The Mental Case (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 6)

by John Ellsworth

  "Banco Nacionale? That's our destination."

  "It is."

  "Have you ever been treated for any kind of mental disorder?" Libby asked with a sweet smile.

  Thaddeus looked at Ansel as if a light bulb had been turned on. He was waiting to hear the answer.

  Ansel's head jerked up and he bobbled the martini. "No. Yes. No."

  "Okay...which is it?" said Thaddeus.

  Libby scoffed and looked off.

  "Yes and no."

  "That yes would have been when?"

  "Recently."

  "Great. You want to tell me about that?"

  "I take Risperdal for bipolar."

  "No, you don't. Risperdal is an anti-psychotic. I'm enough of a criminal lawyer to know a little about my anti-psychotic meds, Ansel."

  "No. Depakote and Risperdal."

  "Depakote I buy. Risperdal for bipolar? You've got some kind of psychosis going on, friend. So why don't you come clean with me. What really happened to your firm's money? Libby, feel free to jump in here at any time."

  Libby said, "Do you want to tell him or do I have to?"

  Ansel dabbed his chin with a linen napkin.

  Whereupon the waiter came for their order. Ansel ordered a veal dish and Thaddeus asked for the Chicken Alfredo. Libby opted for lasagna, heavy on the cheese. The waiter said he would be back with coffee, water, and a red dinner wine.

  Thaddeus looked at Ansel. Ansel fidgeted with his drink.

  "Like I said, why don't you come clean with me?"

  "Yesh, Anshel, how about that?"

  "Because I can't. It's not that I don't want to. It's that I can't."

  "You mean can't or won't?"

  "I can't. I honestly don't know what happened to the money."

  "Well, the part about David. David took the money, correct?"

  "That's my thinking. There was a message on my laptop."

  "Damn, Ansel, we've got a moving target here. You're making this very difficult."

  "Let me talk to Libby. She can help with this."

  "I can help with shome of it," Libby agreed.

  "I don't get the impression that Libby has the first clue what's going on here."

  "I do and I don't," Libby said. "He should tell you himshelf. But you're not going to like what he hash to shay."

  "Well, why don't we skip the part where I don't like what you say? Why don't you just tell me what you know?"

  Tears came into Ansel's eyes. Within a minute his cheeks were damp.

  Thaddeus sipped his coffee and looked away. He was close. Very close.

  "Tell me what you do know."

  Libby slapped the table with an open hand. "David ish dead."

  "What?"

  "David died when he wash eleven. Except sometimes Anshel forgets that."

  "What!"

  Ansel nodded violently. "She keeps saying that."

  "So--let me see if I'm following this. David didn't take the money?"

  "No. David ish dead."

  "Then who--"

  Libby flung back in her seat, exasperated. "Who took the trust funds? Maybe he took them."

  "What did you do with them?"

  "Good luck with that," Libby said.

  Ansel folded his hands and rubbed his thumbs together. "That is the two hundred million dollar question. I really don't know."

  "This--this--" Thaddeus had no words. He was incredulous.

  "I know. I know. It's not an easy case."

  "Well--is there a chance you will remember?"

  "He won't remember what he had for supper by bedtime," Libby said. She shook her head with no small disgust and yet you could see a light of pity in her eyes as well.

  "No. I've tried to remember. If I don't know what happened right now, it won't suddenly clear up on down the road. It doesn't work like that."

  "So you had a psychotic episode and did some things and now you don't know what you did. Is that about it?"

  Ansel nodded. "Probably."

  "Damn, Ansel."

  "I know."

  "How could the firm give you access to its trust account?"

  "They don't know. They know I'm sick, but they think it's my heart. I've let them think that, to account for my hospitalizations. Pacemaker maintenance, I tell them."

  "We have shkeletons in the Largent closhet. Thatsh ash good ash it gets."

  "Damn, Ansel."

