Page 8 of The Wrong Side of the Law

Chapter Three

Gabriel

I’d like nothing better than to rip the wires out of my phone and put it through the wall, but I content myself with just slamming the handset back down onto the cradle. I lean back in my chair and take a deep, calming breath, but when I close my eyes all I can see is an image of Pete Manderley with my phone embedded in the smoking wreckage of what used to be his face.

Okay, so there is one thing I’d like better than to put my phone through the wall.

Who knew that management could be this hellish?

Wait, don’t tell me. I know this one. John Whitehall, that’s who knew.

I still have no idea what gave him the idea that I was some kind of threat, but Good Lord- Cinderella’s stepmom never worked her this hard. I’m not sure if he’s trying to set me up to fail so he can fire me for incompetence, if he wants to show me how much the job sucks so I’ll quit and then never want to challenge him, or if he’s simply hoping I’ll stroke out before I turn thirty-three.

If it’s option one, good luck with that. I’m stubborn as they come, and I’ll be damned if I let him turn me into a failure. Option two isn’t going to work, either. Again: stubborn. I don’t deal well with intimidation.

Jury’s still out on the stroke. It’s still four months until my birthday, after all.

Whatever the plan is, and whatever the reason for it, the State Attorney has certainly made sure that I’m not going to be polishing my reputation in a courtroom for the foreseeable future: I’m up to my ass in alligators, each one of whom is holding a folder that I need to read or sign off on or full of questions that need to be answered or a trial schedule that needs to be approved… or so many, many, many other things.

Life was a lot simpler back when all I had to do was put away scumbags.

Can’t complain about my new office, though. It’s a definite upgrade. It’s at least five times the size of my old office, with a glorious view. I’ve got an old-fashioned partner’s desk and a massive, cushy leather chair with no broken wheels.

Of course, I don’t get enough time to enjoy the view, and I can’t remember when the last time was that I saw the mahogany desk top underneath the mountain of paper. If I look away from the desk, a new stack seems to magically appear, and I can’t afford for it to get piled up any higher.

There’s a second desk in the room, too. For the past month, it’s been nothing but a catch-all for the overflow from mine, but back when Lamar Raynor was in this office there was an assistant there. Brenda Randall was a massive help to Lamar—that much was obvious from just the week I worked with the two of them—but Whitehall transferred her out of the Narcotics Unit the day my predecessor retired. More than a transfer: he promoted her into his own office. It would be better, he said, to wipe away the past and start fresh. This way I’d be able to hire my own assistant, find someone who really fit with my style and needs.

But it’s not all bad. We’ve mainly got competent people—after all, Lamar couldn’t have done his job if he’d had a pack of idiots here. The prosecutors I’ve got under me are solid, and so far I haven’t had to stomp on anyone there to get them back in line. The investigators and paralegals outside the office are fantastic, too. The problem is that it all amounts to a paper factory, and I don’t have anyone to help prioritize and shuffle to make sure the important stuff gets to the top of the heap.

What I need is a competent assistant, and Brenda had twenty years of experience at that second desk. Whitehall keeps delaying the hiring approval, though. There was a budget freeze that lasted a week. Then the approval got lost after he signed it and had to be re-routed. Then… meh.

On the other hand, Whitehall did leave me Karin, at the receptionist’s desk in my outer office. But then, she’s not a paralegal. It wouldn’t matter if she was, though: between answering the phones and reporting back to the State Attorney on every little thing that I do that she thinks might be worth adding to the paper trail, she wouldn’t have enough time left over for anything else.

Thanks a lot, boss. Love ya. Mean it. You’re the best.

Meanwhile, back in reality, some good has come out of it. Out of the blackest night of bleary-eyed meetings and conference calls and all the other myriad ways we torture ourselves in the workplace there have been a few bright lights. I’ve made friends—helpful friends, at times—in the new circles to which I’ve been introduced.

My desk phone chimes. It’s not a call: it’s the intercom tone. Sighing melodramatically for a sympathetic—yet sadly invisible—audience, I stab the button with my finger.

“Yes, Karin?” What fresh new hell are you unleashing upon me now?

“Barbara from HR is here to see you,” she says. Thescritch-scritchof an Emery board is audible. Does she file her nails next to the phone on purpose, just to try and get under my skin? “She doesn’t have an appointment.”

“Thank you, Karin. Send her in, please.” I will not rise to her bait.

The door opens on one of my most helpful friends. Barbara Randolph istheperson to know in HR. The woman lives and breathes for her work, and after thirty years in the human resources department for the State Attorney’s office in this district, she knows where every skeleton is tucked away in every single closet in the building. I have yet to see her crack a smile, and I don’t think there’s a single funny bone in her body.

She’s holding a blue manila folder.

“Good afternoon, Barbara,” I say. “Always a pleasure to see you.”

It is, too. She might not exactly be the most sparkling ray of sunshine, but she’s devastatingly efficient and she doesn’t put up with any foolishness.

“You’re working too much,” she says with no preamble. “You’re going to burn yourself out.”

Barbara glares back through the still-open door to where Karin sits at her desk, hard at work, industriously listening to every word being said, and then closes the door.

Like I said: she knows whereallthe skeletons are.

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