*
Tate was taking a chance.
A big one.
So he had to work fast.
He tried the door to the old brick building on the edge of town, but as expected, the handle didn’t move. Locked tight.
He knocked and checked the awning that covered the entrance, searching for a security camera in the rafters where paint was peeling and an old bird’s nest was visible. Yeah, there was a camera, but he knew from experience that it was a fake, the kind bought online to deter trespassers.
No one answered.
He heard no signs of life from inside the building where Merritt Margrove had made his office.
Good.
Though it was early afternoon, the gray clouds and continuing snowfall gave him some kind of cover. Not much, but some. And he didn’t have time to wait for nightfall. He intended to get in and get out.
Using picks to open the front door, he slipped inside the musty old building and waited, just in case someone was inside, but again, nothing. Good.
He walked silently through the empty reception area, his boots covered with disposable shoe covers he’d picked up at an open house several months earlier and, of course, a pair of tight-fitting gloves.
Nerves taut, he clicked on the flashlight app on his cell phone and quickly made his way down a short hallway to Merritt Margrove’s office. Again he made short work of the simple office lock, let himself inside and left the door slightly ajar door behind him. Once more he paused, straining to hear any sounds of life, but heard nothing but the rattle of an old furnace keeping the interior of the building barely above freezing and occasionally the sound of a vehicle passing by.
The area where Margrove worked was a compact, cheaply paneled room with one exterior window, a massive desk, two faded client chairs and bookshelves filled with dusty tomes that appeared to have not been touched in ten years and what seemed like dead air tinged with the scent of stale cigarette smoke. One wall was covered in cheaply framed photographs of Margrove in his heyday where he posed with B-list celebrities, many of whom were now dead. One at a golf course, Margrove holding a putter and surrounded by his foursome, all in golf caps and loud outfits; another at a restaurant table, half-full drink glasses and ashtrays in front of Margrove and a beautiful woman whom Tate recognized but couldn’t name, an actress in movies now considered classics. On the wall behind his desk, proudly displayed were various degrees, certificates and diplomas.
But the whole place seemed disused.
Abandoned.
An empty work space for a once-high-profile attorney who had spiraled downward into obsolescence through a series of bad choices aided by alcohol, divorce and gambling. And the case that had brought him his most fame or, possibly, infamy? His defense of Jonas McIntyre in the slaying of his family. It hadn’t mattered that Jonas had been found guilty, Margrove had caught the media’s attention for a brief moment in time. And in his “fifteen minutes of fame” he’d been a bright, charismatic star before self-imploding.
So, R.I.P.
It was over now.
First, Tate tried the file cabinets, all standing in a row, like metal soldiers along the wall near the door. All locked tight.
No surprise there.
Next, Tate stole across the room to Margrove’s massive desk with its wide, well-used blotter and slid back the worn executive chair and glanced at his watch. He didn’t have much time. News of the attorney’s death was already getting out. He’d heard about it from one of his sources, a deputy who was close to retirement who had worked with Tate’s father back in the day.
He turned on the computer.
The screen lit and immediately demanded a password.
Not surprised, he tried the desk drawers. Fortunately, they all opened easily. The narrow tray drawer in the middle of the desk held nothing but pencils, pens, paperclips, two pairs of scissors, rubber bands, three lighters and an opened carton of cigarettes, several packs missing.
But no keys or passwords.
“Damn it,” he said under his breath.
The other drawers held a gym bag with a change of clothes that was so unused it was dusty, papers and supplies, a half-drunk bottle of Irish whiskey, but nothing worthwhile and no set of keys. He didn’t want to break into the file cabinets even if he could, and he couldn’t very well steal the desktop computer so he was stuck.
But Margrove had been old school, had grown up and completed his education and law degree before the widespread use of personal computers and the Internet. And in recent years, he’d had no secretary or legal assistant or junior partner. Margrove was an old one-man show. An old one-man show who once had a thriving firm filled with a staff eager to do his bidding, younger associates and aides who’d been tech-savvy and would have handled the mundane day-to-day routines of the suite of river-view offices located in downtown Portland.