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As I was letting myself into the office Monday morning I heard my phone ring. A bulky package was leaning against the door, left by a courier service. I tucked it under my arm and unlocked the door in haste, stepping over a pile of mail that had been shoved through the slot. I paused to snatch up the lot of it and scampered into the i
“Must be the package that was left at my door. I just now walked in and haven’t had a chance to open it. What is it?”
“The transcript of the deposition he took from the accident expert earlier this week. Call me as soon as you’ve read it.”
“Sure thing. You sound happy.”
“I’m curious at any rate. This is good stuff,” she said.
I shrugged off my jacket and tossed my shoulder bag on the floor beside my desk. Before I opened the packet, I walked down the short hall to my kitchenette and set up a pot of coffee. I’d forgotten to bring in a carton of milk so I was forced to use two flat packets of fake stuff once the coffee had finished dripping into the carafe. I returned to my desk and opened the manila mailer. Then I leaned back in my swivel chair and put my feet on the edge of the desk with the transcript opened on my lap, coffee cup to my right.
Tilford Bra
The first page listed correspondence, marked “Plaintiff’s Exhibits #6-A Through 6-H,” and went on down the numbered lines. Included was Bra
A deposition is, by nature, a less formal proceeding than an appearance in court since it occurs in a lawyer’s office instead of a courtroom. Testimony is given under oath. Both plaintiff’s and defendant’s attorneys and a court reporter are in attendance, but there’s no judge.
Hetty Buckwald was there representing the Fredricksons, and Lowell Effinger was on hand in Lisa Ray’s behalf, though neither the plaintiffs nor the defendant were present. Years before, I’d looked up Ms. Buckwald’s bona fides, convinced her law degree was from Harvard or Yale. Instead, she’d graduated from one of those Los Angeles law schools that self-promotes by way of big splashy ads pasted on freeway billboards.
I cruised through the repetitious early pages, where Ms. Buckwald worked to suggest that Bra
As soon as I’d read the file, I called Mary Bellflower, who said, “So what did you think?”
“I’m not sure. We know Gladys was injured. We have three inches of medical reports: X-ray results, treatment protocols, ultrasound, MRIs, X-rays. She might fake whiplash or a lower-back pain, but a cracked pelvis and two cracked ribs? Please.”
“Bra
“What, like Millard beat the crap out of her or something like that?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
“But her injuries were fresh, right? I mean, this wasn’t anything that’d happened weeks before.”
“Right. It could have happened prior to their getting in the van. Maybe he was taking her to the emergency room and he saw his chance.”
“Not to be dense about it, but why would he do that?”
“He had liability insurance, but no collision coverage. They’d dropped their home-owner’s policy because they couldn’t afford the premiums. No catastrophic medical, no long-term disability. They were totally exposed.”
“So he deliberately rammed into Lisa Ray’s car? That’s risky, isn’t it? What if Lisa had been killed? For that matter, what if his wife had been killed?”
“He wouldn’t have been any worse off. Might have been better for him actually. He could have sued for wrongful death or negligent homicide, half a dozen things. The point was to blame someone else and collect the dough instead of having to pay it out. He’d been badly injured himself and a jury awarded him $680,000. They’ve probably pissed it all away.”
“Jesus, that’s cold. What kind of guy is he?”
“Try desperate. Hetty Buckwald went after Bra
“I’ll go up there again. Maybe the neighbors know something we don’t.”
“Let’s hope.”
I returned to the Fredricksons’ neighborhood and started with the two neighbors directly across the street. Their knowledge, if any, probably wouldn’t come to much, but at least I could rule them out. At the first house, the middle-aged woman who answered the door was pleasant but professed to know nothing about the Fredricksons. When I explained the situation, she said she’d moved in six months before and preferred to keep her distance from her neighbors. “That way, if I have a problem with any one of them, I can complain without worrying about someone’s feelings being hurt,” she said. “I tend to my affairs and expect them to tend to theirs.”
“Well, I can see your point. I’ve had good luck with my neighbors until recently.”
“When neighbors turn on you, there’s nothing worse. Your home is supposed to be a refuge, not a fortified encampment in a war zone.”
Amen, I thought. I gave her my card and asked her to call me if she heard anything. “Don’t count on it,” she said, as she closed the door.
I went down her walkway and up the walk leading to the house next door. This time the occupant was a man in his late twenties, thin face, glasses, underslung jaw with a tiny goatee meant to give definition to his weak chin. He wore loose jeans and a T-shirt with horizontal stripes of the sort a mother would select.