One Dog Night

De Luca asks if there’s anything else to discuss, and I refer to the brief that we have submitted requesting a change of venue. Hike wrote it, and it was a solid presentation that should prevail on the merits, but in the real world doesn’t have a chance. Dylan has submitted an opposing brief, no doubt written by one of his devoted minions.

“I’ve read the briefs,” De Luca says. “I’ll issue a ruling shortly.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. We believe it effectively points out the dangers inherent in conducting the trial in this jurisdiction.” I believe what I am saying; this was a heinous crime, one of the most notorious in local history. The press coverage was overwhelming then, and shows signs of being so now. There is no doubt in my mind that it would be easier to impanel an unbiased jury, if there is such a thing, elsewhere.

Dylan quickly and confidently sums up his opposition. My goal in the trial will be to wipe that confident look off his face, and I’ll goad him to do so. Dylan has a thin skin, and is prone to mistakes when angry. As Laurie would be the first to say, I can irritate anyone.

But Dylan is going to emerge from today’s hearing a winner, and De Luca revealingly says, “Perhaps I have more faith in our judicial system than you do, Mr. Carpenter.”

“With respect, Your Honor, a change of venue is not a violation of that system.” I’m going down in flames, and annoyed by it.

De Luca is dismissive. “As I said, I will issue a ruling shortly. But I would suggest you not purchase plane tickets just yet. Now, is there anything else?”

I object to the state’s decision to charge Noah with four counts of murder. Technically, if Noah was acquitted, they could come back and charge him with the other twenty-two deaths, without violating his double-jeopardy rights. It’s a chickenshit thing for Dylan to do, but I don’t have a legal leg to stand on, and De Luca points that out.

When Hike and I leave the courtroom, we opt to walk right out the front door, into the waiting questions of the press that are camped out there. Our client is accused of being a mass murderer, a killer who burned twenty-six victims to death. People like that, even people alleged to be like that, are not usually favorites of the general public. The same general public from which we will choose our jury. The same general public we therefore need to suck up to.

I mouth platitudes about how anxious we are to get to trial and clear Noah’s good name, and how confident we are that justice will prevail.

“No chance of a plea bargain, Andy?” The questioner is Dina Janikowski, a reporter who works for Vince at the Bergen News . Vince must like her, because when someone mentions her name in his presence, he doesn’t snarl or spit.

I look shocked, as if it was absurd to consider such a thing. “Would you admit to killing twenty-six people if you had nothing to do with it?”

She smiles, knowing better than to get drawn into this kind of back-and-forth. “No one has accused me, Andy.”

“Then you’re very, very lucky. Because innocent people can be victimized by overzealous prosecutors. The fact that Noah Galloway is sitting in jail is proof positive of that.”

It’s a parting shot at Dylan that will anger him when he sees it on the news. There’s even a chance he’ll take me off his Christmas card list.

Sam Willis is getting frustrated.

When I give him an assignment to research something on the computer, he takes definite pride in giving me a complete, accurate report on a timely basis.

He couldn’t do that, at least not to his satisfaction, when it came to learning who was killed in the fire. The information was vague, and three people are still unidentified. Sam also had trouble identifying surviving family members for some of the victims.

The problem is that the only information you can get from the Internet is information that has been entered into it. While that encompasses almost everything in recorded history, there are exceptions, and Sam has just hit on another one.

Sam comes to the office to report on the phone that Marcus took from the dead body in the motel. “It’s registered to Buster Douglas,” he says.

“The fighter that beat Mike Tyson?” I ask.

“No, this guy couldn’t beat Mike Tyson. He couldn’t beat you.”

“Because he’s dead?”

Sam shakes his head. “No, because he doesn’t exist, never did. Fake address, fake driver’s license number, fake Social Security number, fake everything.”

“Not a major surprise,” I say. “Do we know who he called, and who called him?”

“Partially. He only made seventeen calls in the last month. Six were to a landline number in Missoula, Montana, and the other eleven were to a New York City cell number. He only received four calls in that time, all from the same New York number as the one he called.”

“Why did you say ‘partially’?”

“The number in Montana is to a Doris Camby; I’ve got the address. But the New York number is registered to Trevor Berbick.”

“That’s another guy that fought Tyson,” I say.

Sam nods. “And he doesn’t exist either. And both Berbick and Douglas paid their phone bills in cash, so there’s no way to trace them back.”

What Sam is saying is disappointing, but not necessarily without promise. “You up for some more work?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“Good. Then check out this Doris Camby; find out what she does, and whether she has any family. If she has any close male relatives, maybe a husband or son, try and find out where they are.”

“I’m on it. Anything else?”

“Check out her phone bill; see who she’s called. But most importantly, check out the phone bill listed in Berbick’s name; let’s find out who he called. If he’s using a fake name, then he’s likely somebody we’ll be interested in.”

“If I find out where he lives, you want me and Marcus to pay him a visit?”

“That’s about as bad an idea as any I’ve ever heard,” I say.

“Come on, Andy. I’m ready for some real detective work.”

I nod. “Maybe you and Hike can work the streets as a team.”

“Me and Hike?” he asks, panic in his voice. “I think I’d work better alone.”

“He’s really a laugh a minute when you get to know him.”

“I know him.”

“Sam, all kidding aside, what you’re doing on the computer is really important. Believe it or not, it’s the best thing we have to go on at this point.”

He nods, resigned. “Okay, I hear you.”

Sam leaves, and Mr. Barrel of Laughs himself comes in a few minutes later. I brief him on what Sam has found out, and Hike says, “Time to start focusing on the defensive side of the ball.”

I know what he means. The investigation, the effort to find the real killer, represents the offensive side of the game plan. But we are defense lawyers, and we need to spend time refuting the prosecution’s version of events. That is the defensive side of the ball, and almost always the most important side. We don’t have to reveal the real killer, all we have to do is raise a reasonable doubt that it was Noah.

The first step in doing that is to become totally familiar with every single fact in the case. There can be no hesitation in court, no surprises. We must know everything Dylan and his witnesses are going to say and do before they say and do it. Stretching the football analogy a bit, it’s like I am the quarterback, and when I get to the line of scrimmage, I have to be completely familiar with whatever formation the defensive team presents to me.

The only way to do that is to review the discovery evidence repeatedly, until we know every nuance. By definition, there are dangers for us on every page; we must know them and counter them.

The preparation for a murder trial is intense and all-consuming, but there is no substitute for it, so Hike and I settle down for the long haul.

Fun time is over.

For Judge Walter Holland, the trial seemed surreal.

On the surface, it seemed to be business as usual. Two sets of lawyers arguing over minutiae that absolutely no one, other than themselves and the people they represent, cared about.

Both sides had positions that they repeatedly affirmed to be correct beyond question. Should their firms happen to have been employed by the other side, they would have taken equally passionate stands a hundred eighty degrees from where they were in this trial.

But for Judge Holland, things were anything but normal. He was trying to act impartial, to pepper each side with the same intensity and amount of difficult, probing questions. He was the “trier of fact,” and personal bias or other considerations could have no part of his process.

Of course, he ordinarily didn’t have to “act” impartial, since he had always been impartial. It was something he’d prided himself on, something he always took for granted. It’s not that he hadn’t had personal biases, everyone does, but until this trial he’d been able to check them at the courthouse door.

The irony was that he had no idea why he was being called on, why the marker was finally being cashed. The stakes in the trial were potentially significant, but certainly no more so than many other cases he’d presided over, and probably less than most. But he’d waited six long years for this to happen, and the hammer was being dropped for a very significant reason, even if he didn’t know what that reason was.

He could only hope that this was the last time that hammer would be dropped. For that he was relying on the honor of people with absolutely no honor at all.

It was a terrible position to be in, and it was entirely his own fault.

After the lunch break that day, one of the lawyers reported that their next witness had taken ill, and they were requesting an adjournment for the day. In the morning, if that witness was still unavailable, they would have another witness there to take his place.

Judge Holland was happy to grant the request; he would have been happy to grant a year’s adjournment. Every day in court was terribly painful for him, the culmination of six years of pain. This delay would give him time to get home and be with Alice and Benji.

Work had always consumed a great deal of his time, and more of his mind, but lately it had been even worse. Alice had been characteristically understanding, possibly because he had never confided the truth to her. Benji had been preoccupied with wondering what he would be getting for Christmas, and making out lists of possibilities.

It was on his way home that Judge Holland got the call on his cell phone. Somehow the man known as Loney only called when he was available to take it; it was as if he was watching him. Holland wouldn’t put it past him.

“Short day today, Your Honor?”

Asking questions that he already knew the answer to was one of the eight billion things about Loney that annoyed him.

“Didn’t feel very short.”

“You were hard on our side,” Loney said.

“I was hard on both sides. That’s my role.”

“Good. Because it’s very important that you completely understand your role. Right through to the end.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Holland said. “I’m going to do this the way we agreed, and then I’m never going to hear from you again.”

“You don’t enjoy our little chats?” Loney asked, the cold amusement evident in his voice.

“I don’t.”

“That pains me,” Loney said, laughing a mocking laugh. “I cherish our time together. But you have a full life, what with Alice and Benji.”

As it always did, the mention of his family sent a chill through him. “Don’t call me again. I don’t want to hear your voice ever again.”

“You know something, Judge? Sometimes we don’t get what we want.” Then he laughed again. “Except for me. I always get what I want.”

When he clicked off the call he was still laughing.

I haven’t really been keeping Tara up to date on the case.

At least not as much as I should. After all, she’s the reason I took it on, and she has an emotional investment in it. Filling her in is the least I can do.

The truth is, I consult with Tara a great deal on all my cases. I often find it helpful to verbalize my thoughts and ideas, and she is a willing listener. She’s also discreet; when I tell her something, I can be sure she won’t go barking it around the neighborhood.

So tonight I am planning to take Tara for a walk through Eastside Park, down near the ball fields, where nobody will overhear us. It’s a setting that Tara loves; the park provides a seemingly endless supply of alluring scents.

I take out the leash, but then decide to check something in the case file, and we don’t leave right away. Tara is not pleased by the delay, and she barks at me a few times.

“Can you be a little flexible on this?” I ask her. “Don’t forget, I’m only working this case as a favor to you.”

Her look tells me she’s not impressed by my argument, and she barks a few more times. I take the leash again, and we’re off.

“Among the many things I don’t understand,” I tell her after we’re about a block away, “is why this all started up now. Why would someone wait six years to have Butler go to the Feds with his accusations? Something must have happened, it might even still be happening now, that has put someone in jeopardy.”

Tara’s not barking a word; she knows better than to interrupt my train of thought at times like this. I almost wish she would; there’s something in the back of my brain that I can’t seem to get to come to the front where I can see it.

“I’m missing something,” I say. “Actually, I’m pretty much missing everything.”

We walk for another hour, during which time I get absolutely no clarity. I would stay out longer, but Laurie is home, and it’s nearing bedtime. The outbreak of nuclear war would not be enough to get me to miss bedtime with Laurie.

Unfortunately, this particular bedtime is going to be somewhat delayed, as Pete’s car is pulling up in front of the house when I get home. Whenever I visualize Laurie and me in bed together, Pete is nowhere to be seen.

“To what do I owe this rare pleasure?” I ask. “And how long will you be staying?”

“I ran the fingerprint from the beer bottle.”

“Great, but you didn’t have to deliver the news personally,” I say.

“Oh yes, I did.”

He says that in a somewhat ominous fashion, but I’ll find out what’s going on soon enough. “Come on in.”

When we get inside the house, Laurie is in the den reading. “Laurie, honey, look what I found outside in the street. A pathetic urchin. Do we have any porridge we can spare?”

“Don’t listen to him, Pete,” she says.

“It’s hard not to; he never shuts up.”

“You want a beer?” I ask.

“I’m on duty.”

“You want a Shirley Temple?” When he doesn’t answer, I ask him who the print on the bottle belonged to.

“Guy by the name of Ray Camby. Local muscle, available for hire.”

Camby is the name of the party that the phone was linked to in Montana. “Originally from Montana?” I ask.

“How the hell do I know? And who gives a shit?”

“Anything else you can tell me about him?” I ask. “Without being surly?”

“Well, there is one other thing, sort of a funny coincidence.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, it’s the darnedest thing. Seems they fished Camby’s body out of the Passaic River this morning. You have a beer with him, and then he turns up dead. What are the odds against that?”

“Poor guy,” I say. “Do you know where the services are being held? I feel like I should send something.”

“Boys, boys…” Laurie admonishes.

“How do you live with this pain in the ass?” Pete asks her.

“I stay heavily medicated,” she says.

He nods and turns back to me. “You want to tell me what you know about Camby’s death here, or you want to come to the station and answer the questions?”

“That’s a tough one,” I say. “Go down to the station with you, or stay here with Laurie and Tara. It’s a coin flip, that’s for sure.”

“Playtime’s over. Talk to me.”

I nod. “He took a bullet in the head at the Castle Inn; it’s a motel on Route 4. Room 131 in the back.”

“You were there?” he asks.

“No, but I had inside information, which will remain inside.”

“Did Marcus kill this guy?”

“No,” I say. “Absolutely not. I would have much preferred Camby remained alive to answer questions. Not as grueling as these, of course. Camby had been following me; Laurie noticed him.”

Laurie nods. “He was killed before Marcus could question him, Pete. That’s the truth.”

Pete nods. For some reason he believes Laurie and thinks I’m full of shit. It wounds me terribly.

“Why was he following you?” Pete asks.

I shrug. “It would have been nice to ask him that. But you can bet it had something to do with the Galloway case.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Good point, Sherlock. It’s just a coincidence. Just like it’s a coincidence that Danny Butler got killed, and that he came forward after all these years to talk to the Feds…”

As I’m saying this, what I couldn’t think of while I was walking with Tara hits me between the eyes. “Pete, why did Butler go to the Feds?”

“He said he had information implicating your boy.”

I shake my head. “But why the Feds? This was a local case; you’d been working on it for years. In fact, the Feds had to drum up the Interstate Commerce thing to even get involved. Why would Butler go to them? Why not you?”

“Good question,” he says, after thinking about it for a few moments.

“Maybe he didn’t think you’d believe him,” Laurie says.

Pete considers this for a while as well; he seems to be pondering something that he is not inclined to share with us.

The silence becomes interminable and I prompt him with, “Pete?”

He finally says, “Maybe.”

“Any idea why that would be?” I ask. “And if you can answer in under twenty minutes, we’d appreciate it.”

He just nods, turns, and leaves the house, leaving Laurie and me staring at each other. “What the hell was that about?” I ask.

“I imagine we’ll find out eventually,” she says. “I’m going to bed. You coming?”

“Is that a serious question?”

It’s the routine that was getting Becky Galloway through the day.

Nothing exciting, just the normal chores in a life that would never again be normal. But she had come to embrace them, to focus on them, and it provided a small sense of security and calm, amid the chaos.

Going to the market, paying the bills, taking Adam to and from school… these were the kinds of things that filled Becky’s day. And every moment she thought about them was a moment she didn’t obsess over Noah’s nightmare situation.

So Becky had learned that in fact life really does go on, and dealing with it could be a welcome distraction. But at night, in the dark with the lights off, well, that was another story.

Becky had decided to plant a wide array of flowers in the garden behind their house. The actual planting wouldn’t take place until spring, but planning it now helped divert Becky’s mind from real life.

So part of this afternoon was spent at the garden supply store on Route 17 in Paramus, trying to decide what plants would go best with each other, and which would thrive in the soil behind the house. She had long consultations with the very knowledgeable store employees, and she agonized over the decision as if it had the slightest consequence on her pain-filled life.

She finally made her choice, spent more than she should have, and only left the comfort and sweet smells of the place because she had to pick up Adam at school.

She went out to the parking lot, and loaded up everything in the trunk. Then she got into the car and looked in the rearview mirror, so that she could back out.

And saw nothing.

The mirror had no reflection, it was somehow empty, and even before Becky realized it had been covered with black tape, she felt the hand on her neck. She screamed and jumped in fright, but could not move, such was the power in the fingers that were holding her down.

“Calm down, Becky,” Loney said. “Calm down and be quiet. You’re going to get through this.” He pressed tighter on the back of her neck, a not-so-subtle message that she was powerless to resist him.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to listen to me, very carefully. It will be quick, and then you can go pick up Adam at nursery school. You should be on time, but if you’re not, Mrs. Dembeck will wait with him.”

Loney’s words sent a chill through her; this man knew where Adam went to school, and who his teacher was. The familiarity was the most frightening thing she had ever experienced.

“Okay? We understand each other?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Your husband is a mass murderer, Becky. Everyone already knows that. All I want is for him to admit it to the world. Plead guilty, reject the travesty of a trial, and live out his life in prison.”

She was not about to argue Noah’s guilt or innocence with this man; she did not want to provoke him. “I’ll talk to Noah about it,” she said. “I will.”

“Don’t lie to me, Becky. Don’t say what you think I want to hear to get rid of me.”

“I swear, I’ll talk to him. I’ll try and convince him.”

“Becky, Becky, Becky…” he said, as if he was disappointed in her. “You haven’t even let me convince you yet.”

“Please don’t hurt me.” She would have added, “or Adam,” but she didn’t even want to give voice to that possibility.

“No need for that at all,” Loney said. “I just wanted to point out that with Noah in prison, you’re going to need money to live. If he pleads guilty, that will never be a problem for you. You have my word on that.”

“Okay.”

“Of course, if he goes ahead with the trial, you and Adam won’t need money to live, because you won’t be alive.” He paused for a moment. “Becky, we can get to you both. Anywhere.”

She tried not to let her voice reveal the terror she was feeling. “I understand.”

“Good; understanding is important. Now get out of the car and walk back into the store. Do not turn around, or I will have to shoot you. Come back in ten minutes, and then go pick up Adam. Do not call the police, or neither of you will live until tomorrow. Do you understand all of this?”

“Yes.”

There was some movement and she saw his gloved hand place something on the front passenger seat. It was a large box, gift-wrapped.

“Please accept this gift as a token of our understanding. You can open it when you get back.”

Becky did exactly as he said, getting out and walking into the store, her legs shaking so much that it was hard to walk. When she came back out he was gone, but the package was still on the front seat.

She didn’t open it then, instead driving toward Adam’s school. But then she realized that she didn’t want him in the car with it without knowing what it was, so she pulled over a few blocks from the school, took a deep breath, tore off the wrapping paper at the top, and opened it.

It was money, hundred-dollar bills spread out across the top. Sitting on top of the bills, bizarrely, was a CD labeled Danny Boy , by Bing Crosby.

Becky had never seen anything like it, and couldn’t imagine how much money could be in the fairly deep box if it was filled with these bills. She started to dig into the box, pushing the bills to the side, until she hit something solid.

She moved all the bills to the side to see what was there, and that was when she screamed. She threw open the car door and staggered out, landing on all fours, throwing up in the grass along the sidewalk.

Left behind in the car was the box with the money. And underneath that money, encased in plastic, was the severed head of Danny Butler.

