
“I mean, I’m fine.
 
It’s Friday.
 
Go home.
 
Send everyone home.
 
Everything’s fine.
 
Good day today.”
 
He didn’t want to let her in on it yet.
 
He still hadn’t figured out exactly what to do.

She laughed.
 
“Good.
 
I didn’t want to stay anyway.”

Ben signed off and tried Brad Funk’s cell phone.
 
More voicemail.
 
Why couldn’t he get in touch with anyone?

He set the phone down just as he reached the ramp for the Eisenhower.
 
It was just as he expected, a parking lot.

Ben crawled west on the Eisenhower, the setting sun burning into his eyes and giving him a headache.
 
All the while, his mind worked overtime.
 
The more it spun around in his head, the more he knew he was right.
 
He tried weaving in and out of traffic in order to get to the office faster, but eventually gave up when the same cars kept pulling up alongside him.
 
He tried Mark and Funk a couple of more times each, growing alternatively angry and frustrated in the process.
 
He needed to get back to the office now.
 
He needed to come up with a plan, a good one, before it was too late.
 
Before it was too late.

53

By the time he finally reached the office, it was 5:30 and he was a wreck.
 
But he knew what he wanted to do.
 
He ran into Nancy in the parking lot.
 
Hers was the only car left.
 
Good.

“It took you all that time to get here?”
 
she
asked looking him over.
 
“You look like shit.
 
Traffic must’ve sucked.”

He shrugged.
 
“It did.
 
I thought you’d be gone by now.”

“Casey called in with a rush letter at 5 o’clock.”

“Figures.”

“No shit.
 
Are you sure you don’t need anything?” she said while shaking her head no.

He managed a weak laugh.
 
“No, I’m good.”

“Are you guys going to need anything over the weekend?”
 
Her head was still shaking.
 

“No,” Ben said trying to put her off, “not a thing.
 
We should be fine.
 
You go ahead.
 
Have a nice weekend.”
 

“Everyone else is gone,” she said over her shoulder as she headed for her car.

Ben stood on the back steps of the building and watched Nancy get into her car and drive away before unlocking the door and going inside.
 
He moved quickly to the front lobby to disengage the alarm and then walked immediately out to the garage to look through the files.

He pushed through the door to the garage, flicked on the lights and stuffed his keys into the pocket of his overcoat.
 
He dropped his briefcase on a chair and looked around the room trying to find the file he needed.
 
The bulk of the files used for trial had been locked in a storage room at the Courthouse for safekeeping.
 
Judge Wilson kept the only key.
 
It was much more convenient to do that than to schlep the files back and forth every day.
 
There were just too many of them.

As he looked around the room, boxes and files and documents stacked everywhere, Ben wondered if he had outsmarted himself and left the files he needed at the Courthouse.
 
He doubted it.
 
They probably had ten copies of everything.
 
He just had to find it.
 
He found his backup witness files in a box under the conference table, pulled them out, and thought back to
Dorlund’s
testimony.
 
That prick, Ben thought, may not have been completely full of shit after all.
 
He may have been closer to the truth than even he realized.

His heart pounded and his fingers trembled as he searched for the right file.
 
He didn’t find it in the first group, but found it back in a box under the table.
 
He laughed out loud as he opened it and walked over and sat in one of the barber chairs to study the contents.
 
He felt like a kid on Christmas, the excitement and anticipation building.
 
He knew he was right.
 
He just had to be.
 
He looked across the room at the notes and posters that had been mocking him for so long.
 
The timeline.
 
He studied the timeline.
 
Then he snapped his fingers.

His phone buzzed.
 
He looked at the display and recognized Brad Funk’s cell phone number.
 
He opened the phone and started in on Funk, eager to talk to someone.
 
“Where the hell have you guys been?
 
I’ve been trying to get in touch with you and Mark ever since I left Court and nobody answers their fucking phones.”

Funk started to answer.
 
“Sorry, but …”

Ben cut him off.
 
“Never mind that.
 
I figured it out.
 
I think I know who did it.
 
I think I know how and I think I know why.
 
It came to me out of the sky right in the middle of Court.
 
Well, not exactly out of the sky, but I did figure it out.
 
I’m sure of it.”

Funk was stunned.
 
“What?
 
Who?
 
Tell me everything.”

“It was the
Renfroes
.
 
At least one of them, or maybe both of them.
 
You see, Bridget Fahey was right.
 
Dorlund
was right.
 
At least almost right.
 
They had the right basic theory.
 
They just had the wrong people, the wrong defendant.”

“I don’t get it,” Funk said.
 
“Tell me what you mean.”

“Look, here it is.”
 
He got to his feet and starting pacing the room.
 
His voice quivered as he told his tale.
 
“I think that Fahey’s basic theory of the case is right.”

“What do you mean?”
 
Funk interrupted.
 
“We already know that Joseph
Cavallaro
is the father of Megan’s son.”

“Yes, we do,” Ben agreed “but listen, that doesn’t mean that Greenfield didn’t father someone else’s child, or least think he did.”

“Okay.”

“Remember how everyone on the Reunion Committee seemed to have that list of all the other members of the Committee except Greenfield?
 
Remember how we never could find Greenfield’s list, not in his office, his briefcase or at his apartment?”

“I remember.”

“We could never figure out why Greenfield of all people didn’t have that list like everyone else did.
 
