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

Road in order to catch unsuspecting drivers who had not slowed sufficiently as they cruised toward downtown.   As he passed Schulte’s old house, once known as the Pig Farm, he saw a handful of Schulte’s old plastic pigs dotted throughout the front yard, partially obscured by the falling snow.   He eased his way into downtown, circled around Usher Park and turned left at the Tree Top Pizza Inn and coasted back toward the office.  
    Irving Park Road is a highly trafficked thoroughfare bisecting downtown Ithaca.   The office was set back off the road west of and slightly behind the pizza place and its adjoining tavern.   Further up Irving Park Road to the west stood the Ithaca Train Station, where commuters would take the forty minute trip to downtown Chicago.   The train tracks angled behind the office and its parking lot and were so close that they could make telephone conversations difficult when the numerous commuter and freight trains rumbled by.   The office also sat smack dab in the landing pattern for O’Hare Airport to the east and jumbo jets flew deafeningly low over the building all day long.  
    The original part of the office was a white frame Victorian house built in the 1890’s.   To this structure, some twenty or so years before, Jim Schulte had attached a storefront grocery store originally found around the corner in downtown Ithaca.   The grocery store served as the main entrance to the building.   On the other side of the grocery store, Schulte built a two-story addition, which housed additional offices for both the firm and for a handful of renters, primarily other lawyers.   Facing the railroad tracks, Schulte built a structure that appeared to be a modest-sized garage, complete with an old gas pump on the east side and what appeared to be the entrance to a barbershop on the west.   The garage served as the building’s library and conference room.  
    Clients coming to the office for the first time would turn off of Irving Park Road onto First Street and drive back behind the tavern, where they would encounter the new addition on the east side of the building flanked by a row of parking spaces.   Continuing back, they would come to the garage and the gas pump jutting out from the main entrance of the building at a right angle toward the railroad tracks.   If there were no parking spaces on the east side of the building, clients would circle around the garage, where they would find a back entrance to the building and four more parking spaces.   Proceeding around the corner of the white frame house, six or eight more parking spaces ended at a sidewalk that paralleled Irving Park Road.   A short walk down this sidewalk across Walnut Avenue brought the commuters to the Ithaca train station.    
    Finding no parking spaces near the main entrance, Ben pulled around the garage and found an open space next to the back entrance at the corner of the house.   Ben grabbed his briefcase and shuffled through the snow, past a telephone box and a small stone fountain, and up the six wooden steps to the back entrance of the building located in a small porch.   He kicked the snow off his shoes as he entered a small hallway, which housed the restrooms.   At its end, a doorway led down a couple of steps into a hallway and out to the garage.   To his right, the bookkeeper’s office sat opposite the copy room.   
    Ben walked through the copy room and stuck his head into a small, oddly-shaped office where he had spent the first couple of years of his time with the firm and Dan Conlon now called home.   The office had a large window which looked across the open yard to the pizza place and tavern beyond.   Conlon was on the phone and Ben gave him a quick nod before heading left toward the lobby and dropping his briefcase and coat on a long, wooden church pew against the wall on the right.   The main entrance to the building under the Matt’s Grocery sign stood opposite the church pew.   There was