Ben drew in his breath. “I’m sure I’d feel just as you do. Devastated. But these are all emotional appeals. They won’t get us past a summary judgment motion.”
One last time Cecily’s hand dipped inside her purse. “This is a picture of my boy. Billy. He was such an angel. He never did anything wrong. He never hurt anybody. He liked soccer and Robert Louis Stevenson. When he grew up, he wanted to be a doctor. But not to get rich, he told me, time and again. He wasn’t going to be a "swimming-pool doctor." He wanted to help people who really needed help, maybe go to a third-world country or something. And you know what? He would’ve done it. He would’ve made a difference.…” Her lips began to tremble. “He would’ve done some real good in this world. But all that potential is gone now. It’s all been wiped away by an act of corporate callousness. Is that right? Is that acceptable?”
Before Ben could respond, Ralph opened his wallet and withdrew a photo. “This is my Roger.” He laughed slightly. “He wanted to be an astronaut.”
“My Donald,” Margaret said, laying her photo atop the stack. “He talked about being an architect.”
One after another, the tattered photographs fell into place. Jay Kinyon. Brian Bailey. Tracy Hamilton. Kevin Blum. Colin Koelshe. Finally, Ben saw eleven sets of eyes looking up at him, eleven youthful faces that passed from the world well before their time.
And above those, all around him, Ben saw many more eyes staring at him. Waiting to hear what he would say next.
He found Harvey hidden in the clothes closet behind some fishing gear and a lifetime supply of shoes, just where his wife had said he would be. It was a walk-in closet, very spacious, with more clothes than a man could wear in a year. Harvey always had been obsessed with his appearance. He pushed the clothes to either side and found a hidden inner closet door. When he opened that, he found a private hidey-hole, just big enough for one. Harvey was cowering inside.
Harvey, a fiftyish balding man with a speckled turnip of a nose, was crouched in a near-fetal position, his hands covering his face. “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.”
He stared at Harvey with undisguised contempt. “Jesus Christ, Harvey. You ran off and left your wife to face the executioner?”
“She’s crippled,” he said, his voice quivering. “She had an accident last year. She couldn’t move fast enough to get away.”
He shook his head with disgust. “Pathetic.” He grabbed Harvey by the scruff of his neck.
“Please don’t hurt me!” Harvey screamed again. “I can’t help you. I don’t have what you want!”
“I wish I could believe you, Harvey. But of course, there’s only one way to know for certain.” He dragged Harvey forcibly back into the bedroom.
Upon arrival, Harvey saw his wife lying motionless in their bed. There was a red circle in the center of her forehead, and a pool of blood around her right leg. Her arms and legs were grotesquely splayed. “Oh, my God!” he screamed. “You didn’t—you didn’t—”
“Heck, no, Harvey. I didn’t do anything bad. I just killed her.” He threw Harvey onto the bed beside his wife’s corpse. “What did you think, that I’d become some sort of rapist? Geez, Harvey. I haven’t changed that much.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a roll of duct tape. “Not that there was any need, anyway. Didn’t you know, Harvey? I had your wife years ago.”
Harvey’s eyes widened, but just before he could shout, the man plastered a strip of duct tape right over his mouth.
“Oh, yeah, Harvey, it’s true. It’s been … what? Ten, eleven years now. We did it several times. Tried many different positions. Some pretty kinky stuff. One time you were in the house, sleeping. We did it right under your nose.” He grabbed Harvey’s arms and held them together, then wrapped tape around them and tied them to the bedpost above his head. “Not that it was any great thrill for me, if you want to know the truth. She was a bit pedestrian in the sack, wasn’t she, Harvey? Too conservative for my taste.” He smiled. “Although I did like that thing she did with her tongue. You know, during foreplay? Ooh-la-la.”
He wrapped tape around Harvey’s ankles, binding his legs together. Once Harvey was motionless, he clapped his hands together, as if celebrating a job well done.
“One last chance, Harvey.” He ripped the duct tape off the man’s face, taking bits of skin with it. “Where’s the merchandise?”
“I don’t know,” Harvey said. Sweat poured down the sides of his face. “I don’t have it. I never did.”
“Wrong answer.” Bending over, he grabbed a pair of dirty underwear lying on the floor and stuffed it into Harvey’s mouth. Then he began systematically undressing himself.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing, aren’t you, Harvey? Wondering if maybe I really have changed, if maybe I have something perverse in mind. Well, you can relax.” He removed the last bit of his clothing, folded them in a neat stack, and carried them to the edge of the room. “I’m not going to molest you or your wife’s corpse. I just don’t want to get any blood on my clothes.”
He reached one more time into his coat, now folded in the pile, and withdrew a large hammer. A ball-peen hammer.
Harvey lurched forward, as much as he was able. His eyes bulged out of their sockets. He squirmed and twisted and made muffled cries for help.
“Oh sure, now you want to talk. But it’s too late now, Harvey. Now you have to pay the consequences.”
Harvey’s muffled screams grew louder, but there was nothing he could do to help himself. The man drew back the hammer and smashed it into Harvey’s left leg, shattering his kneecap.
“Wonderful. Now you and your wife are a matched set.” He crouched down beside Harvey’s spasming body, leaning forward against the side of the bed. “All right now, Harvey. Can we talk?”
Ben remained in his office after the parents departed. He had a lot to think about. He didn’t emerge from his office until sometime after five. Jones was sitting at his desk, waiting for him. “Well?”
A crease formed in the center of Ben’s forehead. “Well, what?
Jones fell back in his chair. “Damn everything! You took the case! I can see it in your eyes.”
Ben cleared his throat. “I … uh … did agree to represent them, yes.”
“Damn! I should’ve known. What am I saying? I did know! I just couldn’t stop it!”
“Now, Jones, calm down.…”
“Do you have any idea what this kind of litigation costs?”
“I certainly do.”
“Do you know what the odds are against you recovering anything?”
“Well … I think it’s too early to say with certainty.…”
“Don’t play coy with me. This is a trillion-to-one shot and you know it. We’ll run up thousands in expenses and have no hope of recovering it.”
“We’ve been through tough patches before.”
“Do you know what our current financial situation is? I do. We’re already on the edge. And this is just what we need to push us over!”
Ben nodded. “And since you’ve raised that issue, I’d like you to run downtown tomorrow and have a talk with The Brain.”
“Aw, no, Boss. Not me!”
“You’re the office manager. It’s your job.” The Brain was the nickname they gave Conrad Eversole, the financial whiz at Nations Bank who handled the firm’s accounts. He had loaned them money in the past. And he would have to loan them money again, if they were going to manage this case.
“What am I going to use as collateral?”
“Tell him about the lawsuit.”
“Oh, right. Like he’ll go for that pig in a poke.”