Sudden Death

“Who shall I say is here?” the clerk asks.

I’m about to tell her a made-up name when the man from the office approaches, extends his hand, and says, “Andy Carpenter?”

This is baffling. How could he know who I am? Unless it’s from all those stupid legal cable shows I do. “Have we met?” I ask.

He smiles. “No. Laurie told me you’d be dropping by.”

So I’ve gone through this whole clandestine operation when Laurie knew all along that I’d go snooping around Findlay. Laurie is smarter than I am; the counter I’m leaning on is smarter than I am. “Well,” I say, trying not to appear pathetic, “I was staying in town, and I figured any old friend of Laurie’s is a friend of mine.”

“Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” he says, and we go off to do just that.

Within fifteen minutes of our sitting at a table in the local diner, probably twenty people come over and say hello to Sandy. He has a pleasant word and a smile for each of them; it’s apparent that this is a nice guy. It’s going to be hard to reconcile that with the fact that I hate him, but I think I can pull it off. Besides, I still have an ace up my sleeve, the knowledge from Sam that Sandy is married, though Laurie thinks he isn’t.

We’re chitchatting away about a variety of subjects when I smoothly bring up the subject. “Are you married?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Not anymore. My wife passed away about two years ago. We were only married a year.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, but I should add, “that I’m such an idiot.” Sam obviously saw a computer record of the marriage but never thought to check for a death certificate.

He nods. “Thanks. It happened all of a sudden… brain aneurysm. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“Sure does.”

Just when I’m positive I couldn’t feel stupider, a woman comes over and gives Sandy a kiss on the cheek. “You must be Laurie’s friend Andy,” she says, holding out her hand. “She told us all about you when she was here.”

Sandy introduces the woman as Jenny, his fiancée. I smile through the pain; I can almost hear Laurie laughing at me from back in Paterson. It flashes through my mind that maybe I shouldn’t go back home at all, that maybe I can avoid humiliation by living the rest of my life in Europe or Asia or Pluto.

But for now I just say my goodbyes, pick up Adam, and head for Milwaukee. I can decide where I’m going when I get to the airport.

I opt for going home, and on the plane I have some time to reflect on what I’ve seen in Findlay. I’m sure it has its warts and problems like any other town, but it seems to be a nice place to live, in the classic “Americana” sense. I understand how Laurie must feel about it and how it must have felt to be ripped away from it.

If those feelings are anything like mine for Paterson, I’m going to be sleeping alone pretty soon. Paterson is a part of me and always will be. I even like its idiosyncrasies, such as the fact that all its famous citizens are number two in what they did. Louis Sabin, a Paterson scientist, invented the oral polio vaccine. It would have been a bigger deal had not Jonas Salk come first. Larry Doby of Paterson was the second black baseball player, three months after Jackie Robinson. Even Lou Costello, perhaps the most famous person from Paterson, drew second billing behind Bud Abbott.

Laurie is at the airport to pick me up when our plane lands. My big-picture plan is to apologize and ask her forgiveness for my surreptitious meddling; it’s the nuances of the apology plan that I haven’t figured out yet. For instance, I haven’t decided whether to include pleading, moaning, whimpering, sniveling, and drooling in the process. I’ll have to see how things go and take it from there, but I’m certainly not planning to let things like dignity and self-respect get in the way.

Adam says his goodbyes, and Laurie and I go to her car. Much to my surprise, she starts to bring me up-to-date on the investigation.

“We’ve got good news and bad news,” she says. “Which would you like first?”

“The bad news.”

“I found a witness who heard Kenny and Preston arguing the night of the murder,” she says.

“Has Dylan gotten to him yet?”

She nods. “He has now. The guy was afraid to come forward. Didn’t want to become Kato Kaelin when the shit hit the fan.” She’s referring to a key witness in the O. J. Simpson case, who became the butt of months’ worth of late night jokes on television.

“The good news better be really good,” I say.

“I think it is. The witness heard the argument when Kenny was dropping Preston off at his house. He saw Preston get out of the car and Kenny’s car pull away.”

She’s right; this is very good news. For Kenny to have committed the murder later that night, he would have had to come back. If he was going to do that, why leave in the first place? It doesn’t exonerate him by any means, but it makes it more reasonable to argue that someone else entered the picture that night.

“Did he say what they were arguing about?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Not really… he just heard bits and pieces. And he didn’t actually see Kenny, but he ID’d the car. I wrote a full report; there’s a copy on your desk, and I have one with me.”

This is such intriguing information that for a moment I forget the Findlay disaster. I’m prepared to bring it up when Laurie starts talking about this great walk and run she went on with Tara today. Is it possible she’s letting me off the hook?

We get home without any mention of the dreaded F-word, which is how I’ve come to think of Findlay. Tara meets me at the door, tail wagging furiously and head burrowed into me to receive my petting. Her excitement at seeing me is something I never take for granted; it’s a gift to be loved this much.

I take Tara for a walk and go back to the house. Laurie is in the bedroom, looking much as she did when I left, except for the fact that she’s not wearing any clothes. It’s a comfortable look, so I try it myself. I like it, so we try it together. It works really well.

After our lovemaking my mouth decides to once again blurt something out without first having discussed it with my brain. “I was in Findlay,” I say. “I met Sandy Walsh.”

She nods, though she seems slightly groggy and ready for sleep. “I know. He called me. He liked you a lot.”

“And I liked him. But I went there behind your back to check up on him… and on you. I was looking for ammunition to use to keep you here.”

“Mmmm. I know. Can we talk about this in the morning?”

I’m anxious and nervous about this subject, and it’s barely keeping her awake? “Laurie, I’m sorry I did it. It was devious and petty, and you deserve better.”

“It’s okay, Andy. I’m not angry with you. I appreciate what you did.”

“Excuse me? Earth to Laurie, Earth to Laurie, come in please, come in please. Why aren’t you pissed at me?”

She gets up on one elbow, apparently having given up for now on the possibility of imminent sleep. “Andy, you did what you did because you love me, because you don’t want to lose me. You also might be concerned that I could make a decision I’d regret. So what if you didn’t tell me about it in advance? What you did wasn’t terrible, nobody got hurt. All in all, it makes me feel good that you did it.”

“Oh,” I say. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

A few minutes later my mouth opens up again. “Laurie, I’m not sure I can stand it if you leave.”

She’s asleep. She can’t hear me.

* * * * *

TODAY’S A ROUGH day for Kenny Schilling. Not that there’s an easy day for him in County Jail, awaiting a trial that will determine if he’ll ever have another day of freedom. But today is the day of the Giants’ first exhibition game, and it’s a further, agonizing reminder to Kenny that he lives in a seven-by-ten-foot world, with no road trips.

My arrival today is a welcome diversion for Kenny from the boring hours with nothing to do but lie around and worry, but he no longer has that look of hopeful expectation when he sees me. It’s gotten through to him that there are not going to be any miracle finishes here, no Hail Mary passes. If we’re going to prevail, it will be at trial, and the road is straight uphill.

I ask Kenny about the death of Matt Lane, and his initial reaction seems to be surprise rather than concern. He tells pretty much the same story that Calvin told, though of course he claims to have had nothing to do with the shooting. In fact, he says, no one has ever even hinted at the suggestion.

“They’re not saying I had anything to do with Matt getting shot, are they?” he asks, the worry growing.

I shake my head. “The prosecution doesn’t even know about it yet, but they will. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me, it won’t be a problem.”

“I’m not holding back anything.”

“Good. Then tell me about your argument with Troy Preston when you dropped him at his house.”

This time the flash of concern is immediate and transparent. He tries to cover it, but as an actor he’s a very good football player. “I don’t remember no argument,” he says.

I decide to take the tough, direct approach, not my specialty. “Yes, you do.”

“Come on, man, we were just talking. It was probably about a girl… okay? No big deal.”

“Who was she?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know… I’m not even sure it was about a girl. We’d argue all the time… it could have been about football. I’m tellin’ you, it didn’t mean nothing.”

I can’t shake him, and he’s probably telling the truth, so I let it drop for now. If Dylan wants to, he can use his resources to run it down, then provide it for me in discovery.

As I’m leaving the jail, I run into Bobby Pollard, his wife, Teri, and their son, Jason. Bobby’s been coming to see Kenny on a regular basis, and since the prison has not exactly been designed with the handicapped in mind, Teri comes to help him navigate the place in his wheelchair.

“I was going to call you, but I figured I shouldn’t,” says Bobby.

“What about?”

“I don’t know… just to see how things were going. To see if I could help in any way. And I heard you went up to Wisconsin to see Matt’s father.”

His knowledge of this surprises me. “How did you hear that?”

“Old Calvin keeps in touch with some of the guys. You know, he tells one person, they tell another…”

Teri smiles and winks at me. “It’s the old football players’ network. They spread the news faster than CNN.”

“Did you know Matt?” I ask.

Bobby nods. “I sure did. And I was there that day. I was with his parents when they got the news. It was the worst day of my life.” He points to his useless legs. “Worse than the day this happened.”

I ask Bobby a bunch of questions about the day Matt was killed but get basically the same story. It must have been a hunting accident… nobody has any idea who did it… Kenny could never have done such a thing. I have no reason to believe otherwise, but it’s starting to nag at me a little.

I also ask Bobby if he’d be willing to testify on Kenny’s behalf, mostly as a character witness, and he once again vows he’ll do whatever he can to help.

Before I leave, Teri motions me to the side and talks softly, so that Jason can’t hear. “Jason wanted to see his ‘Uncle Kenny.’ Do you think there’s anything wrong with his being here?”

I shrug. “I wouldn’t think so, if you answer his questions honestly about what’s going on. But I’m not the best guy to ask about how to treat a seven-year-old. I can barely take care of myself.”

She laughs, and they go inside. I head back to the office for a meeting with Kevin, Laurie, and Adam. The trial date is starting to bear down on us, and we are way behind. Of course, I always feel we are way behind, and this time is no worse than most. What we’re really lacking is evidence to present in our client’s favor, which is generally a good thing to have.

We discuss whether to hire a jury consultant, and even though Kevin is in favor of it, I decide not to. I find that I always spend a lot of time with them and then just go ahead and follow my own instincts anyway.

Another decision to be made is whether to challenge the blood evidence. The Simpson trial and verdict have had an unfortunate effect, besides the fact that a double murderer was set free. It’s also made police far more diligent and careful in their handling of evidence, especially blood evidence. Kevin has gone over the collection done in this case, and there are no grounds on which to convince a jury that the lab reports are not legitimate.

On the investigative front we’ve made gradual progress, but with few favorable results. All that is really left to do now is continue to follow up and talk to friends of Kenny’s and Preston’s, especially those people who knew them both. The pro football community is a large and close one, and that list is very long. The Giants, because of all the research they did on Kenny before the draft, have provided much of it, and it goes back to his early high school days. Pro football teams don’t like to make mistakes with first-round draft picks.

Kevin reports that he has attempted to reach at least seventy-five people so far and has been successful in talking to perhaps fifty. Almost all are cooperative. Five are in prison, three have left the country, and another three have died, including Matt Lane.

The one positive development is that Cesar Quintana has not yet killed me. Moreno has kept his end of the bargain, and even Laurie agrees that Marcus can be assigned other tasks than surreptitious bodyguard for me. Once the trial begins and we start to throw Quintana’s name around some more, that may change. I still don’t know what he thinks Kenny has of his, but he seems to have backed off for now.

Adam has proven to be surprisingly helpful and insightful in these conversations, and I suggest that Kevin let him take over some of the burden in checking out the list of friends. After all, we’re paying Adam a dollar; we might as well get our money’s worth.

Laurie has put off her decision until after the trial, when we both can have more time to think clearly. I view this as a positive sign: She loves this work and loves working with me, and it’s a priority for her. I also view this as a negative sign: She’s planning to leave and doesn’t want to crush me during such a crucial trial.

Stable I’m not.

* * * * *

ARRIVING AT THE courthouse for jury selection day, it doesn’t feel only like a football player is on trial. It feels like a football game is about to take place. Every parking lot within a mile is overflowing, and there’s actually a tailgating environment, with some people even bringing picnic lunches. There’s also a tangible excitement in the air, which I can only liken to a play-off game at Giants Stadium.

I’m good at jury selection; it’s one of my strengths. I’m not sure why, except it is a commonsense process, and that’s how I treat it. But as soon as we get started, it’s quite clear that this is unlike any other jury selection I’ve ever been a part of.

Ordinarily, potential jurors come in armed to the teeth with excuses not to serve. Few people have the time or the inclination to tie themselves down to a lengthy trial, in the process putting their own lives on hold. They all seem to have reasons why their business or their sick relative or their very future cannot survive the ordeal.

Not this time. Jury service in the trial of New Jersey v. Kenneth Schilling is seen as a plum assignment, guaranteeing a shot on Regis and Kelly, if not a lucrative book deal. This is the first trial-of-the-century trial, and everybody wants a piece of it.

Everybody but me. I’m always a pessimist at the start of a trial, but this time it’s justified. We have done little to counter the physical evidence and could never do anything to counter the image that America has of Kenny holed up in his house with a gun, fending off the police. Things can change within a trial-there is an inevitable ebb and flow-but from my vantage point right now it looks like there will be a lot more ebbing than flowing.

The media have been speculating on whether I am going to play “the race card” and that if I’m going to do so, it will most likely be evident in jury selection. I’m not above playing any cards that are dealt to me, but I honestly have no idea what the race card is. Kenny Schilling and his alleged victim are both African-Americans, so if there is an advantage to be gained, I’m not a good enough card player to pick up on it.

Kevin and I meet briefly with Kenny in an anteroom before the court session begins, and I can tell that he is pumped. The endless waiting is over, and he thinks we can go on the offensive. I have to spend some time educating him on what constitutes jury selection and how boring it can be.

The courtroom is a place where the truth is revered, so it’s a bad sign that at least ninety percent of the prospective jurors here today are full of shit. Almost without exception they claim to have an open mind, to have no preconceived notions about the case. In fact, most of them claim to have had little exposure to it, which means they have been spending the last three months in a coma.

Judge Harrison seems even more cynical about the process than I am. He exercises his right to question the jurors along with the lawyers, and at times he is openly incredulous at their claims of purity of thought and knowledge.

I infuriate Dylan by asking many of the prospective jurors if anyone they know or any members of their family have had any drug problems, or drug-related encounters with the police. The press in the gallery buzzes at the mere mention, knowing that I’m going to be using Quintana as a possible other suspect. Dylan wants drugs to enter this case only in that Preston and Kenny were both under the influence when Preston was killed.

The juror wannabes fall into two categories: those who sit on the stand and stare at Kenny and those who deliberately avoid staring, stealing quick glances whenever they think they can do so without being noticed. Kenny was a popular player before, but he has now achieved true stardom through this case. Somehow these jurors, though professing to be open-minded and barely aware of the facts of the case, seem to understand that.

Dylan seems less annoyed by the dishonesty running rampant in the courtroom than I am, but we both use up most of our challenges. We finally empanel a jury that I can live with, though am not thrilled by. There are eight males, of which three are African-American and one Hispanic. The four females are three whites and one African-American. The chosen group seems to be reasonably intelligent and likely to at least listen to our case, should we happen to find one along the way.

Judge Harrison asks Dylan and me if we want to sequester the jury. We both say that we do not, which is pretty much what we have to say. Neither of us wants to be responsible for imprisoning these people in a motel for weeks; they might take it out on us when it’s time to reach a verdict. Harrison agrees, and the jury will not be sequestered, though he lectures them sternly on the need to avoid all media coverage of the case. Yeah, right.

During a trial I make it a practice to have our team meet every night to prepare for the next day’s witnesses, as well as go over everything, so as not to let anything slip between the cracks. Tonight will be the first of these regular meetings, with the main purpose being to prepare for opening statements.

The regular team for the duration of the trial will consist of Laurie, Kevin, Adam, and myself. Marcus will come when he has something specific to contribute, but these are basically strategy sessions, and strategy is not Marcus’s strong point.

We kick around the limited options open to us in our opening statement, until it gets too depressing. I like to speak more or less off the cuff so as to sound natural and more sincere. The difficulty I sometimes have is when I have a lot of points to make, and want to make sure I don’t forget anything. That is not the case here; I have disturbingly few points to make.

The meeting ends, and Kevin is about to leave when Pete Stanton shows up. Pete lives more than a half hour out of town, and I wouldn’t expect him to be working this late unless something significant had happened. I also wouldn’t expect him to drop by without calling; he knows as well as anyone the intensity with which we work during a trial.

Pete greets everyone, but I can tell by the look on his face that something is wrong. He asks, “What’s the word for when you make a contract with someone and then they die, so the deal can no longer be enforced?”

Kevin answers, “The contract is voided.”

Pete nods and speaks to me. “Then you just got voided. Paul Moreno took a bullet in the head coming out of the Claremont tonight. Pronounced dead at the scene.”

We throw questions at Pete and learn that in recent weeks the situation has grown increasingly tense between Moreno and Quintana on the one side and Dominic Petrone on the other. More and more Petrone has felt his operations being challenged by the Mexican drug ring, and it had apparently become financially intolerable, as well as personally and professionally embarrassing.

Local and federal authorities alike were expecting a war to break out, though the expectation was that it would not be full-scale, but rather a couple of messages sent in the form of killings. No one believed that Petrone would start it by taking out Moreno.

Pete considers it a brilliant stroke by Petrone. Moreno was the absolute brains of his operation, and though Quintana will no doubt respond with violence, Pete doesn’t consider him smart enough to prevail in a war.

Laurie disagrees. In Moreno she believes that Petrone had an adversary smart enough to make a deal when one was called for, a deal that could leave both sides alive and in profit. No deal is possible with Quintana, she feels, and on that Pete agrees.

What hasn’t yet been mentioned is the effect this will have on me. My deal with Moreno to get Quintana to keep away from me is no longer operative. “Anybody want to take a stab at where that leaves my general life expectancy?” I ask.

“I certainly wouldn’t make any long-term plans,” Pete says.

Laurie tries some optimism. “I think Quintana will have his sights set on Petrone and his people. And that should certainly be enough to keep his hands full.”

“But I represent an easier target. He could take me out for practice.”

“I’ve got a black-and-white outside with two patrolmen,” Pete says. “They’ll keep an eye out tonight, but I think that tomorrow you should get Marcus back watching your ass.”

I look out the window, and sure enough, Pete has called for a patrol car to protect me. It’s a sign that he’s worried for my safety, or maybe he’s worried that he’ll have to find new financing for next year’s birthday bash.

The timing of this is particularly terrible. Quintana was pissed off that I brought his name into the Kenny Schilling furor, and my entire strategy in the trial that starts tomorrow is to bring Quintana’s name into the Kenny Schilling furor. Since rational is not one of the many adjectives I’ve heard used to describe Quintana, it could provoke a deadly reaction. Or if he is rational, he could well decide it’s a hell of a lot easier to show how macho he is by taking on me rather than Dominic Petrone.

