Conflict of Interest

by Mark Stone

  She blinked at me, though she continued to smile. “Traditionally, it’s the doctor who says what kind of visit it is.”

  “I guess this isn’t very traditional then, is it?” I asked, staring at her.

  “Whatever, dude,” she sighed, her smile finally cracking. “It’s been a long day. Dr. Trapp will be here soon.”

  ‘Soon’ turned out to be another half an hour. I had begun to worry that the (not so) good doctor had seen me in the waiting room, and was calling the police or something, given that the last time we saw each other, I was threatening to kick his ass. I wasn’t sure how I’d explain myself, given the strange nature of my visit as well as the confidentiality I was sworn to with Daphne as my client. As it turned out, I couldn’t have to worry about any of that. Dr. Trapp walked in as my head was spinning, looking down at what I had to assume was my file and grunting.

  “My nurse tells me you don’t want to change?” he asked looking up at me, his expression not changing. “Are you shy?” he looked down at my file again. “Mr. Archer?”

  “Rick Archer,” I said, realizing the man didn’t recognize me and standing to greet him. “And I’m not shy. I just don’t think it’s necessary in this particular instance.” In truth, I figured that-after everything went down- it would be in my best interest to get away from here quickly. I couldn’t do that in a hospital gown.

  “Is that right?’ Dr. Trapp asked me, narrowing his eyes. “And why is that, exactly?”

  “Because I’m not here for any medical procedure,” I answered. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  Dr. Trapp sat his clipboard down and gave me a quizzical look. After a few moments, his entire expression changed. “My God…” he muttered.

  “I just want to talk,” I said, holding my hands up to let him know I meant no harm.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked forcefully, though I couldn’t help but notice that his voice was still low, still a whisper. “You can’t do this. This is my place of work.”

  “And you threatened a woman at my friend’s house,” I reminded him. “No offense, Dr. Trapp, but you don’t seem to be the kind to think of much as sacred.”

  “You think you know me?” he asked. “You think you know anything about me at all? That woman is insane. What she’s saying is ridiculous.”

  “What she’s saying can be proven by a DNA test,” I answered. “Though something tells me you don’t want that.”

  “My son is eighteen years old,” Dr. Trapp said. “He’s an adult. He can’t be compelled to take a DNA test.”

  “Of course, he can,” I answered, shaking my head. “The court can compel grownups to do a lot of things, sir. Of course, going that route would entail bringing charges against you and, while that’s something I think should definitely happen, my client isn’t a big fan of it.”

  “Your client would do well to leave me alone,” Dr. Trapp said.

  “Is that a threat, sir?” I asked, tightening my jaw. “Because I don’t think you’re in any position to be making threats.”

  “You’re not pressing charges,” Dr. Trapp said. “If you were, you wouldn’t be here. In fact, if anyone is in no position to be making threats, it’s you and your client. My son is my own. I raised him from a little boy. I’ve loved him his entire life.”

  “You’ve also lied to him for his entire life, and I’m betting you don’t want him to know that,” I said. “Now, while the idea of keeping the truth of someone’s identity from him sickens me to my core, and I am going to do everything in my power to make sure the truth finally comes out, all Daphne wants is to know the boy she gave birth to. You can call her anything you’d like, and she promises not to blow your dirty little secret, but you’re going to have to play ball here.”

  “Am I?” Dr. Trapp asked.

  “You most certainly are, sir,” I said. “Otherwise, I am going to go to the district attorney, who is a personal friend of mine. I’m going to tell him what you did and I’m going to make sure that, not only does he fast track charges for you, but that he also holds a press conference so that there’s no one in the tri state area who doesn’t know what you did. I’m guessing that if, by some miracle, you happened to both evade jail and keep your license to practice medicine, which we both know you wouldn’t, you’d be the biggest pariah in the state.” I stepped closer to him. “Now, while there is nothing I would love more than to make you go through all of that, I’m inclined to do what my client wants.”

