Dog Tags

CHAPTER 44

“I’M TEMPTED TO SAY WE CAUGHT A BREAK.” Laurie says this as soon as I walk in the house. I didn’t even have a chance to say, Honey, I’m home, or ask how little Ricky’s soccer practice went.

“So go ahead and say it,” I say. “Actually, you can say it over dinner.”

“There is no dinner. I’ve been working. I thought you could bring in Taco Bell.”

“You clearly don’t have this domestic-bliss thing worked out yet. Tell me the break.”

“Sam’s been trying to find the soldiers who were discharged as a result of the explosion in Iraq. It’s been hard, which is probably revealing by itself. But he managed to trace down one of them, Tyler Lawson, to a condo in Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

“Good.”

“So I used a few connections, and wound up talking to a detective out there. It seems Lawson went to Vegas a couple of weeks ago, checked into a hotel, and played some blackjack.”

“Why are you only ‘tempted’ to call it a break? Sounds like a full-fledged one to me.”

“Because he might be another murder victim. The first night he was there, he disappeared. Security cameras in front of the hotel showed him getting into the passenger seat of a car with a guy, and they drove off. That’s the last anyone has seen of Lawson.”

The story isn’t making perfect sense to me. “Why would Vegas cops have checked the security tapes? People leave those hotels early all the time, usually because they’ve lost money. Did they suspect foul play?”

“When Lawson never checked out, they went into his room. All his stuff was there, and the safe was locked. So they opened it and found two hundred thousand dollars in cash. With that kind of money involved they obviously became suspicious, which is why they checked the tapes.”

“Any idea who the driver was?”

“No. He seemed to know where the cameras were, and never gave them a good shot at his face. They traced the plate number on the car; it was rented at Avis with a fake driver’s license and credit card.”

“But Lawson got in the car willingly?”

“According to this detective, yes.”

This is a potentially big development, though “potentially” is the key word. Five soldiers left the army as a direct result of negligence that day in Iraq, and one an indirect result; if two of those six, Erskine and Lawson, were subsequently murdered within a short period of time, then that would be way beyond an enormous coincidence. And it would be great for Billy, since he was an involuntary guest of the county when Lawson disappeared.

Of course, there’s no proof that Lawson was murdered; for all we know he may be at the Cathouse Ranch. On the other hand, it’s a fact that people don’t generally leave two hundred grand behind in hotel safes.

We’re also very far from certain that we will be able to introduce any of this as evidence. My hope is that Eli will open the door to our doing so, by bringing in testimony about the alleged grudge Billy was holding against Erskine for his injury in the explosion. But Eli may stick strictly to the physical and eyewitness evidence, and then it’ll be much harder to bring in all this Iraq stuff.

“We need to find the other four soldiers,” I say.

Laurie nods. “I know. Sam’s working on it; he’s got more things he can try. But for the moment they’ve disappeared.”

“That’s significant by itself. The average guy being discharged from the army wouldn’t likely be wealthy enough to go on a round-the-world cruise. He’d have to make a living, unless he had money from some other source.”

“The kind of money Tyler Lawson had.”

“Right.”

Although it doesn’t change the effort I’ll put into defending him, my confidence in Billy’s innocence is starting to increase. If Lawson was murdered, my theory would be that there was a conspiracy to make the explosion happen, and now the conspirators are being silenced.

It’s the kind of story juries like to hear, but unfortunately judges don’t allow stories. They allow evidence.

I’m feeling guilty that Tara and Milo have been cooped up in the house. It’s way too dangerous to take Milo outside for a walk, and I haven’t been taking Tara very often, because I don’t want to make Milo feel bad.

Laurie and I bring them into the backyard and throw tennis balls to them, but there isn’t that much room to run. Milo is amazing; he jumps and grabs the balls in midair and never misses. Tara, on the other hand, is content to amble over and pick up the balls after they roll to a stop. She unfortunately has inherited my energy level.

All this activity makes me hungry, so I head over to Taco Bell to get dinner. I’m back with a bunch of burritos and quesadillas within fifteen minutes, and we chow down immediately.

We’re finished by eight thirty, at which point I make a terrible mistake. I pour us some wine and then turn on the television without knowing in advance what channel it is tuned to. This is like a lawyer asking a witness a question that he doesn’t already know the answer to.

Major faux pas.

What comes on the screen is a black-and-white movie. Worse yet, it’s the beginning of a black-and-white movie, and Laurie sees it before I can turn it off. Laurie is constitutionally incapable of not watching a black-and-white movie; it could be the worst film ever made, but if it’s in black and white it has a built-in status that demands her reverence. If they filmed Santa Claus Slasher in black and white, Laurie would consider it a work of art.

I don’t have to be a math major to know that if the movie lasts two hours, we’re not going to bed until at least ten thirty. That would be much later than my planned schedule, which had me in a sexually satisfied sleep by ten o’clock.

“Haven’t we seen this one already?” I ask.

“Of course. It’s Tracy and Hepburn.”

“As I recall, they argue and are completely incompatible for ninety percent of the movie, and then they fall in love. I hope I didn’t spoil the ending for you.”

“The ending is my favorite part,” she says. “Let’s watch this, okay? We can talk later.”

The last thing I want to do after this is over is talk. “Okay, sure. You want to watch a love story without nudity… hey, I’m all for it.”

“Keep it up and there’s not going to be any nudity at all tonight. On television or off.”

This sounds like a threat, and Andy Carpenter does not take kindly to threats. “I’ll go make the popcorn,” I say.

That’ll teach her.