She flattened out her mouth, as if she was trying to hold back tears again. “No money for a kid,” she said softly. “I didn’t even know how to get in touch with him. I never got his phone number. I didn’t know where he lived. It was a disaster. I was pregnant by a man who raped me while I was unconscious, and I had no clue on how to find him again.”
“How did you find him?”
“Well, it was the weirdest thing. His company, Stone Enterprises, was in the newspaper. It lost a lot of money that year, yet Gerald was still pocketing millions of dollars a year as its CEO and founder. People were outraged, so the company was in the newspaper and they showed a picture of Gerald there. I read the newspaper, saw the picture, and I was stunned. Absolutely stunned. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”
I made notes furiously while she spoke. “So, you found out who he was. How did you get in touch with him?”
“It wasn’t easy. I knew who he was, finally, but that did me little good. I mean, I couldn’t just call Stone Enterprises and ask to speak with the CEO. That wasn’t going to work. I went to the headquarters and asked to see him, and they laughed at me. They said that there wasn’t any way that I could get a meeting with him. So, I was frustrated.”
“How were you able to finally speak with him?”
“I had to have him served at his office. With a paternity petition.” She shook her head. “To say that he wasn’t happy would be an understatement. He called me the night that he was served and he cussed me up and down. He told me that there was no way that he was the father of my baby, and that I was a stripper, so I probably had sex with a hundred men since him, so how did I know that he was the father? He was a completely different man than the man that I had gotten to know at the club. But I was firm. I told him that he was the only man that I had slept with in over a year, so I was positive that he was the one who had gotten me pregnant.”
I had to smile. I imagined the look on his face when he received that petition and just the thought of that made me want to giggle just a little. Men like Gerald needed to be brought down to size, and I imagined that her petition did just that – brought him down to size.
“And then what happened?”
“He fought me the whole way. He had some powerful lawyer file a bunch of motions, and I didn’t have a lawyer at all. I was doing it all myself. The lawyer tried to stop me from getting a DNA test, but the judge ordered it anyway, and, of course, the results came back that he was the father. He was the only one that was possible, so I wasn’t surprised. He was, though, and furious. He was married, which made things more complicated.”
To say the least.
“Did he lose his temper?”
“Oh, yeah. He did. He came over to my house three separate times. He strangled me one of those times. He had me down on the floor and he had his hands around my neck and I thought I was going to die. The second time he came over, he kicked me in the stomach. I knew that he was trying to get me to lose the baby, and that scared me. The third time, he beat me up so bad that I was put into the hospital. After each time he came over, I filed a restraining order against him. He obviously didn’t care, because he kept on coming over.”
“The bastard,” I muttered, and Megan laughed softly.
“To say the least,” she said. “You can call him a sociopath. That would be the better term for him. I was very angry, because I kept going to court because he kept violating the restraining order, and the judge would let him go every time. The cops also refused to arrest him after he beat me up that one time. The cops refused to arrest him every time he came over. I felt pretty helpless. I had restraining orders against him and he was beating on me and strangling me and I couldn’t get law enforcement to protect me. I thought he was going to kill me next.”
She put her fingers on my desk and drummed them while she looked out the window again for several minutes.
“Would you like another water?” I asked her.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I just want to get through this.” She paused again. “I thought he was going to kill me. But I got the upper hand on him. I got the upper hand, and I was able to make him do what I wanted him to do.”
My ears perked up when she said this. I was genuinely curious on how she managed to get the upper hand on him. “What happened? What did you do to get the upper hand?”
“I got smart. I hired a private investigator to find out any information on him that I could use. I needed to fight fire with fire. And that PI came through. He came through like a house on fire.”
“In what way?”
“My PI, Manuel, found out that Gerald was stealing from the company. He had a forensic accountant go through the company’s books, I guess he also had somebody hack the company’s financial records, and they found out that Gerald had been stealing millions from his own company. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I read in the paper that he was being paid $30 million per year and that his stock options brought him millions more, sometimes over a hundred million dollars a year, and that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t enough. He had to also steal millions more. I mean, how much does one person need? Truly. I guess, for some people, they can never have enough money. It’s some kind of psychological disorder.”
I believed it. I believed that people who were that obsessed with acquiring millions upon millions, by any means possible, were suffering from a psychological disorder of some sort. That made sense to me. At any rate, Gerald sounded like a real piece of work.
A real piece of work.
She looked out the window again. “I told him, after I found this information out, that I had the goods on him, and that I was going to the authorities to have him arrested.”
“How did he react to that?”
“He blustered. He told me that he had no clue what I was talking about. But he suddenly started to play ball. We went to court, and I got child support from him, but I wanted to really make him pay. So I continued to hold that information above his head. Also, I knew that he wanted to literally kill me. He was desperate for me to keep my mouth shut, and I knew that he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t have a problem with killing somebody to protect himself, so I let him know that the information I had about him stealing was in a secure location and that my mother knew where it was and so did one other person. I didn’t tell him who the other person was.”
