Black Oil, Red Blood

Chapter 1



The thing about cancer is it's hard to prove somebody gave it to you on purpose, but I can prove it. In fact, I make a living proving it. I sue oil refineries that would rather save a buck than comply with safety regulations designed to do important things like, you know, keep people alive. It’s not unusual for my clients to pass away in the middle of a case, but I’d never had an expert witness turn up dead until today.

My favorite client, Gracie Miller, hurried toward me as I walked up the stairs to the courthouse. I had hoped to put off talking to her until after I’d spoken to the judge. Her untamed gray hair spiraled out of a would-be bun, curls going in a million different directions.

“Chloe!” she said. “Is it true? Say it ain’t true!”

She didn’t wait for me to answer.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Gracie said, “because I heard it from crazy Mrs. Bagley, and everybody knows she ought to be in a home already. But then I called Mrs. Scott, and sure enough, her husband is out at the crime scene with all the other police, and oh! I’ve lived here for forty years and we ain’t never had a murder!”

That seemed like a pretty big stretch to me, seeing as how we lived in Kettle, Texas, human population: four-thousand; gun population: thirty-four-thousand-three-hundred-fifty six. With all those guns around, there had to have been an incident at some point in the last forty years.

I took Gracie’s arm. She was not going to like hearing that yes, Dr. Schaeffer—her expert witness and the key to winning her case—was indeed dead. He had been scheduled to present critical evidence at a make or break summary judgment hearing twenty-four hours from now. A loss tomorrow would mean the end of our case.

Gracie searched my face and saw the truth before I said a word.

“Oh Lord, a’mighty! What are we gonna do?” she said.

I had a plan, but it was kind of a desperate one—and Gracie didn’t need to know about it, now or ever.

I smiled encouragingly as I carefully omitted the truth. “I’m about to ask Judge Delmont for a continuance. If he says yes, we’ll have enough extra time to find a new witness.”

“Sweet Jesus, Mary, and George W. Bush!” Gracie said. “You know perfectly well he ain’t gonna agree to that! Ever since my husband died, it’s been real lean times. I’m probably gonna lose my house. And I ain’t got all his medical bills paid yet, neither.” Her lip trembled and one big tear welled up and left a streak on her face before it fell to the ground.

Gracie’s husband, Derrick Miller, had died only a month ago from a rare form of leukemia caused by exposure to a toxic chemical called benzene. Derrick had worked his whole adult life in the benzene unit of the PetroPlex oil refinery situated in the middle of town. PetroPlex had never provided Derrick with safety equipment and also had never warned Derrick that benzene would kill him. I was now representing the Millers in a wrongful death suit against the Big Oil industry giant, and tomorrow’s hearing would have been a slam-dunk win if somebody hadn’t offed our expert witness.

“You think it was just a coincidence?” Gracie asked. “Him turning up dead like that the day before our hearing?”

Of course I didn’t think it was a coincidence. The whole situation reeked. If your expert witness dies of a heart attack while surfing in Aruba, that’s life. If he’s murdered the day before he’s set to testify at a hearing that can make or break a case, that’s friggin’ suspicious. But I didn’t see any sense in getting Gracie more worked up than she already was.

“One thing at a time,” I said. Let me go in there and get the judge to move the hearing date back, and we’ll worry about the rest later.”

Like it was going to be that easy.

Gracie nodded. “If anybody can do it, you can. I gotta get back to my cake. I left it in the oven, and the pastor’s wife gets real snarky when I bake ‘em too long. That woman hates a dry cake. It beats all I ever seen.”

“Your cakes are always perfect,” I said.

Gracie beamed. “I got another one mixing up just for you. Strawberry with cream cheese icing—your favorite. You come on by this afternoon and get you a slice, you hear?”

My mouth watered just thinking about it. “That sounds great,” I said, omitting no truth there. I waved goodbye and hurried into the courthouse.





