Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon(88)
We watched as Jack exited the Nude Lawyers from Hell game, turned off his computer, put his glasses in a case, and stuck the case in his pocket. He pushed back his chair, stood up, and then reached over to grab an Affirmation Bear that was sitting on the counter of his cube.
“Here” he said, tossing the bear to me. “Little souvenir.”
“Do you have a lawyer?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “Guess I should.”
“I’ll call and send somebody down,” I said, remembering that I still had the names of the lawyers Michael had recommended.
“That’d be great,” he said.
I watched as the chief and Sammy led Jack out; then I looked down at the bear.
“Damn,” I said, and I punched the bear in the belly to take out my frustration.
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” the bear said, Bogart’s voice sounding particularly incongruous coming from its smiling pink face.
I went back to my desk, fished out my notebook, flipped through till I found the names of the lawyers, and called one for Jack. The one Rob wasn’t using. And then, when I was sure the lawyer was on his way down to the jail, I called Michael to vent.
“That’s great,” he said when I told him the news.
“Great? What do you mean ‘great’?”
“Rob’s off the hook, right?”
“Yes, but Jack’s on die hook, and I’m not sure that’s a big improvement.”
“He’s got a good attorney, right?” Michael asked.
“One of the ones you recommended,” I said. “The one who isn’t representing Rob.”
“He’ll be fine,” Michael said. “You’ve managed to convince the police that Rob didn’t do it - maybe you should back off.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I just don’t believe Jack did it, and I don’t believe the chief is going to keep digging until he finds out who did.”
“What’s so important about this Jack character?” Michael said. Oh, dear. Was that a note of jealousy? I could have said that he was an attractive guy who’d been flirting with me, not to mention doing the kind of thoughtful, helpful things Michael would have been doing if he weren’t three thousand miles away, and that maybe I felt just a little bit bad about not having discouraged him a little more firmly. But I didn’t think that would go over too well. So I stuck to the business side of things.
“Apart from the fact that I’ve figured out he’s the one who really runs the shop, and Rob desperately needs him to get Lawyers from Hell II finished on time and keep the company afloat, it bothers me that the chief used something I found for him to pin the murder on someone I think is innocent.”
“Let his lawyer make a fuss, then,” Michael said. “There’s no reason for you to keep putting yourself in danger.”
“I’m not going to put myself in danger,” I said. “I’m just going to keep doing what I have been doing.”
“Sneaking into the office by yourself in the middle of the night?”
“If you were paying attention, you’d remember that I’ve never managed to be by myself in the office in the middle of the night,” I countered. “There’s always at least one other person sneaking around.”
“And what if the next time the person doing the sneaking is the murderer, and decides you’re too close on his heels?”
“I’ll be careful,” I said. “I’m not incapable of taking care of myself. Besides, there’s only one thing I need to sneak back into the office to do.”
“There isn’t anything you need to sneak back into the office to do.”
“I need to finish studying the mail cart trail.”
“I thought you said you’d done a complete map of the mail cart trail last night.”
“Yes, but that only shows where the cart goes.”
“And anyplace not on your map, the mail cart doesn’t go,” he said. “What’s to find out?”
“I have the marked tiles that form the real trail mapped, and I know where there are loose tiles that show that Ted messed with its path sometime or other,” I said. “But I haven’t checked to see where there are loose unmarked tiles. That would let me figure out where the mail cart went that it wasn’t supposed to go. The wrong paths.”
“But what does that have to do with Ted’s murder?” Michael said. “You don’t know when the wrong paths were used; they could have been done for practical jokes days before the murder. Just tell the police about them.”