Free Final Exam: A Legal Thriller by Terry Huebner Page B

opportunity to use it.   Unless, of course, it was a fairly well-known trophy.”
    “You would almost think that he must have been taken by surprise, although we don’t know the extent to which there were other wounds, you know, defensive wounds on his hands, arms, whatever.”
    “Let’s face it,” Mark said with a shrug.   “We don’t know a hell of a lot more than we did before we got here.   We’re really just speculating here.   They cleaned that office out pretty good.   We don’t know what may have been in there, what documents may have been in there, what he may have been working on at the time, or even whether or not the killer might have taken something from the office.   All this really tells us is that we have a lot more questions than we did before.”  
    “We do know one thing though,” Ben said in a low voice, leaning in close so only Mark could possibly hear.   “We know that they think they can tie Megan Rand to this killing.   What did he say, ‘physical and other evidence’, something like that?   That means they either found something at the scene they could link to her or found something at her house that they can link to the scene.   Maybe they have other stuff too.   Who knows what that could be?   But they’re not just fucking around.   They think they know who did it and when some of these tests come back and confirm what they think they already know, they’re going to move pretty fast.”
    Mark gave a resigned nod.   “You are undoubtedly correct about that.”  

10
    “Which way?” said Casey Gardner.   They were all piled into his Acura on the way out for lunch.   Gardner was driving, Ben was in the front seat, and Brian Davenport, Dan Conlon and Brad Funk were jammed into the Acura’s too small back seat.    Gardner was just pulling out of the parking lot and he stopped at Schiller Street, which veered off to the left.   If he turned here, they would eventually head down Irving Park Road toward Wood Dale.   If they continued up to the corner, they could also turn right and head through downtown Ithaca in the opposite direction.  
    The inevitable response came from Davenport.   “Go up to the corner.”   Essentially, they postponed the lunch decision another thirty seconds.   This happened virtually every day.  
“Hey,” Funk complained from the backseat, “you guys told me we were going to ‘Smoky Mexican’.”  
    “We lied,” Gardner said with a laugh.  
    On most days, Funk brought his lunch from home, a cornucopia of healthy selections, usually including a salad made by his wife, Sue.   He had taken to eating healthy in an effort to reduce his chronically high cholesterol level.   All those days of eating rabbit food for lunch had only reduced his cholesterol by about one point.   Nevertheless, he soldiered on.    Not that he didn’t have weaknesses.   Funk would occasionally join the guys for lunch if they were going out for either Chinese or Mexican food, or, of course, if Phil was going along.   
    Gardner pulled the Acura to the corner and turned left into traffic.   “Where’re we going?” Ben asked.  
    “I guess I could do Mexican,” Gardner said.  
    After the grumbling in the backseat subsided, they agreed they would indeed go to “Smoky Mexican”.   It was one of three Mexican restaurants they regularly visited, all more or less fast food places with small sit down areas inside for those so inclined.   “Smoky Mexican” got its name because it was always hazy and smoky inside and was located about ten minutes from the office in a small strip mall that didn’t have enough parking.   After waiting for five minutes, Gardner pulled the Acura into a vacated space at the end of a row and the five of them piled out.   They placed their orders and Gardner and Ben stepped out of the interior fog and into the fresh, cold air, while Conlon walked over to the 7-Eleven three doors down to pick up a Big Gulp.