Play Dead

I head home to walk and feed Tara, and then go over some files I need to be familiar with for court tomorrow. Once I feel fully prepared, I drive over to Charlie’s, getting there at about eight thirty.

Vince and Pete have not exactly been waiting for me to start; the table is filled with empty beer bottles and plates. Once he sees me, Pete calls out to the waitress the request that she change the beers to more expensive, imported ones.

“Well,” I say, “if it isn’t my two favorite intellectuals. What have you two been discussing? Literature? Fine art?”

“Shit, yeah,” says Vince.

It takes mere minutes for me to stoop to their level, which is not far from my natural state. Actually, because of the need to stay alert for tomorrow’s court session, I don’t fully match their behavior. So while I eat, drink, watch TV, and leer at women, I don’t drool or spit up my food when I talk.

I’m also ready to leave before they are, so I attempt to turn the conversation to the Franklin investigation. “How close are you to making an arrest?” I ask Pete.

“How close are you to being an Olympic shot put champion?”

“I came in third in the nationals.”

Pete goes on to tell me what he has told me before, that this appears to have been a professional job and that no leads of any consequence have come to light.

“What about Franklin’s job at customs? Have they opened up their records about his work? Because I would guess that’s where the answer is.”

He says that in fact the records have been checked but that nothing seems to be amiss.

“What about since that night? Have you checked that?”

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

“Well, let’s say Franklin was doing something illegal, letting in material he should not have been. If it’s tied into the Evans case, then that’s been going on for a long time. If the pattern has changed significantly since Franklin died, then that would be important to know.”

Pete looks at me for a few moments. His mouth is preparing an insult, but his mind has other ideas, so they compromise. “You may not be as dumb as you look.”

“Stop, you’re going to make me blush,” I say.

Pete promises to get right on it the next morning, and I grab a final handful of french fries before heading home.

My work here is done.

* * * * *

I HATE COURTROOM surprises-unless I’m the one springing them.

The kind I hate most are witness list surprises, and that’s what I’m greeted with when I arrive in court for the morning session. Hawpe has come up with a new witness, and the first thing on the docket is a hearing in Judge Gordon’s office to decide whether he should be allowed to testify.

Hawpe informs Judge Gordon and me that a witness, Craig Langel, has just come forward with the revelation that he saw a golden retriever, apparently quite wet, on the night of the murder. The location was about a quarter mile from where Stacy’s body washed ashore three weeks later.

Langel reported it to the animal shelter, who sent out someone to search for the stray dog and capture him but could not find him. Hawpe has just checked the back records of the shelter and located the call and dispatching of the shelter worker, to confirm that it was the same date. It was.

I argue that Langel should not be allowed to testify, because he was not on the list Hawpe provided, but it’s a halfhearted argument with no chance of success. Hawpe represents to the court that he did not know about Langel until yesterday afternoon, and he hadn’t confirmed it with the animal control department until early this morning.

Judge Gordon rules that Langel will be allowed to testify, and I enter a formal objection. He overrules me, and we head into court.

Hawpe’s first witness is Gerald Daniels, head of the Somerset County crime lab. Five years ago Daniels was the technician who handled the forensics on this case, and his promotion since then probably gives him additional credibility.

Not that he needs it. He gives a straightforward, professional analysis of the evidence. He describes the evidence collection on the boat, most notably the bloodstains on the floor and railing, and the positive DNA match to Stacy, based on hair samples from her brush in Richard’s house.

There isn’t any doubt that Daniels is qualified to render these conclusions, and no reason to think he would be deceptive. It is not particularly harmful to me, since I have not contended that Stacy was not on that boat or that she was not murdered.

My cross-examination is therefore short and narrowly focused. “Mr. Daniels, I would like to explore the scope of your investigation. So I’m going to ask you some questions, and I’d like you to answer based on what you can say with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty. If you cannot speak with that certainty, please say so.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you. Now, where on Stacy Harriman’s body did the blood on the boat come from?”

“I cannot determine that with any degree of scientific certainty,” he says.

“Who caused her wounds?”

“I can’t determine that, either.”

“Was Richard Evans conscious when Stacy Harriman was killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were the bloodstains placed where they were deliberately?” I ask.

“Questions like that are beyond the scope of my work.”

“Now I’d like to present a hypothetical. With Richard Evans unconscious, someone who had been hiding on the boat, or who had boarded it after it set sail, murdered Stacy Harriman and threw her body overboard. Is there anything in your work which could disprove that?”

“No, but…”

“Thank you.”

I made some rhetorical points with Daniels, but nothing that will stick. I still have not given the jury any reason to believe that someone other than Stacy and Richard was on that boat. Making the point that it is merely possible is just not going to do it.

Hawpe next calls Dr. Susan Coakley, professor of veterinary medicine at Cornell University. Dr. Coakley might be called a physical therapist for animals, and teaches the practice of physical rehabilitation through exercise. A lot of that is “water therapy” whereby the dogs swim under controlled conditions in a university pool constructed for that purpose.

Her basic testimony is that she believes it to be possible that a young, healthy golden retriever could have made the swim from the boat to shore that night. She does not claim to know it for a certainty but is quite adamant in considering it quite conceivable.

She reminds me of a few professors I had in law school. They considered their opinions to be incontrovertible fact and wore their arrogance proudly on their sleeves. I never got a chance to knock them down a peg, which is why I’m so looking forward to this cross-examination.

In truth, I need to go after her very hard, since if she cannot be shaken, then our “Reggie turned up alive” advantage no longer carries much weight.

“Dr. Coakley, when did you conduct your physical examination of Reggie?” Unless she’s the lowlife that broke into my house and kidnapped Reggie, I know that the answer to this question is “never.”

“I did not conduct an examination.”

“Pardon me?” I ask, betraying my surprise. Oh, the shock of it all.

“I did not conduct an examination on this particular dog.”

“Were you prevented from doing so?”

“No, it wasn’t necessary for what I was called upon to do.”

“I see. So you merely went over his medical records, X-rays, that kind of thing?”

“No, I did not have access to them,” she says.

“You were denied that access?”

“No, the records were not necessary for my work.”

“So the health of a dog is not relevant in determining if that dog could swim four miles in the ocean in a major storm?”

“I was operating under the assumption that he was healthy.”

“So if he were not healthy, that might change your opinion?” I ask.

“It might, depending on what was wrong with him.”

“If I told you he had a badly broken leg that was repaired by inserting a metal plate and that he was taking a drug called Rimadyl for the resulting arthritic pain, would that be significant to you?” I’m shading the truth a little here. Reggie is on that medication now; he was not on it then.

But Hawpe does not object, and Dr. Coakley answers, “I would have to examine the records.”

“You mean the records that weren’t necessary for your work?”

Hawpe objects that I’m being argumentative, and Judge Gordon sustains.

I move on. “Do you have any personal knowledge of a dog swimming four miles in the ocean during a substantial storm?”

“No, I don’t,” she says, trying to control her annoyance. “But I believe it is within their capability, depending on the circumstances.”

“What is the furthest you have personally seen a dog swim in the ocean in the midst of this kind of storm?”

“I have never seen it personally, but it would not be necessary for me to do so.”

“Could a dog do it while carrying a radar antenna on his back?” I ask.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, it was nighttime, and even though there may be lights in the specially constructed swimming pool that you use for your therapy, there aren’t any in the Atlantic Ocean. How would Reggie have known where to swim?”

I think I see a quick flash of panic in Dr. Coakley’s eyes. She should just deflect the question as not something covered in her work, but she doesn’t. “Perhaps there was enough moonlight.”

“Dr. Coakley, I don’t know how much time you spend outside, but have you ever seen a major summer storm? Are you aware that there are a lot of clouds involved?”

Judge Gordon admonishes me for being argumentative even before Hawpe has a chance to object. I let Dr. Coakley off the stand, a little less arrogant than when she took it.

The day’s last witness is Craig Langel, the man who reported seeing a stray dog matching Reggie’s description very late on the night of the murder.

In the hands of Hawpe on direct examination, he comes across as a decent citizen who is telling the truth about what he saw that night. Perhaps trying to make up for the Dr. Coakley debacle, Hawpe nurtures the witness, taking almost an hour to bring out what he could have gotten in ten minutes.

The jury has to be bored and wanting to adjourn for the day, so I don’t want to prolong matters. “Mr. Langel, you’ve testified that you saw a dog, possibly a golden retriever, running stray near the harbor that night?”

“That’s correct.”

“He appeared very wet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is it unusual for a stray dog to get wet in the middle of a rainstorm?”

“I wouldn’t think so, sir.”

“Thank you. No further questions.”

* * * * *

KEVIN CALLS WITH the news that they got plenty of latent fingerprints at the cabin.

Our expert, George Feder, will eliminate those that turn out to match Richard or Karen, and hopefully that will leave many of Stacy’s prints. I’ll then give one of those to Pete, who will run it through the system. Unfortunately, not nearly everyone in the country has their fingerprints in the national database, so there’s a pretty good chance we won’t get a match.

Even so, I’m putting a lot of stock in this process, because tomorrow Hawpe is going to conclude his case, and I haven’t made a serious dent in it. This looks like a classic domestic murder-suicide, and when the jury starts to deliberate, that’s what they’re going to see.

I can talk all I want about campene and a golden retriever who survived, but it won’t cut to what the jury will see as the core truth. They will see that Richard and Stacy were out there alone, she wound up dead in the water, and he wound up unconscious from an overdose.

It’s unfortunately an easy call, no matter what the wise-ass defense attorney says.

Kevin says that Karen has something else to tell me, and he puts her on the phone so that she can do so directly. “Andy, I think someone has been in the cabin.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, sometime since I was there last.”

Karen has told me that she has not been to the cabin since the murder, so that doesn’t narrow it down much. But she’s also said that no one had a key.

“Was there any sign of forced entry?” I ask. “A broken lock or window?”

“No,” she says, “but I’m sure there were things missing. Mostly some of Stacy’s stuff.”

This is potentially very interesting. If Stacy represented a danger to someone, it could have been because of something in her possession. After her death, they may well have gone looking for it in the cabin, a natural hiding place.

Unfortunately, although it’s interesting, all I can do is put it in the bag with the other information I don’t know what to do with. At this point the bag is bursting at the seams.

Kevin comes over for an evening strategy session. We prepare for Hawpe’s final witnesses, but they are not of great consequence. All he’ll be doing is smoothing out the rough spots; he’s already made his point.

Instead we focus on our own case. We’ll once again establish that Reggie is Richard’s dog, and that he survived that night. We’ll also bring in Dr. King, who will present his version of the events of that night, as well as his contention that Richard did not take the Amenipam orally.

But the more I think about it, the more I feel we should focus on Stacy’s faked identity. Even not knowing who she really is, the deception increases our chances of raising reasonable doubt. If we match her fingerprint, then everything changes, for better or worse, depending on that identity.

Kevin agrees with my assessment, though we both realize we’re in an uncomfortable position. Much of our preparation depends on that fingerprint, and all we can do is wait.

Feder meets us in the morning before court begins, with a copy of what he is sure is Stacy’s print. There were many just like it in the cabin, and a particular concentration of them on the pots and pans. He has also come up with a couple of other prints that do not match Richard or Karen, and he’s brought them as well.

To save us time, Feder agrees to bring the prints to Pete Stanton, since they have worked together many times in the past. Kevin and I head into court, where Hawpe proceeds to do us a favor by making his final four witnesses last all day. We will not have to start our case until tomorrow, and the delay works to our advantage.