You could walk right through it, and not know anything was happening.

Of course, there would be no particular reason for you to walk through it, unless you made a habit of strolling through desolate, uninhabited land in east Texas.

There was some equipment there, a few machines and some deconstructed oil rigs, but that was to be expected. This was land that was owned by an oil company, just like millions of acres in this part of the country.

It was bought up cheap, and there was no certainty that it had oil reserves worth even that cost. But like much land both on and off shore, there was the potential for cashing in, so the companies bought it all up.

Only seven percent of such owned land was developed; the rest could sit there for a decade or more, waiting its turn. This particular piece, officially designated TX43765, held no more promise than any of the others.

Also, this land was owned by Milgram Oil and Gas, which was not exactly a behemoth in the industry. Milgram had to be careful with its resources, financial and otherwise, and was less inclined to drill on this kind of land than its larger competitors would be.

Milgram couldn’t afford many dry wells, especially at this point, when they were being drained by an ongoing legal takeover fight. So they paid attention to the sites that were more likely to be moneymakers, and devoted the rest of their available cash to their wind-turbine program. That was the area that they hoped would save the company.

But while walking along the land would tell you very little, walking under it would be a revelation. Because down there was a series of underground mines and tunnels, built over the last six years. It was done without the knowledge of Milgram or any government entity, by people who literally came in under the cover of darkness.

As desolate as the land was, detection was always a danger. Milgram employed security, which patrolled the area on a random basis. As land leased by the government, federal agencies also had eyes occasionally open and watching. And the mining efforts themselves caused rumblings within the ground, detectable by instruments.

So the work was done in total secrecy, a little at a time, which was one of a number of reasons it was so time-consuming. Another was the danger inherent in the operation. Mining always came with its perils, but what these men were preparing to take out of the ground increased that danger many times over. To make it even more difficult, it was the deepest mine any of them had ever worked in.

But now the work was nearing a conclusion, and the men could only bide their time and wait for the signal.

The signal that would change the world forever.

If I’m ever in a foxhole, I want Becky Galloway in there with me.

Under the tremendous pressure and stress of the experience, she still acted intelligently and courageously. In a similar circumstance, I would have pissed in my pants and started calling for my mommy.

Her first concern was for Noah, and she didn’t want to do anything that could impact negatively on his situation. So after calling the school and arranging for Adam to go to a neighbor’s house, she called me. In a shaky, but remarkably calm voice, she told me what happened.

“Where is the package now?” I ask.

“Still on the seat of my car, in the grocery store parking lot. I put the lid back over it so no one can see in.”

“Can you drive the car?” I’m not asking it literally, I mean is she emotionally able to get back in the car.

“It’s not my first choice, but I can do it.”

“Okay, then…” I start, then change my mind in mid-sentence. I am concerned that the guy who threatened her might come back. “Go in the store, but keep an eye on your car. Somebody is going to come there; he’s going to be the scariest person you’ve ever seen, but he’s on our side.”

“What’s his name?”

“Marcus. You get in the backseat, and he’ll drive the car.”

“Okay. Thanks,” she says. Then, “Andy, I’m scared.”

“I know, but it’s going to get better.”

I hang up and update Laurie on the conversation. She immediately calls Marcus and gives him his instructions. He’s to bring Becky and the car to my house, where he will park it in the garage. Then we can figure out what to do.

Legally, our options are one and done. We are obligated to report what has happened, not so much because of the threat, but because of the severed head. We have knowledge of a crime, and even though that crime has long ago been reported in Vegas, it does not lessen our obligation.

Of course, I am not above disregarding legalities; it’s part of my charm. My first concern is for my client, and a disclosure of this incident will not go well for him. Dylan is already planning to imply that Noah’s friends disposed of Danny in a revenge killing; Noah’s wife being in the possession of the missing head can only make the implication much stronger.

Then, of course, there is the matter of the threat to Becky and her child, and we will have to protect her. There is also the question of what we tell Noah, and how he will react. Knowing him as I do, he could decide to protect his family by pleading guilty, since that was his instinct in the first place.

Marcus pulls the car into the garage, and as I watch, he opens the back door for Becky to get out. Marcus with manners; the world must be spinning in the wrong direction.

He takes the box off the front seat, and he, Becky, and Danny’s head come into the house. Laurie gives Becky a warm, comforting hug, and holds her as she breaks down crying. She kept her composure a lot longer than I would have.

Marcus puts the box with the decapitated head in it on the table. I take a quick look at it and instantly regret doing so. It is one ugly head.

Laurie examines it in a longer, more professional manner, and somehow deduces that Danny was strangled, and that his head was cut off after he was already dead. The fact that I sleep every night with a severed-head expert is a tad disconcerting.

“I’m sorry,” Becky says when she’s composed herself. “It was very frightening.”

“Did you get a look at the man?” Laurie asks.

She shakes her head. “No. He was careful about that. But I think I would recognize his voice if I heard it again.”

Under my prodding, she recounts everything she can remember about the incident. There is nothing in there that gives us a clue to his identity, and her mentioning that he was wearing gloves removes the chance of our getting fingerprints out of the car.

“Okay, first things first,” I say. “We need to protect you and your son.”

She nods. “I’ve thought about it. Adam and I can stay at my parents’ house in Ohio. My father will come get us.”

Laurie nods approvingly. “Good. Until he gets here Marcus can watch you.”

“We need to tell Noah; he has a right to know about this.”

Becky nods. “I’ll do that, but it’s not going to be fun.”

“His reaction will be to consider changing his plea,” I say.

“Maybe at first, but believe it or not, Noah is a fighter. He won’t want these people to win. And the fact that they’re out there will increase his belief in his own innocence. But there’s one other problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Our dog. My father is allergic to her.”

It’s funny, but even though a dog was the reason I’m defending Noah in the first place, I never thought to ask if he has one now. I’m about to say that their dog can board at the Tara Foundation, when Laurie says, “She can stay here. What’s her name?”

“Bailey.”

“Is she a golden?” I ask.

“No. Thank you, Noah wouldn’t have been able to stand it knowing she was in a dog run or a cage. He’ll be happy she’s here, with you and Tara, and so will I.”

I tell her to bring the dog over any time, and then I look over at the box. “Okay, we all understand that any talk about this head cannot leave this room. But the head itself is definitely going to leave this room. Any thoughts about what we should do with it?”

“It’s well preserved in the plastic,” Laurie says. “I don’t think we should bury or destroy it, in case we change our minds later and decide to report it to the authorities.”

“And then there’s the matter of the money,” I say. “It looks like a few thousand dollars, but I don’t want to be the one to count it.”

“Let’s save it for a party when we win,” Becky says.

Marcus, who hasn’t said a word this entire time, picks up the box, and puts it under his arm.

“Sounds like a plan,” I say.

Becky was not quite as persuasive with Noah as she had predicted.

She reported that he freaked out, so much so that the guard came in from outside the door to settle things down. Noah finally regained control; sometimes being chained to the table can do that for you. But he wouldn’t agree to anything until he talked to me.

“Who is this guy?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I know what he wants; he wants to stop the trial.”

“Why would it be so important for him for me to be convicted?”

“My guess, and it’s just a guess, is that you’re not the point here. It’s the trial he cares about. He’s afraid of what might come out; he doesn’t want a spotlight put on this crime. Not after all these years.”

“Then why send Danny Butler in the first place?”

“I don’t know that either. But when we find that out we’ll know the key to everything.”

“And how are we going to protect Becky and Adam? I mean protect them beyond any doubt.”

I explain the arrangements we are making, which Becky has already told him about. Marcus will watch her for the two days it will take for her father to get here, and they will bring the dog to live with us. As a recently retired police officer, Becky’s father will have the friends and resources to protect her at his house in Ohio.

“Becky seemed to have confidence in this guy Marcus,” he says.

“Marcus could beat up North Korea.”

“Andy, you have no idea what it’s like being in here, and having Becky and Adam in danger. It is the most frightening experience of my life.”

“Noah, they will be safe, I promise you that.”

“I can insure that by pleading guilty.”

“Which would also insure Becky not having a husband and Adam not having a father, all because of a crime you didn’t commit.”

“You still believe that?”

“I’m positive of it. But we have to focus on proving it.”

“Okay. On one condition. You move the trial date up; I want it to start as soon as possible.”

“It’s already too early,” I say. “It’s not in your best interest.”

“When the trial starts it takes away the incentive to threaten Becky; it would be too late.”

“Noah…”

“Who’d stop you from moving it earlier? The prosecutor?”

“Are you kidding? Dylan would be happy to start in twenty minutes. It’s the defense that benefits from delay. You, in case you were wondering, are the defense.”

“What about the judge?” he asks.

I shrug. “His calendar is clear enough. He’d be willing to adjust the start date.”

“How do you know that?”

“I checked; I knew you’d head in this direction.”

He nods; his decision final. “Okay, let’s do it.”

“Noah, it can significantly impact your chances. We haven’t nearly developed our case enough yet.”

“I understand that, Andy, really I do. But I’m more worried about Becky and Adam. My eyes are wide open on this.”

“I hear you,” I say. “And I’ll take care of it. But I’ve got a demand of my own, equally nonnegotiable.”

“I’m not going to like this.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I say. “But I’m going to take the steps necessary to get you put in solitary confinement.”

“Why?”

“Because a sure way to stop a trial is to make it so that the defendant is no longer alive. That is something we need to avoid. For one thing, it would leave me alone at the defense table with Hike.”

Noah laughs. “He can be a bit of a downer, huh?”

“He makes other downers look like uppers.”

“Okay, solitary can’t be any worse than this. But Andy, there’s something I don’t understand. Someone gets Danny Butler to come forward to accuse me, resulting in my arrest and trial. Then those same people kill Butler, and seem willing to do anything to prevent that trial. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Noah, I’m not the hardest worker in the world, and if I never had another case I’d be fine with it. But if there’s one thing I like about my job, one thing I like about the system, it’s that at its core it always makes sense. It’s just up to us to find the sense in it. The answer is there; we just have to locate it.”

“Are you always able to?”

“No. That’s one of the parts I don’t like.”

“This guy spent a lot of time on the phone,” Sam said.

He’s talking about the owner of the New York cell phone that Camby called a number of times in the month before he took the bullet in the hotel room. The one registered in the name of Trevor Berbick.

“How many calls did he make?”

“A hundred and seventy-eight in the past month. To thirty-eight different numbers. And he called all over the country, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco… eleven calls to Washington, D.C., and fourteen to Vegas. He made four calls to Camby’s phone as well, including an hour before Camby died. And get this; he called Danny Butler three times.”

“But we still can’t identify him?”

“No chance; not from his phone records.”

“What about Camby’s motel room phone?”

“No calls went out; there’s no way to know if any came in.”

It’s a sign of how grim our situation is that this is our most promising lead. Someone who followed me, and who was subsequently murdered, called a cell phone. We now have the records of numbers called by that second cell phone.

Big deal.

“I’m trying to attach names to the numbers that he called,” Sam says. “It may take a day or so.”

“Thanks, Sam. You’re doing a great job.”

He leaves, and I tell Laurie that I want to go with her today. She’s been interviewing family and friends of the victims that Sam has been able to find. It’s obviously unpleasant, and has so far yielded no significant information. I basically want to sit in on today’s sessions because I have nothing else to do.

Our first stop is a small garden apartment on Garfield Avenue in Elmwood Park. It starts to snow as we pull up, not a blizzard but enough that it will stick if it continues like this. I love it when it snows, an emotional remnant of childhood days when snow meant the possibility of school being canceled.

When we get out of the car, I hear a voice calling out, “Ms. Collins! Ms. Collins!”

The door to one of the garden apartments is open, and an elderly woman is standing there, frantically motioning us in. We head for the door, and I realize that she had opened the door and come out because of the weather, not wanting us to stay out in the elements a moment more than necessary.

When we get there, she ushers us in, muttering about how terrible the weather is. Before we even have a chance to introduce ourselves, we have cups of hot tea in our hands. I don’t even like tea, but I drink it gratefully.

Laurie finally introduces me to Mrs. Martha Leavitt, who is probably pushing eighty. She lost her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson in the fire. I’m not sure how anyone gets through that, but she seems vibrant and alert, and has a warmth about her that makes her immediately likable.

“I’m sorry to have to talk to you about this,” I say. “I’m sure you’d rather think about anything else.”

She smiles sadly. “I think about it all day, every day, Mr. Carpenter. I even talk about it to myself, out loud. The only difference now is you’re here to listen to me.”

She goes on to talk about the family members that she lost, showing us pictures and telling stories that are painful to listen to, and absolutely of no use to our case. The truth is that she knows nothing at all about the fire that wasn’t in the papers.

Laurie says, “Mrs. Leavitt, one of the things we are trying to do is understand why that house was chosen by the arsonist. We believe that someone in that house was the target, but we don’t know who that might be.”

She seems surprised by this. “Oh my, I never thought about it in those terms.” She is silent for a few moments. “I guess it didn’t really matter; they were gone, and they weren’t coming back, no matter the reason.”

“Do you know of anyone who might have had a reason to hurt your family? Did any of them have any enemies?”

“Oh, no, that’s just not possible. Not possible at all.”

We ask her a bunch of questions to gently probe the matter, but there is no way she could ever entertain the thought that the people that she loved could have been the targets of such evil.

Our next stop is Morlot Avenue in Fair Lawn, where Jesse Briggs has agreed to meet us at a coffee shop. Laurie says that when she told him on the phone who we were representing, he was reluctant to meet at all. He finally consented to the coffee shop, and Laurie felt it was because he didn’t want people who were on Noah Galloway’s side in his house.

Briggs is in his early fifties, but looks older because his hair is completely white. He makes an effort to be polite to us, but it’s clear that he resents the intrusion.

“All this time nobody talks to me about this, and now twice this month. Where’s everyone been for the last six years?”

“Who else spoke to you?” I ask.

“A policeman.”

I’m surprised and annoyed to hear this. I’ve read the discovery documents cover to cover a few times, and there was no mention of Mr. Briggs being interviewed recently, or at all, for that matter. I make a mental note to torture Dylan for holding out on me.

Briggs lost his daughter, Natasha, and his infant grandson. He is clearly still embittered about it, as I would certainly be. If something like that happened to me, I would try and burn down Earth.

“What about your daughter’s husband?” I ask. “He wasn’t there?”

“She didn’t have a husband.”

“Was the baby’s father there?”

“Natasha never told me who the father was. But you can be sure he wasn’t there. If I knew who he was I’d have killed him myself.”

A few tears start to slip down his face, and he grabs a napkin from the dispenser on the table, quickly wiping them away.

“But it wasn’t the father’s fault that they died,” he says, softly. “It was mine. I’m the one who told her to move back here. I’m the one who said I would take care of her and my grandson.”

“It wasn’t your fault either, Mr. Briggs. It was the fault of the piece of garbage who set the fire.”

“The man you’re trying to let walk free,” he says.

“I don’t believe that to be the case, sir. I truly don’t.”

He looks at me for a few moments, then, “I’ve got cancer, Mr. Carpenter. It’s spread to places I didn’t even know I had. The doctors said I had about six months, and they said that eight months ago. The only thing I’ve wanted for the last six years was for them to catch and put away the man that did this. So I hope you’re wrong.”

Laurie and I tell him that we understand, that we wish him well, and that we appreciate his talking to us. Then we pay the check, and leave.

This was a miserable way to spend a day.

The cell phone call list from our mystery man is surprising, to say the least.

There are seven prominent businessmen in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco; two judges, in Delaware and Missouri; six members of Congress; officers of various governmental agencies including the SEC and FDA; a Washington, D.C., political consultant; a customs officer in Galveston, Texas; as well as a number of other people whose names aren’t so easily recognizable.

There are also a few numbers that Sam hasn’t been able to track down yet, which causes him to view them with great suspicion. The only way that they could be so hard to identify is if they took great pains to make it so, and Sam feels that the reasons for doing that must be nefarious.

He may well be right.

Sam presents this information to Laurie and me in my office, and while it is certainly intriguing, it is far from clear how we should proceed.

“Let’s confront these people, one at a time, and shake them down,” Sam says. “We can split the names up three ways.”

Laurie shakes her head. “Won’t work. We don’t even have an approach to use.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asks.

I know exactly what Laurie is saying, so I take over from here. “It does us no good to go to someone on that list, and tell them they got a phone call from someone we can’t identify, and then ask them what it was about. Even if they know what we’re talking about, they’ll laugh at us.”

We kick it around a while longer, and then Laurie says, “We need to make them think we know more than we do. If there’s any chance at all to get them to talk to us, it would be because they are afraid not to. Of course, the problem is that we’re not really in a position to instill fear in anyone.”

“Maybe we are,” I say. “For the most part, these are public people. They run public companies, or serve in various areas of government. They are not going to want to deal with being dragged into this kind of spotlight.”

“So maybe they’ll talk to us quietly.”

I nod. “Maybe. Or maybe the fact that they were on this call list has nothing to do with this case. Maybe we’re wasting our time.”

“What else do we have to do?”

There’s certainly no good answer to that, so we address ourselves to the question of how we can credibly make these people fear public disclosure, when we don’t have the slightest idea what it is we’re threatening to disclose.

By the time we’re done, we’re close to having a plan of attack. It’s not brilliant, but it has a chance, and it feels good to at least have that.

With the trial about to start, I have to put on my lawyer hat, and leave the investigating more to Laurie and Marcus. But the way our plan sets up, I’m going to have to be the one to set it into motion, though I’m going to recruit some help.

At the moment I have to prepare for trial, to go over the evidence again, and again after that, until I know it cold. I also have to prepare my opening statement, though “prepare” may be overstating it. I think in general terms about what I am going to say, and what points it is essential that I make. But I never write it out, and I absolutely never rehearse. It cuts down on my spontaneity, and spontaneity is one of the few things I’ve got going for me.

So basically I have to think, which means Tara is about to go for another long walk. She’s lucky I don’t take on more clients, or at her age she’d probably have to get knee replacements.

We are in trouble on two fronts. The evidence is against us, but so will be the emotional factor, and in this case it will be incredibly strong. Tara is way more sensitive than me, so it’s this aspect that I decide to talk to her about.

“Dylan is going to parade the families and friends of all the victims to the stand. They’re going to talk about what wonderful people they were, and what a nightmare it was that they died an agonizing death in that fire.”

Tara keeps sniffing the grass; I don’t think I’m getting through to her. “They’re going to hate Noah, because they’re going to want somebody to suffer for it and he’s the easy and obvious target.”

More sniffing; as golden retrievers go she’s as coldhearted as they come.

“I talked to some of those people with Laurie. Just listening to them made me want to vote guilty. I mean, the world moves on, but these people have had to live with it every day. And then suddenly they’re harassed by cops and lawyers, and-”

Tara stops sniffing just as something hits me; I don’t think the two actions are connected.