“Maybe I’m just being selfish,” I say, “not thinking about my client.”

“How’s that?” asks Kevin.

“Look at the irony here. We’re trying to convince the jury that Quintana is a killer. If he kills me, or even tries to, it makes our case.” It’s a poor attempt at lightening the mood, yet it actually contains a grain of truth.

“I’d better call Marcus,” Laurie says, and I don’t try to stop her.

The meeting finally breaks up, and though this is Tuesday, not one of the nights that Laurie and I stay together, she says that she’d like to. I can’t tell whether she wants to be with me or wants to watch out for me in Marcus’s absence. I don’t dwell on it for more than a few seconds. Laurie wants to sleep with me, and whatever the reason, passion or protection, it’s more than fine with me.

* * * * *

DYLAN HAS A surprise waiting for me when Judge Harrison asks if the lawyers have anything to bring up before he calls the jury in. He introduces a motion asking that the defense be prohibited from bringing irrelevant matters, like the drug underworld, into the case.

“If there is evidence that these people killed Troy Preston,” says Dylan, “then by all means it should come in. However, mere evidence that they simply knew Troy Preston has no place in this trial.”

Harrison turns to me. “Mr. Carpenter?”

“Your Honor, the motion is without merit, and would be so even if it weren’t totally untimely. The prosecution has known for weeks of our intention in this area, yet they chose to wait until opening statements to contest it.”

Dylan responds, “Your Honor, we would submit that the murder last night of Mr. Paul Moreno, which was widely reported this morning, makes this motion more pressing. The potential exists that it can turn this trial into a media circus, without having any real relevance.”

“How about if you rely on me not to turn this trial into a circus?” Harrison responds dryly.

Dylan immediately goes into damage control mode. “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I was referring to the atmosphere outside of court. I worry about the influence on the jurors.”

Harrison turns to me. “Your Honor,” I say, “the prosecution position is ludicrous on its face. As I understand it, they have asked the court that we not be allowed to present evidence showing that the victim associated with murderers. They choose to make that request the very morning after those same people are involved in another murder. Speaking for myself, the mind boggles.”

Harrison rules promptly, as is his style. He refuses to prohibit our pointing toward Preston’s associates in our defense, though he will not let us go too far afield. Dylan is annoyed; he believed he had a chance to undercut our defense before we even began. Now he has to collect his thoughts and give his opening statement.

He begins by thanking the jurors for their service, praising their sacrifice and sense of duty. He doesn’t mention their future TV appearances and book deals, just as I won’t when it’s my turn. It’s the unfortunate duty of us lawyers to kiss twelve asses and six alternate asses during every trial.

“There is a lot of attention being paid to this case,” Dylan says. “You have only to try and park near the courthouse to know that.” He smiles, and the jurors smile with him.

“But at its heart it’s a very simple case. A man was murdered, and very conclusive evidence, evidence that you will hear in detail, pointed toward this man, Kenny Schilling, as the murderer. The police went to talk to him about it, and he pulled out a gun and prevented them from entering his house. And why did he do this? Because the victim’s body was in his bedroom, stuffed in his closet.”

Dylan shakes his head, as if amazed by what he is saying. “No, this is not a complicated case, and it is certainly not a whodunit. Troy Preston, a young man, an athlete in the prime of life, was shot through the back of the head. And this man”-he points to Kenny-“Kenny Schilling, supposedly his friend, he’s the one who ‘dunit.’

“Mr. Carpenter will not be able to refute the facts of the case, no matter how hard he tries. He will realize this-he does already-and he’ll try to create diversions. He’ll tell you that the victim, who is not here to defend himself, associated with bad people, people capable of committing murder. Some of it will be true, and some not, but I’ll tell you this: None of it will matter. Even if Troy Preston hung out on a street corner every night with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, it still would not matter. Because those people, bad as they are, did not commit this particular murder, and that’s all you’re being asked to care about. And soon it will be very clear to you that Kenny Schilling committed this murder, and that’s the reason he’s the man on trial.”

Dylan goes on to detail some of the evidence in his arsenal, knowing full well he can back it all up with witnesses and lab reports. By the time he’s finished, he’s done a very good job, and it doesn’t take a mind reader to know that the jury was hanging on his every word. The entire world believes Kenny Schilling is guilty, and as members of this world, that’s the predisposition the jurors brought here with them. Dylan’s words only served to reinforce their belief, so they considered him totally credible.

Kenny looks depressed, and I lean over and whisper a reminder that he is supposed to look interested and thoughtful, but not to betray any emotional reaction at all. It’s easier said than done; the words he’s just heard from Dylan would be enough to depress anyone.

I stand up to give our opening statement with a modest goal. Right now the jury is thinking that the prosecution has all the cards, and though that may be true, I’ve at least got to show that this is not a mismatch, that we are a force to be reckoned with.

“I’m a curious guy” is how I begin. “When something happens, I like to know why. I want things to make sense, and I feel comfortable when they do.

“When the thing that happens is a crime, then the ‘why’ is called motive. It’s something the police look for in trying to figure out who is the guilty party. If there is a reason or a motive for a person to have done it, then that person becomes a suspect.”

I point toward Dylan. “Mr. Campbell didn’t mention motive; he didn’t point to a single reason why Kenny Schilling might have killed Troy Preston. Now, legally, he doesn’t have to prove what the motive was, but wouldn’t it be nice to have an idea? If someone is on trial for his very life, wouldn’t it be nice to understand why he might have done something? And wouldn’t it be nice to know if someone else really did have a motive and a history of murder?”

I walk over to Kenny and put my arm on his shoulder. “Kenny Schilling has never committed a crime, never been charged with a crime, never been arrested. Never. Not once. He has been a model citizen his entire life, achieved a high degree of success in a very competitive field, and as you will hear, has been a good friend to an astonishing number of people, including the victim. Yet Mr. Campbell would have you believe that he suddenly decided to shoot his friend and leave a trail of evidence that a five-year-old could follow.”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t make sense. We need to have an idea why.

“Well, let’s try this on for size. Troy Preston had other friends, friends with a record not quite as spotless as Kenny’s. In fact, they were more than friends; they were business associates. And that business was a dangerous one: the importation and sale of illegal drugs. And it turns out that Troy’s other friends kill people.

“Yet you will hear that almost no investigative effort was made to determine whether one of the people they killed was Troy. Kenny was an easy suspect, because he was set up to be one by the real killers. The police accepted everything they saw at face value, and here we are, still wondering why.

“Now, Kenny did a stupid thing, and if he was charged with committing a stupid act, he would have already pleaded guilty. He took out a gun, for which he has a legal permit, and fired a shot in the air. Then he prevented the police from entering his house for almost three hours, before voluntarily giving himself up.

“Yes, it was stupid, but there was a why behind it, a motive for what he did. He had just found his friend’s body, a bullet through his chest, in the back of his house. Suddenly, men were at the door trying to get in, men who within moments had guns drawn. How could he know that these men were really police? He had no idea why his friend was shot, and was afraid that the same thing was about to happen to him. He panicked, of that there is no question, but it’s easy to understand why.

“Kenny Schilling is not a man capable of murder. You will come to know him, and you’ll understand that. You’ll also hear about other people, people very capable of murder, and you’ll understand that as well.

“All I hope, all Kenny Schilling hopes, is that you keep asking why and keep insisting that things make sense. I know that you will.”

I get a slight nod from Kevin, telling me that it went reasonably well. I agree with that, but I also know that “reasonably well” is not going to cut it. Not in this case.

It’s late in the day, so Harrison tells Dylan that he can call his first witness tomorrow. It’ll give me something to look forward to.

* * * * *

A TRIAL IS AN incredibly tense, hectic process, yet for me there’s something calming and comforting about it. It’s the only time in my life when I have a rigid schedule, a self-discipline in my actions, and it’s a refreshing change.

Tonight is a perfect example. We have our team meeting at my house, after which Kevin leaves and Laurie and I settle down to dinner. We have take-out pizza, though hers is of the vegetarian variety and in my humble opinion not worthy of the name “pizza.” Luciano Pizza or Jeremiah Pizza or whoever the hell invented it would cringe at the sight of the healthy mess that comes out of Laurie’s pizza box.

Laurie turns out the overhead lights and instead lights candles she had put on the table. It makes it a little tough to see the pizza, but she seems to like it that way. We talk about the case, about what’s going on in the world, about how great Tara is, or anything else that comes to mind. Everything except the Findlay situation.

After dinner my ritual is to go into the den, turn on CNN or a baseball game as background noise, and read and reread our files on the Schilling case. In order to react in a courtroom the way I want to react, I need to know every detail of our case, every scrap of information we have.

Each night, I go over the next day’s witnesses, as well as an area of our investigation that I select more or less randomly. Tonight I’m going over Kevin’s and Adam’s reports on their work in locating and talking to Kenny’s friends and acquaintances, especially those he shared with Preston.

At ten-thirty Laurie and I go up to bed, where I continue to go through the papers. She makes a phone call, which is disconcerting, since she speaks to Lisa, a high school girlfriend from Findlay. Laurie is making real connections, or reconnections, back there, and the knowledge of it makes it a little hard for me to concentrate.

I’m trying extra hard to focus, since I have the uneasy feeling that there is something in these particular reports that is significant and that I’m missing. I’m about to discuss it with Laurie, now off the phone, when Tara starts to bark. Moments later the doorbell rings.

“Let me get it,” Laurie says, which means she’s at least a little worried that it could relate to Quintana.

I’d love to say, “Go ahead,” but I’m too macho for that, so I throw on a pair of pants and go downstairs. I get to the door just as the bell rings again, and I ask, “Who is it?”

“Marcus” is the answer from the other side of the door.

I turn on the porch light, move aside the curtain, and sure enough, there is Marcus. I open the door. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Rope,” says Marcus.

“Rope?”

“Rope.”

“What about rope?” This conversation is not progressing that well.

“He wants to know if you have any rope,” says Laurie from the top of the steps.

“No, I don’t have rope,” I say to Laurie. “Who am I, Roy Rogers?”

I turn back to Marcus. “I don’t have any rope. Why do you need some?”

Marcus just shakes his head and closes the door. I turn to Laurie once he’s gone.

“What is he doing? Should I get him some rope?”

“From where?” she asks.

“How the hell should I know? Maybe there’s a rope store open late around here.”

Marcus seems to be gone, so I go back upstairs and once again get into bed with Laurie. My sense is, I haven’t heard the last of this rope situation, and this is confirmed about five minutes later when the doorbell rings again.

Once again I trudge down the stairs. “Who is it?”

“Marcus.”

I open the door and immediately see a sight that will forever be etched in my memory. Two men, one of whom I recognize as Ugly, the guy Quintana sent to threaten me, are tied up with my garden hose. They are head-to-toe and back-to-back, but stretched out full length against each other. They look like a two-sided human bowling pin, and Marcus walks into the house carrying them over his shoulder. He comes into the room and drops them on the floor, and the thud could be heard in Hackensack. Tara sniffs around them, having absolutely no idea what is happening. Join the club.

“Laurie!” I call out. “You might want to get down here!”

She comes downstairs, surveys the bizarre scene, and takes over. “Marcus, what’s going on?”

He tells her in a series of barely decipherable grunts that they were outside, trying to break in, and he caught them. His plan now is to question them. Marcus questioning people is not a pretty sight.

“I think we should call the police,” I say.

Marcus looks at me, then calls Laurie off to the side. They whisper out of earshot of me, Ugly, and his friend. The intruders are rolling back and forth in a futile effort to untie themselves and/or get up. It would be funny if it were happening in someone else’s house.

“Come on, Andy. Let’s go upstairs,” says Laurie.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Marcus is going to question our guests.”

I start to argue, but Laurie silences me with a look, and a head motion directing me upstairs. I have confidence in her in situations like this, and none in myself, so I follow dutifully behind.

As we near the top of the steps, Marcus calls up to her. “Knives?”

“In the kitchen. Second drawer on the right,” she says.

When we get in the bedroom, Laurie closes the door. With Marcus, Ugly, and his buddy now out of range, I become a little more assertive. “What the hell is going on?”

“Marcus said we can call the police in fifteen minutes. He’ll know what he needs to know by then.”

“What is he going to do?”

She shrugs. “Be Marcus. But he said he won’t kill them, and he won’t do anything on the carpet.”

I nod. “Well, that’s comforting.”

“Andy, those guys were trying to break into this house. They might well have killed you, or even us.”

She’s got a point. “Fifteen minutes?” I ask.

She nods. “Fifteen minutes.”

Except for the agonizing times I’ve felt waiting as verdicts were about to be delivered, these are the longest fifteen minutes I’ve ever spent in my life. I strain to hear any noises coming from downstairs, but it seems, as they used to say in Westerns, to be “quiet out there, too quiet.”

At the moment the fifteen minutes are up, I pick up the phone and call 911, reporting that two men have broken into my house. I then call Pete Stanton at home, and he agrees to come over. I think he gets some kind of perverse kick out of Marcus and doesn’t want to miss out on what is going to be an entertaining evening.

Laurie and I go downstairs. I don’t know about her, but I’m cringing at what I think I am about to see. The trio is not in the living room or den, and we find them in the kitchen. Ugly and his pal are sitting with Marcus at the kitchen table, drinking diet sodas. They look unhappy but are no longer tied together with the hose and look none the worse for wear. Marcus looks impassive, which is not exactly a stunning piece of news.

Five police cars pull up less than two minutes later. The process takes only a short time; I explain that these two guys tried to break in and that my bodyguard caught them and held them here so that they could be turned over to law enforcement.

Pete Stanton arrives just as the cops and their captives are leaving, and I let him listen with Laurie and me to the mysteries of the agonizing fifteen minutes, as told by Marcus Clark.

It takes almost an hour and a half for us to understand his cryptic grunts, but basically, the pair admitted to him that they were sent by Quintana and this time were told to “kick the shit out of the lawyer.” They also revealed that it was money that Quintana believes Kenny took from Preston that night, a total of four hundred thousand dollars. The night Preston died was drug receipt payment night, but Preston was killed before he could make that payment. My two visitors were supposed to find out with certainty whether I know where that money is.

Pete points out the obvious. “Quintana’s going to keep coming at you.”

“Why can’t you arrest him once these guys tell you what they told Marcus?”

Pete shakes his head like I just don’t get it. “They won’t talk to us. We’re not allowed to be as persuasive as Marcus. They go down for breaking and entering, then maybe serve a little time, maybe not. There’s no way they rat out Quintana.”

“Which means Quintana remains a big problem,” I say.

“I could kill him,” says Marcus.

Pete jumps up as if somebody shoved a hot poker up his ass. “I’m outta here,” he says, and walks out the door. He’s a friend, but he’s also a cop. He has no love for Quintana, but he’s not going to sit and listen while somebody plots his murder.

Once Pete leaves, Laurie says, “Don’t kill him, Marcus. That’s not going to solve anything.”

I’m torn here. I’m not usually one to countenance murder-after all, I’m an officer of the court-but in this case I’d be tempted to make an exception. To say the least, if I heard that Quintana died, it wouldn’t prompt me to sadly shake my head and say, “Boy, that really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?”

“You need to protect Andy full-time,” Laurie continues.

I turn to Marcus and nod. “I want you on that wall. I need you on that wall.” Either he recognizes the line from A Few Good Men or he doesn’t; with Marcus it’s hard to tell. He grunts a couple of times and leaves.

“That is one scary guy,” I say after I’m sure that he can’t hear me.

“Just be glad he’s your scary guy,” Laurie points out.

It’s now two-thirty in the morning, so Laurie and I get back into bed. I take some time to think about the case. I find I’m starting to believe my own PR now, considering it more and more possible that Preston actually was the victim of a drug killing. The money was certainly substantial enough that people from that underworld might kill for it, and I’m certain, too, that members of Quintana’s gang would have been aware of it.

I’ve been thinking all along that it wasn’t a drug hit because Quintana, Moreno, or even Petrone wouldn’t have bothered to frame Kenny. They’ve got the people and the experience to have murdered anonymously, without real fear of it being traced back to them. Therefore, there would be no reason to frame anyone.

But what if it was one of Quintana’s men who did the killing so as to get the money? He might well have framed Kenny, not to throw the police off his trail, but rather to make sure Quintana did not catch on. Quintana’s justice would be far more swift and deadly than the police.

There is also the chance that Kenny found out about the money and went for it, but this seems far less likely. Sam has checked and found no evidence that Kenny had anything but a rosy financial picture, and he’s been paying his substantial legal bills on time.

I always want to believe that a client is innocent, but there’s believing and really believing. For the first time, I’m starting to really believe, and it’s a nice feeling. It doesn’t quite make up for my knowledge that a murderous maniac in command of an entire gang of other murderous maniacs is trying to kill me, but it’s a nice feeling.

* * * * *

DYLAN’S FIRST witness is Patrolman Jared Clayton, the officer that found Kenny’s abandoned car. I would have expected Dylan to build his case more methodically, to perhaps put on team officials of the Jets to talk about Preston not showing up that day and how uncharacteristic that was. As I reflect on it, I realize that Dylan’s strategy is a good one: He doesn’t want to give me a chance to cross-examine based on Preston’s character. As far as Dylan is concerned, this is a physical evidence case, and he’s going to focus on that as much as possible.

Patrolman Clayton testifies that the car was abandoned maybe ten feet into the woods off the road but that he was able to see it.

“What made you approach?” Dylan asks.

“Well, I thought maybe somebody was in it, in some kind of distress or something. It wasn’t really a normal way to leave a car. Then, when I got close, I saw the license plate.”

“It was an unusual plate?”

Clayton nods. “It said ‘GIANTS25.’”

“Why was that particularly interesting?”

Clayton looks sheepish, a look he can pull off, since he can’t be more than twenty-three years old. “There had been a report that a football player was missing and… well, I’m not really a football fan, so I didn’t realize he played for the Jets.” Most of the female jurors smile their understanding.

“What did you do when you reached the car?” asks Dylan.

“I looked inside and determined there was no one in the car. Then I opened the door and saw what looked to me like bloodstains on the passenger seat and passenger side dashboard. Then I immediately closed the door, called in for a detective team and forensics, and secured the area.”

Dylan introduces evidence proving that the car in question is Kenny’s. Having done that, he could let the witness off the stand, but Clayton is an appealing witness, so he keeps him up there for another ten minutes before turning him over to me. Clayton hasn’t done us much damage-that will come later from the lab results-but my strategy is to make points with every prosecution witness, no matter what they testify to. It reduces the chances of a “steamroller effect,” in which the jury starts to view the prosecution as an unstoppable force.

“Patrolman Clayton,” I begin, “were you on a special assignment on that day? Or just on your regular patrol?”

“Regular patrol,” he says.

“So you weren’t looking for this specific car? This make and model?”

“No.”

“So it was the way it was left in the woods, the way it was abandoned, that attracted you to it?”

