“My office building is only part of it. There’s more, more that is much worse and far riskier. Are you sure you want to be here, Ms. Rosten, because you are in danger while you’re with me. This shattered wrist, concussion, and the face carving are fruits of this danger.”
My stomach heaved at her words, but I attempted to hide my apprehension. “I know you’re in danger and a little about why. Together, we can work out this situation. I have lots of resources and connections. Plus, in some sense, I’m compelled to help you.” My voice sounded nearly brave. But what did I know from heroics?
“Ms. Rosten, the reason I called you is because I didn’t want to involve friends and loved ones in a chaos of my own creation. You are a neutral party, and I need that neutrality for what I want to do. Can you remain unbiased for the next few hours?” She touched the bandage on her head, reminding me that the danger was genuine.
“Please call me Dev. I’m not sure if I am unbiased or neutral, even right now, but I can be nonjudgmental. My clients tell me things, secrets, that I’ll carry to the grave rather than divulge them. It’s my line of work to know the secrets. Tell me why you’re in trouble, Laura. May I call you Laura?”
She nodded as if making a decision about something more important than what we would call each other. “Yes, call me Laura, and you are witness to what I’m going to tell you. That’s where the recorder comes in. And the scrapbook. All this is for testimony, evidence. I need proof and witnesses. I forgot to tell you to bring a camera. Does your cell phone have a decent camera?”
I pulled my phone out of my pants pocket, checked the battery, and said, “It’s a great camera, top of the line, and we have a full battery.”
She was gazing at me as if seeing me, really seeing me, for the first time. I felt vulnerable. “Good,” she said. “There will be a few pages in this scrapbook that I’ll want you to photograph as I proceed.” She was wincing occasionally from pain, but her voice was solid and sure. If she was going to give me the whole story, she needed to be as lucid as possible and was resisting her medication in order to do so. “I’ve been under heavy pain medication. If anything I say is unclear or out of sequence, stop me and ask questions. Can you do that?”
“Of course, anything you need. Would you like more water before you begin?” She gestured toward her glass with the bent straw, and I filled it from the plastic pitcher left by the sink. “Can you operate the recorder with your good hand? Or would you like my help with that?”
“It’s voice activated, so it won’t be a problem. Get comfortable in the chair. I’ll let you know when I need pictures snapped.” I faked comfort in the chair. She clicked the recorder and began.
“Eleven years ago, when I was twenty-seven, I was a freshly minted attorney. I landed a dream job at Meyers, Gaines, and Stratton here in Seattle. Elizabeth Stratton was one of the founding partners of the firm. Several months after starting as an associate, I received a memo from Elizabeth asking me to meet her for lunch. Here’s the memo. Photograph it, please.” I took the first of what would end up being dozens of pictures that evening.
Her face was determined. Her measured pace of speech hinted that she had rehearsed this story before I’d gotten there. “From that lunch where she presented my exemplary professional evaluation, we became friends of sorts. Almost daily, she would stop by my office and chat for a few minutes. She’d send me an occasional humorous e-mail, like this one here.”
She pointed to one of those e-mails like everyone receives, the kind that contains several jokes. The jokes pasted on the scrapbook page were all derogatory about attorneys. At the top, Stratton had typed, “Makes you proud to go to work every day.”
“Photograph it?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “Not yet, there are meatier things to come,” she said and turned the page. The next few pages contained mementoes from bars and restaurants: napkins with tavern names, fancy promotional matchbooks, after-dinner mint wrappers, and a few receipts. She had me photograph the receipts, making sure the dates were clearly visible in the picture.
“Elizabeth and I were meeting socially once a week eventually. At that time, she wasn’t what she is today. She was an aggressive attorney, sure, but she was warm, funny, and compassionate. She was never dogmatic. I was young, but even if I met that past Elizabeth today, I would never predict the self-serving monster she’s become.”
“So what happened to change her?” I was baffled by the Elizabeth Stratton that Laura described.