  Ansel looked aggrieved by his lesser but larcenous self. "So you have me, a client who maybe took a whole bunch of money and now he doesn't know what he did with it. Am I guilty of a crime?"

  "That's a damn good question. There's probably a mix of legal insanity and a dose of embezzlement. Some of both. I don't know without doing some reading. Honestly, I've never had this case before. Insanity, yes. Temporary insanity, yes. Larceny--theft, burglary, armed robbery, yes. But both at once? Not so good there. Unstudied."

  "So what should I do?"

  "Find the money and get it back to your partners. That's first."

  "If we can find the money and return it, is it still a crime?"

  "I'm hungry, ravenous," Libby said. Thaddeus saw how this kind of stuff was old hat to her. She only wanted food.

  "If I return it does that make the whole thing go away?"

  "Good question. It certainly would be arguable. I can't promise anything, but if the money's returned, it works a lot better for you. Maybe a year or two behind bars instead of the rest of your life. Maybe a state prosecution instead of a federal one. Federal sentencing guidelines make you a roommate candidate for Bernard Madoff. State sentencing and prosecution you're out in a year. Maybe no jail at all, given your mental incapacity."

  "So help me. Help me find it."

  "Yesh, help him find it sho I can go home to my own bed."

  "Damn, Ansel,” Thaddeus muttered. He shook his head. He sipped his coffee.

  Ansel winced.

  "Would you quit saying that?"

  "I can't. I'm astonished. I don't have words. Just when I thought I'd heard it all, now this. I don't even know where to begin."

  "Well, we begin in Zurich."

  "Then why are we here?"

  "I don't know. Because I didn't know what else to say to the Fibbies.”

  "So what else haven't you told me? Let's get all that minor kind of stuff out on the table right here, right now."

  "Nothing. You have it all."

  "David's dead, you're sure of that."

  "David ish dead."

  "Listen to her."

  "And you took the money like you were in a blackout."

  "That's an educated guess."

  "Bear with me. I'm struggling here."

  "Here it comesh!" cried Libby. "I love lashagna. I wouldn't eat veal on a dare. Too cruel."

  "Yes," said Thaddeus, "we don't want cruel, do we?"

  Ansel lifted his new red wine. "To Zurich," he said.

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  Chapter 24

  They were 40,000 feet over the Atlantic when Ansel asked the woman sitting beside Thaddeus if she would trade with him. She was happy to oblige and when she had gathered up purse, pillow, and carry-on and moved up beside Libby, Ansel settled in beside Thaddeus. Libby turned to her and they struck up a conversation so everyone seemed happy.

  At least for the moment.

  "There's something else bothering me," Ansel told Thaddeus.

  Thaddeus leaned back against the seat and shut his eyes.

  "Suzanne Fairmont was a young, tough litigator in our office."

  "Okay."

  "She was six years out of Cornell Law, married, one small child, and a terror around the criminal courts. She had never lost a trial, not even a speeding ticket. As you can guess, her services were in great demand, especially around Chicago, where the latest headline crime is as fresh as today's bagels."

  "Okay."

  Ansel lowered the tray on the seat back. He removed his gold watch and placed it on the tray and began rubbing his wrist.

  "Okay. She had ju
st announced her run for District Attorney. Seems she had been pursued by several civic organizations to come over to the light and start putting bad guys away instead of turning them loose."

  "Okay."

  "She was found dead in her office last week."

  "At your law firm?"

  "My law firm. Two doors down from mine. Dead, and they said the wound wasn't self-inflicted."

  "And you're telling me this because?"

  Ansel returned the watch to his wrist. 'I just thought you should know. You're my lawyer."

  "Hold on. Wait a minute, Ansel. Are you telling me you had something to do with Ms. Fairmont's death?"

  Ansel turned white. "That's just it. I don't know. Honestly I would deny it all day and all night. But my reality isn't always the reality everyone else operates in. You follow me?"

  "I think so. Do you have any kind of clue you might be involved in that? Did you own a gun?"

