My Boss is a Serial Killer (27 page)

Had I been working for the psychotic sadist
at the time, I might not have survived. The psychotic sadist
inflicted his injuries with words, not physical weapons, but I
imagine he would have lacerated me with shouts and sarcasm until my
soul bled out.

The next morning, when Bill and I discovered
what I had done, what Bill said was, “Oh my.”

I was horrified. Nothing, not even the
deadliest of sarcasm, hurts me as much as letting someone down.
What a bone-headed idiot I was. What an irresponsible ditz. I said,
eyes closed, “Oh my God, what a stupid thing to do. I’m so sorry.
Tell me how I can fix it. Or if I need to clear out my desk.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Bill said,
“I’ll call the judge and tell him there was a simple mistake. These
things happen sometimes.”

I couldn’t open my eyes yet, from fear and
embarrassment.

Bill actually gave a snuffling little laugh,
and he patted my shoulder. “Now stop that. Do you think you’re the
only one who’s ever mixed things up? Once I spent fifteen minutes
arguing the wrong case in front of a judge.”

I peeked out at him, cringing.

“
Absolute truth. Anyway, fetch a phone
number for the clerk’s office, and we’ll set this
straight.”

That was all he said about it. It did get
fixed, though we had to file an extra pleading to do it.

It has always been difficult to describe to
others what I felt when he was so gracious about my big boner.
Gratitude and humility, and undying devotion. I would have thrown
myself in front of a bus for him that day. Don’t laugh at my
melodramatics. When you have to work for a man almost fifty hours a
week, it certainly helps to consider him a decent human being.

Recalling this, in the folds of my blankets
as I drifted away to sleep, I understood that I did not believe
Bill Nestor was guilty. Maybe that was bone-headed, too, but I was
prepared to be loyal to him. It was the only thing that felt
right.

I went to work on Wednesday because I wanted
to help. I thought perhaps if I was there, I could show people
where things were or help explain the situation better to anyone
who wanted to know. I was every bit as upset about these bizarre
developments as anyone there—even more upset, I was willing to
wager—and was happy to do my part to make this problem clearer, if
not better.

Since I was still without my car, the
protectors outside my house drove me to the office.

When I worked for the psychotic sadist, his
office was in a downtown building that housed several other law
firms. The one that shared our floor specialized in criminal law,
meaning that some of their clientele lacked social skills. One such
client phoned them one day, displeased with the way his case was
being handled, and threatened to come in there and kill them all.
You might correctly surmise that the building was shut down. There
were so many detectives, police and security guards there that the
whole place looked like a scene from a dystopian nightmare. No one,
not even the work-obsessed psychotic sadist, minded the extra
measures, because once finished with the target firm, the
disgruntled client might think he had nothing to lose and come down
the hall to our firm to continue the murder spree. That whole
situation resolved. the disgruntled client was picked up near his
home and his parole was, not surprisingly, revoked. Judges aren’t
forgiving about death threats, no sir. One thing I remember clearly
about the incident was that, throughout the day, there was an
atmosphere of such tension and suspicion that it made us almost
unable to work. The feeling was due to the dark-browed figures
lurking around every corner, whispering to each other in their
radios and peering at everyone and everything, as if it were an
object of potential danger.

When I got to MBS&K on Thursday morning,
the atmosphere was much the same. A palpable sense of law
enforcement and suspicion was in the air. At every entrance to the
building, I saw a couple extra dark blue cars, and there were a
surprising number of men lounging around the front doors, by the
elevator causeway, and at the garage entrances, pretending to read
newspapers unless they were actually in their cobalt blue uniforms.
I guess the KCPD thought they’d better cover their butts, in case
Bill decided to spend the day at work before slinking back to
whatever dark corner that hid him. I’ll admit that scenario was in
the realm of possibility: Bill liked his routines.

Stepping off the elevator, I said to Lucille,
“Well, I see they’ve got the building staked out.”