  I watched his face turn. If I had any doubt that he was guilty of what Daphne accused him of, it was gone now. He had done it. I was sure of it. I knew something else completely too, though, I had the son of a bitch over a barrel.

  “So, what do you say, Dr.? Does dinner tomorrow night work for you?”

  Chapter 9

  I took a swig of my beer and let the music blaring from the jukebox at Rocco’s lull me into something resembling calm. It had been a long day. It had been a long couple of days, really, ever since Daphne laid the truth of why Dr. Trapp was harassing her on Justin’s front lawn squarely on my shoulders. The idea of lying to my friend, especially about his own sister, didn’t sit well with me. He had done much for me since my move to Naples, and I didn’t feel like I was repaying that kindness by keeping a huge family secret from him. Still, Daphne was my client, and I couldn’t break privilege for anybody, even if it was my best friend.

  What was more, the thought that I had actually done a good thing had started to trickle into my mind. Sure, Dr. Trapp deserved to be behind bars for what he did, not only to Daphne, but to her son. My loyalty had to be to my client, though. That was the job, even if it irked me a bit. The situation was complicated one, though. All Daphne wanted was a semblance of a relationship with the child she brought into this world. If I could give that to her, if I could do it on terms where neither she nor her son had to be hurt anymore, than that was a good thing.

  Still, it wasn’t justice, and the idea of justice had been creeping into my bloodstream since the second I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. I shook my head and took another drink.

  “Should I order you another one?” a woman’s voice said from beside me. “Something tells me a couple more of those, and you’ll open right up.”

  I had been so lost in thought that I hadn’t even heard someone sit right next to me. As I turned to take the woman in, it became clear to me just how big a misstep that was.

  Fallon O’Keefe sat next to me. She was dressed for a night on the town, in a low cut shirt and short skirt. She had a band across the front of her hair that held it back and kept it from obstructing her pretty, rounded face. On another night, if I didn’t know who she was and what she wanted from me, I might have been excited to see her there. She was definitely my type. I did know who she was, though, and I did know what she wanted from me. So, anything other than the cold shoulder was an instant no-go.

  “Seriously?” I asked, sighing at her and turning back to my drink. “That’s your best offer? A beer?”

  “I didn’t know we were negotiating,” she answered, a sly grin spreading across her face.

  “Oh, we’re not,” I said. “I just figured a woman important enough to work on a podcast that won a ‘Talk-alicious’ award would have more at her disposal than the offer of cheap alcohol.”

  “It was a ‘Talktacular’, and we won three,” she replied. “I think you’ll find I have more up my sleeve than you give me credit for.”

  “You’re not wearing sleeves,” I answered, my eyes cutting over to her. “Not wearing much of anything, for that matter.”

  “It’s sweet of you to notice,” she purred.

  “Every guy in here who’s not so drunk that he’s forgotten where he is right now has noticed,” I answered. “Trust me, there’s nothing sweet about it. Now, if you’ll be kind enough to leave me alone with my thoughts, they’re going to be all the company I need tonight.”

  “Company is a funny thing, Mr. Archer,” Fallon said. “Sometim
es we don’t know we need it until it’s right there in front of us.” She stopped for just a beat. “Or beside us.”

  “I’m not going to talk to you, Ms. O’Keefe,” I answered.

  “I told you to call me Fallon,” she answered.

  “And I told you to leave me alone. I guess we’re both going to be disappointed,” I said.

  “I don’t need you to talk to me, Rick,” she said. “I thought I had made that clear to you before.”

  “You did,” I said, turning to her. “You made it crystal clear, and yet here you are, still coming at me for information.”