Kevin brings a criminologist named Jeffrey Blalock to our evening meeting. He was formerly a detective in Bergen County, specializing in identity theft and computer crime. With the explosion of illegal activity in those areas, he left the force to set up a private consulting practice, and is now recognized as a leading expert in the field.

Blalock will be the witness through whom we’ll make our claim that Stacy’s background is fake, and he has spent the past couple of days going over the information Sam has gotten, as well as the documents Kevin brought back from Minnesota.

I usually like to spend far more time prepping witnesses as crucial as Blalock, but things are moving too fast to allow that. As I start to talk with him, I harbor a secret fear that he’s going to say we’re crazy, that Stacy Harriman is in reality Stacy Harriman.

He doesn’t. “Stacy Harriman never existed. She was created out of whole cloth.”

“How would this woman manage to do something like that?” I ask.

He smiles. “She wouldn’t. This is WITSEC.”

“They deny it.”

“Under oath?” he asks.

“No, but to a court.”

“Let me put it this way…,” he says, and then points to my desk. “What is that?”

“My desk,” I say.

“If I tell you that’s not your desk, are you going to believe me?”

“Of course not.”

He nods. “Right, because you know better.” He holds up the folder of documents relating to Stacy. “These are as clear to me as that desk is to you. This is WITSEC, no matter what they told that judge.”

As much as I’m surprised that their attorney, Alice Massengale, would lie in court, what Blalock is saying instinctively feels right. Of course, there is always the possibility that Massengale herself was not told the truth and was representing to the court what she thought was accurate information.

I call Cindy Spodek at her Boston office. I don’t want to involve her in the case any more than I have, because it seems to have caused her a problem with her FBI bosses. But this WITSEC confusion is bugging me, and I’m hoping Cindy’s experience can help debug me.

I explain to her the situation and what transpired in court, and she listens without interrupting. When I finish, she says, “It sounds like WITSEC, Andy. I don’t know how else these things could have been fabricated so completely.”

“But their lawyer denied it in court, even though she didn’t have to answer at all. She could have appealed the court’s order to death.”

“Who was the attorney?”

“Alice Massengale.”

“It was Alice?” she asks, her surprise evident. “Then you’ve got a problem.”

“Why? You know her?”

“I do. I worked with her a few times when I was based down there. There is no way she would knowingly lie in court. Absolutely no way.”

For all Cindy’s certainty, she is making an educated guess about Massengale’s veracity. I’m inclined to go along with it because Cindy is a very good judge of people, and because it seems more likely that a good attorney would not intentionally and directly lie to a judge.

I head home and call Laurie before going to bed-or, more accurately, from bed. As always, she wants to be brought up to date on the case, and I do so. It actually helps me to verbalize it to her; it seems to clear my mind.

She also doesn’t believe that Massengale would lie to the judge, both because it seems unlikely on its face and because she trusts Cindy’s judgment. Nevertheless, for now I’m going to operate on the assumption that Stacy was in WITSEC; I just wish I could get it in front of the jury.

Laurie gives me a brief pep talk in honor of our starting the defense case tomorrow. She knows I’m not content with what we’ve got, and she wants to make sure that my concern doesn’t impede my effectiveness. It won’t, but I appreciate her effort.

Just before we’re getting off the phone, I say, “How was your day?”

She laughs a short laugh and says, “It was fine, Andy. My day was fine.”

“What was that laugh for? You don’t think I care how your day was?”

“Andy, go to sleep. My day was fine, but you’re in the middle of a trial. It’s your days that are important right now.”

After we hang up, I use up my yearly fifteen minutes of introspection to examine my feelings about Laurie’s day. I love her deeply, and if something extraordinary happened today, or if she needed me for something, I would be very interested and unquestionably there for her.

But the truth is, if she had an ordinary day as chief of police in Findlay, Wisconsin, then I pretty much don’t give a shit about it.

I’m not sure what that says about me, but it can’t be good. Next year at introspection time, I’ll try and figure it out.

* * * * *

“WE’VE GOT TWO matches,” are the first words Pete Stanton says when I answer my cell phone.

He’s reached me less than five minutes before my going into court for the morning session, and he’s talking about the results from running the fingerprints through the national registry.

I’m actually a little nervous at finally finding out Stacy Harriman’s real identity. Based on my inability to correctly predict anything about this case, I’m afraid it’s going to be Margaret Thatcher or Paris Hilton. “Who was she?” I ask.

“Her name was Diana Carmichael, thirty-four years old when she died.”

“Why were her prints in the system?”

“She was in the Army,” he says, providing me a bit of a jolt in the process. I don’t yet know how that piece of information fits, but I’d bet anything that it does.

“Pete, I’m late to get into court, so…”

“Okay, but I said we’ve got two matches. There’s also one from one of the other prints, and you’ll like this one even more.”

“Tell me.”

“Anthony Banks.”

Lieutenant Anthony Banks. Deceased husband of Donna Banks, wealthy volunteer worker living in Sunset Towers in Fort Lee, and the recipient of the mysterious twenty-two thousand a month from Yasir Hamadi.

Lieutenant Anthony Banks, who, long after his death, seems to have managed to rummage through Stacy Harriman’s things in the cabin, leaving his fingerprints in the process. Just as Archie Durelle, the man he died with, showed up to shoot at me on the highway.

We’ve got ourselves a group of dead guys who really get around.

“I’m going to have Kevin call you and get the details, okay, Pete?”

He’s fine with that and also tells me he’s making progress on checking into whether the type and amount of cargo coming through Franklin’s customs office has significantly changed since his death.

“We’re going to be meeting at my house tonight. Why don’t you stop by?” I say.

“You mean that? So I’m on the team now?” he asks, sarcasm starting to return.

“Well, not the first team. But a damned good backup.”

“Is that right? Well, how about if you kiss my-”

“Thanks, Pete. Gotta go,” I say, and hang up, temporarily depriving him of the last word. As soon as I’m off, I bring Kevin up to date. I want him to call Pete and then take the information and see what Captain Reid at Fort Monmouth can add to it.

I reach the defense table moments before the judge enters, and Richard seems a little agitated at my uncharacteristically late arrival.

“Something wrong?” he whispers.

“Do you know the name Diana Carmichael?”

He thinks for a moment. “No. Should I?”

“You were engaged to her.”

It is an unfair thing to do to him, since I don’t have time to explain it fully right now. During the morning break I’ll do so.

It’s a strange feeling to be opening the defense case in front of the jury while the real action is going on outside, between Kevin, Pete, and Captain Reid. But that’s what I have to do, and I start by calling Dr. Ruff, Reggie’s veterinarian.

Kevin has had a chance to prep her on her testimony, and she’s more decisive than during the hearing. She presents a compelling case that the Reggie she recently examined is, in fact, the dog that Richard owned and took on his boat those years ago.

Hawpe makes little effort to challenge her, and he concludes by stipulating that she is correct, that Reggie survived.

Next up for our side is Dr. Harold Simmons, a blood spatter expert. The fact that there is so much blood getting spattered in this country that we need experts on it is a rather negative commentary on our society, but Dr. Simmons is very good at what he does.

Dr. Simmons’s contention is that the blood spatter on the boat was of a type and in a location so as to render it very likely that it was deliberately placed there. I ask very general questions and let him run with them, and he does so quite well.

Hawpe has some success in his cross-examination, focusing on the fact that it was raining that night and everything was wet. It could have washed away some of the blood and altered the spatter of what remained. Dr. Simmons gives ground very grudgingly, but Hawpe makes some points.

During the lunch break, I return a message from Kevin, telling me what he’s learned. Diana Carmichael was in fact in the Army, stationed in Afghanistan and working for what was called the Afghani/American Provisional Authority. It was the operation hastily set up immediately after the fall of the Taliban to provide much-needed money for reconstruction.

A theory is forming in my mind, but I don’t have the time right now to analyze it in depth. Hawpe has responded to my announced plan to call Jeffrey Blalock to the stand by asking Judge Gordon to refuse to allow his testimony. The judge has decided to convene a hearing, outside the presence of the jury and media, to consider the matter.

“Exactly what is Mr. Blalock going to testify to?” the judge asks.

“He is going to describe documents that he has reviewed that demonstrate conclusively that Stacy Harriman’s background has been faked in an effort to conceal her true identity.”

Hawpe stands. “Your Honor, unless he is prepared to present a credible explanation for how the deception was accomplished, it is pure speculation and should not be admissible.”

“That makes no sense, Your Honor,” I say. “He is going to be stating facts that exist independent of anyone’s knowledge or understanding of how they came about. It is similar to a witness testifying to a cell phone call without understanding the technology behind it. But I might add that Mr. Blalock will also be advancing his view that the fake background was created in the context of the witness protection program.”

Hawpe shakes his head. “The court has already convened a hearing on that matter, and it was determined that Ms. Harriman was not in that program. The U.S. Marshals Service very clearly represented that to the court.”

“We think they lied or were misinformed,” I say.

Judge Gordon does not seem pleased to hear this. “If you’re going to stand up in open court and in effect accuse the government of lying, you’d better have more than what you just ‘think.’”

“We have an expert presenting his point of view,” I say, but I can feel this slipping away.

Judge Gordon shakes his head. “Not good enough. I’ll allow the testimony regarding the background, but in the absence of new factual information, there will be no reference to the witness protection program. Anything else, gentlemen?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I say. “We are in the process of determining Ms. Harriman’s real identity right now. My intention would be to have Mr. Blalock review this new information tonight and then present it to the court tomorrow.”

Hawpe starts to object, but the judge cuts him off so that he can question me about how we learned her real identity. I describe the process of getting the fingerprints from the cabin and running them through the national registry. I leave out the actual identities for now; they are not important to the issue we’re arguing, and I don’t want to give Hawpe a heads-up.

Unfortunately, Hawpe doesn’t seem to need one. He argues that none of the fingerprint information should be admissible. There is no chain of custody, no way to be sure that Stacy left the prints there at all. Anyone could have gotten into the cabin in that time, and therefore it is impossible to say how they were left there, or who left them.

I argue the point, but I have no bullets to fire. Hawpe is right; no one can say with certainty that the woman we know as Stacy Harriman left those prints.

Judge Gordon rules the identity inadmissible unless and until further information is brought forth that could demonstrate its reliability. It has not been a good hearing for us; all we got out of it is the right to argue that Stacy’s background was faked. Any second-year law student could have won that point.

The amount of information we’re gathering is starting to take off, and I can feel us getting closer to the truth. It would have been nice to convey that truth to the people deciding Richard’s fate, but his lawyer couldn’t quite pull that off.

At least my client will have a great story to tell his cell mates.

* * * * *

KEVIN HAS SPOKEN to Captain Reid about Diana Carmichael, the woman who became Stacy Harriman.

The army lists her as deceased, but they are not referring to her death in the water off New Jersey. Her death is recorded as having taken place just three weeks after the helicopter crash in Afghanistan that supposedly killed Durelle, Banks, and the others. I suspect that they created this fake death as a way to ease her into the witness protection system.

Unfortunately, that’s all the records show. The rest of her file is listed as classified, and not even Captain Reid or his boss has access to it. Reid considers this very unusual but is powerless to do anything about it.

