Cold Winter Rain (11 page)

Coach Kronenberg knocked on the door to 316.  There was no answer.

I reached around her and knocked, harder.  Again, there was no response.

Coach Kronenberg turned the doorknob, and the door opened.

She looked at me.  “I guess the girls sometimes leave these doors unlocked,” she said.

The door opened into a sitting room about fifteen feet square.  Inside I could see a couch, a couple of armchairs, an entertainment center with a music system and a big Sony monitor.  The walls were decorated with black and white movie posters.

Through an open doorway at the back of the living space was a kitchenette.  A small plate with a sandwich crust sat on the counter.  To the left, through an open door, was a small neat bedroom, unoccupied, lights off.

“
I’m not sure which one,” Coach Kronenberg said.  “Akilah?” she called.  “It’s Coach Kronenberg.  Akilah?”

The suite was silent.  Sally turned to me.  “I guess she isn’t here.”

“Since we are here, let’s make sure,”  I said.  I crossed the sitting room and knocked on the closed door on my right.  Again, no sound.  I opened the door.

This room was almost identical to the room on the left.  Neat and clean.  The lights were off.  The walls were covered with soccer posters, some of them twins to the posters I’d seen in Kris Kramer’s room at her parents’ home.

But here there was one difference.

In this room, in the half-light from the common room, Akilah Ziyenge lay face down on her neat bed.

An African savannah motif graced the bedspread.  The young woman’s feet were bare.  She was wearing gray cotton sweat pants and a black sports bra.  The unstudied disarray of her limbs and the utter stillness in the room provided me with information I didn’t want but knew I must absorb in every detail:  Akilah Ziyenge was dead.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I heard one sharp intake of breath at my shoulder.  Sally Kronenberg pushed past me and stepped over to the body to feel for a carotid pulse.

She looked at me and shook her head, then held up her hand for me to see.  A small smear of blood streaked her first two fingers.

I moved to her side and looked at Akilah’s neck without touching the body.  I could just see the edge of what appeared to be strangulation or ligature marks.

Sally slipped her hand beneath my arm and pulled me close.  “You have to get them,” she whispered, the sound of her voice sibilant and eerie in this close room of death.  “Promise me,” she said.  “Make them pay for this.”

I looked down into her eyes and nodded.  “Whatever it takes,” I said.

The coach released my arm.

“We have to call the police,” I told her 

“
Campus or city?” she said, now using her normal voice.

“
City.  I should call Leon Grubbs first.”

“
But we’re on campus.  Wouldn’t the campus police have jurisdiction?”

“
I don’t really care about the campus police.  I’m calling Grubbs.”

“
But I’m on staff here.  I think I have to call the campus police.”

I could see her point.  “Look, this shouldn’t be so tough.  We both have cell phones.  Let me call Grubbs first.  When I’m done, you make your call.”

“Got it.  Go ahead and call now.  I’m going back downstairs and talk to the student in the residence hall office.”

This was my turn to take her arm.  “Coach – Sally – no.  Let me take any heat from the police.  Your campus police chief is not going to be happy with you for being here with me.  You don’t need to be accused of interfering with an investigation.  Let the police talk to the kid.  Go out and sit in the common room.  I’ll call Grubbs now.  You call the campus police as soon as I’m off.  That will give me a little time to look around.”

She shook her head sharply and took a deep breath.  “I’m sure you’re right.”  She sighed again.  “Damn.”

When I asked for Leon Grubbs at the homicide unit, the officer who answered put me on hold.

Searching the tiny dorm room wouldn’t take long.  Nothing seemed askew.

Textbooks and a dictionary were arranged neatly between simple wooden bookends on the study desk under the window.  The shade on the small lamp on the desk was straight.  A laundry basket in the closet held a few items of clothing, and blouses and dresses hung on hangers, with jeans and sweaters in organized stacks on a shelf above the rod.

Either Akilah had died without much of a struggle, which seemed unlikely for a healthy, strong athlete, or the killer or killers had straightened the room after she was dead.