***





Judge Delmont was waiting for me in chambers. When I walked in, he had his arms folded across his chest and a look on his face he reserved for. . . well, me. He didn’t like me too much. I was lucky he’d even agreed to an emergency ex parte conference.

Here went nothing. I mentally willed myself into super-lawyer mode.

We exchanged greetings, and I pulled a motion for continuance out of my briefcase and slid it across his desk.

He took a cursory look and laid it back down. “Look,” he said. “I’d like to help you out, but it ain’t my fault your expert’s dead.”

“Not dead,” I said. “Murdered. There’s a difference.”

Delmont shrugged. “What do you expect me to do about it? I ain’t Jesus. I can’t resurrect him.”

“I just need time to regroup,” I said, pulling some more papers out of my briefcase and sliding them over to the judge. “I already drafted the order for you. All I need is your signature—no miracles required.”

Delmont shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “If you had any evidence to support your claim—“

“I have it. I just need an expert witness to present it, but I can’t find a replacement for Dr. Schaeffer by tomorrow morning.”

“Well,” Delmont said, “If you can get opposing counsel to agree to the extra time, I’ll consider the motion.”

Uh, right. “Buford Buchanan is conveniently out of town, and he is not answering his phone. Besides, you and I both know better than to expect that he would voluntarily agree to something so reasonable.”

Delmont pulled a cigar out of the humidor on his desk and took a long whiff. “Smells good, don’t it?”

He offered it to me. The gesture felt like an executioner handing a condemned prisoner his last cigarette before facing the firing squad.

I shook my head. “I trust your judgment.”

“On the cigar. Just not the case.”

This conversation wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped, and that was saying something, considering I hadn’t hoped for much at all. Everybody around here knew darn well the judge in this town had oil stains on his hands.

I sighed. “I’d like to hear your reasoning as to why you think a continuance wouldn’t be appropriate in this situation.”

Delmont leaned back in his chair and propped his custom-made snakeskin boots on his desk, which was decorated with a humidor, an ash tray (full), a cactus, and a jackalope head. No pictures of wife or family.

“The case has been on the docket for well over a year. Besides that, I got too many cases against PetroPlex floating around here already.”

“And that ought to tell you something about the kind of business they’re running around here,” I said.

PetroPlex is notorious for flouting safety violations and dumping known carcinogens into the air and water. The EPA has been after them for years, but they don’t care. It’s cheaper to pay the fines than comply with regulations.

“It ain’t their fault there’s lawyers like you slinking around trying to sue ‘em out of existence. They employ more than half the people who live here. If they leave, Kettle dies.”

“If they don’t clean up their act, Kettle dies anyway.”

Delmont rolled his eyes.

Almost nothing makes me madder than an eye roll from a good ol’ boy. I mentally pulled up my “big girl” panties, leaned over his desk and delivered my most intense “I-am-a-damn-good-lawyer-and-you-will-listen-to-me” glare.

“Look,” I said. “Maybe you think cancer is something that happens to other people. Maybe you think you put on a pink ribbon once a year and you’ve done your part to fight the disease. But if you’ve seen cancer—really seen it—you know that all the pink ribbons in the world just aren’t enough.”

Delmont pulled out a match and lit the cigar he’d been holding. Clearly he wasn’t concerned about cancer in the least. “You finished, Miss Taylor?”

I lapsed into a coughing fit as I waved the cigar smoke out of my face. “You know PetroPlex is dangerous,” I said. “Even if you forget the cancer, how about the explosions? How about the toxic clouds?”

“You got an explosion in this case you wanna talk about?”

“Not in this one, but—“

“Stick to this case, why don’t ya?”

