“A toast to Thena Robert!”
Johnson Dorman, senior partner of the law firm Dorman, Wallace, and Edwards, stood at the far end of the bar with his glass lifted as whooping and applause erupted in the room. Twenty or so colleagues raised their glasses. “To Wil!”“Thanks, again,” I said. That was enough praise for one night, or even for a lifetime. I never chose to be Senator Phil Peterson’s lawyer. My boss, Johnson Dorman Sr., had assigned him to me because of my track record. For me, winning the trial was bittersweet.Domie Dorman, son of the senior partner, raised his glass to me. “To you, Wil.” When I didn’t lift mine, he clicked his sweating glass against mine and downed the last of his drink. He stood too close. His slicked-back light brown hair and perfect manicure gave an incomplete picture of a man who tried too hard to fit in with his colleagues. He said, “Senator Peterson had a rock-solid alibi, didn’t he?”“Yes, he did,” I said. Due to attorney-client confidentiality, I would take the knowledge of Peterson’s guilt to my grave, that he had, indeed, tied his intern Gail to the bed and raped her. Perry, my paralegal, sat on my left. She sipped a fruity cocktail and watched me out of the corner of her eye. She seemed to pick up on my discomfort and quietly asked, “Did the Senator rape her?”Seeming too eager for me to reveal something scandalous, Domie asked, “Did he?”With words memorized for the courtroom, I replied softly, hoping the clamor in the bar would muffle my voice. “The evidence didn’t add up. If Phil Peterson had raped Gail, she’d have hospital records to prove it.” That was true enough. She should have gone to the authorities right away. She didn’t. At some level, I think she enjoyed their secret meetings. Their affair had lasted almost a year. She’d filed suit right after he brought out the whips and handcuffs. But I didn’t mention that. Perry and Domie leaned in for more. As if I’d tell the senator’s story truthfully. “The senator was nowhere near his office on the night in question. He was in session in Washington. Besides, Phil had been injured during their previous encounters.” She was fighting back, I thought. “Once she crushed a metatarsal in his right foot with her high heel. He was barefoot at the time, so you can imagine. He wore a boot on that foot for almost. . . .” I stopped myself. I didn’t want anyone to pity him anymore. I had shown medical evidence to the jury to paint a different picture of their relationship than the truth. I brought in witnesses who saw Gail lure the senator with implied promises. She had teased and flirted with him. She needed money and thrived on the prestige she gained from the relationship. I told the jury that she had planned to sue him all along. They bought it, but there was no consoling my horror over the verdict. The highly sensationalized trial had tantalized millions. The indignant look on Gail’s face and the women in the courtroom would be etched in my mind forever. Men like Peterson were the reason the #metoo movement existed. As a woman, I stood on the same side of the battleground. But as a lawyer who defended those men, I’d become a pariah. Domie put his hand on the back of my stool. “How did you find out about Gail’s boyfriend?” Domie asked. “You pulled that trick out of your pocket like magic.” Domie had received his law degree from an unapproved online college. His father hired him because he was trying to be a good dad, not because Domie had the skills necessary to work at this prestigious firm. “The boyfriend, Gin, was an obvious redirect,” I explained. “Gail flaunted him in Senator Peterson’s face to make him jealous.” I visited the senator’s office one day and overheard Gail’s sisters talking about Gin. She’d said Gail was drawn to abusive men. “I had our detective, Bolman Underwood, investigate him. It turned out that Gin had been charged with sexual assault down in Louisiana.” Investigators had found an array of sexual torture devices he used on his victims too. Beyond handcuffs, Gin had collected locking ankle separators, ball gags, and X-racks. The images had stuck in my mind.“Wow.” Perry’s lips tightened with thinly concealed jealousy. Her gaze darted from me to Domie, and for the first time, I noticed that she liked him. Her gaze softened on Domie when he asked, “And how long was the jury out? Five minutes?” “Forty-five.”“Oh, almost an hour!” Domie’s sarcasm didn’t get past me. I shook my head. “So how many wins is this for you?” Competitive, Domie kept score.