Lich said he needed a break before they went over to The Mahogany. Mac was okay with that. It gave him some time alone with the case to work through the evidence. One thing Mac learned from watching his father over the years was that at some point in a case you needed to sit down and take a look at everything and see if a pattern, string or trail developed.
In law school, a professor happened along Mac studying in the law library. He saw Mac had written ‘jurisdiction’ and drawn a box around it on his legal pad. He had a line to the left that read ‘personal jurisdiction’ and a line to the right that read ‘subject matter jurisdiction,’ the two components necessary for a court to have jurisdiction over a particular case. Then notes were jotted around each of the words. The professor smiled and said, “Mr. McRyan, you are mind-mapping.”
A mind-map is essentially a diagram that uses words, ideas, tasks or other items arranged around a central key word or idea. Mac saw his father do it when he was a kid. Mac picked it up and used it in college and then law school. He never knew it was called mind-mapping but that’s what Professor Becker was telling him and Mac apparently had a good understanding of jurisdiction. He aced the Civil Procedure final.
While Lich took his leave for a few hours, Mac jotted ‘Gordon Oliver’ in the middle of the page, drew a rectangle around it and started jotting down notes in bullet point format:
• Associate at KBMP for 4yrs.
• A very good young litigator according to several attorneys including Preston, Busch, Bernier, Anthony, Lund and Harris.
• Worked killer hours, strictly litigation, going to trial next week.
• No problems professionally at work.
• Mr. “All the tools in your toolbox.” His signature catch-phrase for work and pleasure.
• Womanizer. Slept with at least six women at law firm, probably more. 1. Burrows alibi’d out. 2. Mathis home with boyfriend. 3. Bernier in Atlanta. Other women are not good suspects, no apparent motive (might need to evaluate further?).
• The Mahogany is favorite bar. Confrontation at bar but it was with Burrows, who alibi’d out.
• No other apparent social life beyond law firm and bar.
Mac drew another line away from Gordon Oliver and jotted down ‘Crime Scene’ and drew a box around it:
• Alley at The Mahogany.
• Time of Death - Midnight - 2:00 a.m.
• Blunt force trauma to temple was the fatal blow.
• Not a robbery. Still had wallet, watch and cell phone. New Ford F-150 left behind. If robbery all would have been taken and body left behind.
• Body stuffed into truck bed. Why? To hide it. Why hide it?
• Hit from behind by someone who was tall, at least 6’2" based on wound angle. Weapon unknown.
• Brass plate with blood. Unsure if from murder weapon. Forensics still evaluating.
• Why use the alley? If not robbery, then he was killed by someone who knew him. Alley was a good location but killer had to know that he would be there. Only someone who knew him well would know he would be there. The killer knew him - really knew him.
Mac circled that notation on the legal pad. The killer knew him—really knew him. So how many people really knew him?
Mac leaned back in his desk chair and twirled his pen in his fingers. Now that was something to think about. Only someone who knew him or talked to him all the time would know he was at the bar that night and at that time. Someone could have followed him or they knew he was there and then could lay in wait.
Mac opened the folder on his desk that contained Oliver’s cell phone records. He’d asked that the records identify the number and identity on the other end of the call. A cell phone was essentially one of Oliver’s appendages according to the attorneys at his firm. The records reflected that. On the day he was murdered, he had thirty-three cell phone calls. Mac shook his head. A record day for him might be ten calls and this guy had thirty-three. The day he was killed was not an outlier. As best Mac could tell, he averaged somewhere around twenty-five calls a day.
As for the day he was killed, the calls appeared to be from a collection of clients and from the firm. A number of calls were identified as being from the clients he was going to trial with next week on the RFX Industries shareholder suit. Opposing counsel in the case must have been from French and Burke as there were three calls from that firm. Gordon had calls from Stan Busch, Michael Harris, Constance Bernier as well as two from his secretary and one from a paralegal. The firm calls were mostly between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. and as Mac looked back on his notes, Oliver took a long lunch that day with some other attorneys from the firm. Towards the end of the day, there was one call from Stan Busch at 6:30 p.m. and another from Michael Harris at 8:22 p.m. Mac made a note to follow-up on those phone calls to see what Harris and Busch discussed.
