The previous morning, Clare had poured her entire stash of Valium, Vicodin, and Adderall down the toilet. It had taken two flushes and a few deep breaths, but she was determined to quit. She wanted to be successful and happy and she knew she spent too much time and money on drugs. What was a study aid in college had become a necessity in law school. She was overwhelmed with the work and competitive atmosphere in her first year of school and gladly bought up tablets of speed when one of her classmates offered them to her. She’d been used to the way things were in high school and college, when it was relatively easy to stay at the top of her class. Now everyone around her was very smart and her position among them was unclear.
Whether she would have naturally adapted to the stresses of a top law school, she’d never know. With the drug she was able to stay in the top ten of her class. There was no incentive to not take them that she could see. A lot of the first-year students did the same and it didn’t feel like she was doing anything wrong. But most of them left the drug behind when they graduated from law school. Clare kept up her relationship with her source until he went out of business and she had to find someone new—Casey. It was business as usual as she started her professional career. Wake up, take a tablet or two, work like a dog, go home and crash. Her life got smaller every day. She occasionally thought of her mother’s sister, Alice, who was always in a fugue state from the tranquilizers she took regularly. That wouldn’t happen to her.
Her hopeful attitude started crumbling the next day, her first at Nelson & Nelson. It was twenty-four hours since her last pill and she felt shattered. Her body was betraying her—crushing fatigue, extreme anxiety, and growing nausea. If she’d had any drug available she would have taken it. This was not what she’d had in mind by quitting drugs. It was not the way she wanted to present herself on her first day of work. What if she keeled over in front of her boss? She walked the few blocks from her rented house to the office, hoping the fresh, cold air would make her feel sharp.
She had no idea what being a lawyer in a small town would be like. After Dearborn, Richards & Pike, she only knew it had to be better than the life she led there. As she walked through the town square she saw the remaining downtown merchants opening their shops, some sweeping the sidewalk in front. They said good morning as she passed. Should she introduce herself? Probably. She’d be seeing them every morning for who knew how long. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was all she could do to get herself through the door of Nelson & Nelson.
She walked into the law firm’s small reception room, painted a sky blue. Copies of the Wall Street Journal and the Timson County Times were on a coffee table in the center of a waiting area. Behind the desk was a middle-aged woman in a motorized wheelchair. She looked up from her computer and smiled.
“I’m Clare Lehane. I believe Elizabeth Nelson is expecting me.”
“Right! You’re our new lawyer. I’m sorry I missed meeting you when you interviewed.” She neatly maneuvered her wheelchair around her desk and stuck out her hand. “I’m Donna, the office manager.”
Clare took her hand and hoped her own wasn’t trembling. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she managed.
“I’ve got you set up in your office. Let me show you and I’ll let Elizabeth know you’re here.”
Just as she moved a throttle on the chair to turn around, a young woman came striding in from the back, carrying a file. She was dressed in a dark gray pantsuit with a crisply ironed Oxford shirt. Her shoulders and arms were straining at the fabric, as if she were a body builder. She stopped in her tracks upon seeing Clare.
“Oh, good. This is Joanne Reid, the firm’s paralegal.” Donna introduced Clare, who noticed Joanne’s smile looked forced and she didn’t offer to shake hands. This didn’t bode well. It had been Clare’s experience that some paralegals resented the young lawyers they worked with. The lawyers were paid so much more and they often did similar work. She wanted to avoid that kind of tension.
“Do you work in litigation, Joanne?”
“Yes. I’m Elizabeth’s paralegal.” She was practically lifting her leg to mark her territory. “And I go by Jo.”
“Got it. I look forward to working together.” Clare hoped her smile appeared more genuine than Jo’s did.
Jo tossed a file onto Donna’s desk and returned through the door to the rest of the office, letting it close behind her. “Let’s go through,” Donna said. The door had a lever instead of a knob, placed lower than usual so Donna could reach it, and the door itself had no threshold. Caring people worked there. She followed Donna into a long, wide hallway with offices on both sides. The walls were decorated with Audubon prints of birds and other wildlife, mostly pheasants and ducks. She guessed one or both of the Nelsons were hunters and reminded herself that was normal down here. The first two office doors were closed. Donna stopped at the third and gestured Clare in.
“This is you. Why don’t you get settled and I’ll find Elizabeth.”
