Brad Meltzer - Dead Even

“See you later,” Sara said as Conrad left the office.

When the officer answered his phone, Sara explained that she was calling about the Kozlow arrest and wanted to speak to him via videophone. She then hung up the phone and waited for the officer to call her back. Two minutes later, her phone rang.

“Pick it up and hit ‘Receive,’” Guff said, pointing to an electronic icon on her computer screen.

When she followed Guff’s instructions, Officer McCabe’s face appeared in full color on her computer screen. “Can you hear me?” Sara asked, leaning toward the tiny video camera.

“Oh, great.” The officer rolled his eyes. “A rookie.”

“Save your moaning. I know what I’m doing.”

“She’s got six years of law firm experience,” Guff said, sticking his head into the camera’s path.

“Who the hell is that?” McCabe asked.

“No one,” Sara said, pushing Guff away. “Now why don’t we get started. Tell me everything that happened.”

With his high-back Moroccan leather chair pulled up to his nineteenth-century French partner’s desk, Oscar Rafferty calmly flipped through the pages of the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof German rights contract. All it took was a phone call. Actually, that wasn’t true. It was a phone call and a quick visit in his office. That’s what closed the deal. Since the moment Rafferty entered the world of intellectual property, he’d known the power of making an impression. That was how he had gotten where he was. From the hand-sewn carpets to the Calder mobile in the corner of the room, he always did his best to show the best. And if he needed more proof of the payoff, all he had to do was look at the drying ink on the contract in front of him. It had taken less than forty-five minutes to make that four million dollars. Even by banking industry standards, that was a great hourly rate.

Expanding on a theme, Rafferty always kept three phones on his desk. With current technology, he could easily combine them in one, but the visual effect on his clients was worth the loss of desk space. When the middle phone rang – his personal line – he picked it up on the first ring. “This better be good news.”

“I don’t know if it’s good news, but it is information,” the private detective said at the other end of the line. “Her name is Sara Tate. She’s thirty-two years old and was born and raised in Manhattan. Six months ago, she was fired from her old law firm, which really brought her down a peg, and she just started at the DA’s office. According to some of her old associates at the law firm, she’s aggressive, blunt, and as passionate as they come. One guy said she second-guesses herself a lot and that she can be real volatile, but he also agreed she’s no fool.”

“What else did they say?” Rafferty asked, searching for weaknesses. “How is she in court?”

“Only one of them had seen her do anything firsthand. He said she comes off as a real person, which is a tough feat for most lawyers these days.”

“You think she’s a threat?”

“Every new prosecutor’s a threat. When it’s their first case, they’re all trying to succeed. What makes Sara dangerous, though, is that it’s about more than success – with the cutbacks, she needs this job to survive, and that means she’s going to be pulling out every stop to win.”

“That’s what Victor said.”

“The man knows his business.”

Rafferty pondered this. “Do we know why she got fired?”

“Not yet, but I can find out. My guess is she crossed someone she shouldn’t have. No one would get into it, but I could hear it in their voices. If you push her, she’ll push back – hard.”

“What about her family?”

“Middle-class background. Dad was a salesman, Mom was a legal secretary. Both of them came from nothing, although you couldn’t tell it by looking at Sara. They died years ago in a car wreck, but according to her old colleagues, it’s still a rough issue for her.”

“Good. That’s one way in. Any other relatives?”

“She has a grandfather and a husband.”

“Tell me about the husband.”

“His name is Jared Lynch. He’s from a wealthy suburb in Chicago, but worked hard to get where he is. Dad’s a retired stockbroker; Mom still plays housewife. He’s got two younger brothers, and they all live in Chicago. Financially, Sara and Jared have a small IRA set aside for them by Jared’s family, but in terms of available funds, they’re barely scraping it together. When Sara lost her job, the income loss hit them pretty hard. From what I can tell, they cashed in almost all of their savings in the past six months.”

“That’s what happens when they kick you out of a high-paying job,” Rafferty commented. “What does Jared do?”

“For the past six years, he’s been doing defense work at a law firm – big place called Wayne and Portnoy.”

“He’s a defense attorney?”

“Can you believe it? Two lawyers in one family. Shoot me now or forever hold your peace.”

“Actually, that’s good news.”

“How do you figure?”

“Let’s just say I’m starting to see some interesting possibilities.”

At their Upper West Side brownstone, a block from the Museum of Natural History, Sara ran up the stairs two at a time and unlocked the front door of their apartment. The living room was dark. “Damn,” she said. Jared wasn’t home yet. She flipped on the lights and hit the play button on the answering machine. There was one message. “Sara, it’s Tiffany. Are you there?” Sara listened to the voice of the young girl she mentored through the Big Sisters program. “Want to hear what it’d sound like if you were a rock star?” Tiffany asked. “Saaaaaara! Saaaaaara!” There was a short pause “Saaaaaara! Saaaaaara!” There was a longer pause. “You didn’t think I’d do it again, did you? Anyway, call me. Don’t forget we have plans Thursday night. Hi, Jared. Bye.”

Laughing at the message, Sara headed to the kitchen and started dinner. Their division of chores was simple: The first person home did the cooking, the second one home did the cleaning. Given a choice, Sara always preferred to clean and Jared favored cooking. It was something he had picked up from his father, who liked to experiment in the kitchen.

Sara and Jared’s one-bedroom apartment encompassed the second floor of the five-story brownstone. And while it had a separate dining room and a nice-sized bedroom, the largest room in the apartment was the living room. With its overstuffed slipcovered sofa and its wine-colored oversized armchair, it was the best place to relax and unwind.

Decorated in what Sara called a “funky heirloom” style, the apartment was a mixture of Sara’s informality and Jared’s love of collecting. During law school, Jared had spent his time hunting down lobby cards and rare movie posters. When he graduated, he moved on to actual movie props. And when they had paid back exactly half of Sara’s eighty-thousand-dollar law school loans, Jared celebrated by buying his first expensive collectible: one of Kirk Douglas’s shields from the film Spartacus , which was hung on the wall over the sofa. Since that time, he’d added a bag of corn nuts from Heathers , a salt-and-pepper-shaker set from Diner , an ornate scroll from A Man for All Seasons , and, the prize of his collection, the knife that Roman Polanski used to cut Jack Nicholson in Chinatown . Jared saw his collection as a way to preserve pop history, while Sara saw it as a way to keep Jared happy.

Sara, on the other hand, was kept happy by the six framed pictures on the right-hand wall. Over the past six years, on every wedding anniversary, Sara had drawn a portrait of Jared. Although never professionally trained, she had always loved to draw. She didn’t like to paint, she never sketched, and when she drew, it was never with pencil – only with ink. She didn’t need it to be perfect; what you saw was what you got.