Something Unfortunate

Chapter 3

THREE

Clint Raymond’s heartbeat picked up its pace as he walked toward the firm’s main conference room. He could almost hear its steady pounding. He wiped sweaty palms on his pants leg. He had been in the conference room hundreds of times for depositions, meetings, and client conferences. Literally hundreds of times. But he had never felt this nervous before. Of course, he had never been asked to meet with a police detective investigating the murder of one of his partners – a sobering thought he believed would make anyone nervous.

Clint paused outside the conference room door and again wiped his hands on his pants leg. He took a deep breath, then grabbed the door and pushed his way in.

The room’s centerpiece was a massive marble-topped table that spanned the room from north to south. Floor-to-ceiling windows faced west, overlooking the Dallas skyline. A huge black man sat at the far end of the conference table, studying notes on a pad. The pad looked like a child’s toy, dwarfed in the man’s oversized hands. He flashed a disarming smile Clint’s way.

“Mr. Raymond?” He stood and extended his hand. “My name is K.C. Hodges. I’m a detective in homicide.”

Clint shook the huge hand, hoping the detective wouldn’t notice his clammy palm. “Detective Hodges. I’m Clint Raymond.”

Clint pulled out a chair and sat quietly, sweaty hands folded on the table. Hodges studied his notes for a few minutes without saying a word, then looked up and smiled sympathetically at Clint.

“I’m sorry about your partner,” Hodges said. “I’m sure this is a shock to y’all.” He paused, then added, “You are a partner, isn’t that right? I understood that you and Mr. Hargrove are both partners.”

Clint nodded. “Ken’s been a partner for about six years, while I’ve been a partner for – oh, gosh, must be fifteen years now.”

“Had Mr. Hargrove been a member of this firm as long as you have? If he’s been a partner for less than half as long as you, I would guess he hasn’t been here as long. He’s obviously older than you, so I assume he came here from another firm.”

Clint smiled at the tribute to his youthful appearance. “I’ve been here a good bit longer than Ken. He bounced around from firm to firm for a while before he landed here. But for your information, we’re about the same age.” He grimaced involuntarily as he said the last line, acutely aware that he had spoken in present tense when, based upon the body lying in Ken’s office, it should have been past tense.

Hodges whistled. “I never would have guessed that. In fact, I was surprised to hear you say how long you’ve been a partner. I wouldn’t have guessed you’ve been practicing law that long, much less been a partner.”

“A common mistake. I guess I have good genes.”

Hodges glanced at his notes again, then turned and stared out the window. “Tell me about Frank Oliver and how he got along with Ken Hargrove.”

Clint took the detective’s lead and stared out the window. As a lawyer preparing witnesses to testify, he always told them to answer only the question asked, not to volunteer anything, and to carefully think through each question before answering. He took his own advice. After fifteen or twenty seconds of hesitation, he answered simply, “They didn’t get along.”

Hodges swiveled his head. “That’s it? They didn’t get along? How about a little detail?”

“I don’t really know how much detail to give you. I mean, they didn’t get along.”

“Didn’t get along, how?”

“For whatever reason, Frank thought Ken was trying to steal his clients and take over his position as head of the section we work for. And so, they didn’t get along.”

“Anything to that? That stealing clients thing?”

Clint looked at Hodges and smiled. “How much time you got?”

“All the time we need. Give me the history all the way back to B.C.”

Clint took a deep breath. “Okay, this goes all the way back to before Erwin Christopher retired. So, literally B.C. – Before Christopher.”

K.C. smiled. “The other guy in the firm name?”

“Other guy?”

“Besides Mr. Oliver. And let’s not forget Mr. Clark.”

“That’s right. Erwin helped found the firm and, in the process, built a national reputation as a business litigator, particularly construction litigation. He later branched out to include energy-related companies during the oil boom in Texas, the one back in the Eighties. That was a little before my time, but since I’ve been here, our section has also gotten into litigation involving the renewable energy industry and even some IT and trade secret litigation. Primarily due to that, we’re the most profitable section in the firm. Not the highest-grossing section – some of the bigger sections, like insurance defense, gross more, but that’s because they have more lawyers and more clients, but they bill at lower rates. But we are the most profitable, because we can command the highest rates. And not just regional stuff. I’m talking about nationwide.

