Sudden Death

Kenny wants to testify, which is typical of most defendants. In his view he will tell his story, and everyone will then believe him, and he can go home. This fantasy is greater in celebrities than mere mortals; they are used to their fans hanging on their every word. The problem is, Dylan is not a fan.

Laurie and Kevin are divided on the issue. Laurie thinks that Kenny should testify, that without the story of that pact the players took, there is not a strong enough basis for anyone to accept the serial killing connection. She doesn’t think the statistical-probability evidence, while unequivocal, got through to the jury.

Kevin, with proper lawyer’s caution, is opposed to Kenny testifying. He has seen too many people, many innocent, self-destruct under a wilting cross-examination. Dylan is good. Kevin knows it and doesn’t want to take the chance.

This is a decision I always make myself, with equal amounts logic and gut instinct. Both are telling me that Kenny should not go near that stand, that the benefits of the “pact” story and Kenny’s appealing demeanor will be outweighed by the negative of cross-examination. I don’t want to give Dylan a chance to take Kenny through the facts of this case, most of which are incriminating. And I sure don’t want Kenny up there talking about how he held off the police at gunpoint while Troy Preston’s body was stuffed in his bedroom closet.

Kevin leaves, and I start thinking about my closing statement. Like my opening statement, I don’t write it out, rarely even take notes, because I want it to be as spontaneous as possible. But there are points I want to be sure I cover, so I start mentally ticking them off.

Laurie comes into the den and asks if I want something to eat. I don’t, and I’m about to tell her so when the phone rings. She picks it up. “Hello.”

She listens for a few seconds and then says a tentative “Hi.” Since the initial “Hello” should have covered the greeting part of her conversation, and since I can hear a tension in her voice, I immediately know that this is a charged phone call.

The rest of the call is peppered with clever Laurie-phrases like “I see,” “I will,” and “Of course.” Laurie sneaks glances over at me to see if I’m paying attention to her, so I try to pretend that I’m not, though of course she knows I am.

She throws in a final “I will,” and then hangs up. She looks over at me, and I say, “Wrong number?”

She smiles slightly, as if caught, and says, “That was Sandy. They’re pressuring him to pressure me for an answer.”

“You said ‘I will’ twice. Was that as in ‘I will move back to Findlay,’ or as in ‘I will never leave the love of my life, Andy Carpenter’?” I’m trying to make my tone sound flip, which is tough considering I’m so nervous I can’t unclench my teeth.

“It was as in ‘I will have an answer by next week,’” she says.

“You don’t know what you’re going to do yet?” I ask.

“Andy, you will know the moment I do.” She comes over and sits next to me, putting her hand on my knee. “And I’m sorry to put you through this… it’s just very hard for me. I’m finding this so terribly difficult.”

“Join the club,” I say.

Laurie leaves me to work on my closing statement, not the easiest thing to do under these circumstances. Tara lays her head on my knee, in the same place where Laurie’s hand had just been. “You’re going to stay with me, right?” I say to her. “I’m prepared to guarantee you biscuits for life if you do.”

She snuggles against me. Just what I like, a woman who can be bought.

* * * * *

THE MOMENT COURT is called to order, I announce that we are resting our case. Harrison asks Dylan if he would like to adjourn until after lunch to prepare his closing argument, but Dylan’s preference is not to wait. He clearly had correctly predicted I would not let Kenny take the stand, and is fully prepared.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dylan begins, “when I stood before you at the start of this trial, I told you that Mr. Carpenter would invent theories and attempt to confuse you with irrelevancies. I told you that you should keep your eyes on the evidence and not let his sleight of hand fool you. But I’ve got to be honest, I had no idea how far he would go with it.

“Think about it. None of it had anything to do with the facts. Those facts haven’t changed, haven’t even been challenged. Kenny Schilling was seen leaving the bar with Troy Preston shortly before he was killed. Mr. Preston’s blood was found in Schilling’s abandoned car. His body was found in a closet in Schilling’s house.

“But we hear that Mr. Schilling was somehow framed; that he’s innocent, pure as the driven snow. So how did this innocent man act when the police arrived? He shot at them and barricaded himself in his house.” Dylan shakes his head sadly. “Amazing.

“Now, Mr. Carpenter is a very clever lawyer, but when confronted with these facts, he acted like a man in a trap. First he tried to get out of that trap by claiming a Mexican drug gang did it, though he neglects to say why. Then, when he realized that exit was closed off, he tried to escape the trap by completely reversing direction, claiming it was part of a serial killing and the trainer did it.” Dylan chuckles slightly to himself and shakes his head at the absurdity of it.

“I don’t know how those poor young men died, but I do know the police in each case did not consider them murders… not even suspicious. And I also know that those deaths bear no resemblance whatsoever to the kind of death Troy Preston suffered: dumped in a closet and shot in the chest.

“I also don’t know what drives a man like Bobby Pollard to fake such a serious injury. And I don’t know how cell phones work, or what keeps airplanes in the air, or how we landed a man on the moon. And all of those things that I don’t know have nothing to do with this case.

“I do know that Troy Preston is dead,” he says, and points to Kenny, “and that this man killed him. And I am confident that you know it as well and that you will find him guilty as charged.”

Dylan has outdone himself; I have never heard him better. I feel a momentary panic that, while I’ve been focused so much on the deaths of all those football players, the jury might well see them as irrelevant.

I stand and walk slowly toward the jury. “On a December weekend almost eight years ago eleven teenagers were brought together. They came from Iowa, and Wisconsin, and Alabama, and Texas, and California, and Pennsylvania, and Nebraska, and Ohio, and North Carolina, and two from right here in New Jersey.