Kevin and I struggle to come up with a theory, but what we wind up with is vague and only loosely based on facts. Our thought is that Stacy, which is how I can’t help referring to her even though her real name was Diana, was likely stationed in Afghanistan. She was probably a witness to wrongdoing, and witnesses very often need protection.

The wrongdoing could have been misconduct by American soldiers, perhaps mistreating the enemy, or it could have been financial. There have been a number of stories written over the past couple of years about the chaos that existed just after the Taliban was defeated, and the corruption that was part of the reconstruction efforts. Billions of dollars were alleged to have been lost.

Billions. People have killed for a lot less.

It’s possible that the government itself didn’t believe that lives were really lost in that helicopter crash, or perhaps it knew of other bad guys that got away and would pose a threat to Stacy. In any event, those in charge obviously felt it necessary to tuck her away where she wouldn’t be harmed.

Pete comes over and joins the discussion, mainly to report once again that no progress has been made toward finding Reggie, and that he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I’m going crazy about it and getting more and more pessimistic that we’ll never get a ransom demand. If we were going to get one, it would have come already.

We bring Pete up to date on what we know and what we suspect about Stacy’s real identity and why she was a protected witness. He has a slightly different take on this. “If it’s money that was stolen, maybe they put her in the program not so much so that she could someday testify, but rather to insure that she never would.”

I don’t understand, and I tell him so. He continues, “That money is gone; they’re never going to see it again. If they catch the crooks and have a trial, then they have to publicly confront the embarrassment that they screwed up and lost billions of dollars. If they don’t, then nobody finds out the truth about it.”

“Right. But if there was some other kind of misconduct, like if she witnessed torture or something, the army might also want to keep that quiet.”

Either scenario makes sense in light of the way the government has acted, trying to keep the case from being reopened and, failing that, attempting to thwart us at every turn.

We kick this around a while longer until it’s time for Kevin and me to start our trial preparation for tomorrow. It’s extraordinarily frustrating to realize that nothing that we have learned today or talked about tonight is going to make it to the jury.

Before Pete leaves, he gives me three sheets of paper. It is the result of the investigation I suggested into Franklin’s work at customs, a comparison of the cargo entering before and after his death. I want to look at it because I still have no idea where Franklin fits into all this, but I just don’t have the time right now.

Kevin and I are at it until almost one in the morning, including a half-hour walk that he takes with Tara and me. I’ve been trying to get Kevin to get a dog, since he loves them, and he’s weakening. He explains that right now he’s trying to figure out what he would do with the dog if he had to spend an extended time in the hospital.

“Why? Are you sick?” I ask.

He smiles weakly. “You have no idea; I just don’t like to talk about it.”

Oh.

Our first witness in the morning session is Michelle Miller, a travel agent with an office in Englewood. She met with Richard the day before Stacy died, and she testifies that the meeting was to finalize their honeymoon plans.

“They were going on a cruise through the Panama Canal,” she says.

“Did he give you a deposit?”

She nods. “He did. One thousand dollars.”

“Was it refundable in the event that they had to cancel their trip?” I ask.

“It was not.”

I turn her over to Hawpe. “Had you spent a great deal of time with Mr. Evans and Ms. Harriman when they were together?”

She shakes her head. “No, I actually never met Ms. Harriman.”

“I see. So you did not know what you would describe as intimate details of their marriage?”

“I did not.”

“If the deposit had been refundable and then Mr. Evans committed suicide, would he have been around to receive the refund?”

I object and Judge Gordon sustains, but Hawpe’s point had been made. A murder-suicide is an irrational act, and simply making a honeymoon reservation is no proof at all that Richard could not have done it.

We then call a series of witnesses who spent time with Richard and Stacy and who talk about how much they seemed to love each other.

Hawpe is basically dismissive of these witnesses, getting each one to admit that they have no idea what goes on behind the closed doors of anyone’s relationship other than their own.

It’s been a day of making small gains and pretending they are big, but we’re going to have to do much better. And our chance will come tomorrow, when we call Dr. King and Jeffrey Blalock.

I head home for a long night with Kevin preparing for our witnesses. Dr. King presents an interesting problem, and a role reversal of sorts. In most cases where there has been a preliminary hearing, the witnesses that testify are almost exclusively those of the prosecution, since the purpose is to establish probable cause. The defense thus has the advantage of having heard the testimony before it is given again at trial.

In this case, because the burden was on us at the hearing to bring this to a retrial, it is our witnesses, like Dr. King, who have already been on record. It’s an advantage for Hawpe, but one we have to live with.

It’s almost midnight when we’re finishing our preparations. Kevin’s getting ready to leave, and I’m reading the report Pete left with me, when I immediately see it. “Look at this,” I say.

Kevin comes over, and I hand him the papers. “It’s the list of companies bringing large amounts of goods into Franklin’s area of customs, before and after his death.”

Kevin looks at it, but nothing registers. “And?”

At the bottom of the second page is a list of companies that have had dramatically less come through customs since Franklin’s death. “If I remember correctly, a few of those names were on the list that Sam tracked down. The companies that Hamadi was dealing with.”

I check back through the files and confirm my suspicions; four of the companies are on both lists. The man whom a worried Donna Banks called after my visit seems to have been involved with Franklin in customs activity. I don’t believe in coincidences, but even if I did, this wouldn’t be one of them.

By the time Kevin and I finish thrashing this out, it’s one thirty in the morning and we’ve got a plan. At least, I’ve got a plan; Kevin cautions me against it.

The first part of the plan involves calling Vince Sanders. I want to do it now rather than the morning, because I will be heading for court early, and I want him to get on it first thing. Also, psychologically I want to get the ball rolling.

Vince groggily answers the phone with “This better be good, asshole.” Apparently he’s not so sleepy that he can’t see his caller ID.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Vince, but I need a big favor.”

He doesn’t say a word, which could mean he doesn’t want to, or else that he fell back asleep. I decide to push on. “Vince, I need to speak to Dominic Petrone.”

“Is that all?” he asks, and then speaks to an imaginary person in bed with him. “Dominic, honey, Andy Carpenter wants to talk to you. And when you’re finished, could you run over to the asshole’s house and put a bullet in his head?”

“Vince, it’s urgent, and I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that he’ll be glad you set up the meeting.”

“You want to tell me what it’s about?”

“I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“Repeat after me. If a story of any kind comes out of this, Vince is the person I will give it to, along with an exclusive interview.”

I repeat the vow, and Vince agrees to call Petrone in the morning.

Tomorrow is showing signs of being an important day.

* * * * *

DR. GERALD KING has brought his A game to court today.

In direct examination, he is even more effective than he was at the hearing. He’s a consummate witness; all a defense attorney has to do is wind him up and let him go.

I let him go over his assessment of what happened that night on the boat, and his absolute certainty that Richard did not take any pills. It’s basically the same story he told at the hearing, with more charts and even more assertiveness.

Hawpe certainly has been preparing for him for weeks, but if he makes a dent, it’s not worth calling the insurance company to repair. The best Hawpe can get from him is an admission that the prosecution’s version of events is “not impossible,” but even that draws a sharp comeback from Dr. King.

“Not impossible?” he asks. “Is that the standard the prosecution has to meet to send a man to prison?”

It’s an unprofessional comment, and Hawpe’s objection gets it stricken from the record, but the point is made, and the jury certainly heard it. By the time Dr. King gets off the stand, I think that Hawpe is ready to throw him a good-bye party.

Mercifully, a juror comes down with a stomach virus, and the afternoon session is canceled. I don’t wish anyone ill, and if I could outlaw viruses forever I would, but if someone in America had to come down with one, I’m glad it’s a juror on this case. I need the time to focus on our efforts to learn the truth about Stacy and why she was killed.

I call Vince, who tells me that he just got off the phone with Petrone’s people. Whatever they talked about, it hasn’t improved his mood any. “They want you at Spumoni’s Restaurant on Market Street at five thirty.”

“Five thirty? That’s a little early for dinner.”

“That’s because you’re not invited for dinner,” he says.

I want to make sure I have all this straight. “Who should I ask for?”

“Who are you going to see?”

“Dominic Petrone.”

“Then why don’t you start by asking for him and see how that goes? Oh, and they said you should come alone and unarmed.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That not only will you not bring a gun, you probably won’t bring any balls.”

“Thanks, Vince.”

Before he gets off the phone he makes me repeat the “I’ll give the story to Vince” pledge, which I willingly do. Vince is a major pain in the ass, but the next time he doesn’t come through for me will be the first.

I call Marcus and give him the evening off. Ever the responsible bodyguard, he presses me about why, and I’m forced to tell him. He reluctantly agrees, and I only hope he’s telling me the truth.

I show up at the restaurant at the appointed time. It has been on this downtown street for more than fifty years and is said to have extraordinary Italian food.

I just hope Clemenza left me a gun in the bathroom.

I’ve worn fairly tight jeans and a thin pullover shirt. I’m not trying to make a fashion statement; I’m just not a big fan of getting frisked by burly men, and I’m hoping this will render that unnecessary.

It doesn’t work. I’m not in the door for twenty seconds before I’ve been frisked and ushered into a back room, where Dominic Petrone sits having a drink with two other men. He moves his hand almost imperceptibly, and they get up and leave the table. Three of Petrone’s people take positions around the room, with their backs to the walls.

“Sit down, Andy,” says Petrone.

“Thanks, Dominic,” I say as I do so. “Try the veal. It’s the best in the city.” He doesn’t seem to get the Godfather reference, which is just as well. But Sam Willis would have gotten it.

“Vince says you’re here to help me.”

“I was hoping we could help each other. I have some information you can use, and hopefully you can get information that I need.”

“Let’s start with me,” he says.

I’m not going to get rolled here. “Do we have a deal?”

“Let’s start with me,” he says again, with a little less patience.

“Dominic, the way I envisioned this is-”

“You don’t trust me?” he asks.

I just got rolled. “Of course I do.” Strangely enough, I do trust him, though I know that were it in his best interests, he would kill me without spoiling his appetite.

I pause a moment to try to control the tremor in my voice. What I’m about to say can have serious repercussions, most notably to me.

“In the course of my investigation of the Evans case, I’ve learned that you have been sending large amounts of money, in small-and medium-sized bills, out of the country.”

Petrone doesn’t flinch, nor does he blink. He simply waits, probably deciding in his own mind how I am to be killed.

I continue. “I have not told anyone about it, but I have also learned something else. There is about to be an intense investigation into unusual activity down there, and if you have any cargo there or ready to be shipped in the next few days, it might pay to pull it back immediately.”

“And you are the reason this investigation is taking place?” he asks, his voice completely calm.

I shake my head. “I have told no one about this other than you,” I say, and for the moment that is true.

“And the information you need?”

“Four companies-I’ve brought the list with me-have been bringing goods into this country through the Port of Newark. They came in through Keith Franklin’s section. I need to know what was in those shipments.”

“And how would I know that?” he asks.

“You wouldn’t. But I’d bet that you have the people down there that could find out.”

He thinks for the moment, then takes a pen out of his jacket and writes something on a piece of paper. Hopefully it’s not my eulogy.

He hands me the paper, and I see that it has a phone number on it. “Call me tomorrow at five p.m.,” he says.

“I will. Thank you.”

I walk out into the main area of the restaurant. One of Petrone’s men points with his hand toward the exit door, which I will be thrilled to use. Before I go, I point toward the bathroom door. “My brother better not come out of there with only his dick in his hand.”

He apparently hasn’t seen the movie, either.

