by J J Miller
He’ll do anything to protect his company.
Henry didn’t look like a man who’d soon be blowing his brains out. Quite the opposite. He had everything to live for.
Yet Pete Chang felt differently. He said Henry’s girlfriend had dumped him, and that his scorned wife was unwilling to take him back. The consensus was that Henry was heartbroken, alone, and so lost that he decided to kill himself.
Could the Henry Tuck I spoke become such a vision of despair so soon?
I turned to my laptop and searched my inbox for the email Henry sent me via his girlfriend’s account. When it came up, I felt like a dormant clue had just been revealed to me. It was a Gmail account, and it looked for all the world like she had used her full name as a prefix: fernortega.
I didn’t want to contact her via email. At best, it would waste time. At worst, it would be too easy for her to ignore me.
I had to find out where she lived.
Withing two minutes of searching online, I had an address. I grabbed my keys and made for the door.
Chapter 28
An elderly Latino woman peered warily through the gap offered by the chain-lock. She must have been expecting someone she knew, as it was clear she regretted opening the door and was in half a mind to shut it without a word.
“Yes?” she said, politeness getting the better of her.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m really sorry to bother you but I’ve come to speak with Fern Ortega.”
The woman’s dark eyes studied my face. She frowned and shook her head.
“She no live here,” she said firmly and went to shut the door. I deployed the old salesman trick, sticking my shoe in the gap. This both alarmed and annoyed her.
“Mister. You go now.”
With that, she kicked my toe several times but my foot didn’t budge.
“Ma’am, please. I am no threat to Ms. Ortega. I promise. I’m a lawyer.” I pulled out a card and flashed it at her. She made no attempt to look at it.
“Go away, or I call the police.”
She started kicking my toe again harder and managed to nudge my shoe back a fraction.
“Por favor, señora,” I said, pulling out my elementary Spanish. “Soy amigo de Henry. So su abogado. Es muy importante.”
The woman was not about to change her mind. She raised her foot and was looking to see how she could stomp on my toe when I heard a younger woman’s voice from within.
“Mama. Retrocede, por favor.”
The older woman huffed and shifted back out of sight, and the face of a younger woman appeared.
“What do you want?”
“Are you Fern Ortega?”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Brad Madison. Henry Tuck came to see me about some matters before he died. I think he used your email account to send me some information. That’s how I found you.”
Fern bowed her head and a look of great sadness came over her. It seemed to me that even if she did break it off with him, it was not without pain on her side.
“Ms. Ortega, please. I’m defending a man who used to work for the company Henry was involved in. I’d be so grateful if I could ask you a few questions. Some things about Henry’s situation don’t make sense to me. I was hoping you might be able to help me understand.”
Fern nodded. The door closed briefly as she unhooked the chain. She opened the door and looked behind me.
“Come in,” she said. “Quickly.”
Chapter 29
The mother had moved into the kitchen, and was placing vegetables on the bench next to a large pot. She kept an eye on me as she went about her business, clearly uncomfortable with my presence.
Fern offered me coffee. I wanted to take my time and get her to relax as much as I could so I said yes. She nodded to her mother who shuffled across the kitchen, took a cup out of a cupboard and filled it from the coffee machine.
“Leche?” the mother asked gruffly without looking up.
“No, gracias,” I said.
The coffee was ready in seconds. The mother shuffled over, handed me a cup, and spun around before I got my thank you out.
“Please,” said Fern, motioning for us to sit at a small glass-topped dining table.
“Fern, the reason I’m here is I’m trying to understand what happened to Henry,” I said after we were both seated. “Were you helping him to prepare the documents he needed to give me?”
Of course, I remembered what Pete had told me, that he’d heard Fern had broken it off with Henry, that he was found clutching a photo of her, and that she’d dumped him via text. But I needed to tread very carefully on the relationship issue as I was sure she’d be bearing a lot of guilt.
Fern gave me two quick nods but kept her mouth shut. It was not hard to see that she found the prospect of talking about Henry difficult. But she’d let me into her home. Something told me she wanted to trust me.
Wearing a pretty green floral dress, Fern held herself with stoic poise, her knees together and her interlaced hands resting in her lap. Her fingers pressed against her own flesh, massaging out some of the stress she obviously felt.
“Ms. Ortega, Henry came to me for help not just with his divorce but with getting his money out of HardShell Security. He promised to send me his contract and financial statements. All I got was a basic list of assets he sent me though your account, or else you sent it.”
“I sent it,” Fern said.
I paused, studying her reaction. She looked uncomfortable, as though expecting to be fiercely interrogated.
“Ms. Ortega, I don’t want to make your life more difficult than it already is. But I suspect that Henry’s situation might have some bearing on the case I am working on. I’m hoping that you might have some information that could help me.”
“I’m not sure how I can help,” she said.
