Sasha McCandless 03 - Irretrievably Broken (27 page)

“And?” Sasha asked.

Caroline met her eyes with a steady gaze. “There were three complete associate personnel files—Ellen’s, Clarissa’s, and Martine’s. All of their professional development plans, self-assessments, annual evaluations and performance reviews for their years as associates. There was also an entire official client file. I’m not sure how he got that, because it was very old, too, but I hadn’t ordered it for him.”

Sasha knew that, with few exceptions, Prescott & Talbott’s document retention policy specified that official client files were maintained indefinitely. Destroying an archived client file might not be a crime, but it was certainly a breach of firm policy. Presumably the same was true of human resources records.

“What was the client matter?” Naya said.

“It was a pro bono family law matter.
Vickers v. Vickers
. I flipped through the correspondence file. It appears that Ellen, Clarissa, and Martine all worked on it together as first year associates.”

“Who was the supervising attorney?” Sasha said.

Caroline just shook her head. “I didn’t see a partner’s name on the signature block. But, that can’t possibly be right, can it?”

No, Sasha thought, it couldn’t possibly. A large international law firm like Prescott & Talbott was built on layer after layer of management, supervision, and oversight. New attorneys were paid extraordinary sums, but they weren’t permitted to cross the street without someone more senior holding their hands to make sure nobody was hit by a car. A junior associate at Prescott was forbidden to sign a letter without having a partner review it. Sasha couldn’t imagine a scenario where the firm permitted three first year associates to run a case with no oversight.

“It’s certainly highly unusual,” Sasha told her.

Caroline reached once more into her shoulder bag and pulled out a heavy redweld. Its accordion bottom was stretched to the limit. She heaved it onto the table.

“Well, it didn’t sit right with me, either. So, I didn’t shred them, but now I don’t know what to do with them. I guess that’s where you come in.”

CHAPTER 43

Rich hurried from the kitchen to the laughably small living room area of his cramped apartment. He carried his lunch in one hand and his Ziploc freezer bag in the other. One perk of working for Andy was that he didn’t care if Rich drove home for lunch.

The way Andy put it, it was no skin off his dick if Rich wanted to burn his time driving back and forth on the Miracle Mile all day. Rich didn’t know why old-timers called Monroeville’s William Penn Highway, where Andy had his office, the Miracle Mile. The highway was a stretch of ordinary retail stores, strip malls, big box stores, and chain restaurants that sat just outside the city limits. Maybe back in the day the availability of so much commerce in one place had seemed like a miracle, Rich often thought to himself when he was inching along in the brutal bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic that had become the highway’s claim to fame. As far as he was concerned, the only miracle available on that road was catching a wave of traffic that actually flowed.

But, Rich gladly braved the bottlenecks so that he could escape to his apartment and eat his turkey and cheese sandwich with the local news for company instead of sitting in the break room at Andy’s office listening to the secretary gripe about her lazy husband while she microwaved her disgusting salmon cakes, curried rice, or popcorn. It seemed to Rich that she deliberately chose the most noxious foods available for her lunches.

Rich arranged his plate and the bag on his snack tray and hit the power button on the remote. He checked the time. The broadcast had already started. While his ancient television roused itself to life, he unzipped the bag and removed the picture from its envelope. He stared at Martine’s face until a picture developed on the screen, then he set it aside and picked up his sandwich.

He ate with his eyes glued to the set. The new lunchtime anchor, Maisy Farley, was his favorite. She had a softness and an innocence under all her blonde beauty that was a nice contrast to the sharp, overly toned anchors on the other stations. He’d always been drawn to her. He used to get up early and turn on the Channel 11 morning news just to watch her do the weather.

Rich thought she seemed tense today. Her green eyes looked worried and her smile was distant. She leaned forward and said, “And now, let’s go to Seth Champerton, for an exclusive interview with the attorney representing both of the Lady Lawyer Killers.”

The anchor’s face was replaced by a shot of the field reporter hustling after a girl in a parking lot. Rich turned his attention to his sandwich.