* * * * *

BEFORE CALLING JEFFREY Blalock to the stand, I ask for another closed hearing.

I start off by bringing Hawpe up to date on what we have now learned about Stacy’s identity and background, and I again ask that Blalock be allowed to state his view that she had to be under the protection of WITSEC.

Hawpe, of course, objects. “Your Honor, as you know all too well, we have been over this ground. There was a specific denial in your court from the lawyer representing the U.S. Marshals Service.”

“I now believe she was parsing her words, Your Honor.”

“What do you mean?”

“I checked the transcript. She phrased her denial quite precisely.” I look at my notes and read the words she used. “The woman known in this trial as Stacy Harriman was never under the control of the U.S. Marshals Service in the witness protection program.”

“How is that parsing her words?” the judge asks.

“I believe this is a DIA or CIA operation, probably using WITSEC’s physical structure and operational capability. So I think that the Marshals Service could conceivably deny that she was ‘under their control.’”

I go on to admit that there could be another explanation, that Massengale herself might have been kept in the dark and was therefore telling the truth as she believed it.

Hawpe cuts in. “Your Honor, with all due respect, Mr. Carpenter is making this up on the fly, with no facts to support him.”

I’m prepared to argue some more, but Judge Gordon surprises me with a quick decision. He still prohibits Blalock’s mentioning the witness protection program or WITSEC, but will allow his opinion that an unnamed government entity may have participated in or created the deception.

It’s a partial victory for us, which right now feels pretty good.

Back in court, I take Blalock through all the documentation we have that demonstrates conclusively that Stacy Harriman was not who she claimed to be. In his expert hands the story is spellbinding, and it’s not just my imagination in thinking that the jury is the most attentive it has been throughout the trial.

After we have gone through everything, I say, “A fake credit report… birth records… high school transcript… all these things-how could she have accomplished all this?”

“She couldn’t,” Blalock says. “She had to have help.”

“You mean like a friend who was good with a computer?”

Blalock smiles. “No, much more than that. Far, far more than that. It would have had to be a government agency that made these organizations do their bidding. No citizen could have pulled this off.”

I let him off, and Hawpe starts his cross-examination. He takes an interesting tactic, essentially conceding that Stacy’s identity was a fake, but instead focusing on why that might be.

“Mr. Blalock, have you come in contact with many people who have created new identities for themselves?”

“Yes, quite a few.”

“And they do so for a variety of reasons?”

“Yes.”

“Would one be to get a fresh start, perhaps after a bad marriage?” Hawpe asks.

“It could.”

“How about escaping financial problems?” Hawpe asks.

Blalock nods his agreement. “Certainly.”

“And there could be many others?”

“Absolutely.”

“Of these people who you’ve worked with that have changed their identity, have any of them been murdered?”

“No.”

Hawpe spends very little time on Blalock, perhaps in an effort to diminish his importance. His cross-examination has been well done, effectively telling the jury that just because someone is not who they seem to be, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with their murder.

All in all, I think Blalock’s testimony went well, and I tell that to Richard when he leans over and asks me. “Where do we go next?” he whispers.

“To the jury,” I say, and then I stand and address the judge. “Your Honor, the defense rests.”

The phrase “the defense rests” is unfortunately not to be taken literally. We don’t rest at all after saying it; instead we prepare for any rebuttal witnesses the prosecution might call, and for our closing argument.

Resting is for suckers.

This time I’m going to get even less rest than usual, since at five o’clock I’ve got to place a call to Dominic Petrone, which in turn might lead me in any one of many directions, none of them restful.

I make the call, and the person who answers the phone gives me a different number to call. That call yields a third number. I assume this must have to do with some security concerns, but I’m not sure how.

I finally get through to Petrone, and he says, “I have your information.”

“Great.”

“Those companies you listed did not receive any goods coming through customs.”

This both troubles and confuses me. “I have the documentation that they did.”

“That was intentional. The documents listed shipments that never actually were delivered-that did not even exist.”

This doesn’t make sense. I expected arms, or drugs-“nothing” was not on my list of possibilities.

“Do you know why?” I ask.

“I neither know nor care.”

“But you’re sure about this?” I ask, and immediately regret the question.

“I only say things I am sure of,” he responds. “As an example of that, let me say that I do not want to hear from you again.” With that, he hangs up the phone. Just to show he can’t push me around, I hang up my dead phone as well.

So Stacy Harriman was killed because she knew that certain people were smuggling nothing into the country.

I’m glad we cleared that up.

* * * * *

I FEEL AS if we are operating in parallel universes.

There is the trial, which is nearing conclusion and can certainly go either way. If I were inclined to make predictions, which I am not, I would say we’re in some trouble.

Then there is the investigation operating outside the trial. We are making progress there, but not nearly fast enough. I am gripped by the fear that we’re going to win the eventual investigation battle but lose the immediate war. I don’t want to have to tell Richard the truth about Stacy in a visiting room at the state prison.

There is also the terrifying possibility that we can uncover the whole truth but that it will have no effect on the trial or on a subsequent appeal of another guilty verdict. No matter what happens in the world of Stacy, Hamadi, Franklin, Durelle, Banks, et al., it could be ruled irrelevant to Richard’s case. A jury or an appeals court could say that yes, she was not nearly who she claimed to be, but that doesn’t mean Richard didn’t kill her.

The other, even more frustrating situation is Reggie’s uncertain fate. It is terribly painful to think about, and it is a pain that Richard, Karen, Kevin, and I have in common.

Kevin shares my assessment that we need to take fast action. We discuss whether to turn over what we know about Stacy, Hamadi, and the others to law enforcement. At some point we will do that, but for now it simply doesn’t serve our purposes. It will take too long, and if the government’s performance on this matter to date is any indication, the actions they would take in response to our information may be somewhat less than vigorous.

The only acceptable option Kevin and I can see is to be aggressive and shake matters up. We’ve got a client to defend.

I place a call to Hamadi’s business phone number at Interpublic Trading and reach an answering service. It’s seven o’clock, and it’s logical that no one would still be there. When your company’s sole function is to arrange the importation of absolutely nothing into the country, not much overtime is required.

I tell the woman that I am trying to reach Hamadi on absolutely urgent business. Her reaction is not exactly heartening; she sounds as if she’s falling asleep as I give her the message. I ask her to tell Hamadi that “I know about Franklin and the empty crates, and the world will know about it tomorrow.”

I hang up with no confidence that the message will be conveyed tonight. I try to get Hamadi’s home number from information, but the operator says it’s unlisted.

This is obviously a job for Sam Willis, who laughs in the face of unlisted phone numbers.

I call Sam, who, for the first time in my experience, doesn’t answer his cell phone. This is so unusual that if I were a good friend I would start calling hospitals to see if he’s in a coma somewhere. Instead I leave a message that it’s urgent that he call me back.

Kevin and I start to go over the closing statement I will be giving. As with my openings, I like to plan the main notes that I am going to hit, but not write out a speech or memorize anything. I feel I connect better with the jury that way.

Less than ten minutes goes by before the phone rings. I pick it up quickly, expecting it to be Sam. It isn’t.

“Mr. Carpenter, this is Yasir Hamadi.”

“Mr. Hamadi, you’re about to be in a lot of trouble.”

“Or we can both walk away from this with our respective goals achieved.” He sounds unruffled and unworried. I, on the other hand, am very worried and thoroughly ruffled.

“Please explain that,” I say.

“As I’m sure you understand, this is coming at me quite suddenly. I will need some time to deal with it, and providing me with that time will very much be to your client’s benefit.”

“How will my client benefit?”

“I will give you information that will result in his acquittal.”

“How much time do you need?” I ask, though I can’t imagine an answer that I will be willing to go along with.

“Ninety-six hours.” I am struck not only by the absurdity of the number but also by its specificity.

“You’re wasting my time. You have ninety-six minutes to tell me what I need to know, and then, if it’s as valuable as you say, I’ll hold off on reporting what I already know.” I’m okay with making this pledge, since all I really have on him are suspicions without proof.

He doesn’t answer for so long that I think he may have quietly hung up. Finally, “I will meet you tonight.”

“In a public place,” I say, thinking of Franklin’s arranged meeting with Karen.

“No, it can’t be. Believe me, that is not possible.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“You don’t know the people you are dealing with. But you can choose our meeting place, and you can bring anyone you want with you, so long as it is not the authorities. I will be alone.”

I’m not thrilled with this, but I don’t think I can push him any further. I direct him to Eastside Park, where I will have home field advantage, and he says he can be there by eleven. That will give me plenty of time to make sure my buddy Marcus is there by my side.

As soon as I get off the phone I call Marcus. He’s probably right outside the house but doesn’t say so one way or the other when we talk. I tell him what is going on and that I want him here at 10:45. He grunts either yes or no; I’ll know for sure at 10:45.

“What will you do if Marcus doesn’t show up?” Kevin asks when I hang up.

“Call Pete Stanton and ask him to come.”

“Didn’t Hamadi say no police?”

“I’ll tell Pete not to show his badge.”

Marcus shows up right on time, and I explain the ground rules to him. “I just want to talk to the guy. If he wants to do anything other than talk, you should stop him. As hard as you want.”

Marcus and I drive to the same area of the park where we had our encounter with Windshield Man. It is on the lower level near the baseball fields, and to get there we drive down a road that we referred to as Dead Man’s Curve when we were kids. While it’s a fairly steep hill as it wraps around, the nickname we gave it shows that a child’s perspective can be a little warped.

Marcus and I are there at a minute before eleven, and we get out of the car together. There’s plenty of moonlight, and I walk a few yards to where I can see the curve, since that is the way Hamadi will be entering. There is no sign of him, but it’s not that easy to find this place, so I’m willing to give him a grace period.

“Let’s give him a few minutes,” I say to Marcus, but he doesn’t answer, which is no great surprise. What is a surprise is that when I turn to look at Marcus, I discover that he is gone.

“Marcus?”

No answer. I’m going to take it on faith that Marcus is still here but has decided that protecting me is more easily accomplished by staying out of sight.

With nothing better to do, I look back toward the curve. At about ten after the hour I see a car up above, beginning to make its way down. It’s traveling slowly, as if the driver is unsure where he is going. That’s a good sign.

The car moves silently along until it is about halfway down the curve, wrapping around and descending toward me, though still at least two hundred yards away. Suddenly I hear a deafening noise and see a sight so amazing I have to do a double take to make sure it’s real.

The car is now completely engulfed in a ball of flames, yet it continues to roll down the curve. In the darkness it looks surreal; it’s momentarily hard to realize that someone has undoubtedly just burned to death in it.

Before I even have time to react, I feel a smashing blow in my gut, and I find myself off my feet, up in the air. In an instant I am literally flying, and I’ve flown maybe twenty yards before I realize that I have been lifted off the ground by Marcus, and that I am draped over his shoulder.

He is carrying me away from my car, probably thinking that it might be the next target. We travel like this across the field and to the pavilion, which houses the snack bar and restrooms but which is, of course, closed at this hour. Once we’re there he puts me down, and we watch the burning car complete its descent and crash into a tree.

Actually, I’m the only one watching it. Marcus has his eyes focused on the top level, since that is where the shooter must have been. What he used to shoot, I can’t even imagine.

With Hamadi dead, I also can’t imagine how the hell I’m ever going to find out the truth.

* * * * *

“THIS, AS I told you in my opening statement, is a very easy case.”

