Unthinkable

by Brad Parks

  And, to a certain extent, it didn’t matter whether they were a shadowy secret society or a bunch of CP&L henchmen. One way or another, they wanted this lawsuit to go away.

  So did I, when I really thought about it. This wasn’t my fight. I felt bad for the people who were sick, naturally; and I felt like they deserved justice, of course; but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my family for it.

  Yet, without being able to tell Jenny what was really happening, there was no chance I could convince her to drop the suit. She had spent two years building the case. She believed in it. She was attached emotionally to the plaintiffs.

  I would have to make an end run around her. And I knew where to start.

  Albert Dickel, my onetime mentor, had never liked the CP&L suit, which he viewed as an expensive loser.

  But he did like me. He always had, for whatever reason. Even these days—when I was no possible use to the man—I would see him when I sometimes made random visits to the office, with the girls in tow. Jenny and I jokingly called it “Your Daughters Show Up at Work Day.”

  We did it maybe once a month. It was just an easy way to kill time—which, with two toddlers, I had way too much of. As soon as we showed up, half the associates, paralegals, and secretaries on Jenny’s floor immediately quit whatever they were doing so they could make a fuss over the girls. I might as well have been invisible.

  Not to Dickel. He often went out of his way to talk to me, to see how I was doing. He seemed to think I needed the attention.

  So maybe he would help me now.

  Once I got breakfast cleaned up, I parked the girls in front of Dinosaur Train. Then I took my phone into the hallway and dialed Albert Dickel’s number, knowing I could get him easily at this hour, before the meetings and conference calls began in earnest.

  One ring and I heard: “Nathan, Nathan, Nathan!”

  He always had called me Nathan. I have no idea why.

  “Albert, always a pleasure.”

  “What are you up to with your bad self?” he asked exuberantly.

  “Oh, the usual.”

  I bored him—and myself—with talk about the girls and my small life, following it up with questions about his children, all of whom were older. Then—because time was money, especially when you were billing at $800 an hour—he said, “Anyhow, what can I do for you today? If you’re hitting me up for racquetball, the answer is yes.”

  “Actually, I need a favor.”

  “Shoot.”

  “First of all, this conversation isn’t happening. Especially as far as my spouse is concerned.”

  “I understand. What’s up?”

  “It’s this CP and L lawsuit Jenny is mixed up in.”

  “What about it?”

  “She tries to hide it, but it’s stressing her out,” I said. “And I worry about where it’s sending her, career-wise. She’s in her late thirties, at the top of her game. She ought to be out hustling clients, building her book of business, not going down this rabbit hole. I’ve looked at this thing from a hundred different angles. As long as CP and L is in compliance with the Clean Air Act, there’s no touching them. This is a waste of her time and talents.”

  “I agree a hundred percent,” he said.

  “The problem is, I can’t get her to see it. I’ve tried talking sense into her, but you know how stubborn she is. I was wondering if you could work some magic with the executive committee. Convince them to pull the plug on this thing. She’ll end up with a little egg on her face, but it’s a lot less than the entire omelet she’ll be wearing if she takes this to a big expensive trial and fails to win a judgment.”

  “Absolutely. I’m so glad you called me with this. I had been thinking the same thing for a while now—I just haven’t acted on it. This is the kick in the tail I needed. I’ll get right on it.”

  “Thank you, Albert. It means a lot.”

  “No problem. Oh, and Nathan? We should definitely play some racquetball soon. The firm has drop-in childcare, you know. The girls would have a ball. And I know a great place where we could get a massage afterward. It really feels amazing after a good hard game.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  “You free tomorrow?”

  “Uhh, no can do. But soon, for sure.”

  “You got it,” he said. “Talk to you later.”

  I hung up, feeling greasy. I hated going behind Jenny’s back.

  But under the circumstances, I felt it was entirely justified.