“Let’s deconstruct her after I finish my story. Then you’ll have more information to formulate your theories. By the way, I’ve never told anyone what I’m going to tell you. I ask you to keep the same confidentiality that you keep for your clients.” The IV tube that was plugged in the back of her hand trembled a little now. She was weak. We couldn’t keep this up all night. I looked at the clock. It was nearing midnight.
“If I weren’t discreet, I would be out of business.” That statement nudged the question that had nagged me all night. Should I tell Laura that I was hired by Stratton to derail her? I made the decision to wait. I had no idea what would change if I told her, but I didn’t want her to send me away.
She turned the page of the scrapbook. Even that small effort cost her. She was pale and needed rest, but she continued. “All the receipts on this page are from Manzanita, Oregon. If you notice, you’ll see that they have different dates stretching over a period of two years.”
Some were faded, but I could see they were from the period of Laura’s employment at Meyers, Gaines, and Stratton. Most were from restaurants, and she’d pasted them in chronological order.
“Elizabeth and I began our affair at a luxury beach house the firm owned in Manzanita.” She was looking at me, not at the page. She was gauging my reaction. I’ve sat in the face of hundreds of sordid revelations from my clients, but this was one I hadn’t expected. I didn’t cover my surprise well.
“What surprises you the most, Dev? That a religious icon could have a lesbian relationship or that I’d get into bed with a blatant hypocrite?” The annoyance she felt lifted one of the eyebrows on that intelligent forehead, and her eyes lasered on me.
I squirmed on the chair spring that was torturing my left butt cheek. “Laura, you have to admit, a claim that Senator Elizabeth Stratton, presidential candidate, and wife of Reverend Jerry Greenfield, had a two-year lesbian relationship is, well, a surprise. Not a shock, just a surprise. You are making allegations about a person who sponsors and votes for more anti-gay initiatives than just about any member of the federal government.”
“I can assure you of two things. I am not making up any of this, and Elizabeth Stratton is not the straight woman everyone believes her to be. Would you like me to detail our sexual encounters?” Her right eyelid was quivering from either exhaustion or emotion. “Because, trust me, in the hundreds of times we had sex, Elizabeth was not only an extremely willing participant, she was the enthusiastic initiator.”
I nodded. “That she was the initiator, I can believe. A detailed description of you two having sex? No thank you.” The thought of Laura Bishop having sex with anyone, never mind Elizabeth Stratton, made me heartsick. I was losing any objectivity where Laura was concerned. “Tell me the other parts of this story.”
Laura looked at the scrapbook and turned a page. “Here, on this page and the next several pages, are all her love notes. Some came with flowers or stuffed animals that would be sitting on my office desk when I’d arrive in the morning. They were unsigned, of course, but Elizabeth’s handwriting is distinctive. Some love letters came via regular mail. Those were the most torrid, again, unsigned but in her handwriting. She kept our work e-mail clean of any hint of our relationship, just jokes or interesting quotes came on my work computer. Take a picture of each of these love notes, please.”
Grateful to be distracted from the thought of Laura’s body entwined with Stratton’s, I took several pictures of the love notes and cards. I even moved a table la
mp closer to the bed to help sharpen the pictures. While I was busy snapping photographs, Laura trudged on with her story.
“Of course, being young and still a little naïve, I had dreams that Elizabeth would conquer her discomfort with going public with our relationship. I dreamed that she would agree to come to my home for dinner or that we could lie in bed all morning at her house and make love. But that never happened. We always met in local hotels or spent weekends in Manzanita.” Laura’s voice was growing weaker, and I started to wonder if she would hold up much longer.
“Tell me how it ended, Laura, and why it ended.” I had put my folded jacket on the seat of the chair, making it a tiny bit more tolerable to sit there.