I returned to the desk and tried to focus on my breath while I observed each object.  The lamp, of cheap plastic, might have been part of the furnishings provided by the college.  The desk was an inexpensive wood laminate.

Centered over the kneehole sat an HP notebook computer, the screen with its upside-down logo closed, the power and on/off lights dark.  I’d noticed the computer a moment ago but had not observed it with a still mind.

Of course, I’d missed something obvious.  Front and center below the dark light bar, a four-inch hole appeared.  Someone – the killer? – had popped out the computer’s hard drive.

After two minutes, a police lieutenant I didn’t know picked up a handset and identified himself as the night watch commander.  I got off the phone with him and tried Grubbs’ cell.  He answered after four rings. “This better be important, Slate,” he said.

“It is.”

He listened without interruption while I told him where I was and what I’d seen.  When I’d finished, Grubbs said, “Things were going pretty well for me before you flew back into town, you know that?  Is this connected to Kramer?”

“That would be my guess.”

He said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I have to work through the campus police.  Have they been informed?”

I told him that Sally Kronenberg would make that call.  “One other thing,” I said.  “Send along some techies with computer skills.”  I told him about the missing hard drive.

“
We’ll log it in as evidence.  We don’t need those guys at a murder scene.  Have the lady make the call to campus security now.  And Slate?  Don’t move or touch anything.  Understand?”

“
Yes, sir, understood,” I said, and pushed the End button.

I stepped out into the common area where Sally Kronenberg had heard my call end and was already on her cell phone calling campus security.

The campus was small.  I had maybe two minutes.

In Akilah Ziyenge’s trash can at the end of her desk was a balled-up plastic grocery bag.  I pulled the bag out, slipped it over my hand, and opened every drawer in the girl’s desk.  Notebook hard drives are about the size of the adult human palm, but that’s large enough to see at a glance if they have been placed in a desk drawer.

The missing hard drive was not in the desk, and I saw nothing else other than the usual pens, stamps, and paperclips.

I hadn’t seen a computer bag in the room earlier, and I didn’t see one now.  No other place in the room made sense.  Under the mattress?  I couldn’t look there, not now.

I stripped the bag off my hand and returned it where I’d found it just as loud male voices and heavy footsteps, a staccato squadron of them, sounded in the hall.

The common room door opened, and Director of Campus Security John Miller strode in at the front of the group.  Three uniformed campus police officers in full gear were a step behind. Miller was still in his Brooks Brothers suit.

“
I still don’t understand what he’s doing here,” Miller said to Sally Kronenberg.

“
I told you, John – Chief.  Kris Kramer’s father hired Slate to help find Kris.  Anything I can do to help Kris and that family, I’ll do.  I don’t care if I have to break some rule.”

Miller made a noise like he needed to clear his throat.  “Later.”

He turned to the police officers behind him.  “Secure the scene.  Don’t go into the room.  Don’t touch anything.”  The officers got to work with crime tape.  They pulled on latex gloves before touching doorknobs.

Miller spoke again to the soccer coach.  “We don’t have the resources to conduct a murder investigation on our own.  We know our limitations.  I already called Birmingham Homicide.  Their investigators are on the way.”  He turned to me for the first time.  “Did you touch anything in the room?”

I shook my head.  “No.  I opened the door and found her.  Neither of us touched anything in there except for the coach checking for a pulse.”

Miller nodded.  “My officers will stay here.  I want you two to come downstairs with me, to the dormitory office.  You’re going to have a long night.”

Director of Campus Security Miller was wrong.  Not long after Leon Grubbs arrived with his investigators, he took me aside.  “Look, I don’t need you here,” he said.

“I can stay as long as you want me.  Miller already told me my night would be long.”

“
You don’t understand,” Grubbs said.  “Miller is not exactly playing ball here.”  He glanced in Miller’s direction.  “The mind games may stop if you’re not here.  I know what I need from you, and I know where to find you.  I’ll call you in the morning.  Meantime, you do your job, I’ll do mine.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.  Miller had Sally Kronenberg cornered.

It was not an evening for the social graces.  I left the campus without saying goodbye. 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Friday January 27

Leon Grubbs didn’t call.  But then, he hadn’t said I promise.

