Final Exam: A Legal Thriller Read online

  FINAL EXAM

  A Legal Thriller

  Terry Huebner

  Published by Thunder Road Publishing

  Copyright © 2011 Terry W. Huebner

  ASIN: B006NOVRPO

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For more information on the author and his works visit http://www.terryhuebner.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For all those over the years who inspired me and made me believe that this was really possible.

  1

  Wednesday January 2, 2002

  Gordon Hyatt carried himself with the easy, relaxed manner of one who has spent his life contemplating the battles of others, while never quite engaging in any of his own. At this moment and during all moments really, he appeared to the world to be exactly who he was - a Professor of Law at the Chicago College of Law. Blessed with a glint in his eye and a Virginia drawl, Professor Hyatt could dress down an unsuspecting student without any hint of venom or animosity. The student would dig himself a hole and not realize he was in over his head until he saw the grin on Hyatt’s face and heard the murmuring of his classmates.

  Hyatt pointed the key fob at the shiny, black BMW and the locks clicked shut. He stood there and admired the car as a rogue snowflake floated down and landed on the hood. He wore a brown leather jacket, worn buttery soft and unzipped for the short walk, and carried an old leather briefcase slung over one shoulder. His shaggy brown hair and his beard were just beginning to show flecks of gray as he advanced beyond his early-fifties. He reached the end of the parking lot and stepped over a low metal parapet onto the sidewalk beyond. He looked up Adams Street toward the river as a strong, cold wind blew in his direction. The street was virtually deserted. Then he crossed in the middle of the block and took a sip of his Starbuck’s, letting the hot steam drift up to his nostrils in the cold air. He took another sip of the coffee as he pushed through the revolving doors at the front of the school.

  Hyatt nodded at the security guard as he passed by and made his way to the elevators. Upon reaching his office, he unlocked the door and pushed inside. He set his coffee on the desk and dropped his jacket and briefcase on a chair next to the door before moving around the desk and plopping down in his chair. In front of him sat the last stack of final exams from his first-year Property class. Hyatt glared at them and growled. He looked at his watch – 9:15. Then he fired up his computer and surfed the web for fifteen minutes before feeling the pull of the exams. He glanced over at them, sighed, then pulled the top one off of the pile. By ten minutes of eleven, he needed a break. He put down his pen, pushed back from his desk and stood, straightening his back and yawning. The coffee had gone right through him. He swore he peed twice as much as he did ten years ago. This must be the curse of the middle-aged man. Can’t hold your liquids any longer. Or your liquor. He looked at the remaining exams sitting in a pile on the corner of his desk. Probably an hour-and-a-half or so to go, he thought. He could finish up here and be home in time to grab a late lunch. He would take the exam scores home with him and figure out a grading scale tonight while watching the Fiesta Bowl.

  He eyed a note sitting next to the phone. Last week, he had received a voicemail message from Dan Greenfield about a law review article he had written years ago which briefly touched on the constitutional implications surrounding the use of DNA in child custody matters. Hyatt rummaged through a file cabinet behind his desk and pulled a copy of the article out of an expandable file folder. He would stop at the bathroom, then pop down to Greenfield’s office on the 6th floor and leave a copy of his article on Greenfield’s chair, along with a note offering to discuss the matter over lunch any time next week. He tucked the article under his arm and set off for the washroom. A moment later, he strolled past the elevator and toward the stairwell at the end of the hallway. As he reached the doorway to the 6th floor, Hyatt pulled a keycard out of his wallet and stuck it in the slot next to the doorway. The door clicked, Hyatt pulled the handle and stepped from the stairwell.

  The first thing he noticed was the smell. It hit him like a slap in the face - a sick, rotting, metallic kind of smell. He looked down the hallway toward Greenfield’s office, then back to the right toward the main entrance of the 6th Floor near the elevators. He hesitated, then turned and headed toward Greenfield’s office. The smell grew stronger as he neared Greenfield’s door at the end of the hall. He thought he was going to gag. The door was slightly ajar. He knocked, pushing the door open with his shoulder and called out, “Dan, are you in there?” Hearing no response, he entered the room only to be greeted by the strongest, foulest odor he had ever encountered. He turned involuntarily back toward the door and closed his now tearing eyes.

  Hyatt forced himself to turn back in an attempt to identify the source of the smell. The wall, bookshelf and credenza in the back corner were splattered with blood. He took several short, hesitant steps around the desk. Daniel Greenfield lay in a heap on the floor, his body partially obscured by his desk and chair. His skull, or what was left of it, had been crushed.

  Hyatt gasped for air. Lying across Greenfield’s legs, covered with blood and pieces of Greenfield’s skull and brain matter, was a baseball bat. Hyatt staggered back as the reality of the scene hit him. He tripped over the leg of one of Greenfield’s guest chairs and fell awkwardly against the wall next to the door, striking his head. He gagged and began to retch. Then he stumbled to his feet and backed out the door. He raced down the hallway, around the corner, through a set of double doors and past the elevators to the men’s washroom. He bolted through the doorway into a stall, where he vomited. Several minutes later, drenched in sweat, his peaceful existence now a distant memory, Hyatt found a phone on the desk of one of the secretaries and called security.

