11

Fifteen minutes later, a cherry-red Mustang idled in an illegal parking space, pointing toward an unsuspecting gay bar. The car contained four women on their maiden stakeout: Bennie at the steering wheel, Judy riding shotgun, and Mary in the backseat with Anne. Bennie had driven over, but was delayed because the Mustang had been out of gas and they had to stop to fill up. The bar was closing its doors, and the tea dance had ended with no sign of Kevin. Anne had told Bennie and the others everything, but she couldn’t leave without making sure he really hadn’t been inside.

“I think I won’t fire you yet, Murphy,” Bennie was saying, in the front seat. A red flyer lay crumpled on the dashboard, presumably where she’d thrown it. “You either, Carrier. Because that would be too easy. It would be capital punishment instead of life in prison, and I’m philosophically opposed. You get my drift, girls?”

“You want us to suffer?” Anne ventured.

“Exactly. You, in particular.”

Anne kept her eyes trained on the bar. Judy’s and Mary’s were, too. The black door of the entrance had been propped open, and men were leaving in droves. Some dispersed down the street or hailed cabs, but most lingered, laughing, chatting, and smoking in small groups on the sidewalk, enjoying the shade cast by the buildings. There had to be two hundred men that they’d seen leave, and Anne never would have guessed that they had all fit inside. The bar was a clown car for gay men.

Bennie continued, “There’s only one rule at Rosato & Associates, and it’s this—I’m the boss. I’m Bennie Rosato. I own Rosato & Associates. See? It rhymes.”

Anne nodded again. No Kevin. Damn!

“Murphy, I tried to explain to you that I am chargeable with your actions, and it follows from this that nothing happens in my law firm without my approval. No employee of mine does anything insane without clearing it with me first. This is because I pay the salaries and bills, including but not limited to rent, light, water, casebooks, Pilot pens, and fresh coffee beans.”

Anne’s hopes were sinking. The sidewalks were full of naked chests, tank tops, and short shorts, but Kevin’s Joe Camel shirt wasn’t anywhere in evidence.

“I was trying to reach Detective Rafferty when I heard that my newest associate was in a gay bar dressed in an Uncle Sam outfit, trying to catch a psychotic killer. Imagine my surprise at the news.” Bennie paused. “Not only were you supposed to be researching Willa Hansen, you were supposed to be dead. This leads me to believe that you missed the point of my earlier lecture. As I told you once already, Murphy, I was the one who identified your body.” Bennie’s voice caught abruptly, and the sudden silence got everyone’s attention.

Anne checked Bennie in the rearview, and her eyes flickered with pain. Judy looked over, and Mary hung her head.

Bennie was clearing her throat. “The physical details aren’t the point. Mostly what I saw, what all of us saw, lying in a very cold, stainless-steel drawer, is what Kevin Satorno is capable of, if it was him. He didn’t just want to kill you, Murphy. He wanted to destroy you. He aimed right for your beautiful face and he blasted it to kingdom come. Given the opportunity, he will do it again.”

Anne swallowed hard. It sounded as if Bennie had been worried about her. Cared about her. It was a new thing. “I’m sorry, I really am,” she said, meaning it.

“Good.” Bennie checked her watch, and Anne and Judy returned their attention to the bar. But after a minute, Anne became aware that Mary hadn’t lifted her head and she did something she had never done with another woman; she reached over and held Mary’s hand. Just then a familiar stovepipe appeared at the front door of the bar, schmoozing with a crowd of partiers.

“That’s the manager,” Anne said, watching. The manager was withdrawing a large key-ring from his blue satin pants and shooing everybody out of the way. Closing time, at least until they reopened. Then he went back inside the bar, presumably to lock the front door from the inside.

Goddamnit! “Maybe Kevin’s hiding inside,” Anne said, but even she didn’t believe it. She met Judy’s eye, and she looked almost equally bummed. Anne was feeling better about her since the red flyer. Almost.

“I’m sure they get everybody out before they close,” Judy said. “So if he was still there, he’s not anymore. I think we lost him, Anne. At least for now.”

Mary raised a small, manicured fist. “Don’t give up! We’ll get him yet. He will feel the wrath of girls!”

Bennie waved the associates into silence. She opened her cell phone and made a call. “Is Detective Rafferty in yet?” she asked.

But Anne was already thinking ahead. Mary had given her an idea, when they had all met, earlier in the office. Anne would start working on it as soon as she got back to the office.

She could hardly wait.

