Read Online FIRST CASE - Novella (McRyan Mystery Series Prequel) by Roger Stelljes - Free Book Online

piss off opposing counsel and deponents more than once. But that’s standard and most of the people we had Gordon depose were usually lesser players in the cases. I tended to handle the bigger fish so I’m hard pressed to think of anyone in a case that would want to kill Gordon. I can’t think of one case where that was an issue.”
    “How about clients?” Mac asked. “Was there ever a client that Oliver had issues with?”
    “Not one that I can think of,” Harris answered. “Like I said the other day, Gordon was really attentive to our clients and our clients are pretty happy. Stan reels them in and I do the litigation work with Gordon’s help, at least until yesterday. Gordon was a pain at times, detective, but like I said yesterday, I’ll miss the guy. As a young associate, he was money.”
    Further interviews with the rest of the firm’s lawyers revealed that in the last six months most of Oliver’s work was with Stan Busch. There was some real estate litigation that Oliver worked on for Marie Preston and one case for another partner, Jackson Lund. No problems were noted with those cases yet more names were collected to potentially interview.
    Franklin and Beckett interviewed the firm’s staff and their results reaffirmed one immutable truth of the work place, the staff always knows more about what’s going on in the office than the bosses. Turns out that Gordon Oliver had slept with not three, not four, not even five, but six different women in the firm, including one partner. Beckett and Franklin interviewed the law firm’s IT manager who said that Gordon told him one time that he had his own little Yahtzee card. It required sleeping with a receptionist, secretary, paralegal, associate and a partner. The staff knew that he’d completed the card by recently bedding a forty-three-year-old partner named Constance Bernier on the leather couch in her office.
    “She said ‘he got me at just the right time,’” Double Frank said.
    “This dude was good,” Beckett added.
    “He’d fuck a goat if you held it for him,” Mac replied disgustedly.
    “You saying he had it coming, Mac?” Franklin asked.
    “No. I’m merely stating the fact that he was a douche bag when it came to women.”
    “It’s probably what got him killed though,” Dick added. “We just have to find the person he pissed off the most and we have our killer.”
    “How about the other women he slept with?” Mac asked. “Do any of them look good for it? Have boyfriends or husbands who look good for it?”
    Franklin and Beckett shook their heads. “Two of the women now have boyfriends although they didn’t while they were serving as a love receptacle for Gordo,” Beckett said. “They both claim they were home with their new boyfriends last night. We’ll follow up but I’d bet my pension they alibi out.”
    “What about Bernier?” Mac asked.
    “She flew in from Atlanta this morning. She was there for the last four days.”
    “We could look at her financials and see if she hired someone to do it?” Lich speculated.
    “We can and should but does this really look like a hit to any of you guys?” Mac answered, shaking his head. “If it were a hit, there would be a bullet in his head or a hitter would have known enough to make it look like a robbery gone bad. He would have taken Oliver’s wallet and watch. This looks like neither.”
    “So what is this then?” Beckett asked.
    “This is someone angry at Oliver who made a mistake, didn’t mean to kill him or made a split-second decision to kill him for some reason. This person didn’t really know what they were doing, panicked and quickly hid the body and ran.” This train of thought gave Mac an idea. “Maybe there’s a surveillance or security camera that caught our guy nearby?”
    Lich was skeptical. “Mac, none of the buildings in the alley had any cameras, at least not ones on the alley.”
    “I know that,” Mac answered, thinking broader. “I’m thinking in the