Page 71 of Maddy's Justice

“What did you tell her?”

“What we agreed. It was just an informal thing for MacAlister to meet Kadella.”

“Did she buy it?”

“I think so. I don’t know. I’d hate to play poker with that woman. I can never tell what she’s thinking,” Blake replied.

“What about the rest of it? The discovery?”

“She said no problem. I’ll get all of the discovery requests sent to me. We’ll fight it and bury them with irrelevant paper.”

“She was okay with that?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit. Right now, she’s wondering what it is we’re trying to hide. I knew this day would come,” Spenser said. “If you don’t have an escape plan in place, you’d better get one.”

“What? I don’t know anything about something like that,” Blake said, panic creeping into his voice.

“Relax. We have time, but, if that bitch starts digging, well, I’ll help you. Until then, keep an eye on her. We don’t need her digging into what’s going on down on thirty-eight,” Spenser said referring to the thirty-eighth floor.

Quentin Forrest, using an eight-number keypad code known only to him, unlocked the basement door. Closing and locking the door behind him, he descended the carpeted stairs into the finished basement. Forrest, known to the Stafford, Hughes lawyers as David, was an ex-CIA black bag man. In the basement of his rented suburban home was a half-million dollars of sophisticated listening and recording equipment.

Forrest was returning from a quick trip to Chicago. During his meeting with his boss, among other things, Forrest had presented a report on Maddy Rivers and Tony Carvelli. The news about them was not good. Before he started retrieving information from his surveillance equipment, he took a few minutes to reminisce about his report. After reciting the usual personal data, names, ages, addresses, he got down to it.

“Both are ex-cops. Carvelli did twenty plus with Minneapolis, Rivers only a few years with Chicago. These two are not a pair of local yokels out in Backwater, USA. They’re professional, thorough and dangerous. They have both shot and killed people,” he said.

“The woman, too?” his boss had asked.

“Yeah. In fact, she was attacked in her apartment by a serial killer. She fought him off and threw him through a window eight stories up.”

“No kidding?” his boss said with a chuckle. “Good for her.”

“Ironically, the guy had been tried and acquitted for several murders and get this, Marc Kadella had represented him. They’re engaged now, Rivers and Kadella.”

“How sweet. What do you think?”

“We keep an eye on things. Especially these two, but we don’t want to grab a rattlesnake, either. They can bite back. We’ll see.”

Three hours later Forrest was finished going through two days of recordings. Most of it was mundane drivel. Every time he listened to the routine communications going on at Stafford, Hughes he wondered why anyone would work there and do what they did just for money. If he did what they did, he’d eat his gun.

There were, however, several conversations worth noting. Before he took the time to transcribe them into a report, he made a call on a very secure phone.

“We may have a problem,” he told the man who answered for his boss.

“Tell me.”

“Melanie Stewart. She’s been giving too much personnel data to the lawyers, Kadella and the woman, Mickelson. The senior partners have taken steps to bring them under control, but she worries them.”

“Any reference to the thirty-eighth floor in any conversations?”

“Not so far, no. What do you think?”

“Just a second,” the man said. He spoke to someone then came back.

“I’ll tell you what. Do some surveillance on her. Let’s keep a closer eye on her. Is there a bug in her office?”

“Yes, that’s how I got this information.”

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