“Twelve,” I told him. “Twelve wins? No shit? Twelve in a row? You’re not even thirty yet. No wonder CNBC wants to interview you.”I sat back and sipped my wine. Emotionally and physically exhausted from the three-month trial, I let my mind focus on my next diving adventure. The soaring cliffs in Kimberley, Australia, were remote and far away from this life. I couldn’t wait to plan the trip. There was a freedom in falling through the air, a freedom that couldn’t be found anywhere else. For that one moment, fear and hope swallowed up every part of me. When I hit the water, the punishing blow felt like forgiveness. I needed that now.I imagined arriving at the dive site around dawn—when no one else was there—to watch the sun rising. Like in Acapulco, I’d look down at my toes hanging over the edge of the cliff and stare into the dark blue water below. If the angle of entry was off by a millimeter, or one limb was out of place, the impact could break me. The risk thrilled me. There was a reason the sport was called tombstoning. Many amateurs had died when they hit rocks hidden beneath the surface.My ringtone, an obscure hard metal song called “Stains,” shook me out of my reverie. I took the call outside with the excuse that it was too loud in the bar to hear anything. The truth was I wanted to get away from my colleagues. Outside, in the warm June night, it had just started to rain. A crack of thunder shook the ground and drowned out my voice as I answered. “Hello?” “Hello, is this Thena Robert?”“Who’s calling?” I shouted above the downpour.“This is Jon—” I stepped back against the wall of the building to get out of the rain. “Sorry, what’s that?” Did he say Richard Mackenzie? “I’m looking for someone with your tal. . . I need—” The rain beating on the pavement overruled his low voice. “Yes, I can’t really hear you.” “Can I—?” I thought he wanted to call back later. “I’ll be in the office tomorrow.”“Thank you, Ms. Robert. I’ll be in touch.” “This is my cell phone, my personal number. How did you . . .?” He’d hung up. And now I was drenched.Back inside, Domie sauntered up and put his arm around me. “Raining out?”“Leave it to you to detect the obvious, Domie.” I patted water off my phone with a bar napkin.“Let me get you another drink.” Domie turned toward the bar without waiting for my reply. I grabbed his arm. “No. I’m going home.”“Why? Who called?”“I don’t know. I couldn’t hear him,” I said. “I think it was someone trying to hire me, but I don’t know how he got my unlisted number.” “Hey, that’s great! Just get done winning one case and potentials are calling you already.” Domie stared at my damp chest while I ran fingers through my wet hair. My black bra showed through the white blouse. I turned my back to him and tugged the clinging fabric away from my body. “The Peterson trial has been all over the news tonight, Domie. I’m bound to get a few calls. It was probably some psycho, like all the rest.” “Did you get his name?”Unsuccessful at drying my shirt with a napkin, I patted my face instead. “I thought he said Richard Mackenzie, but I can’t be sure. I couldn’t hear him over the rain and thunder.”“He’s one of the wealthiest men in Chicago,” Domie said. His brown eyes opened wide.Was that the name he’d said on the phone? “I don’t know. Mackenzie’s local, right?”“Why would Huen need a criminal defense lawyer?”“I have no idea, Domie, but I’m going to do my homework in case he calls back.”“Have another drink. Besides, you look great in your wet blouse.” “Seriously, Domie? I thought you were paying attention to current women’s issues.” “Oh, come on. Celebrate with me for once.” Domie actually whined. I picked up my purse and dropped my phone inside. Whiners are not on my short list of preferred companions. “See you bright and early.”I stepped into the foyer of my deluxe Lincoln Park loft and dropped my purse on a stack of boxes near the door. Four months earlier, just before the Peterson trial, I’d bought this secure apartment with its vaulted ceilings in a decent part of the city. It was out of my budget, but I wanted the added security provided to residents. The expense would chain me to my job for many years to come. I’d moved right after the trip to Acapulco and only had time to unpack essentials. Boxes lined the hallway and the living room. Pictures I’d been meaning to hang leaned against the walls in various places.