Lucille motioned me over, as furtive as I’d
ever seen her. “How are you?” she asked.

“
I’m very tired.”

“
Everybody here is just devastated,”
she said. “It’s like working in a graveyard. Listen, ah’m not sure
anybody thought you’d be here today.”

“
Oh? Well.” I didn’t know what to say
to that. Was your boss being wanted for murder adequate grounds for
taking a personal-leave day?

“
Let me tell Donna you’re
here.”

“
I could just go to her
office.”

She shook her peroxide-blonde head rather
sharply. Perplexed, I watched as Lucille paged my supervisor,
motioning for me to wait. I hadn’t been expecting kid-gloves
treatment. When Donna called Lucille back a moment later, Lucille
said, “Carol Frank is here…Ah will…okay. Ah know.”

“
Listen,” Lucille began as she turned
her attention back to me, “they want you to wait in the conference
room.”

“
Who does?”

“
Donna and Brent.” She had known me too
long to be distant. We were buddies. She gave a surreptitious look
around and then said, “Charlene says your desk and Bill’s office
have almost been taken apart. And ah think Terry Bronk wants to
meet with you.”

I felt an inward shriveling. I had known I’d
be called upon to talk it through again, but I hadn’t really
thought a partner would want to hear it all from me. I still didn’t
like Terry Bronk, that frizzy-headed, middle-aged, foul-tempered
man. I’d never had to work a day for him in my three years at
MBS&K, but I’d heard plenty. I’d learned that Terry frequently
made his secretaries cry, swore at paralegals, and threw temper
tantrums that would embarrass three-year-olds. He worked his staff
until outrageous hours of the night because he put everything off
until the very last minute, ensuring time and again that he caused
stress levels that registered on the Richter scale. And, although
one uttered this office legend at the risk of being fired, I had
heard that a year or so before, the big jerk had actually received
an ethical sanctioning by the Federal Court on a particularly
overblown lawsuit. He was not disbarred, unluckily for us. Do not
ask me how a man with such bad habits managed to not only stay out
of prison but also make partner, when my sweet boss Bill was not a
partner and was being hunted by the cops for supposedly offing
nearly enough people to start a baseball team. Fate is often
strange and unpredictable.

So now I had to talk to Terry Bronk in the
same room as Junior Gestapo Brent. Whee, fun. At least Donna would
be there. She could always be relied on to be a friendly face.

“
Just try to answer their questions the
best you can,” Lucille told me, worry on her brow.

I went to the conference room, as I’d been
instructed. I still had my purse, and I hadn’t had any coffee. I
wondered how badly my desk must be damaged, if they didn’t even
want me to go look at it first.

Not only the evil Terry Bronk, Junior Gestapo
Brent and Donna came into the room, but Mr. Miller from Quality
Assurance, the comptroller Lily and two members of the executive
board. Suddenly I wished I’d worn one of my suits because I felt as
if I was entering the most intimidating job interview ever. I tried
to assure myself that all was well. First and most importantly, I
was wearing my go-to skirt, which was my favorite and had never let
me down in a crisis. You can laugh at that, but most women will
tell you that wearing a good skirt can make the difference between
triumph and tragedy. Anyway, secondly, I was trying to help these
people, after all. Lawyers can come across as combative and
argumentative even when they don’t intend to, so I just had to
remember that we’d all had a hard week and keep my cool.

To my dismay, Junior Gestapo Brent, who had
taken a chummy seat at Terry Bronk’s right side, spearheaded the
meeting by saying to me, “Carol, to decide how to best proceed in
this situation, we have some questions for you to answer.”

“
Sure. Fire away.”

“
We’d like to know when, exactly, you
started investigating the past client records of Bill
Nestor.”

My explanation was almost memorized because I
had given it so many times the day before. I gave it again.

“
And so,” Junior Gestapo Brent
summarized, “you made multiple trips to the storage room for files
to research a subject that was not actually part of your assigned
work duties.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, but not
dramatically. This was really typical of the little jerk, to find
an infraction in every action. I said, “Mostly I went on my break
times and lunch hours.”

