A Clean Kill

by Mike Stewart

  Rubber soles squeaked against marble, and I heard the door to my office open and close. I needed to get to a window. “Mind if I help myself to a cup of coffee while I’m cowering in your office?”

  She started to stand. “I’ll get it.”

  I walked toward the short hallway to the CPA’s office. “No, no. I know where it is. Patricia in yet? Thought I might say hello.”

  Lucille settled back into her chair. “Sorry, she’s out on an audit.” She picked up a bottle of blood-red nail polish. “Holler if you need anything.”

  The coffee machine sat in a shallow alcove off the hallway. I stepped up and sloshed brown liquid into a Styrofoam cup—just in case Lucille got curious or helpful and came back to check on me—before heading for Patricia’s office. The window in my office faced the Bay. Hers looked out on Water Street, which fronted our building.

  Her door was locked. I clamped the Styrofoam rim of my coffee between my front teeth and fished a credit card out of my wallet. The lock was a standard inside-the-office job built into a round, stainless-steel knob—a keyhole on one side, a push button, on the other. Even better, the door—like most office doors—opened in, which meant the rounded part of the lock faced out.

  Seconds later, as the card slipped through and the door clicked open, Lucille called out, “Find everything?”

  “Yep. Sure did.”

  I reached around the open door to twist the inside knob, and the lock button popped out. Now, if Lucille came back, all I had to do was look wide eyed and say, “It was open, so I stepped inside to look out the window.”

  I left the door open—open is more innocent—and crossed to the window. A dark green Ford with a whip antenna sat in a no-parking zone in front of the building. Close behind that, a City of Mobile patrol car supported the rumps of two uniforms.

  Lucille still hadn’t made an appearance. I punched the lock button on the way out and pulled the door closed. When I walked back into Lucille’s outer office, she smiled. “Hiding?”

  I smiled and listened. “Heard anything?”

  She shook her head without looking up from the long strokes of crimson she was applying to her nails.

  I peeked out into the empty marbled hallway, parked my coffee cup on a bookshelf next to the door, and slipped out. I was inside the freight elevator and headed for the first floor and the parking deck when a thought hit.

  I punched the 2 on the elevator control panel. By dead reckoning, I decided a door labeled TEMPURA WONG, LICENSED CHIROPRACTOR led to the best view of the entrance to the parking deck. I stepped inside.

  “Well, hello. What can we do for you this morning?” Weh, hewo. Wha cin we do fo you these moning?

  The diminutive, white-coated doctor was her own receptionist. She was smiling. It was a symbiotic relationship. She needed a patient and I needed to look out her window to see if I could get out of the parking deck.

  I said, “Uh, well, I get this pinchy thing in my back when I dance.”

  After a period of twisting and popping and embarrassing closeness, Dr. Wong let me use her phone and her window. I called Kelly. The detectives were gone. I looked out the window. The uniformed cops were gone. I put my shirt on, handed the doc three twenties, and headed for the elevators.

  Working on the assumption that the parking attendant had orders to call the cops if I showed, I exited through the parking deck stairwell, where a metal security door led straight out onto the sidewalk. Two blocks away, I hailed a cab. Ten minutes later, I called Sully Walker’s office from a bar near the waterfront.

  Sully was out, but my call was expected. His paralegal told me to wait. She promised to find Sully. Seventy-six minutes later, Sullivan Walker entered through the front door of Cocktails for Two.

  I waved him over. He sat without shaking hands.

  I asked, “How bad is it?”

  Sully caught the waitress’s eye, then turned to face me. “It was bad. I’ve been blasting Buddy Foxglove over at the DA’s office for most of the last hour. Bottom line is we got the warrant lifted, but you’re going to have to answer some questions.”

  An aging waitress in a puckered-tight outfit stopped by the table and looked at us. Sully ordered coffee. We sat quietly while she fetched it from a nearby stand. She filled a cup for Sully, warmed my cup, and took a seat at the bar. A soap opera played on a television bolted to the wall above the bartender’s collection of shimmering bottles.

