“She’ll love that,” Casey said. “Especially at a place like that.”
“That’s what I figure.”
“Okay then,” Disko said. “I’ll keep digging. Keep me posted.”
Ben met Kate Hinkle and Lucy Wexler for lunch at a pizza joint near their office in the Loop. Kate Hinkle stood about five-feet-seven inches with a nice figure, a pretty smile and light brown wind swept hair. She carried herself with the grace of an athlete and reminded Ben of a model in a chewing gum commercial. He liked her instantly. Lucy Wexler on the other hand, struck Ben as someone who would tell on you for cheating on an eye exam. Although dark and arguably attractive, she possessed none of Hinkle’s charm and what good looks she had were marred by a surly, unpleasant disposition.
All he really got from the interview was a half-way decent personal pan pizza and the opportunity to wonder which lucky guy would wind up with Hinkle. Ben couldn’t see either of them killing Professor Greenfield, however. Hinkle, because she was too nice and obviously didn’t have it in her, and Wexler, because that would require too much effort and personal interaction that she undoubtedly found distasteful. Maybe she would hire someone, but never carry out the deed herself unless Greenfield were threatening her trust fund or make-up kit.
Ben thanked them for their time and walked north down State Street past the Chicago Theater and across the Chicago River to the IBM building, the home of Kenner & Black. Kenner & Black occupied roughly ten floors of the forty-seven story IBM building and even had its own bank of elevators. Ben found Marjorie Thompkins’ name on the registry in the lobby and took the elevator up to the 44th floor. Kenner & Black’s offices looked surprisingly stark and ill-suited for one of the top silk-stocking litigation firms in the United States.
Thompkins wouldn’t see him at first, but when Ben told the receptionist to tell her that he was on his way to the Chicago Tribune, she changed her mind. Thompkins arrived a couple of minutes later and led Ben down a flight of stairs off of the reception area to the 43rd floor and a long conference room with a large wooden table that would seat twelve. She followed Ben inside and closed the heavy wooden door behind her. “Just who do you think you are?” she said.
Ben took a step toward her. “Everyone keeps asking me that. I know exactly who I am. I’m a defense lawyer in a capital murder case. I’ve tried to do the decent thing by contacting you on numerous occasions to set up an appointment at your convenience so we could sit and talk. You haven’t even given me the courtesy of a return telephone call.” He looked around. “So,” he said, “here I am.”
They sparred for a while. Ben suggested that in a firm like Kenner & Black, associates like her were a dime a dozen. She stared back at him, her arms folded across her chest as she seethed with resentment. Finally, when it became clear that Ben wouldn’t go away easily, she relented through clenched teeth. “Look,” she said lowering her voice to make sure no one outside of the closed conference room could possibly hear her, “Daniel and I had a brief relationship, but that was it. It was his idea, it was inappropriate and it was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. But we only slept together a few times and that was it. I haven’t seen or talked to him in at least a couple of years.”
They spoke for a few more minutes and Thompkins implored him to keep her indiscretion to himself. Ben made no promises, but came away from their meeting convinced of one thing - Marjorie Thompkins hadn’t told him the entire truth.
31
Several days later, Ben sat in the garage reviewing some evidence summaries Mark had prepared for him when he heard the heavy footsteps of the man himself stomping down the steps. Mark came through the door loaded down with a box of documents, his briefcase over one shoulder and a large Federal Express envelope tucked under the other arm. He dropped the box on the conference room table with a thud and set the briefcase on a chair, then tossed the Federal Express envelope across the table in Ben’s direction. “Here,” he said, “this just came for you.”
Ben pulled it in to get a better look at the label. “It’s from Fahey,” he said. “I wonder what she wants now?” He ripped the package open and pulled out a stack of documents about half an inch thick. Ben looked quickly at the top document. “Fuck,” he said aloud. “Fahey has an emergency motion set for tomorrow morning. Filed under seal.” Ben read a little further. After a few seconds, he stood, still holding the documents. “Fuck,” he said again, this time in a slow, mournful tone.
“What?” Mark asked. Ben ignored him and kept reading. Then he looked at the next document and sighed. “What? What is it?” Mark asked again. Ben ignored him and kept reading. He looked to the end of the motion to find the prayer for relief, then scanned the attached exhibits. “Are you going to tell me what it is?” Mark asked, exasperated.
Ben paged through a brief and cases attached to the motion before tossing the whole pile back on the table. He looked up at Mark. His face was a chalky white. Mark had never seen him like this before. “What is it?” Mark asked again in a low voice.
Ben paused and took a deep breath before saying, “A paternity test. Bridget Fahey wants a paternity test.” Ben’s words sucked all the oxygen from the room and Mark flopped down in a chair still staring at Ben, but saying nothing. Ben returned Mark’s gaze and looked for the answers to the many questions spinning through his brain at that moment, yet he could find only more questions. “She wants to do paternity and DNA tests,” Ben said after a long pause, “on both Megan and Anthony.”
