The Killdeer Connection

by Tom Swyers

  TWO

  It took David only a few minutes to get home from Harold’s apartment. It took all but ten minutes or less to get anywhere within Indigo Valley, a suburban town of about 20,000 people in upstate New York. When he rolled into the driveway, he saw Annie’s car, though he didn’t want to see her just yet. If he did, she’d know something was wrong immediately, just by the look on his face. After twenty-five years of marriage, her radar was that good. And then he’d have to tell her about Harold’s death, something he wasn’t prepared to do until he’d calmed down, gotten his thoughts together, and figured out a strategy to soften the blow. David already suspected who might have killed Harold. But he also knew that Annie would find his theory far-fetched, maybe crazy. He didn’t feel like using what little energy he had to try to convince her that his thinking had merit.

  She heard the squeaky Mustang door close and greeted David at the side door to the red Cape.

  “Hi, sweet,” she said with a shiver.

  “Hey, Annie,” he said as he walked through the door and gave her a flyby kiss and headed for the kitchen. Her lips were cool.

  “David, we need to talk.”

  Did she hear about Harold already? Must have been Elle who told her. Elle was Annie’s good friend. She was also Pete’s wife and the Indigo Valley police dispatcher.

  “Where’s Christy?”

  “He’s out on the ambulance.” Christy was doing ride-alongs with a local ambulance squad as a volunteer.

  “What’s . . . on your mind?”

  “Come into the living room, and sit down on the love seat with me.”

  Oh, no, not the love seat. The love seat was reserved for anything but love, usually serious adult conversations that Annie wanted. “Before you say anything,” David said, “let me try and explain . . .”

  She was already heading for the living room. “David, please come and sit next to me.”

  David followed with his head hanging down like a bad dog. She hadn’t wanted him involved with the Benjamin Prior case in the first place. She knew if it weren’t for the Prior case, David wouldn’t know Harold Salar. Annie sat down and crossed one leg over the other in one gracious, yogalike move. David plopped down next to her and looked at her chocolate-brown eyes. They were red and moist; she had been crying.

  “My boss called this afternoon. They . . . laid me off.”

  On the one hand, David felt relieved for a second that the conversation didn’t appear to be about Harold. On the other hand, this news shocked him. For as long as they had been married, Annie had been doing corporate human-resources work for LSB, Inc., a global oil company. She had telecommuted for the last ten years. There must have been 10,000 people from all over the world who had passed through Annie’s first-floor home office through telephone conferences that Annie facilitated as part of her job. David would often hear the voices from foreign lands from his basement office when Annie was using the speakerphone. He joked that their home had more international traffic than the United Nations on any given day. David knew Annie was a great employee because he saw her in action, day in and day out. He saw her glowing performance appraisals. He was jealous of her in a way. She was admired by hundreds at her company, and he could hear that open admiration on the speakerphone whenever he went up to the kitchen.

  David worked alone trying to meet clients’ demands. He received compliments for his work, but they were brief and fleeting, and Annie never heard them except when David mentioned them. David sometimes felt like his regular cheering section was just Annie, Christy, and their two cats, but only when they were hungry.

  “Oh, my God. You’ve got to be kidding me. You just met with your boss last week for an hour to discuss your goals for the coming reorganization.” It was the fifth corporate makeover and fifth boss in as many years.

  “They told him he had to lose some head count at the end of the week.”

  “I don’t understand. They just beat earnings estimates two weeks ago.”

  “Evidently, they’re not making enough money.”

  “How many billions is enough these days? They’ve raised the dividend and spent money on share buybacks, but you haven’t gotten a raise in five years. You saved the company more than six hundred thousand last year. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “Apparently not. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. What did the CEO make these past few years?”

  “Something over twenty-five million. I think.”

  “For doing what? Why is he making out like a bandit?”

  “They say he’s restructured the company, made it stronger.”

  “He came in and blamed the last CEO. Raked him over the coals. Then when earnings didn’t improve, he figured it was time to reorganize, rake the employees over the coals. Any monkey can prop up the stock price by cutting jobs and benefits, then shipping jobs to some third-world country.”

  “Funny you say that. My boss said they’re outsourcing much of the human-resources department to India.”

  “As far as I know, your employees are mostly here in this country. Our laws and customs are not well-known in India.”

  “They’ll pay the people there less to do our jobs.”

  “Right, they can’t measure the real cost of their outsourcing, and so they don’t care because it won’t show up in a measurable way on their bottom line. How do you measure mistakes, misunderstandings, and lower morale? Nobody cares about unmeasurable items, especially not Wall Street. They see the stock price go up, and that’s all they care about. Until, of course, one day when the stock price gets creamed because Wall Street figures out that the emperor has no clothes and that the CEO has sacrificed the business to line his pockets. Then this guy is out the door—laughing all the way to the bank—while looking for a new job, new prey. Then the next guy comes in and blames the old guy, and the cycle repeats itself.”