“Right,” he says. “It was unusual for a car to be partway into the woods like that.”

“Almost as if it were meant to attract attention in the way it was positioned?”

Dylan objects that Clayton could not possibly know the intent of the person who left the car there. Harrison sustains, but I’m starting to make my point.

“Would you say there was a significant amount of blood,” I ask, “or just some small specks?”

“I would say a decent amount, certainly not just specks.”

I nod. “And you testified you saw it immediately and that as soon as you saw it, you were positive what it was?”

“Yes.”

“Were there wipe marks? As if somebody had tried to clean it up?”

“I didn’t see any,” he says.

“Patrolman, let me ask you a hypothetical question. If that were your car, and you had murdered someone, would you have done a better job hiding it? Would you have cleaned up the blood?”

Dylan objects, but Harrison lets Clayton answer. “I guess I would have, sir. But I wouldn’t murder anyone.”

I accept that and move on. I get Clayton to describe where the car was on the highway, then ask, “And where was the taxi stand?”

“Taxi stand?”

“Right. Because if the defendant left his car there, he couldn’t walk home, could he?”

“Well…”

“Are you aware of any theory of an accomplice, someone who drove Mr. Schilling home after he carefully hid the car?”

Dylan objects that this is out of the witness’s area, and I don’t push it. Clayton responds to another question by saying that there is a rest area with a telephone a half mile away. I don’t ask if there is any record of that phone calling a taxi company, because Dylan would object again. I know from the discovery that two such calls were made during the days when the car might have been left, but they were both by women, so Kenny is in the clear on that.

I let Clayton off the stand, satisfied that I’ve done as much damage as I could, but I’m all too aware that Dylan’s big guns are still loaded and ready to fire.

Next up for Dylan is Dr. Janet Sheridan, the lab director who did the DNA tests on the blood in Kenny’s car. I know from the reports that the results are conclusive, that it is without question Preston’s blood.

Dylan takes three hours to get Janet to say this in as many ways as she knows how. Her conclusion is that the chance of its not being Preston’s blood is one in two point five quadrillion, or something like that.

My cross-examination is quick and to the point. “Dr. Sheridan, how did Mr. Preston’s blood get in the car?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea. That’s not within the scope of my work.”

I nod. “Sorry. Who was driving the car when it was left where it was found?”

Dylan objects, but Harrison lets her say she doesn’t know this either.

“So if I were to say that someone other than Mr. Schilling took his car, murdered Mr. Preston, and then left the car with the blood in it, is there anything in your test results that would prove me wrong?”

“Not in these results, no.”

“Thank you.”

Kevin and I go back to the office. Adam is there working, and I realize that he wasn’t in court today, though he had said he would be. Maybe the studio is pressing him for what he calls a first draft, but that’s the furthest thing from my mind at the moment.

Adam stops what he’s doing to listen to Kevin and me dissect the day in court. Kevin is a very good barometer of the trends in a trial, and he thinks we did okay, but not great. He’s quick to say that there was no way we could have done great, but it’s not necessary because I wasn’t insulted. He’s absolutely right: Dylan had the upper hand.

After about a half hour of this, Adam rather tentatively asks a question. “Let me ask you guys something. Forgetting people you’ve met while practicing criminal law… I’m talking about in your personal lives… how many people your age… friends… do you know that have died in the last ten years?”

“One” is my answer, thinking of Susan Goodman, a girl I went to high school with who was hit by a car about two years ago.

“Two,” says Kevin. “Why?”

“I’ve checked out maybe a hundred and twenty people identified as friends or acquaintances of Kenny’s. Eight-all males-have died in the last seven years. None were over twenty-five years old.”

* * * * *

I DON’T BELIEVE in coincidences. Never have, never will. It’s not that I don’t think they can happen, and it’s certainly not that I think everything that happens is by a grand design. I’ve just found that it’s always best to assume apparently related events have a logical reason for being, and there is nothing logical about coincidence.

Eight friends of Kenny’s dying before the age of twenty-five: I don’t know what the actuarial tables would say, but the odds against that must be off the charts. And these are young people, mostly athletes, in the prime of their lives. This is very scary stuff.

We have got to get into this in detail right away. Adam does not yet know the particulars of the deaths, nor does he have any indication there was foul play. Who knows, there could have been a leukemia cluster, in which case it will turn out to be a false alarm for our case. He also does not know the specifics of the connections between Kenny and the deceased, or the connections, if any, between the unfortunate young men themselves.

If these deaths are suspicious, related, or in any way tied to Kenny, we’re in deep trouble, and our Quintana theory is most likely out the window. But we’re a long way from determining any of that, and my hope and expectation is that when we find out what we need to know, the problem will go away.

In any event, we have a lot to learn, and we damn well better learn it before Dylan does. Kevin and I are not going to be of much help, and Laurie’s busy on a million other things, so I decide to let Adam do much of the legwork, since he seems good at it and that legwork can be done on a computer and telephone.

Adam is eager to dig into it, and I’m confident he can get it done. The truth is, he showed a really good instinct in picking up on this situation in the first place; someone else could easily have missed it or not thought it represented a problem.

“Let Sam Willis help you on this,” I say. “He can find out things on a computer in ten minutes that could take you ten weeks to track down.”

“Great,” says Adam.

“And from now on you’re really going on the payroll, with an investigator’s pay. You’re not just hanging around anymore.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “The top actors and directors are going to be fighting over this one. Besides, this is really cool. I’m glad I can help, and I’m enjoying myself.”

That makes one of us.

I go home, take Tara for a walk, and then call Laurie. Tonight’s not one of our sleepover nights, but I want to talk to her about Adam’s discovery. I would do so even if she were not involved in the case, even if she were a pharmacist, ballet dancer, or software designer. When something important happens, good, bad, or confusing, it’s comforting to talk to her. And I’ve got nobody to back her up in this area, no real bench strength, so if she bails out, I’ll be talking to myself. That would be another hell of a loss.

Laurie’s reaction to the news mirrors my own, viewing this as a potentially ominous development and unwilling to chalk it up to coincidence. “Do you need to share this with the judge and Dylan?” she asks.

It’s a question I haven’t thought about, which doesn’t say much about my abilities as an attorney. I think about it now and decide that I don’t have to share the information now, and perhaps never. Even if we were to determine that Kenny was involved, even if he’s a serial killer, we would not legally have to divulge the information. We would actually be prohibited from revealing it, the only exception being if we were aware of another murder that was going to be committed.

I get into bed and think about the situation some more. I don’t want to discuss this with Kenny yet; I want to have more information first so I can better judge his response. On some level I can see the possibility that he had an argument with Preston and killed him, but I simply cannot see him as responsible for multiple deaths. Of course, I’ve been wrong before.

The window drapes are open, and my mind flashes to Michael Corleone in the bedroom of his Vegas compound, realizing just in time that the drapes being open means he should hit the ground before the bullets come flying.

I get up and close the drapes, cowardly doing it from the side of the window so as not to expose myself should Bruno Tattaglia want to take a shot at me. As I do, I get a look out into the darkness, and I can only hope and assume that Marcus is there.

They never mentioned anything about this crap in law school.

I wake up at six in the morning and call Vince Sanders. I’ve made a deal with him to make him my initial media contact, and I’m honoring that now. I had come to the conclusion that he sent me on what was basically a wild-goose chase to Wisconsin to check out Matt Lane’s hunting accident, but now I’m not so sure.

Vince grunts angrily at my waking him up, so I tell him that he can go back to sleep and I’ll give the story to someone else. That tends to increase his alertness, so I suggest he meet me at a coffee shop on the corner of Broadway and Thirty-second Street in an hour.

I take Tara for a walk that ends up at the coffee shop, and we sit at our regular outdoor table. I get her a bagel and a dish of water, and she’s already polished it off by the time Vince arrives, ten minutes late.

“This better be good,” he says.

“It is,” I say, launching quickly into what I wanted to tell him, since I’m in danger of being late for court. “My house was broken into by two of Quintana’s thugs. They were going to kick the shit out of me.”

“But they didn’t?” he asks.

“Marcus.”

He nods. Enough said.

“Quintana is trying to keep his name out of the trial, but he’s also after four hundred thousand that Preston was supposed to give him the night he was killed. He assumes Kenny has it and somehow further assumes that I can get it.”

“Four hundred thousand?” Vince repeats, obviously impressed. “These guys who tried to break in… why would they tell you this?”

“Marcus.”

He nods. Enough said.

“But they won’t tell it to the police… so I’m telling it to you. You can break the story tomorrow morning, and then I go national with it.”

“I’m happy to do it,” he says, “but won’t that just piss Quintana off even more?”

“Maybe, but he’s coming after me to keep me quiet. Once I go completely public, he’s got nothing to be gained anymore by shutting me up. Besides, if he’s got any smarts at all, once I do this he’d know that he’d be the first one the cops would go after if anything happened to me. I’m going to shine as much light on him as possible.”

“And it helps your client in the process,” he says.

“Yes. It does.”

Vince thinks about this awhile and then seems to smile in satisfaction at what I’ve just told him. “Works for me,” he says. “I’ll even buy the bagels.”

“Good. I was just going to order Tara another one.”

I get to court with only ten minutes to spare, and I’m barely settled in when Dylan calls Teri Pollard, Bobby’s wife, to the stand. It’s a smart move. He wants someone to testify that Kenny left with Preston to take him home, but he doesn’t want to call one of the football players who were there that night. They are celebrities, and Dylan doesn’t want that celebrity factor to play in Kenny’s favor.

Teri is clearly not happy to be doing Dylan’s dirty work, but she’s obligated to tell the truth. That truth includes describing to the jury the details of the night at the Crows Nest and the fact that Kenny and Preston left on the early side.

“Did anyone else go with them?” Dylan asks.

“No,” Teri says, but then throws in, “unless they met someone outside.”

Dylan won’t let her get away with that. “But you did not see them meet anyone? And you’re not aware of any expectation they had of meeting anyone?”

“No” is her grudging response.

I attempt to get Teri to provide support for Kenny’s general character and goodness, but Dylan objects, since I’m only allowed to cross-examine on areas he covered in direct. That’s okay; Dylan’s objecting makes it look like he’s hiding something.

“Was that night the first time you had been with Kenny and Preston at the same time?” I ask.

“No. Bobby… my husband… and I have been out with them together maybe five or six times.” She points toward Bobby, sitting in the gallery aisle in his wheelchair. “But we spend time with Kenny very frequently.”

“Ever see them argue?” I ask.

“No.”

“Ever see them threaten each other?”

“No.”

“You never thought Mr. Preston might be in any danger by going with Mr. Schilling?”

“No, of course not.” Then staring right at Dylan, she says, “Kenny’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

Way to go, girl.

Next up in Dylan’s parade is the county medical examiner, Dr. Ronald Kotsay. Dr. Kotsay was brought in about six months ago to replace a man who held the position for thirty-eight years, and he’s had a rough go of it. Dr. Kotsay made the mistake of quickly trying to modernize procedures, which did not go over very well with the staff or DA’s office. Simply put, everybody was just used to his predecessor, and Dr. Kotsay’s “sweep out the old” approach faced a lot of resistance. Things have calmed down since, and most people have come to realize what an outstanding medical examiner he is.

“Dr. Kotsay, you were called to the defendant’s house in Upper Saddle River, were you not?” Dylan asks.

“I was.”

“And you examined Mr. Preston’s body at the scene?”

Kotsay confirms that and goes on to say that he found the body in the closet where I had seen it.

“Were there any other wounds on the body, other than the fatal bullet wound?” Dylan asks.

“Yes, there were some cuts and abrasions on the wrists. I believe they were the result of a restraint of some sorts, probably metal.”

“Handcuffs?”

“It’s possible, but likely something with a rougher edge. It’s impossible to be sure.”

Dylan goes over the autopsy, which reports the less-than-shocking news that the corpse with a bullet hole in its chest died of a bullet hole in the chest. “Did you run toxicological tests on Mr. Preston?”

Dr. Kotsay confirms that he did and that Preston’s blood tested positive for Rohypnol. Under questioning he goes on to explain the properties of the drug.

There is little I can do with Dr. Kotsay, since everything he has said is one hundred percent accurate. “Dr. Kotsay, would the amount of Rohypnol in Mr. Preston’s system have rendered him unconscious?”

“No, I certainly would not think so.”

“Is it an amount one might take recreationally?”

“Yes.”

“What effect would the drug have?”

“Depending on the person’s tolerance of course, it most likely would make him mellow, serene, perhaps tired.”

“So it is what is commonly known as a downer?” I ask.

“Yes.”

This is an important point for me to have gotten in, since Dylan will be bringing out the fact that the same drug was in Kenny’s system. A mellow, serene, tired person is not the type one would expect to commit a murder.

“Did you have occasion to examine Mr. Preston’s prior medical records, including those from the NFL drug testing program?”

He confirms that he did and also that those records left no doubt that Preston had been using drugs for quite some time.

“Was he also selling these drugs?” I ask.

Before Dylan has a chance to object, Dr. Kotsay says, “I have no idea.”

“Dr. Kotsay, if you know, what percentage of adults over twenty-one in America are frequent users of hard drugs? And I would exclude marijuana from this category.”

“I could get you the accurate information, but I believe it is between four and eight percent.”

“And what percentage of adult murder victims that you do autopsies on are frequent users of hard drugs?” I ask.

He thinks for a moment. “Again, I don’t have the figures in front of me, but I would say in excess of twenty-five percent.”

“How would you explain that?”

Dylan objects, but Harrison lets him answer. “Well, I would say that their use and especially their purchase of the drugs brings them into contact with dangerous people. Criminals. Their need for money also can cause them to commit crimes.”

“So you would say the drug business is a dangerous one?” I ask, fairly secure that the jury will remember I said in opening statements that Preston was selling drugs.

“Yes, I would certainly say that.”

I smile, hoping the jurors will think I’ve accomplished more than I have. “Thank you, Doctor, I couldn’t agree more.”

* * * * *

LAURIE LAUGHS after we make love. Not every time, but tonight she does. I have to admit that the first couple of times it bothered me a little. I mean, I’m not the most confident guy in the world; I wouldn’t take one of those “How sexually secure are you?” tests in Cosmo unless I could cheat.

But I soon came to understand that her laughter is from the sheer enjoyment of it. Most people I know, myself included, laugh when something is funny, and Laurie does as well. But she also laughs when she is experiencing something that she thinks is wonderful, and at those times it’s an uninhibited, unrestrained laugh that sounds as good as it must feel.

I have other, different physical reactions after sex, but they are competing. I get simultaneously sleepy and hungry, and the only way to satisfy both would be to set up an intravenous system in the bedroom. One of the problems with this is I don’t think M amp;M’s and Oreos come in liquid form, so I’ll just have to wait for medical science to figure it out.

For tonight, hunger wins out, and I trudge down to the kitchen for a snack. Since I am psychologically incapable of being alone in a room without the television on, I turn on the little one on the kitchen counter.

CNN comes on, with a “Breaking News” banner across the screen. This no longer has the significance that it used to; in a desire to attract viewers surfing through channels, news stations have latched on to these kinds of banners as a way of getting the surfers to stop. So breaking news can be anything from the start of a war to an unusually large rainfall near Topeka.

This one gets my attention immediately, since I recognize a street in Paterson. The street is filled with police, and the helicopter shot clearly shows a body lying in the center of it all, covered by a sheet. I turn up the sound and hear the announcer say that the victim is a reputed mobster, allegedly a member of the Petrone family in North Jersey.

This is no doubt part of a developing war between Quintana and Petrone, and the first shot fired in revenge for the killing of Paul Moreno.

I turn off the television and go upstairs without eating anything. I also find that once I get into bed, I can no longer sleep. Since I can’t do the two things I usually do after sex, I try to copy Laurie and laugh. I can’t do that either.

If Quintana has his way, I could be the next one lying on the street with a sheet over me.

Murders take the fun out of everything.

I fall asleep at about two o’clock, and the alarm wakes me at six. I groan and tell a sleeping Tara to get the newspaper. She groans slightly and stretches, dog talk for “Get it yourself, asshole.”

The two stories on the front page of Vince’s paper are the Quintana breakin at my house and the murder of one of Petrone’s lieutenants. My story is the more prominent, and when I turn on the television news, the same is true there. Such is the media power of the Schilling trial that a failed breakin is considered more newsworthy than a successful murder.

The phone starts ringing, and Laurie helps out by dealing with the onslaught of media requests for interviews. I take a few of the calls, easily enough to keep the story going full blast.

Before I get to court, I call Adam and ask for an update. He’s learned the cause of death in each of the cases: There are five heart attacks, an ocean drowning, a hit-and-run, and Matt Lane’s hunting accident. None was considered murder by the police who investigated each death, and the only one that attracted criminal attention was the hit-and-run. The driver is still at large.

I can hear the disappointment in Adam’s voice; he doesn’t think he’s accomplished much, but he’s not understanding the significance of it. Five heart attacks in men this age seems an impossibility and therefore ominous. Adam wants his discoveries to solve the case. I don’t share his goal; if these deaths turn out to be related, it will likely be a disaster for Kenny.

I suggest to Adam that he give Sam Willis another assignment. By accessing Kenny’s records, especially his credit cards, I want to know where Kenny was when each of these people died. It’s a sign that I don’t trust my client, but I don’t want to just take his word for things. I want the absolute facts. Besides, assuming he wasn’t involved in these deaths, he would have no way of remembering where he was at specific times over the years.

Before Dylan calls his first witness, Harrison calls us into his chambers. He has seen the news reports and wants to know if I am concerned for my safety. If so, he will order the marshals to provide special protection for me in and around the courthouse.

I think Marcus has things fairly well under control, and I certainly don’t think the courthouse area is where Quintana will come after me, but I don’t tell this to Harrison. “Thank you, Your Honor, I would appreciate whatever protection you can arrange.”

I want the media, and maybe even the jury, to see that the court thinks I am in danger. This will tell them very clearly that there are killers involved in this case other than my client.

Dylan is smart enough to pick up on this. “Your Honor, I certainly want to ensure Mr. Carpenter’s safety…”

I turn to Judge Harrison and interrupt, pointing to Dylan. “Is he a heck of a guy or what?”

Dylan stares a dagger at me and finishes his sentence. “… but I am concerned that this can be played to the defense’s advantage.” He goes on to explain how, accurately summarizing my reasons for wanting the protection in the first place.

Harrison takes this under consideration, then decides to order the extra protection, with a directive that it be as unobtrusive as possible. He also orders me not to mention it outside of these chambers. Unless the media are extra aware, my advantage has effectively been negated. Point to Dylan.

I’m sure it’s the first of many points that Dylan will make today. He calls State Police Detective Hector Alvarez, who led the group of four detectives who first arrived at Kenny Schilling’s house that day. He was in command until Captain Dessens was called to take charge of the explosive confrontation.