“Except for the two men from New Jersey, Kenny Schilling and Bobby Pollard, they were all meeting for the first time. So they spent the weekend together, and they talked. In fact, one of their talks was so secret that they asked the only adult in the room to leave so he wouldn’t hear them.

“And then the weekend ended, and they went home, and one after another they died.

“There is simply no chance that this is a coincidence. You did not hear me arguing against the DNA evidence, because that was simply a matter of mathematics, and numbers don’t lie. Well, you heard an expert tell you that the odds of these deaths being a coincidence are one in seventy-eight billion, and those numbers don’t lie either.

“But if you’re shaky on those numbers, just add in the fact that Bobby Pollard and Kenny Schilling were both geographically available to have committed every one of those murders. I should have asked the mathematics professor what the odds would be against that. I probably can’t count that high.

“So it is reasonable for you to assume that either Bobby Pollard or Kenny Schilling killed these people. That alone should tell you, after you listen to Judge Harrison’s charge, that you should vote to acquit Mr. Schilling. If it could have been either one of them, then by definition there is more than a reasonable doubt that it was Mr. Schilling.

“But that’s not all you know. You know that Adam Strickland, who was in the process of investigating Bobby Pollard, was suddenly and brutally murdered to cover up what he learned. You also know that Mr. Schilling was in jail, was living through this trial, at the time. Even the prosecution would admit that Kenny Schilling did not murder Adam Strickland.

“And most important, you know that Bobby Pollard is a liar. A liar under oath. A liar of mega-proportions. To believe that Kenny Schilling is the murderer, you must believe Bobby Pollard. I submit that no one should believe Bobby Pollard.

“Kenny Schilling had a very difficult upbringing, the kind of childhood that destroys far too many lives. It takes a very strong person to overcome it, but Kenny did more than just overcome bad luck. He went on to become an exemplary citizen, a good guy in an era and an occupation in which bad guys are all too prevalent.

“There is nothing that Kenny Schilling has ever done, not even anything he’s ever said, that would give the slightest credence to the view that he could have suddenly committed a heinous crime like this. And he did not commit this crime, nor any of the others you’ve heard about.

“Do not end another life, one that is really just beginning, and one that is filled with such promise.” I point to Kenny. “This man deserves his life back. Thank you.”

I have never given a closing statement without being positive I screwed it up, and comments to the contrary from Kevin, Laurie, and Kenny don’t come close to penetrating that pessimism. My guess is that I feel this way because it was my last chance to influence the jury, and matters are now totally out of my hands.

Harrison has decided to sequester the jury for the duration of their deliberations, and after charging them he sends them off to begin. I am now waiting helplessly for twelve citizens to decide the fate of a man I consider innocent. I am also waiting, just as helplessly, for Laurie to decide whether she will exit my life.

Suffice it to say, I am not a happy camper.

* * * * *

EACH PERSON REACTS differently to the stress of waiting for a jury verdict. I become cranky and obnoxious, snapping at anyone who asks anything about the trial. I also become intensely and uncharacteristically superstitious, living according to a long-held list of idiotic behaviors that would make life intolerable if I attempted it on a permanent basis. For instance, for fear of pissing off the justice system god, I won’t do anything remotely illegal. I won’t drive one mile over the speed limit, I won’t jaywalk, I won’t even play loud music on my car radio.

My other trait during these times ties in well with the first two. I also become a hermit, and anyone who has suffered through any time with me while waiting for a verdict thinks my reclusiveness is a good thing.

“Verdict stress” brings out Kevin’s hypochondriac tendencies even further, which is no small statement. This time it happens more quickly than most: When Judge Harrison sends the jury off to deliberate, Kevin literally can’t get up with the rest of us to leave the courtroom. He decides that something called his L4-L5 disk has degenerated, apparently overnight, and he needs a spinal fusion. What he really needs is a head transplant, but Laurie and I are obliged to almost carry him to his car.

Making matters worse is that my pessimism is shared by the large majority of television pundits covering the trial. In fact, I would say that three out of every five people in America are serving in the role of television pundit on this case. The majority view is that the defense is hoping for a hung jury, since not only would it obviously not be a loss but it would give us more time to investigate Bobby Pollard.

I actually have Laurie and Sam continuing to look into Bobby, in the likely event that we should lose and have to appeal. The unfortunate fact is that even a victorious appeal would take years and would destroy Kenny’s football career in the process.

Laurie has spoken to three members of the defensive half of the Inside Football all-American team, all of whom were in the restaurant that night, but not with the offensive team when the pact was discussed. One of them remembers Bobby telling him about it, and his surprise that Bobby seemed to take it so seriously. That person should be a solid witness at what I hope will be Bobby’s eventual trial.

It is an irresistible impulse to try to gauge the jury, to try to guess what they must be thinking. I never do so out loud, since that’s one of my superstitions, but it certainly rattles around in my head enough.

In this case I’m hoping for a long deliberation. Our defense of the serial killings came out of left field, something the jury didn’t expect, and without a necessarily clear connection to the offense charged. If the jury gives it serious consideration, it should take time for them to examine and debate. If they reject it out of hand, certainly a possibility, then there’s really nothing to ponder; all the other evidence favors the prosecution.

I’m at home obsessing when the phone rings, always a traumatic event during a verdict wait. It’s Rita Gordon, the court clerk, calling. Since it’s only the morning of the second day of deliberation, if there’s a verdict we’re finished.

“I hope you’re just calling to say hello,” I say.

“Hoping for a long one?” she says. Knowing how anxious I am, she doesn’t wait for an answer. “No verdict yet. The jury has a question.”

