Page 42 of The List
DAY SIXTEEN
L EE AND H UGHES MET IN THE BOARDROOM. L EE HAD DECIDED ON its assured privacy after De Florio telephoned last night and expressed an urgent need to talk. A speakerphone sat on the conference table.
“Jon, you there?” Lee asked the beige box. “Where are you?”
“Inside a guesthouse at Hickory Row.”
“Tell Larry what you told me last night.”
De Florio went over what he’d witnessed at Bozin’s house and his conversation afterward.
“And your assessment?” Lee asked.
“Mr. Bozin definitely needs watching.”
“Quite a change in attitude from the other day.”
“I see no reason why Reed and Walker would be at Mr. Bozin’s house.”
“Maybe it’s just like Chris explained,” Hughes said. “He was trying to find something out.”
Lee was not persuaded. “And what could he find out? Chris knew the deal was done. There was no need to have any conversations with Reed or Walker. And I doubt seriously if Reed was going to ask Chris’ opinion on what the list is.”
“I agree,” De Florio said. “There is also one other observation. Mr. Bozin did not feel well. He was in obvious discomfort.”
“Anything particular?” Lee asked.
“When he rose from the chair he experienced a sharp pain in his abdomen and almost lost his balance.”
“I’ve noticed that Chris seems to have thinned lately,” Hughes said. “I just attributed it to exercising or dieting. He’s always been a nut about that.”
“Mr. Bozin indicated the situation was a minor medical problem. Nothing serious.”
“Maybe we should check a little further,” Lee said. “We’ll get back to you, Jon. Keep us informed of any further developments.” He clicked off the speakerphone. “Can you access the medical insurance records from here?”
“What are we looking for?”
“Any claims by Christopher Bozin.”
Hughes turned to the computer and punched the keyboard. A minute later, he announced, “On Bozin’s policy a claim was filed two days ago by a Dr. Darrin Edwards for diagnostic tests and an office visit.”
“How much?”
“One thousand eight hundred and forty-two dollars, which includes lab work done in-house.”
“How do we find out more?”
“I can request our claims handler verify the treatment.”
Even though the company was self-insured, it had proven too expensive to process claims in-house. Instead, the task was subcontracted to an outside firm. Still, all payments had to be approved by the accounting department before being forwarded.
“How long will it take to check this out further?” he asked.
“Beats the hell out of me. I’ve never done it before.”
12:00 P.M.
H ANK PASSED ON LUNCH AT THE C OMFORT I NN AND LEFT OUT A side door, quickly driving two miles east into Concord. He arrived at S. Lou Greene’s office just as the lawyer was bounding out the back door toward his red Jaguar.
“I was on my way to eat. Why don’t you come with me?” Greene said.
He’d never been seen in public with Greene and wasn’t about to start now. “I don’t think so, Lou. Order in? We need to talk.”
“I was looking forward to Chinese.”
“Domino’s delivers.”
They went back inside and upstairs to Greene’s office and took a seat.
“Take a look,” he said, unfolding the piece of paper and handing it over.
034156901 William Mesnan, May 23, Heart attack
456913276 Patrick Brown, May 21, Kidney failure
343016692 J. J. Jordon, June 6, Heart failure
295617833 Brandon Pabon, June 6, Drug overdose
178932515 Tim Featherston, June 7, Bee sting
236987521 Melvin Bennett, June 8, Anaphylactic shock
492016755 Paul Zimmerman, June 13, Hunting accident
516332578 Michael Ottman, June 9, Heart attack
“When I got my hands on Lee’s contract memo, I found this list. It was stored in a secured file that the main office maintains in the system. Blocked by a fancy firewall and password.”
“How in the world did you get past those?”
“Just a fluke. Lightning damaged the system. I don’t really know how it happened, all I know is it did.”
“Did it come like this?”
He shook his head. “Brent figured out they were Social Security numbers. He matched names to numbers, then noticed something funny and brought it to me. The two of us worked last night and filled in the gaps.”
Greene studied the list. “This guy here, Brandon Pabon, was a client. He died a couple of weeks ago. Broke my heart. I had a damn good case.”
“That’s what Brent said too.”
“He worked at the bag plant and got hurt on the job. Southern Republic tried to settle quick, but this guy had been around. He came to me, went to all the right doctors, said all the right things. I had the case ready to milk for two-hundred-thousand-plus when he popped one too many Valiums. Heroin too, I think.”
He wanted to know, “Was the company fighting the claim hard?”