Bennie and Judy were meeting with the detectives in a conference room, giving them the reconstructed details of the sighting of Kevin at the gay bar. Mary had left for Anne’s neighborhood, to find any witnesses to what happened the previous night. Anne was sitting at her desk with Mel, making the last of her phone calls to set up Plan B. It had taken some doing, but she was pretty sure she could catch Kevin this time, especially now that she knew he was in the vicinity. She would have to tell the others about it, even Bennie, because she’d need their help. And she was trying to play well with others.

The office fell quiet except for the shh-chunk of the printer outside Anne’s office, spitting out copies to further Plan B. Anne’s gaze strayed to her office window, and the smoked glass reflected her latest incarnation. She couldn’t run around forever as Uncle Sam, so she’d chopped her hair into a short cut and dyed it Rich Sable, #67 from Herbal Essences. The box promised a “rich, dark brown” but Anne didn’t like being a brunette. It made her worry about her credit balances. Eek.

Mel sat upright on a stack of depositions, and Anne smoothed his whiskered cheeks. His green eyes elongated with each stroke, transforming him into the politically incorrect Chinese Cat. It was one of Anne’s favorites. She felt mildly fresher, having showered at the office and changed into clean clothes from the firm’s closet of spares; a khaki skirt from Banana Republic and a white T-shirt that read i make boys cry. She kept her Blahniks but wore no lipstick, caving in to peer pressure now that she had peers. Mental note: Progress brings its own downside.

Now that Plan B was almost in place, Anne wanted to find Willa’s family, to notify them. But where to begin? She took a last sip of cold coffee and logged onto whitepages.com, an online phone directory. She typed in “Willa Hansen” and “Philadelphia” for the city, but the answer came back: Sorry, no people match the phone search criteria you entered.

Hmm. It meant Willa was unlisted. Anne felt her energy returning. It wouldn’t make sense to search under Hansen, because she didn’t know where Willa’s family lived. Then she got another idea. She picked up the phone and called her and Willa’s gym. A young man answered, and Anne tried the ditzy voice she’d heard on their solicitations: “Hi, I’m Jenny, the new massage therapist, in the spa? I’m the one who does the in-homes?”

“Jenny? I heard about you. It’s Marc. Wanna do my in-home?”

“Ha!” Anne forced a giggle. “Hi, Marc. I’m calling because I’m on my way over to one of the member’s houses, but I Iost the sheet with her phone number and address. Her name is Willa Hansen. Do you have her info?”

“Sure.” Keystrokes clicked on the other end of the line. “Willa Hansen lives at 2689 Keeley Street. The phone is unlisted, but she put it on her ap. You want it?”

“Please.” He read it off, and Anne took it down. The address was across town around Fitler Square. She knew only because she got her hair cut near there, when she wasn’t cutting it herself. “Do you have any other information about her in the computer? Anything in her member profile that would help me? I need to build up my client base.”

“Let’s see.” A few more keystrokes. “Not much, Jenny. Her account shows she’s a two-year member, but she never took any of the spinning, yoga, or cardio classes. She didn’t fill out the member profile. She checked ‘single’ on her application, but she didn’t sign up for any of the singles nights. She doesn’t sound very friendly.”

“Not at all.” Anne couldn’t avoid the irony. It could easily have been her own member profile. “Anything else? Anything at all?”

“Let’s see, she rents her house and is self-employed. She didn’t fill in the blank for her yearly income, but that was optional. She’s a slow pay on the dues. I’m looking at her picture, we have it on file, but I don’t remember her at all, and I’ve been here three years.”

“Great. Gotta go.”

“Listen, Jenny, I’m having a party on Monday night for the fireworks. If you—”

“Thanks but no.” Anne hung up, thinking. 2689 Keeley Street. She had to get over there. Somewhere in the house would be something that would tell her about Willa’s family and how she could get in touch with them. She would tell Bennie as soon as she got free. It would make Bennie feel better, but it was having the exact opposite effect on Anne. She was the reason Willa was dead.

“Meow,” Mel said loudly. He was walking back and forth across the Chipster depositions, distracting Anne. She would need to memorize the deps for trial. It might do her good to work on the case and not think about Willa for now, or Kevin.