When he looked up again, the reporter had caught up with the person, who was not a girl after all. According to the caption across the screen, the tiny figure was Sasha McCandless, attorney to the two men accused of killing their lawyer wives.  Rich leaned forward and listened to her tell Seth Champerton that her clients were innocent. Something about the way she said it chilled him, like she
knew
.

But, she couldn’t know. She was just being a lawyer, lying and tricking everyone, he told himself. She couldn’t know, could she?

Rich pushed his half-eaten sandwich away. He stared at the picture of the three lawyers and tried to think of what mistakes he might have made. What did she know?

CHAPTER 44

Sasha’s office was blessedly quiet.  Larry had left, hurrying to get home in time to help Bertie prepare their evening meal before the Shabbat’s prohibition on working kicked in. He’d promised to stop by the office on Sunday to help out.  Caroline was also long gone, with instructions to put the whole mess out of her mind and spend the weekend gardening with her husband—advice that Sasha knew she would disregard, judging by the worry lines framing her eyes.

And Naya was behind her closed door with a copy of the picture of Nick and the girl, working the phones. She was going through the phone book calling local modeling agencies. It was a long shot, but the girl was a knockout and, if Nick’s story was true, Sasha suspected the killer had hired the girl to trap Nick. Then he’d stolen Nick’s hammer and bludgeoned his wife. If they could find the girl, they could find the killer.

Sasha stared at her laptop screen, scanning the newspaper articles her search had returned. Although a preliminary hearing was not typically the time to defend a case on the merits, it had been, and could be, done in Pennsylvania. That’s what she was going to have to do—convince the Municipal Court Judge to throw out the District Attorney’s case against Nick right then and there. And, then, with that concession in her pocket, she would oppose Greg’s bail revocation as being part and parcel of a failed investigation into the Lady Lawyer Killers.

It was a plan. Not a good one, she knew. But, it was something.

She checked her to do list. She’d crossed off ‘research news articles, case law, and procedure.’ She’d also already called and broken the news to Greg about both Nick’s weekend accommodations and Greg’s own upcoming hearing. He’d taken it about how she’d expected him to: badly, with a lot of yelling. All she had left to do was ‘come up with brilliant plan.’ That was all.

She clicked the button to power down the computer. Then she stood to stretch her tight back and get some oxygen flowing to her overtaxed brain. She moved through a series of yoga asanas to clear her mind and relax her body. She finished in Child’s Pose and stayed there, kneeling on her floor, stretched forward, waiting for inspiration.

Think.

Larry’s parting words to her were to resist the urge to be Perry Mason. After Googling Perry Mason, she’d decided Larry’d meant that she didn’t need to prove who
did
kill Ellen and Clarissa; she just needed to convince the judge that the District Attorney couldn’t prove it, either. But how?

Think.

Before she could have an epiphany, her phone rang. She caught herself wondering if it was Connelly calling, as she unfurled herself and raced to answer it.

“Sasha McCandless,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound breathy.

“Sasha, ah’ve been told you’re representin’ the Lady Lawyah Killers. Tell me it’s not true, darlin’ girl?”

Maisy’s syrupy accent did nothing to sweeten her words. Sasha’s neighbor across the hall was a television journalist who had made the jump from early morning weather girl to noontime anchor in record time. She’d then parlayed that into the anchor job on a competing station. Her Southern belle act had evidently lulled her colleagues into making the fatal conclusion that she was not a threat.

“Hi, Maisy.”

“Sugah’, you didn’t answer my question,” Maisy prodded.

Although Sasha knew not to be taken in by Maisy’s soft exterior, she also knew that her neighbor’s love for hard-hitting journalism was tempered by a wide romantic streak. Sasha decided to let the truth work for her, even though it was manipulative.

“Oh, I was hoping you might be Connelly calling,” Sasha said. She waited for Maisy to take the bait.

“And how is sweet Leo?” Maisy asked.

“Gone.”

“What do you mean,
gone
?”

Sasha exhaled. “He’s taking early retirement from Homeland Security to become the chief security officer for some pharmaceutical company outside D.C.”

“Y’all are movin’?”

Sasha blinked at the assumption that she’d just pick up her life and follow Connelly.