  As Sully stirred cream and sugar into his coffee, I said, “Questions I could understand. I mean, hell, the guy was at my house last night. He had a gun, and I’ve got a bullet in my floor where he damn near shot his toe off. What I don’t understand is … I can’t see how anyone would know Chris Galerina stopped by to see me. And, hell, I’m pretty well known around the courthouse. Why didn’t the DA just ask me to come in if he wanted to talk to me?”

  “Tom.” Sully drank some coffee. “First of all, I don’t think anyone does know Galerina came to see you. But they don’t have to know that if your fingerprints are all over the weapon.”

  “I took his gun away from him last night so he wouldn’t shoot himself.”

  “Guess you gave it back.”

  “Yeah, after I took the bullets away from him.”

  Sully drained his cup and said, “Apparently, he had an extra in his pocket. Some guy out jogging on the beach this morning found him. Looks like Galerina drove his car out on the sand last night after he left your house, took a thirty-eight revolver and popped himself in the temple.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, that explains your first question. The cops didn’t know Galerina was at your house, just that your prints were on the gun. But why the DA’s office issued a warrant instead of just picking you up for questioning, that’s where it gets a little scary. Buddy gave me a lot of BS reasons, but he finally admitted getting pressure from ‘upstairs,’ as he put it, to go ahead and arrest you.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Beats me. Could mean several things. None good.” Sully stood. “It’s not going to be a lot of fun, Tom, but come on. The sooner we get you to Buddy’s office for questioning, the sooner we can start trying to figure this thing out.”

  I followed Sully through a jumble of dimly lit tables and out into the sharp December air.

  Seventeen

  A long day made for a longer night. Still, I dozed enough for the alarm to jolt me awake at 6:00.

  The previous afternoon’s questioning had lasted three hours, and I’d learned not all that much—just that my prints were on the gun Chris Galerina had used to shove a bullet into his brain, and my home address had been scribbled on a pink message slip found on the seat next to his corpse.

  When the lab had matched the prints on the gun to the ones I had on file as a member of the bar, ADA Buddy Foxglove’s admitted first impulse had been to pick up the phone and call me. But he’d also admitted getting pressure from an undisclosed superior to issue a warrant instead. He’d admitted all this because he was pissed. He figured somebody was playing politics with one of his cases. He didn’t say it in so many words, but that’s what he thought. And he had not been happy about it.

  I lay in bed and thought about that for a while, took a shower, and was standing in front of the bathroom mirror in boxers, socks, and a shirt, knotting my tie, when the phone rang. I jogged out of the bathroom and picked it up on the second ring.

  “Mr. McInnes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Tom McInnes, the attorney?”

  “Who is this?”

  The man announced his name like it was a baseball score. He was a television reporter. “We wanted to give you the opportunity to comment on the warrant that was issued yesterday for your arrest in the murder of attorney Chris Galerina.”

  He caught me off guard. I said, “That warrant was withdrawn.”

  “Yes.” He paused, and I knew he was taking notes. “Was that before or after you met with Assistant District Attorney Foxglove?”
r />   Okay. Now I was awake. “That’s all I can say right now.”

  “No one else can tell your side of the story, Mr. McInnes. If you’ll just …”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “We have our own sources, but it’s in this morning’s Journal. Right there on the front page. So there’s really no reason …”

  I hung up and ran to the closet for pants.

  The Mobile Register was on my front lawn. I grabbed it and quickly scanned the front page. I thumbed through the metro and state sections on the way to the car.

  Nothing.

  I do not take the Mobile Journal. It’s a second-tier newspaper. It covers sports more than politics, gossip more than economics. Basically, it’s a rag. And I found a machine full of them at the Piggly Wiggly on Highway 98.

  I dropped a quarter and a dime in the slot, yanked open the fold-down door, and took the top paper. Back in Joey’s Expedition, doors locked and motor running, I read about my life.