The TV is on, and I see the “Breaking News” banner, “Schilling Jury Has Question,” at the same moment Rita is telling me this. Rita says the judge wants us there in an hour, so I call Kevin and trudge down to the court.

On the way to the courthouse I hear that Quintana’s body has finally been discovered in a field near the New Jersey Turnpike. I had been thinking that Petrone had sent him to the bottom of the ocean, but apparently, he wanted to use this killing to send a message to others stupid enough to mess with his territory.

I arrive at the courthouse having not even thought what the jury’s question might be, since requests from juries are rarely revealing. They usually focus on a specific piece of evidence, but that in itself reveals nothing. They could be looking at the evidence because they are skeptical of it or because they give it real credibility and importance to the case.

This situation is slightly different. The jury wants to know if they can see police reports related to the other deaths of the young football players. Judge Harrison tells them they cannot, that only evidence introduced at trial is to be considered, and these reports were not part of the trial record. He says this patiently, even though he had made the point in his charge to the jury just before they went out. They essentially dragged us down here to answer a question that has already been answered.

I’m encouraged, though, because at least they’re paying attention to our defense and not rejecting it out of hand. It’s a small sign of hope, and I’m quite willing to shed a tiny bit of my pessimism and grab on to it.

Even during my self-imposed isolation during a verdict wait, I quite willingly have Laurie sleep over on our regular nights. I might be a hermit, but I’m not a crazed hermit. She is also quiet and reserved, and between us we’re not a terribly fun couple.

I know she’s finalizing her decision, but I’m past dwelling on it by now. I’m actually starting to get a little annoyed; it probably didn’t take Truman as long to decide to drop the A-bomb.

I meet every day with Kenny Schilling, who acts as stoic as he can. The strain is starting to line his face to the point where he’s looking like a paint-by-numbers drawing. I also talk on the phone each day with his wife, Tanya, who is better at verbalizing just how agonizing this process is. I am not able to give either of them any indication of how things will go or when.

Bobby Pollard has stayed out of the public eye, and I assume and hope that the authorities are digging into the nuts and bolts of the case we presented. Teri, ever the amazingly supportive wife, has made a public statement supporting her husband and declaring him innocent, but I can’t imagine that she isn’t feeling horribly betrayed.

The call comes from Rita Gordon on the morning of day six. “It’s showtime, Andy,” she says. “The judge wants all parties here at eleven A.M.”

“Okay” is the cleverest response I can come up with.

* * * * *

I’M TOLD THAT a heavyweight championship fight has the most “electricity” of any live event, but I can’t imagine how it could be more charged than this courtroom. The entire country has followed this case, hanging on every word, analyzing every nuance, and it has all come down to this. A young athlete, a member of the “celebrity class,” is going to learn whether he’s heading for death row or back to the locker room.

Just before Judge Harrison comes into the room, I walk over to Tanya Schilling to shake her hand. I have a million things I could say, and I’m sure she does as well, but neither of us says a word.

As I head back to my seat at the defense table, I see that a bunch of Kenny’s teammates, as well as Walter Simmons, have managed to get seats. I briefly wonder whether they got them from scalpers; I can imagine these seats would go for a lot of money.

Kenny is brought in and takes his seat. As Judge Harrison comes in, Kenny takes a deep breath, and I can see him trying to steady himself. He has handled himself with dignity throughout the trial, and he’s not about to stop now.

The jury is led in, looking at neither the prosecution nor the defense. They haven’t been able to take their eyes off Kenny since jury selection, and now they’re looking away. If I were rating signs, this would not be a good one.

Judge Harrison asks the foreman if his jury has reached a verdict, and I find myself hoping he’ll say no. He doesn’t, and Harrison directs the clerk to retrieve the verdict slip from him. The clerk does so and hands it to Harrison.

Harrison reads it, his face impassive, then hands it back to the clerk. He asks Kenny to stand, and Kenny, Kevin, and I stand as one. I have my hand on his left shoulder, and Kevin has his hand on his right. Kenny turns to Tanya and actually smiles, a gesture of immense strength and generosity.

I can almost feel the gallery behind me, inching forward, as if that will let them hear the verdict sooner.

The clerk starts to read. “In the matter of The State of New Jersey v. Kenneth Schilling, we the jury find the defendant, Kenneth Schilling, not guilty of murder in the first degree.”

Kenny whirls as if avoiding a tackle and reaches for Tanya. Their hug is so hard it looks like one of them is going to break. He outweighs her by over a hundred pounds, but I’m not sure which one I’d bet on.

After a short while Kenny spreads his arms to include Kevin and me in the embrace. As group hugs go, it’s a good one. Kenny and Tanya are crying, while Kevin and I are laughing. But we’re all making the same point in our own way… it doesn’t get much better than this.

Judge Harrison gets order in his courtroom and officially releases Kenny, who’s got to do some paperwork. Tanya waits for him while Kevin and I go outside to answer a few questions from the assembled media.

When we get to the area set up for the press briefing, we see something unusual going on. Rather than waiting for us to arrive, the press is gathered around a TV monitor, watching a cable news station. They are watching the news, when they’re supposed to be covering it.

“What’s going on?” I say, a little miffed that nobody is paying much attention to me. One of the reporters answers, “Bobby Pollard is threatening to kill his wife.”

I start walking toward the television monitor when a uniformed officer comes over to me and grabs my arm. “Mr. Carpenter, Lieutenant Stanton asks that you come with me immediately.”

He quickly starts leading me away, and when I look back, I see that Kevin is lost in the crowd. Within moments we’re in a police car, heading toward Fair Lawn, and I ask the officer to bring me up-to-date.