She continued down the hallway as Clare walked into her new office and dropped her briefcase on the desk. It was a bigger space than she’d had in Chicago, though not as sleek. Old-fashioned oak furniture gave the room a comfortable feel. Small holes dotted one of the walls where a previous occupant had hung something—maybe a painting or photograph or a giant picture of family or friends, something she’d be hard-pressed to come up with herself. Who’d worked at this desk before her? Why had he or she left? She opened the middle drawer and found office supplies. She was moving the stapler to her desktop when she heard a soft knock at her door. Elizabeth Nelson stood in the doorway, a gleaming smile on her face.
“Welcome,” she said. Clare had the same impression she’d had when she met Elizabeth during her interview—gentle, but extremely confident. If Clare were a murder defendant with her life on the line, she’d want Elizabeth to be her lawyer. She looked like she knew how to get things done.
Elizabeth walked into her office and sat in the chair in front of her desk. She looked unhurried, so different from Carlton Henning.
“How did your move go?” she said. “It can be rough in winter.”
Clare clutched the arms of her chair. She was willing herself past her horrible physical condition and into a conversation with her boss. She couldn’t afford to make a fool of herself.
“It was easy, actually. I don’t have much stuff, so the truck was only a quarter full.”
“Are you a minimalist?” Elizabeth said.
Clare thought of Casey longingly. “I think it’s because I’m young. I haven’t had time to acquire a lot of stuff.”
“Of course. You’re in the accumulation stage, while I’m throwing things out right and left. You’re in the McClellans’ place out there on Oak Street?”
Clare wondered how she knew that since she’d not yet filled out her new employee paperwork. Elizabeth was certainly competent, but she didn’t know she was omnipotent. “So, it’s true what they say about small towns, that everyone knows everything?” Clare said, smiling.
“Not exactly. More so than the city, certainly. I ran into Tom McClellen and he told me he’d rented the house to a new lawyer at my firm.” Elizabeth sat back in her chair, as relaxed as a cat lying in the sunshine.
“Do you live in that part of town also? Will you see me walking to work every morning?”
“I’m usually the first one in the office, so that doesn’t seem likely. I do live three streets over from Oak, so we’re neighbors.”
Clare couldn’t think of any more chitchat, so she stayed quiet. Elizabeth roused herself and stood. “Let me take you around. You’ve met Donna, who keeps everything running smoothly here. It’s a wise idea to cultivate a good relationship with her, not that it’s hard to do. She’s a treasure.”
“I also met Jo. Is she the firm’s only paralegal?”
“She is. And I’d say an appreciative attitude with her is the way to go. She makes all our lives much easier.”
“I’ll take that to heart,” she said. The last thing she wanted was an adversary.
They walked down the hall to the rear, where she saw a sunny conference room. There were four people in suits standing around a table, drinking coffee. They all turned their heads as Elizabeth and Clare entered the room. “I asked everyone here to introduce Clare at the same time. Thought it would be easier that way.”
Easier for her, but definitely not for Clare. Her anxiety grew at all the new faces. She shook hands first with Elizabeth’s husband, Hank, the other Nelson. He stood at about six feet four inches and was stocky. He probably played tackle at Money Creek High. His smile was broad in his craggy face. He put his coffee down and took Clare’s hand with both of his. She’d met him during her interview two weeks earlier and been immediately comfortable with him. Elizabeth then introduced her to the firm’s three other associates and announced they’d all get to know Clare better at a party she was holding for her at the Nelson home that Friday night. Clare had to feel better by then. She couldn’t take much scrutiny in her present condition.
Elizabeth took her into her large office next to the conference room where she settled behind her desk as Clare sat in front of her. The room was a light salmon color and smelled of the coffee brewing on a sideboard.
“I know starting a new job can be overwhelming. Why don’t we put you to work so you can focus on something?” She reached over to the corner of her mahogany desk and picked up a file. It took two hands, stuffed as it was with a mishmash of papers. “Oleg v. Peterson Agriculture. We’re working this up for trial, which may start in several months. You’ll have to work fast to get up to speed.”
Clare was uneasy. How could she work? She could barely keep her head up. She’d never withdrawn from drugs. It was far worse than she ever thought it would be. “What’s it about? I’m eager to get started.”
