Unleashed

by David Rosenfelt

I take it easy on these witnesses, merely asking enough questions to reemphasize the fact that they have absolutely no information tying Denise’s alleged affair to Sam. I also point out that they believe Denise’s affair had lasted for a number of months, whereas she told Jennings that she was seeing Sam for only one month.

  The only way to resolve this discrepancy is either that she was lying about Sam or she also had other affairs. They both play well for us, especially the former.

  Bader’s last witness is Sergeant Ben Thompson, a prison guard for twenty-two years. He is responsible for the visitors’ room at the prison, and he testifies that Sam visited her on six different occasions.

  “Was he her most frequent visitor?” Bader asks.

  “Yes, by far. Even more than her lawyer.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual between them?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by unusual,” he says. “She would occasionally put her hand on his or touch his arm. That kind of thing.”

  When it’s my turn, I start with, “Sergeant Thompson, when you saw this physical contact that you describe between Mr. Willis and Mrs. Price, did you put a stop to it?”

  “No.”

  “So you didn’t consider it improper?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “You’ve seen that kind of thing before?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sergeant, where did you go to high school?”

  “Montclair High.”

  “Are you still friendly with any of your classmates from back then?”

  “Yes. We get together all the time.”

  “If one of them was charged with a crime, and you were sure he was innocent, might you visit him in jail while he was on trial? Would you consider supporting him in that way?”

  Thompson doesn’t hesitate. “I sure would.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Bader rests his case, and Judge Hurdle asks me if I will be presenting witnesses. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Can you provide their names to the court?”

  “Not at this point, Your Honor, I’m sorry. We’re working as fast as we can to put it together.”

  Bader objects, but the defense gets a lot of leeway in preliminary hearings, partially because of the very limited time we have to prepare.

  I promise the judge I will have a list on Monday morning when we resume, and say that if Bader then needs some time to prepare, the judge can issue a continuance. There is as much chance of that happening as the judge handing out tickets to the lawyers for a Justin Bieber concert. Judges have an inbred hatred for delays of any kind.

  I’m once again reasonably pleased with how the day went, though my meeting tonight with Glennon in Eastside Park will determine just how good the day really is.

  At first Carter was annoyed. Since the situation with the locals in New Hampshire, Maine, and Ohio had been cleaned up rather violently, the operation had proceeded with remarkable precision. Yet now, when it was so close to bearing fruit, his superior officer was suddenly asking for all the details.

  It was ridiculous. If he was going to be seriously questioned, it should have been during the strategic preparation, when substantive changes could have been made. At this late date, other than slight revisions, it was either proceed or abort, and no one was prepared to abort.

  But along with the annoyance, Carter felt more than a little pride. It was a masterful plan, followed by what to this point was a masterful execution. They were making history, and no one had any right to be one-tenth as proud as Carter.

  But the money people had to be given their due. For all of Carter’s brilliance, he could not have come close to pulling this off without the unlimited funding he had been provided. And the truth is that they were also making him rich beyond his wildest dreams.

  So he put all the relevant information on computer disks and prepared a PowerPoint presentation to show his superior when he arrived. Such was the detail that the presentation could continue for many, many hours, but Carter doubted that would be necessary.

  His assumption was that his audience would quickly understand that Carter had done everything there was to do, prepared everything there was to prepare, and left nothing to chance. He figured that within an hour his superior would smile and tell him to continue on exactly as he had been doing.

  The knock on the door came at eight o’clock. Carter let him in, and other than a brief acknowledgment, no other words were spoken. Neither of them was prone to chitchat.

  Carter’s guest requested a beer before they begin, and it was while Carter was getting one from the refrigerator that he felt the gun against the back of his skull.

  “What the hell is going on?” Carter asked as his mind raced for a way out of his predicament.

  The superior laughed. “You’re familiar with targeted killings, aren’t you?

  “I’ve been loyal,” Carter said. “I’ve given you what you wanted.”

  “I’m sure you have. Now I’ll take it from here.”

  “We’re on the same side; let’s talk about this.”

  But the man holding the gun had little time to talk and none to waste. Yesterday Denise Price was eliminated, and now Carter. But his work tonight was not finished.

  Richard Glennon was next.

  When I was fourteen, I kissed Tina Stahlman in Eastside Park. It was easily the high point of my early formative days in the park, and my recollection is that Tina was formed pretty well by then too. Even though she subsequently and repeatedly denied the event to friends, it has remained in my mind a rare but major triumph.

  My other early park days were marked by fairly consistent failures on the baseball diamonds; I was a pitcher and shortstop, but I could neither hit nor throw a curveball. I also played cornerback here on our fraternity football team, where I earned the nickname “Toast,” because I was so frequently burned by opposing wide receivers.