“Pollard’s wife called 911. He’s in their house with a gun, and she said he’s going crazy, threatening to kill everyone.”

“Why does Pete want me there?” I ask, but he shrugs and says he has no idea.

We arrive near the Pollard house in a few minutes, and the scene is a middle-class version of the standoff at Kenny Schilling’s house. This case has ironically come full circle, except this time there is no way I’m going in.

I see Pete, who is second-in-command to his captain. It turns out that I have no real function here; Pete tells me that they figured that since I know the players, they might have some questions I could answer. I’m told to stay in the police command van and wait, which I’m more than happy to do.

In the van one of the sergeants plays back a copy of the 911 call. Teri Pollard’s voice is the sound of pure panic. “This is Teri Pollard. My husband has a gun. I’m afraid he’s going to-it’s okay, honey, I’m just calling to get you some help, that’s all… just some help.” I can’t hear Bobby’s voice through the tape, but it’s obvious she’s talking to him.

She continues. “Please. He left the room. Send officers quickly… please!”

The dispatcher asks for her address and, after she gives it, asks if there is anyone else in the house. Teri says no, that their son is staying at her mother’s in Connecticut. The call is then cut off, suddenly and with no explanation.

“Has there been any contact with her or Bobby since?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “We’ve been calling in, but nobody answers the phone. But no gunshots either.”

Then, in literally a sudden blast of irony, a gunshot rings out, seemingly from inside the house. I hear a policeman from the forward lines near the house yell, “Move!” and I see a SWAT team head toward the house and break in from all sides in a beautifully coordinated movement.

Maybe thirty seconds pass, though they seem like three hours, and a voice yells out, “Clear!” Pete and a bunch of other officers head for the house and enter. The sergeant I am with does so as well, so I tag along with him. I’m not sure if he even notices me, but he doesn’t tell me to stay back.

There are at least a dozen officers in the house, all talking, but above the din I can hear a woman crying, a frighteningly pained sound. I move toward the den, which is where the sound is coming from. It’s the room in which I talked to the Pollards on two previous occasions.

Teri Pollard is on the couch, hysterical, while Bobby is dead on the floor, against the wall, his head a bloody mess. Next to his outstretched hand lies a gun, more effective than a thousand justice systems.

* * * * *

LAURIE AND TARA are waiting for me when I get home. My two favorite ladies.

We all go for a walk around the neighborhood. I haven’t been spending nearly enough time with Tara, and I want to change that now. She seems to be getting more white in her face each day, a sign of advancing age in golden retrievers. In Tara’s case it’s less significant than in other goldens, because Tara is going to live forever.

The scene at the Pollards’ and the lingering depression over Adam’s death have really taken their toll on me, and I’m feeling little of the euphoria that I would ordinarily feel after a victory like the one in court today. For that reason I didn’t schedule the party we have at Charlie’s after every positive jury verdict.

“You were brilliant, Andy,” Laurie says. “I don’t know that there’s another lawyer in the country that could have gotten Kenny acquitted with the evidence they had.”

“Adam did it. I was nowhere until Adam came up with the answer.”

“He helped, but you led the team, and you got it done. Don’t take that away from yourself.”

“It was awful at the Pollards’ house today,” I say. “I’m just so tired of all this death and pain. And I keep saying that, and yet I don’t change anything.”

“You’re doing what you were meant to do, in the place you were meant to do it. And I think that down deep you know that.”

I shake my head. “Not right now I don’t.”

“If not for you, Kenny Schilling’s life would be over, and Bobby Pollard would still be out there killing. The death and pain would be much worse.”

“But I wouldn’t have to look at it.”

We walk for a while longer, and I say, “What Teri Pollard went through is beyond awful. This man she devoted herself to, every day of her life, completely betrayed her. And then, after she stayed, after she forgave him, he left her to deal with everything alone.”

“She’s a strong woman,” Laurie says. “She’ll rely on the core of that strength, and she’ll get through it.”

“You’re a more optimistic person than I am.”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “You’re just more honest about it. I have as many doubts as anyone, but I learned a long time ago that it doesn’t help to give in to them. That we have to do what we think is best and deal with the consequences.”

We walk another block in silence, and I say, “You’re leaving.” It’s a statement, not a question, that comes from some hidden place of certainty and dread.

“Yes, Andy. I am.”

I feel like a house is sitting on top of me, but it hasn’t been dropped suddenly. It’s more like it’s been lowered on me. I’ve seen it coming for a while, but even though it was huge and obvious, I just couldn’t seem to get out of the way.

I don’t say anything, I can’t say anything, so she continues. “I wish more than anything in the world that you would come with me, but I know you won’t, and I’m not sure that you should. But I will always love you.”

I want to tell Laurie that I love her, and that I hate her, and that I don’t want her to go, and that I want her to get the hell out of my life this very instant.

What I say is, “Have a nice life.”

And then Laurie keeps walking, but Tara and I turn and walk back home.

* * * * *

PEOPLE TELL ME that the intense pain is going to wear off. They say that it will gradually become a dull ache and eventually disappear. I hope they’re right, because a dull ache sounds pretty good right now.

Of course, my circle of friends is not renowned for their sensitivity and depth of human emotion, so they could be wrong. The agony I currently feel over losing Laurie could stay with me, which right now would seem to be more than I can stand.

I tell myself to apply logic. If she left me, she doesn’t love me. If she doesn’t love me, then I haven’t lost that much by her leaving. If I haven’t lost that much, it shouldn’t hurt like this. But it does, and logic loses out. I can count the times that logic has lost out in my mind on very few fingers.

