Play Dead Part 5

"Do you do crossword puzzles?" I ask, just to make sure.

She shakes her head while maintaining the smile. "No, I really don't have the time. Any free time I have, I go surfing or hiking or skiing-in the winter, of course."

"Of course," I say, trying to picture Edna on a surfboard. Once I successfully picture it, I wish I hadn't tried.

She leads me into Koppell's office, which isn't that much larger than hers. He is on the phone but signals for me to sit down and then holds up one finger, which I take to mean he'll be off the phone in a moment.

"I'm sure he is a good boy, Mr. Givens," he says into the phone. "But the problem, as I told you, is that in the eyes of the law he is not a boy. He became a man two weeks ago, on his eighteenth birthday. Which makes the marijuana possession more difficult to deal with."

He listens for a moment and then says, "I didn't say impossible; I said difficult."

He concludes by setting a date for the man to come in with his son so they can discuss his legal options. It is a case that will be boring and of very little consequence, and I'm sure Koppell must handle a hundred of them every year.

I don't, which makes me one lucky lawyer.

Once he's off the phone, Koppell turns to me and says, "So I hear I'm out of a job." Then he smiles and says, "Not that it's been a full-time job."

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

"You're representing Richard Evans."

"He told you that?" I'm surprised; prison inmates don't have that much access to outside communication, and I don't know why he would have bothered to call Koppell.

"No, I heard about it on the radio coming in today. They said that you had registered with the court as his lawyer, and that you would likely be seeking a new trial."

It's amazing that this could be considered news. All I did was register, and the reporter must have a.s.sumed I would be seeking a new trial, since what other purpose could there be for me taking him on as a client? The media had barely covered the murder and the trial, and a lawyer change qualifies as a news event? I shake my head. "Must be a slow news day."

"Hey, man, you're a star. Tom Cruise gets headlines when he changes breakfast cereals."

I make a mental note to mention to Laurie that I've been compared to Tom Cruise, even if it's by a middle-aged, overweight male lawyer.

"Anyway, yes, Richard has hired me. I'm sorry you had to hear it on the radio."

He shrugs. "No problem. You didn't come all the way down here to tell me that, did you?"

"No, I wanted to talk to you about the case and to get access to your files."

"They'll be in storage, but I'll have them sent here, and then I'll send them on to you."

"Thanks. Did you see anything on television about the case I handled recently? Where I defended the dog?"

He smiles. "I thought that was great. I'm thinking of hanging around the local shelter to get clients."

"That was Richard Evans's dog," I say.

His surprise is obvious. "Are you serious?"

I nod. "There's no doubt about it."

He thinks for a moment. "Then that changes a lot. If I remember correctly, two witnesses saw the dog with Evans when he boarded the boat."

"That's the kind of information I need."

"It'll all be in the files," he says. "d.a.m.n, how the h.e.l.l could that dog be alive?"

"That's what I need to find out. But things apparently did not happen on that boat the way the prosecution claimed."

"I'm going to be straight with you," he says. "There was nothing, not a shred, that pointed to Richard's innocence. I worked my a.s.s off trying to find something."

"You think there was anything there to find?" I ask.

"I did when it started, but I didn't by the end."

"What about the forensics?" I ask.

He shrugs. "They seemed solid, but we didn't have much money to hire experts. That's an area you could pursue." He pauses, then shakes his head in amazement. "d.a.m.n, that dog is really alive alive?"

"Definitely."

"You know, I never could figure out why he killed the dog. I mean, everybody said how much he loved it, and what would have been the harm in letting it live? What the h.e.l.l could he have been afraid of, that it would be an eyewitness? It just didn't make any sense."

I have been wrestling with this from the beginning; it's one of the major reasons I took the case. If Richard was planning to kill his fiancee, he would have left Reggie at home. That's what I would have done if I were a murderer. And suicidal. And engaged. And had a boat.

