Wrongful Death by Robert Dugoni Read Free Book Online

Anything else going on?”
    “I’m getting my nails done at two.”
    “Good for you. Tell you what, bring me the bill. We’ll call it a perk for the Gonzalez verdict.”
    “Big spender. I should have told you I was shopping for a big-screen TV.”
    PIONEER SQUARE
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
    SLOANE PARKED IN the triangular garage at First Avenue and walked down Washington Street looking for building addresses. Pioneer Square was Seattle’s other downtown tourist attraction, with maple trees and low-rise, red-brick buildings that harked back to a different era. The entrance to John Kannin’s building was near Occidental Square, a haven for the homeless and mentally ill. Shopping carts stuffed with plastic bags circled a bronze monument to Seattle’s firefighters that pigeons had defaced a gray-white.
    Sloane walked into a small lobby and considered a display case identifying the building tenants. He ascended an interior marble staircase and pushed through a smoked-glass door stenciled “John Kannin Law Firm P.S.” Legal books, binders, and files cluttered a desk in a small reception area with shelving along three walls. Narrow windows emitted slats of dull light in which danced floating dust motes.
    “Are you David Sloane?” The man who appeared in the doorway to Sloane’s left looked younger than Sloane had, for some reason, expected. “I’m John Kannin.” He had a deep baritone voice, befitting a trial lawyer.
    “Thanks for seeing me,” Sloane said.
    “You’re interested in military law?”
    “My secretary said you don’t have much time.”
    Kannin gestured to the desk. “My secretary didn’t come in today. If she had, I would have known that my two-thirty hearing has been kicked over a week. Come on in.”
    Kannin led Sloane into an interior office with the same dark wood shelving along one wall. The other walls were brick. A book wedged in the sash propped open a window behind a large desk, allowing in the sounds of passing cars, the trolley, and men arguing on the street below.
    “Fresh air,” Sloane said. “You don’t find that inside buildings too often anymore.”
    Kannin looked to the window. “It helps clear my brain.” He removed a file from one of two chairs. “Take a seat.” There was a round table in the corner, covered with stacks of paper—obviously the overflow from the neat stacks on the floor lining the brick wall. Post-its atop the stacks served as to-do lists. Kannin looked to have a thriving practice. Diplomas hung from the picture molding by fishing line. He had graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Willamette University College of Law in Oregon. Both were good schools.
    Sloane estimated Kannin to be six foot three and well built through the shoulders and chest. He had coal-black hair with traces of gray and eyes the same color. He wore a white dress shirt and a blue tie, though he’d lowered the knot and unbuttoned the top button. Slipping behind his desk, he said, “I’d offer you coffee, but the way I make it, you might as well lick the asphalt.”
    Sloane sat. “Then I’ll pass, thank you.” He pointed to the diplomas. “You graduated from the Air Force Academy.”
    “I played a little football there.”
    “Linebacker,” Sloane guessed.
    “Offensive line. Players weren’t as big back when I was playing. What I really wanted to do was to fly jets, but I was too big for the cockpit.” He laughed. “After that I lost interest. I graduated with a degree in engineering.”
    “How’d you make it to law school?”
    “I decided I liked arguing with people better than math. How about you? What’s your story?”
    “Marines out of high school, saw some combat in Grenada, but lost interest too. I decided I better get an education and moved to San Francisco based on a picture I’d seen in a magazine.”
    “Pretty spontaneous.”
    “I’ve been known to do that,” Sloane said, thinking of the military psychiatrist’s assessment. “Eventually I graduated