She settled back into her bed pillows and gazed at the wall at the end of the room. “When I think back on it, Elizabeth’s withdrawal from me started six months before the very end. More and more days separated our meet-ups. She would claim being busy with one thing or another. But when we were together, she was just as passionate, almost desperately so. There was a clinging need in her that hadn’t existed before. I mistook it for her being ready to commit. In fact, now I know she knew we’d be ending, and she wanted to get what she could before…before it was over.” A tear ran down her wan cheek.
I had to ask. “Do you still love her, Laura?”
“Love her? No, not in that way. But I cry for that younger Laura and that lost Elizabeth. I was unable to state what I wanted from her and fight for it. She was unable to overcome her ambition and fear. We were always doomed, right from the start. It still hurts, though.”
I had experienced a few hurts in my time and could only offer a few hollow words to Laura. “Of course, the hurt of a breakup never really goes away, I think. It just digs deeper into our hearts where it hides under layers of scar tissue. Sometimes we scrape at the scar tissue, and the hurt peeks out to remind us of what we lost.” I reached over and carefully took her IV-punctured hand in mine. “Tell me the rest.”
She glanced at our joined hands then at me. Finally she rested her eyes on the scrapbook. “One day, I was sitting in my office and heard a commotion of delight in the reception area. I peeked out my door and saw the Reverend Jerry Greenfield and a couple other polished suits parading around the secretaries, giving the women schoolgirl vapors. Elizabeth was watching the scene with a bewildering show of satisfaction.” Laura paused for several moments to gather strength and to stem more tears.
Jerry Greenfield, I thought, the Magician, the manipulator. “Was that the first time you had ever seen the two of them together?”
“It was, although I knew Elizabeth had done some legal work for his mega-church in Kirkland. I hadn’t put them together even as acquaintances. I assumed she’d just met with his representatives. He was already a national hero for the religious right by then.”
“Elizabeth didn’t express any qualms about representing someone like Greenfield?” I couldn’t imagine any attorney wanting to represent a snake, but then I supposed there were attorneys who were snakes themselves.
“The one conversation we had about it was brief and defensive. She said he was only protecting his rights, and she was compelled, as one of his attorneys, to fight for him. She was clear the topic was off the discussion table.” Laura sighed, loosed my hand, and started picking at the bandage wrapping the splint on her left wrist.
“Tell me the rest, Laura. We need it on tape.”
“Well, that day was pretty much it. Elizabeth and I were never lovers again. She cut me off without explanation, without fanfare. No note, no fond good-bye, no fuck you. A couple months later, she sent word in an official memo that we had to meet for lunch at a downtown Mexican restaurant to discuss my future with the firm.” Laura’s face had hardened, and the trails of her tears had dried, leaving a line of salty residue on the cheek that was bandaged.
“She fired you because you two had been shtupping for two years?” I was growing angrier with every new angle of the story.
Laura’s eyes flashed at me. “Hey, I don’t need a translation for that one.”
“The beauty of Yiddish. Sounds like what it is. Sorry if I sounded coarse. Tell me about that lunch.”
“Well, she didn’t fire me. Quite the opposite, in fact. She told me she was leaving the firm and offered her lucrative caseload to me. She said I could handle it better than any of the other associates. And, yes, it felt like a buy-off, not an accolade.”
“What did you tell her? Did you take on her caseload?”
“I resigned from Meyers, Gaines, and Stratton. I gave her my two-week notice, a fairly unprofessional thing to do in the legal world, but I had some pride. I told her that she’d better come across with great references for me, or she’d find herself in court with a giant, public sexual harassment suit to deal with.” By the set of Laura’s jaw, it was clear that she had re-empowered herself during that lunch. “Afterward, Elizabeth wrote glowing references for me. I’m proud to say they were accurate, not trumped up. Several months later, she announced both her candidacy for Washington state senator and her engagement to Jerry Greenfield.”
“How were you doing during all that?” My heart was in pain for her.