Jesse Briggs mentioned that he was questioned by a police officer recently, and it annoyed me that the interview report wasn’t included in the discovery documents that Dylan had sent me. But Noah’s arrest was as the result of a federal investigation; there were no documents at all relating to “policemen.”

It could be just semantics, but I would think that if Briggs was questioned by an FBI agent, he would know the difference and speak more precisely.

More significantly, Tony at Taco Bell also mentioned something about talking to the cops recently. I didn’t think much of it, and assumed he meant back near the time of the fire, or to FBI agents. But maybe that’s not what he meant at all; maybe it was local cops that were doing the questioning.

If that’s the case, I need to find out why they were suddenly active, and more importantly, when.

The “when” is everything.

Becky was right; Bailey is not a golden.

Becky says that she’s a mastiff when she and Marcus drop her off, but I think she might be a horse. I even think I might have bet on her once.

She’s enormous, at least a hundred and fifty pounds, and walks slowly, languidly, as if it’s fine if she gets where she wants to go, but if she doesn’t, no big deal either way. She’s only three years old, but seems to have less energy than Edna.

As we always do when we introduce Tara to a visitor, we bring them separately to the backyard and have them meet there. Tara has no idea what to make of her; I’m sure she’s never seen an animal this big. She wouldn’t have to bend down much to walk under her.

Bailey, for her part, seems fine with Tara, though she doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. She wags her tail a couple of times, and I’m glad I’m not standing in the way of it when she does. Godzilla knocked over buildings in Tokyo with a smaller backside.

“What does she eat?” I ask, hoping the answer is not “small children.”

“Becky brought her food. It’s the same as Tara’s, only more. Much, much more.”

“Okay, Bailey,” I say. “This is Tara. She’s in control here; you have a problem, you come to me. If I can’t handle it, I go to Tara. We don’t ask much of you, just make your bed in the morning, and don’t make anything else in the house. And I handle the remote control at all times. You got that?”

I think she nods, although it could be that she’s dozing off. I don’t think she’s going to be a problem.

When we get back in the house, Bailey walks over to the couch and lies down on it. It’s amazing to watch; she doesn’t jump on to the couch, or climb on to it. Her legs are so long that she walks on to it.

I’m still staring at her when Willie Miller comes over. He does a double take when he sees Bailey, and says, “Whoa, what is that?”

“That’s Bailey. Tara’s new friend.”

“Oh, man, I want one of those.” He goes over and hugs Bailey on the couch, who seems to take it in stride.

Willie is here to update me on the progress he is making on his book. “This writing stuff is not as hard as I thought,” he says. “It’s like talking, only somebody puts it on paper when I’m finished.”

“Finished with what?”

“Talking. My helper has a tape recorder, and he asks me questions, and I answer them. Then he says, can we say it this way? Or that way? And I say, sure, whatever you want.”

“Sounds easy.”

“Well, not everybody could do it, but I’m picking it up pretty fast. You should try it; you can use the tape recorder when I’m done.”

As jury selection gets more crucial, it gets more boring.

That’s not to say it isn’t both crucial and boring to start with; it’s just that both aspects get magnified as it goes along.

The reason it’s crucial is of course that a few weeks down the road twelve people are going to sit in a room and decide whether Noah goes free or spends the rest of his life in jail. And right now Dylan and I are in the process of choosing who is going to be in that room.

But it’s also deadly dull, particularly now when we’re in the second day. We’ve already asked the same tedious questions of at least fifty people, and listened as they’ve given pat answers that may or not be true.

People react to their being called for jury duty in different ways, but all of them show up with a plan. That plan could consist of a way to get excused, or a way to get on a panel. They then answer questions according to what they think will accomplish their goal.

When it’s a high-profile trial like this one, the stakes get that much higher, both for the lawyers and the potential jurors. It increases the number of people who want to serve; instead of a lot of them seeing it as a few weeks out of commission, they often look at it as a potential book deal waiting to happen.

If you’re a defense lawyer, as I happen to be, the peril is even greater in this situation. That is because people who want on the jury to make a name for themselves are more likely to convict.

The public wants someone to blame for this crime, and the jurors that identify the fiend and put him away come off a lot more heroic than those who let the guy walk. There weren’t too many parades thrown for the Simpson jurors… not that there should have been.

So it’s a crapshoot anyway, but an even more difficult one in this case. We’re looking for open-minded people, should some happen to exist on this planet. We’re also looking for people smart enough to embrace alternative theories, should we stumble on one.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if these potential panelists were chosen from a list of Rhodes scholars, and we are having to settle for people who seem less than ideal for our purpose. My guess is that Dylan is feeling the same way, but that doesn’t cheer me up to any great degree.

It’s almost three o’clock before we have our panel in place, and Judge De Luca sends them home with the admonition to be back bright and early tomorrow morning.

He also reads a long, prepared speech about how the jurors are to avoid media coverage of the trial at all costs.

Yeah, right.

I’m assuming that they are normal human beings, and that they will therefore be channel-surfing tonight to find every bit of trial coverage that is available. And if they do, they will be seeing a lot of me.

I’m going on three cable news shows tonight, and all were eager to have me. It’s a sign that the 24/7 cable news networks have enough real programming to fill up maybe 14/4, if that.

We timed my proposed appearances to come on the night before opening statements. I’m doing them all from a single studio on West Forty-eighth Street in Manhattan, and they’re being beamed by satellite to the various networks. It’s not exactly a long beaming, since they’re all located right here in New York, but it certainly cuts down on cab fare.

I’m not going on alone; I’m doing so with Alexander Downey, Willie Miller’s publisher. When I called and told him what I wanted him to do, he jumped at the opportunity.

The first show is the most serious. Douglas Burns has just gotten his own legal show on CNN, and unlike some of his colleagues, he examines issues from an intelligent, legally savvy point of view.

Burns is a former federal prosecutor, turned defense attorney, turned TV personality. He’s done it all, and knows what he’s talking about, so it’s a little dangerous for me to go on his show. But if I can get by him, the rest will be easy.

Burns starts off the segment by summing up the issues in the case, utilizing all the evidence that has made its way into the public domain. It’s a thorough, compelling presentation, and if I could get him to slant it in our direction, I could use it as my opening statement.

But I’m not here to discuss the evidence, or our strategy at trial. For one thing, the evidence is stacked against us, and we haven’t formulated a coherent defense, at least not for our case in chief.

I’m here to plant some things in the minds of the people that shouldn’t be watching, the seven men, five women, and six alternates who are on our jury. But more importantly, I’m here to scare a bunch of people who aren’t.

I’m easily able to deflect questions about the evidence and our strategy by claiming that we can’t reveal too much, lest the other side gain an advantage. Burns understands that and backs off, and opens the door for me to discuss what I’m interested in.

I decide to be direct, and say, “To be honest, Doug, my hope is to use your show to send a message.”

He smiles, spreads out his arms, and says, “That’s what we’re here for.” He probably senses that this has the potential to be a big story, and besides, we’re live on television. He’s not going to throw me out; he’s got air time to fill.

“There’s a man named Ray Camby; he’s a two-time ex-con who has been available for hire. From the moment I took on the Galloway case, he started following me.”

“Why was he doing that?”

“Because there are people who are trying to stop this trial, because they are afraid of what will come out. They are the people who killed Danny Butler.” The audience will know who Butler is, because he was in Burns’s setup piece.

“Do you know who these people are?” Burns asks.

“Not yet. But we’re getting close.”

“Is Ray Camby still following you?” He smiles, peers into the lights, shielding his eyes, and says, “Ray, are you out there?”

“You’ll have to talk louder than that,” I say. “Ray Camby was murdered last week, to prevent my investigators from questioning him. But we did manage to get a great deal of valuable information, and we’ve traced back Camby’s connections.”

“Who are those connections?”

“They are people in very prominent positions, in business and in government.”

“You have names?”

I smile. “I do, but I’m not going to reveal them here, at least not tonight. My investigators are going to be approaching these people, starting tomorrow. They will be given an opportunity to cooperate, to discuss with us in confidence what they know about this situation. If they refuse, their names will be made public, and I will invite the working press to start digging.”

“You’re making a very serious threat,” Burns points out.

“I understand that. But twenty-six people died in that fire, and two more have been killed in recent weeks. In addition, an innocent man faces the possibility of life in prison. I think it’s time we played some hardball, and I’m not only willing to make these threats, but I’m very prepared to back them up. And that’s where Mr. Downey comes in.”

Burns then takes the cue and starts asking Downey how he is involved in this process. Downey announces that his company has accepted my proposal to publish a book I will be writing, mainly about the Galloway case, but also about others in my career.

“It will be after the conclusion of the case,” Downey says, “so there will be no reason to hold anything back. Andy has promised to name names, most notably of those who have not cooperated with the defense.”

Downey fends off Burns’s questions about details, mainly because he doesn’t have any. He doesn’t even have a contract with me, not even an agreement that I will write the book. He certainly hopes I will, but the publicity this will generate for his company is payment enough for the moment.

We go through the drill twice more, on two other shows, and head home. The trial starts tomorrow, so I’ve got quite a bit of work ahead of me tonight.

I’m tired, but pleased with how it went. Hopefully I’ve made some people very nervous. I know I am.

“I thought I had seen it all,” is how Dylan begins his opening statement. “I’ve been in this job a long time, and I thought I’d seen it all.” He shakes his head, sadly, at the realization that in fact he hadn’t seen it all.

“It’s my job to deal with terrible things, and I’ve seen a lot of them. Every time someone gets robbed, or embezzled, or assaulted, or murdered, it comes through my office. And I have to admit my colleagues and myself get a little hardened to it; I suppose that’s human nature.

“But every once in a while we’re presented with something so terrible and so tragic that it stuns us all, and makes us recoil in horror. But someone in my job doesn’t get to make it go away by turning off the TV, or not buying the newspaper. I need to face it head-on, as distasteful as it might be.

“And now, today, so do you. You are going to see things during the course of this trial that I wish you didn’t have to see. You are going to hear things I wish you didn’t have to hear.

“But it all comes with my job, and now it comes with yours. Because you and I need to do whatever we can to make sure that something as horrible as this does not happen again.

“Twenty-six people died a horrible death one night six years ago. Most of them were completely innocent, a few weren’t. But none of them deserved the fate that they got. None of them deserved to suffer as they suffered… no one does.

“It took six years to identify the perpetrator of this horrible crime. There was certainly no rush to judgment here. Finally, when it looked as if it might go unsolved, someone came along and provided a key piece of information. After that, through diligent and dedicated investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, all the pieces fell into place.

“Noah Galloway committed this crime. This is not the time for me to convince you of that fact; the evidence will do that. You will be left without a reasonable doubt, which is what our system properly demands.

“You will see Noah Galloway for what he is, and what he has done, and you will do your job. As unpleasant as all of this will be, I have no doubt you will do your job.

“So I thank you for your service.”

Dylan has done an effective job of bringing the jurors on to his team, the team that is dedicated to protecting society from the horribly evil people on my team. It no doubt fits the narrative they came in with, so I’m sure it landed on receptive ears.

As I stand I glance at Noah, who is staring straight ahead and betraying no emotion, as I have counseled him to do. But I can’t help wondering what’s going through his mind. Before I met him, he was resigned to his fate, and comfortable with it. He felt he deserved whatever the system decreed, and that would be that.

But he’s a smart guy, and though he isn’t quite willing to admit it, he must be coming to believe in at least the possibility of his own innocence. That automatically gives him something major at stake, and also gives him a reason to be frightened, and bitter, and angry, and very, very anxious.

He’s not showing it, and that’s good, but he’s got to be feeling it.

I pat him on the shoulder, as much for the jury’s sake as his own, and stand. “I’ve been in my job a lot of years as well,” I say, “but I’ve already had a relatively new experience this time. Very often I can go an entire trial without agreeing with anything the prosecutor says, but this time we are on the same page on a major issue.

“What happened that night six years ago is horrible… no doubt about it. And I would like the person who did it to go away for the rest of his life, and I would be fine if that life wasn’t a long one.

“But your job is not to punish the person that the prosecutor says is guilty. You are not punishers, you are finders of fact. It is your job to decide whether Noah Galloway is guilty, not to protect society. Society is not protected by an innocent man going to prison; it suffers for it.

“Noah Galloway had a disease; it’s called drug addiction. It is a horrible disease, and one that is terribly difficult to overcome. But he’s done just that; he’s turned his life around and become a model citizen. He’s been recognized for his accomplishments and his good works by many, many people, a group that happens to include the President of the United States.

“But his achievements in the last six years don’t make him innocent; nor do his troubles before that make him guilty. When you come to know him then and now, when you know who Noah Galloway is and what makes him tick, then you will know he is incapable of this kind of act.

“The evidence is convenient, rather than compelling. It suddenly appeared as if by magic, and it came in torrents. The case was handed to the prosecutor on a silver platter, and he ran with it. I don’t know about you, but when I’m handed something on a silver platter for no reason at all, I check to see if it’s real silver.

“Well, you will soon see that none of this is real, and that Noah Galloway is a victim. So, like Mr. Campbell, I ask you to do your job, based solely on the facts. Then maybe the police and prosecutors can focus on finding the real fiend, who is out there laughing at us.

“Thank you.”

Noah whispers a thank-you to me when I sit down, and even Hike nods that he feels it went well. A positive nod from Hike is the equivalent of a ticker-tape parade from a normal person, so I’m feeling good about things.

That feeling is wiped away by one sentence spoken to Dylan, by De Luca. “Call your first witness.”

I guess I was hoping the judge would forget about the witness part, and go right to the verdict.

It was one of the more unpleasant phone calls in Loney’s recent memory.

Carmine Ricci had called at three A.M. and he was not happy. The hour of the call was not a surprise; Carmine was on Vegas time, so it was only midnight, and he never slept anyway. He also was not particularly concerned about waking Loney; in fact, based on the tone of his voice, he would have been happy to kill Loney.

“You been watching television?” Carmine asked, instead of “hello.”

“Now?” Loney asked. “I’ve been sleeping for… what time is it?” He looked at his watch, and then continued, “Three hours.”

“The lawyer was on television tonight.”

“What lawyer? Carpenter?” Loney asked. “What did he say?”

“Find out yourself, and then call me to explain. If he calls me before you do, you’ve got yourself a problem.”

“Okay… just tell me… what show was he on?”

“How the hell do I know? You think I watch that shit? I heard it was one of those lawyer shows.”

Click.

Loney set about trying to find out what the hell Carmine was talking about, a task which proved easier than he expected. The cable news and talk shows are repeated frequently in the early-morning hours, and he was able to catch the appearance on the Doug Burns show at four A.M.

It confirmed his worst fears; Carpenter had traced the calls that Camby made, which would not have been that difficult. But then he had somehow managed to delve into Loney’s phone records, and find out who he had called.

This would have been a disaster waiting to happen, if it hadn’t already happened. He would have to call everyone on the list, and explain what had taken place. He would not mention Camby’s death, though they would learn about it from Carpenter’s TV appearances.

Actually, the circumstances of Camby’s death might help him convince them not to talk to Carpenter. They would not want to share Camby’s fate, and even though public disclosure by Carpenter could prove somewhat embarrassing, a bullet in the head would be even more problematic.

His bosses would be upset, though that would quickly turn to anger. Loney knew that they saw him as a necessary evil, a conduit to use to accomplish their goals. Conduits are supposed to handle problems, not cause them, and his bosses were going to see this as a very big problem.

But the worst part was Carmine, because at the end of the day, Carmine was the only player here who was of any real importance. So if Carmine was pissed off, nothing else mattered. And Carmine was pissed off.

Loney called him back, but didn’t bother to apologize. Carmine never wanted to hear apologies; he considered them unnecessary. He already knew that someone who displeased him would by definition be sorry that they had done so, since they would want to stay alive.

All Carmine was interested in was that the situation be rectified, and Loney promised that the process would begin, effective immediately. He didn’t say how he would do that, since another thing Carmine was not interested in was details. He was a results-oriented guy.

In the morning, Loney set out to make calls to everyone that could be on Carpenter’s list. He started with Fowler, asking him if he was aware of what Carpenter had said on television.

“I saw it,” Fowler said. “I’m still trying to figure out how you could have let that happen.”

“It was a mistake,” Loney admitted. “I’m dealing with it.”

“You’d better. Your boss is as unhappy about it as we are.”

“I’ve talked to him. Carpenter is in the dark on this, he’s groping. If his people get in touch with you, your position should be that you don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Fowler’s voice sounded coldly amused. “Now you’re telling me my position?”

“I’m telling everyone the same thing,” Loney said.

“Just make sure they listen to you.”

It was a ridiculous comment for Fowler to make, since there was no question the people on that list would listen to Loney. Their fear of Loney, and in some cases their dependence on him, is what made the entire operation run in the first place.

By noon, Loney had made all the calls. He knew these people, he knew what made them tick, and he could have anticipated each of their reactions.

Some were nervous and afraid, which for the most part they tried to conceal. A few were less concerned, and two even relished the danger. But all promised to stonewall anyone who contacted them. They would not be intimidated; if Carpenter made their names public they were prepared to take him to court for defamation of character.

It was the reaction Loney wanted, though he was not sure each of them could be trusted. He would have to monitor things vigilantly, and perform whatever corrective actions might be needed.

Corrective action was a Loney specialty.

Assistant Chief Peter Hayes is Dylan’s first witness.

Chief Hayes comes from Passaic County Fire Department royalty; his family has been in the department since the early 1900s. Three of his ancestors have been chiefs, including his father, and there is no doubt that Hayes will ascend to the top spot as soon as the current chief reaches retirement age.

Hayes has an imperial attitude about him, as if his title should be “Emperor” rather than “Assistant Chief.” Dylan treats him with a nauseating reverence, so much so that I’m surprised he doesn’t spread rose petals in front of him as he heads for the witness stand.

Dylan starts by taking him through his career path. Hayes has been a firefighter for twenty-four years, and based on this endless testimony, he has received pretty much every commendation and award it is possible to receive, except for maybe a Grammy.

Finally I can’t take it anymore, and I object. “Your Honor, the witness’s service has certainly been admirable, but he’s not here applying for sainthood. He’s presenting evidence of a specific incident.”

De Luca nods. “Sustained. Let’s move it along, Mr. Campbell.”

Dylan turns Hayes’s attention to the night of the fire. “Were you the first one on the scene, Chief Hayes?”

“No, I wasn’t. I got there seven minutes after the alarm was received, but three units were already deployed and on the scene.”

“So you were not the first person to enter the burning building?” Dylan asks.

“No firefighter entered that building,” Hayes answers, uttering the words as if they are momentous. “The intensity of the fire would not permit it. And within six minutes of my arrival, there was no longer any building at all. It had completely disintegrated.”

“How many fire scenes have you visited, Chief?”

“I couldn’t say. Thousands.”

“Was this one unusual?” Dylan asks.

“You mean for reasons other than the toll in human lives?”

“Yes, I’m talking about the qualities of the fire itself.”

“It was the hottest, most intense fire I have ever witnessed, or investigated.”