Even gambling on sports doesn’t help. In normal times a Sunday spent gambling on televised games allows me to escape from anything, but Laurie’s leaving is the Alcatraz of emotional problems. I can’t get away from it, no matter what I do.

I spend half of my time waiting for the phone to ring, hoping that Laurie is calling to change her mind and beg my forgiveness. The other half of my time I spend considering whether to call and tell her I’ll be on the first plane to Findlay. But she won’t call, and neither will I, not now, not ever.

Tonight Pete, Kevin, Vince, and Sam have taken me to Charlie’s to watch Monday Night Football. The Giants are playing the Eagles, which would be a big deal if I gave a shit about it. I don’t.

Halftime has apparently been designated as the time to convince me to get on with my life. They’ve got women to fix me up with, vacations I should take, and cases I should start working on. None of those things have any appeal, and I tell them so. The chance of my going on a blind date, or taking on a new case, is about equal in likelihood to my setting fire to myself. Maybe less.

Sam drives me home and is sensitive enough not to song-talk, though he would have no shortage of sad tunes to pick from. Instead, he thanks me for the opportunity I gave him to work on the case; it’s something he loves and would like to do more of in the future.

I remind him that both Barry Leiter and Adam have died in the last couple of years doing the same kind of work. “Why don’t you do something safer, like become a fighter pilot or work for the bomb squad?” I ask.

Sam drops me off at home, and I open the door to a tail-wagging Tara. I believe she knows I need more love and support than usual, and she’s trying to provide it. I appreciate it, but this may be that rare job bigger than Tara.

I get into bed and take a few minutes to convince myself that tomorrow will be a better day. I mean, the fact is that Laurie was my girlfriend. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s just not that big a deal. Who’s going to feel sorry for you just because you and your girlfriend broke up? It’s not exactly high up on the list of personal tragedies. In fact, if somebody hears you say it, the question they would be expected to ask is something like, “Well, then, who are you going to take to the prom?”

With that self-administered pep talk having failed once again to get through to me, I remember that I had set up a therapy session with Carlotta Abbruzze tomorrow, hoping that she could help me deal with Laurie’s leaving. My view now is that the only way Carlotta can help me is if she calls Laurie and talks her into coming back.

In the morning I take Tara for a walk, and we’re halfway through it when I realize I had scheduled a meeting with Kenny Schilling at his house at ten. After every case I wait a while and then meet with the client. It’s to go over my final bill, but, more important, to find out how the client is adjusting and to answer any remaining questions he or she has. It’s always nice when that meeting is not in prison.

Kenny and Tanya graciously welcome me into their home, and Tanya goes off to get coffee. Kenny’s wearing a sweat suit, aptly named because it’s drenched with sweat.

“Sorry I didn’t get dressed all fancy for my lawyer,” he says with a smile, “but I’ve got to get in shape.”

“I won’t keep you long,” I say, and we quickly go over my bill, which despite its large size draws no objection from him. It’s actually less than the estimate I had given him at the start of the trial.

“I still can’t believe Bobby killed all those people,” Kenny says.

“Could you believe he wasn’t paralyzed?” I ask.

“No, that just blew me away.”

Kenny and Tanya have very few questions; they’re still flushed with relief that their lives haven’t been permanently derailed. I finish my coffee and get up to leave.

“Man, can’t you stay another couple of hours? I need an excuse not to work out.”

“That’s probably the only athletic thing we have in common. Hey, let me ask you a question,” I say, and then describe in detail my plan to become a placekicker for the Giants.

“That sounds pretty good,” he says.

“You think it could work?”

“Not a chance in hell,” he says, and laughs.

He’s challenging my manhood. “Be careful or I’ll be on that field before you will,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. They’re looking to activate me next week in time for the game at Cincinnati.”

Tanya stands to pick up the coffee cups. “Don’t remind me,” she says, smiling.

The comment surprises me. “You don’t want him to play?”

“Not in Cincinnati. I’ve got bad memories of that. But this time I’m going… Watching it on television was horrible.”

Kenny explains. “I got my bell rung in the fourth quarter when we were out there two years ago. I was out cold. Late hit.”

I nod. “I think I remember that.”

“Only time that ever happened to me. Man, that was scary as hell. Next thing I knew it was four hours later in the hospital. I didn’t even know who won. Bobby had to tell me.” He shakes his head sadly, probably at the awareness that Bobby won’t be there to tell him anything anymore.

I head out to the car, and I’m three blocks away when it hits me. I drive the three blocks back to the house about twice as fast, then jump out and pop open the trunk. I’ve brought a lot of my case files with me, in case I needed to refer to them to answer any questions about my bill, and now I pore through them until I find the piece of information I need.

Tanya Schilling is surprised to find me standing there when she answers the doorbell. “Sorry, but I need to talk to Kenny.”

“Sure, come on in,” she says. “He’s still in the den goofing off.”

She goes into the kitchen while I go back into the den. Kenny is also surprised by my reappearance. “Hey, you forget something?”

“Are you positive that Bobby was with you in the hospital in Cincinnati?” I ask.

“Absolutely. And not just because he was my friend. He was my trainer… it was his job to be there.”

“Kenny, I’m going to ask you something I’ve asked you before. Last time you wouldn’t answer; this time you’ve got to.”

“What is it?”

“The night you dropped Troy off at his house… the night he died… who was the woman you were arguing about?”

“I told you, I don’t remember,” he says. He can see by my face that I’m not going to drop it, so he changes his approach. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”

“I think she’s got everything to do with it,” I say.

“Tell him, Kenny.” It’s Tanya, standing in the doorway.

