Free Naked Tao by Robert Grant Page B

it was a thirty four story climb, but I had done it many times before as part of my training for mountain climbing trips out west. A busy lawyer has to find ways to incorporate fitness training into his daily routine, if he hopes to stay on his game. 
    I hoped the physical exertion would help clear my spooked head. The smell of stale piss in the stairwell door did little to alleviate my anxiety. I noticed a puddle of fresh urine with a faint hint of steam still rising from it. Why do people piss in stairwells? I reconsidered the elevator, but couldn’t get past the uneasiness I felt about it, and began the ascent. 
    It could have been the tequila, but the climb seemed unusually difficult.  I had to stop several times to rest. It might have been my imagination, but I thought it sounded like there was someone climbing below me. Each time I stopped the steps below continued like an extended echo before coming to an abrupt stop.  Someone seemed to be following me and trying to avoid discovery. 
    The thought of someone stalking me was creepy enough, but under the circumstances it was nerve wracking. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I figured it all might be connected to John’s death. I had a few questions I wanted to ask this stalker, so I devised a strategy to catch whoever it was. 
    After climbing four more flights of stairs, I opened the door leading to the twenty-fifth floor, but didn’t step through the threshold. Instead, I quietly crept further up the stairs until I was out of view and waited. I expected the stalker to rush up the stairs, but that didn’t happen. In fact, nothing happened at all. 
    It’s possible that my follower didn’t take the bait, but I convinced myself instead that the whole thing was nothing but my imagination. Chiding myself for getting spooked over nothing, I finished the climb and slipped into my old office.  I obviously should have trusted my instincts. 
    The office foyer is intended to impress. The marble flooring is polished to a high sheen. Matching Doric columns and a fresco of the Parthenon is calculated to give the impression that Socrates resides within its walls. To me, it’s a little over the top. The first time I stepped into the place I half expected to see everyone dressed in togas and sandals. 
    Ordinarily, there are number of young attorneys working late on projects dumped on them at the last minute and a night shift of clerical staff working diligently to meet the next day’s deadlines, but not on this night. On this night, the offices were all empty. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a soul working. Everyone was probably sent home in deference to John’s death. The place felt like a mausoleum. 
    This is the home office of Biggs, Scranton & Pulver, a multi-state firm with over 250 attorneys. The firm services large corporations with deep pockets. Pathogen has the deepest and tends to keep the firm very busy. John was right about one thing, losing Pathogen’s business would definitely hurt the firm. Cut backs would follow and more than one attorney would lose his job. 
    I was about to engage in some serious conflict with my client and all conflict is warfare. It’s just matter of scale. Collateral damage is the unintended consequence of war. Many of the people who worked at the firm were friends. They had mortgages and families to feed. I wasn’t sure what they would do if I exposed Pathogen and they lost their jobs.  It was a sobering thought, and a premature one. My first order of business would be to make sure those documents were authentic. 
    Since John was found dead in his office, it’s possible the documents were still in there somewhere. Although he may have destroyed them, it’s unlikely he’d had time to remove them before his death. I headed straight to his office and found crime scene tape barring entry. It turned out to be a good thing, because John’s office door would have been locked otherwise. 
    I squeezed past the yellow tape and