Home Sweet Murder

  “Even when something illegal is going on?”

  “There is nothing illegal going on at the firm,” Leo says.

  “You’re sure?”

  “To my knowledge, yes.”

  The agent is probably in his thirties, but he has a chubby, boyish face, with a brown goatee and a sorry excuse for a mustache. Despite his youthful features, there is something in the man’s face that is disquieting. Anger seems to be bubbling just beneath the surface.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Leo says. “If you want to drop by the office tomorrow, I’d be happy to speak with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I come tomorrow,” the agent says, “I’m bringing a warrant—and police. I think it would be easier if we talk tonight. Off the record.”

  Leo thinks for a moment.

  “May I see that badge again?” Leo asks.

  Leo expects the agent to oblige and show his badge, even if he is irritated by the request. But the agent does nothing of the sort.

  Instead, he shoves Leo—hard—in the chest.

  Leo stumbles back into the foyer. The man steps into the house and swings the door shut behind him. He throws the deadbolt.

  Leo stares in disbelief.

  Sue walks in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.

  “What’s going on?” she says.

  “Ma’am,” the agent says with authority. “I’m with the Securities Exchange Commission. I have some questions for your husband.”

  “Leo?” Sue says, turning to her husband. “I don’t understand.”

  Leo can’t bear the look of confusion and fear on his wife’s face. This isn’t right.

  “This is unacceptable,” Leo says to the agent. “I know the law. I know my rights. You need to leave.”

  “You’re the one who did something unacceptable,” the agent snaps. “And you’re going to be in even more trouble if you don’t cooperate.”

  “I demand to see your identification,” Leo says.

  The man takes a deep breath, like a parent dealing with a petulant child. He reaches into his jacket. But he doesn’t pull out his credentials. He pulls out what looks like a toy gun from a science fiction movie.

  The agent points the object at Leo, and in the instant before the man squeezes the trigger, Leo realizes what it is.

  Chapter 5

  Two barbed electrodes shoot from the gun and stab into Leo’s sweater. Lightning bolts of pain explode through his body. The electricity blasting through him paralyzes his muscle function, and he drops to the ground, convulsing.

  The pain is extraordinary—every bit as excruciating as his heart attack. Leo fears he is having another heart attack, but then the electricity cuts off and the pain begins to subside.

  He is a useless blob of jelly lying on his foyer floor, but he knows he is going to live. Unless, that is, his assailant decides to zap him with the Taser gun again. Leo isn’t sure he can survive another shock.

  Faintly, over his own garbled moans of pain, Leo can hear his wife screaming.

  “You can’t do this!” Sue shouts. “This is outrageous.”

  The agent ignores her and crouches over Leo, fastening his hands and ankles with zip ties. The agent disconnects and retracts the cords from the Taser.

  Sue stands frozen, unsure what to do. Finally, her paralysis breaks, and she steps forward to help Leo.

  The man cuts her off before she makes it two steps.

  “Don’t move,” he says. “I’ll zap you too, you bitch!”

  He grabs her arm and shoves her against the wall. He is much stronger than she is, and he holds her arms together then encircles her wrists with a zip tie. The plastic strips cut into her skin. He fastens her ankles together. Sue tries to bring her breathing under control and to keep herself from crying.

  The man leaves the two of them there—Leo lying on the floor, Sue precariously balanced on zip-tied legs—and starts closing the blinds in the front-facing rooms.

  “Pie,” Sue says, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” Leo says, but this is far from true.

  His limbs feel like Jell-O, and his muscles ache. It’s as if every muscle in his body had seized up with charley horses, and only now are the muscles beginning to loosen. Worse, he feels a painful squeezing in his chest. Not a heart attack—not yet—but it’s serious enough that, under normal circumstances, he would lie down and try to relax.

  Relaxing is impossible right now.

  “What’s this about, Pie?” Sue says. “What kind of trouble are we in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  This statement seems to enrage the agent, who storms back into the room.

  “You don’t know?” he says, kneeling over Leo and practically shouting in his face. “We’ll see about that.”

  The agent leans over and jerks Leo to sit upright. The man winces and reaches for his lower back.

  “Get up and go to the bedroom,” the agent says, holding his back like he just strained a muscle.

  Leo and Sue hobble down the hallway. From their bedroom door, Twist and Shout watch them suspiciously. As if they can tell something is wrong, the cats take off running.

  The agent makes Leo and Sue sit on the edge of their bed.

  “Let’s get this interrogation started,” the agent says.

  Chapter 6

  A chair sits in the corner with a small pile of Leo’s unfolded clothes. The agent brushes the clothes out of the chair and eases down onto its cushion as if the act of sitting is difficult. He takes off his hat and sets it on the floor. His hair is disheveled and flattened on one side from the fedora. His forehead is beaded with sweat.

  He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a prescription bottle. He pops a tiny pill into his mouth and swallows.

  “This is outrageous,” Leo says. “This is a clear violation of our civil rights.”

  The agent rises from his chair and looms over Leo and Sue.

  “You’d be advised not to make this any more difficult than it has to be, Mr. Fisher. You know what you’ve done.”