  2

  By the time Detective Scott Nelson pushed through the circular doors at the front of the building less than an hour later, the crime scene had already been secured and the police techs were well into the process of gathering evidence. Nelson was a short, stocky man in his early forties, about five foot seven and weighing almost two hundred pounds, depending on lunch. He kicked the snow off of his black leather boots on the mat inside the door and unzipped his parka. Sipping on a Diet Coke from the McDonald’s drive-thru, he ambled over to the security desk, where he found a nervous, too-young looking security guard apparently awaiting his arrival.

  Running his hand through his thinning and often out-of-control crop of sandy brown hair, Nelson leaned over the security kiosk and spoke to the young security guard in a soft voice. “Excuse me. I’m Detective Nelson. Would you please locate your chief of security for me?” Getting no response other than a blank expression, Nelson continued. “Whosever in charge will do. As soon as you can, if you don’t mind. Thanks.”

  “Sure,” the guard muttered, grabbing his radio and placing a call to his boss.

  A moment later, a tall, lean man dressed in a denim shirt and jeans rounded the corner carrying a walkie-talkie. The tall man extended his hand t
o the detective. “I’m Roger Tierney, can I help you?”

  “Sure can,” the detective answered. “Are you in charge here?”

  “Well, yes, at least for today anyway. I’m Deputy Chief of Security. My boss, Steve Sanborn, is the Director of Security. But he’s out of town on vacation until Monday. You know, we’re between terms here. We usually don’t expect this kind of commotion.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think so,” Nelson said. Tierney looked over Nelson’s shoulder and could see across the way that a small crowd was gathering on the sidewalk and looking through the glass windows at the front of the building. Following the taller man’s gaze, Nelson turned and glanced back at the front of the building before returning to Tierney and saying, “Why don’t you take me upstairs and show me where it happened, Mr. Tierney.”

  “Of course, right this way.”

  Tierney led Nelson around the corner to a bank of elevators. “Detective Cole arrived a few minutes ago and is already upstairs,” Tierney said as the elevator arrived. The two men walked inside and Tierney pressed the button for the 6th floor. Tierney turned to face the detective expecting more questions, but Nelson said nothing. He merely looked straight ahead and up at the numbers over the door as the lights changed. A bell sounded. The elevator slowed to a halt and the doors opened.

  As he stepped across the threshold, Nelson turned to Tierney and said, “Thanks Mr. Tierney. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

  He had been dismissed. Disappointed and slightly put-off, Tierney stepped back into the elevator, watched the doors close in front of him and rode it back downstairs. Nelson stepped through a pair of glass doors into a small reception area. A uniformed officer greeted him. The officer gestured down the hallway to Nelson’s left. “The victim is located down the hall and around the corner to the right, sir.”

  Nelson looked in the other direction, down the hallway to the right. He turned back to the officer. “Can I get there if I go around this way?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Thanks, I think I’ll take the scenic route.” Nelson appeared like a man out on a Sunday stroll, sipping his Diet Coke as he traveled down the hallway. The floor appeared to consist of offices on the outer perimeter of the building, but it was unclear what was on the inside. All he could see so far was wall. When he reached the end of the hallway, he turned left. He saw a somewhat shorter hallway in front of him with offices again to his right along the outside of the building. About a third of the way down on the left-hand side, he saw a glass door. Next to the door was a long string of windows. When Nelson reached the windows, he stopped and looked inside and the floor plan became suddenly clear. He could see an endless string of tall bookshelves running down the middle of the room, which appeared to cover the entire middle portion of the 6th floor. There were long tables on either side of the shelves and workstations scattered throughout the room. This was the library, or at least part of it.

  Nelson paused for a moment and scanned the room in front of him. No one inside studying at the moment. As he moved a few steps further down the hallway, he could see the entire expanse of the library, all the way to similar windows at the opposite end. He could see police officers and evidence technicians working on the other side. When he reached the end of the hall, he turned left again. To his right was a large, metal door marked, “Stairs.” Down at the end of the long hallway in front of him, he could see more evidence technicians and a uniformed officer. Next to the uniformed officer, he recognized a tall, powerfully built black man - John Cole. He was also a detective.

  Cole turned when he heard Nelson approach and called out, “Hey Scott, how’s it going?”

  Nelson nodded. “What have we got here, John?” Nelson said with a sigh.

  “Deceased white male,” Cole began, “early to mid-fifties.”

  “ID?”

  “Daniel Greenfield - one of the professors here at the law school.”

  “Who id’d him?”

  “One of his colleagues, another professor, stopped by the office to drop something off and, well, he walked in on a pretty bad scene.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Blunt force trauma to the head.”

  “Blunt force trauma to the head?” a voice cackled from inside the office. “He got his brains beat in with a baseball bat. That you Scott?”

