Deadly Justice (20 page)

“Right.”

“So whoever took the body also took the diskette.”

“I suppose so. What kind of information can be stored on one of these, Jones?”

“Just about anything you want. Financial data, documents, lists, even entire publications.”

Ben snapped his fingers. “Didn’t you say documents could be saved on a computer’s hard disk, then transferred onto a diskette?”

“That’s the usual procedure. It’s not mandatory.”

“Then there’s a possibility that whatever was in Hamel’s hand is also stored on a computer somewhere.”

“True. But where?”

“Well, we did find Hamel in my office….”

Quickly, Jones punched a few buttons and brought up the document file on Ben’s word processing program. It was empty. Jones spent the next ten minutes punching buttons, bringing up files from other programs. “Sorry, Boss. There’s nothing here.”

“If it isn’t here, maybe it’s stored in the main office computer. That would make more sense anyway—easier access for Hamel—and the computer room is just across the hall from my office.” Ben snapped his fingers again. “Maybe Hamel was actually working in there. Then, when he heard Herb and Candice leaving, or when he heard Rob and me coming, he ran across the hall and hid in my office.”

“Well,” Jones said, wiggling his fingers, “shall I cross the hall and commence a search?”

“Not now. The computer room is well-staffed during the day. I don’t think they’ll let you sit down and start reading their confidential files. Besides, I don’t want to tip anyone off. Remember, my theory is that Hamel’s killer is someone in this corporation.”

“What a pleasant thought. Well, I don’t want to overstay my welcome….”

“Okay. I’ll call you later. Maybe we can arrange for a clandestine examination of the computer files. I’ll need your help, obviously.”

“You know where to call.” Jones flashed a smile and headed out the door.

Ben pondered this new information. It seemed to confirm his theory that the killer was someone closely tied to the Apollo Consortium. Someone who had killed one person and tried to kill a second, if the attempt on Crichton’s life was what he thought it was. Someone who in all likelihood would try to kill again, especially if he thought Ben was getting close.

Ben stood up and closed the door. Suddenly, his office seemed very small. The entire building seemed to be shrinking, as if the walls were slowly moving in on him. There he was, enclosed in a strange world filled with backstabbers, buttkissers—and someone who had killed one man and targeted a second.

And Ben could be next.

B
EN DROVE HIS HONDA
Accord down the dirt road and parked well behind the bleachers, where he hoped his car would be safe from errant foul balls—mostly his, in all likelihood.

Everyone else was already on the softball diamond in Johnson Park, at the corner of Sixty-first and Riverside. Apollo’s team was warming up. Each member was wearing an identical gray and red softball uniform with the Apollo logo on the back.

Christina tossed Ben a mitt and an official Apollo baseball cap. “Glad you could make it,” she said. “I was afraid we’d have to hire a ringer to take second base.”

“You’d have been better off,” Ben replied. “I’m awful. I don’t want to be here.”

“Don’t be such a grump. Show some
esprit de corps
.”

Herb passed Ben while practice-swinging three bats forcefully through the air. Chuck and Candice lined up beside Ben and Christina and tossed a ball back and forth. Doug was rustling about, lining up the bats in order of length. Ben wondered where he had stowed his computer. Shelly was there, too, although she was sitting on the bench, quiet as always.

Crichton was behind the plate, making goo-goo faces through the chain-link screen.
Goo-goo faces?
Ben took a closer look. Yes, and goo-goo noises as well. The woman on the other side of the screen was holding a chubby toddler, maybe a year old, while a small girl a few years older sat beside them. Crichton was doing his best to entertain, and the whole family was laughing.

What do you know? Ben thought. The workaholic sexist pig really was soft on his family. Of course, Mussolini was a family man, too, he reflected. Still, it’s hard to utterly detest someone after you’ve heard him sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Ben noticed that he and Christina were conveniently positioned in the center of the group warming up. This presented an opportunity for schmoozing he thought he’d best not pass up.

“I hear the police are going to be visiting us in the next day or two,” Ben said.

Chuck’s ears pricked up. “The police?” He tossed the softball to Candice. “What would they want with us?”