Dylan pretends to be surprised by the answer. “Why is that?”

“The chemical mixture that was used, and the way it was distributed throughout the structure.”

Dylan takes Hayes through a long presentation on the chemical compound that investigators determined was used to start and spread the fire. It was a combination of benzene and polystyrene. There was some gasoline added, which Hayes says made it easier to ignite.

“Is there a name for this mixture that we would all be familiar with?” Dylan asks.

Hayes nods. “It’s a form of napalm.”

Dylan is positively shocked to hear this. “Napalm? You mean the weapon used to incinerate jungles in Vietnam?”

“Yes,” Hayes says, and goes on to describe the different types of napalm, and its devastating properties.

The description is impressive in its detail, and will be very damaging when the jury learns that Noah has the training and education to have concocted it.

Dylan is not going to wait for that to happen. He hands Hayes a piece of paper, and asks him questions about it. It is a copy of Noah’s course studies in college and graduate school, and lists his Ph.D. in chemical engineering. I question the document’s admissibility and Hayes’s standing to testify about it, but De Luca shoots me down, as I knew he would.

“Does this background suggest to you that the defendant would know how to make this mixture of chemicals?”

I object on the grounds that Hayes could not be aware of Noah’s base of knowledge. De Luca sustains the objection and asks Dylan to rephrase.

Finally, Hayes is allowed to say that people with Noah’s background should certainly have the capability of concocting it.

Dylan does not ask Hayes anything about the incinerated bodies that were left in the rubble; he will call the coroner later to describe that in horrible detail. But Hayes has done a very effective job, and by the time Dylan turns him over to me, we already have a steep hill to climb.

“Good morning, Mr. Hayes.” I’m not going to call him “Chief”; at the very least that gives him the upper hand and an added credibility in the jurors’ minds. It’s a small thing, but trials are made up of many small things.

“Good morning, Mr. Carpenter.”

“You talked about the elaborate way in which the fire was started, how the mixture was carefully spread out and placed, and how igniting it would have been difficult.”

“Yes.”

“The person doing it would have to have been intelligent, or at least very familiar with this type of thing?”

“Absolutely.”

“And he or she would have to have been patient in the process? It needed to be carefully thought out and executed?”

“Certainly.”

“And clearheaded and alert?”

There’s a flash of worry on Hayes’s face; he knows that the prosecution’s theory is of a drug-desperate Noah exacting revenge on the people denying him those drugs.

“I’m not sure I can speak to that.”

“If you’d like to ask Mr. Campbell’s permission, we can wait.”

Dylan explodes out of his chair to object, and De Luca admonishes me.

“Mr. Hayes, you’ve already stated that the perpetrator had to be knowledgeable in these matters, patient and careful. You think someone could have done all this while not clearheaded and alert?”

“I suppose that would have been the case, at least for a short while,” Hayes concedes.

“Good. Now this clearheaded, intelligent, careful, patient, alert arsonist would have to have had a knowledge of the chemicals in napalm?”

“Yes.”

“Because you can’t just walk into Home Depot and say, give me a jugful of napalm, can you? There are no Napalm R Us stores around, right?”

“That is correct. It is illegal to possess it, or purchase it.”

“And it requires a chemical engineering degree to create it?”

“Certainly doesn’t hurt,” he says.

I introduce four pieces of paper and have them marked as defense evidence exhibits. I then hand the first one to Hayes, and I give copies of all four to Dylan.

“Mr. Hayes, I have just handed you a copy of a Google search page, have I not?”

Hayes holds it away from him, as if it might be contagious. “Yes, I believe so.”

“You’re not sure?”

“That’s what it is,” he says.

“Please read the subject line at the top.”

“‘How to make napalm.’”

“And near the top it mentions how many hits there were on that subject. Please read that as well.”

He mutters the answer. “Two hundred and sixty-four thousand.”

I tell him that neither I nor the jury could hear his response, and I get him to say it louder.

“Mr. Hayes, I think we can assume that these two hundred and sixty-four thousand napalm teachers think the reader has a place to do it, like a napalm office or something. In case they don’t, can you read the subject line and the number of hits on this search page?”

I hand him the next piece of paper, which he sneers at. “‘How to make napalm at home,’” he says.

“And how many hits?”

“One hundred and ninety-five thousand.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I say. “But there’s always a catch. For instance, what if the person wanting to make napalm can’t read? Then he must be out of luck, right? Or maybe you can read this subject line.” I give him paper number three.

“‘Making napalm videos,’” he says.

“And the hits?” I feel like I’m dragging him to the edge of a cliff.

“One thousand six hundred and ten hits.”

“So I guess illiteracy wouldn’t be a deterrent after all. Live and learn. My bad.” I walk toward him with paper number four. “One more,” I say, and hand it to him. “What’s the subject line?”

“‘Need a chemical engineering degree to make napalm,’” he says.

“And the hits?” I ask.

“No results found.”

I’ve only partially succeeded in my cross of Chief Hayes.

I’ve won what I classify as “debating” points, rather than “verdict” points. Debating points are part of a “gotcha” cross-examination, in which the witness might look bad, or get caught in a mistake. But those kinds of points don’t accomplish much in real life; they don’t win over the jury and help them make up their minds. Only verdict points do that.

I showed how silly it was to assume that it takes a chemical engineering degree to know how to mix the chemicals necessary to make napalm. I’m sure the jury gets that intellectually, and I even think they will give me credit for a smooth piece of lawyering.

But ultimately they will dismiss it as a debating point. At the end of the day they will think that if an arsonist went to the trouble of mixing such a concoction, then it is more likely than not that he had a knowledge of chemicals. And there, sitting at the defense table sits the accused, a chemical engineer.

It will all seem to fit for the jury. It won’t be the deciding factor; it will be a contributing one. And unfortunately Dylan is not nearly finished making evidentiary contributions.

His next witness is Detective Sue Pyles of the Paterson Police Department. She’s one of the lead detectives in the drug enforcement division. Pyles has been fighting the thankless, mostly losing battle against drugs for almost twenty-two years.

Dylan asks her about the occupants of the two ground-floor apartments in the destroyed building, and Pyles prefaces her testimony by saying that there are things she cannot say, and names she cannot mention, because it could prejudice an ongoing investigation.

What that means is that the department is still trying to make a case against Double J, who will be playing checkers at the Sunset Rest Home for Retired Drug Dealers by the time the cops get to him.

“But at the time of the fire, these two apartments were part of an active drug distribution center?” Dylan asks.

“They were selling drugs illegally, yes.”

“How do you know that?”

“We had them under part-time surveillance. We were building a case.”

“Were they being watched that night?”

Pyles shakes her head. “Unfortunately, no.”

“So drug users would come to that building to buy their drugs?”

“Some would,” Pyles says. “But in other cases the sale would be made elsewhere. Customers who were good enough might get theirs delivered, or the purchase would take place at a prearranged meeting place, perhaps a park.”

“Back around the time of the fire, were you familiar with Noah Galloway?”

Pyles nods. “Yes.”

“What did you know about him?” Dylan asks.

“He was an addict, and one of the customers of the people we are talking about.”

“A good customer?”

A shrug from Pyles. “Depends on your definition of ‘good.’ He was certainly a frequent buyer, but there were times he was cut off because he had no money. They did not consider him a good credit risk.”

“How did you know this?”

“Audio surveillance.”

“If you had all this information, why had you not made any arrests?”

Pyles frowns, her frustration evident. “We were about to.”

Dylan turns Pyles over to me. She hasn’t done us much damage, merely set up some facts that we would have admitted to anyway.

Pyles’s statement that Noah was a drug addict was something we acknowledged in my opening statement, and was widely known anyway. Noah had received much publicity when he got the presidential appointment, and his overcoming his addiction was a heroic aspect to it.

The fact that Noah was a customer of the people in that building was something that was going to come out anyway. Slightly damaging was the testimony that he sometimes couldn’t afford his habit, and it is there where I will focus my cross-examination.

“Detective Pyles, you said you had audio surveillance of Mr. Galloway dealing with these people.”

“Yes.”

“Tapes?”

“Yes.”

“Would you play them for us, please?”

“We couldn’t find them,” she says, appearing uncomfortable.

I knew this from the discovery, but I wanted the jury to hear it. “Is that unusual?”

“It happens.”

“Obviously. My question was whether or not its happening could be considered unusual.”

“Yes, I would say it’s unusual. But in this case the fire seemed to end our investigation, so perhaps not enough care was paid.”

“You said the investigation is ongoing, and that’s why you couldn’t reveal certain names.”

Pyles nods; to her credit she tackles the issue head-on. “Because of the intensity of the fire, many of the bodies could not be identified. We believed the ringleader of the operation to be one of the dead, but we learned quite a while later he was not.”

I’m surprised by this; Double J must have gone undercover after the incident, perhaps considering himself still a target.

“So your recounting of what Mr. Galloway might have said on the tapes is by memory only?”

“Yes.”

“How many people were on these tapes?” I ask. “How many customers did they have?”

“Maybe a few hundred.”

“You have quite a memory. Do you remember if a lot of the customers for these drugs were CEOs of large corporations, heiresses, members of royal families, people like that?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, though I’m sure she knows where I’m going.

“I mean, were they wealthy people? Titans of industry?”

“You’d be surprised how many wealthy people use recreational drugs,” she says.

“That they were buying from this house, in this neighborhood in Paterson?”

She finally allows as how the clientele for this particular establishment were not particularly well-to-do.

“In fact, Detective, in your experience haven’t you seen many people for whom drug use is financially devastating, and it becomes a constant struggle for many of these people to secure enough money to feed their habit?”

“I have seen that many times, yes.”

“So if your six-year-old memory is correct, and Mr. Galloway was having difficulty supporting his habit, he would have been one of many in that situation?”

“That’s likely. Yes.”

“And people who are desperate for drugs will usually do almost anything to get them, is that correct?”

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Dylan look up; he’s pleased by my question. He wants Noah to be seen as desperate and willing to do anything.

“In my experience, yes,” Pyles says.

“In their desperation to get the drugs, do you often find that they set fire to them?”

Pyles is obviously taken aback by the question, and all she can mutter is, “Every situation is different.”

“But in this situation, the drugs that Mr. Galloway was desperate to get were destroyed by the fire he is accused of setting?”

“That is true. Yes.”

“Thank you, no further questions.”

Tonight is our anniversary.

Since Laurie and I are not actually married, assigning an anniversary date can be tricky. Obvious possibilities were the date we met, or when we started going out, or when we moved in together.

We rejected all those, and chose as our anniversary the day she moved back from Wisconsin to be with me. That seemed to be the date that our commitment became explicit, at least as far as she was concerned. I was hooked long before that.

We’re not really the fancy-dinner, candlelight types, especially during a trial, when every minute counts. We also wouldn’t think of going out on a significant occasion like this without Tara, since she is an integral part of our family. And as the largest, albeit temporary, member of our family, Bailey’s company is welcome as well.

So we head to the Fireplace on Route 17. They’ve got terrific burgers, roast beef sandwiches, and the like, and their hot dogs are among Tara’s favorites. It is also one of the few places that takes me seriously when I say I want my french fries burned beyond recognition.

During the warmer months, we sit outside and eat, but that certainly is not an option tonight. They will let any human inside to eat, no matter how big a loser he or she might be, but dogs are not allowed in. Tara is cleaner than at least half the patrons, and probably smarter than ninety percent, but she and Bailey can’t come in, so we eat in the car.

I have to make two trips from the restaurant to the car, because if I try and carry all of Bailey’s food I could hurt myself. She’s actually a fairly dainty eater, doesn’t make a mess and licks her lips clean. She finishes four hot dogs before Tara has one, and eyes Tara’s remaining food hungrily. But she doesn’t go after it.

Laurie and I resolve not to talk about the case during dinner, but we break that particular resolution within five minutes. We have a lot to go over, and since we’d have to do it when we got home anyway, we decide to get a head start on it.

Laurie’s report is depressing. She has spent the last two days attempting to contact every person on our list of cell phone calls. She has been successful in reaching more than half of them, but unsuccessful in getting anyone to reveal anything of consequence.

“It feels like they’re all reading from the same script,” she says. “They all say they don’t know what I’m talking about, and that while they’d like to help, they really need more information about what we’re looking for.”

“No unusual reactions at all?”

She shakes her head. “Not really. One of them actually laughed at me. A D.C. political consultant named Brett Fowler. He sometimes goes on those cable news shows. He had seen you on TV… thought it was a riot that he was on your list.”

It’s not an unexpected development, but nonetheless disappointing. The truth is that my threat to publicly expose anyone who didn’t cooperate was basically an empty one. We know far too little to do any damage; we don’t even know what it is we don’t know.

I describe what happened in court today, as accurately as I can, and Laurie says, “It sounds like you did very well.”

I launch into my “debating points” versus “verdict points” theory, but she’s heard it maybe a thousand times, so she cuts me short. “The key thing is you’re not getting steamrolled,” she says. “You’ll have time to make your verdict points when you present your case.”

There’s no sense mentioning that we don’t have a case, so I don’t. But I’m also not about to fake being upbeat about our chances. “The emotional side of this is always going to be against us,” I say.

“You mean the way the people died?”

“Yes. Every person on that jury has got an image in their mind of what it was like for the victims, and that’s only going to get stronger. Dylan is going to sift through every human ash in the building.”

“I wonder why they did it that way,” she says. “I mean, regardless of who the target was, why not just come in and shoot them in the head?”

I nod. “I know; that’s bothered me from the beginning. This was so much more difficult to pull off, and not as sure a thing. One person got out; others could have. Maybe even the targets.”

It’s weird how certain things happen, and how they can trigger thoughts. I wouldn’t leave a Fireplace french fry uneaten if there was a tsunami bearing down on me, I’m almost finished with these, and the last few are just burned ash; if you saw one in a different context you would never know it was once a proud french fry.

But looking at it somehow gives me an insight. “The purpose was the obliteration,” I say.

“What does that mean?”

“They didn’t shoot their targets because killing them wasn’t the only goal. They were trying to remove all traces of something.”

“Any idea what that could be?”

I shake my head. “Not really. It could have been anything.”

“Maybe it was identity,” Laurie says. “There were people in there that have still not been identified, and never will be. The fire could have been set to hide who was in there.”

“And even who wasn’t,” I say. “There was no real way to identify most of those people; it was based on secondhand reports. People believed their friends and family were in there, and that was confirmed by the fact that they were missing afterward. We could think somebody died that night who wasn’t even there. That’s why they used napalm; they wanted it to burn so hot that there’d be nothing left. Gasoline and a match wouldn’t have accomplished it.”

“They could have used the napalm to help point the finger at Noah,” Laurie says. “Because of his background.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. We haven’t even come up with a reason why anybody would want to do this to Noah. I think he may have just come in handy, as someone to blame it on.”

“Which they waited six years to do?” she asks.

“That’s been the key question all along, and I finally think I may know how to get to the answer. But it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Why?”

I look at my watch. “Two reasons. One, if I call Pete this late, he’ll kill me. And two, it’s time to go home to celebrate our anniversary.”

“You mean sex?” she asks.

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Laurie feigns a yawn; at least I hope she’s feigning. Feign detection has never been one of my strengths, and females have been yawning at my advances since high school. “Been there, done that,” she says.

“Good,” I say. “Then you’ll know exactly what to do. I’m tired of having to teach you.”

“Or we could not celebrate at all,” she says.

“A night without sex?” I ask, and then shake my head. “Nope… been there, done that.”

I call Pete at eight-thirty in the morning, on my way to court.

“What took you so long?” is the way he starts the conversation, dispensing with “hello.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“You’re calling because you’ve got some questions, and you think I have the answers.”

“You got that right.”

“So what took you so long?” he asks. “I was going to call you if I had to.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Not my style,” he says. “What are you doing now?”

“Going to court.”

“Can you meet me at Stiff City at seven o’clock? I’ll try and get Nancy to hang around.”

“You want to give me a preview?” I ask.

“No.”

The conversation with Pete has been intriguing, which is more than I can say for what is going to happen in court today. Dylan is planning a parade of witnesses who are going to say that Noah was a frequent presence in the area near the fire, and that he was known to be purchasing drugs from the “businessmen” on the first floor.

The first witness is Lawrence Cahill, known to residents of the neighborhood as Larry, showing if nothing else he believes in really clever nicknames. Laurie’s investigation of Larry shows a person of less than the highest character, but he is dressed up today like he’s heading straight for the senior prom after court.

Larry’s tale is as advertised based on the discovery documents. He had seen Noah on a number of occasions in the neighborhood, at least a dozen by his recollection. Noah had been visiting the ill-fated house to buy drugs, and Larry and the other neighbors considered the activities a scourge on the community.

I’m not sure why Larry is here today, though it’s probably to bask in the publicity limelight of the moment, and look good doing it. He doesn’t get many chances to do so, and it probably was irresistible.

I could ask a few perfunctory questions and let him go; that’s probably what I should do. His testimony is not particularly damaging, since we are not contesting that Noah was a drug user, and that he bought from the occupants of the house. I should probably just let Larry have his pathetic moment in the sun, and let him go.

But I won’t.

“Mr. Cahill,” I begin, “how did you recognize the defendant here today?”

“What do you mean? I used to see the guy all the time in the neighborhood; he hasn’t changed that much.”

“So the fact that he no longer has the beard didn’t throw you off?”

Larry seems a little worried about how to respond to this, so he goes with the relatively safe, “No, it didn’t.”

“What kind of beard did he have? Do you remember?”

Larry puts his hand to his chin, in a demonstration. “Just a regular one… you know, around the chin.”

“Yes, that’s where beards grow, around the chin. So you remember the beard, but you can’t picture exactly what it looked like?” I ask.

“Right.”

“What if I were to tell you that Noah Galloway didn’t have a beard then, and never had one in his life? And that he had a moustache instead?”

A flash of panic on the good citizen’s face, and then, “That’s what I meant, a moustache. I’m a little nervous; I got the words confused.”

“You meant to say he had a moustache on his chin? Where was the beard, on his big toe?”

The jury and gallery are laughing, which causes Dylan to come out of his stupor and object that this is irrelevant. De Luca overrules him and the fun continues.

“Noah Galloway never had a moustache either, Mr. Cahill. I could show you a picture, if you’d like. Are you sure it wasn’t Abe Lincoln you saw in the neighborhood? Or maybe Adolf Hitler?”

Dylan objects again, and De Luca suggests I move on.

“You testified that Mr. Galloway was coming to the neighborhood to purchase drugs. Were you a witness to those purchases? Were you in the room when they took place?”

“No.” Larry has decided to switch to the “fewer words is better” approach.

“How did you know which apartment he went to? Were you standing in the corridor at the time he entered the building?”

“Everybody knew,” he says.

“So you heard this from other people?”

“I knew it also.”

“Okay, let’s assume you somehow knew which apartment Mr. Galloway entered,” I say. “How did you know they sold drugs in there?”

“Everybody knew that too.”

“Did this all-knowing everybody buy drugs from them as well? Or were you the only one?”

