Page 93 of The List

HANK PASSED ON LUNCH AT THECOMFORTINN AND LEFT OUT Aside door, quickly driving two miles east into Concord. He arrivedat 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, wasa 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?”