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  The Associate

  A Harper Thriller Legal Thriller

  Rachel Sinclair

  Tobann Publications

  Copyright © 2017 by Rachel Sinclair

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

  For information about upcoming titles in the Harper Ross Legal Thriller series, sign up for my mailing list! You’ll be the first to know about new releases and you’ll be the first to know about any promotions!!!! http://eepurl.com/cTUHFP

  Johnson County Legal Thrillers (Kansas City, Missouri)

  Bad Faith - https://tinyurl.com/y3a6vtcm

  Justice Denied - https://tinyurl.com/y6l24d5u

  Hidden Defendant - https://tinyurl.com/y2od8qrd

  Injustice for All - https://tinyurl.com/y2znryaw

  LA Defense - https://tinyurl.com/y6o6j83f

  The Associate - https://tinyurl.com/y5kskl7c

  The Alibi - https://tinyurl.com/yy96k97t

  Reasonable Doubt - https://tinyurl.com/y6nw27kn

  The Accused - https://tinyurl.com/y2d9t3z7

  The Hate Crime - https://tinyurl.com/y5w4e24k

  Secrets and Lies - https://tinyurl.com/y6pwcjjw

  Until Proven Guilty - https://tinyurl.com/yxlllu7d

  Emerson Justice Legal Thrillers (Los Angeles)

  Dark Justice - https://tinyurl.com/y2ezwnny

  Southern California Legal Thrillers (San Diego)

  Presumption of Guilt - https://tinyurl.com/y2oowdwz

  Best Served Cold - https://tinyurl.com/yyzy5pr4

  Chapter 1

  Harper - Early October

  Erik Gregorian was currently my client. Against my will, of course. It turned out that Sargis Gregorian, Erik’s father, was not as good as his word. Who knew that a gangster and a thug would be somebody who wasn’t a man of honor? I had to laugh a little to myself when I asked myself that question. Of course Sargis was going to go back on his word. He had a son who was in trouble. He also seemed to be a cheapskate, because he apparently didn’t want to actually have to pay for an attorney to represent the kid. No, he wanted his legal representation for free. And, since I was intimidated by his threats to my girls, I was going to do what he asked me to do. I wasn’t going to try to cross him. I might never be rid of him. I knew that for a fact. I might have stepped into a mess of quicksand, and I wasn’t going to be able to ever get out of it.

  “Erik is coming in,” Pearl informed me. “At 2 PM.”

  I sighed. My little interlude in Los Angeles somewhat helped me, in that I was finally able to get some kind of a break and I was finally able to get my alcoholism under control. Hopefully for good. I came home and I found an AA sponsor. Her name was Katie Wright, and she had been on the wagon for 20 years. She was able to talk me off the ledge more than once in the past few weeks, and I was finally working through my 12 Steps.

  So, in a way, I was in a better place, mentally, than I was before I went out to LA. I was more relaxed, and, because I finally had an associate, Damien Harrington, who was helping me out. Liam McNeil, the associate that I hired before I went to Los Angeles, ended up going back to his large firm. That was my fault, of course – I threw him into the deep end, and didn’t really give him a life raft. Since he worked for a large firm, he knew very little about the nuts and bolts about practicing law. He thought that he wanted to get right in the courtroom, but he had little stomach for the kinds of clients he had to deal with. I thought that Liam was the right person, but if he wanted to stay in his ivory tower and not get his hands dirty, then he wasn’t the right person for my firm.

  Damien, on the other hand, was perfect for what I needed. He had experience in criminal defense, because he had worked for the Public Defender’s Office. He was used to trying cases. I was lucky that he was willing to become an associate as opposed to a partner, although he and I had talked about the possibility that he would become my partner in the future. I wanted to make sure he had what it took before I made him a full partner.

  So far, he was doing stellar. He was bringing in cases. I told him that he could eat what he killed, which meant that the cases that he brought in were his. He could work them, and he could keep the fees that he brought in. In addition to those cases that he brought in, I had him help me out with my cases. So, I had somebody who could cover for me in court when I needed it, and I had somebody who could second-chair me in trials. In short, I had somebody who could back me up when I really needed it.

  I was much more relaxed because of Damien, and I was also more relaxed because I finally hired an investigator. I had one before, but, for the past few years, I was doing my own investigation. That put additional pressure on me, and it never seemed that there was enough hours in the day. But Damien convinced me that I needed somebody to do the shoe-leather work, and he and I worked together to find Tom Garrett. Garrett was an ex-con who turned into a private investigator once he got out of the joint. He was very good at what he did, because he was a part of the criminal underground, so he knew a lot of the players in that world. He was able to bring me information, because his buddies from the streets knew that he was working for a criminal defense attorney, and they were eager to help their friends.

