Final Exam: A Legal Thriller Read online

  3

  Following directions given to him by Professor Dorlund, Nelson found Sylvia Greenfield’s home on a nice, quiet tree-lined street about five or six blocks from the Northwestern University campus. It was a red brick Georgian built sometime in the first half of the 20th Century, with a large detached garage and a big yard. The house appeared to be well-maintained, and Nelson imagined from first glance that Daniel Greenfield would have had a hard time leaving it. From what Professor Dorlund told him earlier, Greenfield moved from this house to a small apartment near Wrigley Field, primarily chosen for its obvious convenience in attending Cub games during summer afternoons.

  Nelson parked the Taurus across the street and made his way up the front walk. Despite at least a foot of snow on the ground, the walkway was clear and dry. Nelson rang the bell and turned to survey the surrounding neighborhood. Nice older homes, mature trees and big yards complete with Christmas decorations. Getting no response, he turned and rang the bell a second time. Still nothing. Eyeing the heavy brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head on the large wooden inside door, Nelson pulled open the screen door and banged it sharply four times. Positioned on either side of the front door were sidelights, long rectangular windows covered in sheer curtains. Nelson peered through the one on the right and could vaguely see all the way through to the back of the house. There was no sign of life or activity anywhere. Although Dorlund said that Sylvia Greenfield didn’t work, it was possible that she was out running some errand. Nelson turned to take the walk over to the driveway where he would wander toward the back of the house and check if there were any cars parked in the garage.

  Just as he reached the driveway, a tan Volvo station wagon pulled in, passed in front of him and drove slowly down and parked in front of the garage. Nelson followed down behind it. When he was about halfway down the drive, a woman emerged from the car and threw a gym bag over her shoulder as she slammed the door. Seeing Nelson coming in her direction, she called out in a non-threatening yet insistent voice, “Can I help you with something, sir?”

  Not wanting to scare her or give her the wrong idea, Nelson stopped and reached into his pocket for his credentials. Holding them out he said, “Yes, Ma’am. My name is detective Scott Nelson with the Chicago Police Department. I need a few minutes of your time if you don’t mind.” He paused and then added, “You are Sylvia Greenfield?”

  Eyeing him suspiciously, she approached him until she could see his badge and identification. She looked slowly from the picture on his ID to his face and back again, confirming that he really was who he said he was. Finally she looked him in the eye and said, “Yes, I am. Chicago Police Department? What’s this about?”

  “Ma’am, I think it would be better if we talked about this inside,” Nelson said putting his credentials back in his pocket.

  Not appearing to like this idea, but sensing that she had no real alternative, Sylvia Greenfield turned and said, “Of course, follow me.” Nelson followed her across a flagstone patio and up three steps to the back door. They entered into the kitchen. To the left was the working area of the kitchen - black granite countertops flecked with gray, immaculate white cabinets, stainless steel appliances and a large island in the center of the room. To the right was a generous eating area, which housed a rectangular kitchen table in dark wood surrounded by four Windsor-backed chairs. Across from the table stood a built-in desk and small, cushioned chair. Everything seemed to be neatly stored away in its respective cubbyhole. A white cordless telephone hung on the wall. A brown leather address book, a clean white pad of paper and ballpoint pen lay neatly on top of the desk. The room smelled of fresh coffee and waxed hardwood floors. It could have come right out of Good Housekeeping magazine.

  The woman took off a brown leather car coat and hung it in a closet opposite a set of stairs that went down to the basement. Nelson watched her closely. She was a fairly tall woman, about five-foot-seven, slim and very attractive, even without smiling. She had medium-length blondish hair, somewhat reminiscent of the Jackie Kennedy style of the mid-1960’s. She wore a dark brown turtleneck, tan-colored tweed pants and brown suede slip-on shoes. She closed the closet door and turned back to him. “Now, what can I do for you, Detective?”