Mark whistled. “That certainly puts a new spin on things, doesn’t it?
“Yeah,” Ben replied, “it sure does.”
“Do you really think he could be Greenfield’s kid?” Mark asked.
Ben shrugged. “I hope not.”
“To tell you the truth,” Mark said, “the thought of them sleeping together had occurred to me. I mean, that seemed to be Greenfield’s m.o. Admit it, you’d thought of it too.”
Ben shook his head. “No, not really. Sure, it may have crossed my mind briefly, but I never really took that as a serious possibility. I know the people involved. I mean, I was around at the time. I would have picked up on it. It’s really kind of hard to imagine.” He paused. “Maybe I didn’t want to imagine it.”
“You know Fahey just didn’t make this up out of nothing,” Mark said. “She knows as well as we do that if she dropped this bomb and didn’t have anything to back it up that Wilson would go nuts.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, he would.” Ben thought for a minute. “I’ve gotta get her out here and get to the bottom of this right away.”
“Good idea,” Mark said.
Ben grabbed the phone and dialed Meg’s number. On the fifth ring, he said to Mark, “She’s not picking up. Where the fuck could she be? She’s under house arrest for Chrissakes. She’s wearing an ankle monitor.”
“Maybe she’s just in the shower or something,” Mark said.
“Fuck,” Ben said. “She better be.” He slammed the phone down holding on to the receiver. He picked it up again and dialed Fran’s number. “Fran, I need you to tell me the truth, no bullshit,” he said when she came on.
“Okay,” she answered tentatively.
“I want to know whether Megan slept with Daniel Greenfield.” A long pause answered his question. “Fuck,” he said again.
“Ben, I’m not really comfortable talking about this,” Fran said. “You need to talk to Meg about it.”
“Talk to Meg about it?” he said. “I shouldn’t be finding this out in a Court document.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“They want to do a fucking paternity test and a DNA test. On both Meg and A.J.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh no is right. And I’ve got a client who won’t even tell me the truth. Tell you what Fran, I don’t want to put you on the spot, but this is how it’s going to be. I’m going to give her one last chance to come clean and then you’re going to tell me everything you know.”
“But B
en …”
“But Ben nothing. Do you want to see her in the penitentiary for the next thirty years?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then I’m going to talk to her and if I need you to, you’re going to tell me everything. Got it?”
“I guess so.”
He signed off still seething. After he hung up with Fran, Ben tried Meg again. This time she answered. “I need you to get out here to my office as soon as possible,” Ben said.
“Why? What is it?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“I was going …”
“I don’t care what you were going to do,” Ben interrupted. “I need you to get out here as soon as possible. I’ll call Nelson and set it up. We need to talk. It’s important. I’ll give you an hour.”
Ben gave her directions to the office and she arrived about an hour and fifteen minutes later. Ben and Mark were in the garage and saw her pull around and park in the back. “Why don’t you go into the kitchen,” Ben said to Mark. “I’ll talk to her alone.” Ben unlocked the outside door to the garage and held it open as Meg approached from the parking lot. If she didn’t know already from the telephone call, Meg could see right away that something was very wrong.
“What’s the matter?” she asked before even taking off her coat.
“Sit down,” he said.
“Ben, what is it?” She sat down and he handed her the Court filings he received from Bridget Fahey. A moment later, she gasped and a hand went to her mouth and tears welled up in her eyes. She closed them in a vain effort to make everything go away. She laid the motion back down on the table without finishing it.
Ben climbed into one of the barber’s chairs and sat there watching her for a couple of minutes saying nothing. Finally, he said, “Meg, you know crying isn’t going to do you any good. I’m not even sure it’s going to make you feel better.” His voice held no trace of sympathy and the coldness of his tone made her look up at him. “I think it’s time you leveled with me,” he said slowly. “Now that we know what the stakes are, at least in the short term, it’s time you told me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You’ve been bullshitting me up until now.”
Meg shook her head. “No, that’s not true,” she said her voice cracking and tears streaming down her face.
Ben seemed to be looking through her, not at her. Ben gestured at the documents on the table. “Why don’t you tell me all about this,” he said.
She shook her head again. “There’s nothing to tell. I don’t know anything about it.”
Ben closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Megan, don’t lie to me. We’ve known each other much too long for that. I’m not just your friend, I’m your lawyer. You have to tell me the truth and tell me now. I don’t trust Bridget Fahey, but I know she’s way too smart to make this kind of stuff up without some evidence to back her up. Now tell me the truth. How and when did your relationship with Professor Greenfield begin?”
She looked deep into his eyes and found a hardness there that she’d never seen before, even when he’d been grilling her about her husband. She recognized that this was something he wouldn’t let go of. Then she gave in to the inevitability of it. She tried to gather her thoughts. “I don’t know quite where to begin.”
“Just start by telling me when your relationship became more than just professor and student.”
“Okay,” she said. “I guess it started second year.”
“You mean our second year of law school?”