  Annie stared at the floor; her sandy-blonde, shoulder-length hair was covering her face. David had made similar speeches to her before. The words were different, but the gist was the same. Like any good spouse, she’d usually listen attentively, maybe try to engage him. But not today. “I just don’t know why they chose me. They wanted us to be enterprise contributors, to help other departments. I did exactly that.”

  “Your boss didn’t care about what you brought to the other departments. He cared only about his own bottom line, and he didn’t lose so much by letting you go because you were helping others. By helping out, you probably hurt yourself.”

  Annie looked up, pushing her hair back. “I’m so sorry . . . I feel like I let you down.”

  David put his index finger under her chin and gently held her head so that her eyes met his. “This had nothing to do with you. Your number came up. You survived three years of layoffs, and it was simply your turn.” He kissed her softly on the lips. Annie managed a smile.

  David realized that he had to talk about Harold’s death right there and then. It might not have been the best moment, but if he didn’t mention it, she was going to find out about it within hours. News like this traveled fast in Indigo Valley. Better it came from him than someone else.

  “Honey, I’m afraid I have some bad news, too.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s about Dr. Harold Salar.”

  “What about him? Is he okay?”

  “I’m afraid he’s . . . dead.”

  “Oh, no.” She looked down again and began sobbing. “That’s awful.” David held her close and stroked her hair. “He was such a nice man,” she said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “The police think he was killed.”

  Annie stopped sobbing and looked deep into David’s eyes. “Who would want to kill Harold?”

  “I’m afraid it might have to do with the Prior case.” Ben Prior was a thirty-five-year-old dockworker who had been burned when the fitting came loose on a hose he was using to offload
a railcar full of crude oil onto a barge in Albany. It had sprayed him, and then somehow a spark lit him up like a human torch, causing second- and third-degree burns all over his body. David had sued the Helmsley Oil Company and two railroad companies on Prior’s behalf.

  She got up and moved to a stuffed chair she had inherited from her immigrant grandfather, a strong-willed man who had started his own electrical-supply store and become very successful. “I told you not to take that case.” Annie hadn’t liked that it was a contingency-fee case, and David would only be paid if he won or settled the case. She preferred the steady income of transactional law like drafting wills or doing real-estate closings, much like selling lightbulbs had been a steady business for her grandfather and then her father.

  David countered with a move to the Chippendale armchair with its high, carved-wood back and lion’s paw feet. He’d inherited it from his grandfather, a marketing man and artist in his spare time. It was otherwise known as the “king’s chair” because it resembled a throne. David ruled his imaginary monarchy from it. “I felt it was the right thing to do under the circumstances.”

  “Times have certainly changed, David.”

  David knew she was right. He had taken the case because Dr. Harold Salar was his expert witness. Salar had earned his PhD in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He was the recognized world authority on petroleum chemistry and had been an expert witness for Big Oil, even after his retirement to Indigo Valley. After Salar had learned from the locals that David was Prior’s lawyer, Salar had contacted him and volunteered to be his expert witness in any lawsuit. Big Oil’s big expert had flipped sides, and that was all David needed to hear for him to pursue the case. That also was the only thing that held Annie in check on the topic. Now that Harold was dead, David was without an expert witness and with a trial looming.

  “Yeah, times have changed for both of us,” David said.

  “I feel so bad for Harold. He was such a nice man. Any idea who could have done this to him?”

  “Yeah, I have a suspicion.” He had come up with a theory on the car ride home from Harold’s apartment.

  “What does Harold’s death have to do with the Ben Prior case?”

  “I have a hunch, that’s all.” David didn’t want to share his suspicions with Annie before confirming them. His theory would scare her. More than that, if she discovered that he had fronted expenses on the case by taking on more debt without consulting her, he might end up in worse shape than poor Ben Prior. She didn’t need any more bad news on her plate, and he didn’t need a fight.

  On the other side of the house, they heard the side door open.

  “Christy, is that you?” Annie asked.

  “Yeah, Mom, it’s me.”

  Annie whispered to David, “Not a word about this to Christy.”

  “About what?” David whispered back. “Your layoff or Harold?”

  “Both.”

  David's eyes rolled because he knew the news of Harold’s death would find Christy soon enough.

  “Why are you guys whispering?” Christy asked as he walked toward the living room.

  “It’s what parents do,” David said.

  Christy was now standing in the living-room entranceway, leaning against the molding. He was almost as tall as his old man, a fact that he reveled in pointing out to David. “I heard,” Christy said, his voice cracking. “I heard about Mr. Salar through the grapevine while I was on a call. What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “The police suspect foul play.”

  Christy thought for a second. “But Mr. Salar was such a good man. I mean, he was our scorekeeper, a coach, too, and he didn’t even have a kid on the team. Why would anyone want to kill him?”

  Annie shook her head.

  “Fair question, Christy,” David said. “I’m afraid we don’t have any answers at this point.”

  Christy pulled up a chair, and all three of them sat there silently recalling their memories of Harold, trying to imagine what might have happened to him.