Alvarez describes a very nervous Kenny refusing to let the officers in. When they became more insistent and threatened to enter forcibly, Kenny brandished a handgun and fired a shot to fend them off. They then took out their own weapons, retreated, and called for backup support. As told, the jury could not help but think that Kenny’s actions demonstrated a clear consciousness of guilt.

Kenny has been steadfast in claiming that the officers took out their weapons first, but in cross-examination I am unable to get Alvarez to agree with that. The closest I can come is to get him to admit that his men were surrounding the house and he could not see a number of them. He claims that they would not draw their weapons without being so ordered, but they were not in his line of sight at the time.

“Detective, were any of your men shot or wounded?”

“No.”

“But a shot was fired by Mr. Schilling?”

“Yes,” he says emphatically.

“So he missed?”

“Fortunately.”

“Did you retrieve the bullet?”

He shakes his head. “No. We couldn’t find it.”

“Might he have fired into the air?” I ask.

“It’s possible.”

“As if he was trying to scare you away but not hurt you?”

Dylan objects that Alvarez couldn’t know Kenny’s motivation for firing, and Harrison sustains. I move on.

“Detective, is it possible that Mr. Schilling didn’t believe that you were police officers?”

“I verbally identified us as such and held up my badge to the peephole in the door.”

“Are you sure he was looking through it? Can you tell from the outside?” I know from examining it that it’s impossible, so I’m hoping to trap him.

“I believe he was. I can’t be sure,” he says, avoiding the trap.

“Were any of your men in uniform?”

“No.”

“So it’s possible he thought you were lying? That you were not police, but rather intruders that might cause him physical harm?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” he says.

“What if he had just received a major emotional jolt, one that made him fearful, panicked, before you arrived? A jolt in which he, just for argument’s sake, found his friend murdered in a closet with a bullet in his chest? Might that have caused him to worry about your men coming at him with guns?”

“I believe he knew we were the police, and that’s why he didn’t want to let us in.” He shakes his head firmly. “Mr. Schilling’s actions were not those of an innocent person.”

“Lieutenant, does the name Luther Kent mean anything to you?”

Alvarez reacts, stiffening slightly. “Yes.”

“Please tell the jury how you came to be aware of Mr. Kent.”

In a softer voice he describes a night four years ago when he and his partner came upon Mr. Kent on a street. They approached him, since he resembled the sketch of a man wanted as a serial rapist in that neighborhood. Kent panicked and ran, and in the resulting chase he was shot and killed by Alvarez’s partner.

“Was Mr. Kent later shown to be the rapist?” I ask.

Alvarez takes a deep breath; this is not easy for him. “No. DNA tests cleared him. The actual rapist was arrested two days later.”

Dylan sees where I’m going and objects as to relevance, but he should have objected earlier in the questioning. Now that it’s gone this far, Harrison is not about to stop it, and he doesn’t.

I continue. “Did Mr. Kent have a criminal record? Any indication he had ever done anything which should have made him afraid of the police?”

“No.”

“But different people react differently to stressful situations, isn’t that right?”

“Of course, but that has nothing to do with this case.”

“Because since then you’ve become a master at predicting and judging reactions? You’ve taken a mind-reading course at the Police Academy?”

Dylan objects, and this time Harrison sustains, but I’ve made my point, and I let Alvarez off the stand.

It’s been another day of making small points that do not affect the big picture. I have absolutely no ability to prove that Kenny did not commit this murder; my only hope still rests with trying to convince the jury that it could well have been a drug killing by Quintana’s people. I can only introduce this during the defense case, so I have to be patient and bide my time.

I head back to the office to pick up some papers to read over after tonight’s meeting, and before I leave, I stop in at Sam Willis’s office. He’s been working hard with Adam, and I haven’t had a chance to thank him.

“Happy to do it,” Sam says. “He’s a natural on a computer. He can dig things up that I can’t.”

That’s obviously an overstatement, but Sam doesn’t throw praise around indiscriminately. Adam must be picking up Sam’s tricks really well.

“You’ve both been a really big help.”

“He’s doing most of it,” Sam says. “I’m telling you, he should give up this California movie bullshit and come work here. Him and me and two computers, we could rule the world.”

I smile at the image. “You told him that?” I ask.

“Sure did. I said, say goodbye to Hollywood.”

Uh-oh. That sounds like a song, but I can’t place it, and once again I didn’t prepare any material to engage in song-talking competition.

“Okay,” I say, ready to bail out before I become inundated in lyrics.

Sam goes on. “Then I figured I shouldn’t have said it, that it’s none of my business. So I said, ‘Hey, Adam, don’t mind me. California’s okay, but I’m in a New York state of mind.’”

Got it. Billy Joel.

“I should go, Sam. Laurie’s waiting for me.”

He’s not quite ready for me to leave. “How are things going with her?” Sam asks.

“Nothing new. Still deciding.”

Sam shakes his head in sympathy for my situation. “I think you need to be aggressive. Don’t just stand around and wait for her to make the move. Talk to her.”

“And say what?”

“Well, I can’t put myself in your shoes, but I’ll tell you what I said when I was in a similar situation. After I graduated college, this girl and I moved in together. We were thinking of getting married, but she kept threatening to leave. Finally, I told her, ‘Hey, babe, I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life. Go ahead with your own life and leave me alone.’”

He’s going to keep song-talking until I come up with a response, but none comes to mind at the moment.

“I mean it; you gotta take a stand,” he continues. “And don’t worry; I know Laurie. She’s not gonna move to that hick town. She’s an uptown girl; she’s been living in her uptown world.”

Ah, hah! An idea. “That’s not what I’m going to tell her,” I say.

“What are you gonna say?” he asks

“I’ll be honest; I’ll tell her the truth. I’ll say, ‘I just want someone that I can talk to. I love you just the way you are.’”

He nods his understanding. “Good for you, man. But that honesty, it’s such a lonely word.”

* * * * *

WEEKENDS ARE VERY difficult during a trial. Each day in court is intense and pressure-filled, and when the weekend comes around, the need to withdraw and relax is palpable. But there is no withdrawing, and no relaxing, because there is too much to do, and in the back of my mind I know that the opposition is always working.

I meet Walter Simmons, the Giants’ legal VP, for breakfast. I had told him I’d keep him informed of progress, within the confines of lawyer-client privilege. He’s been helpful in getting his players to meet with various members of our team, so I feel I owe him this time.

The Giants won their first game last week, but did it by passing for three hundred fifty yards and returning two interceptions for touchdowns. The running game gained an anemic sixty-one yards. After I update him on the status of the trial, he says, “Sounds like we should trade for a running back.”

“We’ve got a decent chance,” I lie.

“Yeah. And we’re going to win the Super Bowl.”

I shake my head. “Not without a better kicker. But before too long I may have somebody for you.”

He doesn’t pick up on it, and I decide against telling him my plans. Since it takes very little physical prowess, he could decide to try it as well. One thing I don’t need is more competition.

Adam calls me on my cell phone to tell me that he’s in the office and that he hopes it’s okay with me. “The computer here is much faster than using my laptop at the hotel,” he says.

“No problem,” I say. “When do you want to update me on progress?”

“Pretty soon. There’s a couple more things I need to check out first.”

I head home for an afternoon of reading and rereading of case material. First I take Tara for a walk and a short tennis ball toss in the park; I’ve been feeling guilty at how little time I’ve spent with her. That guilt is increased when I once again see how much she enjoys it. Afterward, we stop off for a bagel and some water, and by the time we get home, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the brief respite away from the case.

I plunge into the material and barely notice the college football game I have on in the background. Laurie comes in at about four carrying grocery bags. She says, “Hi, honey,” and comes over to give me a kiss. It’s domestic bliss straight out of Ozzie and Harriet, and for all my cynicism it feels really good.

“Have you seen David and Ricky?” I ask.

She’s never seen Ozzie and Harriet, since she doesn’t watch old reruns as religiously as I do, so she has no idea about whom I’m talking. Once I explain it to her, she doesn’t seem interested in it. This isn’t working; I need a woman who can be my intellectual equal.

She starts unloading the groceries. “I thought we’d barbecue some seafood tonight.”

“Fish?” I ask, my disappointment showing through. “What is there, a hamburger strike going on?”

With all the work I have, the idea of stopping to cook fish is not pleasing. Of course, I have no idea how long it will take because I don’t know how long one is supposed to cook fish. I know some should be cooked through, some rare, and some just seared, but I don’t have a clue which is which. “I don’t have a lot of time,” I say.

“I’m going to cook it,” she says.

Uh-oh. Another sign of independence. “Are we forgetting who the boy is in this relationship? I am the barbecuer, you are the barbecuee.”

“You’re a man’s man,” she says, and then goes off into the kitchen to marinate the fish in whatever the hell you marinate fish in. They spend their whole life in liquid, and then they have to soak in liquid before you cook them? The ocean didn’t get them wet enough? Hopefully, these particular fish have to marinate for two weeks, but I doubt it.

They’re soaking for about ten minutes when the phone rings. Laurie gets it, and from the kitchen I hear her say, “Hi, Vince… What?” She listens some more and then says, “Vince, he’s here with me. He’s right here.” There is a tension in her voice that chills me to the bone.

She comes rushing into the room and goes right to the television, changing the football game to CNN. I stand up-I’m not sure why-and start walking toward the television, as if I’ll find out what the hell is going on if I’m closer.

I see myself on television; it’s footage from a panel show I did some months before. My lips are moving, but the sound is muted so that the announcer can talk over me. I don’t hear what he is saying because my eyes are riveted to the blaring message across the bottom of the screen: “Schilling lawyer murdered.”

My mind can’t process what is going on. Why would they think I was murdered? Can it be Kevin? Is he the person they’re calling a Schilling lawyer? Then why are they showing me?

“Andy…” It’s Laurie’s voice attempting to cut through the confused mess that is my mind. “They’re saying that you were shot and killed in your office this afternoon.”

And then it hits me, with a searing pain that feels like it explodes my insides. “Let’s go,” I say, and run toward my car. Laurie is with me every step of the way, and within five minutes we are approaching my office.

We have to park two blocks away because the place is such a mob scene. Laurie knows one of the officers protecting the perimeter, and he lets us through the barricades. Pete Stanton is standing next to a patrol car, in front of the fruit stand below my office.

“Pete…” is all I can manage.

“It’s the writer, Andy. Adam. He took two shots in the face and one in the chest. Died instantly.”

I can’t adequately describe the pain I feel, but I know I’ve felt it before. Sam Willis had a young assistant named Barry Leiter who was murdered because he was helping me investigate a case. Like then, I find my legs giving out from under me, and I have to lean against the car for support.

“Why?” I say, but I know why. Adam was blown apart by bullets that were meant for me.

“We just arrested Quintana, Andy. I don’t know if we can make it stick, but he ordered it done. No question about it.”

“I want to see him,” I say, and push off from the car. It’s only then that I realize that Laurie has her arm around me, and she keeps that arm around me all the way up the stairs. She is supporting me, and she is sobbing.

There are officers and forensics people everywhere, finishing up their work. They seem to part as we approach, mainly because Pete is with us telling them to. Suddenly, there just inside the office door, we see a body covered by a sheet. I am getting goddamn sick of seeing people I care about covered by sheets.

I’m not sure how long we’re at the office, probably a couple of hours. Pete has a lot of questions he has to ask me, but he doesn’t make me go down to the station to answer them. Sam Willis shows up, having heard the news on television, and he lets us use his office. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Sam cry.

There is little I can tell Pete that he doesn’t already know. He’s aware of the incident where Marcus threw Ugly out the window, and he was there the night Marcus stopped Ugly and his friend from breaking into my house and roughing me up.

Pete tells me that Ugly and his friend are still in custody and have been since that night. “That probably cost Adam his life,” I say. “Whoever Quintana sent didn’t know me by sight… they thought Adam was me.”

Pete shakes his head. “Maybe, maybe not. They probably came in shooting and didn’t even wait to look. Maybe Adam never knew what was coming.”

For the record, and for Pete’s tape recorder, I take him through the reason Adam came here in the first place. I also describe Adam’s gradual evolution into being helpful on the Schilling case, but I refuse to provide details, citing attorney-client privilege.

Pete tries to probe, to find out as much as he can, explaining that the murder has to be investigated fully. Though he strongly believes that it was a case of mistaken identity and that I was the target, the investigation cannot prejudge that. It has to start with the assumption that Adam was the target and look for reasons why. I understand that, and I’m fine with Pete doing an inventory of the office where Adam was working and taking whatever he needs.

“Just remember that his notes about the Schilling case are privileged, so I’d appreciate it if only you’d look at them first to see if they’re relevant. And I’ll need them back as soon as you can.”

Pete’s fine with that and tells me that I can go. As we reach the street, Willie Miller screeches to a halt in his car and jumps out. He sees me, and his eyes just about bug out of his head. “Man, they said you…”

Without another word he hugs me. I can count the number of male hugs I’ve liked on very few fingers, and I don’t like this one, but I appreciate it. After a few moments I break it off. “Adam was killed, Willie. They shot him thinking it was me.”

Willie looks at me disbelieving, then his face briefly contorts in a kind of rage I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. Without a word, in a lightning-quick move he puts his hand through the front window of his car, smashing it to bits. I know Willie holds a black belt in karate, but it’s still an amazing sight to behold.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Come on, we’ll drive you home.”

Laurie drives, and after we drop Willie off, we go home. She makes us drinks, and we sit down in the den. I just can’t seem to clear my head, to accept as fact what has happened. I don’t want to be a part of this; I don’t want people to die because of what I do for a living. I don’t want to be around this anymore.

“You want to talk, Andy?” Laurie asks.

“All I do is talk.”

“It’s not your fault,” Laurie says. “You couldn’t know this was going to happen.”

“What do I need this for? I’m a lawyer. Did I cut the class in law school when they said that people were going to die just because they knew me?”

“Andy-”

I interrupt. “I want to do what other lawyers do. I want to sue doctors for malpractice because they forgot to remove the sponge after my client’s appendectomy. I want to represent huge corporations when they merge with other huge corporations. I want to make cheating husbands pay through the nose in alimony. I want to do everything but what I’m doing.”

“No,” she says, “you’re doing exactly what you should be doing. And you do it better than anyone I know. As one of your former clients, I can say with certainty that you’re needed right where you are.”

I shake my head, not giving an inch. “No, you’ve got the right idea,” I say. “Findlay is a better place to live than this. I think you should go. I should go with you.”

She shakes her head. “You can’t run away, Andy. I won’t do that, and I won’t let you do it either. If I go, if we go, we’ll be going toward something, not running away.”

I know she’s right, but I refuse to say so, because then I might have to stop feeling sorry for myself. An old Joe Louis expression pops into my head, as if he were talking about me. “He can run, but he can’t hide.”

Right now all I want to do is hide.

* * * * *

I TAKE IT UPON myself to call Adam’s parents in Kansas and notify them of the death of their son. It is one of the more difficult conversations I’ve ever had in my life, but I can only imagine how much worse it is for them. They want his body flown home for the funeral service, and I promise I will help them make the arrangements. It’s a murder case, so by law an autopsy must take place first, but I don’t see any need to mention that right now.

They seem not to want to end the phone call, as if I am their final connection to their son and they want to keep that connection going as long as possible. They show incredible generosity by telling me that they had been receiving phone calls from Adam, telling them how much he enjoyed working with me and how excited he was to be meeting important sportswriters. He’d been meeting football players, not sportswriters, but I certainly don’t bother to correct them. Memories are all they have, and I don’t want to blur them in any fashion.

I tell them Adam was hoping to buy them a house, that he talked about them lovingly and often. They thank me and finally say goodbye, to retreat into their agony.

In the morning I have Kevin, Sam, Marcus, and Edna join Laurie and me at the house for a rare Sunday meeting. Willie comes over as well, since he wants to be involved in whatever way he can in protecting me and nailing Adam’s killer. I’m happy to have him; the trial is not going to stop while we mourn for Adam, and I have to make sure that as a group we are ready to deal with what happened and move on.

We spend the first hour or so talking about Adam and how we felt about him. He had made a very deep impression on each of us with his enthusiasm for life, an enthusiasm that makes his death feel that much more tragic. Marcus even adds two words to the discourse: “Good guy.” It’s the Marcus equivalent of a normal person delivering an impassioned twenty-minute eulogy.

Kevin forces us to look at the impact that this horrible event will have on the Schilling case. I’ve been thinking about asking Judge Harrison for a two-day recess, to give me time to get my head together, as well as helping to catch up on the work Adam was doing.

Kevin thinks a recess is a bad idea, that the publicity from Adam’s killing can only have the unintended and ironic effect of helping in Kenny’s defense. Despite Judge Harrison’s admonition to the jurors not to expose themselves to media coverage of this case, there is no realistic possibility that they haven’t heard what has happened. The inescapable conclusion to be reached is that there are murderers, not sitting next to me at the defense table, who are involved in this case. We might be able to convince the jury that it is “reasonable” to assume that those same people murdered Troy Preston as well.

I think Kevin is probably right, though his point is probably moot, since it is unlikely Judge Harrison would actually grant the recess anyway. So I decide to push on, even though there is nothing I would rather do less.

I ask Sam to bring us up-to-date as best he can on Adam’s work, but there isn’t much he can offer. Adam had given him specific things to do, and their assignments really didn’t overlap. We are not even aware of how Adam put together the list of people he was checking out. When Pete returns Adam’s notes, it will make Sam’s job easier.

Sam has been working hard, though, and his report on his own progress is very worrisome. He has managed to place Kenny within a three-hour drive of three of the deaths, not including Matt Lane’s hunting accident. This is no small revelation: We are talking about four cities in very different parts of the country. To make matters worse, Sam hasn’t ruled out Kenny’s presence in the other death locations; he just hasn’t finished the complicated process of checking.

I am both nearing and dreading the time when I will confront Kenny with what we have learned. His reaction, his explanation, will determine how I handle things and, more important, will most likely determine his entire future.

Laurie brings up the matter of my protection. Quintana is in jail, but Pete has told us off the record that there is little concrete evidence to tie him to Adam’s death. He undoubtedly hired someone to do the killing, keeping his own hands clean. There is a real possibility that he will be released, and a just as strong possibility that he will come after me again.

Laurie makes the suggestion that Marcus’s total focus be on protecting me and that he recruit some of his more energetic colleagues to help in that endeavor. Marcus grunts his agreement, but it is clear that he considers more aggressive action necessary. He’s got a point: Had we let him go after Quintana when he suggested it the first time, Adam would be alive today.

Everybody leaves, and I start to go over my case notes, hoping to get myself emotionally geared up for the resumption of the trial tomorrow. It’s not going to be easy, and within a half hour I find myself turning on the television and taking comfort in NFL football.

In the morning Judge Harrison once again calls Dylan and me into his chambers to discuss the events outside of court. He and Dylan express their condolences, and Dylan is somewhat regretful for his comments last time, when he intimated that my revelation of the threat was mostly an attempt to sway the jury.