  Sue’s eyes widen, looking at Leo for answers.

  He shrugs, a gesture meant to say he doesn’t have any.

  The agent begins to pace back and forth in front of them like a cop on a TV show.

  Sue has a strange surreal feeling—like she’s somehow been teleported from her normal life and dropped into an episode of The Twilight Zone.

  This is our bedroom, she thinks. In our home!

  And we’re being questioned in it like criminals!

  “Leo Fisher, managing partner at Bean, Kinney & Korman,” the agent says, as much to himself as Leo. “And you’ve been there since 1990? Is that right?”

  Leo nods, and the agent turns his attention to Sue.

  “And you’re recently retired, isn’t that right, Susan? Enjoying the life of a housewife, are we?”

  Sue glares at him. What kind of questions are these? What does her retirement have to do with Leo’s law firm?

  “Will you just tell us what this is about already?” Sue says.

  The agent glares at her. She feels like squirming under his gaze, but she holds her head high and does not look away.

  “What this is about,” the agent says, “is some very irregular activity at the firm in the past month.”

  “Irregular activity?” Leo says.

  “Don’t interrupt,” the agent snaps, then turns his attention back to Sue.

  “There are hints of very dubious wire transfers at your husband’s direction,” the man says. “And intercepted emails to prove it.”

  “This must be a mistake,” Leo says.

  “It’s no mistake, I’m afraid,” the agent said. “Either you’re up to no good, or someone in the firm is framing you. Now I need some answers.”

  The agent peels off his jacket and tosses it on the chair in the corner. Without the jacket, they can
see the Taser fastened to the man’s belt, as well as a shoulder holster containing what looks like a semi-automatic pistol.

  Do SEC agents carry firearms? Sue wonders.

  The agent starts bombarding Leo with questions about any illicit activities at the firm. Shady employees who might be framing him? Clients who have criminal histories? Offshore accounts?

  “I don’t know about anything like that,” Leo says. “Can you be more specific? Our firm deals in commercial and civil litigation. We have a high standard for clients we’ll work with—there’s nothing duplicitous going on.”

  “So that’s the way you want to play it, huh?” the agent says, shaking his head.

  “Play what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” the agent snaps. “Stop acting as if you’re innocent.”

  The agent runs his hand through his hair, and his expression changes. For an instant, he lets his guard down. Instead of looking like a confident—and angry—government agent, he suddenly looks different. He looks like an ordinary guy. Someone you might pass on the street or in a hallway.

  Imagining him this way—in another context, wearing different clothes—Leo thinks for a moment that he might know the man. There is just a glimmer of recognition, but then the agent’s bad-tempered expression is back.

  Leo turns away, not wanting his own expression to reveal his speculation. Leo is sure now that he’s seen the man somewhere before.

  But where?

  Chapter 7

  Two weeks earlier

  Leo is sitting in his office at Bean, Kinney & Korman, leaning over a case file. Sunlight pours into the office from a floor-to-ceiling window at Leo’s back. Outside, the trees are ablaze with fall colors.

  Leo’s office is large, spacious, and spotless. Leo’s diplomas hang on the wall: a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College in 1975 and his law degree from George Washington University in 1980. There is also a plaque denoting Leo as one of the “Best Lawyers in America in Commercial Litigation.”

  On Leo’s expansive desk is a new twenty-seven-inch iMac computer, flanked by two framed photographs. One photo is a recent one, taken of Leo and Sue on the beach during a vacation in Turks and Caicos. There is also an older photo of the two of them standing in front of the Berlin Wall during a trip to Germany in the 1980s. The Wall is covered in graffiti, and the two posed for the pic under a place where someone had painted, “They came, they saw, they did a little shopping!” Leo still had most of his hair in the photo—and it hadn’t turned white yet.

  Nearly thirty years has passed since the picture was taken. While Leo’s offices have grown over the years—as has his paycheck—his work ethic has not waned. He is reading this case file with the same vigor he did when he was a young lawyer still trying to make a name for himself in corporate law.

  There is a gentle knock on the door, and a blurred face appears behind the textured glass of the door’s window. Without looking up, Leo says, “Come in.”

  Phil Yeager, another partner at the firm, pokes his head into the office.

  “You ready, Leo?” he says.

  Leo stares blankly at his silver-haired friend, then his eyes open and his mouth becomes an O.

  “The meeting!” Leo says. “I almost forgot.”

  Phil laughs.

  “Almost forgot? You did forget.”

  Leo, embarrassed, gets to his feet, checks his watch, sees that he’s even more late than he thought, and heads toward the door. Only then does he realize that he needs his notes, and he heads back to his desk.

  Phil is grinning. He isn’t upset by the tardiness, just amused. They walk down the hall together, passing cubicles of lawyers reading through large stacks of case files, talking on the phone with clients, and writing briefs on desktop computers. As the two partners walk through the workspace in their three-piece Hugo Boss suits, most of the lawyers look up as they pass, saying hello or nodding a greeting.

  As they pass one desk in particular, a pretty dark-haired woman looks up from a manila folder thick with court transcripts. Phil does not make eye contact. He keeps his head facing forward, like he’s ignoring a homeless person panhandling for change at a stoplight.