We figured that there had to be something on that list, or least Greenfield’s copy of it, notes or something, that implicated the killer in some way, that caused the killer to steal it to protect himself, or herself.
 
I think we were right.
 
I also think that Bridget Fahey is basically right.
 
Greenfield got killed because he fathered someone else’s baby, or at least he and the killer thought he might have, and the killer didn’t want to find out for sure.
 
So Fahey’s version of the case is basically correct, except that Megan Rand
Cavallaro
wasn’t the right woman.
 
So let’s ask ourselves, who else is on that Committee with a child about the right age?”

“You mean Sally
Renfroe
.”

“Yeah, I mean Sally
Renfroe
.
 
Her son is just a little younger than Megan’s, meaning she got pregnant not long after Megan did, probably while we were still students.
 
I haven’t done the math, but I’d bet I’m right.
 
Let’s assume she was screwing around with Greenfield at about the same time as Megan, or maybe a bit after.
 
From what we’ve heard about Greenfield, he wasn’t going to leave his wife, not willingly, and he wasn’t going to commit to someone else.
 
He had a long relationship with Nora Fleming later on and he wouldn’t commit to her even after he was divorced so why would he commit to Sally when he was still married?
 
He wouldn’t and she probably knew that.
 
Maybe they’d slept together a few times or maybe they’d slept together just once, it doesn’t matter.
 
She gets pregnant and knows she’s in trouble.
 
What does she do?”

Ben was on a roll now, the words shooting out of him like a geyser.
 
“She decides to keep the baby.
 
Any other decision wouldn’t make sense.
 
She’s from Nebraska or someplace.
 
Anything else just wouldn’t do.
 
In the old days, they’d send her off somewhere until the baby was born.
 
They don’t do that now.
 
Besides, she had the bar exam to worry about.
 
Now she needed a cover for the pregnancy.
 
She turns to Peter
Renfroe
and they get married.
 
One or the other of them told me that they’ve been friends forever.
 
So she’s desperate and she turns to him and he agrees to marry her and raise the kid as his own.
 
So that’s what they do.

“Everything is hunky-dory until this Reunion thing crops up.
 
Remember, Greenfield wasn’t originally on the Committee, but Sally
Renfroe
was.
 
She got Megan to join, maybe as a buffer for Greenfield once he joined, maybe not.
 
Then Greenfield looks at the list, sees
who
is on it, and starts thinking.
 
Maybe he found out about the kids.
 
He’s got a lot of time to think about that now that his wife left him.
 
At least two of the women on the Reunion Committee were women he’d previously slept with, maybe more for all we know.
 
Remember, he was doing all that research on DNA and paternity and the legal aspects of them.
 
He wasn’t doing that for a law review article, he was doing that for himself.
 
He looked at Megan and Sally, remembered their past history, did the math, and figured out that he may have a child out there that he didn’t know about, a son no less.
 
He starts poking around and gets killed because of it.”

Brad Funk whistled into the phone.
 
“That’s some theory.
 
So you’re saying that Sally
Renfroe
killed Greenfield.”

“Sally or Peter or both.
 
Dorlund
may have had it just about right.
 
Greenfield may have thought he fathered Megan’s son, or maybe
Dorlund
assumed he was talking about Megan because he knew of their relationship, and he didn’t know about Sally and Greenfield.
 
Maybe
Dorlund
misunderstood.
 
Maybe Greenfield was talking about Sally all along.”
 
Ben shook his head and sighed.
 
“Anyway, I should’ve thought of Sally earlier.
 
That was my fault.
 
When I first saw the Committee list, I didn’t know she was married and had any kids.
 
I didn’t think about anyone having an affair with her.
 
I always thought she might be a lesbian, to tell you the truth.
 
By the time I realized all that, my view of her had been filtered through Megan’s perceptions.
 
They were friends and Sally wanted to help out any way she could.”

 
“She has been awful eager to help out,” Funk agreed.
 
“She did volunteer to be a witness.”

“And Peter
Renfroe
has been very interested in the case too.
 
Sure, I guess he and Sally are friends of Megan’s, but he’s been in Court all the time.
 
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.
 
He was in Court today.
 
That’s what made me put it together.”

“I don’t understand,” Funk said.

“I saw him out of the corner of my eye when Sally was taking the stand.
 
Something clicked.
 
A few weeks ago, right before the trial started, I was downtown going out to dinner with Libby and some friends.
 
I was rounding a corner and I bumped into these two guys.
 
They were together, if you know what I mean.
 
I didn’t get a really good look at them - who pays attention to everyone they run into on the street - but I remember that it bugged me at the time.
 
I thought I recognized one of them, but they rounded the corner so quickly it was like they didn’t want to be seen.
 
I sort of put it out of my mind.
 
It wasn’t that important.
 
But now, I’m pretty sure that one of those guys was
Renfroe
.
 
I got a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye today just like I did that night on a street corner and it all started clicking into place—Greenfield, Sally, Peter, Megan, Reunion Committee, murder.
 
And then when Court adjourned, he looked at me and I looked at him and I think we were both thinking the same thing.
 
Hell, the way I acted in Court, everybody in the room knew that something was going on.
 
I had a brain cramp right there in front of everyone.
 
Only it wasn’t a brain cramp, it was a revelation, and I think
Renfroe
knows it, or least suspects it.
 
I could tell by the way he looked at me.”