Koppell promises to get the files to me as soon as he has them, and I thank him and leave. I make some wrong turns on the way out, and I feel trapped in a suburban maze. It takes me a half hour to reach the Garden State Parkway and the safety of a huge traffic jam.

I finally make it back home, though I'm there only long enough to get Reggie and put him in the car. We drive to the Teaneck office of Dr. Erin Ruff, as perfect a name for a veterinarian as you're going to find.

Karen Evans had told me that Dr. Ruff used to be Reggie's vet, and when I made an appointment, I explained that I was Richard's lawyer and I wanted to talk about the case. I asked her to have Reggie's medical records available, but I did not mention that Reggie might be alive.

When I get to Dr. Ruff's office, the receptionist is properly surprised when I have a dog with me, since I had said I was just coming in to talk. She asks his name, and I say, "Yogi."

"And what are we seeing Yogi for today?" she asks.

"Just a checkup."

I'm ushered into a small room to wait for the doctor. It's pretty much like every small doctor's room I've ever been in, though this time I get to keep my pants on.

In about five minutes, the door opens and Dr. Ruff comes in, a smile on her face and a folder in her left hand. She reaches out her right hand to shake mine, when she sees Reggie.

"Oh, my G.o.d," she says. She looks as if she'd seen a ghost, and in a way she has. "That can't be..."

"That's what I'm here to find out."

She's not getting it. "Those cut marks... He's supposed to be dead."

I nod. "And someday he will be, but not yet."

I explain that the reason we are here is to find out if there is anything in Reggie's five-year-old records that would help identify him today.

"Is he the dog who was on the news the other day? The one you went to court about?"

"Yes. He's had his fifteen minutes of fame, but if he's Richard Evans's dog, he's going to get another dose."

Dr. Ruff goes over and pets Reggie, who wags his tail in appreciation. She gently lifts his head and looks to see if the marks are also under his chin, which, of course, they are. "It's as I remember it," she says.

I ask her if there are other factors she can point to that can help identify him, and she starts to look through his records. "We're in luck," she says. "When Richard rescued him, he had three bad teeth, probably from chewing on rocks. I extracted them."

She walks over to Reggie and opens his mouth. He obliges, probably because he thinks she'll fill that mouth with a biscuit. She looks into the mouth, then looks at the records again, then back in his mouth.

"This is Reggie," she says. "There's another thing I want to check-with an X-ray-but this is him."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, it's not DNA, but there's no doubt in my mind. The cut marks, the same three teeth missing... The coincidence would be overwhelming. But Reggie had a broken leg, and a surgeon put a metal plate in it. If that's in the X-ray, then you can be absolutely certain."

She takes Reggie to be x-rayed and brings him back about fifteen minutes later. "It's there," she says. "Between the cut marks, the teeth, and the X-ray, it's one hundred percent."

"You'd testify to that?"

"With pleasure."

She still has a bunch of questions about how Reggie survived whatever his ordeal had been, but I don't have the answers. Not now. Maybe not ever.

I PLACE A PLACE A call to Sam Willis as soon as I get home. call to Sam Willis as soon as I get home.

Sam is my accountant, a role that took on an increased importance when I inherited my money. He's also a computer hacking genius, able to get pretty much any information at any time from anywhere. He sometimes crosses the cyber-line between legal and illegal information gathering, and I once helped him when he was caught doing so.

Sam has become a key investigator for me, using his computer prowess to get me answers that I might never be able to get on my own. It is in that role that I'm calling on him now; I need more answers than I have questions.

I call him on his cell phone, since that is the only phone he owns and uses. He cannot believe that I still use a landline in my home and office, likening it to someone tooling around Paterson in a horse and buggy. Wireless is everything, according to Sam, but the truth is, I'm barely starting to get comfortable with cord cordless.

I can hear a loud public address announcer as Sam is talking, and he explains that he's at Logan Airport in Boston. He's a Red Sox fanatic, a rarity in the New York area, and he goes up there about five times a year to see games. This time he's been there for almost a week.

His flight lands in an hour and a half, and I tell him that I'll pick him up at the airport because I want to talk to him about a job.