  Damien was going to help me with Erik’s case, too, as was Garrett. It was going to have to be all hands on deck to figure out exactly how it was that we were going to win the case for this kid. He was accused of killing a journalist. Her name was Shelly McMason, and she was working in the field, covering the kidnapping of a young girl who was subsequently sold into white slavery. Shelly was a brave reporter, not afraid to get her hands dirty, which meant that she befriended many members of Erik’s gang. The gang was a subset of the Armenian mafia, which controlled them from the headquarters in Los Angeles. Erik was the leader of that particular gang, so it was up to him to try to control his turf. As such, he decided that Shelly was dangerous, because she was getting too close to his operations. She was threatening to expose him and his men, so he decided that Shelly had to go.

  This was a problem because, as Sargis found, the police tend to turn a blind eye when hits were turned onto thugs. Sargis had apparently killed many people who were members of different gangs who were infringing up on Sargis’ turf. Since the people that he killed were other criminals, he never got into trouble for these hits. The “victims” in these cases were vermin that the cops wanted off the streets anyhow, so it was safe to say that the cops were happy to be rid of these men.

  It was the same in Kansas City. As Sargis had explained to me, Erik ran his turf as a general might run his troops. He took care of threats, and he did it swiftly and violently. Yet, he had never been charged with any of these murders. Bu
t Shelly was a different thing. She was a pretty young girl, only 23, a graduate from the University of Missouri’s journalism school. She was a Delta Gamma alumnus, which was one of the best sorority houses at MU, and she had ambitions to work for a national presidential campaign. Her family was wealthy and was considered to be old money. They owned a mansion in the Mission Hills area, which was where many old money people lived.

  In short, Shelly was definitely the kind of girl that people cared about. She was the kind of girl whose murder would rank as a national story in ordinary times. She was the kind of girl who might get an entire Dateline episode devoted to her killing. She wasn’t just some kind of low-profile victim who would get a small story in the Kansas City Star and nothing else. The fact that she was the victim in this case was a problem. Not just because she was a pretty young girl with a good family, but also because she was a journalist. She was murdered doing her job, and, because she was one of the press, the press was taking her killing very personally.

  The upshot was that I was stuck representing Erik, knowing that he was good for the murder. With the spotlight of the media glare trained upon me. And I wasn’t allowed to plead him out. Sargis made that extremely clear. I was going to have to try this guy’s case, and I was going to have to find a way to win it. As impossible as that seemed.

  Damien came into my office and sat down across from me. Damien was my age, 35, and I knew little about his personal background. He kept to himself about those issues. I knew that he was married, although I didn’t know how happily. I had heard him on the phone several times, talking in hushed tones, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear what he was saying. I did notice that, after he got off the phone during those times, he seemed slightly agitated and distracted. I didn’t pry, however. I didn’t know him well enough to ask him about what was going on. It wasn’t my business, anyhow, really.

  I also understood that he had two children – a son, Nathaniel, and a daughter, Amelia. He did talk about them, and he had pictures of them in his office. Nathaniel looked a lot like Damien – dark curly hair cut short on the sides and slightly longer on top, green eyes, olive skin, lean. He was 8. His sister, Amelia, age 6, was the opposite of Nathaniel and Damien – she was small, blonde and pale. She had the same blue eyes as her brother and father, however. I could see that she was a Harrington by looking at her eyes. Other than that, however, I would have never guessed that she was kin to Damien.

  “So,” Damien said. “You got that kid coming in, huh? The Armenian thug?”

  “I do,” I said. “The Armenian thug. I have no idea how it is that I’m supposed to win this case. But I have to. Of course I always give my clients my all, but, on this one, I’m going to have to give him even more than usual. If I don’t…” I sliced my hand across my neck. “Seriously, that Sargis guy scares the shit out of me. He’s so strange. You meet him, and you almost feel as if you should be hearing classical music piping in through his walls. You can imagine him going to the opera and appreciating every note. You can see him reading Dostoyevsky and Proust in his spare time. He probably plays chess with his men. You get the idea. Yet, he’s a thug, as sure as his son is. He has killed, personally killed people when he was coming up through the ranks, and, even now, he personally kills people. Mostly he has his henchmen do it, but, every once in awhile, he carries out the murders himself. I still have a hard time trying to square the outward image with the monster within.”

  Damien shook his head. “I don’t know how you got roped into this bullshit, Harper. How do you get stuck with representing a guy for free? And forced into finding a way to win the case, or else your girls will end up kidnapped?” He crossed his arms in front of him. “Personally, I think that you should call his bluff. You can’t give into terrorists like that. That’s common knowledge. You give into terrorists and blackmail, and it just never ends. Before you know it, you’re representing the entire Gregorian clan and not earning a dime off of it. That’s not fair to you. You got a firm to run here.” He smiled. “And now you got an associate to pay too. Don’t forget that.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, as far as the firm balance goes, I’m pretty flush. I’ve had some major cases lately. I’m not too worried about the money thing.”

