The Strategist

by John Hardy Bell

  “Do you really?”

  “Since you’ve made it clear that you’re not going to do the right thing, and since both of us are so pressed for time, I’m only going to say one more thing.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out another flash disk, and threw it to Richmond. This time he caught it. “That one is for your wife. Give her my regards.”

  Without saying another word, Camille stormed out of the lobby and through the front door. She made it as far as the sidewalk before she doubled over in tears. Her breaths were coming faster than she could control them and she began to hyperventilate. A teenage boy in a Chicago White Sox baseball cap and sagging blue jeans looked at Camille with surprising concern and slowly began to walk toward her. But before he could reach her, she made it to her car, opened the door, and hurled herself inside. Her breathing still out of control, Camille scanned the inside of the car until she found a plastic 7-Eleven bag in the backseat. She put it up to her mouth and began taking long, slow pulls. After a few seconds her breathing finally slowed down and she lowered the bag.

  Her father was right. Pursing Richmond now was more than she could handle. Every second she was in his presence felt like an eternity. All she could see when she looked in his face was Julia. No matter how inexplicable her reasons may have been, Julia loved him. And she was blinded by that love to the point that it got her killed. She had literally given up everything for him: her career, her happiness, her family, her friendships, and ultimately her self-respect. As Camille stood in the presence of that weasel of a human being, she not only saw the man who ended Julia’s life, she saw the man who ruined any chance that Julia had of being happy while she was still alive. And that, above everything else that had happened today, was the straw that finally broke her.

  She furiously wiped the tears from her eyes, but they kept coming. Sickened by the thought that Richmond could be watching, she tried to start the car to drive away, but her trembling hand could not line the key up with the ignition. So she sat back in the seat and kept her mind and body as still as possible. After a few minutes, the flood of emotions that had nearly submerged her finally began to recede. The heaviness in her chest was gone, the keys in her hand were steady, and the fog that had shrouded her mind was starting to clear. When she looked back at Richmond’s building, he wasn’t standing in the doorway staring at her like she had feared and she breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  Camille’s primary purpose in coming here was to rattle him. She knew he wouldn’t tearfully confess or explode with self-righteous rage. Guilty people rarely did either. What they do is exactly what Richmond did: keep calm until the storm appeared to pass. Richmond kept cool as long as he could, but with Camille’s last words to him, he was well aware that the storm had yet to pass. That meant he was undoubtedly plotting his next move.

  But so was Camille.

  The plan was less than ideal, and the results could be worse than anything she had currently imagined. But Elliott Richmond had forced her hand, as had Detective Graham before him. She only had one card left to play, and despite the devastation that could be left in its wake, she had to play it.

  With her plan and method of execution firmly in mind, Camille pulled out her cell phone. Laurence Pine answered on the second ring.

  “I need to see you right away,” Camille said without so much as a hello. “Are you available?”

  Pine hesitated before answering. “Sure. Is something wrong?”

  “Very much so.”

  “What is it?”

  She took a breath and held it in. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Solomon had considered shooting Camille Grisham the second she walked out of Richmond’s office. She was well within range of his PSG-1 automatic rifle, and he could have easily gotten off two clean rounds before she even realized that she was hit by the first. But that was the riskiest of propositions, even in a neighborhood where drive-by shootings were a weekly occurrence. So he waited patiently while she composed herself enough to drive away.

  As he had done with Julia Leeds so many times before, Solomon followed at what he considered to be a safe distance. But unlike Julia, there would be no on-going surveillance. There would be no planning. There would be no waiting.

  Camille showing up at Richmond’s campaign headquarters only confirmed what Solomon already knew: she not only had the disk but had every intention of releasing the information on it. And since going to the police didn’t work, she came to Richmond in the hopes of blackmailing him into some made-for-TV confession.

  Solomon didn’t know him very well, but he was convinced that Richmond would not have folded, even under that kind of pressure. That meant Camille would have to resort to something else. He couldn’t even wager a guess as to what that something else would be. But he also knew it didn’t matter. The end was close. By noon tomorrow, Camille Grisham would be dead, the disk and any copies she had would be in Richmond’s possession, the mayor would still be firmly ahead in the polls, and Solomon would find himself considerably richer.

  But there was a lot to do between now and then. Not only did he have to wait for the right opportunity to move on the agent, but he had to do it in such a way that wouldn’t bring suspicion on Richmond, and ultimately himself. That would take patience and planning, and unfortunately he didn’t have the luxury of either. He would have to improvise.

  When Camille pulled up to a meter in front of the Wells Fargo building, the same building he had trailed her best friend to less than a week earlier, Solomon decided not to follow. Because he hadn’t gotten to Camille sooner, he realized that certain wheels had already been set in motion and he was probably too late to stop them. For all he knew she could have been on her way to the attorney general’s office with the disk in her hand and the destruction of Richmond’s life in her heart. It was a chance he had to take. Solomon may have been hell-bent on finishing the job, but he wasn’t willing to do so at the expense of his own well-being. He knew that making a move now would be based more on impulse than common sense. In Solomon’s experience, acting on impulse led to mistakes. Mistakes led to being caught.

