most personal questions with a cool demeanor. She opened his dep, just to double-check:
Q: (By Ms. Murphy) Where are you employed at the current time?
A: I work at Chipster.com, a web applications company.
Q: In what capacity?
A: I write code for various web applications. I specialize in Cold Fusion, a computer language.
Q: How long have you been employed at Chipster?
A: Five years, since its inception. I was one of the handful of programmers who were there when Gil Martin started the company. It was just six of us, in his garage.
Q: And as such—I’m jumping ahead here—did you receive certain stock options, as part of salary?
A: No, I did not.
Q: Did any of the other programmers receive such stock options?
A: Three did. Basically, ones that Gil knew from his college days. He tends to go with people he knows. I didn’t know him then, and neither did another guy, so we were on the outside.
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:
Q: (By Ms. Murphy) Now, Mr. Dietz, you allege that as a result of the sexual harassment of your wife, Beth, you and she experienced certain difficulties with respect to intimacy in your marriage, is that right?
A: Yes.
Q: When did they begin?
A: When the harassment began. On September 15th.
Q: And how long did it last?
A: We are just now healing. The effects of sexual harassment are like those of rape. It takes the victim time to recover, and to trust men again. And Beth feels guilty, even though she shouldn’t, for what happened.
Q: And what exactly were the difficulties in your marriage, caused by the alleged sexual harassment?
A: Beth withdrew from me. She kept more to herself and became depressed. She slept poorly, she lost weight. She spent more time on-line, four or six hours at nights and on the weekends. She would be in the chat rooms, role-playing or playing Internet games, silly games. Popcap.com and the like.
Q: Specifically, how did the alleged sexual harassment affect your sex life?
A: She became uninterested in sex, and the frequency of intercourse went from once a week to less than that a month. It became unsatisfying. For both of us.
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.
12
What’s going on?”
“Gil Martin’s here,” Bennie answered. “Carrier’s in with him.”
“
“Turns out that since you got killed, he’s been having doubts about me trying
Anne almost laughed. She had tried ten cases to Bennie’s thousand, and they had been in L.A., where even O.J. got off. “So, what did you tell him?”
“That he shouldn’t worry, that I was up to speed. That we function as a team, a family.”
“The family stuff never works,” Anne said without thinking, and Bennie blinked, hurt.
“It doesn’t?”
“All companies say it. It’s never true.”
“It’s true for me. I mean it.”
“Well, I believe it, but they don’t. Other people don’t.”
Bennie still looked hurt.
“Okay, it depends on who says it.”
“Well, anyway, young Gil ain’t buying. We’re toast. He’s already contacted Crawford, Wilson, & Ryan. He knows people there, and he’s also looking at Ballard, Spahr. First-rate firms. They’re running conflicts check as we speak, and we both know what they’ll say.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“He’s your client, make your decision,” Bennie answered without rancor. “What do you wanna do?”
“I didn’t even want