The morning wasn’t a total loss.  I showered, meditated for thirty minutes, and enjoyed the excellent cheese omelette in the Tutwiler restaurant.

As I finished, Susan Kramer called my cell phone.  She wanted to talk.  That made two of us.

Before getting in the car, I went back to the room and called hotel security.  I needed to have the thumb drive with me in case someone I spoke with during the day, whether Susan Kramer or her son or someone else, could tell me how to access its contents.

Downtown Birmingham traffic was like morning traffic in every city, but I made it to Mountain Brook by nine.  This time the Kramer boy, Paul, allowed me entrance and escorted me to the library.  I was making some kind of progress.

Susan Kramer was dressed in a gray tweed business suit with a single strand of pearls and matching pearl earrings.  She stood and extended her hand.  “Mr. Slate,” she said.

“It’s just Slate, I think, Mom.”  The boy looked at me.  “Isn’t that right?”

“
That’s correct.  Just Slate.”

Susan Kramer said, “Well.  Slate.  Please sit down.”

Susan Kramer and her son sat at opposite ends of the red sofa covered in silk fabric.  Today I noticed it wasn’t actually solid red; a subtle gold leaf motif had been woven into the red background.  I sat across from them in a wing chair with tufted gold fabric.

“
Thank you for attending my husband’s service, Mr. Slate.  Paul is taking a few days off from school during this difficult time for our family.  I cannot believe how far this thing, whatever it is, has unraveled.  Kris’s roommate Akilah’s murder is all over the news.  So sad.  Such a fine, lovely girl.  So tragic.”

I nodded.  “Yes.”

She took a deep breath.  “Now.  Don hired you to find our daughter.  Isn’t that right?”

“
Yes, ma’am.”

Her nostrils flared slightly as she took in a lungful of air and straightened her back.  “Then let’s get to work.”

She asked me what I knew.  I told her.

She asked if I thought her daughter’s disappearance had anything to do with her husband’s work.  I said that her husband seemed to think so, but I didn’t know.

I told her about the thumb drive without mentioning how I’d come into possession of it.  Both she and her son said they knew nothing about it.

Paul Kramer asked the question I’d been asking myself.  Were his father’s death and his sister’s disappearance connected with Akilah's death?  I told him that was a reasonable conclusion.  What I didn’t have was proof.

Susan Kramer spoke again.  “So.  A reasonable assumption is that my husband’s death and my daughter’s -- disappearance -- are both connected to my husband’s work, possibly to a single legal matter.  Is that correct?”

I told her those were reasonable working theories.

Susan Kramer stood.  “Then we are meeting in the wrong place.  I have a law degree and practiced for two years before I married Don.  But I know nothing about my husband’s work.  We both preferred things that way.  Anyway, lawyers have that thing about confidentiality.  So we need to speak with my husband’s law partners.  Immediately.  Paul and I will drive in my car.  You know the way, don’t you, uh, Slate?”

I said I did.

“Let’s go,” she said.

I told her that it might be more efficient if they were expecting us.

She looked at me as though she were having second thoughts about keeping me on staff.  “I intend to call Bill Woolf on my cell while I’m driving in.  They’d better make time for me,” she said.

They did make time for us, and, indeed, most of “them” were in the office, including a few legal assistants and paralegals.

Susan Kramer, and, perforce, her son Paul and I, were not kept waiting in the lobby.

Woolf’s assistant bustled out to show us into a small conference room near Woolf’s office.  An assistant served coffee.

Woolf appeared in the doorway before I’d finished stirring.  He gave Susan Kramer a hug and sat at one end of the table.  Susan and Paul Kramer took chairs immediately to his right.  I sat at the opposite end.

“Susan, how can we help you?” Woolf began.

“
You can start by giving Mr. Slate access to every file Don was working on.  Slate . . . Mr. Slate thinks Kris’s situation and Don’s, uh, Don’s death may be related.”