  The dinosaur train was still chugging its way through the late Jurassic, leaving my daughters’ eyes blank with wonder, so I grabbed my laptop from the kitchen and joined them on the couch.

  Ever since I’d had that conversation with Kara Grichtmeier where she’d sort-of-but-not-really told me where J. Hunter Matthews lived, I had been wondering if I could pinpoint his exact location.

  After all, if I could determine that it really was Matthews’ house I had been taken to, I could put a quick end to this whole thing.

  I logged into LexisNexis, that digital trove of public and legal documents, via Jenny’s username and password. A quick search on Matthews II, John Hunter in the state of Virginia yielded me an address in Henrico.

  When I typed it into Google Maps and zoomed in on satellite view, it nearly triggered an episode of PTSD.

  It was a mansion. A Tudor-style mansion. The kind that surely had a Rembrandt hanging in it. There were three chimneys; a gracious, wide covered back porch; a kidney-shaped swimming pool off to the right; and a broad lawn edged with well-trimmed lollipops for trees.

  Zooming out just slightly, I could tell the property had significant elevation, with stunning views of the James River and the countryside beyond it. And it could be seen from Route 288, the divided highway that ran nearby.

  This had to be the place.

  My only remaining challenge was how to get inside and see if I recognized the room where I had been held. Then I could call the authorities, report that I had been kidnapped, and show them where I had been taken. Hunter Matthews wouldn’t admit to a thing, but he would have to answer a lot of questions. Even if the cops couldn’t ultimately press charges due to a lack of evidence, the law enforcement attention would make CP&L think twice about further threatening Jenny or my family.

  I had the key card, which I slipped into my pocket. That would unlock doors for me. But it would only be of so much use if there were people there.

  It was safe to assume Rogers and the Praesidium would not be there. They had already used the residence for their one purpose and would have no additional need to hang around.

  But that still left the rest of the Matthews family, and/or any domestic help they surely had. I needed to either elude detection or come up with some kind of ruse.

  There were two scenarios that came to mind. One would involve the cover of night, black clothing, and a whole lot of skills I didn’t really possess.

  The other involved me playing a much more natural role.

  Committing the address to memory, I closed the laptop. The girls were still riveted to the television. They didn’t even notice me leaving the room.

  From the closet under the stairs, I grabbed my largest diaper bag and the Pack ’n Play, the portable playpen that could double as a crib for Cate. From the kitchen, I rummaged up some snacks.

  Returning to the living room, I plucked the girls from in front of the television one by one and got them buckled in their car seats, chirping all the while about how Daddy had an errand to run.

  Then I pointed us toward the home of J. Hunter Matthews II.

  CHAPTER 17

  JENNY

  There was no sign of the woman with orange hair anywhere around the parking garage or in the plaza with the fountains.

  Jenny walked briskly all the same. But when she made it into the CMR building and still didn’t see the woman lurking anywhere near the entrance, Jenny decided to put Code Orange out of her mind.

  It was probably nothing to begin with. She was alr
eady feeling sheepish for having wasted Barry Khadem’s time with it.

  Once at her desk, Jenny started working through the emails that had come in overnight and earlier that morning from clients, associates, and other partners, all of them eager to demonstrate how little work-life balance mattered to them.

  Jenny was deep in that slog, lost enough in the flow that she didn’t notice the man standing in her doorway until he coughed lightly into his hand.

  Albert Dickel. Technically, he was CMR’s associate managing partner. Jenny always thought of him as the firm’s unofficial switchblade: he came out of nowhere, struck fast, and left behind pools of blood.

  In the history of Carter, Morgan & Ross, most of the associate managing partners either moved up to managing partner or passed the title on to someone else after a few years, when the burden of constantly doing the wet work became tiresome.

  Dickel hadn’t. He seemed to enjoy it.

  Short and nearly bald, save for a five-o’clock shadow of hair ringing the sides and back of his head, he remained trim thanks to a regimen of racquetball and balefulness.

