Robbie nodded as I handed him my business card. And after another five minutes in the cramped space, we left the security office with more questions than answers.
Chapter 3
My new office was the sort of place you could only find if you knew it was there, and I liked it that way. Casey had demanded an upgrade if she was going to work with me as a partner in the firm, and it didn’t take much to convince me that it was time to part with the old offices and move somewhere different. The new offices were on the fifth floor of a brick building off Clark St., in Downtown Chicago, only two blocks from my old offices. On our floor were a number of accountants, along with a design studio. I don’t think they appreciated a PI firm moving in, but then, I’d like to see them kick me out.
The new offices were slicker, shinier, and presented a more professional first impression of our firm, not that I was concerned about what clients thought. I didn’t want street signage, nor my name on the door, and the fifth floor suited me. I had enough work to avoid taking walk-ins off the street. Walk-ins were mostly a waste of time, often they were people with small issues and small budgets.
“What are your thoughts?” I asked Casey.
“That Pavlov would’ve considered feeding his dogs every time he heard a bell ring.” She slumped down into her office chair, and swirled a full 360 degrees.
I thought for a second. “Ok. Yep. I suppose you’re right.”
“Or that security at an airport is ridiculously tight, all the way up until you get to the baggage claim. Then it’s just like a free-for-all, take whatever bag you want.”
“Well, I guess.” I smiled. “But I was talking about the case. What are your thoughts on the case? More particularly, Daley?”
“He’s not perfect, but that’s probably because he’s a sleazy lawyer. You?”
“There’s nothing that concerns me, yet.” I turned on the computer. “Right now, he looks like a man who’s lost a friend and is questioning if he could’ve done anything more. He’s clutching at straws and living off hope and he’s willing to pay us to prolong that hope.”
The first part of any investigation is to question the motive of the person hiring the investigator. Normal people with normal lives don’t hire private investigators. Citizens doing average things don’t need the services of expensive detectives. People on the edge do. People with questions about their lives.
“But there is one question I’ve been thinking about.” Casey stood and walked over to the coffee machine. She lifted up a mug, and I nodded my response. “Why wouldn’t he use the investigators in his law firm? Why call us first? Maybe he’s not telling us everything. Maybe he’s hiding something.”
“You think he shot Waltz and made it look like a suicide?”
“It’s worth a look to see what their relationship was like in the past few weeks.”
“But then why hire us if the police have let him get away with it?”
“To make sure his tracks are covered. If we find any evidence, then he’ll be the first to know, and he’ll also be the first to get rid of it. Better we find it than the cops.” Casey poured a coffee for me, and one for herself. “This decaf life isn’t working out.”
“How long did the decaf life last?”
“At least fifteen hours.” She looked at her watch. “What about Waltz’s death? You don’t think it’s suicide, do you?”
“There’s no forced entry, nothing stolen, and nobody saw anything. He was in a tough business and he was a guy on the edge. Cops have written it up as suicide. At first glance, it doesn’t look premeditated and most likely it is a suicide, but that second bullet does raise questions. It’s an old mob trick, but it’s an effective one.”
“Perhaps it’s like you said, he fired at the wall just to check the gun worked first?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But then there’s the connection with the other lawyer. Jeffery Stone, about fifteen months ago, another high-profile lawyer who committed suicide by shooting himself, or so they wrote it up. And l bet if we looked at his cases,” I typed into the computer. I read the first few lines on a news website. “Yep. Jeffery Stone’s last big case was a sexual predator who he got off on a technicality.”
Casey cocked her head at the new information, feeling how it fit together.
“And here I was thinking we were having a slow week,” Casey handed me a coffee and then sat back down. “Ok, but there are hundreds of lawyers in this city. Thousands even. And some of them shuffle off this mortal coil every year. Other than the sexual assault charges, what makes the connection between these two?”
“Just a hunch,” I offered, and Casey groaned inwardly. The only thing she hated more than a sexist comment was me working on a ‘hunch’. “The cases both involve sexual assault charges and the lawyers got their clients off without any punishment.”
“We need something solid, Jack. Some actual evidence,” Casey continued. “The media have been like flies on dog doo-doo with Waltz for the last four months. That rapist Waltz got off is probably happily planning his retirement somewhere in Florida near an all-girls’ high school. The public have been baying for Waltz’s blood. That means there are a hell of a lot of suspects to get through and a hell of a lot of people who won’t want this case solved, and will make it their mission to be giant pains in our asses.” She slapped her mug on the