Harrison unsolicitedly offers me a one-day recess, which I decline. Dylan asks that Harrison poll the jury, to see if they’ve actually been deligently avoiding press coverage. It’s a surprising request and makes me realize just how worried Dylan is about what is taking place outside the courtroom. If the jury admitted to having seen the coverage, the only real remedy would be a mistrial, and I am stunned to realize that apparently Dylan would consider that.

Harrison declines to poll the jury; this is not a judge who is going to give up on this trial. He agrees to admonish the jury in even stronger terms than previously not to expose themselves to any press reports.

Dylan calls Stephen Clement to the stand. Clement is the neighbor of Preston’s whom Laurie discovered and who has information that cuts for both the prosecution and the defense. Dylan is making the smart move of calling him, since his ability to question him first will allow him to frame the testimony, both positive and negative.

Clement, under Dylan’s questioning, tells the situation in simple, direct terms. He was out walking his dog that night when a car pulled up and Preston got out. He never saw the driver, but he describes the car, with the GIANTS25 license plate. He also knows that the driver was a male, because he heard Preston and the driver arguing.

“Could you tell what they were arguing about?” Dylan asks.

Clement shakes his head. “I really couldn’t hear them… I was across the street, and the car was running. It might have been about a woman; the driver might have said, ‘You leave her alone.’ But I could just as easily be wrong.”

“But you were close enough to be sure that they were arguing?” Dylan asks.

“I’m quite certain of that.”

Dylan asks what happened next, and Clement says that the car pulled away, at a higher-than-normal speed.

“Did the car return?” Dylan asks.

“Not while I was there. But I only walked the dog for another three or four minutes.”

“So the car could have returned after that and you wouldn’t know it?”

Clement nods. “That’s correct.”

Informationally, I have no reason to even question Clement, since everything he has to say has been said. I just need to spend a little time putting a more favorable spin on it for our side. Laurie has questioned him extensively, so I have some information at my disposal.

“Mr. Clement, when you were out walking, did you have a cell phone with you?”

“Yes. I always carry one.”

“When you heard these men arguing, did you call the police, fearing violence was about to break out?”

“No.”

“Did you try to intervene yourself? Try to prevent anyone from getting hurt?”

“No.”

“Did you quickly leave the area so that you and your dog wouldn’t be injured?”

“No.”

“So it was not an argument that was unusually loud or volatile? Not one where you were worried that someone could be badly hurt? Because if it were that bad, I assume you would have taken one of the actions I just mentioned. Isn’t that right?”

“I guess… I mean, they were just yelling. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

Having made the point, I ask him how fast the car was driving when it pulled away, since Clement had referred to the speed as being higher than normal.

“I would say about forty miles an hour,” Clement says. “It’s a residential neighborhood, so that’s pretty fast.”

I put up a map of the neighborhood and get Clement to explain that he walked home in the same direction that the car pulled away. That adds a few minutes to the time he would have had to see the car if it returned. It’s a small point, but it works against the image of an outraged Kenny storming back after the argument and killing Preston.

Court ends for the day at noon, giving two jurors time to attend to personal business, probably doctor’s appointments. I can certainly use the time, and I call Pete Stanton and ask for a quick favor. He knows he owes me big-time for the ridiculous birthday party, so he readily agrees.

One of the names on the list of mysterious deaths was a drowning in the ocean in Asbury Park, a Jersey beach resort about an hour south of Paterson. I know that Pete has a number of connections with the police department down there, and on my behalf he calls one of them to arrange for me to be able to talk to the officer most familiar with the young man’s death.

I don’t hit much traffic going down there, since it’s a weekday and not during rush hour. Arriving in Asbury Park provides a bit of a jolt; I spent a good deal of my youthful weekends down here, and the city hasn’t held up very well. The buildings have eroded considerably faster than my memories.

Sergeant Stan Collins is there to meet me when I arrive at the precinct house. He didn’t speak to Pete directly, but he knows what I’m there to learn and suggests that we drive to the scene of the drowning.

Within ten minutes we’re near the edge of Asbury Park, and the ocean seems rougher than it did when I drove in. Collins says that this is common and has something to do with the rock formation.

He points out where Darryl Anderson died on a September day six years ago. “There was a hurricane warning, or a watch,” he says. “I can never remember which is which.”

“I think the warning is worse,” I say.

He nods. “Whatever. A bunch of local teenagers weren’t too worried about it, and they decided it would be really cool to ride the waves in the middle of the storm.”

“Anderson was one of the teenagers?” I ask.

“Nope. I think he was twenty or twenty-one. His brother was one of the kids out in the water. Anderson heard about it from his mother, who was upset and asked him to make sure the kid was okay.”

Collins shakes his head at the memory and continues. “The undertow was unbelievable, and Anderson started yelling at the kids to get out of the water. He was a big, scary guy, a football player, so they did. Except one kid, a fourteen-year-old, couldn’t make it. The current was pulling him out.”

“So Anderson went in after him?”

He nods. “Yeah. Got to him and grabbed him but couldn’t make it back. Their bodies were never found.”

“Is there any way,” I ask, “any way at all, that he could have been murdered?”

His head shake is firm. “No way. There were twenty witnesses to what happened, including me, although I got here for the very end of it. Everybody who saw it said the same thing. It was preventable… those kids should never have been in the water… but there is absolutely no way it was murder.”

It’s a sad story, but one that has the secondary effect of cheering me up. Kenny obviously had nothing to do with this death, and if I can find that to be true of most of the others as well, then coincidence will actually have reared its improbable head.

When I get back home, an obviously distressed Laurie comes out to meet me at the car. I hadn’t told her where I was going, and she was panicked at the possibility that Quintana had gotten to me and dumped my body in the Passaic River.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” I lie, since I’m thrilled that she’s upset. “I had to leave in a hurry.”

“You had a cell phone, Andy. You could have called me.”

She’s right, I could have called her, and I’m not sure why I didn’t. It’s not like me. I didn’t consciously think about it, but was my subconscious trying to worry her? Or am I subtly separating from her, so as to prepare myself and lessen the devastation when and if she leaves?

“I should have.”

She lets it drop, and I update her on what I learned. She is relieved, as I am, but points out that it’s not proof that Kenny wasn’t involved with any of the other deaths. She suggests that it’s time that I speak to Kenny about it, and I make plans to do so before court tomorrow.

Laurie and I had planned to go to Charlie’s for dinner tonight, but she doesn’t want to leave the house. She wants to make a quick dinner and get into bed. With that as the ultimate goal, there is no such thing as a dinner quick enough. But I inhale some kind of a sandwich, and Laurie and I are in bed by nine o’clock.

Our lovemaking tonight is more intense than usual, and Laurie is one hundred percent responsible for that. I think that she was really shaken and worried about me today, and this is how it is manifesting itself. Of course, the next time I successfully read a woman’s mind will be the first, so I stop trying to figure it out and simply go with the flow.

It turns out to be one of the best flows I’ve ever gone with.

* * * * *

I WAKE UP WITH that awful feeling of remembrance about Adam. I know these feelings will be with me for a long time, because I still have them about Sam’s assistant, Barry Leiter, and he died almost two years ago. I’m going to have to start allocating scheduled time for my various guilt issues so I don’t get them confused.

I arrive at court an hour early for my scheduled meeting with Kenny about the information Adam was developing. I bring Kevin with me, not for him to participate, but to have an independent opinion on Kenny’s reaction to my questions.

Kenny seems surprised and a little concerned when he’s brought in for the meeting, since the unusual nature of it makes him think that something has come up.

I get right to the point, reading him the names of the eight young men who have died. When I’m finished, I ask, “Do those names mean anything to you?”

Kenny thinks for a moment, then says, “Well, Matt Lane is the guy who died in the hunting accident that we talked about. And Tony George played for Penn State, a linebacker. I don’t know where he is. And I think Mike Rafferty played out West somewhere; I met him a long time ago. I think I heard something happened to him. Are these guys all football players?”

“They were,” I say. “Now they’re all dead.”

If the look of surprise on Kenny’s face is an act, it’s a damn good one. “What do you mean, they’re all dead? What happened to them?”

“Various things… you don’t know anything about it?”

The awareness starts to dawn on Kenny that we might be tying this to him. He stands up. “Hey, wait a minute! Are you saying I killed them? Are you out of your fucking minds?”

He’s yelling so loud that I’m afraid the guards outside the door will hear him and come rushing in. “No, Kenny, that’s not what I’m saying. But you can be sure that’s what the prosecution will be saying if they find out.”

“Find out what? Except for Matt, I don’t even know where these guys live. How could I have killed them?”

“Okay,” I say. “You’ve told me what I need to know.”

He is far from calmed down. “Jesus Christ,” he says, “I thought you were on my side.”

We talk for a brief while longer, then Kevin and I leave for some last-minute preparation for today’s witnesses. Kenny still seems upset, but he’ll just have to deal with it.

Once we’re out of earshot of Kenny, I ask Kevin what he thinks. “He obviously got upset,” Kevin says, “but that could be because he’s innocent or guilty. I’d vote for innocent; he really seemed confused before you told him what you were talking about.”

That’s my feeling as well, but like Kevin, I’m well aware that I could be wrong.

As Judge Harrison is about to come into court, I go to turn my cell phone off. It’s something I do every day, to save myself the embarrassment of his confiscating it if it should ring during the court session. I see that there is a text message on the phone from Sam, asking me to call him and identifying it as “important.” The cell phone probably didn’t get reception in the anteroom where I met with Kenny.

I’m worried about what Sam might have discovered, but I have no time to call him now. I also have to switch my mental focus to Dylan’s first witness, Captain Dessens. As the lead investigator and arresting officer, Dylan will use him to sum up his case.

In truth, Dessens has little to add to the facts of the case. The jury has already heard about the blood evidence, Kenny’s actions the day of the arrest at his house, and the discovery of Preston’s body in the closet. Those are the main facts, and all Dessens does is repeat and embellish them. It is almost as if Dessens is giving Dylan’s closing argument for him.

Dylan is painstaking in his questioning, and he doesn’t turn the witness over to me until almost noon. Harrison decides to take the lunch break before I cross Dessens, and as soon as I can get to where I can talk privately, I call Sam.

“What have you got, Sam?” I ask.

“Nothing good. I’ve got Schilling within seventy-five miles of six of the eight deaths at the time they happened. I’ve cleared him on one, and I’m still working on the eighth.”

“Shit,” I say, once again displaying my characteristic rhetorical flourish.

“Andy, these deaths took place all over the country. The odds against Kenny being in each of these places at those particular times are astronomical. Beyond coincidence. Way beyond.”

“I know,” I say, because I do know, and there’s nothing to be gained by my first choice, which would be to remain in denial. I make arrangements to see Sam after court is over, and go to find Kevin. His reaction is the same as Sam’s, and we agree to figure out tonight just how we are going to deal with this.

Dessens gets back on the stand, no doubt prepped by Dylan for a full-blown cross-examination covering everything. He’s not going to get it; I’ve made whatever points I’ve had to make with previous witnesses. Instead, I’m going to use this cross to start presenting the defense’s case.

“Captain Dessens, you testified that Mr. Schilling became the focus of your investigation early on. I believe you said that within twelve hours he was your prime suspect.”

He nods. “That’s correct.”

“Who were your less-than-prime suspects?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Let me try to be even clearer. Who were on your list of suspects; who were the people you crossed off that list when you decided Mr. Schilling was your man?”

“There were no specific names; it was early in the process, and we hadn’t had a chance to go deep into our investigation.”

“So Mr. Schilling was your only suspect as well as your prime one?”

“Yes.”

“Generally, in a murder investigation, when the prime suspect doesn’t jump out at you so fast, is it fair to say you have a large list of suspects and then you pare them down?”

“Generally, but every case is different.”

“But you never prepared such a list for this case? You stopped looking after Mr. Schilling was arrested?”

He shakes his head. “We continued our thorough investigation, but we had our man.”

“Did your ‘thorough’ investigation uncover the fact that the victim was dealing drugs?”

Dylan jumps out of his chair to object that this is not within the scope of his direct examination, but I argue that it is, since Dylan had Dessens talking about his investigation. Harrison agrees with me and allows Dessens to answer.

“We had indications of that, yes. Nothing that has been proven.”

“In the same way that Mr. Schilling’s guilt in this case hasn’t been proven, since the jury has not yet returned a verdict?”

Dylan objects that this is argumentative, and Harrison sustains.

I push on. “Did you learn where Mr. Preston got the drugs he was selling?” I ask.

“Not with enough certainty that I can name anyone here today.”

I nod. “Fair enough. I’ll name some people, and you tell me if they were possible drug suppliers to Mr. Preston. Here goes… Albert Schweitzer? Pope John Paul? The queen of England?”

Dylan objects again, calling my questions “frivolous,” which is not exactly a news event. Again Harrison sustains.

“Captain Dessens,” I ask, “is it your experience that drug suppliers are dangerous people, who often employ other dangerous people?”

He agrees to that but little else. I let him off the stand having basically made my point: Troy Preston associated with people who seem a lot more credible in the role of killer than does Kenny Schilling.

As Dylan rests the prosecution’s case, I believe I have a slight but real chance of convincing the jury that Kenny doesn’t fit the bill as the killer of Troy Preston.

That’s because they don’t know what I know.

* * * * *

SAM LAYS OUT THE information he has learned in a straightforward, serious way. He doesn’t even song-talk, such is his understanding of the implications of this material. Sam is a numbers guy, and he understands the laws of probability. These facts do not obey those laws.

The question is what to do now. I do not see how we can ever bring any of this before Judge Harrison. If we determine the best, that Kenny has no culpability, then that is the end of it. If we determine the worst, that Kenny has committed a series of bizarre murders, we are prohibited from revealing it. Anything in between, if there can be anything in between, would likewise be privileged.

All this work we are doing is essentially to satisfy our own curiosity, and our energies could be better spent in helping defend our client against the charge he faces, not what he might have done besides that. The only legally ethical justification for our actions is to claim that we are preparing for the remote possibility that Dylan will learn what we are learning, and we will have to defend against his use of that knowledge against Kenny. Having said that, I certainly won’t be charging Kenny for any of the hours we spend on this end of the investigation.

I ask Laurie to devote herself full-time to learning about these mysterious deaths. I want her to investigate each one individually, much as I did Darryl Anderson’s drowning in the ocean off Asbury Park. Maybe she can clear each case as definitely not a murder, but I doubt it.

Marcus is going to continue to guard me, since our concerns about Quintana are absolutely real. Quintana may not have killed Preston, but he’s already sent people after me, and Adam’s fate is testimony to his ruthlessness. This is a bad guy, whether our courtroom claims of his involvement in the Preston murder are true or not.

Lying in bed is when I do some of my best thinking. Tonight Laurie lies next to me, awake, so instead of just rattling around in my head, the words I am thinking come out through my mouth. “The thing that gnaws at me, in a good way, if there can be such a thing as good gnawing…”

Laurie gets frustrated with my lengthy preamble. “Spit it out, Andy.”

“Okay. None of these other deaths were ruled murder by the police, not a single one. Assuming the worst, that Kenny killed all of them, why would he have done such a good job covering up his guilt those times, and then with Preston he just about holds up a neon sign saying ‘I’m guilty’? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“So maybe someone else did them all, including Preston.”

“That fails the same logic test,” I say. “Whoever it was that did it, why would they make all of the others not look like murder and this one so obvious? To frame Kenny? They could have done that just by killing Preston. Why kill all the others?”

“Somehow the Preston killing is different,” she says. “If it wasn’t Kenny that did it, but instead somebody trying to frame him, the other killings weren’t part of that plan. Don’t forget, if Adam didn’t happen to notice them, we’d think Preston was the only death in the case.”

I’m just about to fall asleep when something makes me think of Bobby Pollard, the wheelchair-bound trainer who has known Kenny since high school. Pollard was in a terrible accident, one that cost him his ability to walk. It clearly could have cost him his life but did not. Should he be on our list as well? Was he supposed to be another victim?

It’s eleven-thirty at night, but the Pollards told me I could call on them at any time, so I take that literally and dial their number. Teri answers, and I explain that I need to talk to her husband. My plan is to meet with them after court tomorrow, but such is their eagerness to help that they give me the option of coming over tonight. They apologetically say that they can’t come to me because their son is asleep and it takes Bobby time to get dressed and become fully mobile.

I’m wound up too tight to sleep, so I figure I might as well go over there. I wake Laurie and tell her where I’m going so that she won’t be worried again. She offers to go with me, but I tell her I’m fine on my own, and she seems quite happy to accept that and go back to sleep.

I leave the house, glancing around for Marcus on the way to my car. I don’t see him, but I know he’s there. I hope he’s there.

Twenty minutes later the Pollards are serving me coffee and cinnamon cake in their dining room. “Bobby, I want to talk to you about your accident” is how I start.

His face reflects an understandable confusion. “My accident? I thought this was about Kenny.”

“There’s a great deal I can’t tell you, including how the various pieces come together. I just ask that you answer my questions as best you can, and reserve any questions of your own until the time I can answer them.”

Bobby looks over at Teri, and she nods her assent, which I think is the only reason he lets this continue. “What about my accident?”

“Tell me how it happened.”

“I already did. I was driving in Spain, and I went off the road. The car rolled over, and I never walked again.” His voice is angry, as if I shouldn’t be making him go through this. He’s right; I shouldn’t.

“What caused you to go off the road?” I ask.

“Another car went out of its lane. I tried to avoid it, give it room, but I ran out of room myself.”

“Who was driving the other car?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. They didn’t stop. I don’t even know if they saw what happened to me.”

“Do you think they did what they did intentionally?”

“I never have, no. Do you know something I don’t?”

I ignore the question, trying to get through this. “Who was with you on the trip to Europe?”

He thinks and names four male friends, unfortunately including Kenny. Then, “Teri and I had just gotten married a few months before; it was sort of a last fling with the guys.” He looks at her. “Not that kind of fling… you know what I mean.”

She smiles her understanding, not particularly jealous of anything that might have happened almost a decade ago, before her husband was paralyzed. Then she turns to me. “I was pregnant, so we got married. We were only eighteen.”

I ask Bobby, “Why weren’t your friends with you when you went for the drive?”

He shrugs. “I don’t remember. They probably went to the beach.”

I’m learning more than I need to know, so I apologize for bothering them and leave without answering their questions. What I did was not fair to them, but it provided me with another piece of information. The list of tragically unlucky friends and acquaintances of Kenny Schilling’s now includes Bobby Pollard.

Heading to court for the first day of the defense’s case, I can’t remember ever being a part of a situation like this. I’m defending my client against a murder charge while at the same time leading an investigation to determine whether or not he is a serial murderer. And whether I win or lose the trial, I can never reveal the results of that investigation.