That is how Hawpe starts his talk to the jury, who are paying rapt attention. I only wish they had been in Eastside Park with me until three in the morning; then they would be as groggy and unfocused as I am.

I spent the hours after the explosion playing a balancing act with Pete Stanton and his detectives. I gave them Hamadi’s identity and told them that he was coming to give me information about a case, but I revealed little else. Not knowing whether there are any federal law enforcement agencies I can trust with this, I decide to hold back for now.

I did take the opportunity to tell Pete Stanton about the money smuggling at the port, and Chaney’s involvement in it. He’ll go to the feds, and they’ll start an investigation. Hopefully Chaney will go down, but Petrone will emerge unscathed, having been alerted by me as part of our deal. I’m not thrilled by my role in this, but it’s the best I could do.

“And that is exactly what it has proven to be,” Hawpe continues. “Richard Evans went out on a boat one night with his fiancée, and he killed her and threw her body overboard. He then tried to kill himself, an effort that was thwarted only by the Coast Guard.

“Witnesses have placed them alone on the boat together, and there has been no evidence to the contrary. The defense has suggested everything from murderous stowaways to marauding pirates but has offered not the slightest facts to back up their theories.

“We don’t know why this crime was committed. Ms. Harriman told her neighbor that she and Richard Evans were having problems in their relationship, and she feared his temper. So perhaps he just flipped out in a momentary rage, then tried to kill himself when he realized what he had done.

“Or maybe he was depressed, and planned an evening that would provide a bizarre form of escape. Or it’s possible that she told him she was leaving the relationship, and he couldn’t handle the rejection.

“I can’t stand here and tell you the answer, but I can tell you that it doesn’t matter. We do not allow cold-blooded murder, no matter what the motivation.

“Now, the defense has raised the possibility-I would even say the probability-that Stacy Harriman lied about her true identity. And I cannot tell you why she did that. But none of the possible reasons-and they are many-could possibly justify her murder.”

Hawpe walks over to the jury and stands maybe three feet from them. “If one of you took a gun out right now and shot me, thinking my name was Daniel Hawpe, you would be arrested. If later you found out that my real name was Bill Smith, or Carl Jones, it wouldn’t matter. You would be just as guilty.

“On behalf of the State of New Jersey, I want you to listen to the judge’s instructions, follow your common sense, and vote your conscience. If you do that, Richard Evans will never be in a position to murder again.”

As soon as Hawpe sits down, I am gripped by exactly the sense of fear and anxiety and dread that I face every single time I give a closing statement. This is my last chance; once I sit back down I will never have another opportunity to influence this jury.

It’s like a baseball pitcher who throws a three-and-two pitch with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. The pitcher is in control until the moment the ball leaves his hand, and then he has no control over his fate whatsoever.

Once I finish this statement, I’m a bystander.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have been involved in a lot of trials, more than I sometimes care to remember, and I have seen many different prosecutorial approaches. A good prosecutor adjusts his case and his style to the facts he has to present, to the strength of his case.

“Mr. Hawpe is a very good prosecutor, and it is obvious that he carefully assessed his evidence before coming up with the tactic that best fit this trial. What he wound up with is the ‘well, maybe, but’ approach.

“You heard it throughout. When we proved that Reggie was alive, his response was basically, ‘Well, maybe he is alive, but…’

“When it was shown that Richard did not take Amenipam in pill form, Mr. Hawpe backed off with ‘Well, maybe he didn’t, but…’

“When it was demonstrated that Mr. Evans could not have sustained his injury in the way it was presented, Mr. Hawpe allowed that ‘Well, maybe he didn’t, but…’

“And when it was proven beyond doubt that the very identity of the murder victim was a lie and a mystery, he conceded, ‘Well, maybe it was faked, but…’

“Before a prosecutor asks you to send someone to a life in prison, he has to be certain of his facts. He should not be constantly amending them when they prove wrong. He cannot be allowed to tap dance his way to a murder conviction. Richard Evans deserves better than that.

“Stacy Harriman’s entire life was a lie, a complete fabrication, even to her own future husband. This is not something that she would have done casually. How many people do you know that have done it? She was a young, beautiful woman so afraid of where she had been that she couldn’t get herself to reveal it to the man she loved.

“She lived alone with her fear, her secret, until it killed her.

“Richard Evans has never done anything criminal-not on the boat that night, not in his life. Before this nightmare he was a dedicated public servant, a caring friend, a loving brother.

“He can be all that again, if you will let him. Thank you.”

I turn around and walk back to the defense table. I see Karen in the front row, sobbing, and Richard grabs my arm as I reach him.

“Thank you,” he says. “No matter how this turns out, thank you.”

* * * * *

IT SEEMS THAT you can never get a good coma going when you need one.

My strong preference would be to remain in an unconscious state while a jury is deliberating. In fact, I’d like to be wheeled into the courtroom that way and not woken up until the very moment that the clerk is starting to read the verdict.

That way I would be able to avoid the anxiety, the doubt, and the second-guessing that I inflict on myself. I wouldn’t have to go through my ridiculous preverdict superstitions, and my friends wouldn’t have to deal with me at my most obnoxious.

This is not a fun time.

Making matters worse is Karen Evans’s understandable desire to hang out with me while we wait. She knows I’ll hear things first, so this is where she wants to be. This gives me the unwanted burden of having to be reasonably pleasant at a time when I am always impossibly cranky.

Karen also assumes I know more about this process than she does, but she’s wrong about that. I have no idea what is going on in that jury room, or what decision they might reach. The entire thing is impossible to predict and, more significantly, completely out of my control. That is what makes it so maddening.

Kevin and I have tried, with little success, to divert ourselves with our investigation of Stacy’s background, though it is too late for anything that could come of it to help in this trial. The reason it hasn’t been that diverting is because we no longer know what the hell to investigate. By now Stacy, Durelle, Franklin, and Hamadi are all dead, which leaves us with precious few suspects.

In fact, the only suspects left from the dwindling pool are Anthony Banks; Mike Carelli, the Special Services chopper pilot; and Captain Gary Winston, the surgeon who went down with the others. We have never been able to locate any of them, and we certainly don’t seem to be ready to start now.

Banks and Carelli are the most likely candidates for bad guy, since Hamadi’s car was shown to have been blown up by a grenade launcher. Since surgeons are not usually trained in grenade launching, Dr. Winston is probably off the hook.

Sam Willis had a brainstorm yesterday to go to Hamadi’s funeral and surreptitiously take pictures of all in attendance. Since Kevin and I had seen photographs of Banks, Carelli, and Winston in their army files, he thinks maybe we’d see one of them at the funeral.

The suggestion made very little sense to me, since if these guys are actually alive and in hiding all these years, the idea they would come out to attend the funeral of a man they killed doesn’t add up. But Sam wanted to do it, probably so he could get to use a tricky hidden camera gizmo he recently bought, so I let him.

Sam has gone through all the pictures and printed them out off his computer. Digital cameras are amazing; I just wish I didn’t find them so bewildering. When I want to take pictures, I buy one of those disposable cameras, take the shots, and then leave them undeveloped in the camera for years.

I call Sam and tell him he should bring the pictures over now. Karen and Kevin are both here, and I figure it will be good for Karen to think we’re doing something proactive, even though we’re not.

Sam brings in his computer and shows the pictures to us in something called PowerPoint on the wall. It’s as if he were making a presentation to a board meeting. But he’s enjoying the literal spotlight, so I pretend to be paying attention.

There are more than seventy-five pictures, documenting in excruciating detail the perhaps hundred and fifty attendees at the funeral. Most of the photos have five or more people in them, so obviously, many people are seen much more than once.

By the thirtieth picture, I haven’t seen anyone that looks remotely familiar, and I’m so bored I would rather be at the ballet. Kevin’s face tells me he’s as miserable as I am, but I don’t speed Sam up, because Karen is so into this. She keeps saying things like “Wait… hold on… that person looks like… can we focus in on him…?” but ultimately she doesn’t recognize anyone, either.

Just as Sam is gathering up his material to leave, the phone rings. A ringing phone while waiting for a verdict is equivalent to a drumroll and ominous music at any other time. Everybody stares at it for a moment, but I’m the only one with the courage to answer it.

“Mr. Carpenter?”

“Yes?”

“This is Ms. Battaglia, the court clerk. The jury has informed us that they have a verdict. Judge Gordon has convened a court session to hear it at three o’clock.”

I hang up the phone and turn to Kevin and Karen. “We have a verdict.”

“Finally!” Karen says, with obvious relief.

That one word completely sums up the difference between me and that strange group of people called “optimists.” Karen is glad that there’s a verdict; she sees a positive result as now a few hours away. I have no idea what the result is, but the fact that there is one is enough to make me physically ill.

Kevin is in another class altogether; he’s always physically ill.

We hit a lot of traffic and don’t get to the court until a quarter of three. The media is out in force to see the result of what has become a very public legal battle.

The public is kept behind police barricades, and as nervous as I am, I still reflect on what could possibly bring someone here to stand in the street. It’s not as if they’ll get special insight into the case; they’d be able to hear the verdict just as quickly on television. And they’re clearly not here out of an intellectual interest in the workings of the justice system; the most intelligent question I hear is, “Hey, Andy! You gonna win?”

We’re in our seats at five to three, and Richard is brought in moments later. Daniel Hawpe looks over at me, smiles, and mouths, “Good luck.” He has the calm manner of a lawyer who doesn’t have a client with his life on the line.

Richard seems under control, though I can’t imagine the stress he must be feeling. He just looks at me and offers a weak smile. “One way or the other,” he says.

I nod. “One way or the other.”

Karen gets out of her seat in the front row and hugs Richard from behind. She’s not supposed to do that, but the guards who would ordinarily prevent her understand that these are extraordinary circumstances.

Kevin looks pained and miserable. I have seen him in stressful situations like this, and they tend to increase his hypochondria fivefold. Right now I’m afraid he’s going to have urology issues under the defense table.

Judge Gordon takes his seat at the bench and asks that the jury be brought in. It takes either ten seconds or ten minutes for them to do so; time doesn’t seem to have structure or meaning at moments like this.

For some reason it always bothers me to know that the jury’s decision has already been made, even though we’re first finding out about it now. It’s like watching a football game on tape and not knowing the final score; it doesn’t help to root, because the boat has already sailed.

This verdict has already sailed.

Judge Gordon asks the foreman if a verdict has in fact been reached, and he confirms that it has. He hands the verdict slip to the clerk, who hands it to Gordon.

Gordon reads it, and his face remains as unrevealing as those of the jury members. He hands it back to the clerk and asks Richard to stand. Richard, Kevin, and I all do so, and out of the corner of my eye I see Karen rise in her seat, a gesture of total solidarity. If I’m ever in a foxhole, I want her with me.

I put my arm on Richard’s right shoulder, as much to support myself as him. He grabs my arm and holds it, and we brace ourselves. Here it comes…

The clerk starts to read at the pace of what feels like one word every three hours. “In the matter of the State of New Jersey versus Richard Evans, we the jury find the defendant, Richard Evans… guilty of murder in the first degree.”

Richard lowers his head for about fifteen seconds, then turns to Kevin and me and says, “We gave it our best shot.” The courtroom is deathly quiet, and I can clearly hear Karen behind me, sobbing.

I put my arm on Richard’s shoulder and lean down toward him. “It’s not over,” I whisper. “I swear to you, it’s not over.” He doesn’t answer, probably because he doesn’t believe me. And there’s no reason he should.