She was a smart cookie. If Gerald thought that he could just kill her to shut her up, she let him know that that plan wouldn’t work. She also told him that two different people had that information, without telling him who the second person was, therefore he wouldn’t know who to kill in order to keep everything quiet. Very smart.
“So, then what happened?”
“I got what I wanted from him. He bought me that house in Hallbrook and he agreed to pay me $100,000 a year, in addition to the child support that he was giving me, which was figured out to be $5,000 a month.” She smiled. “And he hasn’t harassed me since. In fact, I haven’t seen him since. Thank god.”
I leaned back in my chair as I regarded her. She was smart and tough. She also had the goods on Gerald. One thing was for sure – after speaking with her, I had no doubt, zero doubt, that Gerald was capable of ordering Judge Sanders murdered.
“Let me ask you this. The reason why I wanted to speak with you is that I’m hot on the trail of finding out who killed Judge Sanders. I’m thinking that Gerald Stone is looking pretty good to me right now.”
She furrowed her brow. “Gerald is? Why do you think that he did it?”
“His company has a case that’s pending. A class action. It involves Dowling Chemicals, which is a subsidiary of Stone Enterprises.”
She nodded her head. “Yes. That chemical. Toluene or something like that.”
“Toluene. Yes. That’s exactly it.”
“Those poor people. I mean, I know that community. It’s pretty similar to the neighborhood where I grew up. Those people have very little to begin with. They certainly
don’t need some negligent company poisoning them. All those babies born with brain damage – it’s heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking.”
I nodded my head. “It is. It breaks my heart, too. And you’re right – those people have enough to worry about without having to worry about getting sick because some idiotic company doesn’t make sure that they’re disposing of chemicals correctly.”
“Amen. So, that case is pending. Why do you think that Gerald wanted to get rid of Judge Sanders?”
I raised my eyebrows. “If you knew about Judge Sanders, you would know why. He was a plaintiffs’ attorney. By that, I mean that he consistently ruled on behalf of the plaintiffs against the big corporations. He had no qualms slapping companies with large punitive damages when they were guilty of criminal wrong-doing. In this case, there was the possibility of being assessed millions of dollars in punitive damages. Maybe even as much as a billion in punitive damages. At any rate, the punitives would have probably been in the hundreds of millions if Judge Sanders was trying this case. I read through his opinions, and he hated corporations who are criminally negligent. He despised them. He slapped them down hard. And the way that Dowling got rid of those chemicals – that was criminally negligent. I mean, the employees were just pouring that stuff on the ground. They didn’t even bother putting all the chemicals in barrels. And the barrels that they did use were not rated for those kinds of chemicals.”
“Really? I didn’t pay that much attention to that case. I mean, I saw that it was Dowling Chemicals, but I didn’t really associate it with Gerald.” She smiled. “If I did associate it with Gerald, I probably would have thought the same thing that you’re thinking – that Gerald was behind Judge Sanders’ murder. Because you’re right – Gerald would have a judge killed. He would do that without even thinking. The man’s a sociopath. A straight-up sociopath.”
I drummed my pen on the desk. “He is. I mean, he sounds like it.” I bit my lower lip. I was fairly certain that Gerald’s fingerprints were all over this murder. Just all over it. But was Michael’s fingerprints on it as well?
That was going to be the trick. I was going to somehow, someway, connect Michael to this whole murder. I didn’t know how I was going to do that, however. Gerald Stone had motive to kill the judge. Gerald Stone had the right mentality to do it. Michael, however, didn’t quite have the same motive.
It might have just been a huge coincidence that Michael was involved with Kayla Stone, and that Gerald Stone most likely ordered that Judge Sanders be killed. Yet, there wasn’t any doubt that Michael had the best access to the judge. Somebody poisoned him, too, before he was killed, and Christina Sanders told me that Michael had the best access to poison the judge.
Michael told me, however, that Christina was setting him up.
I was confused. After speaking with Megan, I thought that I knew who did it – it was Gerald. But I couldn’t deny that Christina Sanders, and, for that matter, Ava Sanders, also had reason to do it. Michael was having an affair with Kayla Stone, and Kayla Stone’s prenuptial agreement was changed the day after the judge was murdered. That would indicate to me that Kayla Stone did something for Gerald in exchange for getting the terms that she wanted on that agreement.
That something might have been killing the judge.
It might have been. But I wasn’t sure. And I was a long, long way from proving any of it. I wanted to go to the cops and tell them what I suspected about Gerald, but I was afraid that they would take their attention away from Michael. I needed Michael to still be the focus of the investigation.
I needed to make sure that, at the end of all of this, Michael did the perp walk. That was within my reach. I could feel it. I could taste it. It was coming. I just had to prove it.
“Ms. Ross?” Megan asked me. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said, coming out of my reverie. “I am. Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been talking to you and you haven’t answered me back. I think that I lost you somehow.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I just got lost in thought. What were just trying to say to me?”
“I was asking you if you needed any other information from me.”
“No, actually. You’ve given me all the information that I need. You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty, so I thank you.”