I’ve decided to break our defense case into two parts. The first will deal with showing the jury who Kenny Schilling is and how unlikely it is that he would suddenly turn killer. The second phase will be devoted to presenting the jury with other alternatives, other possible killers, and to show them the dangerous world in which Troy Preston lived. Neither of the two parts is likely to carry the day; the overwhelming physical evidence, plus Kenny’s behavior during the siege at his house, are still looking impregnable. We are in very deep trouble.

Just before the session begins, I call Sam Willis and ask him to add Bobby Pollard to the list of people he is investigating. I tell him not to bother checking whether Kenny had the geographic proximity to have caused the accident, since Bobby has already said that he did. Rather, I want Sam to check into the accident itself, to learn whether the Spanish police considered it a possible attempted murder.

I spend the day parading a group mostly consisting of professional football players in front of the starstruck jury. Each witness talks of his admiration for Kenny and the total absurdity that anyone could believe Kenny could take another life.

I would be bored to death if Dylan did not look so uncomfortable. He’s afraid that the jury will buy into what these people are saying just because of who they are, and he spends little time cross-examining so that they’ll leave more quickly. Dylan does get each to say that he has no actual knowledge as to the circumstances of Preston’s death and cannot provide Kenny with any kind of alibi.

I call off our meeting tonight; I’m well prepared for tomorrow’s witnesses, and I’m better off spending the time trying to extricate myself from my well-deserved depression. It’s not one of our regular sleepover nights, but I ask Laurie to stay, and she does. I barbecue, and in deference to my fragile mental state, she doesn’t even insist on fish.

We’re just sitting down to eat when Pete Stanton, with characteristic perfect timing, shows up. We invite him to join us, since I always make extra, and he does. At least he didn’t bring his extended family with him.

Once Pete is finished inhaling his food, he gets around to telling us why he came by. Quintana was released from custody this morning, and the police have heard from informants that he’s going to come after me. Pete wants to make sure that I’m well protected, and Laurie tells him that Marcus and Willie are on the case.

“But you’re sure it was Quintana that had Adam killed?” I ask.

Pete nods. “It was Quintana, unless you’ve got some other homicidal maniacs after you. With your mouth it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“So the investigation is closed?”

He shakes his head. “Unsolved murders are never closed. But this one ain’t getting solved, if that’s what you mean.”

I know exactly what he means, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fearing for my life. I’m forming the germ of an idea on how to deal with the situation, but I’m not ready to verbalize it yet, and certainly not to Pete.

“When can I get Adam’s notes?”

“There weren’t any.”

“Come on, Pete, of course there were. He took notes on everything.” Pete’s shaking his head, so I ask, “Did you check his hotel room? And his car?”

“What kind of a moron do you think I am?” he asks. “I’m telling you, there were no notes, zero.”

Laurie jumps in. “He had them, Pete. Legal pads… lots of them. I watched him take them.”

Laurie and I look at each other, each knowing what the other is thinking. If whoever killed Adam took his notes, then it may not have been Quintana’s people at all. They would have no use for them. And if it was somebody else, and they wanted those notes, then it’s just possible that I wasn’t the target after all.

The murderer may have killed exactly whom he intended to kill. Adam may have come upon something that caused his death, something that he never got a chance to tell me.

We tell our suspicions to Pete, who cautions us against jumping to quick conclusions. Adam could have done something else with the notes. He could have shipped them back to LA or left them in some storage place we don’t know about.

I don’t buy it and I tell him so, which causes him concern that we are going to view Quintana as less of a danger. “He’s coming after you, Andy. We know that, whether he killed Adam or not.”

“Pete, do you know that Quintana is a murderer? I mean, know it for a fact?”

“Of course.”

I press him. “I don’t mean know it like you ‘knew’ he killed Adam. I mean absolutely know it beyond any doubt.”

He nods. “I know it beyond any doubt. And I’m not talking about the people he’s destroyed by selling his drugs. I’m talking about murder. I would flick the switch on him tonight if I could.”

Pete thinks I’m asking the questions in order to confirm that Quintana is a danger to me, but I’m not.

I have no intention of telling him why I’m asking.

* * * * *

I CALL A SEVEN A.M. meeting at my office with Kevin, Laurie, and Sam Willis. Laurie and I lay out our developing theory about Adam’s murder, and Kevin’s excitement is obvious. Not only does he agree with our reasoning, but he makes the point that if someone killed Adam because of what he learned about the deaths of the athletes, then Kenny is innocent. He’s been in jail and is thus the one person with an ironclad alibi for Adam’s murder.

I ask Sam if it’s possible to go on my computer, the one Adam was using, and retrace where he had been on it.

“I can’t do it in depth, but I know someone who can. I’ll bring him in right away.”

“What about the phone records?” I ask. “If he made calls those last couple of days, can you find out who he called?”

He nods. “That’s easy. And once I’m in there, I can also lower your phone bill if you want.”

We agree to meet right after court at my house to get an update on Sam and Laurie’s progress. Kevin and I head for court; we’ve got a case to put on and a client to defend. A client who just might well be innocent.

Just before court starts, I go out to the side of the building where I won’t be overheard. I call Vince Sanders on my cell phone and tell him I have a big favor to ask.

“What else is new?” he asks sarcastically.

“I want you to set up a meeting for me tomorrow night with Dominic Petrone.” Vince knows Petrone fairly well, as he knows pretty much everyone in America, and he has served as an intermediary between myself and the mob boss before.

“You mind telling me why? ’Cause he’s gonna want to know.”

“Just tell him it’s about Quintana. That’s all I can tell you right now.”

“I’ll get back to you.” A click indicates the call is over; Vince never says goodbye.

My first witness today is Donald Richards, a private investigator whose main client is the National Football League. Walter Simmons had put me in touch with him. I take Richards through the way he works for the NFL, leading him into a discussion of the great lengths they go to in protecting the integrity of their game.

“What kinds of things does the NFL worry about?” I ask.

“Gambling is number one. Drugs are a close second.”

He describes the drug testing program, which is not as rigorous as it could be, but substantially more intrusive than those for the other major sports. The NFL, he explains, has comparatively good relations with the players’ union, and therefore the players will submit to testing that the baseball players, for example, will not.

“Was Troy Preston one of the people you were hired to investigate?’

He nods. “Yes. On three separate occasions.”

He goes on to explain that Preston had failed a drug test, which is a red flag for the NFL. Richards was assigned to find out the extent of Preston’s involvement with drugs, and based on his initial reports, follow-ups were deemed necessary.

“Why is that?” I ask.

“Because I learned that Mr. Preston was not just using… he was selling.”

I ask Richards to provide the details of his investigation, and he doesn’t hesitate to implicate the deceased Paul Moreno and the unfortunately very alive Cesar Quintana. It’s a weird sensation that I feel while he is doing this, knowing that Quintana will freak out and redouble his efforts to kill me when he finds out that I have once again exposed his name to unwanted worldwide publicity.

Richards is on the stand all morning, and his performance is impressive. I make a note to mention him to Laurie, in case we want to add him to our team on future cases. It hits me that Laurie may well not be on that team, the first time I’ve thought about that possibility in a while. This has been a difficult and frustrating case, but if nothing else, it has served its purpose as a diversion from my personal concerns.

Judge Harrison cancels the afternoon session because of some other matters that he has to attend to, so Dylan’s cross-examination of Richards will be put off to Monday. I call and ask Sam to come to the house at three to report on what he’s learned, and I tell Kevin and Laurie to be there as well. Willie Miller joins us, along with his dog, Cash. Willie has been hanging around as part of my “security detail,” and it does make me feel more secure, though I would never admit it.

Sam starts off with an apology that he hasn’t made more progress, but he’s only had a handful of hours to work on it. Sam has learned that Adam was apparently focusing on something involving the media; he was trying to locate a Web site for a magazine called Inside Football, which hasn’t existed for a number of years. He also placed three phone calls to the New York Times in the thirty-six hours before he died.

“Any other significant calls?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No, doesn’t seem to be. Mostly to players Kenny knew… families of the deceased guys… that kind of thing.”

“Any idea why he would be interested in a sports magazine and the New York Times?” Kevin asks me.

“No… but Adam’s parents mentioned that he was excited about talking to famous sportswriters. I thought they meant football players, but I didn’t question them about it. Maybe they were right.”

I call Vince, whose connections would make him the ultimate authority in matters of this type. He’s not in, and I leave a message for him to call me back ASAP. In the meantime Laurie brings us up-to-date on what she has learned.

None of the deaths were considered possible homicides by the various police entities that investigated, which we already knew. However, Laurie has checked into four of them so far, and when viewed through the prism that we now hold, they could look quite suspicious. As examples, she cites the hit-and-run and Matt Lane’s hunting accident. The five heart attacks are bewildering, and I ask Laurie to check with a doctor, one we sometimes use as an expert witness, about whether there is a drug that can cause a heart attack and not show up in an autopsy.

Vince calls back within a few minutes and sounds annoyed. “I told you I’d call you back when I set up the meeting,” he says.

“That’s not why I’m calling,” I say.

“Jesus, what the hell do you need now?”

“Vince, I’m going to ask you a question. I just want you to answer it and not assume it’s important to the Schilling case. I don’t want you to start tracking it down as a possible hot story.”

“Then you must be trying to reach a different Vince,” he says.

“You’ll get whatever I have first. But this can’t go public in any way now.”

He thinks for a moment. “Okay.”

“Did you ever hear of a magazine called Inside Football?” I ask.

“Sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

“It’s a magazine that’s folded. I need a list of the people that wrote for it in the last ten years and copies of any stories that included Kenny Schilling or Troy Preston.” I have a hunch and decide to throw it in. “I also want to know if any of the writers are currently at the New York Times.”

“That’s all?” he asks.

“That’s all.”

“Give me two hours,” he says.

“You’re a genius.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Vince then proceeds to use up five minutes of the two hours making me swear repeatedly that he will get whatever story comes out of his labor, as well as any story that doesn’t. I’m happy to do so. Vince’s contacts are amazing, and if I’m going to need to learn anything in the media world, he is a person who can absolutely make it happen.

Two hours gives me just enough time to take Tara for a short tennis ball session in the park, as long as I drive there. I haven’t thrown a ball with Tara in a while, but one of her twelve million great qualities is that she doesn’t hold a grudge. Willie and Cash join us, which is fine with me: Though Tara doesn’t have many dog friends, she has always liked Cash.

Cash is the more competitive of the two dogs; it’s very important to him that he retrieve each thrown ball. Tara is more out for the fun of the game, though I toss the ball in her direction often enough that she gets her share.

Willie lets me do the throwing, and I note that his eyes are constantly sweeping the park, probably looking for one of Quintana’s people. I’m just about to suggest that we leave when I hear Willie say, “Andy, get the dogs and get in the car.”

We are near the Little League fields, and I see Willie looking off in the direction of what we called Dead Man’s Curve when we rode bikes down it as kids. It’s about three hundred yards away, and I can see a dark sedan navigating the curve, which will eventually lead to where we are. It is a classically ominous-looking car.

I don’t pause to ask questions, yelling for Tara and Cash to follow me. All three of us are in the backseat within seconds, and Willie follows along right behind us and gets in the driver’s seat. He pulls out, quickly but without screeching the tires, and in moments we’re driving in the security and anonymity of Route 4.

“Was that who I think it was?” I ask.

Willie looks at me in the rearview mirror and shrugs. “Don’t know. But I didn’t think we should wait around to find out.”

“I can’t run away every time I see a car,” I say.

“What are you gonna do, stay and fight?” he asks. “They’ve got Uzis, you’ve got a tennis ball.”

This is no way to live.

* * * * *

THE PHONE IS RINGING as I walk into the house.

“You want me to fax you the articles?” is Vince’s replacement for a normal person’s “Hello.”

“Fax them.”

“I’ll include the list of writers, but only one of them works for the Times.”

“What’s his name?”

“George Karas.”

George Karas has, over the last few years, become one of the more well-known sportswriters in the business. He’s done this, as have others, by branching out past writing into television, becoming one of the pundits that are called on to give opinions about the games men play.

Karas would therefore certainly qualify as a “famous” sportswriter, someone Adam might well have bragged to his parents that he had spoken to. It gives me more hope that we’re on the right track.

“How do I get to him?” I ask.

“He’s waiting for your call,” Vince says, and gives me Karas’s direct phone number.

“Vince, this is great. I owe you big-time,” I say.

“You got that right. That reminds me, I set up the meeting with Petrone.”

“For when?”

“Eight o’clock tomorrow night. They’ll pick you up in front of your office.”

“Thanks, Vince. I really appreciate all of this.”

Click.

Since Vince is no longer on the phone, I hang up my end and call Karas at the number Vince gave me, which turns out to be his cell phone. We’re only ten seconds into our conversation when I catch another break: He’s on his way home to Fort Lee and offers to meet me for a cup of coffee.

We meet at a diner on Route 4 in Paramus, and Karas is waiting at a table when I arrive. I recognize him because I watch all those idiotic sports panel shows that he’s on. I introduce myself, then say, “I really appreciate your meeting me like this.”

“Vince told me he’d cut my balls off if I didn’t talk to you,” he says.

“He’s a fun guy, isn’t he?”

He nods. “A barrel of laughs. Does this meeting have something to do with the Schilling case? Vince wouldn’t tell me.”

His question is a little jarring on a personal note. I keep forgetting that the Schilling case, more than ever before, has at least made me nationally recognizable, if not a celebrity. The truth is that more people in this diner would know who I am than the “famous” sportswriter I’m having coffee with.

“It may. It depends on what you have to say. But I have to tell you that this is on background… off the record.”

He’s surprised by that. “Am I here as a journalist?”

“Partly,” I say. “But I need assurance that you won’t use it as a journalist, at least for the time being.”

He thinks for a few moments, then reluctantly nods. “Okay. Shoot.”

“A man that was working for me as an investigator was murdered last week. His name was Adam Strickland. Did he contact you around that time?”

Karas’s face clouds slightly as he searches for a connection to the name. It’s disappointing, but that disappointment fades when I see the light go on in his eyes. “Yes… I think that was the name. My God, that was the young man that was murdered in your office?”

“Yes. You spoke to him?”

Karas is quiet for a few moments, either trying to remember the conversation or trying to deal with this close brush with someone’s sudden death. “He didn’t tell me he was working for you… he just said he was a private investigator. I assumed he was working for some tabloid rag…”

“Can you tell me specifically what he asked you?”

“He was interested in the days when I did some freelance work for a magazine called Inside Football. I put together a high school all-American team, and we ran it as a large spread.”

“Is that the team that Kenny Schilling and Troy Preston were on?”

He nods. “Yes. That’s what he was asking me about.”

“What specifically did you tell him?”

He shrugs. “Really not much. I told him that we picked players from all over the country. It’s not an exact science; these are high school kids, playing against all different levels of competition. We looked at their size, their stats, how hard the big-time colleges were recruiting them, that kind of thing.”

I nod; as a sports degenerate I know something about this stuff. Great high school basketball players are far easier to spot than their football counterparts. Kids that stand out in football in high school often can’t even cut it on the college level.

“Did he ask you for a list of players that were there?”

He nods. “Yeah, I wasn’t going to go to the trouble of finding it, but he seemed like a decent guy…”

“He was a very decent guy,” I say.

“I could tell. Anyway, I keep good files, so I faxed it to him.”

I’m now close to positive that we’re on to something. The list was faxed to Adam, it was important to Adam, but it was nowhere to be found in his possessions. The killer almost certainly took it, and I don’t know any drug gang killers that like football quite that much.

Karas tells me about the weekend the players spent in New York, and I ask him if he can recall anything unusual about it, especially anything concerning Schilling or Preston, but he cannot.

“I wasn’t a chaperone, you know? There were around twenty-five guys, and most of them had never been to New York, so they weren’t too interested in me telling them stories.”

He thinks some more, then adds, “We rented out the two upstairs private rooms in an Italian restaurant that Saturday night. I think it was on the Upper East Side. Divided it up, offense in one room, defense in the other. I must have been with the offense, because I remember Schilling being there.”

He has nothing more to add, so he asks me a few questions about what this is about and how it relates to the trial. I deflect them, but promise he’ll be the second to know, after Vince. Knowing Vince as he does, he understands.

I thank him for his help, and we both leave. He promises to fax me the list tonight, and I tell him the earlier the better.

That list could answer a lot of questions-and raise new ones. We’re getting somewhere; I can feel it.

I go home and tell Laurie what I’ve learned, and I can see the excitement in her face as she hears it. It’s not the look of a woman who wants to go to Findlay and plan a schedule for the school crossing guards, but I don’t say anything like that. I don’t want to blow it.

Laurie and I spend the next hour and a half watching the fax machine not ring. I take advantage of the time to think about the trial, which is weirdly running on a parallel track. When we learn more about the mysterious deaths, I’m going to have to find a way to bring those two tracks together. That’s not going to be easy.

The fax machine finally rings, and it seems as if it takes a little over a week for the paper to come crawling out. It turns out there are two pages, and the first is a note from Karas. He writes that he’s just remembered that at the Saturday night party the offensive players asked him to leave the room for a brief time. They said they were going to have a “team meeting.” He considered that a weird thing to request and feared that they had brought some drugs that they were going to use once he left. Not too long later they invited him back in, and to his relief he saw no evidence of drug use.

The second faxed page is the list of high school players who were brought to New York that weekend. Laurie and I compare it to the names of the deceased young men, and we make a stunning discovery.

Seven of the eight who died were members of the offense, the same group that included Kenny Schilling and Troy Preston. The same group that asked George Karas to leave the room so that they could have a team meeting.

Kenny Schilling was close enough geographically to have killed each of those people, though they were spread out across the country. Kenny played professionally, and he traveled extensively, and those young men died at times when Kenny was nearby. Darryl Anderson, the Asbury Park drowning victim, is not on the list.

But there is another name on that list, and if Kenny was there, he was there as well. I’ve been viewing him as a victim, and there’s still a good chance of that, but I’ve just adjusted my view.

I am talking about Bobby Pollard, high school all-American, Giants trainer, friend of Kenny’s.

Possible victim, possible serial killer.

* * * * *

MY CLIENT IS INNOCENT. I am almost positive of that now. It would be nice if I had known it sooner, since I might have been able to develop an effective strategy to defend him. A secondary but significant benefit would be that Cesar Quintana would not be hell-bent on killing me.

There are a few questions that need to be resolved before I can include Bobby Pollard on my list of legitimate suspects. The primary one is his injury: I’m not sure he is really paralyzed. If I’m wrong about that, I’m wrong about his possible guilt, because there’s no way he could have committed these murders without mobility.

The key factor that applies to both Bobby and Kenny, the one that leads me to suspect Bobby, is their availability. Most of these deaths occurred while the Giants were in a nearby town for a game. Players are pretty busy during those trips, and I’m not sure they would have the time to plan and execute these camouflaged killings. I assume that trainers also have serious constraints on their time, but I’ll have to check that out. But if Kenny was in the town, Bobby was there as well.

