The Deposit Slip

26





Jared spent Friday night in the basement, trying to finish up the documents. Jessie was not around, working on summaries at the Larson farm, he assumed. So he had descended to the document room to try to finish up the boxes.

It was nearing ten o’clock in the evening when his cell phone rang. He saw that it was Towers again on the other end.

“I spent the rest of this afternoon on the phone,” the investigator said. “For the information I need on the VA disability checks, it’s best I go through Washington. I’ll need a release from Erin on behalf of the estate, but I have the office in D.C. where they can tell me the history of disability payments to Paul Larson. Are you sure you want me to fly there instead of handling this on the phone? It would be much cheaper.”

Jared hesitated. “I’m going to have to compensate you for your time, Richard. I know that.”

“We can talk about that. But I’m speaking of the costs. I can’t front them for you, Mr. Neaton. Are you sure you want to take on the expense?”

When Jared left the farmhouse the other night, he hadn’t told Erin he would stay on the case. He also had not said he would quit. Facing her plea that he continue, he couldn’t mention that one factor crying for him to leave the case was money. His well had run dry.

Jared had reviewed the checking accounts—business and personal—earlier in the week. Between the bills for his Minneapolis practice, Jessie’s paycheck, and his townhouse mortgage, there wasn’t even enough of the Clay cash left to cover Towers’s flight. He’d instructed his bank to distribute the last of his rollover IRA from Paisley, but that would take a few weeks—and then would only be enough for Jessie’s next paycheck and a few screaming bills.

It went against every fiber of Jared as a trial attorney to make strategic decisions in a case because of money. Having Towers handle this problem by phone made all the sense in the world. But Jared knew that maneuvering through the Washington bureaucracies was quicker in person. You always hit dead ends, and in person, you could push. On the phone, you got put on hold. Besides, Clay used to say that you could never tell if you’d gotten everything from a witness without going eyeball to eyeball with them.

There was one risky option that had been nipping at the edge of Jared’s mind for days now. The bond money from Olney and some other client funds. The bond wasn’t due to court quite yet and the money still sat in the client trust account. Jessie nagged every few days about it, wanting to know when they were going to post the bond.

Misusing client trust money. This was the stuff of disbarment—or worse. Jared quickly tallied up his receivables from the work he’d done back in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago. It should cover the Olney bond—when it came in. But it still was risky to count on that resource.

Jared could feel the truth in this case like hot breath—he was so close. He saw again Whittier’s superior smirk at the deposition and knew that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—make a mistake in this case because the tap was running dry.

The Olney cash would buy him two weeks, Jared thought with finality, and he’d pay it back with the next dollars in the door.

“No, fly out to D.C.—Monday morning if you can. Call me back with the cost, and I’ll drop a check in the mail in the morning.”