  “You will be once this jackass starts monopolizing your time with his freebie cases. I’m telling you, this Erik case is only the beginning. You let Sargis get away with this, and you’ve opened the door to being completely manipulated. Lucky for you that I just brought in a wrongful death case that will give your bottom line a huge boost.” He nodded his head. “It’s a good one, too. I’m really lucky that I found it.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “And I’m assuming you’re going to share it?”

  “Of course I’m going to share it. I can’t work it on my own. But it’s a case that I found yesterday afternoon when I was visiting my daughter Amelia in the hospital.” He looked sad all of a sudden. “So, yeah, I was visiting Amelia in the hospital when I got to talking with this woman. She told me that her son was in surgery. Amelia was also in surgery, and there really weren’t other people in the waiting room, so we were able to talk and kinda bond.”

  I wanted to ask him where his wife was while his daughter was in surgery, but I didn’t want to pry. “Go on.”

  “Her son was in the middle of his a routine hernia surgery. She didn’t seem all that concerned about it. It was in the oncology ward, though, where her son was having his surgery, so I figured out that the hernia probably wasn’t all that was going on with her son. And it wasn’t. He was also suffering from leukemia. But the mom, her name is Betsy Ward, she said that her son, Austin was his name, was in remission. The hernia was being repaired by her kid’s usual cancer doctors because the doctors thought that the hernia might have resulted from an earlier surgery that the doctors did on Austin, which was a bone-marrow transplant.”

  I wrote down what he was saying, and wrote a question mark by my notes. I was going to have to come back to the questions that I had for Damien. “So, Austin, the son, was involved in routine hernia surgery, and what happened?”

  “Well, as I was sitting there, the doctor came out and talked to Betsy. I could tell by the way that the doctor was talking to her that it wasn’t good news. Then Betsy started to cry and wail and she collapsed on the seat. The doctor didn’t even try to put his arm around her. He just walked out of the room. So, I went over to her. She told me that the doctor had just come out to tell her that her son was dead. He died on the operating table.” He shook his head. “The kid died during a hernia surgery. That kind of thing shouldn’t happen. So, I got the mom’s permission to get the kid’s medical records, and I had an independent doctor review them. According to that other doctor, Austin apparently died because he was given Propofol in a high dose. Plus, according to this other doctor, Dr. Peter Wagner, Austin wasn’t in remission at the time he had that hernia surgery. In fact, it looked like Austin’s leukemia had advanced to the point where he was near death at the time that he did his surgery.”

  “What’s wrong with Propofol?” I asked Damien. “That’s a drug that has been commonly used in general anesthesia for quite some time.”

  “Nothing is wrong with Propofol per se,” Damien said. “Except for the fact that Austin was allergic to the drug. They used Propofol in his earlier surgery for the bone marrow transplant, and he had an allergic reaction then to the drug. They almost lost him during that surgery, and it was determined that Austin was allergic to Propofol. Yet, the anesthesiologist used it on him again. That’s what makes this whole thing a pretty open and shut case, if you ask me.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, but it’s kinda a dog of a case. After all, according to Dr. Wagner, Austin was not long for this world no matter what happened in that surgery. That would mean that the damages would be extremely limited.” The way that actual damages are calculated in wrongful death cases depended heavily upon what the lifetime earnings of the dead person would have been over the co
urse of an average life. Economists and actuaries are employed in the courtroom to testify about the earnings potential of the person in question. That was a complicated formula as it was – it was dependent upon the person’s age, education, profession and income at the time of the death. It sounded like Austin not only didn’t have much income, if he was a minor, but he also didn’t have much potential income, if he was dying.

  “It’s not that much of a dog case,” Damien protested. “Austin might have only been 18, but he had been accepted at Harvard and MIT, and he was a mathematical genius. He was carrying a 4.4 GPA at Pembroke Hill, which, as you probably know, is the most exclusive private school in the Kansas City area. He had a lot of potential. His vision in life was to work for NASA. He had the grades and the drive to do it. Not only that, but his mother had enrolled him in a clinical trial that hopefully would have helped him. His bone marrow transplant apparently didn’t really work to put him into remission, but this clinical trial sounded good. If we can convince the jury that there was a chance that Austin could have lived and gone on to fulfill his potential, then there’s a chance that this case might be a good one.”

  I sighed. I knew what he was saying, but I hated wrongful death cases. Especially wrongful death cases that involved medical malpractice. They were expensive to try – by the time you get all your experts lined up and paid, you typically ended up paying $100,000 out of your own pocket. That meant that you better win the case. It wasn’t like a criminal case, where the expenses were relatively nominal – you might have to get expert witnesses involved, and you often had to do depositions, which cost some money, but you could conceivably try a criminal case with almost no money out of pocket, if you do all the investigation yourself.