I call Kevin and Sam, give them each some assignments, and ask them to come over tomorrow at noon. I’ll be spending the morning at the jail, talking to Kenny.

I have a tough time sleeping tonight. There is so much to be done, and we have very little time and no real idea how to proceed. That’s not a great combination.

I’m up early and leave for the jail by eight-thirty. Willie arrives just before I go, for the purpose of accompanying me. He seems to be relishing the role of bodyguard, and that’s fine with me because my concern about Quintana is pretty much with me twenty-four hours a day.

We’re at the jail by nine o’clock, and though I don’t offer Willie the option of going inside with me, he makes it a point to decline just in case. Willie spent a lot of years in prison and is not about to enter one again, even if he’s free to leave.

Kenny thinks I’m there to discuss the possibility of him testifying. It’s something he has expressed a desire to do, but until now I’ve put off the discussion as premature. That hasn’t changed.

“That’s not what I want to talk about,” I say. “Something important has come up.”

If a person can look hopeful and cringe at the same time, Kenny pulls it off. He doesn’t know whether this is going to be good or bad news, but he instinctively knows it will be important. “Talk to me,” he says.

“I want you to think back to your senior year in high school, when that magazine made you an all-American and brought you to New York for the weekend.”

He nods. “That’s where I met Troy. I told you that.”

“Can you think of anything unusual, memorable, that happened on that weekend?”

He thinks for a moment, then shakes his head and smiles. “Not unless you call drinking beer unusual.”

“I’m thinking a little more unusual than that.”

“Then I can’t think of anything,” he says.

“On that Saturday night you went to a restaurant with the rest of the players. There was a sportswriter there, and you and the other members of the offense asked him to leave the room so you could have a team meeting. Do you remember that?”

Again he thinks for a while, searching his memory. That weekend seems not to be something that he has thought about in a long time and maybe never was terribly significant in his life. I’m finding I believe his reactions, now that I believe in his innocence. It’s a feeling of substantial relief.

“It definitely rings a bell. Let me think about it for a minute,” he says.

“Take your time.”

He does, and after a short while he smiles slightly and nods. “I remember… we had it all figured out. We knew some of us would make it big in the pros someday and that some wouldn’t. Nobody thought they’d be the ones not to make it, but with injuries and stuff you never know.”

“Right,” I say, hoping to move him along.

“So we decided that the ones who did make it would get these huge bonuses, and we all agreed that they would take care of the guys who didn’t. Like an insurance policy.”

“So it was a pact?” I ask.

He grins. “Yeah. I told you we had a lot of beer.”

“This pact… is that why you’ve taken care of Bobby Pollard all these years? Gotten him a job as your trainer?”

He shakes his head. “Of course not. I hadn’t even remembered about that high school thing until you just asked. Bobby’s a friend… and everything he dreamed about fell apart. So I helped him. But it wasn’t charity, you know? He’s a damn good trainer.”

“Could anyone in that room have taken that pact seriously? Could Bobby?”

His head shake is firm. “No way… once the beer wore off… no way. Come on… we were kids. Why are you asking me this stuff?”

“Remember those guys I asked you about… the ones that had died? They were all there that night. They were all members of the offense on the Inside Football high school all-American team.” I take out the list and show it to him, along with the list of the deceased.

“Goddamn,” he says, and then he says it again, and again. “You’re sure about this?”

I nod. “And I’m also sure that you were in the general area at the time of each death. You and Bobby Pollard.” I’m not yet positive that what I’m saying about Pollard is true, but I have no doubt that the facts will come out that way.

“You think Bobby killed these people?” he asks.

“Somebody did, and he’s as good a bet as any. And he may have killed a young man who was working for me as well, when that young man discovered the truth.”

“It just doesn’t seem possible. Why would he kill them? Because they didn’t give him part of their bonuses? Some of these guys didn’t even get drafted by the NFL.”

It’s a good point, and one of the things I’m going to have to figure out. “How good a player was Bobby?” I ask.

“He was okay… not as good as he thought. He wasn’t real quick, but in high school he was bigger than the guys he was playing against. In college, and especially the pros, everybody is big. So you gotta be fast.”

“So Bobby wouldn’t have made it in the NFL if he hadn’t gotten hurt?”

“Nah. He wouldn’t even have been that good in college. But he’d never admit that, and don’t tell him I said it.”

Kenny asks me what effect my theory will have on his trial and is not happy when I tell him that right now I haven’t decided how to handle it. What I don’t tell him is that his life will depend on my making the right decision.

Willie and I head back home, where Laurie, Kevin, and Sam are waiting for me. Sam has spent the night and morning performing more miracles on the computer and has already placed Pollard geographically within range of the murders.

“And I’m gonna get the medical records,” he says with a smile.

“When will you have them?” I ask.

“As soon as you let me get the hell out of here.”

“Can’t you do it from here? Adam got killed for doing just what you’re doing.”

He shakes his head. “Adam got killed because he called Pollard and must have mistakenly alerted him to what was going on. At the time, he probably didn’t realize Pollard was the killer, but Pollard must have known he’d figure it out soon. I won’t make the same mistake.”

“Come on, Sam, you’re going way too fast. We’re not nearly that sure that Pollard is our guy.”

Sam just smiles. “No harm, no foul.”

He knows I’ll understand his cryptic comment, and I do. It’s a basketball phrase, which when twisted into this situation means that if we pursue this strategy and come up empty, what have we lost? We might as well go for it full out and see what happens. He’s right.

“Okay, but can’t you do all this on my computer?”

He snorts. “You call that thing you have a computer? You want this to take forever?”

I don’t, so I let Sam leave. Kevin then brings me up-to-date on our legal situation and the few precedents that deal with the kind of predicament we are in.

None of what we are doing has in any fashion been introduced into the trial. The judge, jury, and prosecution all have no idea that Troy Preston’s murder is one in a series or that Bobby Pollard is a suspect. All we have done as a defense is try to poke holes in the prosecution’s case and shift suspicion onto Troy’s drug connections.

What we have learned would be a bomb detonating in the courtroom, and we have to figure out how to minimize the damage our client might suffer in the explosion. After all, we could be setting up Kenny as a serial killer. Right now our only credible reason for thinking the killer is Pollard, rather than Kenny, is the fact that the imprisoned Kenny could not have killed Adam. It is possible that Quintana really did kill Adam, thinking he was me. Perhaps Adam just placed his notes in a location that the police haven’t uncovered. I don’t believe that scenario, but it’s only important what Judge Harrison and the jury believe.

An even more immediate problem is how to get all this admitted in the first place. There is a very real possibility that Judge Harrison won’t let it in. We can’t even prove that the other deaths were murders; in each case the police say otherwise. Harrison could rule that none of this is relevant, and there’s not an appeals court in the free world that would overturn him.

Laurie has learned from the doctor that a drug form of potassium not only can cause heart attacks when administered in an overdose but would be undetectable in an autopsy unless the coroner had a specific reason to screen for potassium poisoning. The reason it’s so hard to find is that once death occurs, cells in the body break down and release potassium on their own. Potassium as an agent of homicide is very unlikely to be discovered by a coroner, especially in small-town jurisdictions.

This news points even more directly at Pollard, since as a team trainer he has substantial contact with the medical staff and the drugs that they use. He would also have access to their prescription pads.

I have a four o’clock meeting with Pollard, which had been planned to discuss his potential testimony, scheduled for sometime this week. I don’t want to cancel it because I don’t want to give him the slightest hint that there is anything unusual going on.

Laurie wants to come with me, no doubt because she remembers all too well what happened to Adam. I decide to go alone, for the same reason I didn’t want to cancel the meeting. I don’t want Bobby Pollard to have the slightest inkling that there are new developments.

We meet at the Pollards’, in deference to his difficulty in getting around. I’m growing increasingly suspicious of that difficulty, but I’m not about to reveal that suspicion.

Teri Pollard greets me as warmly as she did the first time I was at their house, and I accept lemonade and home-baked cookies from the myriad of refreshments that she offers me. I can’t help feeling sorry for her; she has devoted her life to Bobby Pollard, and if I’m right, and successful, it’s all going to come crashing down on her.

Having been a reluctant witness herself in Dylan’s case, Teri asks if I mind if she sits in on my meeting with Bobby. I tell her that’s fine, and she brings me into the den, where Bobby waits in his wheelchair. I start my conversation with either Bobby Pollard an innocent paraplegic or Bobby Pollard an injury-faking serial killer.

I don’t want to lie to him at this point, so I’m careful in how I phrase my comments and questions. “Character witnesses don’t generally add to the facts of the case, but simply offer their high opinions of the defendant. I assume your view would be that Kenny Schilling is not the type of man that would commit murder?”

He nods. “Absolutely. I know him better than anyone.”

We go through these platitudes for about ten minutes, at which point I switch to questions that Dylan might ask him, so as to prepare him. I don’t make the questions too difficult, since Dylan would have no reason to attack him.

Once we’re finished, we chat in more general terms about football and the Giants’ prospects without Kenny. His hope is to have Kenny back in a couple of weeks, which would be ample time for a play-off run.

I tell Bobby that I’ll give him at least twenty-four hours’ notice before he testifies. I leave out the part about ripping him apart on the stand and about making sure he spends the rest of his life in a seven-by-ten-foot cell. There’ll be time to tell him that later.

I head home and prepare for my meeting with Dominic Petrone. His people pick me up at eight P.M. sharp. Except for shrinks, mobsters are the most punctual people I know. The driver tells me to sit in the passenger seat, and I notice when I do that his partner is stationed directly behind me. I feel like Paulie being driven by Clemenza into the city to find apartments where the button men can go to the “mattresses.” This driver doesn’t have any cannoli, but if he pulls over to get out and take a piss, I’m outta here.

They drive me to the back entrance of Vico’s, an Italian restaurant in Totowa. It has always been considered a mob hangout, a rumor that I can now officially confirm.

The driver tells me to walk in through the back door, which I do. I’m met by an enormous man who frisks me and brings me into a private room where Dominic Petrone is waiting.

Petrone is a rather charming man, early sixties, salt-and-pepper hair, with a dignified manner that one would expect of a successful head of a large business. He’s a typical CEO of a company where the “E” stands for “executions.” He greets me graciously, as he might an old but not terribly close friend, and suggests I sit down. I find it a smart thing to do what Petrone suggests, so I take a seat opposite him.

The table is set for dinner for one, and in fact Petrone is already eating his bruschetta appetizer. I’ve got a hunch I’m not invited for dinner. “What can I do for you?” he asks.

“I may be able to give you Cesar Quintana,” I say.

“Give him to me for what purpose?”

“That’s up to you,” I say. “Whatever you decide, all that I care about is that he no longer wants to kill me.”

“You say you ‘may’ be able to give him to me?”

I nod. “I’m pretty sure I can, but I haven’t decided yet if I want to. I won’t know that until I’m in the moment.”

I proceed to tell him my plan, the bottom line being that I will place a call to him if I’m going to give him Quintana. If I do, he’ll have to be ready to move immediately, though I’m not yet telling him where this will take place.

He nods, as if it all makes perfect sense, though I’m sure he considers this the most ridiculous plan he’s ever heard. It’s also got to be, from his perspective, almost too good to be true. “Is there something else you want from me, something you haven’t yet mentioned?”

“Just one thing,” I say. “Can you cash a check?”

* * * * *

TODAY MIGHT BE the weirdest midtrial Sunday I’ve ever spent. I have witnesses scheduled for tomorrow, but they’re part of a strategy that I’ve decided to abandon, so there’s no reason for me to call them.

All I can do is wait to see if Sam can come up with enough information to make my new strategy viable, and if he does, I’ll have to figure out how to convince Judge Harrison to let me use it.

The first thing I do is call Willie Miller and tell him that Petrone has agreed to my terms and that he should tell Marcus to move forward on our plan. I haven’t brought Laurie into this operation because it’s both dangerous and illegal. She would try to stop me, or perhaps get involved herself, and neither of those options is acceptable to me.

With that call accomplished, I have to fill the rest of the day. I would take Tara out for a long walk, to clear my head and enjoy the autumn air, except for the fact that a Mexican drug lord is sworn to kill me. I’m trying to deal with that, but for now the idea of bullets flying through that autumn air puts a damper on things.

With no other viable alternatives, I am forced to sit with Tara and watch NFL football all day. I have seen less football so far this season than in any other in recent memory, and I can’t make up for that in one day, but I’m going to try.

The Giants game is particularly interesting to me. On the field their running game looks as if it’s mired in quicksand, and on the sidelines I catch occasional glimpses of Bobby Pollard, taping ankles and generally performing his job as trainer. If I do my job right, both the on-and off-field situations are about to change dramatically.

Laurie plays her “little woman” role perfectly, bringing Tara and me whatever chips, beer, biscuits, and water we might need. I haven’t thought about Laurie leaving in a while, and when I do, it is with increasing confidence that she won’t. How could she give up this much fun?

Sam and Kevin come over at seven. Sam has tracked down some of Pollard’s medical records and vows he will get the rest. The fact that some of it originated in Europe makes things a little more complicated, but Sam has total confidence.

Kevin and I kick around our legal strategy to introduce this new slant on matters. The decision will completely rest with Judge Harrison, and Dylan will be crazed by the prospect of it. We agree that we will ask for a meeting in chambers before the start of court tomorrow, and we’ll take our best shot.

I wake up early and call Rita Gordon, the court clerk, and tell her of our desire to hold the meeting in the judge’s chambers, thereby delaying the start of court. I tell Rita that it is an urgent matter, because I want the judge to fully expect to be dealing with a very important issue.

Kevin and I arrive before Dylan, and we informally chat with the judge for the five minutes until he does. We are prohibited from talking about the case, and because of the occupation of the defendant, we can’t even do what would come naturally and talk about football.

When Dylan does arrive, I get right to it. “Judge Harrison,” I say, “there has been a very significant new development which causes us to ask for a continuance.”

Continuances are not something Judge Harrison willingly dispenses, and he peers down his glasses at me. “I would suggest you’ll have to be slightly more specific than that” is his understatement.

I want to dole out as little information as possible, but I’m fully aware that I’m going to have to be forthcoming. I tell him about the high school all-American weekend and the fact that the majority of the young men on the offensive team have died.

His interest is obviously piqued. “They were murdered?”

“The police in those jurisdictions did not think so, but I believe that since there was no way they could have been aware of the connections, they came to the wrong conclusion.”

“Why couldn’t they have made the connections? You did.”

I nod. “That’s because we were looking for it, and we were still lucky to find it. The police in these areas couldn’t have known where to look. These young men for the most part did not know each other, and the all-American team for this magazine was obscure. Besides, many publications pick all-American teams; there would have been no reason to focus on this one.”

“And your client has an alibi for these other deaths?” he asks.

“At this point he does not, Your Honor. In fact, he was geographically close enough to each one to have committed them.”

Judge Harrison interrupts. “Let me see if I understand this. You are abandoning your view that the murder in this case was drug-related, and you have developed a new strategy, which is to tell the jury that while your client is on trial for one murder, he may well be a serial killer?”

I’m nervous as hell, but I can’t help smiling at how he puts it. “You find that unconventional, Your Honor?”

“That’s not quite the word I would use.”

“Your Honor, in the interests of justice, I want the jury to see the entire truth. I believe that this truth will also enable me to create a reasonable doubt as to my client’s guilt.”

Harrison turns to Dylan, who seems stunned by the direction this session has taken. “Mr. Campbell?”

Dylan is in a quandary. On the one hand, he would be thrilled to see the specter of Quintana and drugs out of the picture; on the other hand, he totally doesn’t trust me. This seems perfect for him, but he’s smart enough to know that if I want something, he shouldn’t.

Conflicted as he is, he decides on the one surefire approach: No matter what I want to do, he doesn’t want to give me the time to do it. “Your Honor, Mr. Carpenter is entitled to present whatever defense he wishes, but I see no reason for the trial to be delayed so that he can go on a fishing expedition to support a new strategy. Having said that, I assume his new witnesses would not be on the current witness list. Therefore, the state would reserve the right to request our own continuance, should we need time to prepare for our cross-examinations.”

Harrison turns to me. “How long a continuance are you requesting?”

Earlier in this session I used the words “in the interests of justice” because Judge Harrison is obliged to rule according to those interests, even if those rulings aren’t necessarily based on accepted court procedure. In a death penalty case the “interests of justice” principle becomes even more crucial. “To properly further the interests of justice, Your Honor, I would request one week.”

Dylan almost chokes. “Your Honor, we have a jury out there, and-”

Harrison cuts him off. “The trial is continued for two days. Court will resume at nine o’clock on Wednesday.”

I’m a little disappointed in the ruling; I was hoping for three days. But it should be enough time if we don’t waste any of it. I ask Judge Harrison to seal this proceeding for the time being, and for him to order that neither Dylan nor I reveal the substance of it, at least for now. Dylan argues, but I throw in another “interests of justice” argument, and Harrison agrees.

I head to a meeting in my office to finalize our plans, and if the radio news reports I hear on the way are a true indication, the media are going crazy over the just announced continuance. All that Judge Harrison has revealed is that it was requested by the defense, and as I near my office, I can see the media hordes outside waiting for me.

I call ahead and switch the meeting to my house, since I can more easily get in and out without having to deal with the press. They are there in force, but I come in the back way and then hold a thirty-second press conference on the porch.

“As you know, Judge Harrison has issued a gag order,” I say. “Gagged people by definition have no comment.”

Not being gagged themselves, reporters continue to bombard me with questions, but I briefly and disingenuously profess frustration at not being able to answer, and head back inside. Before long Kevin, Laurie, Sam, and Willie have made it through and join me in the den.

Willie calls me aside and tells me that Marcus has set things up as scheduled, and it gives me a pit in my stomach the size of Norway. To put it out of my mind and focus on the matter at hand takes a mental discipline that I’m not sure I have.

I can feel the different dynamic in this meeting compared to our previous ones. Until now we’ve been floundering, unsure where to go and how to get there. Now we have a viable plan, and our task is simply to execute it.

Kevin and I go over the meetings we need to have tomorrow with our witnesses, and Sam reassures me that he has recruited a friend highly competent and capable of setting our trap for Pollard.

To that end I call the Pollards, and Teri answers. I ask her to have Bobby pick up the other line. Laurie, Kevin, and Sam sit silently in the room as I wait, knowing that this conversation must go well for us to have a chance.

Bobby picks up, and I tell him that he is to testify Wednesday, though I’m not sure at what time. I’ll want him at the courthouse at nine A.M.

“No problem,” he says. “How come the trial was delayed?”

“The judge won’t let us talk about it, but it’s nothing for you to be concerned about,” I lie. “Your testimony will go forward as scheduled.”

“It’s nothing bad for Kenny?” Teri asks.

“Definitely not. It could even turn out to be good.”

“Great,” she says.