He shakes his head emphatically. “No way. Not me.”

“Who did you buy your drugs from?”

“I never bought drugs,” he lies.

“You have two convictions for possession, for which you served ninety days in prison. You were innocent of those crimes?”

“Yes.”

“You pleaded guilty to throw the authorities off the track?”

Dylan objects, and De Luca sustains.

Time for me to wrap this up. “Mr. Cahill, one of those convictions was two weeks after the fire. Is it possible that in the weeks before that, your mind was impaired by drugs? And that instead of seeing Mr. Galloway, you saw some facial-haired person and got them mixed up?”

“No,” he says.

“No further questions,” I say.

I enjoyed that, but all I did was add debating points to my increasing total. Dylan is going to bring more witnesses to say basically the same thing that Cahill said. It was a stupid move on Dylan’s part to have Cahill testify at all, and especially first.

Dylan calls four more witnesses in succession that place Noah in the neighborhood, having dealings with the drug guys on the first floor. These witnesses are not convicted drug users, nor are they lying. For that reason I barely lay a glove on them, and don’t try too hard to do so.

There’s no reason to make witnesses like this look bad. The jury will like and believe them, and they are testifying to facts that are really not in dispute.

It has basically been an uneventful day, and barely a diversion from my meeting with Pete tonight, which I hope will be the main event.

Alex Bauer knew the call was coming.

He had known since the moment he saw Carpenter on television. He hadn’t needed Loney to call and alert him, but Loney had done so the next morning.

Bauer had been upset at the turn of events, and had let Loney know it in no uncertain terms. He didn’t believe that Loney had cared one way or the other about his level of concern; Loney was not the type to be bothered by anything.

Bauer considered himself a cool customer as well, and he had no doubt that he would handle the call when it came. But he had been assured that there would be no slipups, and now all of a sudden there was a major one.

Bauer avoided the call twice. They came on his cell phone, as he knew they would, so there was no one to answer the call for him and make an excuse. He knew who it was because it was from a number he did not recognize, with a New Jersey area code.

The third time he answered it, if only to get it over with, and to find out how much they knew. It was a woman, which for some reason surprised him, but she sounded professional and self-assured. She introduced herself as Laurie Collins, an investigator working for Andy Carpenter.

She was probing, but it soon became obvious that she knew very little. She talked about his having received phone calls from a particular number, and wanted to know who the caller was and what the nature of his relationship with that caller was.

“Why are you asking me these questions?” he asked.

“It has come up as evidence in a major trial being conducted right now,” she said. “Perhaps you’re aware of the Noah Galloway trial?”

“The guy who set the fire?” Bauer asked.

“The jury hasn’t made a decision on that question either way as yet. But it’s a very public trial, and since you’re the head of a public company, I would assume you’d want to stay as far away from it as possible. One way to insure that would be to answer my questions without the need for depositions or testimony.”

It was a threat, not a very veiled one at that, and matched what Carpenter had said on television. In any event, Bauer was certainly not cowed by it, and he said what Loney had suggested he say.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Collins, I really have no idea what you’re talking about. And if I have to testify to that, I’ll find the time to do so.”

“So you’re saying you never received such a phone call?” she asked.

“I’m saying I receive many phone calls. As you pointed out, I am the head of a company. I have no idea which phone call you are referring to, and you don’t seem to be in possession of much information to help enlighten me. So while I would very much like to help you, I’m afraid I cannot.”

That effectively ended the call, though Collins said that he would be hearing from her again. She had no idea how close Bauer had come to telling her what she wanted to know, and he knew that there might well come a point when he would.

It was really up to Loney, and the judge in Delaware.

I meet Pete at the coroner’s office at seven.

He’s waiting for me in the lobby, and from there I can see that Nancy Adams’s office is dark. Since we’re there to meet with her, that strikes me as somewhat surprising.

“Nancy’s out to dinner,” Pete says. “She’ll be back at seven-thirty.”

“So why are we here at seven?”

“So we can talk.”

“Good,” I say. “You start.”

He shakes his head. “No, let’s start by you telling me what you think.”

“Okay. I think that there had to be a reason Butler was sent in now to implicate Noah, rather than six years ago. The only thing I can think of is that whoever did set the fire was trying to hide something. And if all of a sudden they needed to hide something, it meant that somebody was out there looking.” Pete isn’t saying anything, so I add, “Jump in whenever you want.”

“Go on.”

“Two people have told me that they were interviewed by the police recently. They didn’t say the FBI, though that’s the kind of thing people remember and mention. The interviews were not in the discovery documents, because Dylan made his case from the FBI investigation.”

Still nothing from Pete, so I go on. ”You are in charge of the department’s investigation of the fire, and have been since the beginning. That’s why I called you.”

“Not bad,” Pete says. “You are not nearly as dumb as you look. You may not believe this, but there are people in the department who like me. They’ve known how this case has bothered me, and in their downtime, they sometimes work the case.”

“You assign things to them?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No. Most times I’m probably not even aware that they’re doing it. It’s only if they find out anything that could be significant that they come to me with it. And that rarely happens, believe me.”

“But somebody was on to something this time,” I say.

“I think so, although I don’t know what it was. But I do know who it was.”

“Kyle Holmes,” I say. He was the young officer who was killed along with his partner when they responded to that domestic dispute. Those killings took place three weeks before Noah’s arrest.

Pete nods. “Kyle Holmes. Maybe there was more to his death than we thought.”

Pete goes on to tell me that Kyle had mentioned to him that he was looking at the case from a new angle, but didn’t say what that was. He was young and eager, and had a tendency to jump to conclusions, so Pete had told him to update him when he had something concrete to report. The next day he was shot and killed, and Pete of course had no reason to connect it to the fire investigation.

“So for the last week I’ve been trying to find out what he was doing,” Pete says. “He usually took notes when he was out on a case, but there were none found on his body. No one thought anything of it at the time, but now it seems that maybe the killer took them.”

“What have you learned?” I ask.

“Let’s wait for Nancy.”

Nancy Adams will be worth waiting for. She is absolutely beautiful, with long jet-black hair, a magnetic smile, and legs that would reach the floor no matter how low that floor happened to be. Lookswise, she’s in Laurie’s class, which is an honors class all the way.

Whenever I see her I’m reminded of that old quiz show, What’s My Line? If panelists had to guess what Nancy did, spending her time cutting up dead bodies would rank last on the list of possibilities, except for maybe sumo wrestler.

There’s one other thing I want to talk to Pete about, while he is in a relatively helpful mood. “I need a big favor,” I say.

“That’s a real news event.”

“I need a list of missing persons reports, starting a week before the fire up through a month afterward.”

“Just for Paterson?” he asks.

“No, I need to cast a slightly wider net than that.”

“New York, New Jersey?”

“I was thinking the United States. Continental would be fine.”

“You’re insane,” he says.

“Okay, I’ll make it easier for you. Do you get notified when a person reported missing is subsequently found?”

“We’re supposed to, but I’m sure it doesn’t always happen.”

“Anybody that was found, you can leave them off the list,” I say.

“What’s this about?”

“The people that were unidentified in the fire. I want to find out if any of them could have been the target,” I say. “I admit I’m grasping at straws here.”

“I’d like to help, but there’s very little I can do,” he says, surprising me once again with his cooperative attitude.

“Why?”

“Because there are thousands of localities; I can’t contact every one. You need to attack this nationally.”

“I will,” I say. “But for now, whatever you can do would be great.”

He nods. “I’ll do what I can.”

“You can give the information to me as it comes in; then I can get my people started on it.”

“Thanks a lot.” He sneers. “You have people now?”

“I’ve got plenty of people. If you work really hard, one day you could be one of them.”

Nancy shows up precisely at seven-thirty and we go into her office. I haven’t seen her in a while, so we make small talk for a few minutes, until Pete grunts his displeasure.

“Tell Andy about your talk with Kyle Holmes,” Pete says.

She nods. “Kyle came to see me, a few days before he died. He wanted to talk about the Hamilton Village case, so I had the file in front of me. Not that I needed it; there are some things you don’t forget.”

“Were you here at that time?” Nancy had moved here from Boston a while back, but I don’t remember if it was before or after the fire.

“It was one of my first cases when I took over the office,” she says. “Not a great way to start.”

“What did Kyle want?” I ask.

“First a little background, though I’m sure this is in the discovery documents,” she said. “The fire was unbelievably intense, and it caused the second and third floors to cave inward. So the bodies were incinerated, not cremated but not too far off either. And because the building caved in on itself, the remains, such as they were, were mixed together. It was a horrible, horrible scene, by any standards.”

I don’t say anything; the information she’s providing was in the discovery documents in excruciating detail. Reading them once was painful, and I was obligated to go over them a bunch of times.

She continues. “I’m embarrassed to say that there was very little science involved. We could independently identify very few of the bodies; it was really guesswork based on secondary evidence, like testimony of people who claimed they knew who was in there.”

“But some of the bones were intact,” I say.

She nods. “Yes, but keep in mind we never had DNA samples of these people to start with, so even if we were able to extract some from the remains, there was nothing to compare it to.”

“Okay, I understand the situation you faced.”

“Good, because I never tried to hide it. It’s in all my reports. And those reports are what Kyle came to talk to me about.”

“Something specific?” I ask.

“Yes. He was interested in one of the victims. Roger Briggs.”

I’m familiar with the name; he was the grandson of Jesse Briggs, whom Laurie and I interviewed. The child’s mother, Jesse’s daughter, was killed as well. “What about him?”

“Well, keep in mind that we did not attempt to put too much information about the victims in our report. We just couldn’t do so from the remains alone, and the rest would be more of an investigative effort, which is not really what we’re geared to do. We basically just listed each victim that we knew about by name, sex, and age.”

“Roger Briggs was on the list,” I say.

She nods. “Yes, but there was a mistake, and information was not transcribed correctly. It said Roger Briggs, male, eight. The fact that he was eight months old was not clear; it appeared from the list that he was eight years old.”

“So?”

“So nothing about the remains listed in the report corresponded to the size of a victim of that age. Kyle was asking me about that.”

“What did you tell him?” I ask.

“Well, I spent some time studying the report, and my backup notes from the examinations. It confirmed what I thought; there was nothing intact that corresponded to an eight-month-old. Of course, that isn’t necessarily conclusive; those remains could have been burned too badly.”

Pete speaks for the first time since Nancy started relating the story. “So bottom line, what do you think?”

Nancy pauses for a moment, seeming to weigh her words. “I don’t think there was a baby in that fire.”

It seemed significant when Nancy said it, but the possibility that there might not have been a baby in the fire is not exactly a case solver. First of all, we can’t be sure it’s true. Second of all, if it were true, we don’t know where the baby is, or what he or she has to do with anything.

What is important is the knowledge that Kyle Holmes was working the case, and that he thought he was on to something. What might be more important is that someone else thought he was on to something, and killed him for it. Then, if my theory is correct, the frame of Noah that was kept in reserve was finally unveiled, to stop anyone else from following up on what Kyle was learning.

At this point, the threat to Becky, which was clearly a way to stop the trial, might even be logical. The perpetrators might have been banking on the case being so strong that Noah would have pled it out, and not gone to trial.

Once I convinced him to do so, and the trial date came so quickly, the entire matter would automatically be subject to intense scrutiny, which the bad guys clearly would not want.

So now, in addition to having no idea who the significant adults are in this case, we have added a baby to be in the dark about. But at least it’s starting to make a little sense, and at this pace we should have the whole thing nailed by Noah’s thirtieth parole hearing.

I ask Laurie to focus as much time as possible on learning whatever she can about Natasha and Roger Briggs. Roger was the only baby listed among the victims of the fire, and they lived on the third floor, which I have always considered worthy of special investigation. The fire would have consumed the entire house from the first floor up, yet special attention was given to spreading the mixture on the third floor.

Today is going to be another depressing day in court, watching Dylan parade his witnesses in front of the jury, questioning them in excruciating detail. It’s like getting a legal colonoscopy.

Before I leave I take Tara and Bailey for our daily morning walk, during which I get my monthly idea. With Bailey with us the walks are much slower; I think she would prefer that we push her in an enormous stroller.

Along the way we run into a neighbor walking her beautiful golden, Callaway. She’s one of Tara’s favorite dogs to interact with, they can spend all day sniffing and chatting. This time is a little different, as Callaway can’t take her eyes off Bailey. It’s like she wants to pull Tara aside and ask, “What the hell is that?”

When I get home I call Sam and ask him if he can recruit at least five people, with significant computer skills, who can work on the case under his direction.

“What about my computer class?” he asks.

“You take a computer class?”

“I teach one. A night course. I’m sure some of my students would love to do it.”

“Can you bring them to my house tonight?” I ask. “Around eight?”

“That’s pretty late,” he says. “How about six? Does that work?”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll move some stuff around.”

I wish I could move the trial around, like around to August, but that’s not going to happen. Dylan surprises me by telling the court he wants to call FBI Special Agent Neil Mulcahy. I knew Mulcahy would eventually testify, I just thought Dylan might hold him off until later.

Mulcahy is not going to have much to say, at least not on his own. He was the agent to whom Danny Butler spoke when he claimed that Noah had confessed setting the fire, and he will basically be reading the transcript of that interview.

I let Hike argue on our behalf that the testimony should not be admitted, since Butler is not here to be cross-examined. De Luca overrules our objection, as we knew he would. I consider it a bad law, but it’s not De Luca’s job to make those judgments. He has to implement the law as it is, not as he thinks it should be.

Dylan asks very few questions, just a handful to set the scene. He’s correct in that approach; Butler’s words, even when spoken by Mulcahy, are powerful and speak for themselves.

In fact, the words are much more powerful than if Butler were here. Mulcahy is an impressive guy, and as an FBI agent he commands the kind of respect that a slimeball like Butler never could. The words have more credibility coming out of Mulcahy’s mouth than they would dripping out of Butler’s.

The original version of the interview took about two hours and fifteen minutes, and that’s how long the reenactment takes. Dylan actually plays the part of Mulcahy in asking the questions, and Mulcahy plays Butler.

I watch the jury as they watch the performance, and they are paying rapt attention. I’m surprised they haven’t asked for a playbill.

We take a break before my cross begins, and I call Cindy Spodek on my cell phone. Cindy is an FBI agent, recently promoted to assistant bureau chief in Boston. She is a very good friend to Laurie and me, which I constantly take advantage of to get information when I need it.

“What do you need now?” she asks, when she gets on the line, which is not exactly warm “friend” talk.

“What I need is to find out how my friend Cindy is doing, to find out what is going on in her life, because I care deeply about her. That is my whole reason for calling. It is my whole reason for being.”

“You’re full of shit,” she says.

“What tipped you off?”

“You only call when you’re on a case. This is about Galloway.”

“Actually, now that I have you…”

I go on to request the same missing persons information that I asked Pete for, since Cindy would have much better access. It takes some cajoling, but she basically likes to be helpful, and she’s not the type to let down a friend. Those are the kind of people I can take advantage of.

“This will take a while,” she says.

“I don’t have a while; the trial is almost over.”

“Good-bye, Andy.”

I head back to court for the Mulcahy cross-examination. I have little ammunition with which to challenge him, since he really was not the witness against Noah; he was only channeling Butler. But I have to give it a shot.

“Agent Mulcahy, did Danny Butler have a criminal record?”

“He did.”

“Did he have three convictions for drug possession, and two for breaking and entering?”

“Yes.”

“Was he arrested but not convicted on three other occasions?”

“Yes.”

“Was he himself addicted to drugs?” I ask. “Enough so that he was in rehab on four separate occasions?”

“Yes.”

“Did you believe his story?”

“I did.”

“Because of his status as an upstanding citizen?”

“We take information and judge it no matter where it comes from. It’s not always upstanding citizens that have information about a crime.”

“What would Butler’s background have to have been for you to doubt what he said? Maybe time as a Taliban commander? Or a Nazi SS officer?”

Dylan objects and De Luca admonishes me to cut it out. Business as usual.

“Did you check into Butler’s background after you talked to him?”

“I did.”

“Did he graduate high school?” I ask.

“He did not.”

I introduce Butler’s high school records, which include a PSAT combined score of 614, and I point out that in those days one got 400 for signing one’s name.

“In the interview, Butler said that his conscience had been bothering him all these years, and when he saw Mr. Galloway on television as a representative of the U.S. government, it pushed him over the edge. Made sense to you?”

“I had my doubts,” Mulcahy says, surprising me. “But when I checked it all out, I was convinced.”

Mulcahy has opened a door for me, that I was planning to open myself. “Checked it out how?”

“I compared it to the evidence of the fire. Everything Butler said was accurate, and it was information that was not publicly available.”

I introduce as evidence Butler’s records from one of his drug rehabs, and refer Mulcahy to the date on the report. “Is that two weeks after he says Mr. Galloway confided in him?”

“Sixteen days, yes,” Mulcahy says.

I then get him to read a paragraph from the initial statement Butler made to the rehab facility, admitting to heavy drug usage for the two months previously. “So by his own admission, Mr. Butler was using drugs during the period that he claims Mr. Galloway confessed to him?”

“Yes, but not necessarily that day.”

“Maybe it was a drug holiday,” I say. “Or maybe it was Thanksgiving, and he was going cold turkey for the day. But in any event, his recounting of the details of the fire, how it was set, et cetera, all of that proved to be accurate?”

“Definitely.”

“Down to the last detail?”

“Yes.”

“So let’s recap. A man with five felony convictions and extraordinarily low intelligence recounted almost verbatim technical details of a conversation he had six years earlier, when he was taking so many illegal drugs that he would soon be forced into rehab? And all because he was suddenly conscience-stricken. Is that about right?”

“That’s your description,” Mulcahy says.

“Which part of it is inaccurate?” I say.

“You left out the fact that there was no other way he could have gotten the information.”

“There was no other way that you could find,” I say. “Now, you said that Butler was subsequently killed in Las Vegas, and that Mr. Galloway is said to know people there.”

“That’s correct.”

“I also know people there. Are you going to cuff me?”

Mulcahy surprises me with a smile. “I’m tempted,” he says, and the jury laughs.

“Where did he get the money to go to Vegas in the first place? Did he have a job?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe he suddenly came into money? Perhaps for performing a service?”

“If he did, I’m not aware of it.”

“Maybe he just needed a vacation; conscience clearing can be exhausting.”

Mulcahy just smiles, as if these barbs are to be expected from a defense attorney who doesn’t have the evidence on his side. He’s an experienced, excellent witness because of his confidence and lack of fear; the jury thinks that means he’s telling the truth and hiding nothing.

I let him off the stand, having accomplished as much as I could, which is not nearly enough.

“Mr. Mandlebaum, I think you’ll be more comfortable in this chair.”

That’s what I hear Laurie say as I walk into the house. What I see is Laurie, Sam, Tara, Bailey, and five very old people, four of them men.

“Andy, I’ve got some people I want you to meet,” Sam says. “This is Morris Fishman, Leon Goldberg, Stanley Rubinstein, Hilda Mandlebaum, and her husband Eli.”