  None of them could imagine the profound impact his death would have on their own lives. Harold’s passing had set into motion a series of events that would haunt the family forever.

  THREE

  Several days later, David entered the county surrogate clerk’s office in Mohawk City to file Harold’s will for probate. The will named David as executor and listed a variety of charities as beneficiaries, most notably the Diocese of Albany Catholic Schools. When David had asked Harold about his interest in the diocese, he’d shrugged and told David it seemed like a good organization that helped kids.

  Standing behind the counter stood Martha, the chief clerk. David had known her since childhood, and to this day, he regretted the beginning of their relationship. If it wasn’t bad enough to have the name of Martha alone, her parents made the mistake of pairing it with Washington, their last name. In third grade, David had been one of the many boys who ran all over the playground yelling, “Martha Washington! Martha Washington? How’s George?” By the seventh grade, when Martha had ballooned to a hefty weight, the boys took pleasure in emphasizing the last syllable of her surname when she walked down the hall. David didn’t take part in that but instead remained silent when his friends did. At their ten-year high-school reunion, David sought her out to apologize for his behavior. She was gracious and said she didn’t remember him calling out her name, but she took some pleasure in needling David five years later, after she’d become chief clerk.

  “Good morning, Martha. How are you?”

  She smiled and said what she always said to David’s open-ended greeting. “To quote Martha Washington, ‘I live a very dull life here. Indeed, I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else.’”

  David smiled back and nodded. Martha had lost a great deal of weight, probably because she was a single mother who had to raise three children without any child support. David had heard about her struggles through the lawyer grapevine. But she didn’t show any stress during working hours. Every day she put on the same sweet perfume and tried to look her best. Everyone in the city knew she wore consignment-store suits, but they all marveled at how new they looked.

  “What brings you here today, David?”

  “I’m afraid I’m here on business, Martha. I need to file a probate petition.”

  “Who’s the decedent?”

  “Harold Salar. Did you hear about his death?”

  Martha’s face turned grim. “Yes, I read about it in the paper the other day. What a shame. But I’m confused. Your friend Jim Fletcher filed a probate petition a few days ago for Salar.”

  David’s jaw dropped for a second. “You’re busting on me, right?”

  Martha shook her head. “Nothing would please me more than to say that I was, but I’m dead serious . . . pun unintended.”

  David stood there looking around the office while his mind raced. The probate office’s stacks of papers and boxes made him feel like he was back in Salar’s apartment again. That vision had haunted him the past few nights in his sleep—a dead Salar glaring down at David while he’d sat on the floor.

  His thoughts turned to Jim. They had been friends since law school. He was a solo attorney, mainly doing white-collar criminal-defense work. What’s Jim doing filing a petition for probate for my close friend and client?

  David perspired as he looked back at Martha. “Do you know when the other will was signed?”

  “I don’t recall the exact date, but I remember it was about a month ago. I’d get you the will, but it’s somewhere in the office being processed.”

  David stood there silently and took a tissue from his pocket to wipe his brow. His will was four months old, so the will Jim filed likely revoked his in the boilerplate language.

  “Do you want me to look for the will or file your petition?” Martha asked.

  “No, I think I’ll pay Jim a personal visit and get this straightened out. Thanks for your help, Martha.”<
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  With that, David headed for the exit and across the street to Jim’s office. Mohawk City was the county seat, and there were many small law offices located around the courthouse. The rent near the courthouse was lower than in the suburbs, since the crime district started just four blocks away. From the street, David spotted a gold-lettered decal on a glass entrance door with Jim’s name on it and walked through the door.

  “Good morning. Is he in?” David asked as he strode right by the receptionist and climbed the stairs two at a time.

  “Yes, but he’s on the phone. Can I—”

  “He’s always on his phone,” he said without looking back.

  David knocked on the door before entering. Jim looked up before returning to texting someone. “Hey, buddy, sit down. I’ve been meaning to call you. I’ll be done in a second.”

  David closed the door behind him. “I’ll bet you have,” he said while sitting down in one of the leather upholstered office chairs that faced Jim. Jim put his cell phone down on the cherry desk and rocked in his high-backed leather swivel.

  “I detect some hostility in your voice.”

  “You should.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You filed a probate petition for the Salar estate. You knew he was my client, and yet you did his will. What gives?”

  “Hold on there, partner. I didn’t know he was your client.”

  “I told you one day after the boys got done playing baseball. Don’t you remember?”

  “You told me he was your expert witness in that oil case you took.”

  “I also mentioned he was my client.”

  “I don’t recall—”

  “Of course you don’t. You were texting while I was talking to you. You and your cell need a separation agreement.”

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway—”

  “It matters to me. The estate was going to charities. I was going to be executor of that will. That’s food out of my family’s mouth. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. Are you pissed about what happened to Stan Moss? Is that what this is all about?” Stan Moss was a client of Jim’s whom David had helped to defend on arson and terrorism charges before having to withdraw. Moss was convicted and serving what amounted to a life sentence.