I take a deep breath; here comes the hard part. “Teri, with the way the media are all over everything that happens, this trial is as much about public relations as anything else. Maybe more.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she says. “The things they say about Kenny, it makes my blood boil.”

“Me too,” I say. “That’s why I want you in a TV studio on Wednesday doing interviews when Bobby finishes testifying. The other side is going to have people out there saying Bobby is wrong; we need you saying he’s right.”

“Whatever you need, but I was hoping to be there to support Bobby.”

I hate manipulating her, but I have no choice. I can’t have her at the courthouse, able to tell Bobby about the witnesses preceding his own testimony. “I’m sure Bobby wants you where you can most help Kenny. Isn’t that right, Bobby?”

“Absolutely,” he says, and she agrees.

“Bobby, do you need me to send someone to pick you up, or can you make it to court by yourself? I can get you through the back entrance, so you won’t have to go through any of the crowds.”

“I can drive,” he says, and the trap is set.

* * * * *

HINCHLIFFE STADIUM is an impressive relic, a former minor-league football and baseball stadium that sits overlooking the Passaic Falls. If I remember my Paterson history correctly, these falls, third largest in the country, were discovered by either Alexander Hamilton or George Hamilton.

The stadium now goes unused and is often rumored to be coming down. The old boy is about to have some excitement tonight. I’m standing near what used to be home plate, holding a briefcase and waiting. Within twenty minutes the shit might well be hitting the fan.

I thought I had planned for all eventualities, yet I now realize I should have planned for the fact that there would be no lights here. Fortunately, it is a clear night, and there is a substantial amount of moonlight. Visibility will not be a big problem. But what else have I forgotten?

I look at my watch and see that it’s ten P.M. I know what is happening at this moment. Marcus is picking up Quintana at a designated meeting place. He will determine to his satisfaction that Quintana is not armed, and they will start driving here to see me. Quintana does not know where I am, and he has promised to come alone.

Willie Miller is nearby in his own car. He is watching to see if any of Quintana’s men follow Marcus’s car. If they do not, all is fine. If they do, then Quintana is breaking our pact and planning to kill me.

In my briefcase is four hundred thousand dollars in cash. It is much lighter and takes up much less space than I expected. But it is a great deal of money, and it represents an amount I am willing to put at risk to ease my conscience and not feel like a murderer.

The message was sent to Quintana that I wanted to see him personally, and I would be willing to provide the four hundred thousand he lost the night Troy Preston was killed. If he comes alone and promises not to come after me anymore, he can have the money and our relationship comes to a less-than-poignant end. If he tries to take the money and still attempts to kill me, then when I have him killed, I will consider it self-defense.

My cell phone rings, and in the empty stadium it sounds like about two million decibels. I answer with “Yes?” and hear Willie’s voice on the other end. “They’re being followed,” he says.

“Are you sure?” I ask, though I know the answer.

“I’m sure,” Willie says.

I hang up the phone and call a number Petrone had given me. His designated person answers it, and I say, “Hinchliffe Stadium.”

His answer is a simple “We’ll be there.”

The next twenty-five minutes are the longest I have ever spent. Finally, I hear Marcus and Quintana coming from under the stands, walking toward me.

Quintana is tall and fairly well built, though standing next to Marcus, he looks like a toothpick seedling. He has a sneer on his face, probably perpetually, and it tells me that he believes he is in control. He’s not.

The first thing Quintana says is, “Show me the money.” Despite the seriousness of the moment, it strikes me as funny, as if Quintana is playing the movie version of the song-talking that Sam Willis does.

I’m tempted to respond, “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse,” but instead, I open the briefcase and show it to him.

“Did you come alone?” I ask.

“Yeah.” This guy is not much of a conversationalist.

“So you’ll take this money and we’re even?” I ask. “You won’t come after me anymore?”

“That’s what I said.”

I know he’s lying, but I hand him the briefcase. He puts it under his arm and yells out something in Spanish, to the men he knows are outside the stadium. I am not supposed to know that those men are there and that their function will be to come in and kill Marcus and me. Marcus just watches all this impassively, betraying almost no interest at all.

Suddenly, there is the sound of gunfire, the noise rattling the old stadium. Quintana reacts with surprise and concern, looking around to see what could be happening.

“You lied to me,” I say, my voice cracking slightly with nervousness. “Your men followed you so that you could have me killed. I called for some support, which was purely an act of self-defense. I’m sorry it worked out this way, but you left me no choice.”

Off to our left, Petrone’s men are entering the stadium. Quintana displays amazing quickness for a man his size, and I display amazing stupidity for a man any size. He grabs me before I can get out of the way and holds me in front of him so that my body is between him and the advancing gunmen.

I’m gripped by panic; I can’t imagine Petrone’s men backing off simply because their bullets will have to pass through my body to get to Quintana. I have no doubt that Petrone has warned them that Quintana is not to escape alive, and even less doubt that they would not be willing to go back and say, “Sorry, Godfather, but we didn’t kill him. The lawyer was in the way.”

Suddenly, a sequoia tree in the form of Marcus’s forearm lands on Quintana’s head. He goes down as if shot, and I get a quick and nauseating glimpse of the crushed side of his head and face.

Marcus picks up the briefcase and hands it to me. “Let’s go,” he says, and we walk past Petrone’s men and out of the stadium, leaving them to attend to Quintana. Based on how he looked, and how hard Marcus hit him, they will not need their guns.

All they’ll need is a shovel.

* * * * *

JUDGE HARRISON calls court to order at nine A.M. sharp. He’s usually a few minutes late, but it’s as if this time he’s showing his determination not to allow the continuance to go on one minute longer than he had authorized.

I’m still more than a little shaken by last night. It did not have to result in any killing; Quintana could have walked off with the money. And as it played out, I can justify in my mind that it was self-defense; had I not called Petrone’s people, I would have been killed myself.

But the truth is that I set a process in motion knowing it could result in Quintana’s murder. Had I not done that, he would still be alive, as unpleasant as that might be for me. I’m compounding that by not revealing to the police what I know about the murders that took place at the stadium last night. As an officer of the court this has not been my finest moment.

There is no mention of those murders in the media, and Petrone may have chosen to keep them secret. It’s okay with me.

Things leading up to this crucial court day have progressed as well as I could have hoped. Pollard is in an anteroom with Kevin, ostensibly to discuss his testimony, but really to keep him from hearing anything about the witnesses before him. Laurie is with Teri at a TV studio that we have rented, though she is not likely to want to do any interviews after she discovers what happened to her husband. Laurie feels as guilty about this part of it as I do, but there was no other way to handle it. We simply could not have her drive Bobby to the hearing.

I will need to get the witnesses that precede Pollard on and off in a hurry, to reduce any chance that he will get wind of what is going on. My first witness is George Karas, whom I need to set the scene. I have him testify as to the facts surrounding the high school all-American weekend. I submit the subsequent death certificates of the various athletes as evidence, so as to support him.

Dylan has little to do with him on cross-examination, since the facts testified to are indisputable. Additionally, Dylan has no idea where I’m going with this, so he doesn’t want to inadvertently help me. The safest and correct thing for him to do is say very little for now, which is what he does.

Next up is Simon Barkley, a retired vice president at Hamilton Life Insurance, who ran that company’s actuarial department for seventeen years. He is also a part-time mathematics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, where he teaches a course in mathematical probabilities.

Once I quickly have his credentials established, I go right to the heart of his testimony. “Professor Barkley, did we meet at my home yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Did I give you the information that Mr. Karas just gave this jury concerning the deaths of these eight young football players?”

“Yes, you did.”

“What did I ask you to do?” I ask.

“To calculate the probability that these deaths could have been coincidental; that is to say, they could have happened by chance, without some common factor or cause among them.”

“And did you do so?”

“Yes. Would you like to hear my conclusions?”

I smile and spread my arms to include the judge, jury, and gallery. “I think we all would.”

“Well, let me say that the key assumption under which I was operating is that these young men had little or no connection to each other in the years after this weekend. For instance, had all eight been riding in the same car and that car plunged off a mountain, clearly the fact that they all died would not be a surprise to anyone. Or if they all belonged to the same army unit and went into battle together, these multiple deaths could be explainable as well. A third such example would be if they were together when exposed to a deadly bacterium.”

“I understand,” I say.

“Obviously, none of those things, or any circumstances like them, are applicable here.”

“So what are the chances that eight out of eleven men of this young age, athletes, would die in the past seven years, without there being a single factor causing all of the deaths?” I press the point. “What are the chances it is just a terrible coincidence?”

“Approximately one in seventy-eight billion.”

I hear a gasp from the gallery, and I pause to let the answer sink in. We’re talking DNA-like numbers here. “Just so I understand this, are you saying that the chance of these deaths being unrelated, that the members of this all-American team were just the victims of horrible coincidence, is one in seventy-eight billion? Billion with a ‘b’?”

He confirms that, and I turn him over to Dylan, who once again has no idea which way he should go. So far I’ve been setting up evidence of serial killings, and the only suspect in those killings until now is Kenny Schilling. Dylan has no reason or inclination to screw that up.

Once Barkley is off the stand, I ask for a sidebar conference with Judge Harrison and Dylan. As soon as we’re out of earshot of everyone, I inform the judge that Bobby Pollard will be called next and that I would like to have him declared as a “hostile” witness. As such I would be able to ask tough, leading questions, as if it were a cross-examination.

“On what grounds?” Harrison asks. “What would prompt his hostility?”

“I’m going to expose him as a fake and possible murderer.”

Dylan almost leaps in the air. “Your Honor, I really have to object to this. There has been absolutely no showing made to link Mr. Pollard to these crimes.”

Harrison looks at me, and I say, “There’s going to be plenty of showing once I get him on the stand, Your Honor.”

Harrison has little choice but to grant my request, though he will certainly come down on me if I don’t deliver. He allows me to treat Pollard as a hostile witness, though Dylan reiterates his futile objection.

“The defense calls Bobby Pollard,” I say, and within moments the door to the courtroom opens. Kevin pushes Pollard’s wheelchair to the stand, and Pollard pulls himself up out of the chair and into the witness chair with his powerful arms.

He looks confident and unworried, which means he has no idea what has preceded his testimony this morning. I start off with gentle questions about the background of his relationship with Kenny, including a brief mention of the all-star weekend. I then have him describe the nature of his injury and the circumstances in which it took place.

“So you have no use of your legs at all?” I ask.

He nods sadly. “That’s correct.”

“That’s amazing,” I say. “Yet you hold a job… live a full life. How do you get around?”

He credits his wife, Teri, with being a big help in that regard, and under prodding describes some of his daily routine, including his ability to drive a specially equipped car with hand gas and brake controls.

Since he believes he is here to say good things about Kenny, I ask questions that let him do so. Once he finishes, I hand him the list of the offensive players on the high school all-American team. “Do you recognize these names?”

He looks at them. I’m surprised that he’s as cool as he is; I would have expected the list to make him look worried. “I know a few of the names. Obviously Kenny and Troy and myself.”

“Are you aware that eight of the people on that list are dead?”

His head snaps up from the list. “Dead?”

“Dead.”

He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I have no inclination to tell him what I’m talking about, so instead, I give him a group of copied pages that Sam has gotten from hacking into computers. “Please look through these pages and tell me if they are copies of your credit card bills.”

He looks, though not too carefully. His mind must be racing, trying to figure out a way out of the trap that he’s just “wheeled” himself into. “Yes… they look like mine. Sure.”

“You can take some time to confirm this, but I will now tell you that based on your credit card receipts, you were within two hours’ drive of every one of those deaths at the time they happened. Yet you lived in New Jersey, and these deaths occurred in all different parts of the country.”

“You’re not saying I killed these people. Is that what you’re saying?” He’s showing a proper measure of confusion and outrage, an amazing job under the circumstances. But for someone who can fake paralysis for years, this bullshit must be a piece of cake.

“So you did not kill them? You did not kill any of them? Including the victim in this case?”

“I have never killed anyone in my life.”

“And everything you’ve said in court today is truthful?”

“Totally.”

“Equally truthful? None of your statements were less true than others?”

“Every single word has been the truth.”

“How did you get to court today, Mr. Pollard?”

Finally, a crack in his armor, the kind of crack that the Iraqi army left on the way to Baghdad. First his eyes flash panic, then anger. “You son of a bitch,” he says.

Harrison admonishes him for his answer, and I ask the question again. “How did you get to court today, Mr. Pollard?”

His voice is soft, his teeth clenched. “I drove.”

“Using the set of hand controls you described earlier?”

“Yes.” He has the look of a man being dragged closer and closer to a cliff. All the while his mind must be racing, trying to figure out if I can prove that he’s lying. If I can prove it, he’ll stop lying and try to lessen the damage. If I can’t, there’s no reason for him to stop.

“And that statement is as truthful as every other one you’ve made today?”

“Yes.”

I let him off the stand, asking that he remain in the court, subject to recall. Harrison grants the request, and Dylan doesn’t object. Dylan looks like he’s planning to follow Pollard over the cliff.

Pollard takes a seat near the back of the room, and I call Lester Mankiewicz, a client of Sam’s. Mankiewicz was a computer technician for the Ford Motor Company at their Mahwah, New Jersey, plant. He worked there for eleven years, installing and operating the computers that exist in every car made today.

Lester agreed to Sam’s request for help in this case because it sounded like fun, and Sam says there’s pretty much nothing that Lester won’t do for fun. I had explained to Lester that what he would be doing was technically illegal, but that I could guarantee that he would not be charged with a crime. Once I told him what we wanted him to do, I think he would have paid us for the opportunity.

I have a television and VCR brought into the courtroom and take Lester through his story. He and Sam taped every aspect of it, so his words are like televised voice-over.

“Last night at three A.M. I entered Bobby Pollard’s unlocked vehicle, which was parked on the street in front of his neighbor’s house. I installed a device that is technically a small computer chip but really operates like an alarm clock. In this case it was set to go off five minutes after the car was started.”

“What would happen when it went off?” I ask.

“It would disable the hand controls… neither the brakes nor gas would work, other than by using the foot pedals.”

He continues to describe the rest of the operation. He installed another device to measure pressure on the foot pedals, and both devices could be monitored at a remote location.

“Please take us through what happened when Mr. Pollard started driving,” I say.

His presentation is devastating. I expected that when the hand controls lost power, Pollard would be forced to use his legs to control and drive the car, secure that no one would ever know the difference, since he was alone. Amazingly, Pollard never used the hand controls at all, using the foot pedals the entire time. Every bit of this is measured by computer.

I let Lester off the stand and try to introduce copies of Pollard’s medical records. They show that he was in fact in an accident in Spain but that it was relatively minor. The accident left him paralyzed, but the attending physician found no medical explanation for it.

Dylan objects to the introduction of the medical records, on the grounds that there is no one in the court qualified to authenticate them. Harrison agrees, as I figured he would, and we don’t get to use them.

Next up is Carlotta Abbruzze, a shrink I went to for a while when my marriage was breaking up. I decided I didn’t want to be shrunk, and my marriage broke up, but Carlotta and I remained friends. She has more Ph.D.’s than anyone I know, and she is easily qualified to testify in this case.

I ask Carlotta to explain psychosomatic paralysis. In layman’s terms she explains that while there is no physical reason for it, the paralysis itself is real. She also describes how the human mind, if it leans toward such a syndrome, can be incredibly opportunistic. A minor car accident such as Pollard had could have triggered the immediate mental response to develop the syndrome.

“How long might it last?” I ask.

“Anywhere from a few minutes to a lifetime. When it disappears, the patient might intentionally continue to fake the paralysis, if it is providing some mental comfort for him.”

“Just hypothetically, if a young man whose entire life was dedicated to football came to believe that he was not good enough to make it in the NFL, might even that subconscious realization bring on the syndrome?”

“It’s certainly possible,” Carlotta says.

Dylan’s cross-examination is relatively effective, getting Carlotta to admit that she has never examined Pollard and that she can’t be sure that he has ever suffered from this syndrome. I’m ultimately satisfied with her testimony; the jury understands this is a possible explanation for Pollard’s situation.

To cap off an extraordinary day, I call a devastated Bobby Pollard back to the stand. “Mr. Pollard,” I ask, “were all of your previous answers to my questions truthful?”

His reply is terse. “I take the Fifth.”

“Have you been lying about your medical condition?”

“I take the Fifth.”

“Did you kill members of the high school all-American team that you were chosen to be on?”

“No.”

I let Bobby go and call Pete Stanton. He testifies about Adam’s murder, including the fact that Adam’s computer showed that he had been investigating the high school all-American team. He also confirms that the phone bill from the phone Adam used in my office shows two calls to Bobby Pollard the day he was murdered.

“And where was Kenny Schilling on that day, the day Adam Strickland was murdered?” I ask.

“In County Jail,” Pete says.

Dylan’s cross-examination is quick, as if he doesn’t want to concede Pete has had anything important to say. “Lieutenant Stanton, have you arrested Bobby Pollard for the murder of Adam Strickland?”

“No.”

“Have you decided to?”

“Not at this moment.”

Dylan nods; his point is made. “But you did arrest someone for this murder?”

“Cesar Quintana, but he was released for lack of evidence.”

“And you believed that he was the killer and that the murder was a case of mistaken identity? Is that not true?”

“I believed it then, but I’ve learned a lot since then.”

“But again, you haven’t learned quite enough to make another arrest?”

“It won’t be long now,” Pete says.

Dylan smiles. “I can hardly wait.”

Pete leaves the stand, and I call Dr. Stanley Robbins, my last witness of the day. He testifies as to the properties of potassium and its ability to cause fatal heart attacks while being very difficult to discover.

Dylan’s cross-examination is brief, and a very eventful court day is over. As I’m leaving, Laurie arrives, looking somewhat shaken from her experience at the TV studio with Teri Pollard.

“It was horrible,” Laurie says. “Before she knew what we were doing, she was confiding in me, talking about how difficult their life has been since Bobby’s injury. Then, when she realized what was going on today, and that Bobby was faking that injury… I don’t think she had any idea, Andy.”

Laurie is feeling guilty about having deceived her, and I am as well, but I don’t know how it could have been helped.

I do know one thing… I’m glad I’m not there to hear the conversation in the Pollard house tonight.

* * * * *

TONIGHT’S MEETING is to make the most important decision a defense attorney has to make in every trial: whether or not to let the defendant testify in his own defense. Usually, that important decision is a no-brainer, and my clients would have to walk over my dead body to reach the witness stand. Of course, most of them would prefer it that way.

This case is different, mainly because Kenny is the only person who can testify to a crucial fact: the subject of the “team meeting” the high school kids held in that restaurant those many years ago. Only three people are left alive who were there and know about the pact to share their NFL riches with each other. One is Kenny, one is Pollard, and the other is Devan Bryant, who is currently serving in the United States Army, stationed fifty miles outside of Kabul, Afghanistan. Bryant is unavailable to us, and Pollard seems likely not to aid in his own demise, so that leaves only Kenny.