I’m sure Richard feels worse than I do, but right now it seems impossible that anyone could. My client was innocent, and I couldn’t get a jury to believe me. Hawpe got twelve people to vote on his side, even though his side was wrong.

Judge Gordon thanks the jury for their service and schedules sentencing for three weeks from now. The gavel pounds again, bringing the proceedings to a close. The jury files out, and the guards lead Richard away.

If there’s a moment in my life that I’ve hated more than this one, I don’t remember it. Maybe when my father died.

Maybe not.

* * * * *

BEFORE I LEAVE, I ask the court clerk to get me in to see Judge Gordon.

It is not necessary to include Hawpe in the meeting, because the trial is over. This is just between Judge Gordon and me.

The clerk gets me back into his chambers right away, and Judge Gordon starts the conversation with “Tough loss in there.”

I nod my agreement. “Very tough. Your Honor, I am here to report that I am aware of a crime about to be committed.”

He’s obviously surprised to hear this. “By whom?”

“My client, Richard Evans. As you know, even though it was told to me in a privileged conversation, I am permitted to reveal it because it involves a future crime. I am actually compelled to reveal it.”

“What is the crime?” he asks.

“Suicide. Mr. Evans had revealed to me his intention to kill himself in prison should he be convicted.”

“What is it you want me to do?” he asks.

“My request is that you take affirmative action to stop the crime from occurring, by ordering that Mr. Evans be kept on a suicide watch in prison.”

Judge Gordon thinks about this for a while, but he really has no choice in what to do. He nods and says, “Thirty days, at which point we will revisit this.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Karen and Kevin are waiting for me back in the courtroom when I leave the judge’s chambers. Karen comes toward me and we hug, one of the longest hugs I can remember, without either of us saying a word.

When we break it off, she says, “You’re not going to give up, right?”

“Right. Whatever it takes.”

I want to talk to Karen about what she can do to keep Richard’s spirits up, but I don’t want to do it here. We make plans to have dinner tonight, even though I know my preference will be to hide under the covers.

When I get home, the answering machine tells me that Laurie has already called me twice. She’s going to tell me how I can’t blame myself, how I did the best I could, and how the odds were stacked against me. It has absolutely no chance of helping.

I call her back, and she tries her best to make me feel better, but I’m certainly not having any of it. “I started the case with an innocent client and a dog. Now my client is in jail for the rest of his life, and the dog is gone. I pulled off the daily double.”

“Andy, I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel terrible; I’m just saying that you can’t wallow in it. And you can’t let it prevent you from capitalizing on your progress.”

“Which progress might that be?” I ask.

“Come on, you know as well as I do that you’ve learned an amazing amount about the crime. All along you’ve been operating on two parallel tracks, the investigation and the trial. You’ve been wishing that they could coincide, but they didn’t. The good news is, you only had to win one of them to win.”

She’s right, of course. I could have won by getting Richard acquitted, but I can just as certainly win by finding out the real killers and bringing them to justice. And we have taken some substantial steps toward doing that.

Laurie and I talk it out for a while. The truth is, we know who Stacy Harriman really was, and we can assume that she was killed to prevent her from someday testifying. We even have a rough idea of the conspirators involved in her murder. What we need to do is keep pushing until we and the rest of the world know everything. And I’m going to make that happen if I have to hire every investigator in America.

I take Tara for a walk and then drive to Karen’s to take her to dinner. The devastating verdict has left her subdued, and it’s obvious that she has done quite a bit of crying.

During dinner we talk mostly about Richard and the need to keep him hopeful. It may be false hope, something I usually try to avoid in dealing with clients, but this time it’s necessary. The suicide watch will not last forever, and if Richard is determined to kill himself, he will manage to do so.

Karen promises to do what she can and asks a bunch of questions about the status of the investigation. I tell her everything, and I can feel her optimism starting to return the more she hears.

It’s almost eleven o’clock when we leave the restaurant. As we near Karen’s house, she says, “Do you think I can visit Richard tomorrow?”

I shake my head. “I doubt it; they’ll be transferring him back to Rahway. I’ll be able to see him because I’m his lawyer. I want to explain to him that it’s my doing he’s under a suicide watch.”

“Andy, I wrote a letter to him this afternoon. I wanted so badly to talk to him, but I couldn’t, so it helped me to write it. Could you give it to him tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

We pull up in front of Karen’s darkened house, and we both get out of the car. Karen starts to get her keys out as we go up the steps, but it’s hard for her to see in the dark. “I hope we didn’t have some kind of power failure,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because I’m sure I left some lights on.”

I look over at the attached garage and see that there is a small light coming from underneath the garage door, which is open a few inches. I’m about to say that she obviously has electricity, when suddenly I’m gripped by a clarity of thought and an instinct I didn’t know I possessed.

“Karen!” I yell, and I pull her arm just as her key reaches the door. She screams in surprise, and we lose our balance and fall back down the two steps. At the very moment this is happening, the front door seems to explode at its center in front of us.

Another noise comes from inside the house, and I grab Karen and we start to run. I make a quick decision that the street is not the place for us; it is too well lit. Instead I lead her into the alley, back into a darkened area that serves as a corridor between the houses on this block and the block behind it.

There are sheds and Dumpsters back there as well, but it’s hard to navigate in the darkness. I can hear someone pursuing us from behind, so I pull Karen down behind one of the Dumpsters. It is so dark that I can’t see Karen, which means the intruder shouldn’t be able to see us.

My heart is pounding so hard that it feels like somebody is using the Dumpster we’re leaning on for a bongo drum. “Andy?” Karen whispers-I guess, to confirm that I’m still there, since we’re not actually touching. I reach out and touch her arm, hoping it will stop her from talking.

I can clearly hear someone coming toward us, stalking us. I’m in a near panic, not knowing whether we should try to run some more or stay there and hope the night makes us invisible. The danger in running is that we are likely to bang into something and call attention to ourselves. Based on what happened to the door, the shooter has such a powerful weapon that he will not have to be terribly accurate to hit us in this enclosed area.

I can hear the shooter coming closer. I can’t tell how close, but I would guess he’s thirty feet away. It is impossible to avoid the realization that this person is going to kill us unless I do something to stop him. I have no idea how to do so, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t have the courage or ability to pull it off.

On the other hand, I do have Karen, and she pushes something into me which feels rock hard. I reach out and take it; it feels like a piece of firewood. It makes sense; if she or her neighbor has a fireplace, this would be a likely place to keep the wood.

So I have a log, and he has a large gun. Advantage, bad guy, although I wouldn’t feel confident even if the weapons were reversed.

I whisper to Karen: “Move as slowly and quietly as you can away from the Dumpster and back toward that wall.” I say it so softly that I’m not even sure if actual sounds are coming out of my mouth, but she must hear me, because I can feel her slowly move away.

I can hear the shooter’s footsteps move toward me, and I force myself to come up with a plan. It’s not a good one, but it’s the best that I can do.

As he gets closer, I slowly stand, dreading the clicking sound that my knee usually makes when I get up after sitting for a while. This time it doesn’t; I wonder if fear-induced adrenaline is a cure for knee clicking.

Taking a deep breath, I quickly raise the lid of the Dumpster a few inches and let it drop. It is a distinctive sound, and I want the shooter to think we have taken refuge inside.

It seems to work, because I can hear him move quickly to the Dumpster. He opens the lid, and the next sounds I hear are bullets being fired into it.

Using that deafening sound to camouflage the sounds I will make, I stand and start swinging the log at the spot where his head and body are most likely to be. I seem to strike him a glancing blow, probably on the shoulder, and I hear him yell in pain.

I know that he must be readying the gun to fire, and I make an adjustment and bring the log down as hard as I can at where I think his head must be. It makes a crunching sound, and he moans and seems to fall.

I’m not taking anything for granted, and I keep swinging the log at him, alternating between hitting cement, Dumpster, and something else that I hope is his head. I’m sure the sound of wood hitting skull is quite disgusting to most humans, but right now it sounds pretty good to me.

I start screaming to Karen to run into the house and call 911. I eventually stop swinging the log, because the shooter is completely silent and apparently unmoving. Lights go on in Karen’s neighbor’s house, probably because they are wondering what the racket is about.

My eyes adjust to the dim light, and I can see the shooter at my feet. His head is literally smashed in, and a pool of blood is forming next to him.

I can’t see his face, and I gently move him with my foot so that I’ll be able to. I’m guessing it’s Banks, Carelli, or Winston, since they are the unaccounted-for people in that alleged helicopter crash.

I’ve seen pictures of them all, but the damaged face on the shooter does not seem to match any of them. It’s disappointing; there seems to be enough people in this conspiracy to fill Yankee Stadium, all of whom want to kill Karen.

Within a few minutes the area is filled with seemingly every cop in New Jersey, and the paramedics arrive moments later. But this particular conspirator is not going to kill anyone ever again.

He is dead, just the latest bad guy to learn that you don’t mess with Andy Carpenter.

* * * * *

KAREN AND I don’t get back to my house until four in the morning.

It would have been even later, but Pete Stanton arrived on the scene at Karen’s house and ushered us out of there faster than another detective would have.

After what happened, Karen hadn’t wanted to spend the night at her house, which was totally understandable. Right now we’re both exhausted, and I show Karen the bedroom where she can sleep, and head to my own to go to bed. I call Laurie to tell her what happened, since I know she would want to hear about it as soon as possible.

I wake her, but she quickly becomes alert when I start to tell her what happened. This is the first time I have ever told a story about my own actions that is simultaneously heroic and truthful. I faced death without Marcus to protect me, and I prevailed. The mind boggles.

Laurie has many questions for me about tonight’s events, the last of which is, “Andy, are you okay?”

I know that right now she is referring to my state of mind, my emotional health. I have killed a man, violently and at close range, and that is known to have an often terrible effect on one’s psyche.

Not on mine.

Maybe it will set in later, but I feel absolutely no remorse or revulsion about what I’ve done. This is a guy who deserved to die, whose intent was to gun down Karen and me. “Better him than us” is an understatement.

I get off the phone and try to sleep, and my exhaustion enters into a pitched battle with my adrenaline, the result of which is, I don’t sleep well at all. I get up at seven to take Tara for her walk; it will give me time to consider the impact that what happened last night will have on our investigation.

Karen was obviously the target, since the shooter could not have known that I would be there. But the reason for the attempt on her life is bewildering. How could she possibly be a threat to their conspiracy? It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself since she got shot, and I’m no closer to the answer than before.

Pete Stanton makes the situation slightly clearer when he calls and says that the fingerprints of the guy I killed showed that he was, in fact, Mike Carelli, the Special Forces officer who supposedly piloted the chopper. I didn’t recognize him from the picture, but as in the case of Archie Durelle, the picture I had seen was seven years old.

Either way, I’m getting a little tired of people trying to kill people that I care about, including myself. And I’m getting more than a little angry about my government standing by and not doing anything to prevent it.

I call Alice Massengale at her Newark office and tell her I want to see her about her representations at the hearing. She seems reluctant, so I use the same approach on her that I used on Hamadi: I tell her that if she doesn’t meet with me today, she can learn what I have to say by turning on the television tomorrow. It works again, and an hour later I’m in her office.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter.”

Cindy Spodek said that Massengale can be trusted completely, but at this point I’m not ready to give her the complete benefit of the doubt. I’m certainly not concerned about the social niceties. “You misled the court about Stacy Harriman.”

