by Mike Farris
The teen pulled her head up by the hair. Aiming down, he pointed a gun at her face.
Meg screamed again. She clawed at the hand holding her hair, threw her other hand up in front of her face.
He pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced Meg’s hand, and blood spurted from her cheek, just below her left eye. The scream died in her throat.
The teen fired twice more. Still clutching her hair, he dragged her body to the back of the car. Leaving her feet by the curb, her body angled into the lane of traffic, he jumped behind the wheel of the Maxima. He threw it into gear and sped off.
The red Cadillac followed. Its driver’s side wheels cut a swath across Meg’s torso, then the car disappeared into the night as police sirens sounded in the distance.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Adrenaline still racing from my near-encounter at the office, I slipped under the covers and pulled the blankets up under my chin. Rufus was already asleep, or maybe he was faking it. He was probably waiting for me to sleep so he could step over me and position himself in front of the fan that I used year round. I tuned the television to the news then programmed the timer to shut it off in thirty minutes, hoping for sleep. Long before the screen went dark, I drifted off.
The phone jangled me awake at 2:27 in the morning. My first instinct was to turn off the alarm on the clock. I pushed the button, but the noise persisted. I was awake enough by then to realize it was the phone. Sure enough, Rufus was lying directly in front of the fan. I dragged the receiver off the hook and slid it to my ear.
“Hello,” I mumbled.
“It’s Robin. Meg’s been hurt.”
I felt as if my heart had stopped. I sat up, wide awake.
“It’s bad, Bay. You need to get to Baylor Hospital as fast as you can.”
I threw on jeans and a tee-shirt, slipped into a pair of Reeboks, grabbed a baseball cap and jacket, and left the house within seconds of hanging up. I must have set a record driving from Forney to Baylor, on the eastern fringes of downtown, reaching speeds near one hundred miles an hour. Thank God for no traffic and no cops.
I found Robin in the ER waiting room, pacing in front of the nurses’ station.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Still in surgery.” Her voice quivered. “It’s not good.”
“Tell me.”
Robin held up three fingers and touched them to her cheek in a triangular pattern under her left eye. “She took three shots to the face, almost point-blank. Then, for good measure, the bastards ran over her. They stole her car.”
My knees went weak, so I found a chair before I fell. Robin followed and sat next to me. She held my hands.
“Cops said it was the fourth carjacking in that neighborhood in two months,” she said. “They think it’s some kind of gang deal. Maybe an initiation kinda thing. It’s the first shooting, though. The others just got dragged out of their cars, so this one’s different.”
I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. My head hurt, and I couldn’t think straight. Robin let go of my hands and put her arm around my shoulders.
“A few prayers couldn’t hurt right now,” she said.
I nodded. I had been on that program since she had first called.
“I love her, you know.” I surprised myself by saying it. I had never heard it out loud from my own lips before.
“I know.”
I looked at her, surprised.
“It’s obvious,” she said. “Have you told her?”
I shook my head.
“She loves you, too.”
I looked at Robin, who smiled tenderly.
“It’s written all over her face every time she looks at you,” she said. “And I hear it in her voice when she talks about you.”
“What does she say?”
“It’s not so much what she says as the way she says it.” She paused, then said, “It’s almost a religious experience when she talks about you. She relates everything to you. When she drinks coffee, she talks about how much sugar you put in yours. When we drafted the petition for the lawsuit, she talked about how you would have drafted it. She knows what restaurants you like, what sports teams you follow. She’s made it a point to know everything she can about you.”
A doctor, still wearing surgical scrubs, came through the swinging doors. He stopped and looked over the folks in the waiting area.
“That him?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
We stood and approached the doctor.
“Are you looking for us?” I asked.
“Meg Kelly’s family?”
“Friends,” Robin said. “Her parents are on their way from east Texas, but they’re not here yet.”
“I really should wait for the family,” he said.
“I’m her attorney,” Robin said.
The doctor studied her, not sure what to do. Lawyers scared people, especially doctors. He sighed heavily.
“She lost a lot of blood, and one of her lungs collapsed,” he said. “When the car ran over her, it broke her ribs, and one punctured the lung. We’ve got that under control. The real problem’s the gunshots.”
He paused. I could tell he was organizing his thoughts before continuing.
“The bullets did extensive damage to her face. It may just be muscle damage, but it may be nerve damage. If it is, she’s going to have numbness on the left side. It’s going to cause that side of her face to sag. It could even affect her ability to blink, which means her eye will have to be protected against drying up. Fortunately, the shots were aimed downward. Two bullets passed through just under the eye socket and came out the back of her neck without going through her brain. But the third one ended up wedged against the brain stem. We removed the bullet, but we don’t know whether there’ll be any permanent damage. It may affect her vision. There’s also a chance of paralysis.”
“You talk like she’s going to pull through,” Robin said.
“I’m just talking about what happens if she pulls through. It’s a miracle she’s even alive.”
“What are her chances?” Robin asked.
“About one in ten,” he answered after only momentary hesitation.