  LOCAL ATTORNEY ARRESTED

  ON CHARGE OF MURDER

  Exclusive to the Mobile Journal

  Early yesterday morning, the District Attorney for Mobile County issued an arrest warrant for local attorney Thomas McInnes, charging him with first-degree murder in the death of fellow attorney Christopher Galerina. The Journal has learned that Mr. Galerina, a successful litigator and civic leader, was found dead on the beach near Mr. McInnes’s home in Point Clear just hours before the warrant was issued. Mr. Galerina reportedly had been shot through the temple.

  Well-placed sources inside the Mobile Police Department confirmed that Mr. McInnes’s fingerprints were found on a small pistol that forensic analysis has verified to be the murder weapon. Those same sources reported that Mr. McInnes was arrested in Auburn this past Saturday and charged with the assault and battery of an employee of Tiger Tooth Photo in that city.

  Auburn police were summoned after Mr. McInnes allegedly threatened and physically attacked a photo shop clerk for mistakenly giving his photographs to another customer. According to police records, just minutes after the altercation in Tiger Tooth Photo, Mr. McInnes was arrested inside a nearby restaurant where he reportedly was engaged in threatening that establishment’s employees. Mr. McInnes was arraigned later that evening and pled not guilty. He was subsequently convicted of disturbing the peace and released after paying a fine.

  Mr. McInnes first gained notoriety last year in connection with the death of a woman who may have been instrumental in the murder of Mr. McInnes’s younger brother, Hall McInnes. In that incident, it was determined that Mr. McInnes acted in self-defense when he drowned the woman in the surf outside his beach house in Point Clear.

  Three months prior to the drowning, Hall McInnes had been shot to death with a high-powered rifle near the town of Coopers Bend in what authorities believe to have been a drug-related contract killing …

  And so it went.

  The article concluded by briefly outlining Galerina’s civic and charitable activities in the Greater Mobile Area before finally, in the last sentence, noting that the previous day’s warrant for my arrest had been “withdrawn pending further investigation.”

  It was a good job. Chris Galerina looked like the Pope. I looked like a serial killer.

  I drove back home, went into the kitchen, and made coffee. The first time my phone rang, I picked it up. After that, I let the reporters leave messages. Five calls in, I heard Kelly’s voice on the machine. She was telling me about the newspaper story.

  “Kelly?”

  “Oh. Hi. Did you hear my message?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got the paper in front of me. Some schmuck with Channel Three called this morning while I was still in bed.”

  Kelly sounded scared. “What are you going to do?”

  “Right now I’m drinking coffee.”

  A little time went by before she spoke again. “We got a fax this morning from the State Bar.”

  I waited.

  “There’s no good way to tell you this, Tom. The letter says you’ve been temporarily suspended from the practice of law until they can set up a hearing before the disciplinary committee.” She paused. “You want me to fax over the letter?”

  “Might as well. And you may as well cancel my appointments for today while you’re at it.”

  “You’ve got a hearing Friday in the Meyer case.”

  “Right. Call Sully and see if he can come out here. I’ll ask him to cover the hearing. I need to talk with him about the newspaper and the bar suspension anyhow.”

  “Will do.” She paused again. “What’s going on, Tom?”

  “Somebody’s trying to destroy my credibility.”

  “Why?”

  “The Baneberry case.”

  “Do you have something on someone who’s connected enough to do all this?”

  “Beats me.”

  A light rain had begun to fall when Kai-Li parked her aging Volvo in my driveway and jogged through the mist to the front porch. I’d watched her coming from the entry hall, through a column of square panes lined up against the doorframe. It was past 5:00 and close to dark. Tom Brokaw’s voice floated in from the living room.

  Kai-Li had called Kelly from the Montgomery Airport around lunchtime. She had been waiting to meet a flight from Iowa, waiting to hand off Sunny to her ex for the holidays when she picked up the afternoon paper. My fame had spread. She’d told Kelly she wanted to talk with me in person. She’d said it was urgent. Kelly had called me on the other line to get an okay before giving Kai-Li directions to my house.

