The Rule Of Nine Part 11

"It's possible he could be an unhappy former client," she says. "Didn't like the result, got out of prison, and used your card as a kind of consumer complaint." Joselyn looks at Snyder. "Sorry. I don't mean to make light of your son's death."

"No. I wanna hear." Snyder is all eyes at me.

"No. I don't think he's a former client," I say.

"Why not?" she says.

"Yeah," says Snyder, both of them waiting for an answer.

Harry looks at me as he fills his face with another bite of sandwich. I know what he's thinking: "You got yourself into this with one lie; you're going to have to get yourself out of it with another."

"The thought crossed my mind. We checked our records. But there's no one we can think of." Then the afterthought, like a stroke of genius. "Besides, if it was a disgruntled client, someone unhappy with my services, they would have been booked and finger printed at the time of arrest. Their prints would be on record with the FBI." Take that!

Harry gives me a wink, good job.

"Right. Of course. How stupid of me," she says.

"All I have is a name-Liquida. No physical description. So that's it. That's everything. That's all I know." I'm still smiling when she says it.

"That's too bad."

"Why?"

"Because it must be hard on you."

"What do you mean?" It's one question too many. What they teach you in law school is to stop when you're ahead.

"Because that thumbprint on your card is no accident," says Joselyn. "It may be your business card, but it's his calling card on the back of it. You did say the print was on the back of the card?"

"It's what the FBI told me," I say.

"You must have done something to really p.i.s.s this guy off," she says.

I refuse to ask why. I don't want to play in her sandbox anymore.

"Do you have one of your business cards on you?" Joselyn looks at me.

"Yes." I'm gritting my teeth as I say it.

"Can I see it?"

"Sure." What else can I say?

I reach into my pocket and pluck a business card from the small cardholder I carry. I reach over to hand it to her.

"You just proved my point." Joselyn doesn't look up from her salad or take the card from my hand. Instead she leaves me there, my arm extended, holding the card, as she sweeps a small piece of lettuce into her mouth from her fork. "Do you see..." She wipes her mouth with her napkin.

"You see how you're holding the card, thumb on one side, first finger on the other? I never practiced much criminal law, but anyone handling a business card, unless they held it by the edges, in which case they won't leave any prints, would hold it like you are, front and back, thumb on one side, finger on the other. Even if they were smudged, you would still find two smudged prints, one on each side of the card, not one clear thumbprint. To get that you would probably put the card on a table or a hard surface and press down with your thumb. Besides, isn't it normal for a professional to wear gloves at a crime scene? Wouldn't that be part of the uniform of the day? And yet he left thumbprints at both scenes. It's a conscious act." She punctuates this statement of fact with a sip of wine she had ordered in a stemmed gla.s.s and then places it back on the table next to her unfinished drink in the tumbler. "I wouldn't want to worry you unnecessarily, but it seems to me he's sending you a message."

"Is that why he killed my son?" says Snyder.

"I don't know. But then it wasn't my card that he used." Joselyn looks at me with a Ches.h.i.+re-like grin. "Do you have any ideas?"

"No." I slip the business card back into my pocket.

"What could you have done to make him that angry?" says Snyder. "I wanna know how you know this guy. What's the connection between you and him?"

"I told you. I don't know him. I don't have a clue. I wish I did."

"That doesn't tell me why my son was killed," says Snyder. "He wasn't involved in drugs. That I know. So how would he come in contact with someone like this-this Liquida?"

"Maybe he didn't," says Harry. "Maybe this man Liquida came looking for your son. It's how he earns his money. He's hired to kill."

"No. Why would he be hired to kill Jimmie? My boy wasn't involved in anything that would put him in that kind of danger."

"Obviously he was," says Harry, "or else he'd be alive."

"What do you mean by that?" Snyder starts to get out of his chair.

"Relax." I put a hand on his arm. People at the other tables are starting to look at us. "Harry didn't mean anything."

"I'm sorry if I offended you," says Harry. "If what you say is true, then Jimmie was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. For all we know he could have been killed by mistake. The information we have on Liquida is sketchy at best, only that he works for the cartels and hires out. The people employing him would have the moral judgment of a cancer cell. If they thought the rain was a threat, they'd shoot the weatherman. So it might not have taken much for your son to get killed. If he saw something, heard something, and he may not even have realized it."

"They would kill him for that?" At this moment Snyder has the look of a clerk who has rung up a sale and is calculating the change.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing," says Snyder. "Only..."

"Only what?" I ask.

"It was just a minor problem, trouble he had at work. It's why I thought he might have come to see you."

"What was it?" says Harry.

"Jimmie violated some security protocols in the building where he worked. At least that's what I'm told. He took someone into a secure area without authority, and apparently he got caught."

"Your son told you this?" says Harry.

"No, the FBI, when they interviewed me. They showed me some pictures, Jimmie and another man. They didn't tell me that this was the actual event, but I have to a.s.sume..."

Snyder reaches into the leather portfolio next to his elbow and pulls out what appear to be three glossy prints. He hands them to me. I look at them. I recognize Jimmie Snyder from the death scene photos shown to us by Thorpe that day at the FBI office. The other man is pudgy looking, a little shorter than Snyder's son, wearing a baseball cap, Bermuda shorts, and a polo s.h.i.+rt.

I hand the photos to Harry. "Did they say anything else?"

"No. They showed me the photos in hopes I might recognize the man. They let me have them so I could run them by Jimmie's friends to see if anyone knew who the man was. I thought that if Jimmie talked with you about the problem at work, he might have told you who he was."

I shake my head.