I stood silently while Robin fired questions at him. I couldn’t think or process his words. I couldn’t picture Meg—bright, vivacious, beautiful—lying in a hospital room, hooked up to machines, in a coma. Nor could I picture her, face drooping on one side, unable to smile or laugh, walking with crutches, if at all, dragging paralyzed limbs behind her. But I preferred both of those options to visiting a gravesite, flowers in hand.
After the doctor had satisfied Robin, she allowed him to go. She looked at me, concern etched on her face.
“You all right?” she asked.
I put my fist through a sheetrock wall.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They finally wheeled Meg into the critical care unit a little after five o’clock that morning. Robin had an early court date and left at 6:30 to prepare. I called the office and left Ellie a voicemail message telling her what had happened, then dragged a chair beside Meg’s bed and stood vigil.
It was hard to reconcile the Meg I saw in the bed before me with the Meg I knew. She lay deathly still, her head and one hand swathed in bandages. A tube extended from an opening where her mouth was and hooked into a respirator. Several IV lines ran from the backs of her hands, leading from different plastic bags of clear liquids hanging from a portable rack. A machine monitored her heart, its beep in rhythm with the chug of the respirator.
“I love you,” I said.
I spoke softly, as if I were afraid of waking her, though I would have given my life to wake her. I thought if anything could get through to her, it would be a still, small voice.
“Please wake up.”
Then the tears came, and I couldn’t talk anymore.
*
“She really is a helluva lawyer to be so young.”
I looked up at the sound of the voice. Bill Patterson stood on the other side of the bed, hai
r mussed, tie pulled askew, wearing cowboy boots and a western suit. I had been asleep, still holding Meg’s hand. She hadn’t moved since I had been there.
“How’d you hear about it?” I asked.
“Radio.”
He looked at her like a father looking at a sick child. “She’s one of the brightest young lawyers that ever worked with us. We got an honest day’s work for a day’s pay from her.”
“She’s one of the good ones, Bill.”
“She pulled the laboring oar from the first day Tripp got her involved with my work. It started with grunt work, but I spent lots of time with her when she was pulling our files together for document production. Then she sat with Tripp when he defended my deposition. When they prepped me to testify, I saw how much he depended on her. She knew the facts inside and out, and she knew the law. It just blew my doors off when I found out she was less than a year out of school.”
He dragged a chair over and sat down. We faced each other across Meg’s bed, both looking at her. Gingerly, but tenderly, he stroked the hair that cascaded down the bandages around her face.
“What’s going on here, Bay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d just about bet my bottom dollar she was the one who called me that night. She tried to disguise her voice, but now that I think about it, it sounded like her. I found out about her lawsuit, which seems to have a lot to do with my attorneys’ fees statements, and I figure that’s why she called.”
“Did you ever get all those billing records from Tripp you were talking about?” I asked. “All the time entry back-up.”
“Our CPAs went over ’em with a microscope. Everything looked kosher.”
“Did you get Tripp’s calendars?”
“Tripp pitched a fit when I asked for ’em, so I backed off.”
“But you say the billing back-up looked okay?” I asked.
“Looked fine.”
“Can I see what he gave you?”
“Can’t you just get them from the firm?” he asked.
“I’d like to see what Tripp gave you.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’d rather not say.”
He watched me for a long moment. I knew he wanted to know if I thought Tripp had doctored the records, but he dared not ask.
“Will you do that for me, Bill?”
“On one condition… If you find what you’re looking for, you’ll tell me what it is. You owe me that.”
“If I find it.”
“Until then, I’m not even going to ask.”
“I’d also appreciate it if you don’t say anything to Tripp about this,” I said.
“About now, you and Meg may be the only lawyers I trust.”
He looked at Meg again, stroked her hair once more. He watched the bouncing ball on the heart monitor, listened to the respirator.
He nodded. “If I find out she got fired ’cause she was looking out for me, I’m gonna come after Tripp Malloy with a fire in my belly he’s never seen before.”
He stood to leave, then stopped and looked down at Meg.
“God help whoever did this to her.”
*
Reports of Meg’s carjacking hit the Dallas media coupled with reports of her lawsuit. The Dallas Morning News described Meg as a “reputed troublemaker at the firm” who was fired for “reportedly engaging in sexual liaisons within the firm’s offices with an unnamed partner.” One local television station reported that “sources” said she had been a “mediocre lawyer who allegedly traded sexual favors in hopes of advancing in the firm.” The media also reported that she was terminated by Holloway & Davis for falsifying information about her reasons for leaving Black West & Merriam. The firm couldn’t have done a better job of blackening Meg’s reputation, timing it to coincide with her lying unconscious in a hospital bed.
Shortly before noon, I went to the office. Meg’s parents had arrived soon after Bill Patterson left and they took up my vigil. Meg’s mother, Rachel, was a thin lady with dark hair who bustled with nervous energy. Meg had her mother’s eyes, but she more closely resembled her father. Mark Kelly stood just under six feet tall, rail-thin like his wife, with thick wavy hair that was more gray than black. I could tell, in brief conversation, that they didn’t know anything about Meg’s problems with the firm or her lawsuit. I respected Meg’s decision not to tell them and kept what I knew to myself. I also did what I could to keep them away from the news reports.