  Leo doesn’t ignore the woman. He nods at her and smiles.

  “Hi, Alecia,” he says.

  “Hi, Leo,” says the woman, who has a chubby face and a bright smile.

  When Leo and Phil arrive to the conference room, the other partners jibe Leo for being late, though no one actually seems upset. Life is good at the law firm of Bean, Kinney & Korman.

  Leo stands before the group and begins his presentation. Leo’s job today is to give the partners a summary of their third quarter: both the cases that are being litigated as well as the company’s financial picture.

  All is good, and the partners react with smiles, laughs, and jokes.

  Just as the meeting is wrapping up, Phil raises his hand and says, “Leo, I hate to end things on a sour note, but you didn’t mention our bit of unpleasant business. What are you going to do about our little problem?” He draws out the two syllables of the word “problem” and makes a face as he says it—as if the word itself is uncomfortable to utter.

  “Well,” Leo says. “I don’t know if I’d call it a ‘problem.’”

  “Oh, I would,” another partner, Bill, pipes up. “This could damage the reputation of the firm if it’s not cleaned up quickly.”

  “And quietly,” someone adds.

  “We need to take action for the good of the firm,” says Jennifer, one of the newest lawyers to be promoted to partner. “We’ve let this go on too long now already.”

  “It’s a little problem right now,” says Phil, “but it could be a big one if we don’t nip it in the bud—if you know what I mean,” he adds.

  Leo does know what he means. Unfortunately, Leo also knows that the responsibility for dealing with the “problem” is going to fall on him.

  As much as he loves his job, this is a part he doesn’t like.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Leo says.

  Chapter 8

  The agent asks Leo to think hard about what was happening at the firm in October.

  “In October?” Leo says. “You mean last month?”

  “Yes, last month,” the agent snaps.

  Sue watches Leo out of the corner of her eye. He has a perplexed look on his face. Either he doesn’t have any idea what the agent is talking about or he’s a very good actor.

  Sue has only ever known Leo to be a devoted husband—a good, genuine man. She fell in love with his kind smile and has never known him to be anything but the gentle man she fell for all those years ago. But she hasn’t spent much time with him when he’s in his work environment. Not in the office. Not in the courtroom. Maybe he’s good at putting up a front and she doesn’t know it.

  “Okay,” Leo says. “October. Let’s see. We’ve been hired to help a startup company develop non-compete clauses for its employees. We’re working with a real-estate developer on some land-use ordinances. And we’ve been busy with a trademark infringement case in federal court.”

  He says the last one like it’s a question. Could this be the case the agent is referring to?

  The agent shakes his head. His cheeks are flushed with anger and frustration.

  Sue has had enough of this back-and-forth.

  “This isn’t the time to be protecting someone, honey,” she says to Leo. “Just tell the truth.”

  Leo shrugs his shoulders and frowns, looking genuinely bewildered.

  “I honestly don’t know what he’s asking for,” Leo says. “Nothing out of the ordinary happened at the firm in the time frame he’s referring to.”

  The agent leans over and pokes a finger into Leo’s chest.

  “You’ve got a really lousy memory,” the agent barks.

  He begins pacing again. Sue notices that he is wearing black gym shoes, which are well-worn and scuffed, with Velcro instead of laces. They look dirty, and this makes her wince bec
ause the carpet in this part of the house is plush and ivory-colored. It stains easily, and therefore Sue and Leo usually take their shoes off in the bedroom. This man with old dirty shoes is tromping all over their expensive white carpet.

  The appearance of the shoes strikes her as odd. She lets her eyes drift up to examine the agent, really paying attention to his appearance for the first time. His suit is wrinkled, and the fabric looks cheap. She doesn’t imagine an agent of the SEC would necessarily wear the type of expensive suits and shoes that Leo can afford, but she thinks the man would want to look more professional than he does.

  She looks at his tie and then at the fedora on the floor and jacket on the chair. None of the ensemble matches. Even if the guy has no fashion sense, she thinks, any employee at Men’s Wearhouse could help him pick out a relatively affordable matching suit, tie, and pair of dress shoes.

  Now that she looks at him, the face doesn’t match the clothes either. His chunky cheeks, thin goatee, and peach-fuzz mustache make him look like a frat boy wearing a costume for some kind of college prank.

  His outfit looks like something an actor might wear in a community theater performance. The only parts of the getup that look convincing are the two guns. She knows the Taser is the real thing, and the pistol looks authentic as well. Its weight makes the holster sag in the way a prop probably wouldn’t.

  But besides the weapons, the outfit seems like it would only fool someone on first glance.

  Which, she realizes, is exactly what happened. She and Leo only glanced at the guy when he first entered the house. They never had a chance to really study his appearance.

  The agent continues to badger Leo, but Sue isn’t paying attention to the words. She continues to scrutinize the man. He has a tall, stocky body. From his build, he looks like someone who might have been an athlete when he was younger, but he’s since packed on a little too much weight around his midsection.

  His fingernails are long, with dirt caked underneath, like a little boy who’s been playing in a sandbox all day.