Lich was looking through the kitchen cabinets when Mac walked back in and sat at the kitchen table. “I didn’t find anything in the living room obviously,” Dick said. “The kitchen doesn’t have anything either. Heck, half the cupboards are empty. Oliver didn’t have much in the way plates, glasses, things of that nature.”
“Single guy who works all the time, not a surprise,” Mac said, looking under the kitchen table. “He didn’t care much about how his place looked, smelled or was organized. I mean, he’s got this dirty toolbox sitting under the table. I mean, what’s he even… need… a toolbox… for?” Mac stared at the box. “Could it be that simple?”
“What?” Lich said, seeing the look on Mac’s face.
“You have to use all the tools in the toolbox,” Mac mumbled as he flipped the metal clasps loose and opened the toolbox. A dusty tray sat in the top with a few screw drivers, wrenches, tape measure and hammer. Mac pulled the tray out and looked into the box itself. “Huh.”
“What?”
Mac pulled out a yellow folder that was clasped closed. “Grab the camera out of my backpack.”
Lich walked back to the door into the apartment and grabbed the backpack Mac brought along. Dick pulled out the camera and snapped three photos of the envelope. Mac then opened the top and slid the contents out onto the table. There was a computer flash drive and copies of a death certificate, driver’s license and other various papers. Mac read through the documents and a smile crept across his face.
“What do you have?” Lich asked.
“Yahtzee.”
CHAPTER TEN
“Your whole life is a lie.”
At 10:03 p.m., Mac pushed into the interrogation room with Lich, sat down at the table and looked across at his suspect.
“Why am I here?” Michael Harris asked.
“You tell me, Michael,” Mac answered acidly, dropping a stack of paper down on the table in the interrogation room, “Or should I say Jordan. As in Jordan Paris.”
You could have knocked Michael Harris a/k/a Jordan Paris over with a feather.
“You look surprised. Wait until you see what I found,” Mac added with dramatic flair. “You know what they say. You gotta use all the tools in the toolbox.”
In Gordon Oliver’s toolbox, Mac found a binder clip of documents that showed Michael Harris was in fact Jordan Paris and that the real Michael Harris was dead and had been for eight years. McRyan and Lich spent the better part of the last four hours putting it together.
Jordan Paris, who was now sitting across the table from them, graduated from the University of San Diego School of Law cum laude eight years ago. In his final year of law school, as required in California, he submitted his application to the Committee of Bar Examiners for the State of California. To be admitted as a lawyer in California, the applicant must be shown to be of appropriate moral character for the practice of law. Jordan Paris had a felony drug conviction from his sophomore year in college when he was running with a bad element. A drug sale went sideways, there was gunfire and one person was killed. Paris didn’t shoot anyone, was largely in the wrong place at the wrong time, but ended up with six months of jail time and a felony conviction. After his jail stint, Paris re-dedicated himself to his schooling and managed to fight his way into law school. While worried about getting admitted to the California bar, he thought with his clean last four years and good grades, he’d be able to show evidence of reform and rehabilitation. Then in the summer between his second and third year of law school, Paris was arrested for driving while intoxicated. His application was rejected by the committee as he was viewed as lacking the moral character for the practice of law. He filed an appeal, which failed. He would not be admitted to the practice of law in California.
Paris met Michael Harris while in his second year of law school. Harris was attending Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. The two ran into each other in the law library at the county courthouse. Paris could tell right away, Harris was a loner. Yet they struck up a friendship. When Paris was down on his luck, with no job, even fewer prospects and almost no money, Harris offered him the couch at his apartment. One month later, Michael Harris was killed in a car accident.
At the time of his death, Harris was just starting his own law practice, running it out of a run-down job share office with four other young lawyers. Harris was an only child and both his parents were dead. He appeared to be a loner and few people seemed to notice that he passed. When he died and nobody seemed to be missing him, Jordan Paris made a calculation.
Jordan Paris became Michael Harris, proving the Committee of Bar Examiners for the State of California correct about Paris’s lack of moral character.
Paris assumed his friend’s identity, moved to Florida and was admitted to the bar. After three years practicing in Florida, he moved to Illinois for two years and then had been at KBMP for the last two years. At KBMP he became the model senior associate, working almost exclusively for Stan Busch, trying cases and putting himself on a potential path to partnership.
Harris impressed Oliver. So much so that Gordon Oliver called a friend of his named Jane Phipp, who worked the career center at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Oliver raved to Phipp about Harris, how personable he was and what a good lawyer and mentor he was. Phipp related to Mac that she said to Oliver that she didn’t remember Michael Harris in that way and the two of them did a little more talking and corresponding and they realized they were not talking about the same person.
Oliver did what good young lawyers do, research. Mac had to hand it to him. Gordon Oliver pretty much had it all and was dead on based on what Mac and Lich had dug up in the last three hours.
Mac laid it all out on the table for Paris.
“This is not what you think, detective,” Paris pleaded. “I did not kill Gordon Oliver.”
“I don’t know, Jordan,” Mac replied casually. “It seems to me like you’ve got huge motive to have done so. Oliver figures out you’re not who you say you are, that you’ve assumed Michael Harris’s identity and that you’ve been practicing law under his name. He confronts you about it a day or two ago, threatening to expose you to the firm, the authorities and anyone else who would be interested. I mean, you’re finished but good. Before he does that, before he reports you, maybe he offers you some sort of alternative. Maybe he’s worried about the damage it will do to the firm, so he gives you the chance to come clean or maybe just leave town, a little get out of jail free card. Whatever it was, it doesn’t work for you. So you went to The Mahogany to confront him.”
“You might not have even wanted to kill him,” Lich added.
“That’s right,” McRyan stated, sitting back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest, his right leg over his left, “You just wanted to talk again, but he rebuffs you. He’ll have none of it. Everything is falling apart. So you lose it. You hit him in the back of the head. Gordon stumbles, falls and hits his head on the bumper. Then he isn’t moving. He’s dead. You killed him.”
“So you panic,” Dick followed. “You put his body in the back of the truck and you get the heck out of there. It might have helped if you’d grabbed his wallet, watch, etcetera… so that it looked like a robbery. I’m a little surprised you didn’t think of that. It certainly caused us to look in other directions, such as the law firm where we found you.”
“I didn’t kill him, detectives,” Paris exclaimed. “I didn’t even know Gordon knew about me. If he did, he didn’t let on at all. I had no idea.”