Final Exam: A Legal Thriller (65 page)

Ben sat sprawled at one end of the church pew, his feet up, sipping on his beer and occasionally holding the cool bottle against one of the cuts, scrapes or bruises that covered his face.
 
Brad Funk sat in one of the rocking chairs, while Mark took the other.
 
Funk shook his head and took another long drag from his beer.
 
“It’s like Clint Eastwood said in that movie.”
 

Ben nodded.
 
“It’s a funny thing killing a man …” Ben said.

“Yeah,” Funk replied.
 

Ben looked at him thoughtfully.
 
“But Brad, you didn’t have choice.
 
He was going to kill me for sure, and if he knew you were in the office or if he had heard you, he would have hunted you down too.
 
He might even have killed Sally.”
 

Funk nodded.
 
“I know that.
 
I did the right thing, but it’s not what you expect when you see it on TV or in the movies.”
 

“No,” Ben agreed, “it’s not.”

They heard footsteps in the hall and Detectives Scott Nelson and John Cole joined them.
   
Cole leaned against the receptionist’s desk and Nelson took his hand and swung Ben’s feet to the floor and sat down on the pew next to him.

Ben winced and held his hand to his side.
 
“What? You’re not going soft on me now, are you?” Nelson asked.

Ben shook his head.
 
“Funny.
 
I think I caught another one in the ribs sometime during the fight.
 
Same spot as before, God
dammit
.”
 
Then Ben looked at Funk. “Not that I’m not grateful, but where in the hell were you and why did it take you so long to get here?”

Funk shrugged.
 
“You won’t believe this, but I was at the pistol range doing some target shooting.
 
I got here as fast as I could.”
 
Ben looked at him sideways and Funk held up his hand and said, “I swear.”
 
Then he shook his head.
 
“This was a lot different,” he whispered.
 

All fell silent.
 
They could hear the evidence technicians murmuring off somewhere in the distance.
 
“Sure is,” Detective Cole said after a minute.
 
Funk looked down at the floor.
 

“My ears are still ringing a little bit,” Ben said.
 

“You know,” Nelson said, “I’m pretty impressed with how you fought him off.
 
He was a pretty big guy.”

Ben smiled ruefully.
 
“Yeah, I did okay for a while,” he said tipping his beer toward Funk.
 
“But if Sally and then Brad hadn’t arrived, I’d be dead.
 
At the end, he was the guy holding the gun.”

Nelson offered Ben a slight grin.
 
“Still … anyway, you’ll be happy to know,” he said, “that I just got off the phone with Bridget Fahey.”
 
Ben raised his eyebrows and Funk looked up at the Detective.
 
“I told her that her case against your client just went to shit.
 
I told her who did it and that he was dead and that her case was dead too.”
 

“How’d she take it?” Ben asked.
 

“Not too well, as you might expect,” Nelson said, his grin widening.
 
“But what the fuck is she going to do?
 
It is what it is.
 
Between you and me, I think she knew it was going downhill anyway.”
 

Mark got up from his seat, moved over to Ben and extended his hand.
 
Ben shook it.
 
“That’s not going to do anything for her political career,” Mark said with a laugh.
 

“Who said an ill wind doesn’t blow someone some good?” Nelson added.
 

Ben looked over at Funk.
 
“Brad, you get the job of calling Phil and explaining how you shot up the office.”
 

Funk grinned.
 
“He’ll probably make me pay for the damage.
 
Hey, none of my shots missed.
 
I didn’t even damage anything.”
 

“I, on the other hand,” Ben said, “get to call Megan and tell her she just got the rest of her life back.”
 
He looked at his watch –
 
almost ten-thirty.
 
“I think she’s probably still up.
 
It’s probably worth a phone call.”
 

Nelson looked at Cole and said, “Pretty soon this will be all over the television.”
 

“Probably already is,” Mark said.

They all nodded, and no one said anything for a minute or two.
 
Then Ben looked over at Nelson and asked, “What are you going to do about the paternity issue?
 
Greenfield’s dead.
 
Does anybody really have to know?
 
Do we have to put the kid through all that on top of this?”
 

Nelson sighed.
 
Cole looked at him and shook his head.
 
“That is a good fucking question,” Nelson said, clearly not relishing the prospect.
 

They all thought about unintended consequences for a moment.
 
“Mark, my friend,” Ben said, breaking the silence, “tell you what, why don’t you go into the kitchen and bring us each back a beer and we’ll talk it through.
 
In the meantime, does anybody want to hear my closing argument?”

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A Legal Thriller

Terry Huebner

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FINAL BROADCAST

A Legal Thriller

Terry Huebner

1

The man smiled, raised his glass in salute to the television and downed the vodka in one long gulp.
 
Raymond Burr as Perry Mason had just gotten the better of Hamilton Burger once again and the man appreciated the skill, the virtuosity and the style with which it had been accomplished.
 
He had seen this episode before, of course, for he had seen them all before, many times.
 
Perry Mason was sort of his hobby.
 
He admired the great trial lawyer, for he had once been one himself, perhaps even the best and most famous trial lawyer of his generation.
 
He was, after all, Daniel Patrick Lindsay, the boy wonder, the young lawyer who became famous when he got that rich banker acquitted of killing his wife long before the advent of all-news channels on cable television.
 
If CNN had been around back then, he would have been bigger than Perry Mason.
 
He was a real-life Perry Mason, only better.
 