“Yes,” she said and Ben sighed. “I ran into Daniel while I was out getting lunch one day and we sat down and had a sandwich together. It all seemed innocent enough. I’d been fighting with Joe and we got to talking about our respective spouses and it seemed like we both needed to just let off some steam.”
“Go on,” Ben said.
Meg spent the next half hour or so telling Ben the story of their relationship from its beginning over that fateful lunch to its end a few months later. “We mostly just talked,” she said under Ben’s withering gaze. “He was a very good listener. But yes, we eventually started sleeping together.” Ben realized how difficult it was for her to discuss these things and despite his anger, he tried not to make it harder than it needed to be. He looked at the ground. “The sex was kind of, well, secondary, if you can believe that. Joe and I weren’t sleeping together very often and Daniel and Sylvia weren’t doing it very much either according to Daniel and eventually we just sort of started.” Ben continued to look down at his shoes. She paused, gathering herself to continue with the story. “We didn’t sleep together very often or for very long for that matter. We probably slept together for the first time during the spring of second year and broke it off all together by the beginning of third year, right around Labor Day when we were back in school.”
“When was Anthony born, Meg? July wasn’t it?”
“Yes, July 11th.”
“If you stopped sleeping with Greenfield in early September,” Ben said doing the math, “that’s cutting it kind of close, don’t you think?”
“No, it’s not,” Meg said emphatically. Now it was Ben who didn’t want to meet her eye. He looked up to find her staring directly at him. “Ben, you’ve got to believe me,” she said. “Daniel Greenfield is not Anthony’s father. He absolutely positively is not.”
Ben wanted to believe her. “How do you know?”
“I just know. I know when he was conceived.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just know, that’s all. Women tend to know these things. He was conceived on a long weekend in Florida in October.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “Let’s assume what you’re saying is true. This still isn’t going to look good and it’s going to be mighty embarrassing for everyone involved, particularly you, your husband and your son.” He paused again. “Does Joe know anything about this?” he finally asked breaking the silence.
“Yes, well, no not directly, but he knows there was someone for a time back then.”
“Is there any way he could have found out?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.”
“He’s not going to like hearing about this, you can bet on that.”
“No, but it was a long time ago.”
“But it will be embarrassing and humiliating for him. Just like it would have been if he’d found out in the first place.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying maybe he did find out in the first place. Or maybe he found out recently.”
“You’re not suggesting that Joe had anything to do with Daniel’s death, are you?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just raising logical inferences. The press is going to have a field day with this when it gets out.”
“Why does it have to get out?” Meg asked. She pointed to the papers on the table. “This is filed under seal.”
“That’s all well and good, but you know in a case like this, there are no secrets. Obviously, we’re not going to tell, but do you think you can trust Bridget Fahey? Of course not. Someone’s going to find out sooner or later, probably sooner. That’s assuming somebody in the media doesn’t already know about it.”
“We have to protect Anthony,” Meg said.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do that,” Ben replied. “It’s going to come out eventually. The best thing we can hope for is that they do the test and your son is Joe’s like you say he is.”
“We can’t let them do the test,” Meg said frantically. She gave him a pleading look.
“Why not? The best defense we have is that he’s not the father. Besides, I don’t know how we can prevent the Judge from granting this motion. What better motive is there than killing a man who just finds out that your child is his? That’s something worth killing for, don’t you think? At least I might think that way if I were sitting
on a jury. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. We’ve been wondering all along what the motive was for Greenfield’s murder and now Bridget Fahey has tossed a perfect motive right in our laps. Now, you say that Anthony is not Greenfield’s son and that you didn’t kill him and I believe you, but we have to kill this thing once and for all and the only way to do that is to take the test and prove that the child is your husband’s and not Daniel Greenfield’s.”
Ben scratched his head thinking and looked at her for a minute. “You’re going to have to reconcile yourself to the idea that they’re going to make you take these tests. Let’s get back to your relationship with Greenfield for a minute. How did it end?”
“He broke it off,” Meg said. Ben raised his eyebrows. “We didn’t see each other much over that summer,” Meg continued, “and I had a feeling at the time that he’d found somebody else and had more or less lost interest in me, at least from a sexual standpoint. We still talked after that, but not that often. It was really all over in just a few months.”
“He found out you were pregnant, didn’t he?”
“Well, of course. After all, I was still in school. I couldn’t very well hide it.”
“Did he ever question whether he was the father?”
“No, he never did. He knew he wasn’t. He knew he couldn’t be.”
Ben got up from the barber’s chair and slowly paced around the garage. He stopped in front of the door and peered out into the parking lot. Without turning, he asked her. “When did you last see him?”
“I don’t know,” she said haltingly. “It’s been a long time, years probably.”
“Years?” Ben said. “You know, Megan, there are phone records and witnesses and even security cameras.” He turned and faced her again. “So, I’ll ask you again. When did you last see him?”
Final Exam: A Legal Thriller Page 22