Kenny looks like the classic deer in the headlights. “Tell him what?” he asks, but it’s clear he knows what. And he now knows that she knows.

Her voice is firm. “You tell him or I will.”

I press him. “Who were you arguing about that night, Kenny?”

He nods in resignation. “Teri Pollard. Bobby’s wife.”

I already knew the answer to that question, and I can make a good guess at the answer to the next one. “Why were you arguing?”

Kenny looks at Tanya, gets no help, and turns back to me. “Troy was fooling around with her.”

“Why did you care?”

“Bobby was my friend. They had a good marriage… they had a son… I didn’t want him breaking them up.”

“There’s more to it than that,” I say.

“No,” Kenny says, “that’s it.”

I turn to Tanya. “Can you tell me?”

She nods. “Yes, I’ll tell you. Jason Pollard is Kenny’s son.”

Kenny whirls in surprise. “How did you know that?”

“Because I know you. Because I live with you. Because I understand you. You think I could watch you for all these years and not know what was going on? How stupid do you think I am?”

With no need to keep the secret from Tanya anymore, the story pours out. Kenny had a brief affair with Teri back when they were graduating high school; he thinks it was not long after the all-American weekend, but he can’t be sure. Teri was planning to marry Bobby at the time and went ahead with it.

“When did she tell you that you were the father?” I ask.

“Maybe six months after Bobby’s accident. I had just met Tanya. I’ve helped support Jason ever since.” He looks at Tanya. “Teri insisted that I keep it a secret, or she would cut me off from Jason. I didn’t want that to happen. I’m so sorry.”

“Did Teri want to leave Bobby for you?”

He nods. “Yeah, at first. But that was years ago. Why do you need to know all this?”

“Unless I’m very wrong, Teri Pollard killed Troy Preston. She killed her husband. She killed all of them.”

* * * * *

SHE ASKED ME TO come over tomorrow night.” It’s the first sentence Kenny can manage to say after he processes what I’ve just told him.

“Why?” I ask.

“She said she was going through Bobby’s stuff, and she needed some help, and that there might be some things I’d want to keep for myself. I told her I’d be there at eight.”

“You’re not going,” Tanya says.

Kenny looks to me for guidance. “Don’t say anything to Teri right now,” I say. “Let me think about this for a while. We have until tomorrow night.”

I promise to get back to them later today. I leave to be on time for my twelve-fifteen session with Carlotta, which has just changed in content and increased in importance.

Carlotta’s door opens at exactly twelve-fifteen, not one minute sooner or later. This would be true if we were sitting just below an erupting volcano, with hot lava raining down on us, or if we were in Baghdad dodging cruise missiles. I suspect that punctuality is a trait common to all shrinks, but it is nonetheless amazing.

Once I’m seated in the chair opposite her, Carlotta asks, “So, Andy, why are you here?”

“Laurie left and I’m in such pain that sometimes I think I can’t breathe,” I say. “But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

She laughs. “Of course not. Why would it be?”

She’s familiar with the case, having testified, but I proceed to tell her everything that I have just learned about Teri Pollard and Kenny Schilling, stopping frequently to answer her questions. Finally, I say, “I know it’s hard for you to judge people from a distance, but if you can enlighten me at all, I’d appreciate it.”

“Well,” she says, “assuming Teri is the murderer, we can also assume two other things. One is that she is terribly unstable, in layman’s terms a wacko. Such people only flirt with rationality, and it’s not always helpful to try and predict their actions using logic. Two is that she took the pact that those young men made that weekend very seriously, maybe even more seriously than her husband did. When he had his accident, she thought she could rely on that pact, that the others would support her husband, and by extension her, in the manner in which they had promised. When they didn’t, she exacted her revenge. She was possibly taking out on them her anger at her husband for failing her.”

“But why commit the other killings in secret and Preston’s so publicly? And why frame Kenny? Why not kill him also?”

“I think she would have felt that Kenny deserved a special kind of demise, of torture, compared to the others. He loved her, at least in a physical sense, and then abandoned her and her child. Plus, he succeeded dramatically in the NFL, which in her eyes made him the most guilty of nonsupport.”

“But he provided support,” I say. “He made sure her husband was employed, and gave her money to raise the child.”

Carlotta shakes her head. “Not enough. In her eyes not nearly enough. She wanted to be married to a star, and instead in her eyes she thought she was living with a cripple.”

“Why now? Why would she wait and then choose to go after Kenny now?”

She shrugs. “That’s beyond my range of knowledge. Did anything significant happen in Kenny’s football career recently? Any special achievement?”

There it is; I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it. “He just signed a fourteen-million-dollar, three-year deal, plus incentives.”

She smiles. “That might be rather significant, don’t you think?”

I nod. “What is she likely to do next?”

“It’s hard to say. She could continue to try to exact her revenge on Kenny, and that desire could be increased by her husband’s death, even if she is the one that killed him. Or she could try to win him over, in the misguided notion that her husband stood between them. She might think that Kenny will now love her and they can ride off into the sunset together. One thing you can be sure of, though: She will do something. This doesn’t end here.”

On that ominous note I head down to the police station to meet with Pete Stanton. He is a very good friend of Laurie’s, and I have to resist a strong temptation to ask if he’s heard from her. Instead, I repeat the saga of Teri Pollard.

Since he’s a good cop, his first reaction is skepticism that someone like Teri Pollard could have pulled off all these killings.

“Think about it,” I say. “Most of them were heart attacks, and I’ll bet she used potassium, or something just like it. As a nurse she would have had even greater access to it than Bobby. As for the other deaths, Kenny told me she grew up in Kentucky and as a girl went hunting with her father, so she could handle a rifle. And a hit-and-run, anybody could do that.”