  There was talk he was gay. But in the fashion of southern gentlemen of a certain age and social standing, being gay meant having a wife, three children, and a few weekends of unexplained travel a year.

  He was always dressed expensively, with monogrammed cuffs and a rotating assortment of designer eyeglasses to match whatever he was wearing.

  On this day, his outfit’s theme was blue. Navy-blue suit. Light-blue tie. Dark-blue framed glasses.

  “Good morning,” he said in a way that suggested he found nothing pleasant about it.

  “Hi,” Jenny said, returning his flat affect.

  “May I come in for a moment?”

  “Be my guest,” she said, gesturing toward the chairs on the other side of her desk.

  He sat and, without further preamble, said, “I’ve been asked to inform you that the executive committee will be holding a vote on whether to discontinue the CP and L case tomorrow afternoon.”

  Dickel had delivered the line with no apparent malice. But Jenny knew what Dickel was really up to here. He was the kind of man who clung to the belief that women were too emotional to make reliable decisions. What he really wanted was for her to blow up at him, hopefully loudly enough for someone else to hear it, thus justifying his prejudice.

  Jenny wasn’t going to give him the pleasure.

  “And why is that?” she said evenly.

  “Because it has little chance of generating revenue and it’s way over budget.”

  “Three-quarters of the projects at this firm are over budget. Are those being voted on as well?”

  “No, because they are generating revenue,” he said. “They have this thing called hours that we get to bill to a client.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of those. I out-billed you last year, remember?”

  She added a sweet smile.

  “This isn’t personal,” Dickel said.

  “Of course not. It’s all business. Which is why I’d like to remind you that we now have two hundred and eighty clients with estimated damages of—”

  “I’m aware of your estimates,” he said. “But you’ll only start to see those numbers if you can prove liability, and you’ve yet to make a convincing argument for how you’re going to do that. We need a cogent legal strategy, not pie in the sky.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “I know you are. But there’s a reason you haven’t gotten anywhere: it doesn’t exist. You’ve been wasting your time. A promising young partner like you ought to be out hustling clients, building your book, not going down a legal rabbit hole. We’re doing you a favor by cutting this thing loose. I just talked to Lawrence. He agrees with me.”

  Jenny tried not to let Dickel see her suck in a breath. Lawrence Coates was the firm’s managing partner.

  “I see,” Jenny said. “Will I have the opportunity to make a presentation to the executive committee before it votes?”

  “If you’d like, yes.”

  “Terrific. Then please put me on the agenda,” Jenny said. She smiled again, though this time it was a lot tighter.

  “Your wish is my command,” Dickel said smarmily. He rose from the chair and said, “See you then.”

  As soon as he was out of sight, she sagged.

  She would be going into this meeting at a serious deficit. True, Dickel and Coates were only two votes on the nine-member executive committee. Still, they were two very influential voices. At least two other members of the committee were basically sheep. There were some independent thinkers among the remaining five, but Jenny would have to convince all of them to go her way.

  Jenny could feel that old sense of inadequacy beginning to well up. This wasn’t 4-H Club. She was out of her depth, trying to push a new legal precedent out of a piece of legislation that other lawyers had been squeezing for more than five decades now. Maybe Dickel was right to—

  Then she thought about Danece Henderson, battling for breath; and Clyde, struggling to pay the rent; and all the other people out there relying on her.

  She had to be strong. For them.

  Before long, she was again sitting upright.

  CHAPTER 18

  NATE

  I probably should have been fearful, driving myself and my young daughters toward a house where I had been chained and their lives had been threatened.

  Instead, I felt strangely emboldened.

  This time, I was visiting on my own terms—not drugged, not bound.

  I had my phone on me and could call 911 if anything went sideways. And Lorton Rogers and his thugs wouldn’t know I was coming, because I had removed that tracking device.