“Nice to meet you all,” I say. “You’re Sam’s students?”

They all nod their confirmation of my question.

“At what school might that be?” I ask.

“The YMHA in Wayne.”

He’s talking about the Jewish version of the YMCA, meaning it’s the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. Except they aren’t “young” and Hilda isn’t one of the “men.” Perhaps it should just be called the HA.

I ask Sam if I could talk to him in the kitchen before we get started. Once we’re in there, I ask, “Does their age have anything to do with why you wanted to make the meeting early?”

He shrugs. “They’re sharper earlier in the day,” he says. “They usually have dinner around fourish, and then to bed by eight.”

“I’m not sure this is going to work, Sam.”

“They’re up at five in the morning, Andy, so we’ll have a full day. And you should see them on a computer; they’re as good as any students I’ve ever had.”

“How many classes have you taught?” I ask.

“This is my first.”

“Sam…”

“It will be fine; trust me.”

I actually do trust Sam, especially when it’s in the area of computers, so we go back into the other room. Morris Fishman is in the process of telling Laurie she looks just like Esther Fleischmann, his high school sweetheart who cheated on him in 1947 when he went to Rutgers and she stayed home.

“Morris,” Laurie says, “you deserved better.”

Eli Mandlebaum is petting Tara, and Leon is petting Bailey, and they seem quite content about it. Based on their relative sizes, Leon could be Bailey’s jockey. Tara has always been an equal opportunity petting receiver; she is unconcerned about race, religion, sex, or age. Clearly she’s teaching Bailey her open-mindedness.

Sam turns the meeting over to me. I can tell I need to get it over with quickly; it’s getting close to six-thirty, and I think Hilda is starting to nod off.

I explain where we are on the case, as it relates to the cell phone records. “We have all these people that were called. They live in different places and have quite different occupations. The only common thread that we know about is that they were all called at some point by the owner of that particular cell phone.”

“So you want to find out if there are any other connections?” Stanley asks.

“Exactly. We need to dig as deeply as we can into each of their lives, and find out if they are connected in any other way. No matter how insignificant the link might be, I want to know about it.”

“How do we do it?” Leon asks.

“I have no idea,” I say. “Sam is in charge of that. He’ll instruct you on what to do. Right, Sam?”

“No problem.”

“I’m also going to be getting a list of missing persons from around the time of the fire. We’re going to need to track them down as well.”

“We’re on it,” Sam says, and then turns to his team. “We start bright and early at six? The computer room at the Y?”

Everyone nods their agreement, and Hilda says that she and Eli will pick up bagels and lox on the way in. With that, Sam leads the “over the hill gang” out the door.

When they leave, Laurie says, “I hope I’m just like them if I get to be their age. And I hope we’re just like Hilda and Eli.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you see them holding hands? Hilda told me they’ve been married sixty-one years. And they’re still holding hands.”

I hadn’t seen them holding hands, but I don’t say that. The truth is, I see the possibility of turning this situation to my own sexual advantage. The trick is to appear sensitive. “I’ll hold your hand as long as you let me,” I say, and take her hand.

“You think you’re going to use Hilda and Eli’s love for each other to get me into bed?” she says.

“It was worth a shot,” I say.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” she says. “There’s a definite chance you’re going to get lucky tonight, but you need to understand that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Mandlebaums. You got that?”

“Yes, ma’am. The Mandlebaums are a nonfactor.”

“Okay, let’s go,” she says, and starts leading me up the steps to the bedroom.

“I just hope that I don’t scream out Hilda’s name,” I say.

Today’s testimony is going to be both dry and terribly damaging.

The witness is Special Agent William Rouse, the assistant head of the FBI crime lab located in Baltimore. He supervised the bureau’s testing on the metal can found three blocks from the scene.

It’s a large can, standard make, capable of holding almost four gallons, and Dylan proudly holds it up before introducing it as evidence and showing it to the witness. I’ve seen pictures of it from the discovery, and learned that it’s available at Home Depot and pretty much everywhere else.

“Is this the can you were given to test?” Dylan asks.

Rouse nods. “It is.”

“What types of tests did you run?”

“Fingerprint analysis, blood typing, and DNA.”

“Were you able to get satisfactory results in all three areas?”

“We managed to retrieve DNA and blood type results. There were no fingerprints.”

“These tests that you conducted, were the same ones done by the local police at the time the can was found?”

“Yes, I was subsequently shown those reports after we conducted our tests.”

“Were your results consistent with theirs?” Dylan asks.

“Identical.”

Dylan takes him through the results, which are of course a match for Noah’s DNA and blood type. Rouse says that there is a one in four billion chance that the DNA results are inaccurate. Based on the media reports I read before coming to court this morning, that matches our chances of getting an acquittal.

Dylan then addresses the question that the jurors must certainly be wondering. “If the police had these DNA results six years ago, why wasn’t an arrest made back then?”

“Because Mr. Galloway’s DNA was not in the database at the time. Recently he attempted to gain clearance because of a federal job he was taking, and a DNA sample was required. That’s the reason we got a hit when we ran it this time, acting on Mr. Butler’s information.”

“Your witness,” Dylan says to me, in a tone that doesn’t seem to contain much worry.

I start by opening a package under the defense table, and I take out a can that is identical to the one that Rouse tested. “Is this the can you were given to test?” I ask, mimicking Dylan’s question.

Rouse looks confused, and points to the previously introduced can, now resting on a side table. “No, that one is.”

“How do you know that?” I ask. “Don’t they look identical?”

“I assumed Mr. Campbell was showing me the correct can.”

I nod as if this makes perfect sense. “So you said you were certain that was the can, even though it just looked like it, because you just believed whatever Mr. Campbell said?”

“I tested the can that he gave me,” Rouse says, finding apparent refuge in a non sequitur.

“Good for you. How long was Mr. Galloway’s DNA on that can?”

“At least six years,” he says.

“You can tell that from your tests?”

“No. But as I said, my results matched the police tests.”

“The results that Mr. Campbell showed you, and you accepted at face value.”

“Yes.” He manages to sound slightly indignant at my inference.

“Agent Rouse, you are here as a supposedly independent expert witness. The court members and I would appreciate it if you would limit your answers to what you know independent of what Mr. Campbell or the police told you. Can you do that?”

Dylan objects, but De Luca overrules him, and Rouse agrees to my request.

“Thank you,” I say, acting as if I have triumphed, when in fact I haven’t. Rouse’s test results are still staring me in the face, and the jury will believe them.

In situations like this, I feel it’s important that I do more than just attack the witness; I need to present an at least somewhat plausible theory of my own. It’s tough in this case, because I truly have no idea how Noah’s burned skin got on that can.

“So, based on your own tests, that DNA could have been left on that can three years ago?”

“It’s possible.”

“Three months ago?” I ask.

“Possibly.”

“Was he conscious when he touched the can?” I ask.

“I can’t say that from my testing.”

“Did he touch it willingly?” I ask.

“I don’t know. That is not within the scope of my work.”

“Was his skin on the other cans as well?”

“I only tested the one can. I was told that it was the only can recovered.”

I show Rouse a page of the report by the fire department, which estimated that seventeen gallons of the napalmlike substance was used. “This can couldn’t hold seventeen gallons, could it?”

“No.”

“It would take five such cans to hold that much, would it not?” I ask.

He nods. “It would.”

“So the theory is that Mr. Galloway fled the scene, but for some reason decided to leave one can to be found, while taking the others with him?”

“That is not part of my testing.” I knew that, but I don’t really care what he says. I’m doing the testifying now; I’m just using Rouse as a foil to get my words out.

“You’d have to ask someone else that.”

“Thank you, Agent Rouse. You can be sure I will.”

The birth certificate of Roger Briggs is on file in the Paterson Hall of Records.

It shows that he was born to Natasha Briggs at Paterson General Hospital. There is no father listed on the certificate, and no explanation for the omission.

Tragically, the death certificate for Roger Briggs is also on file, and it is dated slightly more than eight months after his birth. Cause of death is asphyxiation by fire; which is standard procedure in cases of these types, though an incinerated body can yield no such evidence. Even the bureaucracy can’t seem to stomach the concept of a human being, in this case a baby, being consumed by flames while alive.

There is good reason to doubt that Roger Briggs died in that fire, and it is not just that the coroner found no traces of a body that small. My doubt more strongly stems from the fact that a young officer named Kyle Holmes seems to have had the same doubt, and I believe he died because of it. And if he was in fact murdered by someone threatened by those doubts, then they move up a step toward certainty.

Our investigation outside of the trial is moving very slowly, and at this point is mostly dependent on Sam Willis and the “over the hill gang.” I’m also anxiously waiting for Pete and especially Cindy to come through with missing persons information, but that is pretty much a shot in the dark.

Our situation within the trial is considerably more dire, and unfortunately moving at a faster pace. Dylan has maybe four days’ worth of witnesses still to call, and then it’s our turn to present our case, such as it is.

I believe in being completely honest with my clients, except when I think it is in their best interest to conceal things or flat-out lie to them. My moral compass pretty much always points south.

But in Noah’s case there’s no reason not to be straight, so in our daily meeting before court I lay things out as best I can. As he always does, he listens respectfully, with no apparent emotion, and then asks intelligent questions when I finish.

Once I’ve answered everything completely, if not to either of our satisfactions, he says, “It’s funny in a way; the longer this has gone on, the more I’ve believed in my own innocence. And the more I’ve wanted to win.”

“That’s only natural,” I say.

He nods. “I suppose. But there was something very comforting in not caring. The worst had happened; that was as bad as it was going to get.”

I know exactly what he’s saying, and I’m feeling very guilty about it. I gave him a reason to hope, I gave him actual hope, and to this point I’m not delivering on it. I’ve built him up for a fall, and we both know it.

But he’s going to try and let me down easy. “On the other hand, Andy, the relief that I feel that I didn’t kill those people makes anything that happens worthwhile. I had to live with that horror for a long time, but it’s gone. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t hate myself.”

I just nod my understanding.

“Instead I hate you,” he says, and laughs to let me know he’s kidding.

Before we head into court, Noah tells me that he heard from Becky and Adam this morning, and that they’re doing well.

“She wanted me to ask you if she can come back to attend any of the trial,” he says. “She wants to support me, and she wants the jury to see her supporting me.”

It’s actually a good point, and one I’ve thought about. The jury may be wondering why she’s not here, and I’m going to answer that question for them in our case.

“But I told her no,” Noah says. “I want her where it’s safe, and I sure don’t want her here when the jury tells us their verdict.”

The truth is, I’m not that anxious to be here for that either.

Dylan doesn’t have much more to say, so he’s going to keep saying it.

His first witness today is Randall Henderson, a forensic scientist with the New Jersey State Police. He is the person who did the original testing on the paint can in the days after the fire, and whose work has since been confirmed by the FBI’s lab.

If I play my cards right, he will be the only witness today. One of the jurors has a doctor’s appointment that has been deemed necessary, so court will not be in session this afternoon. Since it’s Friday, that will give me two and half days out of this courtroom, which will feel like a three-month world cruise.

Henderson is a very competent professional, and there is little doubt that his testing was done correctly. Though I made the FBI scientist look bad on cross-examination, the fact that the test results of both labs were identical makes it impossible to effectively challenge the results. They know that, Dylan and I know that, and the jury sure as hell knows it.

Dylan does me a favor by dragging out his testimony for two hours. I just have to keep Henderson on the stand for a few more minutes, and it’s hello, weekend.

“Mr. Henderson, in examining the can, did you weigh it?”

“No, there was no reason to, not for my purposes.”

I take the can and ask De Luca if I can hand it to him. When he says that I can, I ask Henderson to hold it and guess its weight. “Maybe six pounds,” he says.

“And it’s empty?”

“Yes.”

I walk back to the defense table, and Hike hands me the second can, which I give to him. “What about this one, which is now two-thirds filled with liquid?”

Henderson is a pretty big guy, maybe six feet, a hundred and eighty pounds, and he has no trouble lifting it. “I don’t know… fifteen pounds.”

“I weighed it earlier, and it totaled thirteen and a half pounds. Does that seem about right?”

“I would think so,” he says.

“There was earlier testimony that the amount of flammable liquid used would have required between four and five of those cans. That would mean between fifty-four and sixty-seven pounds, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Would it not be incredibly difficult to carry four or five of these rather unwieldy cans, weighing sixty or so pounds?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

I receive permission from De Luca to ask him to step down from the witness stand. Hike reaches under the table and starts handing me additional cans, one at a time. I pretend that I’m having a little difficulty carrying them, and I make four trips over to Henderson, each time carrying one can.

“Mr. Henderson, each of these cans is identical to the original, wouldn’t you say?”

“They look the same,” is his grudging reply.

“And they all are filled with fluid, and each weighs thirteen and a half pounds. You don’t have a bad back, or anything like that, do you?”

“No,” he says.

“Great. Then would you please carry them to the back of the courtroom? All at once, please.”

Dylan stands. “Your Honor, please…”

De Luca stares him down. “Your Honor, please?” he mimics. “Is that an official objection?”

De Luca instructs Henderson to carry the cans as I asked, providing he is not afraid he will injure himself. It’s a fairly impossible task, because there is no way two hands can grip all the various handles at the same time.

Henderson gives it his best try, and much to my delight drops one of the cans after walking only a few feet.

“Pretty tough, huh?” I ask. “And remember, this fire was set on the third floor, so these cans were carried up the steps.”

“It’s difficult, but not impossible,” Henderson says.

“You want to try it again? We’ve got time.”

He doesn’t want to, so I let him get back onto the stand.

“Mr. Henderson, let’s say for argument’s sake, all evidence to the contrary, that one person could do what you just failed to do. If you saw someone doing it, just walking down the street, do you think you would notice him?”

“I suppose I would, depending on what I was doing at the time.”

“Yet no one reported seeing Mr. Galloway doing that.”

Dylan finally makes the correct objection that these questions have nothing to do with Henderson’s lab work, and De Luca sustains.

“When you were testing this can in your lab, did you ever have trouble finding it?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Ever misplace it?”

He shakes his head. “Of course not.”

“It stands out, doesn’t it? Be pretty tough to lose.”

“I certainly would not lose it, or misplace it.”

“Yet no other cans were found, not in Mr. Galloway’s apartment or anywhere else. Does it seem strange to you that he would leave the can with his charred skin on it right out on the street, but would hide the other cans so carefully that an entire police department could not find them?”

Before he can answer, Dylan objects, and De Luca tells him not to answer the question.

I try another one. “Did you have occasion to test any items from the actual house itself?”

He nods. “I did.”

“Any significant results?”

“Depends what you mean by significant,” he says. “But basically no. Everything in that house was pretty much incinerated.”

“Do you think that was the plan, and that’s why napalm was used?”

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“Well, would whoever used the napalm have been likely to know that incineration would be the result?”

He nods. “I would certainly think so.”

“Then why not leave the cans behind to be incinerated along with everything else?” I ask. “Why take one can that he burned himself on, and carry it three blocks?”

“I can’t say.”

“That’s too bad.”

“We got something, Andy. Hilda found it.”

It’s the first message on my answering machine when I get home, and as I’m listening to it, Laurie walks into the room.

“Sam found something,” I say.

“I know; I spoke to him. They’re on the way over.”

“They?”

She laughs. “Apparently they travel as a group.” When I grimace, she adds, “They’re nice people, Andy. This is an adventure for them.”

“Do you know what they found?”

“No, Sam wouldn’t say; he wants Hilda to have the honor.”

“The State of New Jersey, the prosecutor’s office, and the FBI versus Hilda Mandlebaum. It’s a steel-cage fight to the finish.”

“My money’s on Hilda.”

Before they arrive, Marcus shows up. Laurie had called him in case whatever it was that Sam’s gang came up with needed following up.

Tara practically lights up when she sees Marcus, who never fails to pet her. She follows him as he heads straight for the kitchen and the refrigerator, giving me time to ask Laurie, “How many of Sam’s five interns are going to have a coronary when they see Marcus? I would make the over-under number three.”

“I think they’re probably tougher than you think,” she says.

Sam and his gang walk in about fifteen minutes later, four hundred and twenty-seven years of hard-nosed investigators, not including Sam. Each of them carries a briefcase; they look like an army of aged accountants.

If they are intimidated by Marcus, they don’t show it, and Morris Fishman mentions that Marcus looks like somebody he knew in Korea.

“You fought in Korea?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I bought fabric there. I was in the dress business… shmatas.”

Marcus nods knowingly, as if he’s spent the weekend shmata-shopping with Hilda. I feel like I’m on the planet Goofball.

“Let’s get started, shall we?” I ask.

Sam nods. “Sure. Hilda?”

Hilda shrugs and says, “You go ahead, Sammy. You can tell it better than I can.”

Sam opens his briefcase and takes out some pieces of paper. He hands a copy of the first one to Laurie, Marcus, and me. Each of the “gang” also takes out their own copy to refer to it. It’s a photograph of a distinguished-looking man, about forty-five years old.

“This is Walter Holland. He’s the presiding judge in the Delaware Chancery Court. Undergraduate at Princeton and then went to Virginia Law, top of his class. Clerked for a justice in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Married to the former Alice Simmons for three years; they have one adopted child, Benji, and they live a mile from the courthouse. Very well respected, and considered to be the leading jurist on business law in the country. We’ve listed the rest of his bio and some of his most important cases at the bottom of the page.”

I don’t have to ask why I should care about Judge Holland or his background, since he was on the cell phone list. Laurie had tried repeatedly to reach him, but was unable to. What I am now waiting for is what Sam has learned about Holland that has caused him to single him out.

Sam takes out more paper from his briefcase, again handing a copy to the three of us. Again, the “gang” does the same. Another man is pictured in this photo, a little younger than Holland, and a little harder. Even in this photo, it’s clear that this man does not suffer fools gladly, and is used to getting his way.

“This is Alex Bauer,” Sam says. “He is the CEO of Entech Industries, a relatively small energy company, with holdings in the South and Midwest. He’s a former marine, former amateur boxing champ, reputation for being tough.”

“I spoke with him,” Laurie says. “He gave me the party line, that he had no idea what I was talking about, and I should call him back when I had more specifics.”

“Well, you’re about to have some. For the last five and a half years, Entech Industries has been trying to acquire Milgram Oil and Gas, a publicly owned company with a market capitalization that makes it maybe thirty percent larger than Entech.”

“So Entech is borrowing the money to buy it?” I ask.

“That’s not clear,” Sam says. “Either that, or they have other investors behind them, or they’ll sell off pieces of the acquired company. One way or the other, Bauer and Entech do not seem concerned, and they’re offering a forty percent premium on the stock, up from an initial offer of a twenty percent premium.”

“Why isn’t Milgram accepting the offer?” I ask.

“Two reasons. One, it’s a mostly family-owned company, been one for generations. Between five siblings they have more than thirty percent, and just don’t want to give up the business. The second reason is that they have been pioneers in wind technology, and have invested heavily in it. There’s a school of thought that as a country we are headed in that direction, and that the government is going to make a huge investment in it. They’d be on the ground floor.”