  All business, Nelson thought. Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She was indeed a very attractive woman, probably in her late-forties or early-fifties, and she carried herself with a sense of authority. He took a deep breath and exhaled, never losing eye contact with her. “It might be better if we sat down, Ma’am.”

  Suddenly, concern crossed her features. “What? What do you mean? Why are you here? Did something happen to my girls?”

  “No, no Ma’am. It’s not about your daughters. As far as I know, they’re both fine. Please Ma’am. Please come over and sit down,” he said gesturing to the kitchen table. He unzipped his coat, slowly pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. After a moment, she reluctantly joined him, moving slowly across the kitchen and pulling out the chair next to his before sitting down, her hands in her lap.

  “It’s about your husband,” Nelson began.

  “What about my husband, Detective? What’s happened?”

  She looked directly at him. After a moment, he continued in a soft, calm voice. “I’m sorry to inform you, Ma’am, but your husband, I mean ex-husband, Daniel Greenfield, was found dead earlier this morning.” She took a deep breath, looked down at her hands, but said nothing. “He was found in his office at the law school by another professor. I’m sorry to have to come here like this and give you this kind of news, Mrs. Greenfield, but I didn’t want you hearing in some other way. I didn’t want your daughters finding out in some other way that their father was dead. I wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to give them that news yourself at the time and in the way that you thought was most appropriate.”

  Sylvia Greenfield nodded slowly, but did not look up. They sat in silence for a moment before Sylvia Greenfield finally asked, “When did it happen, Detective?”

  “We’re not quite sure, Ma’am,” he said quietly, shading the truth. “We’re still looking into those things right now. It’s really too early to tell. There will have to be an autopsy and so forth before we really know the exact circumstances.” They sat in silence for another moment or two before she finally looked up. There were no tears in her eyes. “Did your husband have any other family of any kind that needs to be notified?” Nelson asked.

  “Just an older brother who lives in Florida now,” she replied. “Daniel’s parents died some time ago, and it was just he and his brother left. Of course, he has a few cousins here and there, but I can notify them. I’ll also get in touch with his brother.”

  “Can I assume that you will be the one handling the arrangements?”

  She looked almost surprised. “Yes. I suppose I would have to be,” she said finally.

  “Let me give you my card,” he said taking one from his pocket and handing it to her. “It may be a few days before your husband’s body is released for burial. I’m not quite sure how long it will be. But in the meantime, of course, you can call me directly on the number listed on my card. I will probably be the one in the best position to provide you with any information you might need.”

  She looked puzzled. “Why would it take so long, Detective?”

  “Because in addition to the autopsy I spoke about, there will also be an investigation into your husband’s death. You see, Ma’am, your husband did not die of natural causes. Daniel Greenfield was murdered.”

  4

  Benjamin Lohmeier pulled into the parking lot at Tuscany and dropped his car with the valet. Tuscany was a popular spot located in an Italian neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. The dining room wasn’t large and was invariably quite crowded, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights. But this was a Wednesday, so reservations were fairly easily had. Ben pushed through the door and found his friends sharing a glass of wine in the bar.

  “Hey, here he is,”
Bowden Flynn called out just as Ben walked up.

  “Took a wrong turn,” Ben said smiling.

  “Wrong turn my ass,” Bowden answered. “You’re just on Lohmeier time.”

  A few moments later, a hostess led the group to a small round table for four in the back of the room. Shortly thereafter, a waiter who didn’t look old enough to serve alcohol approached the table and asked Ben if he wanted anything from the bar. “How about a nice Chianti?” he answered.

  “Red wine,” Fran Fischer joked, “how unusual.”

  “Oh,” Ben answered, “I guess I’m just trying to broaden my horizons. I’m handling some criminal matters for a couple of Italian guys who love to drink red wine, so …”

  “Criminal matters? I thought your office didn’t do much criminal work?” Fran asked.

