Free Premeditated Murder by Ed Gaffney

software product to Cellcom—”
    “The phone company?” Terry interrupted.
    “Yeah,” Cal said. “I had been working on this technology back from when I was a grad student at M.I.T.—”
    “When was that?” asked Terry, clicking the pen, obviously intending at some point to check up on the facts.
    “Let's see. I graduated in '93 and started postgrad right after,” Cal said.
Click click
. Terry wrote something down. Zack didn't move. “Anyway, my first payment was a little more than a million dollars, and the agreement was that Cellcom was going to pay me around thirty thousand dollars per month as a minimum licensing fee. It was likely to increase as their business grew. I was set for life, basically,” he said, checking to see if either believed him. Not so far.
    Terry said, “Any way we can verify this?”
    “Sure. My contact at Cellcom was Gina Gefardo.” Clumsily, he picked up a sheet of paper with the arm in a cast and handed it to Terry. “I figured you'd want to talk to some people about me, so before you came, I wrote down some names and numbers. Sorry about the handwriting.” He smiled apologetically as Terry took the paper from him. There was no reaction. Wow. “Gina can connect you with the legal department.”
    Terry squinted at the paper. “Who's Steve … Doctorow?”
    “He's my—well, he
was
my financial advisor. Steve can tell you whatever you need to know about my money.”
    At this, Terry exchanged a look with Zack.
Financial advisor
. Terry looked like he didn't know what to think.
Crazy-ass rich black dude blew away a bunch of students. Now what do we do?
Zack's look was more like
If I had a gun with me, I might just shoot him now, and save us all a lot of aggravation.
    “So anyway, right after I got the money, we decided that we were going to take a trip to Africa.”
    “What?” Terry interrupted. “Who decided?”
Click click
.
    “Me and my wife, Cheryl. I was married back then.” Another look passed between the lawyers. Terry wrote something else down. “And I had a son. Kevin. He was five at the time. We wanted him to see a part of the world where being black was the rule, not the exception, before he started kindergarten.” Cal paused for a moment. “So in the summer of '98, we took him to Kenya.”
    Terry's eyes flashed up. “Aw, holy shit. Don't tell me. Kenya in 1998.”
    Cal smiled sadly. “Yeah. On the morning of August seventh, Kevin woke up early. I'm not much of a morning person, so Cheryl decided to take him for a walk downtown to a bakery that had these sweet rolls that he loved. We were in the capital. Nairobi.” Cal swallowed. This was a little harder than he thought it was going to be. “They weren't going to the embassy, they were just out for a walk.” He paused. “They were right next to it when the bomb exploded.” His throat ached; his words sounded thick. “The cops told me that they died instantly. But I don't know.”
    Terry's pen clicking stopped. Zack's ferocious mask had been replaced by something a little less hostile.
    “Before the bombing, I always had something going full speed. My education, my software design, my family. But after Kenya, I just didn't care about anything. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I started drinking, first to help me get to sleep, then to numb myself when I was awake. I got so depressed I wouldn't even let anyone in the house.
    “It was bad for a long time.” Cal stopped to take another drink of water. “Nothing mattered to me. Absolutely nothing. I remember getting a call from a friend around that time, telling me that there had been a break in the investigation of the bombing and that they had found the people who were responsible. I didn't care. I was basically just waiting to die.” He took a deep breath.
    “Then, one day, I dropped a bottle of vodka in the sink by accident. And there it was. All