already out making speeches.”
“That’s what they say. But who knows.” I could hear the tone of my own voice lowering, trying to sound world-weary, salty, like a guy in the know. “They’re also saying Carver might get a judicial nomination out of it. You know, if Steele gets reelected.” I winked as I said it, unaware of my own obnoxiousness. By the time I was two beers into the next day’s hangover I’d stopped paying attention to myself.
“Well, with connections like that, you might do alright for yourself in the bigtime.”
“Who knows.” I shrugged. “I like it so far, it’s a great way to get some experience and pay off my student loans. Besides, getting to work on cases like Steele’s ain’t bad either.”
“Course,” Jendrek continued. “With friends like that it’s easy to make powerful enemies too.” He smiled and took a swig. “A guy’s got to play his cards pretty well.”
Just like the time before, all the times before, we never got around to planning the class or even mentioning it. Jendrek was a cool hand and knew how to get the job done. The fact of the matter was, he liked me and felt responsible for making sure I didn’t drift too far out into the abyss. After some minor jabs at big firm life and the damage it can do to a young lawyer both personally and professionally, I could tell Jendrek realized he had a lot more work to do. When we got up to leave, I snatched the check and paid it. “Big spender,” Jendrek laughed on the way out.
When I got home I found a large envelope on my doorstep. I recognized Liz’s handwriting on the outside and I tossed it on the coffee table. As usual, my apartment was three degrees shy of hell on a balmy day and I fired up the air conditioner immediately. I was feeling drunk and drowsy in the heat and I removed all of my clothing except the watch. I decided to enjoy my new toy a little longer. For all I knew, I might never take it off. It was waterproof up to one hundred meters, after all.
I sank into my battered couch and stared at the silver watch face. At that very moment, it was far and away the most valuable thing in my apartment. But I kept glancing at the envelope, wondering if she’d dropped off a pile of personal things I’d had at her apartment. Finally, I tore it open. It was Steele’s credit report and the supporting documentation that went with it. I’d completely forgotten I’d asked her to get it.
The first things in the pile were past due credit card statements for accounts held by both Steele and his wife. There were several pages comprising the charges from the month prior to the murder. I scanned through them, grinning at my voyeuristic glimpse into the lifestyle of the politically powerful and wealthy. Meals out at restaurants nearly everyday, in locations all over the country. A five hundred dollar purchase at Neiman Marcus in San Francisco two weeks before the murder. There were plane tickets to Dallas on the first line of the statement. There were bills for haircuts, dog grooming, car washes, dry cleaning. The final entries on the bill were for restaurants and hotels in Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska. I rolled my head back on my neck and thought of Ed Snyder’s comments about the Alaskan Wilderness Preserve and the article I’d read in the LA Times.
The next set of papers were bank statements. The joint account had $132,268 in it the day of the murder. Two days later the account was closed. I wondered why that would have been. Then I remembered Becky Steele’s comment about her mother’s family having all of the money. I also remembered that the grandparents, and presumably the holders of the purse-strings, had come to town to retrieve the grandchildren. I flipped through the bank papers carefully and found what I was looking for. The grandfather had also been a signatory on the account and had closed it after the son-in-law was arrested and the evidence appeared to point to him. I almost laughed at the outlandish cruelty of it. Steele sure must have felt good, left for dead and penniless in a state penitentiary only days after his arrest. But surely he must have had some other account of his own, how else could he have afforded Garrett Andersen?
Behind the bank statements were