“Was he troubled?” he asked.
“He was… quiet. Sullen. For him to smile or laugh was a rare event. He was a joy to work for, though. But I always thought him bothered by something. I never sensed he’d take his own life.”
He understood that observation perfectly. “It’s hard to see sometimes.”
“Peter was a good lawyer. He worked the files with expert precision.”
“It sounds like I have a lot to live up to.”
She grinned. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
“I bet you’ve seen a lot of people come and go from this office?”
“You could say that. We’re like a two-man law firm with only one client. But it’s a big client.”
She was right about that. He pointed at the stacked file boxes, which had been delivered a few minutes ago. “How many active workers’ comp cases do we have?”
“Two hundred and thirty-one,” she said with no hesitation.
He nearly smiled. This woman struck him as someone who knew every detail. A lot like his mother, who didn’t miss much either.
He mentally counted the boxes. Twenty-two. A lot, for sure, but not much different from his active cases at the DA’s office, or when he practiced law. Back then he’d handled pretty much whatever walked through the door. Small fees. Large fees. Sometimes no fee at all. He’d employed two assistants and together they’d run the office. When he closed things down it had been easy to find them new jobs. Their excellent reputations had preceded them. Nowhere he was, not as a boss, but as a mere employee. One small cog in a really big machine.
“I’ll leave you to become better acquainted with all your new clients,” she said, pointing at the boxes. “These are the active cases. The retired files going back ten years are downstairs. Anything older is in off-site storage.”
Good to know.
“One question,” he said. “Where did these boxes come from?”
“After Peter died,” she said, “we sent them to an outside firm in Savannah, and they’ve been temporarily keeping everything current. Now that you’re here, we’re back in business, so I had them returned. That firm is also available to us, if we need them, for any help on the files. But that has to first be approved by the general counsel.”
“Got it.”
She left and he decided to get the hard part over with. So he opened the first box and started transferring files to the three metal cabinets that lined one wall of his new office. Thankfully, the boxes were alphabetized and he used the time to note the names on each file. He kept emptying the boxes, filling the metal drawers, closing them with an annoying screech. He was working up a sweat, the building’s air-conditioning not all that efficient when it came to ridding heat and humidity.
Two cabinets were full.
He worked on the third, stacking the files on top, transferring them to the drawer one at a time and noticing the wide variety of thick and small. He was not looking forward to reading all that paper. But he would. He’d have to. No other way to be prepared. What had Confucius said?Without preparation there is sure to be failure.
Yep.
He filled the second drawer in the third cabinet and slid it shut a bit too hard, causing the stack of remaining files atop to slide back toward the wall. He managed to stop the avalanche, but not before one of the files fell behind the cabinet.
Just great.
He removed the pile from the top and stuffed it into the next drawer. Then he slid the half-empty cabinet out and spotted the file—which had miraculously dropped spine first, keeping its contents intact. He retrieved the folder and noticed something else lying on the floor, propped against the dusty wall.
A small frame.
He lifted it out and saw that it was a family picture. A woman and two small children standing in front of Cinderella’s castle at Magic Kingdom. A typical tourist shot that millions of families possessed. His parents had taken him there twice as a kid.
But this one was different.
The woman.
She’d come to his house last night.
10:40A.M.