Because I didn’t want to look at the mess, I left the lights off and kicked my navy blue stilettos into a corner. In the bedroom, I pulled my long mouse-brown hair into an updo and wound a hair band around the still-wet tresses. I changed out of the wet shirt, threw on a tank top and loose pair of shorts before opening the bedroom window and letting in the wet smell of rain-soaked concrete mixed with freshwater lake breezes. After scrubbing my face and applying moisturizer, I curled up in bed with my laptop. The name Richard Mackenzie stuck in my mind. Determined to follow my intuition, I scrolled through the first dozen images of Mr. Mackenzie, a local celebrity-businessman. “Not bad,” I murmured with a crooked smile.Mackenzie was cofounder and chief sales executive of Prevail Pharmaceutical Software, and photos of this CEO were making my heart tick faster. One taken during a charity tennis tournament showed off Mackenzie’s long legs and muscular physique as he exploded into the air for an overhead shot. In the next picture, he grinned at the camera, showing off his perfect white teeth, curly black hair, and intense blue eyes. This man was way beyond good-looking; he was fucking hot. Been way too long since you had a man, Wil. I reset my focus. J. T. Mackenzie graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a degree in biochemistry. Afterward, he received an MBA in operations and technology management. It was during this time that he came up with the idea of combining a cutting-edge software platform with a state-of-the-art pharmaceutical distribution system. Less than a year after graduating, he and his partners, Jack Barnes, and Darren Ward, launched Prevail Pharmaceutical Software, or PPS. The company grew quickly. In a few years it went public with a wildly successful IPO. Then Prevail moved its corporate headquarters, as well as the sales and marketing divisions, from Madison to Chicago.Going back through the search results, I tried to figure out why Richard Mackenzie needed a criminal lawyer. A small article published two days ago in the Chicago Tribune mentioned Mackenzie in conjunction with a twenty-five-year-old missing person, a woman named Leung Yang. Yang, Mackenzie’s top personal assistant, had disappeared. Foul play was suspected but the police weren’t releasing any further details. The list of persons of interest was short—J. T. Mackenzie was the list. Yang had traveled everywhere with him. Many articles about Prevail included photos of Mackenzie and Ms. Yang together. I continued my research, now switching to his assistant. Born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, she attended UCLA for business. She moved to Chicago after W. W. Grainger’s top executive hired her. She was introduced to Mr. Mackenzie at a social gathering, where he hired her on the spot. Because of the Peterson trial, my train of thought traveled to sex. Who had used whom? Yang was quite attractive, with flawless skin and silky black hair. I wondered what Mackenzie had learned about her skill set and what kind of relationship they had. Was it purely professional? Or was it more than that? What if she put all her cards on the table? And her panties, too. Or perhaps the encounter went in a different direction. Could the police really think that J. T. Mackenzie, CEO of a multi-million-dollar enterprise, had something to do with Leung Yang’s disappearance? They had yet to arrest him. I looked at a close-up photo of his stormy eyes and imagined Mackenzie taking Yang to a hotel room and stripping her naked. A shiver trilled through my back ribs, and I got up to close the window. The rain had started up again. I was unsure if he’d been the caller, and yet I was drawn into the story and its characters. If Richard Mackenzie needed a lawyer, then I wanted to represent him no matter what. Can I trust my gut?Sleep came in restless fits while I listened to the city noises, traffic, sirens. A nightmare woke me before my alarm radio began playing “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurhythmics. Far from sweet, I’d dreamed Senator Peterson was abusing other women in his office. They were shouting at me from their skyrise offices as I looked up at them. Right before I awoke, the women began throwing things out the windows at me. They hated me for helping the Senator.As the sky began to lighten, I stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. After I showered, I chose a professional outfit that fit my mood: a simple black shift accented with a heavy silver chain and mid-heel pumps. I brushed and clipped my long brown hair into an updo. I didn’t wear much makeup, just a couple strokes of mascara added to my dark lashes and a tiny dab of expensive lip gloss. Too many years of fighting with my brothers and being a tomboy took the sweet little girl out of me. If my hunch were right
A new attitude boosted me out of bed the next day. Empowered, and wearing my black pencil skirt and red button-up shirt with a stiffly ironed collar, I arrived at work twenty minutes early. Mackenzie’s executive assistant called shortly after eight o’clock. “Hello, Ms. Robert. Mr. Mackenzie will meet with you today to discuss a contract. Be at Alinea at four o’clock sharp.” “Alinea?”“Will you need a car to pick you up from work?”“I’ll manage to get there on time. Thank you, Miss —?”“Mrs. Hellenberg. I’ll tell Mr. Mackenzie that you’ll be there. Have a good day.” Now I had work to do. After Dad moved us to Normal, Illinois, he had kept in touch with Jeff Lohmann, our friend at CPD Violent Crimes Division. Jeff’s children were about the same ages as my brothers and me, so we’d gone on fishing trips and shared vacations together. They were my second family, but lately I felt closer to Jeff than my father. For one thing, he lived nearby.A few years earlier, when Jeff’s daughter Paul