She edged Mel off the deposition of the plaintiff, Beth Dietz. Anne recalled Beth as reserved, with an engineer’s superior air despite her mellow smile, hippie clothes, and ratty Birkenstocks. Beth was smart enough to fabricate her case and so was her husband. The courts had become the real-life version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And the final answer was, everyone. Anne started reading:

Anne knew not a word of it was true. No way in the world would Gil Martin tussle on his couch with a programmer, with his board in the next room and his funding for a $55 million IPO at stake. Anne had known Gil from law school, and he was always headed for great things; good-looking, witty, with a sharp legal intellect, but a technical mind as well. It didn’t come as a surprise when he quit after first year, started Chipster, and grew it into one of the frontrunners in web applications. Along the way, he’d married his college sweetheart, Jamie. In the credibility contest that was Dietz v. Chipster, Anne knew Gil Martin was telling the truth. This Tuesday, she’d have to prove it. She read on:

Boss? Anne kept thinking about the word. She couldn’t imagine Gil using that word. It was so old-fashioned, she didn’t know anyone who used it. Then she remembered. Back in the Mustang, on the stakeout, Bennie had said, “I am the boss.” It was a fortysomething thing, not a twentysomething thing. What did it mean? Anything? Would it help? She returned to the dep.

Anne read it over again, flashing on the way Bill Dietz had morphed from hippie to psycho at the deposition, yelling in the quiet conference room. The businesslike Courier font of the deposition page, almost embossed on thin onion-skin paper, could never convey that he’d jumped enraged to his feet, stretched his full-six-two frame over the conference table and begun pointing, his finger almost poking Anne in the face. She had found it almost laughable when she took the deposition. Why was it bothering her so much now?

Of course. Kevin.

Anne was seeing the ponytailed Bill Dietz with new eyes. Finding abusive men everywhere. Still, she set the deposition aside and went to the accordion file for the Dietz deposition. She had deposed him for a day in connection with his loss-of-consortium claim, which meant that he was suing Chipster.com in tort, for loss of his wife’s companionship and sex during the marriage. He had kept his temper the whole time, answering even the most personal questions with a cool demeanor. She opened his dep, just to double-check:

Anne didn’t like the sound of it. It read as if Dietz were resentful, which he hadn’t seemed at the time, when he had merely stated it as a matter of fact. But there had to be resentment there; those stock options would make its founders millionaires when Chipster went public. Did it matter? Did it have anything to do with the bogus case for sexual harassment? Did it motivate it? Anne hadn’t focused on Dietz before because his claim was derivative, frankly, bullshit. She’d had it dismissed under Third Circuit law, but she had taken his deposition before the dismissal, for free discovery. She thumbed through Dietz’s deposition, to the core of the claim:

Anne read the rest of the dep, but it didn’t tell her anything more about Bill Dietz. But that wasn’t all she had on him. She had served him with interrogatories and a document subpoena, routine in employment cases. She reached for that folder, opened it, and skimmed his answers to interrogatories. The opening questions were background, and her gaze fell on the third interrogatory:

 

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVICTED OF A CRIME?

NO.

 

The veracity of the answers was attested to by Dietz’s signature on the next page, but he wouldn’t be the first person who’d lied in his interrogatory answers. He’d obviously lost control at the dep, almost violently. Had it happened before? Anne’s gut told her it had, and she set the interrogatories aside, turned to her computer, and logged onto the Internet, clicking onto one of the myriad snooper websites. Onto the screen popped a banner:

Check court records for liens, finances, and criminal convictions!

She typed in the name “William Dietz.” It didn’t take two seconds to get an answer:

Your search has revealed 3680 persons named William Dietz with criminal convictions.

Anne wasn’t surprised. It was a common name. She couldn’t begin to read each one, it would take until Tuesday. She narrowed the search geographically, to Pennsylvania. As far as she knew, Bill Dietz had been living here at least in the recent past. He had worked at Chipster for less than five years.

Your search has revealed 427 persons named William Dietz with criminal convictions.

Hoo boy. Anne checked her watch. 5:10. It was getting late. Still, what was the point? She had so much to do, and this was undoubtedly a detour. She didn’t even know why she was following up. So what if Dietz was violent? So what if he had a criminal record? So what if he only pretended to be a sensitive ponytail? Still. Anne flashed on the scene in the dep, on the rage in Dietz’s eyes. She moved the computer mouse over the first live listings in blue, and clicked.

Eighty-two listings later, Bill Dietz still hadn’t been convicted. Anne rubbed her eyes. This was stupid. She wasn’t getting anywhere. She checked her watch. 6:05. Was Bennie still in with the cops? What was taking so long? Anne stretched, tense and frustrated. She was about to take a break when the door to her office opened a crack.

Bennie stuck her face inside the open door, her forehead creased with anxiety. “You’re wanted in conference room D. Now.”

“The cops? Is there a problem?”

“No, the cops are in C.” Bennie snuck inside and shut the door behind her like a co-conspirator. “What’s worse than the cops?”

“Brown hair.”

“Think money.”

“My Visa bill.”

“Think like a lawyer, not a woman,” Bennie said, but Anne was already on her mules.