If she’s cowed by my direct approach, she hides it well. “That’s a serious accusation.”

I nod. “And an inaccurate one. I should have said, “You misled the court about Diana Carmichael.”

“Diana Carmichael,” she says, concealing whether the name has any meaning for her. “Suppose you tell me what you are talking about.”

I continue. “Here’s some of what I know.” I then proceed to detail some, but not all, of the facts I have learned about Hamadi et al. I tell her that a group of people stole billions during the chaotic reconstruction period in Afghanistan and then faked their deaths and disappeared.

“But it is difficult to disappear with a huge amount of ill-gotten money and exist in society. So an elaborate scheme was set up, whereby fake companies would do fake business with each other, showing huge earnings in the process. But in reality they were earning nothing; the money that they received was the stolen money, effectively laundering it. Hamadi was the front man for the operation.

“I know a lot more than that,” I say, “and what I don’t know, I am going to discover through the Freedom of Information Act.”

“Mr. Carpenter, you can believe me or not, but the story you are telling is one I am completely unfamiliar with.”

“If that’s true, then you were set up to mislead the court, and you should want to help me get the truth out. Because I am going to prove that the government you represent knowingly withheld information, stifled investigations, and then deliberately misled the court. It resulted in my client twice being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.”

“All I can say is that I will look into your allegations.”

“Good. You should start with Hamadi.”

She nods and asks me if I can write out all the particulars of what I know about him.

I start to do so, and I’m almost finished when I realize something else I can give her. “I have pictures of the people at his funeral. They meant nothing to me, but maybe…”

I stop talking, and the pause becomes so long that she says, “Maybe what?”

All of a sudden I’m not inclined to explain it to her. All I want to do is get out of her office and go home, because I just realized who is not in those funeral pictures.

On the way home I call Sam Willis and ask him to come right over with the pictures. I want to go through them again, just to make sure I’m right.

Next I call Kevin and ask him to check whether a golden retriever was reported missing to the Essex County Animal Shelter during a specific one-week period back in March.

Sam is already at my house and set up when I arrive, and I look at each one slowly and carefully. I still don’t recognize anyone, which is exactly what I was hoping.

I call Karen, Pete Stanton, and Marcus and ask them all to come over on a matter of urgent importance. I want Pete with us where we’re going, because law enforcement should be present, and I want Marcus with us in case we run into a couple of hundred bad guys with machetes and bazookas.

Karen, Pete, Marcus, and I are in the car and heading off within forty-five minutes. Kevin calls me on my cell while we’re on the road, and he confirms exactly what I suspected about the animal shelter records.

Next I ask Kevin to check the records of Gary Winston, the surgeon who was on that chopper. What I want to know is what kind of surgery he specialized in. Actually, I believe I already know, and I just want to confirm it.

Karen is surprised when I tell her that we are heading for the cabin, and shocked when I tell her why. I’m encouraged when Pete hears what I have to say and doesn’t ridicule it, but even if he did, it wouldn’t matter.

I think I’m right.

I’d better be right.

It takes almost an hour and a half to get up there, and we park close but out of sight of anyone in the cabin. I’m not sure how to go about approaching it, since there is a very good chance that gunfire might be heading our way when we do.

Pete and Marcus come up with a plan; they will sneak up and enter the cabin, disarming anyone who might be inside, while Karen and I wait by the car for them to signal to us that it’s safe to come up. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the perfect plan.

Pete and Marcus head off, and for the next fifteen minutes Karen and I hear nothing. No voices, no gunfire, no noise of any kind. I’m trying to figure out whether that’s good or bad news, when my cell phone rings.

“Come on in,” Pete says.

“Is there anyone there?” I ask.

“Come on in,” he repeats, and hangs up.

Karen and I drive the rest of the way to the cabin. No one is outside and everything is completely quiet, and I have a brief flash of fear that Pete was forced to call me and that we could be walking into a trap. Then I remember that Marcus is with him, and I get a new infusion of artificial courage.

Karen follows me as I enter the cabin. Pete is leaning against the counter that separates the kitchen area from the main room. Someone I assume to be Anthony Banks lies on the floor unconscious, with Marcus standing over him.

In the corner of the room, lying on an area rug and chewing on a toy, is Reggie, looking none the worse for wear from his adventure.

And sitting at the small dining table is a woman I recognize as Yasir Hamadi’s live-in lover/employee, Jeannette Nelson.

Also known as Diana Carmichael.

Also known as Stacy Harriman.

Even though she was expecting this, Karen doesn’t recognize her at first, but slowly it starts to sink in. She stares at her as if trying to process what she is seeing. Stacy just sits there, sullen and silent, as Karen slowly walks toward her.

“You,” Karen says slowly, “are a piece of shit.”

* * * * *

YOU WOULD THINK that discovering that a murder victim is actually alive would be enough to quickly spring from prison the man wrongly convicted of the killing.

Unfortunately, the system does not work nearly that efficiently. The state has to endlessly investigate the developments, a hearing has to be scheduled, and witnesses have to be heard. That would all be fine, except that Richard is sitting in jail.

His reaction when I told him that Stacy was alive and Reggie was safe was not what I expected. I expected shock and euphoria; what I got was an almost dulled acceptance. This man has been battered and beaten down by events, and I have to get him out of that cell as soon as possible.

To that end I once again call to arrange a meeting with Alice Massengale. This time she doesn’t resist at all, asking me to come in right away, which I’m happy to do.

It is clear from the moment I arrive that Massengale is angry, and it doesn’t take much longer to discover that it’s not me she’s angry with. “Stacy Harriman-Diana Carmichael-was part of WITSEC,” she says. “I shouldn’t be confirming that for you, but I am.”

“Thank you for that,” I say.

“I had been told otherwise, which is why I made those representations to the court.”

I believe her, and I tell her so. I also tell her that I am here to negotiate with the U.S. government, and I have chosen her as their representative.

“I have no standing to represent anyone,” she says.

“I think you’ll have all the standing you’ll need,” I say. “All I ask is that you convey my terms to the appropriate officials and tell them they have twenty-four hours to respond.”

She smiles; she doesn’t yet know what my terms are, but she thinks she’s going to like them. “Fair enough,” she says.

“Good. Here’s what I want. Richard Evans must be released from jail immediately; I don’t care how it’s done. I want him out and the conviction wiped from his record. Then I want ten million dollars to help compensate him for the loss of five years of his life, to say nothing of the pain and suffering he has had to endure. I believe he can get more in the lawsuit I will otherwise file.”

“What are you offering in return?” she asks.

“Partial confidentiality.”

“What does that mean?”

“Mr. Evans is free to discuss everything with the press, with the following exceptions. He will not reveal that the government was aware of his innocence, that it misrepresented to the court, or that it tried to wiretap and otherwise sabotage his legal team. He also will not reveal the terms of the settlement.”

“Ten million dollars is something of a reach, don’t you think?” she asks.

“Not compared to what the government will recover when they start digging into Hamadi and everyone else. Either way, it’s not negotiable. If my offer isn’t accepted by close of business tomorrow, we file suit the next morning and start booking talk show appearances immediately. And with what I know about Afghanistan and the government’s behavior in this case, ten million dollars to shut me up is a bargain.”

She agrees to convey my offer, and I get the feeling she’s relishing doing so. I also wouldn’t be surprised if she testified for our side, should this ever go to trial.

I head home for a planned meeting with Pete Stanton. Pete is feeling pretty good right now; the arrests of Stacy Harriman and Anthony Banks are by far the biggest of his career. He’s been all over the media talking about it, including an interview on the Today Show this morning. He has had to say repeatedly that he can’t reveal details of the investigation, so basically all he does is smile a lot.

If Pete is grateful to me for putting him in this position, he’s hiding it well. I tell him that there are a few things I still can’t figure out, and ask if he can fill me in on where the investigation stands.

“I should tell you, a private citizen, about confidential police work?” he asks. “Why would I do that?”

“Let me take a shot at a reason,” I say. “How about so you’re not forced to buy your own beer from now on at Charlie’s?”

“On the other hand, we need more openness between law enforcement and the private citizenry,” he says.

“Since it obviously wasn’t Stacy, whose body washed up on shore?” I ask.

“Still no ID on that. We’re checking missing-persons records for that period. Whoever it was, they took her hair and put it on the hairbrush at Richard’s house and then put some of her blood on the boat, so it would seem to match Stacy’s DNA.”

“They would have had to find someone with the same body type, hair color…”

He shakes his head sadly. “Good reason to get murdered, you know?”

“Any luck finding Gary Winston?” I ask.

“Not yet… Hopefully Stacy will give him up. But he’ll be found-surgeons aren’t the type to hide in the wilderness eating leaves and shit. They like to come out and have a good meal once in a while.”

As far as I can tell, and Pete agrees, Winston is the last missing member of the conspiracy. Had I realized earlier that Winston was a plastic surgeon, stationed in Afghanistan to deal with serious battle wounds, I might have caught on to the scam earlier.

I hadn’t recognized Durelle or Carelli from their pictures and just assumed that it was because they were taken years ago. In fact, Winston had altered their faces enough to be consistent with new identities, as he had done with Stacy.

Karen was targeted out of fear that because of her closeness to Stacy, she might see through it and recognize her. The night before she was shot, Franklin heard me agreeing to let her accompany me to Short Hills to see Hamadi. Their fear was that she might see Stacy then or shortly thereafter.

Stacy had obviously only pretended to be a witness for the government, to deflect suspicion from her. She was actually a key conspirator but allowed herself to be put into WITSEC, knowing full well she would not remain there.

“When is your client getting out of jail?” Pete asks.

“I’m working on it.”

“Let me see if I understand this,” he says. “You lose a murder case in which there was no murder, and you can’t spring your client even though the victim turned up?”

“These things are complicated.”

Pete nods. “I know one thing for sure. Clarence Darrow, you ain’t.”

* * * * *

“CHECK YOUR E-MAIL.”

That is the short and to-the-point message from Alice Massengale that is on my answering machine when I return from my morning walk with Tara and Reggie. Tara is clearly loving having Reggie back, so much so that I’m thinking maybe I should get another dog when he leaves. I’ll have to discuss it with her.

I turn on my computer, and I see an e-mail from Massengale, which seems to contain a document to be downloaded. After ten minutes of trying, I am forced to admit that downloading is simply not something at which I have the required expertise.

I am about to call Sam Willis, when the doorbell rings. It is Karen, coming over to find out in person if we’ve made any progress in getting Richard out of jail. The situation is even more frustrating to her than to me.

“Do you know how to download something from an e-mail?” I ask.

“You don’t?” is her incredulous response.

“Of course I do. It’s just that you said you wanted to help out on Richard’s case, and-”

“Where is it?”

I take her over to the computer, and she sits down. She makes a few clicks with the mouse, and within thirty seconds she is jumping up and down and screaming with pure joy.

My instincts tell me this is good news, but I sit down and look at the screen to find out just how good. The document Massengale sent is a letter, for me to sign, essentially agreeing on behalf of the government to the terms as I presented them to her.

Richard is going to be free, and Richard is going to be rich.

Karen prints out the agreement, and I sign it. She offers to hand-deliver it to Massengale’s office so I can focus on the mechanics of getting Richard out of jail.

I place a call to Hawpe’s office and am pleased to learn that the process has already begun. Massengale had assumed I would find the terms acceptable, since they were my terms, and had taken the initial necessary steps.