“Ms. Ortega, I don’t mean to be rude but I just want to understand things better. Henry was on top of the world when I saw him. He was clear-eyed about spending the rest of his life with you, but he wanted to do right by Laura. I just don’t understand why he would kill himself.”
She kept her mouth shut. She hadn’t told me to shut mine so I ventured to think I could explore the subject a little more. Careful not to lay the blame at her feet, I started with some other theories.
“He might have been ill. Was he ill?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Was he worried about anything?”
“No.”
“Was he really as happy as he seemed to be?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask when you saw him last?”
Fern bowed her head, then lifted it again to address me. “The day before he died.”
Tears were filling her eyes.
“Excuse me,” she said. She got up and went to the kitchen and came back with a box of Kleenex. She pulled out two sheets and dabbed her eyes. She was trying hard to keep herself together.
“Ms. Ortega, if you don’t mind, what was the nature of your conversation with him that day?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, was everything okay? Was it a happy conversation? A normal conversation the couples have?”
Fern let out a little moan as tears fell from her eyes. She dabbed them once more, as well as her nose. “No. It was not like that.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. Why are you asking me this?”
“Ms. Ortega. Something is not right here. It just doesn’t add up. And I’d like to know the truth about what happened to Henry. There, I said it. This is not just me sticking my nose into your business, I assure you. What you tell me could help save another man’s life.”
Fern straightened herself again and swept her right hand over her thighs. There was a steel about her now.
“I broke up with him,” she said resolutely.
“Can I ask why?”
“I thought he was being foolish. I’d told him many times that I felt things were moving too fast. I felt uncomfort
able, and I didn’t think he really cared about what might happen to my mother.”
“He wanted you to leave her and move in with him?”
“Yes. But he knew I could never leave my mother by herself.”
“He didn’t talk about living somewhere with both you and your mother?”
“No.”
“And so you broke it off?”
“Yes.”
“Were you in love with Henry?”
Her head went dead still as she directed her words at me. “Yes. Very much so.”
“Couldn’t you have worked something out?”
Fern’s lips began to tremble. Then her next words came rushing out. “Mr. Madison. I’m so scared. I just don’t know what to tell you.”
I leaned forward.
“Ms. Ortega, you have nothing to fear from me, I promise. I’m not judging you. If you wanted to break up with Henry, that’s your business. But to tell you the truth, I’m not sure you’re being totally honest with me.”
She bowed her head again. Then she took a sip of coffee. The drink seemed to give her a modicum of comfort.
“I did not want to break up with Henry,” she said ruefully. “I was forced to.”
“Forced? Who forced you?”
“Some men came to my house. They were ugly men. Very rude and very rough. They told me they were Henry’s friends and they were not going to let me ruin his life. They said nasty things to me. They said I was a whore and that all I wanted was his money. Then they told me I must never see Henry again. If I refused, they said, they would kill both me and my mother.”
“They threatened to kill you?”
“Yes. They made it very clear. They said they could make me disappear, just like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“What did you say to them?”
“What else could I say? I told them I would obey. They made me write a message on my phone. They read it. They told me it wasn’t enough. I had write other things. Cruel things.”
“Like what?”
“That I never loved him. That I’d realized what a fool he was and that he was too old for me. They made me send it.”
“Henry would have been devastated. But he would have tried to call you, wouldn’t he?”
Fern nodded. “Yes. I’m sure he did. But they took my phone with them. So I’ll never know.”
Fern then broke down sobbing. After collecting herself, she resumed. “The next thing I heard, Henry killed himself. And it was all my fault.”
Fern hunched forward, her shoulders wrenching with the force of her sorrow. Her mother came in, bent down and put her arms around her.
Fern gently shrugged her mother off. She straightened her back and looked at me. “You see, Mr. Madison. It’s all my fault. I am the reason Henry killed himself.”
“Ms. Ortega. I don’t think you should believe that.” I took out my phone and showed Fern a photo of Quinn Rollins. “Is this one of the men who came to see you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
I then pulled up another photo.
“What about him?”
“Yes.”
A flicked through to another photo I had on file.
“And him?”
“Yes.”
“These are the two men who came here and threatened you?”
“Yes, that’s them.”
Fern looked surprised. I wasn’t.
“Ms. Ortega. You are not responsible for Henry’s death. I don’t believe that Henry committed suicide. And nor should you. He was murdered. And I think I know who exactly who killed him.”
The photos I’d showed her were of Nate Reed and Bo Hendricks.
Chapter 30
With the trial looming fast, Megan and I commandeered the conference room. It was time to take stock of the case. We laid everything out on the huge table. In one corner were photos of all the key players including Chip, Rollins, Scooter, Nate, Bo, plus a photo of a Harley Davidson to represent the Iron Raiders. In the opposite corner, we had the crime scene photos. In between were piles for witness statements, police records, forensics, and exhibit lists.