I squared my shoulders and relaxed my glare—but only by a little bit. There was no way I was going to let this stuffed shirt redneck pawn intimidate me into backing down. There was too much riding on tomorrow’s hearing to just roll over on it. Not only would Gracie wind up in a world of hurt if we didn’t come out on top of this, but I would probably also lose my job. I’d had a pretty nasty string of highly questionable losses in this courtroom under this judge for more than a year now, which was fast destroying my reputation as a good lawyer. . . not to mention depleting my bank account. Wrongful death attorneys don’t get paid if they don’t win, and I’d been eating nothing but Ramen for weeks.

Meanwhile, I was pretty sure Judge Delmont was living fat and happy off the scraps PetroPlex passed him under the table, but I couldn’t prove it.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s cut to the chase, here. I’m gonna stop pretending like I expect you to be reasonable. So if you wanna stop pretending like anything I have to say matters to you, that’ll be just fine with me.”

Delmont shrugged.

“What are my chances of getting you to sign a continuance?”

“I’d say ‘slim to none,’ but I’d hate to give you any false hope.”

I took a deep breath. What I was about to do was likely to land me in serious trouble if it didn’t come off right. On the other hand, Delmont really didn’t leave me any other choice.

I reached down to my briefcase and lifted out a manila envelope. Slid it slowly across his desk.

Delmont rested his cigar in his ash tray and pulled the envelope toward him. He cracked open the flap and pulled out a series of glossy eight by tens. As he looked at the photos, the lines in his face seemed to deepen.

“You really don’t look good naked,” I said. “And I wonder what your wife would think if she saw you with that blonde?” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “There’s no way those boobs are real, right?”

Delmont shoved the pictures back in the envelope.

My heart felt like a jackhammer inside me. I prayed Delmont couldn’t actually see it pumping. If I showed just one sign of weakness, this whole thing would backfire for sure.

Delmont put his hands on the desk and leaned over it, getting right in my face.

“You think this is a game, Chloe?” He spoke slowly, softly.

“I most certainly do not,” I said. “The question is, do you?”

“I could have you disbarred for this. Throw you in jail.”

“But you won’t.” I tried to put as much meaning behind those words as possible.

Delmont pulled back abruptly. “Where did you get those?”

I had gotten them from Miles, my fabulous paralegal. Where he’d gotten them I didn’t know. Frankly, I had been kind of afraid to ask.

“It doesn’t matter where they came from,” I said. “What matters is the continuance. I expect to see the order signed and filed by eight a.m. tomorrow morning.”

“Or what?” Delmont asked.

“I think you know what.”

Delmont got up from his desk and paced back and forth across his bearskin rug, his fat rolls jiggling with each heavy step. When he turned his back on me, I could almost see his life-sized portrait of Robert E. Lee reflecting off the fresh perspiration on his bald head.

I waited. The courthouse was quiet today. It seemed as though the loudest sound in the room was the sound of my own heartbeat.

“Fine,” he finally said.

Joy welled up inside me, but I didn’t allow it to show.

“But you only get a week.”

And just like that, the joy was gone. “A week! That is a joke! I need six months!”

“You get a week, or I will call your bluff and report you to the bar.”

“What makes you think I’m bluffing?”

“What makes you think I give two pig farts about keeping my wife?”

My jaw dropped open against my will. Seeing as how this was my first attempt at blackmail, I was kind of at a loss. I had never considered the fact that he might not even want to keep his wife.

“Get out,” Delmont said. “And pray to God the next time you stand in front of me you got a jury on your side.”

I gathered my things together and stood.

“A week,” Delmont said. “I don’t care what else you’ve got up that sleeve of yours, that’s all you get. That’s the extent of my patience. Got it?”

I tapped the photographs on the desk with my index finger. “I’ll just leave these here for you to think about. I’ve got my own set.”

I didn’t wait for Delmont to reply. I just walked out.

I was so distracted as I walked down the concrete stairs of the courthouse and into the town square that I stepped wrong and broke the heel off one of my Louboutin shoes. I tumbled down the steps, my briefcase popped open, and my papers scattered all over the town square.

I cursed at the shoe. The Louboutins were a relic of better times—the times when I’d actually had no trouble winning cases. The times when the deck wasn’t completely stacked against me.