  "No guns. I'm an insurance lawyer. We won't insure Smith & Wesson, Glock, Colt, any of them. As an industry we hate guns. No, I didn't have a gun."

  "And she died by gunshot?"

  "What little I know--yes, she died from a gunshot to the head."

  "Damn, Ansel."

  "So what do we do?"

  "For one thing, you don't talk to the cops. You haven't spoken to the police have you?"

  "No, I cleared out of the office so that wouldn't happen."

  "Were you afraid of what you might say?"

  "I was afraid of what I don't know. It's hard being me, Thad. When I'm up on my meds, it's all good. But if I miss or if I get stressed out, I can miss things."

  "That's a nice way of putting it. I would have said you have psychotic episodes and probably shouldn't be practicing law. We have a different slant on it, you and I."

  "Maybe you're right."

  "We can cross that bridge later. Do you have any kind of retirement funds?"

  "Why?"

  "Because you might find yourself suddenly retired, if you don't wind up in jail first."

  "401k. Plus a disability policy."

  "You? Some carrier was actually willing to insure you against disability? Did you lie on the application?"

  "I'm in the industry. We take care of each other."

  "Good grief. I was shot and now I can't even get disability insurance. You're a miracle."

  "We try."

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  Chapter 25

  When the Chicago Police Department assigned detectives to high profile murders, one team always at the top of the list was O'Connor and Wainwright.

  Jake O'Connor was twelve months shy of retiring from Chicago PD, having worked his way up to Lieutenant of Detectives. On Gold Watch Day he would have made chief.

  His partner, Lucinda Wainwright, was an Olympic weight lifter with 2016 Rio aspirations.

  Jake was tall, lithe, and a graduate of the University of Illinois-Chicago with a master's in forensic science.

  Lucinda--who preferred "Lucinda," never "Lucy"--Lucinda was a graduate of Eastern Illinois University just a few years behind her idol Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys. Like her superstar hero, Lucinda had found her calling her freshman year. Except hers wasn't football, it was weight-lifting, or lifting as it was known to its adherents. She was muscular, of course, with legs like oak trees, with greatly exaggerated quadriceps muscles, which gave her tremendous lifting power. When Lucinda wasn't working out she supported herself as a homicide detective with CPD. When Jake wasn't writing a scholarly article on homicide CSI techniques, he supported himself (and wife and four children) as a homicide detective with CPD. Jake had seniority over Lucinda, so he ran the show.

  In a way, then, the detectives had something in common with the homicide victim named Suzanne Fairmont. All were especially accomplished at their professional calling.

  Suzanne, however, was much younger than the two detectives that would investigate her death by gunshot, for she was only twenty-nine when she died.

  Many of the old sages who wrote features for the Tribune and Sun-Times allowed as how Suzanne was too young for the job of DA. She needed another ten years in the ring, they opined over the months leading up to her death. She was too green, too ambitious. But beyond that, she was every precinct committee person's dream: youthful, vivacious, incredible pedigree, high profile accomplishments.

  So when she turned up dead that snowy Chicago morning, the orbits of the three shining stars suddenly closed and coalesced.

  Right away, Jake knew the case was going to be difficult. No murder weapon and no known enemies. In fact, the usual enemies of law enforcement were known to worship at her feet. After all, to a man--or woman--they all owed their freedom to the lawyering skills possessed by Suzanne. None of them would have a motive to harm her. In fact, their motives were the exact opposite: they would all have a motive to see her live a long and safe life. Especially so, since her clients weren't the type to shut it all down with the commission and narrow escape from just one crime. They were repeat offenders, each one of them. Recidivists, Jake's thick books called them, sociopaths who could be counted on for repeating legal fees generated by repeating crimes and arrests. The denizens every successful criminal lawyer cultivates.