Richard had initially called me the night before he became a person of interest in Leung Yang’s murder. Though I followed the news, only the method of her death had been gleaned by investigators. Leung overdosed on fentanyl—China Girl was the street term—shortly before she was found. Before that, she’d been missing for two weeks. All leads to the timeline between her disappearance and the discovery of her body were dead ends. Even after I did my research I couldn’t find anything to incriminate my client. I wondered if Mackenzie would hire an investigator. He certainly had the money for it.Friday night crept up on me like a stalker. When I looked at the clock and realized that almost everyone at the office had gone already, I packed up my weekend homework and left for the private gym. I bought my pricy membership last year during the trial of another sexual predator. Though I loved the size of the pool at the YMCA, this quieter gym had additional security. And now as always, I needed m
Mackenzie had gone through all the correct channels and returned the signed Engagement contract. After he wired the retainer fee in the full amount to the firm, Domie stopped by my office and offered his congratulations. He wore an ear-to-ear grin. “Look at you! Talk of the town!” I grimaced, not in the mood for his praise.“God, what I would give for a client like him!” “Domie, you don’t know what you’re saying.”“So? You’re famous now, Wil. This case is all over the news.” “If I could, I would give it all to you.” Especially, I thought, the guilt.“Want to join me for lunch?” Domie leaned on the frame of my office door. With his arms and feet crossed, he appeared to be posing for a photo.I desired to be alone, but I was hungry, and the idea of a stale sandwich from the vendor cart didn’t appeal. “Are you ready to go?” I asked with less civility than I intended.“Let me grab my phone.”Perry watched us, overly interested in our conversation. She had been spending an inordinate amo
Monday morning news reports filled my TV screen. Claire Russo spoke of the latest happenings in the Middle East while an alert scrolled across the bottom. Investigators were trying to link J. T. Mackenzie to Leung Yang’s murder. With the company’s CEO becoming a possible suspect in her murder, PPS stocks were declining, the newsfeed said. I took my usual route to work on the Robert Line. I owned a car, but it had been parked in the underground lot beneath my building for four months. I hadn’t secured a parking permit yet, and that was next on my to-do-list. The car was coated with a layer of grime. It needed a carwash. For now, riding the el to work seemed like less hassle. Once seated, a woman twice my size spilled into the seat next to me. Leaning my shoulder against the window, I called Bolman Underwood of Underwood Investigations. He had worked for me before, and though high strung, he was well connected and worked quickly and efficiently. “What can I do for you, Wil?”“Hi, Bolm
The morning of Fourth of July, my friends Roman and Jen and I went shopping on Michigan Ave. We meandered between dress racks and I dragged my fingers across a shirt here, a pair of slacks there. Unless I liked the feel of it I wouldn’t pull any garment off the rack. “How do you deal with it, Wil?” Jen referred to the media attention my job had lately gotten. Jen was a nurse in the pulmonary wing at Rush Hospital. She lived in the same building where Roman and I lived as roommates and that was how we’d gotten to know her. “I guess I ignore it.”“She compartmentalizes, like a serial killer.” Roman brushed past me with her eye on the upper racks. Roman and I had known each other longer. We met in college and our sisterly relationship had only grown stronger over the years.“Thanks!” I said sarcastically.“Teasing!” she retorted.Jen brushed her bangs to the side revealing a creased brow. She seemed broody. “All that attention would bother me. I’d never go out.” Very private, Jen hardl
Richard dismissed the cook and waitstaff after the fireworks display over the lake. Darren and Maddie left because she was tired, and the baby was kicking. Shortly after that, Jack and Whitney returned to their hotel room. With a glass of Chardonnay in my hand, I followed Richard to the patio. Lake Michigan’s dark edge was clearly delineated by twinkling lights along the waterfront. The boats’ red, white, and green running lights accented the abysmal dark farther away, like stars on the night water. I stood at the balcony rail overlooking the curved shore of Lake Michigan. On the table behind me, the flames of several pillar candles flickered.His voice was low. “Do you like the view?” he asked, gazing down at me. His black hair glistened in the candlelight.I took a deep breath. “It’s magnificent.” “I need to discuss the case with you. Mrs. Hellenberg texted me about an hour ago. Leung’s body was released to her family.” I returned my gaze to the black expanse of Lake Michigan. “
Early the next day, Jeff called me. I was to meet him with my client at the Chicago Violent Crimes Division. Jeff had come across the same emails that Richard spoke of. They had been cc’d to Leung.Chicago VCD was raucous with activity. In the hallway, two officers dragged a thin, handcuffed man who shouted about his rights. Richard and I passed a dozen or so tables cluttered with stacks of paper and coffee cups on our way to Jeff’s office. Detectives and officers hustled about. At one desk, a couple held hands and tears streamed down their faces as a detective solemnly read from a sheet of yellow paper. In the center of the maelstrom, a hysterical woman held her young son by the shoulders as she yelled something about statutory rape. To the right, a bored detective questioned three men who were more interested in a group of scantily clad women. Half-starved prostitutes with too much makeup on their young faces couldn’t care less. Jeff waved from across the busy room and met us halfw