Even if I could find a replacement expert in a week (which was highly unlikely), all of Dr. Schaeffer’s evidence and files were locked away in his house behind a whole lot of crime scene tape. We only had one set because my boss was too cheap to foot the Xerox bill.

If I couldn’t convince the police to let me in and get those files, I’d just blackmailed the judge and put myself in jeopardy for nothing.





***





It was only three blocks back to my office.

I parked and limped indoors. Mountains of boxes lined the hallways—all of which contained my boss’s files, not mine. Art hung on the wall, but you couldn’t see it behind the stacks of cardboard.

I twisted and turned my way through the paper maze until I found my little cubicle, from which I daily fought Big Oil. My paralegal, Miles, was waiting for me.

He took one look at me and zeroed in on my broken heel. “Oh my gawd. Not the Louboutins! Please tell me you broke that heel wedging it between Delmont’s butt cheeks.”

Miles is the kind of guy who sets off even the most recalcitrant gaydars.

“Sadly, no,” I said, tossing off the shoes and collapsing into my desk chair.

Miles crossed his arms and eyed me with concern. “Too bad. That would have been worth the loss. Did you get the continuance at least?”

I nodded, and Miles did the happy dance. “Woo-hoo! Atta girl!”

Our boss, Dick Richardson, heard the commotion and popped his head into my office. “Oh, good, you’re back. Didja get it done, or are you fired?”

Miles glared at him, but I was unperturbed. Dick talked to me like that all the time. He’s the kind of micromanaging, paranoid, jerk boss you want to avoid at all costs. His first name kind of sums him up. If I hadn’t been out of other options when I moved to Kettle two years ago, I never would have agreed to work for him.

“I got the continuance,” I said. “If you wanna fire me today, it’s gotta be over something else.”

“Hrmph. I’m shocked. ‘Bout time you won one. How’d you manage it?”

“I used my superior persuasive skills, for which he was no match.”

“You take your shirt off for him or something?”

Before I could figure out what to say to that, Miles chipped in. “She has other assets.”

Dick made a noise that was something between a grunt and a laugh. “Not the kind that appeal to you, I bet.”

Before Miles could launch into a tirade that might produce negative consequences, I said, “If you don’t mind, we’ve got work to do.”

“Yeah, get back to work,” Dick said. “I gotta go into Houston to pick up my new car, anyway. Settle a case and generate some cash while I’m gone, will ya?”

Geez. Another new car. This guy was living high on the hog and I was at home eating Ramen. What was wrong with this picture?

I waited until Dick was well out of earshot before dropping my bomb on Miles. “Okay, so you’ve heard all the good news,” I said. “Now for the bad news.”

His face fell. “Oh no. There’s bad news?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty bad. We only have a week to prep for the next hearing.”

Miles looked like he was about to faint. I wouldn’t have blamed him. I might have already fainted myself if the sheer urgency of the situation hadn’t kept me moving forward.

Miles sat down hard. “We can’t find and prep another expert in a week.”

“I know that.”

“Good Lord, Chloe! Why didn’t you just come out and say so! You got my hopes up and called the boss in here and—“

“Um, I think he came in here on his own.”

“Whatever. Details!”

“I don’t want Dick to know about this until we have another expert in place.”

“Chloe, you are dreaming. Dick and Delmont and the whole PetroPlex crew have a poker game scheduled for tonight, and all his poker buddies already know! How do you think you’re going to keep it from him? This is not going to go well for you.”

“You never know. Maybe they don’t talk business at those games.”

“And maybe a leprechaun will fly up your arse and leave a pot of gold!”

“It’s the best I can hope for,” I said. “I might get another case to settle before Dick figures it out. We have the rest of the afternoon. And besides, we might be able to find and prep a new witness before next week.”

“But we haven’t even got all of Dr. Schaeffer’s research, and his place is a crime scene! You’ll never be able to get your hands on it in just a week!”

“Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” I said.

“What are you going to do? Break in?”

“If I have to.” Hey, I’d already committed blackmail today. One more moral breach wouldn’t matter too much, right?

“Girl, you have lost your mind.”

“Not yet,” I said, “but I’ll be there soon without your help. Have you found out who the detective on the case is yet?”

“Of course! It’s Jensen Nash.” Miles fanned his face with his hand and raised his gaze to the ceiling in a mock partial swoon.

Jensen Nash was one of the town’s local detectives. I didn’t know a lot about him except that he was an eligible bachelor and purportedly the sexiest male in a two-hundred mile radius. But this was according to the local girls, whose taste in men I seriously questioned. I was not really into the cowboy type, which comprised the majority of the male population in this town.

“Have you been able to get a hold of him yet?”

“Yes. I already asked him for an appointment on your behalf, and he refuses to see you today. I also told him there wasn’t much time, and that you were dealing with matters of life and death,” Miles said.

“And?”

“He wasn’t impressed. He said he deals with matters of life and death every day, and that the living, especially living attorneys, can wait.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah. But in a really sexy voice.” Miles sighed. “You should call him.”

I buried my face in my hands. Honestly. I just needed one thing—one thing—to go right, to be easy, just one time today. Was that really too much to ask?

“Go see him in person,” Miles said. “Wear something low-cut.”

“That is cheap and disgusting. . . and worth a shot.” I rolled my chair back from my desk and inspected my broken shoe. “Are you up to finishing the draft of this motion?”

“Sure,” Miles said. “Go get him, tiger. But take my advice and go home and freshen up first.”

“That bad?” I asked.

“Girl, your hair looks like it went through a hay bailer. Change into something cuter. And do I even need to mention the shoes?

I sighed and limped out the door.





***





When I pulled into my driveway, the looming afternoon shadows of PetroPlex’s largest refinery draped my sorry excuse for a rental house. The refinery was one of the largest in Texas and the town’s supporting industry, employing over 1500 of Kettle’s total population of 4000. The regional corporate headquarters were attached to this refinery and employed another 500 people. The complex was large and situated smack in the middle of town, right in everyone’s backyard. Here, workers refined over 140 million gallons of crude oil into gasoline and other substances every day.

Residents whose property abutted the refinery, like mine did, were used to living under the refinery’s continuous cloud of smoke and the frequent spurts of fire from the safety flares, which ignited every time the refinery needed to burn off excess vapors. Every now and then, something would go wrong, and the neighborhood would be filled with the smell of toxic chemicals. Sometimes alarms would even go off, warning nearby residents to stay indoors and seal the cracks in windows and doors with wet towels to keep the chemicals from getting in.

Worst of all were the explosions, and there had been a few. Most of them were minor, but several years ago a large one had killed ten people and shook the neighborhood’s foundations.

I hobbled out of my car, grabbed the mail, and stumbled inside, kicking off the now defunct Louboutins. My long-haired Chihuahua/Sheltie mutt Lucy (so named for her red head—a characteristic she shared with me) raced towards me and jumped up and down, tongue lolling out, eyes wide. I put my stuff down and scooped her up to pet her hello. She licked my face and I kissed her on the head. “Are you hungry?” I asked.

She responded by leaping out of my arms and racing to the back bedroom where I kept her food bowl. I followed her, scooped some food into her bowl, and returned to the kitchen to look at the mail.

Bills, bills, and bills, all of which were 60-90 days late. Student loans in excess of six figures. Electricity. Phone and Internet. No cable, though—I had long since let that go. I swore out loud when I saw a demand letter from my landlord. I was sure to be evicted soon, at this rate. I really needed to settle a case and generate some cash.

There was also a notice from the City of Dallas threatening to repossess my dog if I didn’t send them proof of vaccination within seven business days. I figured I could at least safely ignore that one, since I didn’t live in Dallas anymore and I doubted they’d come all the way down here to get her. Still, I did need to find a way to pay for the vaccinations soon. Down here, you never knew what would jump out and bite you.