“Our client, Peterson Ag, is the corporate farm that maintains several methane gas lagoons on its properties. Oleg, a farm worker, fell into a lagoon and died. That’s the nutshell.” Elizabeth was leaning back in her chair, looking closely at Clare. “It’s important we get a good result in this case.”
“Isn’t that true for every case?”
“It is. But Peterson Ag is our largest client. Hank handles all their business matters, and the workers compensation and litigation fall to me. We want to keep them happy.”
“Pardon my ignorance, but what is a methane gas lagoon? It sounds post-apocalyptic.”
Elizabeth laughed. “You’re about to practice the kind of law that we often do here, involving farms and agriculture. A methane gas lagoon holds the waste slurry of the livestock on a farm. For corporate farms this can amount to a large network of lagoons that are literally full of shit. The methane gas from the slurry can be deadly.”
“It sounds like a workers comp case to me.”
“It is. But as we were investigating his compensation case, we discovered there was a product recall involving the guard railing that failed. Oleg had been standing on a walkway surrounding the lagoon. According to another worker with him, he simply leaned on a gate in the guard rail and it gave way, plunging him into three feet of slurry. Our position is Peterson Ag never received the recall, and if that’s so, and the manufacturer knew the gate was defective, it introduces a punitive damages case against them. Ogden Lagoons makes the lagoons. We’ve brought them into the litigation.”
“Why didn’t the other guy pull Oleg out?”
“Not everyone’s a hero. He said he wasn’t willing to go into the slurry and he didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed by it. He ran for help instead, but Oleg was dead before anyone got to him. The autopsy showed he’d hit his head hard in the fall, but that wasn’t what killed him. He was probably knocked out and then suffocated.”
Clare took a deep breath and tried not to slide down her chair as if her bones had been removed. She knew it was possible to get shit cases in a rural county law firm, but she never imagined a literal shit case. The idea of falling face first into that slurry, as they politely call it, did no favors to her stomach.
“I’ll take you to the case room. The lagoon manufacturer just produced their documents the other day, and I’m putting you in charge of the review. Jo will help you cull them, but their relevance and attorney privilege status will be left to you to decide. Obviously, we’re most interested in finding any evidence they sent the product recall to Peterson.”
Elizabeth led her into a room about twice the size of her office. It was lined with worktables against all the walls, with a larger worktable in the middle. At least a dozen boxes were stacked on the center table and the room smelled musty with old files. Reading documents was about as boring as it gets for a lawyer. How would she ever be able to do it without speed? Jo sat at the table with a stack of documents in front of her. Elizabeth introduced them.
“We met out front,” Clare said. She turned to Jo. “Looks like I’m on the document review team with you.”
Jo smiled weakly. “Great.” She turned her head back to her documents.
Elizabeth didn’t seem to notice Jo’s rudeness. “Jo will show you how we process the documents.”
“Would it be okay if I spend some time going through your file before starting in on the document production? I want to fully understand what I’m looking for.” Clare needed the cover that reading a file could provide. She couldn’t stand the idea of spending the rest of the day with Jo, not in her condition.
“Of course. Let’s get it from my office.” Clare retrieved the file and hurried to her own office. The first thing she did after sitting down was call Casey. She didn’t dare close her door on her first day, so she spoke sotto voce when he came on the line. “I need to see you tonight.”
Casey snorted. “So much for your new country life. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter. I want to get a bit of a supply from you to transition. Changing everything at once was foolish.”
“Do you mean you quit?”
“I threw all those pills away.”
“You should have returned them. I would have given you a refund. Why did you go cold turkey?”
“Because I’m stupid. I feel like crap. Turns out you’re not supposed to go off Valium all at once.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Clare could hear a slight whine in her own voice. Pathetic.
“Not my place. But I can’t meet you this evening,” Casey said.
Real panic washed through her. “Not even for a minute? I’ll be quick.”
“Not until midnight. I should be home by then.”
“Done. I’ll see you tonight.”
She disconnected and tossed her phone onto her desktop. Chicago was three hours away, so she’d leave at eight and get there early. She poured a cup of coffee in her new Nelson & Nelson mug and resigned herself to reading the file and taking notes until the end of the day. Elizabeth told her during her interview her firm’s hours were eight thirty to five, and no one expected her to stay later unless it was something that couldn’t wait. She wouldn’t try to make an impression by staying late tonight. She didn’t think she physically could.