"On a case?" he asks, hopefully, since he loves this kind of investigatory work.

"On a case."

For some reason, I've always been a person who picks other people up at airports. I know that when I land I like someone to be there, even if it's just a driver. It's depressing to arrive and see all these people holding up signs with names on them, and none says "Carpenter." It makes me feel as if I have my own sign on my forehead-"Loser."

Sam flies into Newark rather than LaGuardia, which is where most Boston flights arrive. I share Sam's dislike for LaGuardia; it's tiny and old and so close to the city it feels as though the plane were landing on East Eighty-fourth Street. Newark is far more accessible and feels like a real airport.

Newark is far more accessible and feels like a real airport.

Sam is outside and in my car within five minutes of landing, because he did not check a bag. Sam wouldn't check a bag if he were going away for six months; he doesn't think it's something a real man should do.

Sam has some mental issues.

As Sam gets in the car, I realize I haven't prepared for the song talking game that dominates our relationship. The trick is to work song lyrics smoothly into the conversation, and Sam has so outdistanced me in his ability to do this that he has taken to adjusting the rules so he won't be bored. Now he will sometimes do movie dialogue instead of song lyrics, and I never know which it's going to be. Unfortunately, I have not prepared for either.

The good news is that Sam is so interested in finding out about the upcoming investigation that song or movie talking doesn't seem to be on his mind.

I brief him on what I know, and "brief" is the proper word, since I know very little. "For now I want you to focus on the victim, Stacy Harriman," I say. "There is very little about her in the record."

"You know where she's from, age, that kind of thing?" he asks.

"Some. What I don't have I'll get."

"Is this a rush?"

I nod. "Evans sits in jail until we can get him out. So it's a rush."

"I'll get right on it," he says.

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

He shrugs that off. "No problem. Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me."

He's doing Brando from The G.o.dfather. The G.o.dfather. It's a movie I know very well, so there's a chance I can compete, but right now my mind is a blank. "Sam, I want you to be careful, okay?" I say this because two people in my life have died because of material they have uncovered in this kind of investigation. One of the victims was Sam's former a.s.sistant. It's a movie I know very well, so there's a chance I can compete, but right now my mind is a blank. "Sam, I want you to be careful, okay?" I say this because two people in my life have died because of material they have uncovered in this kind of investigation. One of the victims was Sam's former a.s.sistant.

"Right," Sam says, shrugging off the warning.

"I mean it, Sam. You've got to take this stuff more seriously. We could be dealing with dangerous people."

He looks wounded. "What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you'd come to me in friendship, then these people would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, they would become my enemies. And they would fear you."

He is incorrigible. "Thank you, G.o.dfather," I say. "You want to work out of my office?"

He frowns. "You must be kidding. On your your computer? It would take me a year." computer? It would take me a year."

"I can set up whatever system you want," I say.

He shakes his head. "No, I'll work at home... I've got wireless and a cable modem." Then all of a sudden he's yelling, "At my home! Where my wife sleeps! Where my children come to play with their toys!"

"Sam, can we finish this before you start making me offers I can't refuse?"

"Sure. What else is there?"

I'm about to answer when I hear a loud crashing noise and then feel a sudden rush of warm air.

"Holy s.h.i.t!" Sam screams, and I realize that there is no longer a side window; it has just seemed to disappear. "Andy! To your left!"

I look over and see a car alongside us, with two men in the front seat. The man closest to us, not the driver, is pointing a gun at my head. He looks to be around forty, heavyset and very serious-looking. In an instant the thought flashes in my mind that he looks like a man on a mission, not a joyride. There have been some random highway shootings in the past few years, but I instinctively feel that this is not one of them.

I duck and hit the brakes just as I hear a loud noise, probably another shot. It doesn't seem to hit anything in the car, but I can take only momentary comfort in this. My fear-induced desire is to burrow under the seat, but I realize that my car isn't equipped with autopilot, and if I don't sit up and look at the road, we're in deep trouble.