Meeting first Susan’s eyes, then mine, Woolf nodded slightly several times.  “Right,” he said finally.  “I can see the point here.  But our files are privileged.  Slate, you’re a lawyer; Susan, you have a law degree.  You both understand.”

I nodded back.  It was contagious as a yawn.  “I do understand your issues.  But those files may help solve a murder and Kris’s disappearance.  I need them, and I think you understand that, don’t you, Bill Woolf?”  The files might help solve two murders, but I didn’t want to bring last night into the conversation unless I had to.

“
Yes,”  he said.  He turned to Susan Kramer.  “Would you all excuse me for a moment?”  He wheeled around in his chair, stood, and in one stride opened the door and disappeared, closing the door behind him.

Susan Kramer turned to me.  “What was that about?” she said.

“No idea,” I said.

Susan Kramer looked down at the table, and her shoulders began to shake.  She wasn’t holding it together as thoroughly as it appeared.

Paul took his mother’s hand.  Her jaw muscles were visible, her mouth a thin line.  I picked up my coffee mug, said something about looking for Woolf, and went out into the hall through the door at my end of the conference room.

Down the hall in Woolf’s office I found Woolf at his desk and another, older man, balding and rumpled, in one of the chairs opposite Woolf.

As I peered in the door, Woolf glanced up and saw me.  “Come in, Slate, and close the door,” he said.

As I did so, the other man stood, approached me, and held out his hand.  “George Hill,” he said.

“Sit down, Slate,”  Woolf said.  “George is Of Counsel here and serves as my in-house ethicist.  Keeps us out of trouble.  George and I have been discussing these matters involving Don Kramer.  We think we have a solution,” he said.  “Right, George?”

Hill turned to acknowledge me with a slight smile.  “Yes, I see no problem with making the offer.”

Woolf looked at me.  “Slate, your law license is current.  I had someone check.  How would you feel about becoming Of Counsel to the firm on an interim basis?”

“
On an interim basis?”  Inane, but I had to stall while I thought.

“
Just until you complete your investigation,” Hill said.

I started to shake my head.  “I suppose it solves your ethics issues, but it might not solve mine,” I said.

“How so?” said Woolf.

“
I don’t need or want responsibility for, or, more precisely, to take on ethical duties to, your clients.”

“
Understood.”

“
Or to the members and associates of your firm.”

“
How so?” Hill asked.

“
Well, not to spell it out, but if it turns out that one of the firm’s clients or someone here had anything to do with Kris’s disappearance or Don Kramer’s murder, don’t expect to invoke any privileges.”

Woolf nodded.  “I sincerely do not believe that anyone here would have harmed Kris or Don.  Nor any of our clients.  But we can craft some sort of agreement that addresses these problems.  That’s what we have lawyers for, right?”

He turned to Hill.  “Let’s get one of the transaction lawyers on this straightaway.  Maybe Thornton.”  He stood and extended a hand.  “Welcome aboard, Slate. Let’s go speak with Mrs. Kramer.”

The agreement drafted by Carrie Thornton, a thirty-something junior partner in the firm’s transaction department with chin-length dark hair and the body of a maturing starlet, excluded me from any knowledge of or access to the firm’s files except for any files Don Kramer had billed on since his tenure at the firm began.

This language created the “Chinese wall,” often used by law firms when they hire lawyers from other firms that have represented clients with interests adverse to those of clients of the hiring firm.  Our arrangement presented an unusual use of the Chinese wall concept, but it would have to suffice.

The contract did not mention compensation except to parrot the language commonly appearing in sales contracts:  “Ten dollars and other good and valuable consideration.”  I planned to ask for my ten bucks in cash.

The contract did not approach perfection.  We all knew that.  But at least it gave me access to what I needed.

Among other things, I didn’t think an agreement between a law firm and a lawyer could erase the attorney-client privilege, but since I had no intention of protecting the guilty, I didn’t care.

I signed in the presence of Thornton and Woolf’s assistant.  Woolf signed.  We went back to the conference room and explained to Susan Kramer what we had done.  She had composed herself and said she was pleased I would have access to the files.

I told her we would talk later, and she and Paul left.

I had work to do.