“The usual. But Pabon understood how to play the game. He did what I told him.” Greene shook his head. “I lost some good fees on that one.”
He told Greene what he and Brent thought about the list.
“Brent is right about comp claims,” Greene said. “It’s far cheaper on the company for a worker to die than be injured. Your man Walker had a good eye on this one.”
“I told you he was smart.”
“What’s he going to do about it?”
“Nothing. Until he hears from me. I told him I wanted to look into it further and run it by you. Can you offer any wisdom?”
Greene studied the list. “I have to say, it’s damn suspicious. There are a whole lot of unanswered questions here. Ones only Southern Republic can offer. They may need to be confronted. Head-on.”
“Not until the contracts are done and final. I told Brent the same thing. I have to get those deals sealed first. The people on this list are dead. Waiting a few days to get to the bottom of this isn’t going to make a difference to them.”
“That’s a bit cold, isn’t it?”
“Yep. But at the moment I have to deal with the living who need their paychecks and benefits.”
He checked his watch.
“Speaking of which, I have to get back to the negotiations. All hell’s about to break loose. We’re going to get the company’s new offer changing the proposed contract length from three to five years. The other unions are not going to like that. It will be a long afternoon.”
Greene seemed in thought. “Before you go, let me make a copy of this. I want to think on it some more, too.”
12:45 P.M.
“ I DON’T LOVE YOU,” brENT SAID TO PAULA. “IT’S THAT SIMPLE. ”
“It’s her again, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s you and has been you for a long time.”
“Brent, we’ve been through this before.”
Little concern filled her voice. It was like they were having a disagreement over whether to eat in or go out. Not that her husband wanted a divorce.
“Again, Paula, we haven’t been through it. That’s the whole point.”
“You seriously plan to divorce me? What about our parents?”
“Not that they have anything to do with this, but they’ll understand.”
“And if they don’t?”
She always used others as her weapon of last resort. “Millions of people divorce and get along fine. There’s no reason why we can’t be one of those couples.”
“You plan to stay here in Concord?”
“Of course. This is my home. I practice law here.”
“You couldn’t seriously be considering marrying that ragamuffin?”
He could almost hear the thoughts swirling through her convoluted mind. What would the bridge group think? How would she explain things to her Thursday women’s club meeting? And the book club?
What others thought had always been important to her.
“Could you imagine Ashley Reed at a State Bar of Georgia function?”
In fact, Ashley would be far better there than the Academy Award performances he’d many times been forced to endure. Paula small-talking her way through the evening only to tell him on the way home how she despised nearly everyone there, repeating gossip he really didn’t want to know.
“Can we do this friendly, or will there be war?” he asked.
“What do you propose?”
“You keep this house and your car. I’ll help for a while with the mortgage and car payment. But you’ll need to go to work. I’m sure the board of education would love to have you back. We don’t have much debt, but what little we have I’ll take care of. The cash we have in the bank, we’ll split.”
“And what about your law practice?”
“That’s not on the table.”
“What if I want to make it an issue?”
“You don’t,” he said, and she seemed to understand that the battle lines would then be drawn, his eyes asking, Do you really want that fight?
“It’s over, Paula. It’s been over for some time. Let this end quietly.”
“I’m no fool, Brent. I know she’s a part of this.”
“Then you are a fool, because she’s not a part of anything.
Yes, Ashley is someone I care about—you knew that going in—but I’ve never been unfaithful to you.
I’ll admit. In my mind. In my heart. I wanted another woman.
But I never did anything about that. I’ve tried for three years to make this work—”
“I don’t understand you, Brent.”
“That’s your whole problem. You never have understood me.”
“I understand that she’s the problem and has been since day one.”
“If you recall, I came and told you I didn’t want to get married.”
“But there was the matter of our child.”
“There was always something that seemed to make it easy for us to put off the inevitable. This time there’s nothing.”
“I could hire the meanest divorce lawyer in town and fight you every step of the way.”
“You could. But you won’t.”
Containment was surely her major worry. And she needed time to generate an appropriate cover story to adequately explain the breakup.
Pressures from the job. He was always working.
No time for her. Maybe, if necessary to extract maximum sympathy, drop the rumor of another woman.
But careful there. That might mean she’d been inadequate in some way.
He watched her as the seriousness of the situation seemed to be settling in. For the first time in a long while she actually appeared concerned, perhaps thinking this was real.
“You love her? Don’t you?” Paula asked.
It had been the question he most dreaded, but he decided to be honest.
“I do.”
“You sorry bastard.”