“They’re still trying to figure out who killed poor Howard.”

“Christ,” Candice said. “If they can’t figure out who’s mutilating all those teenage girls, they’re never going to track down Howard’s killer.”

“Oh?” Ben said. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s just a question of priorities, and it’s obvious that the mutilation-murders have a higher one right now. I haven’t heard Howard’s name mentioned on the news once, but I hear an update every night about the latest grisly development in the teen serial slayings. The slaughter of little girls has so much more tragic appeal to middle America.”

“I’d like to know what kind of questions the police are going to ask,” Chuck said, reverting the conversation to the previous topic.

“The usual, I expect,” Ben said nonchalantly. “Where were you the night Howard was killed? Did you know him? Did you have any reason to want him dead?”

Doug smirked. “I suppose we all had that, depending upon how petty you want to get about motives.”

“The police can get pretty damn petty,” Chuck mused.

“Why do you say that?” Ben asked.

Chuck shrugged and looked away. “Never mind.”

“Well,” Ben said, “I can account for where Rob was the day Howard was killed, and I know where Herb was shortly before I found the body.”

“Really? Where?”

Herb turned and glared at Ben.

“At the office,” Ben replied simply. “But everyone else is unaccounted for. Where were you, Chuck?”

“Who knows? I can’t remember that far back.”

“Surely you thought about it when you heard Howard was dead.”

“I was at home that night watching television. By myself.”

Christina made a tsking noise. “Not a very compelling alibi, Chuck.”

“Sorry. If I’d known there was going to be a murder, I would have gone to the opera.” He fired the ball back at Candice, throwing it so hard it smacked loudly against Candice’s glove. Candice winced, took her hand out of the glove, and shook it out.

“Take it easy, Chuck.”

“Sorry,” he said. He didn’t look sorry, though.

“What about you, Doug?” Ben asked. “I don’t think I’ve heard what you were doing that night.”

“I was writing,” Doug replied.

“What a surprise,” Chuck said with a wink.

“I didn’t see you at the office,” Ben commented.

“I wasn’t there. I was at home.”

“Took some files home with you?”

“I wasn’t working on Apollo business. Some of us do have lives outside the office, you know.” He hoisted a few bats into the air. “I was working on my novel.”

“You’re writing a novel?”

“What a surprise,” Chuck repeated.

“What kind of novel?” Christina asked. “Adventure? Murder mystery?”

Doug peered down his nose. “Hardly. I’m writing a modern deconstructionist dialogue, encompassing the existential viewpoint and post-World War II logology, as viewed through the perspective of seventeenth-century poetry.”

“Sounds fascinating,” Ben said dryly.

“And this is a novel?” Christina asked.

“Oh, yes. But I’ve written it in sonnet form.”

“Sonnet form?”

“Fourteen-line iambic pentameter, a-b-c-b rhyme pattern. It’s a daunting project. But we all suffer for our art.”

Ben suspected that there would be more suffering by the reader than the writer. “When do you expect to have it completed?”

“Oh, it’s done. I was just revising it a bit. Making some improvements.”

“Then what?”

“Well…it’s currently under consideration by various publishing houses.”

“Oh?” Ben asked. “Like who?”

“Well…both Penguin and Vintage expressed interest. Unfortunately, the recession has caused them to make some difficult choices, sometimes favoring commercial tripe over significant literature. I’ve had some very favorable feedback from the University of Peoria Press.”

“How much do you have to pay them to publish it?”

“Not as much as—” He stiffened. “I don’t see as that concerns you.”

“So you don’t have anyone who can testify about where you were the night Hamel was killed?”

“No. I suppose not.”

Ben shook his head. “You and Chuck are in a tough spot. The police don’t have any real leads. And when they don’t have leads, they start to get desperate.”

“What do you think they’ll do?”

“I don’t know. Personally, I don’t think the cops are going to solve this one unless they go back to…kindergarten.”

The softball coming toward Chuck thudded against his chest. He grunted, but continued staring at Ben, his eyebrows forming a furrowed ridge over his eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m just saying they need to start fresh,” Ben said, trying not to sound coy.

Chuck picked the softball up, but never stopped staring at Ben.