“
Are secretaries supposed to be in
storage at all?” Terry Bronk asked Donna.

Donna said, “There’s no specific rule against
it. I don’t think they like to go down there, ordinarily, but if
Lloyd was busy…”

“
Was Lloyd too busy to go down there?”
Bronk asked me.

I thought we were getting rather off-topic,
but I answered, “I didn’t bother Lloyd. As Brent has made clear,
this was not precisely firm business, and I didn’t want to bother
anyone else with it.”

“
So you will admit,” said Junior
Gestapo Brent, “that you were conducting an investigation on
company time without any specific instructions to do
so.”

I stared at him. Suddenly I sensed the need
to choose my words carefully. “I’ll admit that I wasn’t instructed
to do so.”

“
And when,” continued Junior Gestapo
Brent, checking an item off a neat little list in front of him,
“did you start communicating with the Kansas City Police Department
about your findings?”

“
I think your phrasing is a little off
there.” I glanced at the numerous faces surrounding me. “I wasn’t
communicating with the police. I was dating a detective. I went out
with Gus Haglund three or four times, and during our conversations,
I mentioned that I was curious about suicide and retired widows.
But I never said—”

Terry Bronk interrupted. “Can we assume by
that statement that you were trying to impress the detective that
you were dating?”

“
What?”

“
Were you investigating Bill Nestor in
an effort to impress your boyfriend?”

“
Wait a second,” I said, taking another
glance around the room. The atmosphere in here certainly didn’t
feel supportive. I had thought it was just Junior Gestapo Brent’s
lousy attitude, but I was getting that bad vibe from every corner.
Was it possible that I was actually in trouble? “What kind of
meeting is this?”

“
This is a meeting I have called,” said
Terry Bronk, “to establish what actions you took and what actions
we should take in turn.”

“
What actions I took?” I looked to
Donna, the closest thing to a friendly face. “Is this a
disciplinary hearing or something?”

“
Does it need to be?” asked Junior
Gestapo Brent sharply.

Mr. Miller, the quality-assurance man,
stepped into the fray at this point. He was a milquetoast little
creep who I’d barely ever spoken to, and in a whining voice he
asked, “Ms. Frank, why did you elect to go to the police with your
findings rather than your supervisor?”

“
What?”

“
When you suspected that Mr. Nestor
might be having problems of a personal nature, why did you neglect
to report this in the proper format and to your immediate
supervisor?”

I noticed suddenly that I was shaking, a
combination of nerves and anger making me shiver as if under a
blast of cold winter air. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “What
would the proper format have been?”

“
Work-related problems are properly
reported in written form to your immediate supervisor.”

“
Oh, well, I didn’t know it was a
work-related problem, per se. What I thought was that my boss had a
strange client record. I went and asked him about it, and he gave
me a research assignment pertaining to that.” Several pairs of
eyebrows shot upward. I asked Mr. Miller, “Does that count as
reporting it to my supervisor?”

Miller didn’t answer me. He asked, “When did
you question Mr. Nestor about this?”

“
I’ve talked to him several times about
it. Which one do you mean?”

“
I’m referring to the conversation in
which you told Mr. Nestor that the police suspected him of murder.
When was that?”

“
Yesterday,” I began. “But—”

“
Job abandonment,” muttered Junior
Gestapo Brent.

“
What?” I barked at him in
disbelief.

“
Wasn’t it yesterday, when you
fabricated a story to me that Bill was sick and you had to go to
his apartment. You said you’d be back by ten but you never came
back at all. Doesn’t this qualify as job abandonment?”

My mouth fell open so far that my jaw nearly
hit the table.

“
We’ll save the job abandonment issue
until later,” said Terry Bronk, giving me an evil look. “The matter
at hand is why Miss Frank decided to completely subvert the methods
of reporting a work-related problem and instead just told it to her
boyfriend at the police department.”