She grimaced. “Well, if what I tell you helps you somehow put Gerald into jail, then I’ll be happy. He’s a bad man, Ms. Ross. A very bad man. Once you told me your suspicions about him – that you think that he was behind the murder of Judge Sanders – I knew that what you were thinking was probably right. Gerald would do something like that without even thinking twice. By the way, who is the judge who is currently overseeing the case?”
I sighed. “Judge Perez. He’s a hard-ass who is really stingy with plaintiffs. The plaintiffs in this case will probably get very little out of it. Which is a shame, of course. They’ve been hurt. They need justice, but it will probably be denied to them. All because of Gerald. They’re collateral damage, and it just isn’t right.”
“No, that’s not right,” Megan agreed. “It’s not right that one judge will award millions and another judge won’t. That doesn’t seem like justice.”
“It’s not. It’s the legal system, though. Powerful people are behind getting these judges seated. Powerful lobbying interests make sure that they get their men and women on the bench. Because federal judges are appointed by the President, the justice system is run by whomever the current President chooses. That’s why elections have consequences. People don’t really think about that, but it’s true – if the people want to have their cases heard by judges who are sympathetic to them, and not to the powerful, then they have to elect politicians who will put those types of judges on the bench. Nobody ever thinks about that angle until they attempt to sue somebody and find out, too late, that the judge who oversees their case is a total hard-ass. Like Judge Perez.”
I was on my soap-box, and I knew it. As an attorney, I knew, for a fact, how important it was to get the right judge to hear your case. Judge Perez, as far as the plaintiffs were concerned, was exactly the wrong judge. As far as the wealthy special interests were concerned, however, Judge Perez was a golden boy. It made me sick.
Megan nodded. “Well, Ms. Ross, I hope that you get your man. By your man, I hope that you get Gerald.”
I shook her hand and she left.
I sat down at my office, thinking that Megan was right. Gerald sounded like a bad guy. The very worst kind of person. But he had good company, because Michael was also a bad guy. They were in on it together. I knew it.
But how was I going to prove it?
THE NEXT DAY, I was sitting in my office, minding my own business, trying to go through my stacks of files and triage them somehow, someway. I was consumed with Michael’s murder trial, but, even so, I also had other clients who needed attention. They were mostly low-level cases that would plead out – stealing clients, DWI clients, and other cases like that. It wouldn’t be a big deal, except that I had a lot of them.
And then I heard Michael come storming into the office suite. “Where is she? Where is my fucking bitch attorney?”
I peeked my head out the door, and he saw me. Pearl stood up and put her hands out, but he went right past her and charged towards my office. My heart started to pound loudly, and I saw him tear off his leather gloves and throw them on the floor. His fists were balled up and I shut the door before he could get in.
“You open that door. You open it right now. Right fucking now.”
A part of me wanted to call the police, but I thought better of it. I didn’t want anything to complicate my mission, and having Michael hauled into the police station would certainly have the effect of slowing his case down. I was so close to finding all the pieces of the puzzle, and I simply didn’t want anything getting in the way.
“I won’t. Not until you calm down.”
I heard him breathing heavily, so I waited. I wai
ted until I heard his breathing slow down before I opened the door.
“Come in,” I said, pointing to a chair. “And sit down.”
“You…you…you…” He shook his head. “What are you doing on this case? Where are you going with it?”
“Come again? If you’re referring to the fact that I had Megan Baker in here for a deposition, I would think that you would be thanking me for that. She told me some information that was very interesting to me about Kayla’s husband.” I nodded my head, never letting on that I suspected that Michael himself was also somehow behind the judge’s murder.
“You lay off Gerald Stone. Do you hear me? You lay off of him. That’s an order.”
I sat down. “Now, why would you ask me to lay off of him?”
He shook his head. “Listen, Kayla and Gerald are on their last tether. Gerald is ready to divorce her and leave her with nothing at all. I have to hear it from Kayla that her husband is harassing her because he found out that you’re looking at him for this murder. Gerald is ready to cut her out. Do you hear me? He’s ready to cut her down to size.”
I narrowed my eyes, wondering what his game was. Why he was so upset. After all, Gerald changed that prenuptial agreement to take out the infidelity clause.
Or was he getting ready to change it back? To put that infidelity clause right back in? That would make sense. I was closing in on him. I was putting him into a vise. It was a vise of his own making, to be sure, but a vise it was.
“Michael,” I said, my voice calm and measured. “What happens to Kayla Stone is none of my concern, and it shouldn’t be yours, either. Your concern should be laser-focused on my finding an alternative person who did this murder. If we go before the jury, at this moment, you’re going to fry. Do you know why the jury will fry you? I’ll tell you why. Because there is nobody else to pin this murder on. Somebody is going to go down for it, and you’re the only candidate at the moment. The only one. Now, my job is to turn over every stone, no pun intended, and find out alternative explanations for the murder. I would like it if you would back off and let me down your job, or else you’re going to be as fried as that chicken you bought the night of the murder.”
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 54
