'For real?' s
'Only twice.'
'Stalker.' Brinkley smiled again. It was the whiskey that let him.
'How else am I gonna find out stuff I need to know? You don't tell me squat.' Kovich waved to the old bartender,
who had his back turned, and called for a Miller Lite. Brinkley didn't tell him it would be a long wait. 'I checked it out when you started getting cranky. I figured it was trouble between you and Sheree.'
'How?'
'I'm a detective, remember? I detected.' Kovich gestured again to the bartender, who was washing a glass in the grimy sink. 'Hey, buddy, a Miller Lite for me and another shot for my lawyer.' The bartender didn't turn around, and Kovich's heavy lips curled into an unhappy line. 'What is this, Denny's? I'm too white to get a drink?'
'He's hard of hearing.' Brinkley leaned over. 'James!' he fairly shouted, and the bartender turned. 'A Miller and another!'
'Lite!' Kovich added, loudly. When he looked over Brinkley was staring at him. 'Portion size is key.'
Brinkley laughed as the bartender came over with a sweating bottle and pilsner glass for Kovich and poured him another shot. Both detectives took a first sip.
Kovich cleared his throat. 'So you're thinkin' the boyfriend is trying to hide something, the way he signs the logbooks. Right?'
Brinkley nodded. He was relieved Kovich didn't start talking about Sheree.
That meant to follow up, we had to find out his real name. So while Goofus cries in his beer. Gallant gets busy.' Kovich leaned down, picked up a paper grocery bag, and pulled out a stack of girls' clothes catalogs. He slapped them on the bar and spread them out like a winning deck of cards. There were easily ten, marked with yellow Post-its. 'My kid saves these to bankrupt me.' He flipped open the top catalog and inside was a photo of Paige Newlin. She wore a floppy hat with a fake daisy on it. 'Recognize our girl?'
'Sure, yeah.'
'So I call up the catalog company and ask about the girl but I can't get anybody who knows her. They give me the
name of the photographer they use in Philly and I call him up. David Something, his name is. He don't know much about her and he only dealt with the mother on the phone, but he says the boyfriend stopped by the shoot. He remembers the boyfriend's name in a flash, he says because it's an unusual name, but I say it's because he's queer as my dick is long.'
Brinkley straightened on the barstool. 'So what's his name?'
Trevor Olanski. How's that for a handle?' Kovich took a gulp of beer. 'So I check him out. Call Morrie in juvy on a flyer and ask around.'
'What did you find out?' Brinkley said, his head clearing suddenly.
'Seems our Trevor got tagged for dealing coke, on Tuesday of last week. At Philadelphia Select, that ritzy private school in town. He goes there.'
'No shit,' Brinkley said, surprised. 'Was there a complaint?'
'Don't show up in the file. The docket they keep shows it got withdrawn the next day. Smells like strings got pulled, but the officer in charge is on vacation. I'll find out when he gets back.'
'So we gotta talk to this kid.'
'I got an appointment with him tomorrow morning, at his parents' in the subs. You can come with, even though you're black.'
'Damn!' Brinkley laughed. It was great news. Maybe they were on to something, with the boyfriend. This mean you think I'm right?'
'No fuckin' way. I still say you're full of it.'
'Good, then I know I'm on the right track,' Brinkley said automatically, but it wasn't what he meant. What he meant was, I appreciate what you did for me.
Kovich put his catalogs away. 'You're welcome,' he said, after a minute, and Brinkley forced a smile.
33
Davis surveyed Jack Newlin's spacious, well-appointed office, on the top floor of Tribe amp; Wright. The wall of windows displayed the entire western half of the city, twinkling at night. A cherrywood Thos. B. Moser desk and end tables flanked a patterned sofa, and Newlin had two other desks: a polished library table in front of a matching file cabinet and, against the side wall, a modern workstation with a laptop. Three desks total; Davis would have expected as much. Atop them rested silver-framed photos of Honor and Paige Newlin. It was odd seeing a photo of Honor Newlin alive and it reminded Davis of his purpose.
He wanted to know all he could about Jack Newlin. He crossed to the file cabinet and opened the top drawer, which slid out easily on costly runners. He scanned the files, neatly kept, and all of them were Buxton Foundation matters. He reached into the first accordion, pulled out a manila folder of correspondence, and flipped through it. The letters concerned the tax structure of a charitable gift to libraries worth almost a million dollars. The D.A.'s eyes would have glazed over if it hadn't confirmed his belief that Newlin was a meticulous and patient planner. He marked the files for seizure by the uniformed cop waiting outside, with a warrant and a cooperative security guard from Tribe. He'd read the files at his office, to see the details they contained.
Davis opened the second drawer and zeroed in on the folder that said 'CONFIDENTIAL – COMPENSATION.' He pulled it out and skimmed the stack of papers inside. It was a listing of the partnership draw of the firm's lawyers
from last year. They were ranked in order from the highest paid to the lowest, and he didn't have to look far to find Newlin's name. It was in second place, just under William Whittier's. Newlin's compensation was listed at $525,000 in partnership draw and a million dollars in billings bonus, from the Foundation business he'd brought to the firm.
Davis whistled softly. He had learned the information from Whittier, but it was something else seeing it in black-and-white. He flipped back through the years, fully expecting the most recent year to be the highest. But it wasn't. The previous year, Newlin was still number two, but his draw was $575 grand and his billings bonus was higher, $1.1 mil. The prosecutor double-checked, but he had read it right. He thumbed backward in time, to the previous year's compensation. Again, to Davis's surprise, it was higher than the more recent year, $625 in draw, $1.3 in billing bonus. And Newlin was number one in compensation that year, not Whittier. What gives?
Davis eyeballed Whittier's trend and that of some of the other highly ranked partners. All of them had partnership draws and billings bonuses that increased through the years. That would be the logical trend of the income of a successful lawyer; it was Davis's own salary history, though his pay was much lower. But Newlin's pay was going down.
Davis mulled it over. Given what Videon had told him, he suspected that Honor Newlin had been gradually decreasing the amount of work the Buxton estate was sending her husband and apparently beginning to funnel the billings to Whittier. She was costing Newlin hundreds of thousands of dollars and humiliating him in front of the entire partnership. In effect, Honor Newlin was firing her husband gradually, giving him every reason to want her dead before she cut him off completely.
Excellent, for motive. Davis slapped the folder closed, marked it for seizure, and searched the third drawer, which yielded nothing significant. He stood up, brushed
off his suit, and was about to leave when he glanced at the third desk, the workstation. Newlin's laptop, he'd almost forgotten it. He went to the laptop and lifted its lid, which opened more easily than he expected. It hadn't been latched completely, merely closed to protect the keyboard from dust. Davis had the same careful habit.
The large screen was black, saving power, and he moved the mouse to wake it up. It came to life with Newlin's time records for the day of the murder, and Davis sat down and studied them carefully. Newlin's day in six-minute slices, spent on matters for the Buxton Foundation. The description of the billed time was detailed and complete: prepare contracts, prepare documents for gifts to local college; revise press release with regard to computer-to-schools program; discuss joint gift to the Cancer Society.