Gray Mountain

“Very well put, Ms. Brevard,” Hump said. “That sums up our position nicely, and I’ll be happy to call the U.S. Attorney right now and clarify things.”

Mattie said, “There are over two hundred active files and a thousand more in storage. None of which have anything to do with Donovan Gray and his business. Do you really want to haul them back to your office and dig through them?”

A

Hump raised both hands and called for quiet. Frohmeyer stiffened his back and glared at Samantha. “We’ll start with your office. If we find what we’re looking for, we’ll take it and leave.”

“And what might that be?”

“Read the search warrant.”

Hump asked, “How many files do you have, Ms. Kofer?”

“Around fifteen, I think.”

Hump said, “Okay, let’s do this. Let’s place her files on the conference room table and you boys have a look. Go through her office and inspect whatever you want, but before you remove anything let’s have a chat. Okay?”

“We’re taking her computers, desktop and laptop,” Frohmeyer said.

The sudden interest in Samantha’s files was puzzling to Mattie and A

“Where is it?” Frohmeyer snapped.

“The technician has it. Some type of bug, I think.”

“When did you take it in?”

Hump threw up another hand. “She doesn’t have to answer that. The search warrant doesn’t give you the right to interrogate potential witnesses.”

Frohmeyer took a deep breath, fumed for a second, then gave them a sappy grin. He followed Samantha to her office and watched closely as she removed her files from the army surplus cabinet. “Nice place you got here,” he said like a real smart-ass. “Won’t take long to search this office.” Samantha ignored him. She carried her files to the conference room where Banahan and another agent began flipping through them. She returned to her office and watched Frohmeyer slowly poke through her two file cabinets and the drawers to her rickety desk. He touched every piece of paper but took nothing. She hated him for invading her private space.

One agent followed Mattie into her office; another followed A

“Are all the laptops gone?” Frohmeyer asked Hump when he finished digging through Samantha’s office.

A

“How convenient. Guess we’ll be back with another search warrant.”

“All fun and games.”

They picked through hundreds of retired files. Three of them climbed into the attic and pulled out records Mattie hadn’t seen in decades. The excitement gave way to monotony. Hump sat in the hallway and shot the bull with Frohmeyer while the ladies tried to return calls. After two hours, the raid lost steam and the agents left, taking with them nothing but Samantha’s desktop computer.

As she watched it leave, she felt like the helpless victim in a backward country where the police ran rampant and rights were nonexistent. It was simply wrong. She was being bullied by the cops because of her association with Jeff. Now her property was being confiscated, and her clients’ confidentiality was compromised. She had never felt so helpless.

The last thing she needed was a good grilling at the hands of Mattie and A

Mattie was waiting when she returned to the office at dark. The laptops were back, safe and untouched.

“Let’s go sit on the porch and have a glass of wine,” Mattie said. “We need to talk.”

“Is Chester cooking?”

“Well, we never skip di

They had a nice stroll to Mattie’s house and decided along the way it was too chilly for porch sitting. Chester was busy elsewhere, so they were alone. They sat in the den and had a sip or two before Mattie said, “Now, tell me everything.”

“Okay.”

36

At about the same time, Buddy Ryzer parked his pickup truck at a scenic overlook, and walked two hundred yards along a trail to a picnic area. He sat on a table, put a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. Two campers found his body late Monday night and called 911. Mavis, who’d been on the phone for hours, got the knock on the door. Panicked neighbors rushed over; the house was chaos.

Samantha was sleeping soundly when her cell phone began vibrating. She did not hear it. Absent an arrest, why would anyone feel the need to call his or her lawyer at midnight on a Monday?

She checked it at 5:30, soon after she awoke in the fog of reliving the FBI raid. There were three missed calls from Mavis Ryzer, the last one at 12:40. A message in a trembling voice delivered the news. Samantha suddenly forgot about the FBI.

She was really growing weary of all this death. Donovan’s still haunted her. Francine Crump’s was not untimely, but its aftermath was causing problems. Two days before, on Gray Mountain, Samantha had again seen the white cross marking the spot where Rose took her life. She had never met the Tate boys, but felt an attachment to their tragedy. She often thought of Mattie’s father and the way black lung killed him. Life could be harsh in the coalfields, and at that moment she missed the rough streets of the big city.

Now her favorite client was dead, and she was facing another funeral. She put on jeans and a parka and went for a walk. As the sky began to lighten, she shivered in the cold and once again asked herself what, exactly, was she doing in Brady, Virginia. Why was she crying over a coal miner she had met only three months earlier? Why not just leave?

As always, there were no simple answers.

She saw a kitchen light on at Mattie’s and pecked on the window. Chester, in his bathrobe, was making coffee. He let her in and went to fetch Mattie, who was supposedly awake. She took the news hard, and for a long time the two lawyers sat at the kitchen table and tried to make sense out of a senseless tragedy.

Somewhere in the pile of the Ryzers’ records, Samantha had seen a payment on a life insurance policy of $50,000.

“Isn’t there some type of exclusion for suicide?” she asked, cradling her cup with both hands.

“Typically, yes, but it’s only for the first year or so. If not, then a person could load up on insurance and jump off a bridge. If Buddy’s policy is older, then the exclusion has probably expired.”

“So, it looks like he killed himself for the money.”

“Who knows? A person who commits suicide is not thinking rationally, but I suspect we’ll find out that life insurance was a factor. He had no job, no benefits, and their small savings account was gone. That, plus three kids at home and a wife with no job. He was facing years of even more bad health, and the end would not be pretty. Every coal miner knows a victim of the disease.”

“Things start to add up.”

“They do. Would you like some breakfast, maybe a piece of toast?”

“No thanks. I feel like I just left here. I guess I did.” As Mattie topped off their coffees, Samantha said, “I have a hypothetical for you. A tough one. If Buddy had a lawyer ten years ago, what would have happened to his case?”

Mattie stirred in some sugar and frowned as she considered this. “You never know, but if you assume the lawyer was on the ball and found the medical records you discovered, and that he or she brought Casper Slate’s fraud and cover-up to the court’s attention, somewhere along the way, then you have to believe he would have been awarded benefits. Just speculating here, but I have a hunch Casper Slate would have acted quickly in order to keep their crimes away from the court. They would have conceded the claim, folded their tent so to speak, and Buddy would have received his checks.”