It is a little before dinnertime when they approach my rented cart, the woman and her baby boy, the woman winding her way through the crowded mall while the baby squirms in her arms. She looks like she needs a place to rest. Her little one throws himself to the side and I see shoes on his feet; clearly he wants to be allowed to walk, but his mother, she will not allow it. Maybe because there are too many shoppers, this evening a week before Christmas.
“There’s Hope in one mile,†he said.
“I’m not going to make it.†She leaned over and retched on the carpet. “Sorry about the car.â€
The call troubled Pete Thorsen. It wasn’t like Sam Lawrence to call him in the evening, much less when he was out to dinner with a client.
When Pete got back to Sears & Whitney, he found Sam hunched over a small conference table in one corner of his office, staring intently at a document. A jumble of paper covered the table with a couple of glasses, one tipped on its side, mixed in. Crumpled scraps of paper littered the floor nearby. That wasn’t like Sam either. Pete’s old friend and mentor was the most meticulous man he knew. Even in his prime, Sam’s office had always looked like the set for a magazine shoot rather than the workplace of one of the busiest and most successful lawyers in Chicago.
Neighbors and business associates said the kindest thing Rupert Ames ever did was die. That he was shot dead in his bed cut no slack with them. His heirs would agree; he was as rotten to them in death as he had been in life, as they were to find out shortly when his will was read.
Who murdered Rupert Ames? And why bother, he was eighty-eight years old? He was ailing. Bed-ridden, in fact. The killer had slipped into his bedroom through a second floor balcony door, whacked him, and exited by the same route.
“Miss Weiss,” the judge said, “are you ready to proceed?”
Laura Weiss—youngest member and granddaughter of the founder of Weiss, Cashman, and Snow—stood and smoothed her gray business suit. “Yes, Your Honor. I call Mack Jacobs to the stand.”
Today is my sister’s birthday and, as previously mentioned, she has a law degree (hopefully she’ll soon receive good news about the bar exam). To to mark the occasion, over the course of the day Shred will publish a trio of lawyer stories from Gerald So, Art Montague, and Bob Wangard. Enjoy!