  I’d spent the afternoon talking with Sully and trying without success to run down Sheri Baneberry. Around 3:00, I’d tried to get Dr. Laurel Adderson on the phone. I figured she was wondering what kind of nut she had confided in. I was right. After leaving me on hold for eight minutes, Dr. Adderson’s office manager told me that my message had been conveyed to the doctor, and she couldn’t promise that the doctor would call me back.

  I opened the door as Kai-Li reached for the bell.

  I smiled. “You here to fire me in person?”

  Kai-Li stopped just outside the door. Her eyes, more gray than green in the dusk, scanned my face. She smiled back. “You don’t get depressed very easily, do you, Tom?”

  I stepped aside. “Just mad. But I’ve had some time to get over it.” Kai-Li passed me in the foyer and continued into the living room. I said, “I’ve already been fired by a couple of clients today, and Dr. Adderson—the physician who treated the dead juror—won’t return my calls. So I was a little surprised you wanted to drive down.”

  She smiled again, and I noticed her eyes had grown bright green in the lighted room. “I can’t fire you. I work for you. I guess I could quit.” She walked over to the sofa. “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Can I get you a Coke or a drink or something?”

  She shook her head and collapsed onto the sofa. I walked over and clicked off the evening news before sitting beside her. She turned sideways, tucked one leg under the other, and trained those eyes on my face. “Back to the point—I guess I could resign as your consultant. And I’m ashamed to say that I likely would have done just that if I hadn’t already analyzed the data you gave me before I saw the newspaper.”

  “You’ve already run the analysis?”

  “You were in trouble. And, anyway, once I had the disk from the State Bar, it was mostly a programming job. It took a couple of hours to decide how to best analyze the data and a few more hours to write a simple program. Nothing to it, really.”

  “And?”

  “And Chris Galerina’s firm, Russell and Wagler, is definitely hazardous to your health if you’re a juror on a big-money case.”

  Hazardous to your health. That was the joke at the courthouse, according to Curtis Krait. But I didn’t think I’d shared that with my Chinese-Scottish-American consultant. I asked, “Have you talked with any lawyers or anybody else around the state about Russell and Wagler since we met in Auburn?”


  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and shook her head. “No. I’ve been putting all my time into running the analysis. Why?”

  I studied her pretty face. “No reason. Tell me what you found. Please.”

  “Okay, how much do you know about statistical analysis?”

  “I think I made a ‘B’ in sophomore business statistics.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, we’ll go with the layman’s overview.” She paused briefly before going on. “I was lucky starting out. The State Bar Legal Directory was already in ASCII format and it was clean—you know, not full of typos or formatting problems. So all I had to do was load it into my database program, assigning addresses to the pertinent data fields. I used a system of cataloging the data that reflected the sequence of data in my existing database, so if we need to make other, additional comparisons in the future …”

  I interrupted. “This is what you call the layman’s overview?”

  A light blush crept up her cheeks. “Sorry. I get into this. Anyway, once I had the legal directory in my database, I wrote a simple comparison program to check the trial attorneys in my original sample with their firms in the legal directory. I pulled everyone who wasn’t a sole practitioner and divided them into their respective firms so I’d have a large sample to compare with Russell and Wagler. Then it was a simple matter to pull juror illness rates for each firm in the directory. Now all I had to do was apply p-factor analysis …”

  “Kai-Li?”

  “What? Oh. That’s probably the kind of thing you wanted me to skip.”

  I smiled and nodded. “You know you’re way too good-looking to be this big a nerd.”

  She laughed. “And I guess you don’t get excited by legal bits, like, what do they call it? The ‘rule against perpetuities’ or something?”

  “Actually, no, I don’t. But I know what you mean. Right now, though, I’d really appreciate your skipping to the end.”

  “Okay, but you’re missing out.”