“Is that why Entech wants it?” Laurie asks.

“Probably, but they haven’t commented on it. Milgram also has land holdings that it is drilling for oil on, and a lot that it has the rights to but hasn’t gotten started on yet.”

“Why haven’t the other seventy percent of the stockholders taken the offer?”

“Because the board is controlled by the Milgram family, and they’ve adopted a poison pill. Stanley used to be a stockbroker… Stanley?”

Stanley says, “Companies that don’t want to be taken over, but think, oy, it could happen, make a poison pill. There are different types, but this one says that if any outsider buys more than twenty percent of the shares, the current shareholders can buy more shares at a reduced price. It dilutes the value of the newcomer’s shares. The more he buys, the less they’re worth.”

“Oy,” Laurie says, and I look at Marcus. If he says “Oy,” I’m out of here.

“But how do the two tie together?” I ask.

“Bauer and Entech are suing Milgram, claiming the poison pill is illegal,” Sam says. “If they win, they get the company. Milgram’s been fighting it, and draining their assets in the process. It’s considered very unlikely that they’d have the resources to appeal and have this drag on further in the courts.”

“Let me guess. The suit is being heard in Delaware, with Judge Holland presiding.”

Hilda points at me and says to Sam, “He’s very good.”

“Hilda, if I was that good, I’d know what to do with this.”

I tell Laurie I’ll work on Judge Holland, while she deals with Bauer.

The problem is that I have no idea how to do that. It’s pretty tough to get hold of big-time judges, though the fact that Holland doesn’t know me is a plus. Judges who know me have a tendency not to be too fond of me.

It’s also not the smartest thing in the world to accuse judges of doing bad things, especially when the accuser has no evidence and doesn’t know what the bad things are.

So basically, I need to figure out a way to reach him, and then figure out what to say if I do.

“Judge Holland’s office,” is how the woman answers the phone when I call. I’m surprised anyone answered the phone, since it’s Saturday. But he’s apparently preparing an opinion, so I thought I’d take a shot.

“I’d like to speak to the judge, please,” I say. “My name is Andy Carpenter.”

“May I ask what it is in reference to?”

“It’s a personal matter between Judge Holland, Alex Bauer, and myself. Mr. Bauer suggested that I call.”

“Just a moment, please.”

Waiting for her to come back on the phone, I figure there is about a two percent chance that Holland will get on the phone. Maybe less.

“I’m afraid Judge Holland is unable to speak with you, Mr. Carpenter.”

“Unable or unwilling?”

“I assume you are aware that Judge Holland is currently presiding over a case in which Mr. Bauer is an interested party?”

“I am.”

“Then you should know that all contact must go through the court. Good day, sir.”

As my mother would have said about my attempt to reach Holland, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” I always found the saying annoying, but it crystallized a clear difference in attitude between us. To her, the “ventured” part was important; while all I ever really cared about was whether something was “gained.”

With nothing better to do, I plunge into as much information as I have been able to accumulate about the case before Judge Holland in Delaware.

Financial litigation has never been a specialty or interest of mine, and this case, if nothing else, confirms that attitude. It is deadly dry, lawyers arguing in arcane legalese about issues which do not seem terribly consequential. Regardless of which company prevails, the world will not be a better, or even appreciably different, place.

But there is something in here, something that relates to Noah Galloway’s trial, and to the murder of twenty-six people six years ago. At least I hope that’s true, because it’s the only hope I have.

The phone rings, and it’s Pete, telling me that he has the list of missing persons from that period six years ago. It’s a very, very incomplete list, he says. “If it helps you, I’ll be surprised.”

I ask him to e-mail it to me, and then I call Sam and tell him I’m forwarding it to him. It’s Saturday, probably a day that most of his gang rests, but he promises to get right on it.

He asks what I specifically want. “Actually, hold off until I get you the rest of the names,” I say, thinking of the list that Cindy Spodek is working on. “Meanwhile, any other connections between people on the cell phone call list?”

“No, but we’re still rechecking it,” he says, and I let him off the phone to do his work.

I take Tara and Bailey for a walk, and when we get back, Laurie comes out on the porch to greet us. “I reached Bauer,” she says.

“And?”

“He did a one-eighty; now he wants to talk. He says he has a lot he needs to say.”

“Needs?” I ask.

She nods. “Needs. It sounds like he wants to get something off his chest.”

“Sounds good to me. Does he have a specific time and place for the unburdening?”

“He’s going to call me back; he said this must be done in absolute secrecy. Made me promise that I would never reveal that he talked to us.”

“Did you promise?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“I’m glad I didn’t.”

“Andy…”

“Let’s see what he says, okay? Maybe he’ll admit to setting the fire. Either way, let’s see if keeping your promise justifies Noah spending the rest of his life in jail.”

“Carpenter called me. He said he was calling on behalf of Alex Bauer.”

If it wasn’t panic in Judge Holland’s voice, it was something close to it.

“Did you talk to him?” Loney asked.

“Of course not. I had my assistant tell him it was inappropriate for me to do so, because of Bauer’s involvement in the case.”

“Good,” Loney said. “You handled it perfectly.”

“You don’t seem to understand; he obviously knows what’s going on. You think he’s going to stop because my assistant said I wouldn’t come to the phone?”

Loney was tired of babysitting these people. They were all leaders in their fields, accomplished people, yet they turned to mush when the going got difficult. “He’s not calling you because he knows… he’s calling you because he’s trying to find out.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because if he knew what was happening, you wouldn’t be the judge that he would go to,” Loney said. “His focus is on his trial, and getting Galloway off.”

“Galloway should get off.”

“Get a grip, Judge. Your part in this is almost over.”

“It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like it will never end,” Holland said.

“Have you finished writing your opinion?”

“Almost.”

“Good. Issue the damn thing already and you’re done.”

“Why does Bauer want the company?” Holland asked. He’d been curious about that since the suit was filed; Milgram was a struggling company, and the legal process had been steadily draining them, to the point where they would not be able to afford a lengthy appeal if they lost.

The wind turbines were promising, but overall the company should not be a ripe takeover target. In fact, noticeably absent these last few years was any other bidder for it; Bauer was the only one.

“There is no need for you to know, and you don’t want to know,” Loney said. “Your sole function here is to make sure he gets it.”

“I’ll post the opinion to the court Web site on Tuesday, after which I will never hear from you again.”

Loney laughs off the threat. “Hey, you called me this time.”

“I mean it, Loney. This is the end of it. I swear, I’ll tell everything I know and go to jail. I might even be able to live with myself.”

“You going to take your wife and child with you? Maybe get adjoining cells?” The threat was very clear, and Loney had made it multiple times before. If Holland did not do as he was told, exposure of his wrongdoing would not be the only retribution.

So for the moment Holland did the only thing he could do. He hung up.

“There’s a motel on Route 46 in Clifton called the Parker Court. I’m in room 216.”

Bauer is saying that to Laurie, and I’m listening on the speakerphone. He has driven up from his home in Cherry Hill, from where he commutes to his office in Philadelphia.

I’ve passed by the motel he’s talking about many times; it is not where you’d expect to find the CEO of a big corporation, unless he was meeting a hooker.

“When should we be there?” Laurie asks.

“We?”

“Andy Carpenter and myself.”

“Oh,” he says, and then is silent for a few moments while he considers that this secret is expanding. “That’ll be okay. Now would be good; the less time I spend in this dump the better.”

“We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Laurie says, and hangs up.

She starts heading for the car, and I say, “Might make sense to bring Marcus. We don’t know whose side this guy is on.”

She shakes her head. “No time, and I don’t want to scare him off. I’ve got a gun, in case you decide we should shoot him.”

We are at the motel with five minutes to spare. It’s one of those places where you enter the individual rooms from the outside, so we head for 216 and knock. Alex Bauer opens the door in ten seconds.

“I’m Alex Bauer,” he says. “Come in.”

We enter the drab, nondescript room and introduce ourselves, and he says, “Sorry I can’t offer you anything. I would have ordered from room service, if not for the fact that they don’t have any.”

“No problem,” Laurie says.

“I’d like to get right to this,” Bauer says. “I’m a little nervous, and I don’t want to change my mind. But I need your promise this will go no further. If it does, I believe I will be killed.”

Laurie and I both make the promise; I might even keep it.

There are two beds in the room and a chair. Laurie and I sit on one of the beds, but Bauer paces rather than sitting down. “I’m being blackmailed,” he says. “It’s been going on for almost six years.”

There is no limit to the number of questions that this surprising admission raises, but I start with, “Who is doing the blackmailing?”

“The person I deal with, or rather the person who deals with me, I guess you’d call him my handler, is named Loney. His first name is Alan, but he never uses it, at least with me. He works for a man named Carmine Ricci, who is a mob boss in Las Vegas. But I’m not supposed to know that.”

The mention of Vegas is particularly interesting to me, since that is where Danny Butler was killed. “How do you know it?”

“I’ve hired some private investigators to find out. They didn’t dig too deep, because I didn’t want to have them caught in the process.”

“What are they forcing you to do?” Laurie asks.

“I have tendered an offer to purchase a company called Milgram Oil and Gas. It’s been very contentious, and the case is in a Delaware court right now. A decision is expected at any time.”

“What do they have to gain from that?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It is not a move I would have made without their intervention. It won’t hurt my company either way, but as they say, the juice has not been worth the squeeze.”

“What happens after you get the company?”

“There will be further instructions, which they assure me will be painless.” His smile has no humor in it. “Painless is not how I would describe this situation.”

“And what if you don’t get the company?” Laurie asks.

“They don’t seem to be concerned about that. My analysis is that it’s a close legal call, but if Loney is worried, he certainly hides it well.”

There is no doubt in my mind that this is where Judge Holland comes in, and less doubt that he will rule in favor of Bauer and Entech Industries. Alex Bauer is not the only one they have something on.

“Why are you cooperating with them?” Laurie asks.

“That I can’t reveal, to you or anyone else. Suffice it to say that they have knowledge of something that, if revealed, would destroy my career, and most of my life. But I will tell you that it has absolutely nothing to do with the fire, or the Galloway trial.”

“How did they get that knowledge?”

“That is something I’ve never been able to uncover. It may seem a little cryptic for me to say this, but they may have been responsible for facilitating the situation in the first place.”

“They set you up?” Laurie asks.

“It’s possible, but ultimately I am to blame.”

“Why did you come to us with this?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Probably because you were coming to me, and I figured you’d find it all out anyway. But I also would like to nail them, and I’m hoping that you’ll be able to do that.” He pauses, and then says, “While leaving me out of it.”

“That would be nice,” I say.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Vince Sanders is referring to the fact that I haven’t been to Charlie’s to watch football for a couple of weeks. He’s yelling, so I hold the phone a few inches from my ear, which is the position it’s usually in when I’m talking to Vince.

“I’m in the middle of a trial, Vince. It’s on the front page of your paper every day.”

“So you’re in a trial, and I have to buy my own beer?”

“Vince, it was completely inconsiderate of me, and I apologize. From now on, just put everything on my tab.”

“You don’t have a tab,” he points out.

“Damn. If I get one, put everything on it.”

“What do you want?”

“What makes you think I want something?” I ask.

“When people ask me for a favor I get a rash. I’ve been scratching ever since the phone rang.”

“What about when the favor could result in a big story, which you would get the exclusive on?”

“That, my dumb, annoying friend, is like a soothing balm. What are we talking about here?”

“I need to talk to Dominic Petrone right away.” Petrone is the head of the largest organized-crime family in New Jersey, and he is one of the four or five billion people that Vince has access to.

“Why don’t you ‘friend’ him on Facebook?”

“Vince…”

“What should I tell him this is about?”

“The Galloway trial.”

“Let me have your credit card number,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because if Petrone puts you under Giants Stadium, I don’t want to have to buy my own beer.”

“Why do you say that?” I ask, but realize the answer as I ask him.

“Because they tried to pin the fire on him when it happened. The theory was that the drug guys in the house were moving on his territory. He was all over the papers, including mine, and he wasn’t happy about it.”

“But he got cleared of it,” I point out.

“I still wouldn’t go around accusing him if I were you.”

“I’m not accusing him; tell him it’s about Carmine Ricci.”

“Stay by the phone.”

“For how long?”

“Until it rings.”

Click.

Vince never says “hello” or “good-bye.” It’s part of his charm. But he does have the significant trait of always coming through, and the phone rings ten minutes later.

It’s Vince. “Be outside your house at nine P.M. ”

“At night?” I’m nervous enough about meeting Petrone, since all he would have to do is nod for someone to kill me. It just seems somewhat safer during daylight hours.

“Wow, you don’t miss a thing.”

Click.

Meeting with Dominic Petrone is one of those things that seems right when you plan it, but then dread when the actual time approaches. In this case the dread starts as soon as Vince hangs up the phone.

“Let me go with you,” Laurie says.

I shake my head. “No. This is me and Dominic, one on one, mano a mano.”

“Mano a mano?”

I nod. “Right. Law of the jungle.”

“You’re a wonderful, talented man, Andy, but the jungle is not your thing.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you’re afraid of wild animals, bugs, snakes, lizards, spiders, scary-looking plants, and not having indoor plumbing. I have a feeling you wouldn’t sleep that comfortably in your tent if you knew that Mafia dons were lurking around either.”

“While all of that may be true, I told Vince that I wanted to talk to Petrone. I didn’t mention anyone else, and I don’t want to pull any surprises.”

I go outside at a quarter to nine, and exactly fifteen minutes later a black sedan pulls up. One of Petrone’s very large people gets out of the backseat, and holds the front door open for me. I get in the passenger seat and see that two other goon clones are in the car, one obviously driving.

“Hey, guys,” I say, and none of them answer. That sets the tone for the rest of the ride, as they don’t speak a single word the entire way. It makes me uncomfortable, but I’d prefer the silence to somebody saying “Sonny says we’re going to the mattresses,” or “Leave the gun and take the cannolis.”

We get on Route 80, which surprises me because I know from previous visits that Petrone lives in the Riverside section of Paterson. Then we get on the lower level of the George Washington Bridge, but the driver does not execute the amazing U-turn that they did in The Godfather.

My keen intuition tells me I’m seeing Petrone in New York.

We head down to lower Manhattan, and park in a lot in the West Village. We get out of the car, and I follow them down the street. They stop at a building on the street, with no sign, though there is a flag flying above the door. It’s not a flag I recognize.

The driver knocks on the door, and within fifteen seconds it opens. The person who opens it looks at us and opens the door wider, so we all go in. Still not a word has been spoken.

It seems to be some kind of restaurant/club that we’re in, but certainly a private one. I follow my escorts to a back room, which is an ornate bar. Petrone is having drinks with four other men.

They all turn to see us as we enter, and the four men start to get up in unison, obviously preparing to leave us alone. Petrone slightly shakes his head, and raises his hand, as if telling them to stay, and they sit back down.

Petrone gets up and walks into an adjacent room, and I am led into it as well. My three escorts, whom I’ve really grown close to, stand with their backs to the wall, while I sit at a table with Petrone.

I’m very nervous, but not quite as much so as in previous meetings with Petrone. I assume that is because in each of those meetings he hasn’t killed me, so therefore my chance of survival this time seems good. Had he killed me one of those other times, I would not be so optimistic now.

“Hello, Andy,” Petrone says. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit?” Petrone can be quite gracious, a refined gentleman, probably in his mid-fifties, who seems the type that might have some mixed emotions when he orders people executed.

“There is something going on that I thought you might not know about.”

He smiles. “There’s always a first time.”

“Carmine Ricci from Las Vegas; I assume you know him?”

“I prefer you to make statements, rather than asking questions.”

I nod. “Gotcha. Anyway, it seems that Mr. Ricci is involved, at least peripherally, in a case I’m working on. And his involvement consists, among other things, of having a man in his employ do some rather illegal things. Right here in North Jersey.” My assumption and hope is that Petrone will not like a counterpart from across the country operating in his territory.

“Interesting,” Petrone says. “And the name of this man?”

“Loney. If I’m right, he’s already committed a murder, blackmailed a bunch of people, and threatened a woman. And that’s just before lunch.”

“Do you have any reason to believe that Mr. Ricci is an interested party in this, other than providing access to one of his employees?”

“I don’t know that either way,” I say.

“What would you have me do about all this, on the off chance that I believed you?”

“Well, in a perfect world, first you would call Mr. Ricci and get him to withdraw his troops, so to speak.”

“You think he and I are part of one large club?” Petrone asks.

“I think he might respect you enough to see your point.”

“You said ‘first.’ Is there a second?”

I nod. “Yes. I’d like to go talk to Mr. Ricci, perhaps make him a proposition. Under your protection.”

“What might be in this for me?”

“Well, the fact that I’ve alerted you to this situation is something I would hope you’d appreciate. And then there is the help I provided on Quintana.” I’m referencing my providing Petrone with a way to get rid of a former rival, who in terms of viciousness made Petrone look like Mary Poppins. It also benefited me on a case, but there’s no reason to mention that now.

“I’ll call you at noon tomorrow,” Petrone says.

“Great. I’ll look forward to it. How’s the food here?”

“The best in the city; I’m looking forward to dinner right now. Good-bye, Andy.”

I’ve got a hunch I’m not eating here. Maybe my three buddies and I can stop at a Taco Bell on the way home, where we can eat quesadillas and chat the night away.

Hike comes over at eight o’clock in the morning.

He does so for two reasons, probably of equal importance in his mind. The first is that he knows Laurie makes French toast on Sundays, and there is no better French toast on planet Earth. The second is that I pay him by the hour, and if it meant getting paid, Hike would eat asbestos toast.

He’s already there when I come back from my walk with Tara and Bailey, hovering around the kitchen while Laurie cooks. When I enter he looks at his watch, and says, “You’re late. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“Sorry. Maybe we should skip breakfast.”

He laughs. “Not in this lifetime.”

During breakfast we talk about our next steps in the investigative, nontrial area of our efforts. More accurately put, Laurie and I talk, while Hike mostly chews. When it comes to eating, Hike is a mini-Marcus.

“No matter what Petrone sets up, I don’t think you should go to Vegas,” Laurie says.

“Why not?”

“It’s not obvious? Ricci is the head of an organized-crime family. If he’s been behind all this, then you have set yourself up as, if not his enemy, then at least a pain in his ass. He could decide to remove the pain.”

“But maybe he’s not, maybe he’s just providing the muscle. That’s what Petrone implied might be happening. In that case, he has no overriding interest, and he might pull the plug.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“I’m not.”

“I’m going with you.”

“You’re not.”

We argue about this for a while, and we finally settle on a compromise, which is mostly in my favor. If I go to Vegas, Marcus comes with me.

“What about the judge in Delaware?” Hike asks.

“What about him?”

“He seems to be a key part of this. Maybe we can pressure him to cave.”

“He won’t even take my call,” I say.