“Have you established that she was present in the cities where the deaths took place?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Not yet. But Bobby said she went on all the road trips with him. That’s why she couldn’t hold down a full-time nursing job. She had the same access he did.”

He’s looking doubtful, so I add, “And there was evidence that a woman called a taxi from the convenience store near where Kenny’s car was found. No one made the connection until now.”

“What about her husband’s suicide?” Pete asks. “He fired the weapon that killed him; there was gun residue all over his hands.”

“I’d be willing to bet she had given him a drug to knock him out… probably potassium as well. She held the gun to his head with his own hand.”

He still doesn’t fully believe me but is cautious enough to be alarmed by Kenny’s plan to visit her tomorrow night. He also knows that if I’m right, then Kenny’s canceling the visit is not going to solve the problem. She’d keep coming after him.

We come up with a plan, but one that requires Kenny’s participation. Pete comes with me to Kenny’s house to present it, and Tanya joins us as we do so. Basically, we want Kenny to go to Teri’s wearing a wire, and with a contingent of police secretly stationed right outside the house. If she makes a threatening or incriminating move, they will rush in and arrest her.

It’s obviously dangerous, and Tanya predictably is against it. “If you’re so sure she’s the one, why don’t you just arrest her now?” she asks.

“Because there’s not enough evidence to make it stick,” I say, and Pete voices his agreement. I go on, “Tanya, if we’re right, she’s going to keep coming after Kenny. We can either wait for her to do it on her terms or get her to do it on ours, when we’re ready.”

Kenny, who has been silent, considering this is his life we’ve been talking about, nods. “Let’s do it. I want this over with.”

* * * * *

PETE ALLOWS ME TO sit in the police communications van, situated just around the corner from Teri’s house. Small cameras and microphones have been surreptitiously placed to monitor everything that goes on inside, and it’s all in front of us on screens.

In the van are two technicians, plus Pete and I. The armed units are stationed near the house, out of sight from the street because, although it’s seven-forty-five, Teri isn’t home yet. Kenny is due in fifteen minutes, and we’ve told him to be right on time.

I’m vaguely uncomfortable with Teri’s late arrival. If we’re right, and she’s going to make an attempt on Kenny’s life, it’s the type of thing you’d think she’d want to prepare for. You wouldn’t expect her to be somewhere looking at her watch and thinking to herself, “Gee, I’m running late. I’m supposed to be killing Kenny Schilling in fifteen minutes.”

“She might have made us somehow,” Pete says. “She may know we’re here. Or maybe something happened with her kid.”

“She told Kenny that the son was at his grandmother’s and wasn’t coming back until next week.” I don’t mention that the boy is Kenny’s biological son; it’s not something that Pete needs to know.

At eight o’clock sharp, Kenny arrives. He rings the bell and gets no answer, then seems confused as to what to do. He looks around at the street, possibly hoping that we’ll show up and tell him what the hell is going on, but of course we can’t do so, since Teri might arrive at any time. Kenny does the proper thing: He sits on the porch and waits.

Another five minutes go by, and still no Teri. Kenny just sits there on the porch, completely and rightfully confused. Pete says, “Poor guy is getting stood up by the person supposed to kill him. You can’t get much lower than that.”

One of the technicians laughs and says, “Maybe she changed her mind and wants to date him. My dates stand me up all the time.”

I don’t share in the laughter, because what he has just said triggers a recollection of Carlotta saying that Teri might no longer want to kill Kenny, that with Bobby out of the way, she might want to win Kenny back. And that recollection sends a cold chill down my spine.

“Come on!” I yell. I open the door and jump out of the van. Pete is behind me, asking what the hell is going on. I rush to his car and say, “Hurry up! I’ll tell you on the way!”

I tell him how to get to Kenny’s house and that he should get backup to follow us. Once he’s done so, I say, “Teri invited Kenny over to get him out of the house. Tanya’s the target.”

“Why?”

“To get her out of the way. Teri’s nuts enough to think that Tanya is the only reason she can’t have Kenny to herself. If she gets Tanya out of the way, she would think the coast is clear.”

“Shit,” Pete says, a sentiment I share completely.

We’re a block away from the Schilling house when I see Teri’s car.

Pete pulls up in front of the house, and I’m out of the car before he is. I run to the front door, which is fortunately but ominously open. I rush in, Pete right behind me.

We hear a woman’s voice, a frightening sound somewhere between a scream and a plea. It’s a large house, and impossible to be sure where the noise is coming from, but I realize where it must be.

“Pete!” I call out, hoping he can hear me but Teri can’t. I run for the room I was in months ago, the room where Troy Preston’s body was in the closet. I push open the door, and Tanya is huddled in a corner. Teri faces her, holding a handgun, but turns to me when she hears me coming in. Unfortunately, the gun turns along with her. “How nice you could join us,” she says.

I raise my hands, even though I haven’t been told to, and she motions me to stand near Tanya. I know Pete is out there in the hall, but he would have to get well into the room before having a clear shot at Teri. Teri could easily hear him coming and kill one of us before he could intervene.

I have no idea what to say to get out of this. Things that come to mind, like “You’ll never get away with this” and “There’s no reason anyone should get hurt,” seem like pathetically ineffective clichés.

Instead, I try to surprise her, to make her think. “Why did you kill those young men?” I ask.

“You know about that?” she asks, her voice and half-smile reflecting pride in her own accomplishments. “Bobby said you were smart.”

“Is it because they broke the pact? They didn’t take care of Bobby?” As I say it, I’m watching the small corridor between the doorway and the main part of the room, hoping Pete can get in here without her noticing him.