“He’s moving. Or ... I guess, he’s moved. He was supposed to go down for the weekend to look for a place to live, but he’s decided to stay.”

Maisy was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her sweet tea and magnolia accent had disappeared, replaced by an accusation. “Why?  Sasha, what did you do?”

“Mom? Is that you?” Sasha asked.

Maisy laughed, a lilting noise, and the accent returned. “I’m sorry, honey. That wasn’t fair. Did you do sumthin’ to upset him?”

“I guess so,” Sasha admitted.

“Which was?”

“He asked me to come with him. And then he tried to give me this ring, but I had to leave—”

A squeal rose from Maisy, and she interrupted, “An engagement ring?”

“I don’t know. Anyway, he left without saying goodbye, so I just thought you might be him.”

“Oh, sweetpea. We’re gonna get some supper tomorrow and talk.”

Sasha shook her head, as if Maisy could see her. “I can’t. I have to work.”

“You have to eat, too. Let’s do Ibiza. We can drink too much sangria and pick at tapas. Seven o’clock?”

Sasha was about to resist, but thought about the weekend of drudgery and solitude that stretched out in front of her. A dose of Maisy would break it up nicely.

“Sure. That sounds good.”

“Perfect,” Maisy said. “And, Sasha?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you go thinkin’ I’m gonna forget you didn’t answer my question.”

Maisy hung up with a laugh before Sasha could respond.

Sasha added dinner with Maisy to her calendar then wandered across the hall to see if Naya was making any progress.

Naya swiveled her desk chair around when Sasha opened the door.

“Any luck?” Sasha asked.

Naya shrugged. “I have feelers out with all the agencies. I told everyone the girl might be a witness in a murder case; most places told me to go ahead and email a copy of the picture over and they’d see if anyone recognized her. I gave everyone my cell number and yours, just in case something pops on Sunday, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

Sasha knew she was right. But they just had to keep moving, keep turning over rocks, and eventually they’d find something. Or they wouldn’t, but then at least she’d have the certainty of knowing there was nothing to find.

The relentless search for answers was one of the most useful things she’d learned as a young attorney at Prescott & Talbott. The answers were usually out there somewhere. And the victor in any courtroom showdown was generally the person who kept looking for something that helped her case—a published decision, a witness, a piece of evidence—long after it seemed futile. Prescott & Talbott taught its attorneys that whoever was willing to sacrifice more time to the pursuit of an answer won. It really was that simple.

“Huh.”

“What?” Naya asked.

Sasha hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud.

“Oh, I was just thinking, Ellen, Clarissa, and Martine were first years when they handled that pro bono case, right?”  She said, moving across the room to sit in the chair across from Naya.

“Right. So?” Naya put down her pen and looked closely at her. “What are you thinking?”

“What’s the first thing new attorneys learn at Prescott & Talbott?” Sasha said.

“To answer a question with another question, apparently.”

“To leave no stone unturned. Research everything, brief everything, review everything.”

Naya nodded. “Sure. But, the second thing they’re taught is to rein it in.”  She laughed and went on, “After the first month, when some chucklehead bills three hundred hours to researching some exceedingly minor issue, Marcus gathers all the baby lawyers in a conference room and roars at them that they’re being paid for their judgment.”

“True,” Sasha conceded. “But, one of the reasons Prescott would never let three first years run a case together is that there’d be no seasoned attorney with judgment on the matter.”

“You think they did something stupid?” Naya said.

“Come on,” Sasha responded, “if there was no one reviewing their work? I’m sure they did
something
stupid. The question is, did it get two of them killed?”

Naya cocked her head toward her windowsill. “File’s over there. You wanna split it up?”

“Yeah. Are you hungry?” Sasha asked, checking the time. It was just past six o’clock.

“I can hold off for another hour or two, if you can,” Naya answered.

“Sounds good.”

They both knew the longer they waited to break for dinner, the shorter their night of work would seem. It wouldn’t
be
any shorter, but it would
seem
shorter. And when a woman was staring down the barrel of a twenty-hour workday, she’d play all the mental games she knew to make it less painful.