  “Yeah, sure is, Ham. Happy New Year.”

  “Not for this guy,” the voice replied. A moment later, the Deputy Assistant Medical Examiner, Dr. Hammed Akhter, emerged and faced the two detectives. He was a thin, studious-looking man, who had come to America from his native India in 1970 to attend medical school. He began to extend a gloved hand, stained with the victim’s blood, but then drew it back. “I’d offer to shake hands, but I don’t think you’d want to.”

  “Probably not,” Nelson agreed. “You say beaten with a baseball bat?” he continued. “That’s some way to start the new year.”

  “This guy never made it to the new year,” Akhter replied. “By the state of the body, I would say he’s been there a few days already. Depending upon whether they had the heat on over the holiday or not, I would place the time of death at probably Saturday, maybe even Friday. Friday would be what, the 28th? Say the 28th or the 29th. I’ll know more after I look into it a little.”

  “So, he’s been just laying there in his office dead for four or five days, that’s what you’re telling me?” Nelson asked.

  “Sure looks that way. See, it’s not really that surprising. What with the holiday, this being a school, no students around, he might have been the only one here when he got it.”

  Nelson nodded. “Not quite the only one. When can we come in and look around a bit?”

  “Well,” Akhter said stroking his chin with the top of his wrist, “I’d give these guys a while yet, but you can probably peek your head in the door and get the general gist of things.”

  Nelson and Cole followed Akhter to the office, staying in the doorway as the medical examiner went inside. Nelson took one look at the far wall and let out a long, low whistle. “I guess someone was pretty serious about this, weren’t they?” he said after a long pause. “He’s back there behind the desk?”

  “Yeah,” Akhter said pointing.

  Nelson stuck his head as far into the left side of the doorway as he could, craning to try and see the body behind the desk. He could see the victim’s left arm and part of what was left of his head. Nelson stood straight up and looked at the wall again for a moment. Then he briefly scanned the rest of the room and stepped back out into the corridor. Cole followed him. Nelson looked down at his feet. Water from the melting snow on his boots stained the carpet. He took another step away from the office and looked up to catch Cole’s eye. “Well, this looks like it’s going to be a while,” Nelson said. “Anyone been notified yet? Wife? Family? Anything like that?”

  “No, not yet. The guy who found him, Professor Gordon Hyatt, said he was divorced a couple of years or so ago, and that his wife lived up in Evanston.”

  “You mean ex-wife.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, she lives up in Evanston. Somebody was trying to find an address or a phone number for her up in Evanston. The Dean was working on it. I think his office is down on the 2nd floor if you want to take a stroll.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Nelson replied, taking one last look inside the office before following Cole down the hallway. “We’ve got to keep a lid on this thing,” Nelson said to Cole as they reached the elevators. “This guy’s got a wife, or an ex-wife, and probably has some kids too. For all we know, he’s got a girlfriend or something. We don’t want these people flipping on the TV this afternoon and finding out that the old professor here got his brains beat out and nobody told them about it.”

  “It looks like it’s going to be a heater,” Cole said just as Nelson was thinking the same thing. Partners were like that. They could read each other’s minds.

  “A heater,” Nelson repeated in a pained voice. Inside the
department, a “heater” was a case that drew a lot of heat, either from the press, the public or the brass at headquarters, sometimes even City Hall. No one wanted to catch a heater. “I can feel the tan already.”

  Cole slapped Nelson on the back. “Thank God you’re in charge,” he said with a humorless laugh. “Do you want to send somebody to the wife’s house?” Cole asked after a long moment when the weight of the immediate future began to settle in on both of them.

  Nelson made a face, like he just smelled something bad and it wasn’t the dead guy in the office. “Nah, I’ll do it myself. We’re not going to be able to get in there and look around for awhile yet anyway. Evanston’s not that far. If I leave pretty soon, I should be able to get back later this afternoon to take a look around. Besides, I’d kind of like to see what her reaction is when she finds out. You never know, she might be involved.”

  It only took a few minutes for Detectives Nelson and Cole to find out what they needed to know in order to inform Greenfield’s next of kin of his untimely death. The Professor and his wife, Sylvia, divorced three years ago, although Professor Greenfield really didn’t want the divorce and tried to do everything he could to prevent his wife from going through with it. They had two daughters, both in their late teens - one a junior in high school and the other a freshman at Northwestern University. Sylvia Greenfield got custody of the girls, the house, the dog and most everything else from what Nelson and Cole could tell from their few minutes with the Dean and Samuel Dorlund, another professor at the law school who burst into the Dean’s office five minutes after the detectives got there.

  It was a quarter past one when Nelson merged onto northbound Lake Shore Drive and headed toward Evanston. Nelson would inform Sylvia Greenfield of her ex-husband’s demise, with Cole handling things back at the crime scene. Nelson wanted to get back before traffic got too heavy, so he quickly punched the blue Taurus up to fifty-five and turned on talk radio.