  But one thing different about Suzanne's criminal law practice was picked up on early in the investigation. Credit Lucinda with sniffing it out first: all of Suzanne's clients over the last twelve months were white collar. With her increased notoriety as the go-to criminal lawyer in Cook County had come a seismic shift in the type of crime she was increasingly called to defend: embezzlements, insider trading, income tax evasion, undisclosed offshore accounts, bribery, credit card fraud--all of the paper stuff, the stuff that didn't require a gun or a battered head or a stolen vehicle. Her clientele over the last year had decidedly shifted away from violence, theft, and mayhem, and more toward the behind-the-scenes stuff of white collar ignominy. The criminals over the first half of her career were found in the the ghettos and dark places. The criminals over the most recent half of her career were found at the county club.

  Which gave the two detectives fits, when Lucinda brought it to Jake's attention.

  "This chick," said Lucinda over coffee in the detectives' day room, "wasn't about the kind of bad buys we usually get."

  "How so?"

  "I've been over the thirty-six files she opened over the last fourteen months. There's not a murderer, wife-beater, child molester, rapist, or grand-theft-auto perp among them. They're all business people, executives, tax preparers, and accountants. None of whom, you wouldn't think, would resort to a gun to kill their lawyer. Your usual dickheads with guns and bludgeons weren't in her file drawers."

  "So we're looking for someone who maybe wasn't a client?" said Jake. "Interesting."

  "How about a family member?" asked Lucinda. "I'm thinking we start with the husband. Maybe look for rejected boyfriends."

  "She was married to a linebacker on the Bears practice squad. Mr. Violence, his teammates call him. But I've been all over him. Airtight alibi: he was home with their kid Sunday night while Suzanne played catch-up the office."

  "Can he prove that?"

  "It gets better. Suzanne's parents were there with him. They'd had dinner and watched movies until eleven o'clock. Suzanne was expected home at nine. But it wasn't unlike her to stay late. That what her family thought, so the parents leave around eleven-thirty and hubby falls asleep on the couch, waiting for her. He comes to next morning and that's when he makes the call and our maintenance man opens her office door and finds her dead."

  "Okay, so what about the maintenance guy?"

  "Can you think of any motive he might have to shoot her dead?"

  "Likely not," said Lucinda. She flexed her huge right forearm and admired the muscle that popped up. "So the husband is airtight, the janitor ain't got motive. That leaves--"

  "That leaves the law partners."

  "Just what I was about to say."

  "Top or bottom?" Jake asked.

&
nbsp; "How about you take top and I start at the bottom."

  "Meet in the middle?"

  "So be it."

  "Or should we team up on them?" Jake had paused as he was packing up his investigative file. Maybe tag-team would come off better.

  "They're lawyers. Good guy-bad guy ain’t gonna work with them."

  "Agreed."

  "Let's get started. Who's first up?" said Lucinda.

  "Got the firm diagram right here. Top attorney is Ansel Largent, Managing Partner."

  "He was the guy supposed to give us a statement the first morning."

  "Who disappeared; and hasn't been found since."

  "Red flag."

  "Big red flag."

  "So where is he, best guess?"

  "I wouldn't think he would flee. That would be too obvious."

  "I'll get on that," Lucinda said.

  "One other thing you need to know."

  "What's that?"

  He tossed her two pages stapled together.

  "These are the security log, bank building ins and outs, law firm ins and outs."

  "What do they tell us?"

  "That your new friend, Ansel Largent, entered the bank just after eight p.m. the night of the homicide. M.E. says she was shot between nine and eleven."

  "Well, well. So now we know."

  "We know something else, too,” Jake said.

  “What’s that?”

  He tossed her two more stapled sheets.

  “Reproductions from the security cams for the visitor who showed up next.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Well, she had a security key.”

  “Name?”

  “Elizabeth Largent.”

  “Probably Ansel Largent’s wife.”

  “The plot thickens.”

  “One of them shot Ms. Fairmont—that’s my prediction.”

  "We know where I need to start."

  "Maybe we should work these two separately? You take her, I take him?”

  "On second thought, let's do that."

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  Chapter 26