Once I’ve done all I can over the phone, I head down to the prison. It is my opinion, based on very substantial feedback over the years, that I can be even more obnoxious and annoying in person than on the phone.

Even under my relentless prodding, there is a limit to how fast the bureaucracy will move, and it’s not until three o’clock that I get to enjoy the sight of Richard Evans walking through the prison doors to freedom.

He sees me immediately and comes over. We just stare at each other for a few moments.

“It took you long enough,” I say.

He smiles. “Sorry-I was tied up.”

With that we hug. I’m not a big fan of hugs, and man hugs are my least favorite, but this one is okay.

“Come on,” I say. “There’s somebody at my house who wants to see you.”

When we pull up to my house, Karen, Reggie, and Tara are on the porch waiting for us. Richard has the door open even before I bring the car to a full stop, and he heads for the porch. He doesn’t quite get there, because Reggie comes bounding down the steps and leaps on him.

Within moments Richard and Reggie are on the ground, with Richard on his knees, hugging and petting him. Reggie’s tail is wagging a mile a minute, and he seems to be doing his best to lick the skin off Richard’s face.

“You saved me, buddy. You saved me.” Richard says it over and over, punctuated by laughs. Reggie doesn’t comment, so I assume he agrees and is being modest. And Reggie did save Richard’s life, as certainly as Lassie ever saved anyone.

“Is this great, or what?” says Karen, constantly dabbing at her eyes. She comes over to hug Richard, but Reggie doesn’t seem to be in the mood to share.

Yes, it’s definitely great.

Tara stands off to the side, watching the scene, clearly bewildered that she is not receiving any of this affection. She comes over to me, and I pick up the slack and pet her, but she knows she’s getting the short end of the stick.

We go into the house, and I fill Richard in on what I have learned from Pete or figured out on my own.

“Do you have any idea where Reggie was all these years?” he asks.

I nod. “With Stacy. She drugged you on the boat, and when you were unconscious, she left on another boat with one of her partners. She took Reggie with her.”

“Why?”

I shrug. “I think she genuinely loved him. It’s why she had him taken from my house.”

“So how did he get away from her?”

“There was a storm last March, and a tree fell and badly damaged the house she was living in. My guess is that Reggie was home alone and that he took off when that happened.”

“Where did he go?” Richard asks.

“Looking for you. The guy who found him, Warren Shaheen, lived only about six blocks from your old house.”

This causes Richard to hug Reggie once again and call him an “amazing dog.” He’s got that right.

“So Stacy was with me because of my job? So they could work their customs scam?”

“I can’t say that for sure, Richard.” My statement is true; I can’t say it for sure, but I believe he is right. And I believe she found a more willing conspirator in Franklin, which set this whole thing in motion.

“What are you going to do now?” I ask.

“Well, I have to find a place to live, I have to earn a living, and I have to pay your fee. Because if anyone has earned his money, it’s you.”

I look over at Karen and smile. “You didn’t tell him?” she asks.

I have not told Richard about the monetary settlement. “No, I thought I’d leave that pleasure to you.”

“What are you two talking about?” Richard asks.

“Let’s put it this way,” says Karen as she points to Reggie and Tara. “These guys are going to be sleeping in Gucci dog beds.”

About the Author

DAVID ROSENFELT was the marketing president for Tri-Star Pictures before becoming a writer of novels and screenplays. His debut novel, Open and Shut, won Edgar^® and Shamus award nominations. First Degree, his second novel, was a Publishers Weekly selection for one of the top mysteries of the year, and Bury the Lead was chosen as a Today Show Book Club pick. He and his wife established the Tara Foundation, which has rescued over four thousand dogs, mostly golden retrievers. For more information about the author, you can visit his Web site at www.davidrosenfelt.com.

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* * * * *

“ANDY CARPENTER, LAWYER to the Dogs.”

That was the USA Today headline on a piece that ran about me a couple of months ago. It was a favorable story overall, but the headline was obviously designed to make a humorous comparison between me and those celebrity attorneys who are often referred to as “lawyers to the stars.”

While you would naturally think it would have exposed me to ridicule from my colleagues in the legal profession and my friends, it really hasn’t. This is because I don’t hang out with colleagues in the legal profession, and my friends already have plenty of other reasons to ridicule me.

Actually, referring to me this way makes perfect sense. Last year I went to court to defend a golden retriever who had been scheduled to die at the hands of the animal control system here in Paterson, New Jersey. I saved his life, and the media ate it up with a spoon. Then I learned that the dog was a witness to a murder five years prior, and I successfully defended his owner, the man who had been wrongly convicted and imprisoned for that murder.

Three months ago I cemented my reputation as a dog lunatic by representing all the dogs in the Passaic County Animal Shelter in a class action suit. I correctly claimed that my clients were being treated inhumanely, a legally difficult posture since the opposition took the position that a key part of “humane” is “human,” and my clients fell a little short in that area.

With the media covering it as if it were the trial of the century, we won, and living conditions in the shelters have been improved dramatically. I’m in a good position to confirm this, because my former client Willie Miller and I run a dog-rescue operation called the Tara Foundation, named after my own golden retriever. We are in the shelters frequently to rescue dogs to place in homes, and if we see any slippage back to the old policies, we’re not exactly shy about pointing it out.

Since that stirring court victory, I’ve been on a three-month vacation from work. I find that my vacations are getting longer and longer, almost to the point that vacationing is my status quo, from which I take infrequent “work breaks.” Two things enable me to do this: my mostly inherited wealth, and my laziness.

Unfortunately, my extended siesta is about to come to an unwelcome conclusion. I’ve been summoned to the courthouse by Judge Henry Henderson, nicknamed “Hatchet” by lawyers who have practiced in his court. It’s not exactly a term of endearment.

Hatchet’s not inviting me to make a social call, and it’s unlikely we’ll be sipping tea. He doesn’t like me and finds me rather annoying, which doesn’t make him particularly unique. The problem is that he’s in a position to do something about it.

Hatchet has been assigned to a murder case that has dominated the local media. Walter Timmerman, a man who could accurately be referred to as a semi-titan in the pharmaceutical industry, was murdered three weeks ago. It was not your everyday case of “semi-titan-murdering”; he wasn’t killed on the golf course at the country club, or by an intruder breaking into his mansion. Timmerman was killed at night in the most run-down area of downtown Paterson, a neighborhood filled with hookers and drug dealers, not caddies or butlers.

Within twenty-four hours, police arrested a twenty-two-year-old Hispanic man for the crime. He was in possession of Timmerman’s wallet the day after the murder. The police are operating on the safe assumption that Timmerman did not give the wallet to this young man for safekeeping, knowing he was soon to be murdered.

This is where I am unfortunately going to enter the picture. The accused cannot afford an attorney, so the court will appoint one for him. I have not handled pro bono work in years, but I’m on the list, and Hatchet is obviously going to stick me with this case.

I arrive at the courthouse at eight thirty, which is when Hatchet has instructed me to be in his chambers. The arraignment is at nine, and since I haven’t even met my client-to-be, I’ll have to ask for a postponement. I’ll try to get it postponed for fifty years, but I’ll probably have to settle for a few days.

I’m surprised when I arrive to see Billy “Bulldog” Cameron, the attorney who runs the Public Defender’s Office in Passaic County. I’ve never had a conversation of more than three sentences with Billy in which he hasn’t mentioned that he’s overworked and underfunded. Since both those things are true, and since I’m personally underworked and overfunded, I usually nod sympathetically.

This time I don’t have time to nod, because I’m in danger of being late for my meeting with Hatchet. Lawyers who arrive late to Hatchet’s chambers are often never heard of or seen again, except for occasional body parts that wash up on shore. I also don’t get to ask Billy what he’s doing here. If I’m going to get stuck with this client, then he’s off the hook, because I’m on it.

I hate being on hooks.

* * * * *

“YOU’RE LATE,” SAYS Hatchet, which is technically true by thirty-five seconds.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor. There was an accident on Market Street, and-”

He interrupts. “You are under the impression that I want to hear a story about your morning drive?”

“Probably not.”

“For the purpose of this meeting, I will do the talking, and you will do the listening, with very few exceptions.”

I start to say Yes, sir, but don’t, because I don’t know if that is one of the allowable exceptions. Instead I just listen.

“I have an assignment for you, one that you are uniquely qualified to handle.”

I nod, because if I cringe it will piss him off.

“Are you at all familiar with the case before me, the Timmerman murder?”

“Only what I’ve read in the paper and seen on television.” I wish I had more of a connection to the case, like if I were a cousin of the victim, or if I were one of the suspects in the case. It would disqualify me from being involved. Unfortunately, I checked my family tree, and there’s not a Timmerman to be found.

“It would seem to be a straightforward murder case, if such a thing existed,” he says and then chuckles, so I assume that what he said passes in Hatchet-land for a joke. “But the victim was a prominent man of great wealth.”

I nod again. It’s sort of nice being in a conversation in which I have no responsibilities.

“I’m told that you haven’t taken on any pro bono work in over two years.”

Another nod from me.

“I assume you’re ready and willing to fulfill your civic responsibility now?” he asks. “You may speak.”

I have to clear my throat from lack of use before responding. “Actually, Your Honor, my schedule is such that a murder case wouldn’t really-”

He interrupts again. “Who said anything about you participating in a murder case?”

“Well, I thought-”

“A lawyer thinking. Now, that’s a novel concept. You are not being assigned to represent the accused. The Public Defender’s Office is handling that.”

Relief and confusion are fighting for a dominant position in my mind, and I’m actually surprised that confusion is winning. “Then why am I here?”

“I’ve been asked to handle a related matter that is technically before Judge Parker in the probate court. He has taken ill, and I said I would do it because of my unfortunate familiarity with you. Are you aware that the victim was very much involved with show dogs?”

“No,” I say. While I rescue dogs, I have little or no knowledge of dog shows or breeders.

“Well, he was, and he had a seven-month-old, apparently a descendant of a champion, that his widow and son are fighting over. The animal was not included in the will.”

This may not be so bad. “So because of my experience with dogs, you want me to help adjudicate it?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Glad to help, Your Honor. Civic responsibility is my middle name.”

“I’ll remember to include it on the Christmas card. I assume you have a satisfactory place to keep your client?”

“My client?”

He nods. “The dog. You will retain possession of him until the issue is resolved.”

“I’m representing a dog in a custody fight? Is that what you’re asking me to do?”

“I wouldn’t categorize it as ‘asking,’ ” he says.

“I already have a dog, Your Honor.”

“And now you have two.”

“Can you keep a secret? A really big one?”

DON’T TELL A SOUL

A Novel

by

DAVID ROSENFELT

Tim Wallace’s wife died in a boating accident several months ago. On New Year’s Eve, his two best friends finally convince him to go out for the first time since Maggie’s death-and that’s when Tim’s life goes from bad to worse. A drunken man confesses to a months-old murder, says “Now it’s your problem,” and walks away.

When the man turns out to have been telling the truth, Tim’s life is put under the microscope by the cops, and they’re not giving up. But neither is Tim. He’s determined to uncover the truth-even if it kills him.

“This fast-paced and brightly written tale spins along…. Don’t Tell a Soul is a humdinger.”

– St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Stellar… Rosenfelt keeps the plot hopping and popping as he reveals a complex frame-up of major proportions… terrifying and enlightening.”

– Publishers Weekly (starred)