The Occupied by Craig Parshall

Author:Craig Parshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Thrillers / Supernatural, FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
ISBN: 9781496418395
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2016-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

34

Howard Taggley was in the lobby, waiting for me outside the check-in window. He was wearing a wrinkled suit coat and a loud tie that had been loosened at the neck. He looked to be in his fifties. After popping open his briefcase, he yanked out a two-page document that was stapled in the corner.

He handed it to me. “Here’s the agreement. Look it over. Then sign. No changes. No cross-outs. I had a tough time convincing my client to go along with this.” Then he reached into his briefcase and also pulled out my copy of the criminal indictment. “Remember: my client was reluctant to cooperate with you.”

I waved the papers in the air. “If your client is innocent, he has nothing to lose by this and everything to gain.”

Taggley was skeptical. “Mr. Black, with all due respect, I know you had a reputation in New York for pulling rabbits out of hats for your clients, but do you really expect me to buy that? What you just said?”

I smiled and looked over the agreement, and as I did I was thinking to myself how I had always played my cards close to the vest as a defense attorney. Don’t take excessive chances. Control everything. So, either Taggley was being monumentally sloppy in letting me interview his client, or else he thought he had something to gain. Something valuable.

The terms of the agreement were exactly as Taggley had represented, so I signed it, and so did he. Then he stuffed it into his briefcase, told me he had e-mailed a copy to me already, and announced us to the jail clerk who was behind the glass window. We both dropped our driver’s licenses into the aluminum slide tray so the clerk could verify our IDs. Taggley also tossed in his professional Wisconsin State Bar card, his evidence of being a licensed attorney. I noticed that fact and remembered that I no longer had one. As memories of my life in New York flashed past me, for an instant there was that momentary pang of regret about my past. But I shook it off. Things were different now. And so was I.

While we waited for the clerk to check us in, and as we rode the clunking jail elevator to the basement level, I quickly scanned the indictment.

Bobby’s body had been found at the border where Manitou met the countryside about a quarter of a mile from Country Club Road, off a farmers’ service road, and a few feet from the banks of Pebble Creek. The charging document said he was shot in the head by a pistol, but it omitted mentioning the caliber of the weapon that had been used.

A witness who was driving down Country Club Road shortly after sunset, around the time Bobby’s death had occurred, had noticed two men, a tall one and a short one, walking down the service road in the direction where Bobby’s body was later found. The short one was in front. Bobby was five feet nine inches, and the witness identified him later from a photo.

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