"Hard to tell what he looks like from the pictures. The hat's down over his eyes in two of them." Harry zeros in on the other photo, the enlarged close-up. Over the shoulder is just a piece of a sign, the words "basketball and weight lifting" and a line below it that was out of focus. Harry studies it for a moment, then lays it on top of the other two and pushes them off to the side.

"When were these taken?"

Snyder looks up at Joselyn. "I don't know. Why?"

"Do you mind?"

"Go ahead."

She picks them up.

"I'm pretty sure they are stills from a security video camera," says Snyder.

"That's exactly what they are," says Harry. "Where were the photographs taken? What building, I mean?"

"Oh, G.o.d." Joselyn is leaning over the enlargement, peering down at it on the table. She's white as a sheet, and slack jawed.

"What is it?" I say.

"It's like a bad dream," she says. "I thought he was dead. They told me he was dead."

"Who?"

"National Security Agency." She coughs, covers her mouth. "Gimme-can I have some water," she says.

Harry motions for the waitress, but she doesn't see him.

"There's a pitcher and gla.s.ses on the side table near the bar." I point.

Harry starts to get up, but Snyder's closer. He makes a beeline for it just as Joselyn topples sideways onto the booth seat.

I grab her before she can fall. Snyder scurries back with the water. He's got it in a gla.s.s, but Joselyn's not going to be drinking. She's out cold. I dip my linen napkin into the gla.s.s and wipe her forehead. The shock of the ice water on her skin causes her eyelids to flutter. A second later she opens them.

By now the waitress is over. "Is she all right? You want us to call 911?"

"No!" says Joselyn. "I'm okay. Really, it's nothing." She struggles to right herself on the booth seat.

Her skin is clammy, with cold sweat on her arm. "Sip a little water," I tell her.

She gives a feeble shake of the head. "No, my stomach right now..." I steady her so if she goes down again she doesn't bang her head on the edge of the table. "Yeah, you're just fine," I tell her.

"I think she'll be all right." Harry looks up at the waitress. "We'll get her back to the office. We've got a couch in the conference room. She can lie down. If she needs help we'll call from there. Can you bring the check?"

"We'll deliver it to the office. Go," she says. "Take her on over. We'll catch up."

SIXTEEN.

He's older, and he looks heavier in the photograph, but it's him," she says. Joselyn is flat on her back on the couch.

"Keep your head down, don't try to lift it. Keep your eyes closed." One of the girls from the outer office is holding a cold compress across Joselyn's forehead and eyes.

"Do you have a name for this guy?" Snyder is holding the single enlarged photo in his hand, his notebook open on the conference table in our office.

"When I knew him he was calling himself Dean Belden."

Snyder writes it down.

"But that was what? Nine years ago now. I was told later that he had a number of other names he used, but according to the people I talked to he usually worked under the name Thorn."

"How did you meet him?" I ask.

"He came to my office. I was still practicing law back then. Up in Was.h.i.+ngton State, near Seattle. He said he..." Joselyn lifts the wet compress from her eyes and s.h.i.+fts her body on the sofa to get her head up onto the armrest.

"Don't try to sit up," I tell her.

Harry hands her a pillow and helps her to slide it under her head.

"Thanks. I'm feeling a little better. Besides, I have to get my feet under me. I have a flight to catch tonight, remember?"

"As you said, there are more important things than Congressional hearings," I remind her.

"You were telling us how you met him," said Snyder.

"It's been so long. He was calling himself Dean Belden. He showed up at my office one day and said he was a businessman. Said he had some corporate legal work for me or something. No. No, I remember now." She lowers her feet onto the floor and sits up. She holds her head for a moment with both hands as if it's ringing like a bell.

"Are you all right?" I ask.

"Yeah. Gimme a second." She takes a moment to compose herself. "The offer of corporate work came later. The first thing he told me was that he had been subpoenaed. That was it. He was under subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle. He told me that as far as he knew, it had nothing to do with him. He was not the target of the investigation. It was somebody else, another man he just happened to do business with. He claimed he didn't even know why they wanted to talk to him. He offered a large retainer and told me that if I did a good job on the grand jury thing, especially if I could get it quashed, there might be some corporate work for me later. I was starving at the time, in a solo practice, ready to take anything that came through the door, and like a fool I said yes. That's when the world caved in on me."

"How do you mean?" says Snyder.

"All of it was a lie-his name, his business, the reason he was being called before the grand jury. He knew I couldn't get the subpoena quashed. The government was closing in on him and what he needed was a witness, so he could disappear."

"Go on," says Sydner.

"His business, which was nothing but a front, was located in the San Juan Islands, in Puget Sound. He invited me out, supposedly to prep for his appearance before the grand jury. He had a pilot's license and a small floatplane. The day he was supposed to appear before the grand jury he decided we'd fly.

"I was impressed. I was young and stupid. He set the plane down on Lake Union in Seattle and we took a cab to the federal courthouse. He was cool as a cuc.u.mber. We got inside and while I was engaged in small talk with one of the marshals, Belden took a powder. It was a few minutes before I realized that he was gone. But there I was, standing all alone holding the bag. I a.s.sumed that Belden had a case of last-minute nerves, simply got scared and ran. It's what he wanted me to think. I grabbed a cab and headed back to Lake Union hoping I could catch him before he got into the air. I thought I could talk him into coming back to the courthouse.

"As it turned out, I didn't quite make it. I got there just in time to watch him push off from the dock, climb up into the plane, and lift off. I heard the engine sputter and watched as the plane cart-wheeled into the lake. To this day at least that's what I think I saw. He was very good. It was all meticulously ch.o.r.eographed. Of course, the divers didn't find his body in the wreckage, but then they didn't have to. The police had me as a witness. But the feds didn't buy it."

"So they already knew about him," says Snyder.