Spilled Blood by Brian Freeman Page A

alternative version of his own life. Rollie didn’t wear business suits. He wore a blue polo shirt and tan dress slacks and a comfortable pair of loafers. The slacks sported a coffee stain near the pocket. He was tall and stocky, with a bulging stomach that sagged below the top of his belt. He was in his late thirties, and he had messy black hair and a dark beard line. A yellow highlight marker had been shoved above his ear and forgotten.
    Rollie looked like a lawyer who scraped for business with ads in the yellow pages. Generic brochures on personal injury, bankruptcy, divorce, and foreclosure, published by the Bar Association, were stacked on the counter. His law degree was in a drugstore photo frame on the wall. An empty air freshener sat on the lobby table among copies of farm and sports magazines. The waiting room smelled of grease. Inside Rollie’s office, behind the counter,Chris saw an open white foam box on his desk with a half-eaten cheeseburger and fries. Rollie’s lunch sat among a mountain of legal files.
    ‘Not exactly Faegre & Benson, is it?’ Rollie asked with an ironic smile. Faegre was the state’s largest corporate law firm, with a blue-chip roster of Fortune 500 clients.
    ‘I wish I charged their hourly rates,’ Chris said.
    ‘Oh, I bet you do okay.’ Rollie patted Tanya on the back and pointed her toward a spare office with a sofa, television, and conference table. ‘You hang out with your iPod for a while, okay, baby? I want to talk to Mr. Hawk.’
    ‘Sure.’ Tanya gave Chris a nervous glance as she retreated into the office. Rollie’s eyes lingered on his girl as he pulled the door shut, and it was obvious that his daughter was the center of his world. Not his work. Not his clients. Chris wished he’d learned that lesson years ago.
    ‘Come on back, Mr. Hawk,’ Rollie told him. ‘Sorry, I’m just finishing lunch.’
    ‘Call me Chris.’
    ‘You like fries, Chris?’
    ‘Love ’em, but not anymore.’
    ‘I hear you.’ Rollie led him into his office, took four fries in his hand, and munched them together. ‘I admire your willpower. Me, I can’t say no.’ He picked up the burger and took a large bite and washed it down with Coke. ‘Poor Tanya, she got my genes. My ex-wife is a beanpole.’
    ‘So’s mine. Olivia was lucky.’
    Rollie sat down and leaned back in his chair. ‘Thank you for bringing Tanya here. I appreciate it.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘You look like hell,’ Rollie said.
    ‘Other than a splitting headache, I’m fine.’
    ‘You want some Advil?’
    ‘Actually, that would be great.’
    Rollie dug inside the top drawer of his desk and found an old plastic bottle that looked as if it had been used and re-used dozens of times. He unscrewed the top and poured three red tablets into his hand. The pills looked fresher than the container in which he stored them. He passed them to Chris, who swallowed them down.
    ‘Tanya thinks Kirk Watson was trying to abduct her,’ Chris warned him.
    Rollie’s chest swelled with a long, fierce breath. ‘Kirk.’
    ‘You know him?’
    ‘I’ve known him for years. Actually, I defended him when he killed his father.’
    ‘Kirk
killed
his father?’ Chris asked.
    ‘About seven years ago. He beat him to death with a hammer and then cut up the body.’
    ‘Jesus.’
    ‘Yeah. Kirk’s dad beat the crap out of the younger boy, Lenny, whenever he could. With the evidence of abuse, I got the whole thing handled with a juvie sentence.’
    ‘I’m surprised Kirk would harm Tanya after you got him a slap on the wrist for murder.’
    ‘Kirk thought he should have walked.’
    ‘Tanya says the police around here won’t touch him,’ Chris said. ‘Is that true?’
    ‘Yeah, Kirk always seems to have an alibi when things happen. Or witnesses get cold feet and decide not to testify. It’s ugly.’
    ‘Do you still represent him?’
    ‘Hell, no. Not anymore. Even ambulance chasers like me have some standards. I’m not in it for the money.