  “Because I believe in giving a person every chance they have at defending themselves,” she said. “This series is going to happen with or without you. My job gets done, either way. The difference is, with you, the narrative changes. You see, I don’t think you’re stupid or heartless or even incompetent. You got a bad break.” She narrowed her eyes and splayed her fingers out in front of her. “Don’t you see what this can do for you? If I can craft a compelling and plausible story here, one that paints you as the unintended victim in all of this, you could get your old life back. The firm that fired you the ones that turned away from you in your time of need, they’d all be clamoring to get you on the payroll. I’d bet you’d even get a few offers of partner.”

  I thought about that for a second, about what that might look like, about what it might feel like to march back into Chicago, vindicated and hoisted high on a pedestal. In the end, it just seemed wrong.

  “There’s only one victim in the Turner case, Ms. O’Keefe, and I’m sorry to say she’s dead,” I answered. “I don’t want what you’re selling. I’m not that man anymore.”

  “Oh, Rick. Of course, you are,” she said, smiling as she pushed herself off the bar. “You seem to have forgotten. That’s all.” She patted me on the shoulder before she walked away. “Don’t worry. I’ll remind you.”

  Chapter 10

  Laura Sky walked into my office like a wave crashing on the shore. Though she promised me there was no hard feelings after our last tangle in court, I hadn’t seen her in weeks and I was beginning to think she actually did harbor some resentment toward me. Though, if that was the case, what was she doing here now? I didn’t have any pending cases that she was involved in and, even if I had, Laura wasn’t the type to make the trip to my office for it. Her coming here would serve to give me the upper hand in a case, and she would never do that.

  “Laura,” I said, pushing myself off my desk and standing to meet her. “It’s good to see you, though something tells me it’s not going to be quite as good once I find out what I owe this pleasure to.”

  Not even a hint of a smile graced her delicate features. That wasn’t a good sign.

  “You should probably sit back down,” Laura said, motioning to the chair I’d just stood from.

  “That bad?” I asked, cringing a little, and looking her over.

  “This is the first lunch hour I’ve had all week that didn’t entail me eating from the hood of my car,” she said. “I wouldn’t have given it up to come down here unless I thought it was important.”

  “I have half a tuna salad sandwich in the mini fridge over there,” I said, sitting and pointing to the black box in the corner of the room. “I’ve just been dying to give it away.”

  “As tempting an offer as that is, I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you disappointed,” she said, sitting in the chair across from me.

  “That’s happened to me a lot lately,” I answered, letting a hesitant smile drag across my face in the hope it might cause Laura to do the same. No luck, though. She sat stalwart, her face as unmoving as stone. “Look,” I said, shuffling and placing my elbows on my desk. “If this is about a woman with a podcast, I’m sorry if she’s bugging you. I’ve been trying to get her to stop, but I don’t have a leg to stand on legally. She’s well within her rights to ask all the nosy, unnecessary questions she wants, even if it does threaten to make my life harder.”

  Laura narrowed her eyes, and I knew she had no idea what I was talking about. That was at once a relief and a problem. On one hand, I didn’t look forward to the idea of Laura being told what happened with me up in Chicago. Sure, she’d heard about it, but there was a difference between hearing about something and being presented with a concrete narrative. Still, it begged the question if that wasn’t what so important it was what forced Laura to skip her one decent lunch of the week, then what was it?

  “I’m way off, aren’t I?” I asked, swallowing hard.

  “I’m afraid so,” Laura said. “Listen, I want you to know that what I’m doing isn’t something I make a habit of. I normally wouldn’t do this, and if not for the relationship you and Justin have with Ethan, I wouldn’t even consider it.” She pursed her lips. “But you do have that relationship, and that means something to Ethan. That means it means something to me too. Lord knows I wouldn’t want to find out about something like this from a stranger.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, instantly straightening up as my heart began to pump into overdrive. “What’s happened, Laura?”

  “An hour and a half ago, local police got a call about a domestic disturbance at a house on the south side,” she said. “Some yelling, some loud banging, the usual. I’m told this wasn’t a house that the police had ever been called to before. So, it set their flashers off a little.”