I threw open my pantry to see if maybe there was some hidden gem in there I had forgotten about. Sadly, there was only Ramen. I was really much more in the mood for fajitas—and margaritas. Patron margaritas. The kind that were served in the big glasses the size of a human head with salt on the rim and a sangria floater.

Maybe if I played my cards right, I could get Detective Jensen Nash to buy me dinner. After all, he’d be more likely to spill his guts over drinks, right? Maybe I wouldn’t even tell him I was a lawyer. Maybe I’d just go down there and turn on the charm and lure him out of the office and wham! Before he knew it, I’d know all about Dr. Schaeffer’s murder and I’d have my files back.

This seemed like a pretty good plan, assuming I could get it to work. I have never considered myself beautiful. My bright red hair and pale porcelain skin are a bit out of place among all the tanned blondes down here in south Texas. Because I was hungry and really wanted those fajitas, I prayed Nash was into the red-headed type.

Trying to forget about my financial situation for a moment, I went to the bedroom, flinging off today’s office wear as I went. I changed into a black lace number layered over a solid red cotton tank and very tiny, very fitted jean shorts, then I slipped on some red high heels. I felt pretty naked for what would essentially be a business meeting, but on the up side, I looked absolutely nothing like a lawyer, a breed of people Jensen Nash apparently hated.

I told myself this was totally going to work. Then I shut my eyes really tight while I tried to make myself believe it.

Okay, who was I kidding? I opened my eyes and took a moment to fantasize, not for the first time, about what my life would have been like if I had actually married my ex-fiancé, Dallas trial attorney Dorian Saks—a partner and colleague at my old law firm. He was more tall, more dark, and more handsome than the tallest, darkest, handsomest man you’ve ever seen. He owned a mansion in Highland Park, an area of supremely-concentrated wealth near downtown, and he was a movie star in the courtroom. When he looked at you, everyone else disappeared. I was absolutely certain that every time he stepped before a jury, each juror felt as though there was no one else in the room and that nothing mattered except producing a verdict in Dorian’s favor.

If I had married him, I would have had a cook, a housekeeper, and a personal shopper to replace my broken Louboutins. I would have had a fireplace in the bedroom and a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. I would have had a diamond ring big enough to have its own zip code.

And I would have had an eternally broken heart. That was the fantasy killer.

Dorian was simply incapable of honesty and fidelity. This I discovered after we were engaged. Dorian’s secretary knocked on my office door one day and told me Dorian had taken her out for a steak dinner. He told her he was going to marry me and asked her not to tell me she was sleeping with him.

Dorian’s ego was such that he thought that would fly, but I’m no doormat. He lost both me and his secretary, but I was sure he’d had no trouble finding replacements for both of us.

The toxic torts circle in Dallas is a small one. I couldn’t handle staying there and facing him every day, so I left town. The only job in my practice area that was available anywhere in Texas happened to be here in Kettle.

Living in this crummy rent house buried under stacks of unpaid bills, I wondered for a fleeting moment if maybe I could have lived with the infidelity after all. He had loved me enough to propose. Couldn’t that have been enough?

I thought about it for a moment, but in my heart I knew, even stuck down here in Kettle, Texas with a job that paid jack squat, I wouldn’t trade places with whoever Dorian was with now.

I noticed a chip in my fingernail polish, and that brought me back to the present. I pulled out a bottle of top coat to smooth it over and tried not to let the situation get me down. Sure, I was feeling a little desperate, but I vowed to myself that Jensen Nash would never, ever know. I would be smooth. I would be charming. He wouldn’t know what hit him.

I checked my mascara one last time, spritzed on some Michael Kors perfume, ruffled the fur on Lucy’s head, and headed out the door and down to the police station. Look out, Jensen Nash! Here I come!