He had to have been killed by someone who knew him, but why? Could be the womanizing but Mac was starting to think that was not the cause. Martin Burrows was their one good suspect on that angle and he was out. The others just didn’t feel right nor did the evidence really point in their direction. Nobody else seemed bitter enough to want to do anything to Oliver.
Mac looked at the crime scene photos and in particular the pictures of Oliver. He had this nagging impression that given how the murder took place, the killer didn’t really know what he was doing. It was as if there wasn’t a plan. The first blow to the back of Oliver’s head was with something strong enough to stun him and knock him over but, according to the coroner’s report, it would not have been enough to kill him or even do any real damage beyond stunning him. It was Oliver hitting his head on the bumper that was fatal and that wound appeared to Mac as if it happened by chance or luck or even possibly bad luck. It would have taken real talent to have known that hitting Oliver from behind would have caused him to fall and hit the bumper. If the killer went for revenge, he would have used a tire iron or a bat if the plan was to hit Oliver from behind. Neither the evidence at the crime scene nor the wounds to Gordon Oliver revealed the use of any such weapon. The killer may have brought and, it appeared at this point, probably left with the weapon used to hit Oliver in the back of the head. But in the end, there was a definite lack of viciousness to the murder. It was almost as if it happened by accident.
Mac kept thinking that the killer knew Oliver well. Knew his habits, his routines, where he liked to hang out. The killer knew, had to know, that Gordon Oliver was granted the privilege of parking in the back at The Mahogany. That he would be there, that he would come out the back. Given what they knew of Oliver thus far, it struck him that somehow his murder tied back to the law firm. These were the only people who seemed to know him really well.
“It must be the law firm,” Mac muttered.
“Why?” Lich answered. Mac was so engrossed in what he was doing he didn’t realize his partner was back.
“How long you been back?”
“About ten minutes or so there, partner. I’ve just been sitting here watching you. You were so intensely focused I didn’t want to interrupt. So why is it the law firm and not some spurned lover or the lover of a spurned lover?”
“I’ve spent the last two hours running through the case. The angry boyfriend, fiancé or husband theory doesn’t add up for me.”
“At least not yet,” Lich cautioned. “Given how prolific our guy is, I’m sure there is a woman he bedded that we’ve yet to uncover.”
“I’m not dismissing it completely,” Mac answered. “There could certainly be someone out there we are not aware of yet. But even with that, I don’t buy the angry boyfriend angle anymore.”
“Why not? Seems that’s the one thing he was doing that pissed people off.”
“True.”
“So why the firm and not some jilted lover or boyfriend or husband or ex-husband?”
“Because of where he was killed, Dick. He was killed by someone who knew his habits, where he went, when he went there and that he would park his truck behind the bar. At this point, the only people who know Oliver well enough to know those things are the people at the law firm. I’m just thinking it has to be someone there and Oliver knows something, has something on someone, maybe he saw something that made someone need to track him to the alley behind The Mahogany for some reason. We find that, we find our killer.”
Lich sat down in the chair next to Mac’s desk. “Let’s assume you’re right, which I’m not completely convinced that you are, but let’s say you are. That means going deep, much deeper at the law firm. You may know this better than I but at least in my experience, law firms do not give into something like that willingly.”
“No, they’ll fight us because it probably means us getting into e-mail, files and all that stuff lawyers and law firms like to claim privilege over although that’s a bunch of bullshit,” Mac answered derisively, looking at his watch. “Look, it’s after six now so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get with the County Attorney’s office to evaluate our more involved access at the law firm. In the meantime, we can go back to Oliver’s apartment and see if we missed anything. Then we can cover our bases and go to The Mahogany.”
“I can’t wait,” Lich sighed.