Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve
Monday Monday

Renee Choi drops her purse on top of her desk and hangs her gray raincoat on a hanger outside her cubicle. Water drips from the bottom of the hem and the sleeves, creating a new water stain on top of several older ones. “Good morning, Mara.” Renee calls out over her cubicle wall.

There is no response. That was strange. Mara just lived a few blocks away. She was always here before her. Always. Renee abandons her purse and starts to walk the building. Her first stop is the tiny coffee nook. The air pots were empty. That explained why she hadn’t smelled coffee when she first walked into the office. She walked over to the copier area. The copier hadn’t been turned on either. Renee flips the toggle switch, and the copier comes to life, offering a friendly ‘warming up’ message.

Mara always made the first pot of coffee (though after that, the person that emptied the pot was supposed to make the next one), and she always turned on the copier. For further confirmation, Renee goes to Mara’s desk. Her chair was still pushed under the desk. The computer was turned off, and her desk was just as Mara had left it Friday night. Oh shit. Friday night. Did the cops pick her up for the assault? The guy seemed the type that was all bluster, and would never go to the cops if it meant admitting that he had gotten his ass beaten by a woman. No, that would damage his fragile ego far too much.

Renee bites at her thumbnail. I should have insisted on giving Mara a ride home instead of letting her walk. A chill runs through her body. The guy wouldn’t have gone to the cops, but would he have followed her? And attacked her later that night? Oh shit! Renee takes out her cell phone and starts dialing Mara’s cell phone number. She starts to hit Send, and realizes that she was one number off. She cancels and redials. There is a long pause. “Come on, come on.”

The phone on the other end doesn’t even ring. The voicemail simply picks up. “You’ve reached Mara Ravenclaw, Deputy Public Defender. Please leave a message and I will get back to you.”

“Mara, where the heck are you?” Renee asks, her voice betraying more than a small amount of concern. “I’m kind of worried. Did you make it home okay Friday night?” Renee hangs up and then makes a pot of coffee. Hopefully, Mara will be in soon. Maybe she overslept or something.

But eight o’clock rolls past with no sign of Mara. The other Public Defenders come in and get to work, but only Renee shows any real concern. Marquis arrives at 8:30. Renee waits about ten minutes to allow Marquis to get settled in, and heads into his office. She knocks on the doorjamb softly. “Knock, knock.” She says, finally catching his attention.

Marquis looks up from his pile of papers, and Renee perches herself on the edge of a counter adjacent to his desk. “Did you get a message from Mara? She hasn’t come in yet.”

Marquis looks at his phone. The red message light is neither lit nor flashing. “No, I haven’t. She hasn’t come in? That isn’t like her at all. He reaches for his Rolodex, and flips through the R’s. He finds Mara’s number, and starts to dial it. He listens a moment, and then hangs up. “It’s been disconnected. Did you try her cell phone?”

Renee nods. “It went straight to voice mail. I’m worried that something might have happened to her Friday night. Maybe that creep followed her.”

“Mara seems like the type of person who can handle herself pretty well. I’m sure she’s fine.”

“But her number’s disconnected.”

“Well, if she were dead, she certainly couldn’t have it disconnected, now could she? It’s probably totally unrelated. Maybe she decided to change her number, or didn’t pay her phone bill.”

Renee sighs. “Yeah, maybe it’s nothing.” She goes back to her desk and starts to try to focus on her caseload, but her mind continues to stray towards Mara. What if she was dead in an alley somewhere? What if someone else had disconnected her phone? The questions just kept creeping in, along with a nagging feeling that something had happened.

At 9:30, Renee’s desk phone rings. She jumps out of her chair, momentarily startled. She looks at the display. It was Marquis. “Yes, Sir?” She asks.

“Choi, my office. Now.”

“Okay.” Renee hangs up the phone and walks toward Marquis’ office. She looks over to Mara’s office. It was still unoccupied. She enters Marquis’ office. “You rang?”

Marquis gestures to a nearby chair. “Have a seat.” Renee sits down. She notices that an opened courier envelope was sitting on Marquis’ desk. It hadn’t been there earlier. Marquis picks up a piece of paper off his desk and pushes it towards Renee. “This just arrived via courier. Read it.”

Renee blanched when she saw the paper. She recognized Mara’s neat and perfectly aligned signature at the bottom of the page. “She-she resigned. I don’t believe it. I thought she was going to retire here. That’s what she told me.”

“And without notice, no less.” Marquis says. “Well, that’s a great fucking way to start out a Monday. Do you still have the resumes of the candidates we didn’t hire? Maybe one of them is still available. I’ll go through her desk and reassign her cases.”