  So he let her go, secure in the knowledge that he would see her again very soon. It ultimately didn’t matter whom she talked to in the interim or what she told them. If Solomon had his way, and he was confident he would, Camille wouldn’t live long enough to see the outcome.

  CHAPTER 37

  Laurence Pine’s assistant stood up the instant she saw Camille approaching her desk. “Mr. Pine is waiting for you,” she said with an appropriate sense of urgency. “Right this way.”

  Camille nodded and followed her through the same marble-floored corridor that had first led her Pine’s office suite only a few hours earlier.

  His office door was ajar. Through the sliver of an opening, Camille could see him seated behind his desk scrolling through an electronic tablet. Though Camille didn’t know him well enough to distinguish one mood from another, she guessed that he was on edge. After a gentle knock, the receptionist opened the door.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Pine. Camille Grisham is here.”

  Pine had stood up and walked around his desk before Camille could even step through the door. “Come in Camille,” he said as he clipped the top button of his suit jacket. Instead of the handshake that Camille was expecting, he pulled out the chair in front of his desk. “Please sit.”

  “Will there be anything else?” Pine’s young receptionist then asked.

  “No calls please. Regardless of who it is,” Pine directed.

  She nodded, flashed a quick smile and quietly let herself out.

  Camille waited until she heard the door close before speaking. “Thank you for accommodating me on such short notice.”

  Pine slipped on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses over eyes that had already worn the strain of a long day. “The call sounded rather urgent. And considering the circumstances surrounding our first meeting, I wasn’t about to make you wait.”

  �
�I really appreciate that. Because the truth is this can’t wait.”

  Pine leaned forward in his chair. “I’m all ears.”

  “I need to know about Julia’s professional life.”

  “What would you like to know specifically?”

  “Anything you can tell me about what she did at Brown, Wallace, and Epstein, in particular any connection that either she or her firm had to the Schumann Investment Group, Springwell Technologies or Elliott Richmond.”

  Pine seemed to be at an immediate loss for words.

  “Mr. Pine?”

  He took off his glasses and set them down on his desk. “May I ask why you want to know?”

  “The key that Julia left for me was for a safe deposit box. Inside that box was a flash disk and a corresponding list of written instructions. She mentioned your name in reference to an Excel spreadsheet titled ‘Schumann-Springwell’. She said that you would know what to do with it.”

  “Did you open the spreadsheet?”

  “It was filled with percentages, financial figures, and pie charts that meant absolutely nothing to me. Same with the other nine hundred or so files that were on the disk.”

  “Nine hundred? Jesus, what was she planning on doing with all of that?”

  “That’s what I came here to find out.”

  “I’m sorry that you came all the way back here in search of answers, Ms. Grisham. But I’m afraid I don’t know nearly as much as you think I do.”

  Camille reached into her coat pocket, pulled out Julia’s note, and handed it to Pine.

  After reaching for his glasses, he unfolded the note and began silently reading. It wasn’t long before he started shaking his head. “My God,” he muttered without looking up.

  “Now do you understand why I came here?”

  Once Pine finished the note, he handed it back to Camille. He was still shaking his head. “What does all this mean?”

  “I already told you, I’m not familiar with–”

  “Not the files. The fact that she went through the trouble of transferring them to a disk and locking that disk in a safe deposit box less than a day before she was murdered. If I had asked myself that question before now, I would have assumed that it was a crazy coincidence. But now…”

  “Coincidence is officially off the table,” Camille declared.

  Pine swallowed hard.

  “I know you were her personal lawyer. But you also said that the two of you were good friends. I’m sure she confided in you, especially about things related to a profession you were both in. Anything you can offer will help.” Camille could feel the desperation growing in her voice, despite a concerted effort to maintain her composure. “Please.”

  Pine sat back in his seat, his eyes drifting out the large window. “I need to preface this by saying that she never discussed the details of her work with the Schumann Investment Group or Springwell Technologies. The confidentiality agreement she was most certainly made to sign was part of the reason. My own survival instinct was the other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I rarely asked Julia about the details of her work because she was involved in things I wanted to know nothing about. The less I knew, the less I had to lie about if such a time ever came. Plausible deniability. It’s the standard-bearer for our profession.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you do know, beginning with her work for Elliott Richmond.”

  “The story begins and ends with her work for Elliott Richmond. Julia had been with Brown and Wallace for a total of ten years. Eight of those years were spent as an associate. The partners always felt like she had the potential, but her inability to land money-making clients held her back. It got to the point two years ago where she feared the firm would let her go altogether. Then she landed the account that changed everything for her.”

  “Schumann Investment Group,” Camille said.

  Pine nodded. “During that time Schumann was exploring the possibility of branching out into the home mortgage market, and Julia was brought in to do some side consulting work. Apparently they were so impressed with that work that they hired her on as full time counsel. It was a major coup for Brown and Wallace, and they rewarded Julia with a junior partnership six months later.”