“He would have taken care of them. If he had his legs, he would have been a star, and he would have taken care of every one of them. They took an oath. A goddamn blood oath.”

Bobby did have his legs, but I don’t think I’ll remind her of that fact right now. I think I see a slight shadow in the corridor, and right now all I can do is hope the shadow is who I think it is.

The panicked Tanya seems to move slightly, causing Teri to yell and point the gun at her. I’m afraid she’s going to shoot, but she doesn’t. “Look at her,” Teri says to me, indicating Tanya. “This is who Kenny thanked on television, for making him a star. Doesn’t that make you sick?”

I see the shadow in the corridor move, so I look in the other direction, the direction of the window, and yell, “Pete!”

Teri turns toward the window, just for a split second, and it’s enough time for Pete to get into the room. He yells, “Drop the gun!”

But Teri doesn’t drop the gun, instead turns with it, and Pete has no choice but to shoot. The bullet hits her full force in the shoulder, sending her flying back into the wall as her gun falls harmlessly to the floor.

I grab Tanya and hold on to her, and it feels like within moments the room is filled with every cop and paramedic in the United States, as well as one running back for the Giants.

* * * * *

THIS SESSION WITH Carlotta is going to be about me, and as I sit in her waiting room at eight o’clock in the morning, I’m looking forward to it. She’s seeing me on an emergency basis, since I called her and told her I was in a lot of pain.

“Emotional pain?” she had asked.

“Emotional pain,” I had confirmed. “I’ve got things I need to talk about.”

Carlotta opens her door and lets me in precisely at eight. I mutter a greeting, head straight for the couch, and lie down. “I don’t think I can deal with Laurie being gone” is what I think. “Do you think Teri Pollard is sane enough to stand trial?” is what I actually say.

“This is the source of your emotional pain?” Carlotta asks.

“Not exactly.”

“Then perhaps we should talk about the source of that pain.”

I sit up and shake my head. “It’s too painful.”

We go on to talk about Teri, and I tell Carlotta what Pete Stanton has told me about his interrogation of her. Teri has openly admitted-in fact, bragged about-how she looked up each player who had verbally signed on to the “pact,” all those years before. The first young man had laughed at her, ridiculing the idea that anyone could have taken it seriously.

Carlotta nods. “That would have set her off. And once she killed him, there was no turning back.”

“But according to Pete, she was very calculating about it all. She took her time, didn’t make them at all suspicious. She just slipped the potassium in their drink, and that was that.”

“And her husband had no idea what she was doing?”

“It doesn’t seem so. Bobby apparently didn’t take the pact as seriously as she did, although she could only have heard about it through him. She wasn’t there that weekend.”

“The insecurity that would have driven Bobby to his psychosomatic injury would have made him build up the importance of the pact when he first related it to his wife,” Carlotta says. “He was afraid he wasn’t good enough to achieve success, so he was telling her that they’d be taken care of even if he failed.”

“And she bought into it,” I say.

Carlotta nods. “So strongly that she couldn’t rationally deal with the disappointment when it turned out to be an illusion.”

We talk about it some more, and even though there are twenty minutes left in my session, I stand up to leave.

“Andy, why don’t you talk to me about what’s bothering you?”

“I find it harder to deny things if I admit them first.”

“It might help,” she says.

“I’m not ready.”

“When you are, I’ll be here.”

I nod. “I’ll call you as soon as I am. Figure about four years from Wednesday.”

* * * * *

I’M NOT GOING TO make it as a placekicker. I know that now. I got a book to study the technique, and I’ve been trying it in the park for an hour a day, each of the last two days. I’ve been kicking off a tee, while Willie fields the kicks and Tara and Cash watch. All of them knew I was going to fail long before I did, as they watched my kickoffs bounce pathetically along the ground.

I do have another plan to reach the NFL, though. I’m going to be a coach. But I don’t want to be like those other crazed coaches who stay up until three o’clock in the morning watching opponents’ tapes. I’m going to be a placekicking coach. The hours shouldn’t be too long, and the placekicking book I got gives me a head start.

I have already taken on another case. I’m representing Kenny and Tanya Schilling in proceedings to let them adopt Jason Pollard. Since he’s Kenny’s natural son, and they are an upstanding family with sufficient financial resources, it will be an easy win. Especially since there is no doubt that Teri will be confined for the rest of her life.

I’ve now added “breaking and entering” to the personal criminal history I began when I instigated Quintana’s murder. I made the assumption that Teri Pollard had taken the four hundred thousand dollars of Quintana’s money from Troy Preston the night she killed him, and on Tuesday I climbed through a window of the Pollard house to look for it.

It took about an hour, but I found it buried under a mountain of toys in Jason’s closet. I sent it, in the form of a check, to Adam’s parents, with an accompanying note telling them that it was money he had earned. I also mentioned that he had talked about buying them a house, but that they should certainly do what they wish with the money.

Laurie sent me a letter. I got it last Wednesday, a couple of days after I talked to Carlotta. The envelope is pretty thick, so it’s probably a few pages. Someday, maybe in the next couple of years, I’m going to open it. And then, a few years after that, I’ll probably read it. If she wanted to come back, she’d call. This is probably a rehash of her reasons for leaving, and I just can’t let myself think about it right now.

I read in this morning’s paper that there’s an eclipse coming up early next month. It upsets me that I have no one to whom I can say, “I told you so, the whole thing is a scam.”

The truth is, there’s a lot of things I want to say, but there’s no one around that I want to hear them.

Laurie is the only person I really love in this world, and I hate her.