It was the night before Christmas Eve and Lindsay poured
himself
another vodka and saluted the great trial lawyer once again as the signature theme music played.

If Lindsay had been a great trial lawyer, he certainly wasn’t one now.
 
He hadn’t seen the inside of a courtroom, at least as a lawyer, in years.
 
His last big case had been when he cross-examined that lying cop in the actor’s trial as part of the Hollywood Defense.
 
That had been good.
 
Everyone had seen on national television just how good he could be.
 
He had gotten himself in shape for that one and it had paid off.
 
But that had been more than a decade ago, and the time since had not been kind to Pat Lindsay.
 
Too much booze, too much spending and too few cases over the years had finally taken their toll.
 
Friends from the old days tried to help him out by shoveling him a few scraps, cases he never would have looked twice at in his heyday, but he didn’t even want to get out of bed for that shit.
 
So he didn’t.
 
Most days he just sat with his feet up in the sitting room off his bedroom watching TV and drinking vodka by the bottle.
 
Some life.
 
A friend had even gotten him the entire run of Perry Mason on DVD, but the box sat gathering dust on the floor in the corner of the room because Lindsay had never bothered to learn how to operate the DVD player.

Down below, a figure clad all in black emerged from behind a dilapidated gazebo in the back of Lindsay’s yard and leaned against the trunk of an orange tree.
 
The evening had cooled to the low-60s from an afternoon high in the mid-80s and the man wore a jacket over a black turtleneck and jeans.
 
From this vantage point, he could see the entire rear portion of Lindsay’s house, a white frame structure showing its age and Lindsay’s lack of upkeep.
 
He could see Lindsay too, a dark shadow behind pale drapes just like always.
 
The figure could see the lights from the television dancing on the walls of the room behind the drapes.
 
He looked around the yard.
 
A pair of rabbits played tag before disappearing into the far bushes.
 
The man smelled something strong and fragrant coming from his right and turned in that direction.
 
He thought it was lilacs, or maybe gardenias, he didn’t know the difference.
 
Something strong anyway.

Before Lindsay had let the place go to hell, it had been professionally landscaped, complete with an expensive lighting and watering system.
 
Where once this was the scene of lavish parties, now the overgrown shrubs and bushes merely provided privacy from the prying neighbors in this North Palm Beach, Florida neighborhood.
 
The water in the pool was a slimy green with algae and broken lawn chairs littered the flagstone deck, now cracked and crumbling.
 
The outside lights were all off, victim of a court-mandated austerity campaign, and the only lights seen emanating from the back of the house came from the kitchen on the first floor and the TV in Lindsay’s bedroom on the second.

The figure picked his way through the debris in the backyard and came to a set of French doors which led to an eating area off of the kitchen.
 
He pulled on a pair of black gloves as he peered inside.
 
He turned the handle and the door opened, he had left it unlocked on a previous visit, and entered the house.
 
He didn’t have to worry about the alarm system either, for that was another victim of bill collectors and a civil judgment.
 
He strolled casually into the kitchen, where he found six gallon-sized jugs of Smirnov vodka sitting on a chipped granite island next to a stack of unopened mail.
 
Otherwise, the kitchen looked neat and clean, almost sterile, as though it hadn’t been cooked in for months.
 
Probably hadn’t, the man thought.
 
The room smelled of orange-scented cleaning solvent.
 

Just for kicks, he carefully opened the refrigerator door, although he knew the stealth probably wasn’t necessary.
 
All it contained was a six-pack carton of Budweiser long necks with three full bottles left inside, a near empty jug of milk that looked sour, a couple of eggs in a dirty plastic bowl, a variety of salad dressings and barbecue sauces and a carton of baking soda.
 
The man smiled.
 
Lindsay must have wanted to make sure that he killed all of the odors.
 
The freezer contained a box of Good Humor ice cream bars and a mostly full five-pound bag of ice.
 
Couldn’t run out of that.

The man moved through to the front hall in the manner of someone who knew exactly where he was going.
 
He came to it from underneath a grand staircase that gently curved to the left as it rose to a large formal landing framed in ornate iron that seemed to come straight out of Gone with the Wind.
 
From the discoloration down the center of the mahogany stairs, the man concluded that a carpet runner had recently been torn out.
 
The tapestry wallpaper also appeared worn and threadbare.
 
Across the way, between the stairs and the front entrance to the house, a door stood ajar.
 
The man looked at his watch, still a little early, and considered his options.
 
From the bottom of the stairs, he noted the smell of cigarettes wafting down from above.
 
The only light came from the upstairs hallway and the man could faintly hear the sound of the television off in the distance.

Without ever taking his eyes off of the landing, the man crossed the front hall and pushed into the study.
 
The room smelled musty with just a hint of furniture polish.
 
He silently closed the door, but quickly found a light switch on the wall and a desk lamp went on.
 
The room contained a beautiful, hand carved desk in dark mahogany, inlaid on top in green leather, with a matching green leather desk chair and sofa, both worn slick and shiny with age.
 
In the far corner, stood an empty TV stand.
 
Built-in bookcases stained a dark brown covered the entire near wall and were crammed full of volumes in all shapes and sizes.
 
More books, covered in a light patina of dust, were piled in four 2-foot high stacks on the desk.
 
The man walked casually over to the couch as though waiting for an appointment and took a seat.
 
His eyes moved around the room and settled on the bookshelves.
 
He closed his eyes, thought about his next move and waited.