  Camille smiled as she remembered the phone call she received from Julia about her promotion. Saddened that she wasn’t able to celebrate the momentous occasion with her best friend, Julia decided that she would bring the celebration to her. Camille called her bluff, then had to recant eight hours later when Julia called her again, this time from Dulles Airport. That four-day celebration turned out to be the last extended time that Camille would spend with her. It was also probably the last time that Julia was genuinely happy.

  Pine continued. “Things seemed to be good for a while, then Julia began dropping subtle hints that issues were starting to arise.”

  “What kinds of issues?”

  “Complaints about the people she worked for. Before Schumann, the only thing Julia ever complained about in relation to her job was not making enough money. But she knew that was a function of her lack of rainmaking ability and took full responsibility for it. Her gripes were never personal though. She respected the firm and everyone associated with it. Once Elliott Richmond came on the scene, things changed. All I heard about was how difficult he could be to work with, how unethical the Schumann management as a whole was, and how she wished she had never accepted the junior partner position.”

  Camille nodded. “That was the same thing she said to me. When I told her she should just leave and go do something else, she told me that it was too late. I could never get her to elaborate on exactly what that meant.”

  Pine chuckled nervously. “The explanation she gave me was that by signing the contract with Schumann and accepting junior partnership, she had essentially sold her soul. She enjoyed the personal spoils. But those spoils came with a price.”

  “Which was?”

  “Blind loyalty to the firm and her client. Julia had a questioning nature. If she didn’t understand something, she’d ask questions about it until she did. If she didn’t like something, she spoke up about it. When you’re an up-and-coming associate, that kind of mentality is seen as a positive. But once you reach a certain level, asking too many questions can be seen as rocking the boat, upsetting the balance. You’re encouraged to toe the line, to maintain the status quo. There’s simply too much at stake to do otherwise. But it wasn’t in Julia’s nature to adhere to that kind of philosophy. So when she came across certain aspects of Schumann’s business practices that she deemed to be questionable, she took her concerns to the partners at her firm. But she was met with nothing but resistance – essentially told that the firm’s bottom lines were more important than her, quote, theories. In a nutshell, she was told to shut up and play along, or risk getting moved along – right out of the firm.”

  “What did she discover about Schumann’s business practices that had her so concerned?”

  “She didn’t offer a ton of specifics, and I didn’t ask. But what she did tell me was that Schumann was, in legal terms, a subsidiary of a larger company that was unknown to the general public. In real world terms, Schumann was nothing more than a public front for the work that this other company was actually doing behind the scenes.”

  “And what is the name of this company?”

  Pine hesitated before answering. “Horis and Roth Limited.”

  Camille shrugged her shoulders.

  “No one else seems to be familiar with them either,” Pine responded. “I did some research of my own and couldn’t come up with anything. But Julia was apparently very familiar with them. According to her, Horis and Roth, under Elliott Richmond’s directive, was secretly financing a project that was publicly sponsored by Denver County Clerk and Recorder’s office. Julia referred to it as the Ace Project. It sought to incorporate social media into the voting process by allowing people to cast votes through text message, email, and Facebook-style so
cial media. Similar projects had been implemented in other states with varying degrees of success. But Colorado’s would be the largest such project to date, and with the current senate race projected to bring out the largest non-presidential year turnout in the history of the state, it would be the perfect test case. Julia didn’t go into any specifics about her role, if any, in the project, the connection between Horis and Roth and Springwell Technologies, or the role that the Denver County Clerk played in the project. But she did tell me that there came a point where she no longer wanted anything to do with it.”

  “And she told her partners at the firm all of this?”

  “According to her, she told them everything. But as I said, she was completely stonewalled. Before her death, Julia was seriously contemplating leaving the firm, even though doing so would be career suicide. Brown and Wallace’s reach is very far, and given the circumstances of her departure, she would be hard-pressed to find a comparable firm willing to take her on, even as a bargain-basement associate. She knew this, and that’s why expressed so much regret about signing on as partner. Once you’re inside a circle like that, it’s very difficult to get out of it.”

  “The existence of the disk meant that she was trying,” Camille insisted.

  “I’d say she was too. Unfortunately, someone made sure she didn’t get the chance.”

  Camille shook Elliott Richmond’s face out of her mind. “Even though you didn’t want to talk about the specifics of Julia’s work, I’m sure you formed your own opinions as to what was going on.”

  “In my opinion, uninformed as it may be, I think this whole thing centers on Elliott Richmond, his ties to Horis and Roth, and his attempts to influence and manipulate the Springwell project. He certainly had the pull to do so. And everyone knows he had the motivation. I think that Julia and Richmond were closer than she let on, and through her insider status she learned things about the project and its ultimate intent. She may have gone along for the sake of getting along at first, but Julia’s moral compass eventually steered her back in the right direction. Unfortunately, her moral code meant nothing to the people she was dealing with.”