Lawyer Trap

5





DAY ONE–SEPTEMBER 5

MONDAY MORNING


The law firm didn’t waste any time turning Aspen Wilde, Esq. into a billable-hour machine. The head of the Employment Department—Baxter Brown, Esq.—showed her to her office, drank coffee with her, smiled, and made her feel at home. Then he left her with a wrongful termination file to review, in preparation of answering interrogatories, admissions, and document requests which needed to be in the mail by this time next week.

“If you run into any problems, shoot me an e-mail,” he said. “I’ll be in depositions until Thursday morning, but I’ll be checking my e-mails twice a day.”

Then he left.

She felt wonderfully full.

By eleven o’clock, just about everyone on her hall had popped in at least once to say welcome. A couple of the guys stopped in twice. The associates gave her the thirty-second scoop. Sure, the firm’s stated goal for newbies is 1,750 billables a year. But plan on 2,000 minimum. And, if you’re actually crazy enough to want to make partner some day, plan on 2,200 to 2,500. “When you get up in the middle of the night to take a piss, think of a case and bill the client for your time.”

Shortly before noon, a new face showed up in her door—an attractive man in his early forties with blondish hair and energetic blue eyes. He wore a gray suit with an expensive hang, and looked exactly like what a lawyer at the top of his game should look like.

The kind of person who could walk into any room and dominate it.

The epitome of success.

She recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t quite place it. Then it struck her. He was none other than Blake Gray himself—the president of the firm and reputed rainmaker extraordinaire.

“Got time for lunch?” he asked.

They ended up walking past a crowd of waiting people at Marlowe’s and got escorted to a nice booth near the back with a white tablecloth. Within minutes, their food arrived, a steak and nonalcoholic beer for him and a shrimp salad for her.

“With your arrival today,” he said, “we now have 123 lawyers. One of my primary responsibilities, as the head of the firm, is to be sure that we all remember we’re a family, and not just a bunch of individual cogs in some kind of overgrown machine. It’s our attitude toward one another, and toward our clients, that spells either survival or extinction. So I make it a point to personally know everyone in the firm, hence our lunch today. But more importantly, I make it a point to be sure that everyone in the firm, from the copy clerk to the department head, knows that my office door is always open.”

Aspen nodded.

“That’s good to know.”

He smiled.

“You know,” he said, “I’m a little jealous. I wish I could be back in time, reporting for my first day of work. You have the whole world ahead of you.”

She wasn’t sure if it was smart to say what she wanted to say.

She decided to anyway.

“I’m a little scared. I’m not sure I’m ready.”

He understood.

“It’s an intimidating place at first,” he said. “But we were all green once, just like you. Then we grow. You will too, trust me. Just take it one day at a time.”

She took a drink of water.

Then she decided to see if his door really was open.

“I heard this morning about what happened to Rachel Ringer,” she said. “She was one of the nicer people toward me, when I clerked here last summer.”

He wrinkled his forehead.

“She had a big heart,” he said, “on top of being a brilliant attorney.”

Aspen agreed.

“I can’t help but think about one of the projects she had me working on back then,” Aspen said.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“It was for a psychologist,” she said. “I can’t remember her name right now, but the gist of the matter was that she had some kind of an impromptu conversation with some man who wasn’t a formal client. She took him to be a killer. Apparently he had a certain MO that she recognized. Anyway, since the man asked her questions that could possibly be viewed as the type of thing a patient might ask a psychologist, she wanted a legal opinion on whether the conversation was covered by the physician-patient privilege. Rachel had me do the research and we concluded that the privilege in fact attached, meaning she couldn’t give the information to the police.”

Blake nodded.

“You’re talking about Dr. Beverly Twenhofel,” he said.

“Exactly, that’s her,” she said. “I can’t help but wonder if Rachel’s disappearance is somehow tied to that case.”

Blake took a swig of the nonalcoholic beer.

“The same thought came to me at one point, namely Rachel’s working on a case potentially involving a killer, and then she ends up missing. But I don’t see a connection for two reasons. First, the guy—whoever he is—wouldn’t even know that our client had approached us for a legal opinion. So there’s no reason Rachel would have been on his radar screen. Second, if the guy did feel threatened, say because he sensed that someone believed he was a killer, he would have gone after Dr. Twenhofel, and not us. That never happened. She’s alive and well and hasn’t been threatened or harassed in any way.”

Aspen hadn’t been privy to that.

Obviously Blake was way ahead of her.

“Well,” she said, “that’s the only thing that I know of, sort of offbeat, that might somehow explain something.”

He nodded.

“It was a good thought,” he said. “But unlikely.”

She ran her other theory by him, the theory that maybe Rachel hadn’t actually been abducted in the parking lot of The Fort at all, but had in fact been abducted somewhere else earlier. Then they dropped her car off in the parking lot to make it look like she’d been abducted there.

Again, he didn’t seem overly impressed.

“We had, and still do have, the best private investigators in the state working on the case,” he said. “I’m sure they considered that theory. In fact, I’m almost positive they have. I remember talking to them at one point about the fact that Rachel gassed up near her house about twenty minutes before she was supposed to arrive at The Fort. It was about a twenty-minute drive there, which meant she was on her way. So if she wasn’t taken in the parking lot, she somehow had to be pulled over before she got there. I don’t see how that could happen. As I recall, her spare tire was in good condition, meaning she hadn’t pulled over with a flat.”

He shrugged.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” he said. “I’m only saying that it doesn’t seem to fit the facts.”

“I didn’t know all those facts,” she said.

“No way you would have,” he added. “But your theories are impressive, especially for someone who just started thinking about it. I can tell we made the right decision hiring you.”

“I hope so.”

“I already know it,” he said. “You’re going to be a partner some day. I can tell.”