  “We don’t,” Ben replied, “or at least we didn’t. We’re starting to get more in though; mostly existing clients or referrals from existing clients, that sort of thing. I’ve had a couple of reckless homicides, an aggravated assault and even an attempted murder in the last few months. I’m trying to grow the criminal practice, but without all the drug cases. I hate drug cases, but there’s a bunch of them out there. It’s a welcome break from a lot of the civil stuff.”

  The four of them, Benjamin Lohmeier, Bowden Flynn, Fran Fischer and Megan Rand, became close friends during law school when they were assigned to the same first-year section, although Fran and Megan met a couple of years earlier as older undergraduate students. Ben and Megan sat next to each other in Professor Daniel Greenfield’s Criminal Law class, where Ben served as a buffer while Megan, like many of the women in the class, lived in fear of being called on by Professor Greenfield to give some sexually explicit detail in one of the myriad of cases involving rape, murder and other various perversions. The more perverted the case, the more it seemed that Greenfield called on a woman to either describe the facts or dissect the various legal issues involved.

  As their first year moved along, the four grew close and spent a great deal of time together. They studied together, ate lunch together and simply bullshitted together. Like many law students, they formed a study group, usually just the four of them. They were a little older when they started law school. Ben and Megan were almost thirty; Fran and Bowden almost forty, and they carried themselves with the seriousness that greater life experience tended to provide.

  Fran had spent a couple of years early in her marriage living with her family in Israel, while Bowden had joined the Peace Corps and lived in a variety of exotic locales, including Tehran. While many of their colleagues displayed the cocksure, smartass attitude of young college graduates who knew they were on their way to big-money success as famous litigators, these four knew differently, and this knowledge coupled with their relative age and experience, drew them together and made them friends. While their paths after law school took them in four decidedly different directions, they tried hard to keep the group together, gathering for dinners such as this one every month or two, coupled with the occasional phone call in between. As is often the case, one of them, in this case Fran, organized these little events and fought to make sure that everyone attended.

  Following law school, Ben took a job with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office where he spent four and a half years moving up the prosecutorial ladder. Before he left to pursue greener pastures and more money in the private sector, Ben served as first chair in countless drug cases, aggravated assaults, rapes and murders. He knew he couldn’t handle those kinds of cases forever, and he also recognized that he likely lacked the political skills required to climb the supervisory ranks. Nevertheless, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office had provided him with valuable experience and made him feel at home in a courtroom.

  Fran Fischer experienced similar frustrations while following an entirely different career path. Having graduated near the top of her class, Fran grew frustrated by her inability to land a job with one of Chicago’s top law firms during the tight job market in the early 1990’s and ultimately settled for a job with a small law firm in the northwest suburbs specializing in school law. She left after two years to join her father’s labor law practice downtown where her pressures were purely self-imposed.

  Megan Rand never really understood why she went to law school in the first place. She didn’t have a burning desire to practice law or prove herself in any real way. Her husband was a successful personal injury lawyer downtown, and they didn’t need the money. She only entered law school because she needed something to do with herself, it seemed interesting and Fran was going too. On the eve of her graduation, she found herself unexpectedly pregnant and unable to take the bar exam with the rest of her class. She finally took it the following winter, passed it, and took a job her husband arranged for her as a law clerk with Justice Michael Sullivan of the Illinois Appellate Court. But for a brief stint as a hearing officer handling domestic relations and custody cases in Cook County, she had been there ever since.

  Of the four, only Bowden Flynn knew exactly what he wanted when he entered law school and never for a moment wavered from his planned career path. Every course he took, every job he accepted and every book he read in his spare time was designed to prepare him to become a public interest lawyer. During the years following graduation, Bowden Flynn was largely responsible for the closing of incinerators that polluted neighborhoods, for the funding of programs to help the underprivileged and for numerous downtrodden finally getting their day in Court. Homeless families found food and a place to sleep because of him, and the forgotten masses of the urban poor found a tireless voice to tell their stories of silent suffering. In short, he made the system work just a little better for those for whom it had never worked before.