Rob strolled into the midst of the group and intercepted a softball on its way to Candice, much to her annoyance. He looked great in his uniform; he was obviously the only true athlete in the group.

“Everybody ready to play?” There was a spattering of well-tempered enthusiasm. “All right, let me pass out the assignments and the batting lineup. Anybody has any problems, let me know right away.” Although Crichton was indisputably the coach, Rob was the manager, which meant Rob did all the thinking and all the work, while Crichton gave the pep talks and accepted the trophies.

The group stopped what they were doing and formed a huddle around Rob. “No problems? Okay. Now, listen up. Coach Crichton has a few pregame words for you.”

Having been properly introduced, Crichton strode mightily into the huddle. “Listen up, team. I’ll try to make this brief. I think you all know how important this game is.”

Ben didn’t. As far as he knew, this was the third game of the season and the team was one and one. So what?

“I know a lot of people disagree,” Crichton continued. “A lot of people say, ‘It’s just the Lawyers’ League. It’s just for fun. Don’t take it seriously.’ Well, I’m here to tell you something different. Do you take your work seriously? Do you take your life seriously? My father used to say, ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing seriously.’ And he was right.

“Sure, we could just bumble through, drop pop flies, swill beer, act like asses. We could be cool and well-liked and friendly. And what would that get us? We’re not here to hoist brews, damn it, we’re here to play ball. Honest, proactive ball. And there’s no point in playing the game if you’re not playing to win. That’s for losers. And we’re not losers.
Are we?
”

The group answered with a rousing
“No way!”
, at least half the volume of which was contributed by Chuck.

Crichton huddled closer and grabbed the two players on either side of him by the shoulders. “We’re not just anybody, team. We’re lawyers. Lawyers, damn it! We’re the best there is, the cream of the crop. We’re professionals. And that means more than just knowing how to file briefs and make convoluted arguments. It means we’re professional about every aspect of our lives, and everything we do. Including softball.

“So when this game starts, I don’t want to see a bunch of clowns and beer-guzzlers out there on the diamond. I want to see professionals. I want to see winners!
All right?
”

The team shouted
“All right!,”
slapped mitts, and ran out into the field of glory.

By the top of the fifth, Apollo was behind Memorex Telex by nine runs. Three more, and the game would be a skunk. And, sadly enough, there were men on both first and second, and it looked as if Memorex Telex would bring home the clinching runs at any moment.

The game had been a comedy of errors, except that thanks to Crichton’s shouting, bellowing, and bullying, there was nothing funny about it. Tragedy of errors, perhaps?

Christina and Candice were both warming the bench, as they had been for the entire game. It would be difficult for Ben to say which was the more unhappy about it. Although this was purportedly a coed league, and necessarily so, the managerial team of Fielder and Crichton had not played a single woman yet.

Sexism carried to its most pathetic point, Ben mused. He could tell just from watching Candice warm up that she had a strong arm, and he knew for a fact that Christina was a much better player than he was. But here he was on second base, letting grounders bounce into his face and bumping into the shortstop, while Candice and Christina cooled their heels.

Shelly had been given the job of third base coach. Rob probably was just trying to get her off the bench, but this was a job for which she was ludicrously unsuited. She remained uncommunicative. She didn’t understand the rules of the game, or what she was supposed to be watching for, or what she was supposed to be telling the runners. As Chuck sailed toward third on his one hit of the game, he had yelled, “Is it safe? Is it safe?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

He was tagged out at home.

As he trudged back to the bench, Ben overheard Chuck doing a lot of muttering with Shelby’s name in it. “Goddamn idiot. She’s no better at softball than she is at law. I’m going to have another talk with Crichton about her, and soon. This is goddamn intolerable.…”

And so forth.

The next Memorex Telex batter hit a bouncing bunt right down the middle. It slipped past Crichton (who was pitching, natch) and headed toward Ben. It passed under Ben’s glove, but he sat down on the ground and managed to block its progress with his posterior. He picked it up, then dropped it, fumbled around with it, bounced it off his chin, and eventually managed to throw it to the first baseman, much too late. The batter made it to first, the other two runners advanced.