“Maybe we can find out who he’s called. That might lead us to Loney.”

“How would we do that?” Laurie asks. I think I know what Hike is thinking, but I hope I’m wrong.

I’m not.

“We have his cell number from Loney’s original phone, right? So we find out who he has called. If Loney was calling him, the reverse is probably true, and we can get Loney’s new number.”

I put down my fork. “You’re going to try and illegally obtain the private phone records of a prominent judge?”

Hike shakes his head. “Who said anything about me? I’m a law-abiding citizen and, I might add, an officer of the court. Sam can get it.”

“Let’s assume for a second that Sam would be crazy enough to do it…”

“A likely assumption,” Laurie says.

I nod. “True. But what does it really do for us? We already know who Loney is, and that he has been in contact with the judge. Do we really need more confirmation of that? What we need to do is find Loney.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said. “Call Sam; let’s make sure my idea will work.”

I call Sam and put him on the speakerphone. After hearing Hike’s plan, he confirms that it is very feasible, and blames himself for not thinking of it earlier. If we can get Loney’s number off the judge’s records, Sam could hack into the phone company’s computers, something that is for him about as difficult as breathing.

Once in the computer, he could trace the GPS signal that is within every cell phone. In that way we could locate Loney’s phone, and very likely Loney.

“And you are willing to illegally invade a prominent judge’s records?”

“A crooked prominent judge,” Sam points out.

“You can mention that at your sentencing hearing,” I say.

“I’m not going to jail,” Sam says. “Not with you as my lawyer.”

I try to talk him out of it, but of course I’m not sure if I really want to. Hike’s idea, while risky, is a good one, and could lead us to Loney. Of course, I have no idea what the hell I would do with Loney if we found him, but suffice it to say Marcus would be involved.

“I’ve got to get off the phone,” I say to Sam. “I’m waiting for a call from a Mafia don.”

“Now that’s cool,” Sam says.

Among the more admirable qualities of ruthless crime bosses is their punctuality.

The phone rings at noon, though it is not Petrone who calls. It’s his first lieutenant, Joseph Russo, which doesn’t make me any less nervous. It’s a sign of how uncomfortable these people make me that I’d rather deal with lawyers.

“Mr. Ricci will see you in Suite 36575 of the Mandalay Bay Thursday afternoon at three P.M. ”

“Thursday is Thanksgiving Day,” I point out.

“Tell me something I give a shit about.”

“Is Ricci aware that I am under Dominic Petrone’s umbrella of protection?”

Russo laughs. “We’ll find out soon enough, huh?”

“I’m going to bring one of my investigators, Marcus Clark.”

“I don’t care who you bring.”

Click.

Nobody says good-bye anymore.

Court is closed on Wednesday because of personal business Judge De Luca has to attend to, and it’s obviously closed for the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. Which means I only have to get through two court days, stretching it so that I don’t have to start presenting the defense case this week. The way Dylan is dragging this out, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Once the call is behind me, and I can breathe normally again, Hike and I settle in to go over the witness list and make our preparations. There is nothing in it that we haven’t gone over ten times before, but total familiarity with everything is absolutely necessary, and there’s no other way to get it.

At one o’clock I turn on the Giants game as background noise, though the truth is I pay more attention to that than the case files.

Cindy Spodek calls at halftime, which is probably a coincidence, since she is not generally that considerate.

“Is your fax number still the same?” she asks. “I have a list to send you.”

“These are people that were reported missing during that period and never found?”

“Right,” she says. “Six hundred and forty-one names.”

“That many?”

“And I’m sure there are quite a few that never made it to us. I believe this is the part of the conversation where you say, “Thank you, Cindy. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“No, this is the part where I ask if you’ve ever dealt with Carmine Ricci, and you say, ‘Sure, he’s a pussycat.’”

“You’re dealing with Ricci?”

“I’m meeting with him next week,” I say.

“I’ve got a better idea. Don’t.”

“Can’t be helped, Cindy. Any tips?”

“Besides getting your affairs in order? Andy, seriously, this is not a wise idea.”

“Did I mention it can’t be helped?”

“An hour before you see him, call my number here at the bureau on your cell phone. If you feel things are getting dangerous, show him that you made the call, and tell him that we know where you are.”

“Good idea. I will,” I say. “Thank you, Cindy. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“Very well put,” she says. “Now let me talk to Laurie.”

I give the phone over to Laurie, and she and Cindy chat for about an hour. Most of Laurie’s side of the conversation consists of her saying things like, “I can’t stop him. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

I call Sam and tell him that I’m going to be faxing him Cindy’s list of names of missing persons from around the time of the fire. He can add it to Pete’s list and get started.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” he asks, a perfectly logical question.

“Find out whatever you can about these people. I know you don’t have time to dig too deep into each one; the public records should be enough. I want to know if they were connected to any of the people involved in this case, any of the people you’ve already found in the phone records. Pay particular attention to the various players in the Delaware trial.”

“Got it,” he says.

“How is it going on getting the judge’s phone records?”

“Should have it very soon. And then we use it to find Loney.”

“Yes, but that part is going to have to wait until I get back from Vegas. If we’re going to deal with Loney in person, I want Marcus there.”

“Okay, whatever you say. Meanwhile we’ll get started on this list.”

“Can you get more help?”

“Don’t need it. We’re fine.”

“Sam, your staff does not consist of people we want to overwork, you know?”

“Andy, they’re amazing. I tell them to go home and take the rest of the day off, they say no. I hope I’m that energetic when I’m their age.”

“I was never that energetic at any age,” I say.

As I hoped, Dylan’s big mouth works in my favor.

He spends the next two days putting on witnesses of little consequence, and then questions them as if they were crucial to his case.

None of the witnesses present direct evidence about Noah. They either talk about the extent of Noah’s addiction, or his expertise in chemical engineering.

I question each of them, and make points which show the jurors our side is still alive and feisty. But all I’m really doing is biding time until Vegas.

We have to fly out on Wednesday, since I don’t want to risk a flight cancellation that would leave me unable to make the meeting with Ricci.

I haven’t been to Vegas in twenty years, and I have no idea where to stay. When I mention that to Marcus, he says, “Mandalay Bay.”

I’m surprised that he even knows the name of a hotel there; Marcus does not seem like the Vegas type. “Why?” I ask.

“Sushi bar.”

Marcus eats sushi; this truly is a global society. Mandalay Bay is where I’m meeting with Ricci, so staying there may not be a positive. If his goons chase me out of the room with guns blazing, I don’t want to run next door to my room.

But ultimately I make the reservation there, telling the reservations clerk that I want to be as far as possible from suite 36575, which is where the meeting is. The clerk says that it’s no problem, and at the end of the call tells me to “have a lucky day.”

I’d better.

When we are leaving for the airport, Laurie hugs me very hard and long. It feels good, but less so when I realize that she is doing it because it may be the last time. Tara licks my face when I kneel down to pet her; and I whisper to her that Laurie should be her go-to person for biscuits and stomach-scratching if I don’t come back. I pet and say good-bye to Bailey, nearly waking her in the process.

I bought first-class tickets for Marcus and me from Newark to Vegas. Marcus gets through security without incident, which means he’s not carrying a gun, and he’s not actually made of steel.

The other passengers in the waiting area all seem to be staring at Marcus; he is someone you stare at until he stares back at you, and then you pretend you weren’t staring and walk away.

I can’t imagine they’re pleased that they’re going to be on the same flight as Marcus. If it’s overbooked, and the airline looks for volunteers to give up their seats, there will likely be a stampede.

Conversations with Marcus do not come easy for me, since he says almost nothing, and what he does say I can’t understand. I actually prepare a few things to say, which I figure I’ll spread out throughout the trip, and hopefully get by.

Marcus sits at the window, and I sit next to him. I turn to say something to him when the plane starts to leave the gate, but he’s sleeping. He sleeps the entire way, and I have to wake him at the gate in Vegas. This works out well, since I can now save my planned conversational tidbits for the trip home, should he happen to be awake, and should I happen to be alive.

Vegas looks nothing at all like it did the last time I was here. The cab driver takes us on the scenic, longer route, since that is the best way for him to drive up the cost on the meter.

The hotels are simultaneously remarkable and ludicrous. There is one meant to look like the skyline of New York, one of Paris, and one of Venice. They are cleverly and respectively called New York, New York, the Paris, and the Venetian.

Strangely, I don’t see any hotel designed to replicate Paterson. Perhaps “the Patersonian” is on the other side of the strip.

Marcus and I enter the hotel. Between that moment and the moment we go up to our rooms, four different hotel employees say things like, “Welcome back, Mr. Clark,” and “Good to see you, Mr. Clark.” Marcus just grunts in response, but no one seems put off by it.

Marcus has a life, and I don’t.

I meet Marcus for dinner and drinks at the sushi bar, because that’s where he wants to go. As we walk up to the person behind the desk, she lights up and starts talking a mile a minute in Japanese.

I’m about to tell her that I don’t understand what she’s saying, until I realize that she’s talking to Marcus, and “Clark” is sprinkled through the diatribe, though it sounds like “Clock.”

Marcus is smiling and nodding, hanging on every word. He even grunts in Japanese, though his normal “yuh” sounds more like “yih.”

The maître d’ comes over and joins in, and they’re laughing and chattering away, still in Japanese, which means it takes a long time to get our table. Which is fine, since I don’t like sushi anyway. Fortunately, Marcus makes up for that by eating enough for me and half the guests in the hotel.

Once he’s finished, and before the enormous check arrives, he grunts and leaves. I head up to my room, where I order room service, call Laurie, turn on the TV, and fall asleep.

I sleep maybe four hours; I’m way too stressed to relax. Marcus and I meet in the morning at the buffet, which has an unbelievable array of very appealing food. For me it represents a potentially fitting last meal; for Marcus it is a chance to provide onlookers with a lasting memory and bragging rights. They will forever be able to say that they were there the day Marcus Clark defeated the Mandalay Bay’s all-you-can-eat buffet.

Two o’clock rolls around all too fast, and five minutes before the appointed hour Marcus and I go up to Ricci’s suite. I don’t think there is any chance that Marcus will be allowed in the meeting with me; I’m sure that my being alone will be the only way I’ll get in. But I like having Marcus with me, and I want them to know he’s here.

I knock on the double doors to the suite.

It’s showtime.

“We need to meet with the judge.”

Brett Fowler had said it, and it immediately pissed Loney off.

“No, we don’t,” Loney replied, trying to remain calm. Loney always had anger issues, which was generally not a good thing for the person he was angry at.

“Yes, we do. Carpenter called him.”

“I know. I spoke to him.” Then, pointedly, “He’s my contact.”

“Then you know he’s freaking out. Look, Loney, I’m sure you think I’m stepping on your toes here, but I don’t really give a shit. This guy is about to issue his ruling. We’ve been waiting six years for this, and we’re going to make damn sure he doesn’t change his mind, or jump off a building.”

As annoyed as Loney was, he knew that Fowler was right. “Okay, I’ll set it up.”

“I already did,” Fowler said.

“You’re crossing the line.”

“I know,” Fowler said. “And I’ll cross back as soon as he issues his ruling. So for now let’s not argue about this, okay? You’re not the one calling the shots here.”

Loney also knew that was true; he was essentially a hired gun. For now. “Where’s the meeting?”

“In Delaware, about a mile from where he lives. It’s a place I have set up there.” He gave Loney the address, and told him it was a warehouse. “The last thing we want is for the judge to be seen with us, especially me.” Since Fowler was a professional political operative, such a sighting would cast any judge in a negative light.

“He’ll be there at ten tonight,” Fowler said. “Can you make it?”

“I’ll be there.”

Fowler liked the action; he always had. That’s why he’d spent seven years in the Marines, and that’s why he became a political operative in Washington. War, Fowler understood as well as anyone, is war. No matter what the battlefield looked like.

On the drive to Delaware he reflected on the progress that had been made. The only thing he had not anticipated was the speed at which the events would take place. The precipitating factor in that was the implication of Galloway. It sent things a little more out of control than Fowler would have liked, and Carpenter had proven to be something of a wild card.

But ultimately the result would have been the same; all that Carpenter had really changed were the tactics and the timing.

The big picture was intact and moving along beautifully. Holland would stay in line and rule in Entech’s favor, which was the key all along. Everything would flow from that, and quickly, since there would be nothing to impede the progress.

Galloway would probably be convicted, at least that’s what the media had been saying. Fowler really had not been paying much attention. Even though he was mostly responsible for Galloway being on trial in the first place, the end result of that trial was not particularly important.

People were going to die; there was no getting around that. Anyone who knew what was really happening, who had helped in making it happen, was going to have to die. Just like those twenty-six people had died at his hands. The secret had to be preserved, or there would be no place on the planet to hide.

That was coming soon, and Brett was gearing up, getting ready for the action, for the war.

Damned if he wasn’t looking forward to it.

He got to the warehouse at nine-thirty. Loney drove down from New York, and was there ten minutes later. It was formerly a medical supplies storage facility, but was now mostly empty. The FOR LEASE sign looked weather-beaten and the place was old and in terrible shape; it seemed likely that the medical supplies it housed must have included whiskey and bullets to bite on for pain.

They briefly went over the plan for the meeting. Loney would do the talking, since the judge knew him, and was aware of the danger he represented. Fowler was just there to be a calming influence, should one be needed.

Loney was to tell the judge that it was almost over; that once he issued his ruling this would all be behind him. Providing the judge kept his silence on the matter, neither Loney nor anyone else would ever call or visit him again.

It’s a message that had been delivered repeatedly ever since the trial date was established. Loney doubted the judge ever believed it, or that he would believe it now.

The fact was that it wasn’t true. The judge knew too much, and was too unstable emotionally to be trusted. It wouldn’t happen the next day, or the next week, or even the next month, but the judge would soon take his secrets to his grave.

It wasn’t until ten after ten that Fowler looked at his watch and said, “I don’t like this.”

“He’ll be here,” Loney said. “If I have to drag him out of bed.”

“He should have been here by now. This is not a guy who’s out drinking beers and forgot the appointment. To him this meeting is one of the most important of his life.”

“Then let’s go find him,” Loney said.

“Where?”

“His house.”

Fowler shook his head. “No, we don’t want his wife and kid to see us. That just complicates things.”

“So let’s grab the wife and kid. Then the judge will do exactly what he’s told.”

“No. Let’s call him first. I think you should be the one to do that. Tell him that not coming here is unacceptable.”

Loney nodded, and took out his phone. Just as he was about to dial, Fowler said, “Hold it. I think I hear a car.”

He walked to the window, which was behind Loney. He had to wipe away the dust to look outside, then stared out there for about ten seconds.

“You see him?” Loney asked.

“No. You’d better call him.”

Loney turned back to his phone. It was set up exactly the way Fowler wanted it. Loney was concentrating on dialing, his hands occupied, and his back to Fowler.

It was therefore the easiest thing in the world for Fowler to take his handgun from his pocket and shoot Loney three times in the back.

Loney fell forward, landing on the floor just before his cell phone did the same. He was already dead by that time, but Fowler felt for a pulse to make sure. “Damn,” Fowler said to Loney’s body. “Now that I think of it, I forgot to tell the judge about the meeting.”

Fowler wasn’t terribly worried about the body. It would be a long time before anyone entered this warehouse, and the discovery of a dead gangster could not in any way come back to him. He had been careful not to leave fingerprints or any other evidence that could implicate him.

But he didn’t want to just leave the body where it was, so he took one of the large, empty drums that was in the warehouse, and laid it on its side. Then he half pushed and half rolled the very large Loney into it. He put the top on, but could not lift the drum upright. Which was fine.

Fowler locked the place and left. It had been a while since he had personally killed anyone, and as a marine in Kuwait that had been done more anonymously.

But this didn’t bother him at all. Not a bit. Which was good, because Loney would not be the last person he would have to kill.

The door opens and two men step out.

They’re not particularly large, maybe an inch taller than me and not much heavier. One of them looks at me, then Marcus, then back at me. “Not him,” he says. “Just you.”

I nod and ask Marcus to wait outside the door. He doesn’t seem happy about it, but it’s been prearranged, so he goes along with it. I let the two men lead me into the room, realizing with horror as they do that I forgot to make the call to Cindy at the FBI, so I could show it to Ricci on my phone.

I thought they were leading me into a hotel room, but that’s not what this is at all. It’s an apartment, as nice as any I’ve ever seen. It is amazingly elegant, and the main room is an atrium with a glass ceiling and a spiral staircase up to the second floor.

The furniture seems clearly very expensive and perfectly designed to complement the room, though I don’t have the slightest knowledge of furniture, designs, or even rooms. In the center of the room is a grand piano.

The room is set down a few feet, and one has to go down two stairs to get to it. I wonder if the people in the rooms below it have to duck down, because their ceilings are lower than everybody else’s.

Making the place somewhat less appealing to the eye are three very large men, none of whom are smiling. One of them comes over to me and frisks me, very carefully and intimately. If the TSA people frisked people at airport security like this, everybody would take trains.

I’m assuming that none of these people are Ricci, since they all seem to have basically the same level of authority. Once it’s determined that I’m not armed, they lead me into another room off the main one. Only one of the goons goes in with me, but he leaves moments later, leaving me alone in what seems to be a den.

The room has a desk and three chairs, all recliners, all facing a wall with eight televisions. There is one large one in the middle, probably sixty inches or so, and then a bank of seven others, each maybe thirty-two inches.

The one in the center has the Lions-Packers game on; it’s a measure of how scared I’ve been that I had forgotten that Thanksgiving is a big NFL football day.

I watch the game for about five minutes, still all alone. If I’m being kidnapped and held, I can think of worse rooms to do it in. There’s also a full bar, but I resist the temptation to make myself a drink.

I could really use a drink.

Finally, a door opens and a man comes in. I assume it’s Carmine Ricci. He’s dressed casually, tan slacks and a green pullover shirt, and seems to be in pretty good shape. He doesn’t have the sophisticated air of Dominic Petrone, and is at least twenty years younger. Ricci looks like he’s earned his stripes the hard way.

“You a football fan, Carpenter?”

I nod. “Big Giants fan. Huge.”

“I have a large bet on the Cowboys to win the NFC.”

“I hope they wipe the floor with the Giants.”

“Dominic Petrone says you’re a wiseass, but that I shouldn’t kill you unless you really piss me off.”

“Trust me, my goal is not to piss you off.”

“Then talk,” he says.

I ask him if he knows about the Galloway case and he says that he does, from reading the papers.

“Galloway is innocent,” I say. “He’s been set up; he didn’t set the fire.”

“Why should I care about that?”

I decide to go head-on. “Because your man Loney has been doing all the dirty work. Among other things, he threatened Galloway’s wife, he killed Danny Butler, and he has blackmailed a number of people, including a judge.”

I’m not sure if all the things I said are true, but I’m also not sure Ricci would know if I’m wrong.

He doesn’t say anything, so I continue. “There’s a lot more that I suspect, but which I’m not sure of. But rest assured I’m in the process of finding out.”