  Dinner began with the four devouring two plates of fried calamari and a basket of warm bread. By the time they finished their salads, a second bottle of Chianti arrived. Ben ordered chicken and Bowden chose fish, while the women veered toward pasta - linguini with clam sauce for Fran and cheese ravioli with marinara for Meg. As they waited for the main course, they turned their attention to the obligatory discussion of what had been going on in their lives since they last met for dinner a couple of months before. Nothing really spectacular was going on with any of them, save for the occasional new case worth noting or a funny story or two about one of their kids. They talked about classmates they had run into and vacations they were planning.

  Finally, half way through the main course, Ben got down to business. “So,” he said putting his fork down and looking directly into Meg’s eyes. “What’s up with the asshole?”

  The question, made almost matter-of-factly in a tone that suggested not answering was not an option, came with the glare. Meg finished a bite of ravioli, took a sip of wine and looked first at Fran, then at Bowden, both of whom looked back in her direction. She did not want to meet the glare. While Benjamin Lohmeier was not a physically imposing man, he stood only five-feet-eight- inches tall and weighed barely one hundred forty-five pounds, he possessed a magnetic, dynamic and sometimes hypnotic personality. He learned at an early age the effect he had on those around him, and used it to his advantage.

  Although capable of great warmth, he could also burn ferociously with frightening intensity and then suddenly cause chills with his sudden coldness. He could be friendly and inviting and intimidating all at the same time. Once you were out, you never got back in again. Meg slowly raised her head to meet the glare, as his friends called it. “He’s fine,” she said hesitantly.

  “Hmmm, he’s fine,” Ben replied slowly. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Both Fran and Bowden glanced back at Ben seeking to determine whether a follow-up was in the offing. It was. As Meg looked away, Ben met their gaze and raised his eyebrows with a slight smile.

  “When you say fine,” Ben continued, “do you mean the divorce is moving along?”

  “It’s moving along.”

  “How’s his health?” Ben asked with a wicked s
mile.

  Meg shot him a dirty look. Her husband, a prominent personal injury attorney in town, was much older than she, almost seventy. They met when Meg was in her early-twenties and working as a clerk in his small Chicago law office. Soon the relationship was more than professional, and Meg eventually moved into his brownstone on the near north side. Eventually, they got married and even had an unexpected child, a son born shortly after Meg graduated law school. As time passed, they slowly grew apart, their age difference serving as an anchor helping force the marriage under. Things hadn’t really been right with them since law school. He really wanted a trophy, not a partner, and Meg’s willingness to seek a place of her own in the legal world challenged and threatened him.

  Truth be told, the divorce wasn’t really going anywhere. Meg more or less dropped it under his pressure. Ben learned this from Fran long ago. Nevertheless, Meg and Joe lived separately, Meg in a high-rise condominium near downtown and her husband in his Gold Coast brownstone. They shared custody of their son.

  Ben leaned back in his chair and glanced over at Fran who shook her head no. He decided to back off. His heart really wasn’t in it tonight anyway. “So,” he continued after a lengthy pause, “how’s Anthony handling all of this?” Anthony Joseph Cavallaro, or A.J. as his parents often called him, was Meg’s nine-and-a-half-year old son.

  “He’s good, he really is,” Meg answered looking relieved for even the slightest change of subject. “He seems very comfortable with the way things are right now. I mean, he sees both of us all the time, just like before.”

  Fran steered the conversation away from Meg’s marriage and toward children and families and parents and work. Ben let the conversation drift in that direction and poured another glass of wine. This was already his fourth or fifth glass, and he had a pretty good buzz on. He had handled enough DUI’s as a prosecutor to know that he had better shut it down pretty soon or driving home could be an adventure he did not want. Unlike some lawyers, he did not want to use himself as a test case to argue the merits or lack of same in Illinois’ drunk driving laws.