“I think you should tell him,” said Megan, as she neatened all the piles. She’d returned from New Orleans feeling refreshed and ready to hit the ground running. After commenting on her glow, I asked how the wedding went. She described in some detail how wonderful it was, and how particularly sweet Sam had behaved. I immediately imagined that another wedding might be in the air, but kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to jinx her.
I’d followed Megan’s New Orleans debrief with an account of my visit to Fern, and how I was sure Henry had been murdered by Bo and Nate on Rollins’ order. Megan thought I should take it to Detective Frierson.
“The only reason I’d do that would be if I actually wanted him to laugh in my face. And I’m no masochist. Ed Frierson is not interested in anything that either waters down his line of inquiry or deviates from it.”
“That’s just wrong.”
“Not from Frierson’s end. At this stage of the game, he’s like a freight train on a track: hard to stop and impossible to change course. I can just see his reaction as I try to explain why I think Henry Tuck was murdered and that it could be linked to the HardShell heist. He’d laugh even harder when I admitted that I had no hard evidence to back my theory. Same with the prosecutor Dale Winter—he’s locked and loaded too. He would never deviate from his position on my account. So, no. I’m not feeling up to being their court jester.”
We stood at either end, surveying the material.
“Winter may pull a surprise, but I think his strategy will be straightforward. He’s got strong evidence, and a compelling story to tell.”
I paused for a moment and moved over to the crime scene photos.
“What?” asked Megan upon seeing the expression of my face change.
“Winter’s going to tear Chip to shreds. Our case is so feeble by comparison. I mean, look at this.”
I picked up the photo of Nate Reed’s body, two neat holes in his forehead, his eyes frozen open. While I saw a bad seed who’d basically killed foreign civilians for sport, who’d murdered Henry Tuck, and robbed dispensaries all over the city, the jury would see, with the help of Winter, a man of honor, a brave soldier whose only mistake was to trust his wicked colleague Chip Bowman.
“It’s going to be hard to argue against the fact that these two guys died with Chip’s bullets in their brains. I can’t deny that to the jury. And as much as I might try to make my own story plausible, my fundamental flaw will always be there.”
“Your fundamental flaw?”
“That I’ll be asking them to believe that an invisible man, a mystery figure, is to blame. Winter just has to show them this,” I said waving the photo, “and point to Chip and his gun, and it will make perfect sense. The jurors will join the dots to get a simple, compelling truth.”
“They might believe you, Mr. Madison.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure. They’ll see through my story, and what an effort of construction it is. It will come across as a story that’s striving to be the truth.”
Megan looked worried. “You’re not giving up, surely?”
I shook my head. “No, of course not.”
“Well, you sound like you’ve lost before the trial has even started. That’s not like you at all.”
Megan walked up to me. “You still believe Chip Bowman is innocent, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then he needs you. And he’s lucky to have you. You’re not just the only chance he has to get his life back. You’re his best chance. Believe me, if Dale Winter is feeling complacent, he’s a fool. He knows what he’s up against. I expect he’s working this case like his life depended on it. Beating him won’t be easy. But if anyone can beat him, you can.”
“Thanks Megan,” I said. “There’s so much that I know, so much that I can’t prove, so much that I can’t take into that courtroom, I feel like I’ll be fighting with
one hand tied behind my back.”
“Then it’ll be a fair fight, won’t it?” Megan smiled. Then her face displayed a pride in knowing that her words had lifted me.
A loud banging on the conference room glass window broke the moment. I spun my head to the source to see Wes Brenner standing there with a big, knowing grin on his fat face and his eyebrows arched high in delight.
“Sorry to disturb you both,” he said in a derisive tone. “I just wanted to drop something by. A gift for my favorite lawyer.”
With that, Brenner stepped into the room and tossed a package onto the table. As it landed with a thud, he was already on his way back out.
“I’ll let you get back to work,” he called out as he walked away, laughing at whatever he’d conjured up in his sordid mind.
I picked up the package. It felt like a book. I tore the envelope open and, sure enough, it was a paperback entitled How to Save California From Itself. My eyes ran down to the bottom of the cover to see Brenner’s name there.
“I didn’t know he’d written a book,” I said.
“Maybe it’s new.”
I turned the cover to check the publication date.
“You’re right. It’s just come out,” I said. I turned another page and saw Brenner had written a dedication in blue ink.
Thanks in advance for your help, Loser.
Wes.
PART II
Chapter 31
It was late spring when the trial began, but summer was muscling its way in. At 8:15 in the morning, the Downtown temperature was getting toward ninety. But it wasn’t the weather that got me hot under the collar, it was the sight and sound of Wes Brenner standing at the entrance of the Criminal Courts Building, spouting his two-cents’ worth of bullshit for the assembled media.
I heard him clearly from thirty yards away, ranting about the blight of legal cannabis and what he thought should be done about it.
I felt the strong urge to walk up to him and plant my fist into his face, but I sucked it in, skirted the media scrum and made for the glass entrance doors.
Taking the elevator to the ninth floor, I passed through security, and made my way to courtroom 311.