  Still mindful of the potential of being followed—if someone had been watching the house and then picked us up coming out of the parking garage—I drove with one eye on the road and one on my rearview mirror.

  Once we hit Chippenham Parkway, I began countering maneuvers, slowing to as little as forty, then accelerating to eighty. I pulled off at random exits and turned circles. I ducked into parking lots. All the while, I stayed alert to any cars that may have been repeating themselves.

  There was nothing. I was clean.

  I was soon entering J. Hunter Matthews’ neighborhood, which was riddled with multimillion-dollar homes, each more magnificent than the last, with their circular driveways, tennis courts, and topiary shrubs.

  I could feel my jaw growing a little more slack with each bend in the road. It’s not that I grew up in poverty. Far from it. Still, we’d lived in a two-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side, back when that wasn’t necessarily considered anything worth bragging about.

  The Matthews abode—gleaming white with the signature brown half timbering of the Tudor style—was all the way at the end, perched out on the bluff that overlooked the James. As I had already seen in satellite view, there were no gates to stop me.

  I kept an eye out for security cameras but was relieved not to see any. A neighborhood like this—so insulated from the real world—probably made them feel unnecessary.

  There was an enlarged section of driveway directly across from the front entrance of the house that seemed to have been designed for vehicles to pull into, so that’s what I did.

  Importantly, I didn’t see any other cars. Or vans. Another sign that Rogers and his people weren’t here.

  I cut the Range Rover’s engine, slung the diaper bag and the Pack ’n Play over one shoulder, then unbuckled the girls. Cate had fallen asleep during the drive. She stirred for a moment but settled right back down when I rested her head on my free shoulder.

  The house was large enough that there were two potential front entrances. One was less formal. I went for the more formal one. It had a slate path lined by gumdrop-shaped shrubs, leading to a set of semicircular stone steps.

  Without a free hand for Parker, I asked her to stay close to me. As we walked toward the house, I was alert to any sign of hostility coming from inside, read
y to dash back to the car if need be.

  Reaching the double doors that served as the main entrance, I rang the doorbell. A woman in a light-blue maid’s outfit answered. She had a wide, Mesoamerican face; caramel-colored skin; and Elena stitched into the pocket.

  I put on my best smile, hoping I looked like the very picture of harried fatherhood: Two bulky bags on one shoulder, a sleeping child on the other, a toddler clinging nervously to my knee.

  “Hey!” I said. “We’re here!”

  Before she could react, I pushed past her into the house.

  “Don’t tell your boss I said this, but he gives lousy directions,” I continued. “I barely found the place. Is he here?”

  Elena gave me this blank stare.

  “He no here,” she said, in an accent that hailed from somewhere in Central America.

  The door was already closed behind me. We were in.

  Now I just needed to create a little more chaos. But toddlers are nothing if not good for that. I felt terrible about what I did next, but I think if Cate had fully understood the circumstances, she would have forgiven me.

  So: I took a small piece of my daughter’s tender little thigh and pinched it. Hard.

  Like she had been scalded with hot water, Cate came roaring awake, going from peaceful slumber to full-throated cry in less than two seconds.

  “Sorry,” I said to Elena. “It’s still nap time. He told me to just pick a room upstairs and throw the girls in it. Hopefully they’ll settle back down. Come on, Parker.”

  I don’t know how Parker could even hear me over her sister’s caterwauling. But she moved obediently with me as I went toward the opulent wooden staircase, which had heavy carved spindles supporting a squared-off handrail, all of it stained a dark cherry.

  Though certainly different in style from the woodwork of the room I had been held in, it was nevertheless beautiful craftsmanship, the product of a skilled artisan. Did that mean this was the same house? It was hard to know. I had only seen that one room during my first visit. Until I saw that room again, I felt like I couldn’t be totally sure.

  But that’s why I was now tromping up the stairs. Elena was clearly nervous about the propriety of this intrusion. But I was moving with impunity, and she was too uncertain to stop me.