“I was crushed, but I felt oddly strong, even emboldened. That’s when my friend Margaret gifted me with that reading with you.” Her small smile at me was tinged with a little guilt. “Sorry I was such a pill. Your reading was more accurate than I wanted to believe. I started my own law practice, and it grew steadily. Elizabeth even referred a few clients to me. A sort of peace offering, I hoped, but was probably meant to keep me quiet. And I was quiet. Until now.”
“And now you feel you have to say something.”
“As of yesterday, yes, to expose who she really is. Back when Elizabeth and I were in the throes of our passion, it didn’t feel like shtupping or whatever. For a time, she loved me. I know it. It was the real thing. I’m sure most people have relationships they regret but know the emotions were real at the time. Well, that one was mine. But now other people are paying for it. The American people need to know what Elizabeth is.” She was agitated, and it brought a little color into her face.
“How do you mean ‘other people are paying for it’?” As if I had to ask.
“Those murdered security guards. It was no coincidence that it was my suite that was burgled. My office is on the twenty-third floor, for God’s sake. No burglar would ride an elevator to the twenty-third floor and then randomly decide to ransack one attorney’s office suite. Not when there are twenty-two floors beneath that are faster to get to and house offices containing far more expensive items than mine.”
“What are the police saying about that? Surely they understand your reasoning.” I was in agreement with Laura but wanted to learn one more thing.
“The police are turning a deaf ear to whatever I say to them. I’m beginning to suspect the worst.”
“And that is—”
“The police are somehow beholden to Jerry Greenfield and Senator Stratton. Because I’m sure that guy who killed the security guards did so because the guards caught him on their cameras. Somehow, the murderer dispatched those three poor men, then went to my office to see if there was any damaging information about Elizabeth. Information that could affect her chances of running for president.”
I looked at the scrapbook still open in front of her. The scrapbook was exactly what the killer was looking for. And it was sitting right in front of us. There were still several pages to discuss, and Laura’s energy was slipping away from her. Her injuries, compounded by the emotions the scrapbook unearthed, were taking their toll.
“Let’s continue through the rest of the book. What does it contain?” I reached to turn the page. Laura rested her hand on my forearm. I loved the feel of it there. She seemed to note the effect of our touching and moved her hand onto the scrapbook.
“There’s nothing more of importance in there. Just clippings recording Elizabeth’s rise from attorney, to senator, her marriage, and her p
lans to run for president. Nothing more to look at.” She closed the scrapbook and left her hand on the cover, as if protecting it from my prying. She didn’t leave me any time to wonder about that. “We have to get me out of here. They won’t stop at killing innocent security guards. I have to go somewhere they won’t suspect, with someone they’ve never associated me with.” She looked into my eyes. “I’m hoping that someone will be you, Dev.”
She had me, and somehow, she knew it. I was helpless to turn her down. Something between us was shifting. We both felt it, but in her injured state, I’m sure our nascent attraction was more confusing for her than it was for me. “Helping you is why I’m here.”
There were other things that were troubling me. Confessing my recent meeting with Elizabeth Stratton was only one of my conundrums. I was also worried about how I’d handle the two of them simultaneously. Was that possible to do safely? I shook off my confusion and concentrated on our immediate situation. “What do you have in mind?”
“I have to get past that guard out there. Then we need to hide the scrapbook somewhere while we figure out what to do.” She was fidgeting with her IV tube, then she held up her hand and looked at me expectantly.
I backed away and shook my head. “What…what do you want me to do?”
She was grinning a little, an adorable little grin. “C’mon, you can do it, Dev. Millions of people pull out IVs every day. It can’t be too hard, can it?’
“But I’m not a medical professional. I’m a third grade school teacher turned tarot reader. Blood upsets me.” I had backed myself into the wall and was considering hiding myself in the closet until she got the needle out herself.
“Well, you can’t expect me to do it. It’s too personal. The sight of my own blood makes me faint, and I’m already in a weakened state.” Her face took on a pleading look that I knew had the capacity to rule my life. “Please, Dev? You’re the only one who can do this for me.” She lifted her hand a little higher.
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