I reached the office during the lunch hour. My hallway was mostly quiet. I hadn’t told Ellie when I would arrive, so she had no reason to wait for me. I was anxious to talk to her, though, to see how word of Meg’s condition had been received. I entered my office and closed the door. Ellie had stacked my mail in the center of the desk. On top lay a thick envelope, marked hand-delivery, from Patterson McBain.
Good ol’ Bill.
I had just slipped a letter opener through the envelope’s edge when I heard a knock at the door. It swung open before I could answer and Tripp Malloy walked in.
“What is this? Casual day?” he asked.
I realized I still wore the faded jeans, tee-shirt, and hat I had thrown on before speeding to the hospital. My unshaven face looked like I had adopted Oscar Hamilton’s look.
“I’m kinda busy here, Tripp.”
“I want to talk to you about your little buddy’s lawsuit. See, I found out Robin Napoli’s a friend of yours.”
He paused, as if waiting for me to confirm. I declined, sitting silently.
“I’ve just got one question for you, Muckleroy… Whose side are you on?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Muckleroy. You’re no good at it.”
“You do it very well,” I said.
He squinted then assumed his conversational stance, as if he meant to be there for a while.
“Everybody in the firm knows you hooked Napoli up with Kelly to sue us.”
“There’s nothing wrong with referring a friend to an attorney.”
“There is when it’s to sue your own firm. My God, Muckleroy. Don’t you have any loyalty?”
“I guess you learned about that in the army, huh?” I said.
“You could have used a little time in the service, yourself. It might have made a man out of you.”
“I guess we just define the word differently.”
Tripp unfolded his arms with great deliberation. He leaned forward, gripping the edges of my desk. “Regardless of what you think about me, this is your own firm, for God’s sake. I’m your partner. We’re all your partners.”
“My firm, right or wrong, but my firm. Is that the notion?”
“Damn straight. There are over five hundred lawyers counting on this firm to feed their families, put clothes on their backs, and roofs over their heads. We’ve got people to take care of.”
He hesitated, as if fighting emotion—out of character for him. The only emotion I had ever seen in him was anger.
“I’ve got people to take care of,” he said.
“You put ’em in the crosshairs, not me. And when you and your group leave and take your ten million dollars with you, what happens to the rest of us? Where’s the loyalty there?”
“Thanks to your girlfriend, I’m not going anywhere.”
I stood so I could look down at Tripp. I didn’t like him looking down at me, lording his superiority over me.
“I guess no one wants a guy who makes his firm a fraud defendant. And I wonder how much longer Patterson McBain and Horace Swanson will be your clients. Do you think they’ll sue, too?”
He reddened. I knew I had struck a nerve.
“So I guess we’re stuck with each other,” I said.
“Man, we’re a family here. And I’m part of that family. When you jeopardize that…when you threaten the family…it makes me wonder if you’ve got any right to still be a member of that family. You might want to take a close look at the partnership agreement again. R
emind yourself how easy it is to expel a partner.”
I walked around the desk until I was on the same side with Tripp. He backed up a step as I brought my two-hundred-forty-pound frame closer.
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“You’ve got to decide whether getting a piece of ass is worth it.”
He never saw the punch coming. I didn’t have time to think about it—I just reacted. My fist connected flush with his left cheek. I used the same hand I had punched through the sheetrock at Baylor Hospital, but this felt better. Tripp dropped flat on his back without so much as a stagger. His glasses flew across the office.
I stood over him, amazed, but not sorry. He lay still for about fifteen seconds. At first, I thought he was unconscious. For an instant, I even thought he might be dead, but then he rubbed his jaw. With his other hand he searched on the floor for his glasses. After he found them and put them on, he struggled to his feet. He stood wobbly-kneed, a huge mouse already swelling under his eye.
“I’ll see you kicked out for that.”
“Do your damnedest.”
I stepped toward him. He turned and beat a hasty retreat, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It would be just a matter of time before Alvin Peoples heard about my punching Tripp, so I thought it best to be gone when he came looking for me. I also didn’t want to deal with the inevitable questions that would come now that the gossip about my illusory affair with Meg had hit the press.
I went to lunch, then met Rachel Kelly at Meg’s apartment. She’d left her husband to watch Meg and gone to the apartment to clean up and rest after traveling. While there, she also tidied the apartment. She joked that, “In times of crisis, country mothers either cook or clean. My mother was a cook, but I’m a cleaner.” It was while going through Meg’s desk, straightening up, that she found copies of the lawsuit and other documents that told her just enough to know that something bad had happened to Meg at work.
I sat at the kitchen table. She had already brewed coffee and poured me a cup.
“Meg has told us so much about you that I feel I already know you. She said working for you was the best thing that ever happened to her.”