“Another thing you’ve got to understand is the firm’s compensation structure. Partners get rewarded for not only the work they do, but also the work they bring in, no matter who does the work. Sort of an ‘eat what you kill’ mentality. Erwin was the highest paid lawyer in the firm.”

“I think I can see where some of this is going,” Hodges said. “When he retired, someone had to take over that business – and maybe some of that income.”

“That’s right. Frank and a partner named Jeff Alden were next in line. For whatever reason, Erwin decided to groom Frank as his successor, putting him in touch with the clients and letting them know that Frank was going to be ‘the man’ when Erwin left. After Frank took over, he started cutting off work to Alden, including access to clients, because he saw him as a threat. So, Alden left.”

“Leaving Frank with all that business to claim as his own.”

Clint nodded. “Most of the clients we work for in this section are clients Frank inherited from Erwin, but he did help build the IT and trade secret practice, along with renewable energy. The biggest problem has to do with Erwin’s old clients, though. Their loyalties were to Erwin, not Frank, and new, younger people have moved up in the ranks at those companies, so sometimes the relationships seem a little shaky. Ever since I’ve been here, Frank’s always been real protective of those clients, always worried that someone was going to try to steal them.”

“Like Ken Hargrove.”

Clint nodded again. “Like Ken Hargrove.”

K.C. scribbled a few notes, then looked at his pad as he framed his next question. “So, let’s get back to what I asked before. Was Ken Hargrove trying to steal Mr. Oliver’s clients?”

Clint hesitated before answering. This was not easy to explain, especially to someone who had never worked in a large law firm.

“The problem is trying to figure out how Frank’s mind works,” Clint said. “He sees the world a little bit differently than the rest of us do.”

Hodges arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not that easy to explain. Ever since I’ve been here, Frank has tried to keep any of us who work with him from having close contact with his clients. Like I said, he’s afraid we’re going to poach them.”

“Doesn’t that make it hard for you guys to practice law?”

“You have no idea. But that’s where the problems started. We were trying to get away from that mentality of his shielding us from the clients. Ken sorta spearheaded that whole deal. We all thought he was right, but he was more willing to act on it than the rest of us were.”

“Why are y’all afraid to take him on?” K.C. asked.

“Fear. We saw what happened to Jeff Alden.”

Clint paused as K.C. caught up with his notetaking. “Anyway,” he continued, “without Frank knowing it, or at least not knowing the full extent of it, Ken started dealing directly with some of the clients. He developed a real friendly relationship with a few of them and started getting new files directly from them instead of having them come to him through Frank. Some have even referred new clients to Ken. When Frank found out, he blew up. He thought it was proof that Ken was trying to steal his clients.”

“Anything to that?”

Clint shook his head. “Absolutely not. The problem was trying to make Frank understand that. It caused problems for all of us.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Frank overreacted. In the process, he smothered what little client contact we did have. And when some of us complained about it, he assumed we were conspiring with Ken to conduct a coup, to force him out of the firm and replace him with Ken.”

Hodges flipped through his notes. “Do you know if Mr. Hargrove was working in the office this weekend? He was wearing casual clothes when we found him, so we assume that was the case.”

“That’s right. I saw him up here yesterday, around five o’clock, just before I left.”

“Do you happen to know if Mr. Oliver was also here yesterday?” K.C. asked.

“He was getting off the elevator just as I got on,” Clint said.

“Did you talk about anything?”

“Just why I was working on a Sunday.”

“Any mention of Mr. Hargrove being there?”

“Sorta. Just as I got on the elevator, Frank said something about Ken setting up an –” Clint made air quotes with his fingers – “unauthorized meeting. He wanted to know if I knew about it, and I just said, ‘Talk to Ken; don’t talk to me. He’s in his office.’ So, I guess I let it slip that Ken was there.”

“How did Mr. Oliver respond?”

“He was pissed. I figured he was going to confront Ken about the meeting, so I left as quick as I could. That wasn’t my fight.”

“What made you think it was going to be a fight?”

“It always was.”

“Did Mr. Oliver seem any more pissed off than usual?”

“It was about par for the course for the last few weeks.”

“Were the last few weeks worse than before?”

Clint thought a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess they were.”

“Tell me about that.”