  “Alright,” I said, still confused.

  “When officers got there, they found the owner of the house had been murdered in cold blood,” Laura said. “The man’s neighbor, the same woman who made the disturbance call in the first place, remembered seeing a woman leaving the house soon after she heard the ruckus. She gave police a description of the woman, as well as a description of the car and the license plate number.”

  “She knew the license plate number?” I asked, my eyebrows darting upward. “You know, I’m impressed. Sounds like an open and shut case for you.”

  “It does,” Laura said, though her voice lacked the energy it should have had with a sure thing. “But I’m afraid this is a little more complicated than that.”

  “Complicated how?” I asked.

  “The dead man was a doctor, Rick,” she said, and immediately my heart dropped.

  “A doctor?” I asked, remembering what I had done yesterday and letting my mind run wild. “What was his name?”

  “Stephen Trapp,” she said, bringing my worst fears into solid life. Of course, if there was any doubt about what she was going to say next, she brushed it away with a sentence. “And the woman seen leaving his house, the car and the license plate, it all makes Daphne Knight. We’re confident that fingerprints found in the house will match Daphne’s. Once that happens, it’ll be more than enough for a warrant.” She nodded at me, looking at the watch on her wrist. “Daphne Knight is about to be arrested for the murder of Dr. Stephen Trapp.”

  “That’s impossible!” I said, leaping from my seat again. “Daphne would never do something like that!” The truth was, I didn’t really know her. I knew Justin, though, and I couldn’t believe someone he treasured as much as he did his sister could ever be responsible for something like that. What was more, I spoke to her. I knew what she was looking for when it came to Dr. Trapp. Murder just didn’t seem reasonable given what I knew.

  “I’m not here for that,” Laura said, holding a hand up to stop me. “This is happening, and we’re not in a courtroom, Rick. I have no interest in arguing the merits of this arrest with you here. I just wanted you to know, so that you wouldn’t be blindsided.” She stood herself and looked me over. “I’m going to go now. I’m not sure what else there is to say.”

  “Neither am I,” I muttered as she took her leave and I mulled over everything that had just happened, and- because of that-everything that was about to happen. “Neither am I.”

  Chapter 11

  I rushed to Justin’s house on two wheels, screeching into his driveway and running out of the car before I was
even sure I’d put the damn thing in park. My heart was racing and my head was swimming with the information Laura had just dropped on me. I couldn’t believe this. This couldn’t be real.

  I slammed into the front door, knocking hard on it and screaming for Justin to open the door. Taking a deep breath, I found my entire body to be shaking as Justin opened the door. His eyes were tired and rimmed in red. His jaw was set and his brow was furrowed with worry. He knew. He knew exactly what was about to happen.

  “You son of a bitch,” he muttered, looking at me with more anger than I had ever seen even from the other side of the aisle. “How could you do this?”

  “Justin,” I said, nodding at him and holding my hands out in front of me to show him I meant no offense. “I’m sorry. If I’d have known-”

  “You’re sorry?” he asked, his face melting into a mask of hurt and anger. “Are you serious right now? After everything that’s happened, after everything you did, you’re really going to come to my house and hit me with an ‘I’m sorry’? You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

  “Justin, let him in!” Daphne said, appearing behind her brother, grabbing his shoulder, and pulling him out of the doorway. “He didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “The hell he didn’t,” Justin said, though I couldn’t help but notice he didn’t move to block the doorway again. He blinked, looking back at me. “Get your ass in here. I don’t want to scream at you in front of the neighbors anymore.”

  As I walked in, closing the door behind me, Daphne rushed me, her own eyes filled with tears and her hands trembling. “I didn’t do this, Rick,” she said frantically. “He was okay when I left. I swear. I would never have hurt him. I just wanted to know the boy. You believe me, right? You understand?”

  “I believe you,” I answered honestly.

  “At least someone does,” she said, tears spilling from her eyes and streaming down her cheeks.