  My adult years here have been a mixed bag. There have been the always pleasant walks with Tara and Laurie, mostly during daylight hours.

  I’ve had a few clandestine nighttime meetings with people relating to cases I’ve been working on. They haven’t gone so well: a car blew up, a guy got splattered on my windshield, a couple of violent deaths. Businesswise it’s fair to say that Eastside Park hasn’t been my good-luck conference room.

  Of course, the mere prevention of death, mine or anyone else’s, is not going to be good enough tonight. If Glennon can give me a road map to what the hell is going on, it will be perfectly timed to fit in my strategy on how to get Sam off.

  I arrive at the designated meeting place at nine forty-five. I prefer being the first to arrive, though I’m not sure why. It might be because it gives me the chance to get used to the darkness and the silence, which are not two of my favorite things. I also like to see the other person arriving, and better yet, I want Marcus to see the other person arriving.

  Of course I haven’t seen Marcus since last night, when he was emptying our refrigerator. I know he’s here, and even though I don’t think Glennon presents any danger, I’m glad that he is.

  There is a winding road that leads down from the upper part of the park to the lower part, where I’m waiting. As kids we called it Dead Man’s Curve, though to adult eyes it looks somewhat less fearsome.

  The directions I gave Glennon included coming down that way, even though there is another entrance into the lower level of the park. So it is that road that I keep my eyes on, watching for car lights coming around the bend.

  By ten fifteen I’m getting concerned that those lights are not going to appear, and by ten thirty I’m pretty sure of it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; Glennon seemed scared to the point of being unstable.

  I take out my cell phone to see if perhaps he had called and the phone didn’t ring due to weak service in the park. But there are three bars and no message on the phone.

  I stick it out until ten fifty and decide to leave. Glennon has my number and can certainly call if he’s running
late and still wants to meet. I’m not holding my breath.

  I yell out, “Marcus, we’re outta here!” but he doesn’t answer. Marcus sticks to the script; he maintains radio silence even without radios.

  I start walking toward my car, once again checking my cell phone for messages. As I do so, it rings, and in the quiet night it sounds like about a thousand decibels. It scares me so much that I drop the phone. Fortunately, it lights up when it rings, so I’m able to see it on the ground without much difficulty.

  “Please be Glennon,” I actually say out loud, but the caller ID removes any suspense in that regard. It isn’t Glennon calling; it’s Laurie.

  “Andy, where are you?”

  “At the park. I was waiting for Glennon, but—”

  She interrupts. “He’s not going to show up.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he’s dead.”

  Eastside Park strikes again.

  “Marcus, now we’re really outta here!”

  I make the five-minute drive home, and Laurie tells me she had been watching the local news. She was probably afraid she was going to see a story about a prominent defense attorney murdered in Eastside Park, but instead the breaking news was of something that happened on Route 80.

  According to police, a car containing the body of Richard Glennon was found in a ditch off the side of the highway, in Paterson. He had been shot once in the back of the head and would have certainly died instantly.

  I call Pete Stanton on his cell phone to see if he can get me any more information. When he answers, I ask if he has heard about Glennon’s murder.

  “I’m watching his body being loaded into a van. Why?”

  “He was on his way to meet me tonight,” I say.

  “You remain a regular good-luck charm. Come on in and talk to me about it.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Headed to the morgue. Glennon’s wife is on the way to ID the body.”

  I agree to come down and talk to him, even though it will probably be a waste of time. I won’t reveal much about my case, and he won’t reveal much about his. But it’s worth a try.

  I arrive at the morgue just in time to see a uniformed officer escort a sobbing woman into the building. I wait in the reception area, and ten minutes later the same officer brings out the same woman, sobbing even harder now. My keen investigative mind tells me that she is Mrs. Richard Glennon.

  Pete finally comes out, and we go outside to talk. “Any chance you caught the killer?” I ask.

  “Why? You want another client? You moved up from amateur killers to professional?”

  “This was a professional hit?”

  “No doubt. Now suppose you tell me why you were meeting Glennon?”

  There’s not really much reason for me to hold much back. The more people who are investigating all of this, the more chance there is that we’ll collectively learn something.

  So I tell him what I know and suggest that he call Agent Muñoz to learn more.

  “You’d better hurry up and solve this,” I say. “I’ve got a feeling something bad is about to happen.”

  He points back toward the morgue. “Worse than this?”

  I nod. “Much worse than this.”

  “Your Honor, we do not have a full witness list at this time.”

  Bader and I are in Judge Hurdle’s chambers before the start of court this morning, and Bader’s reaction my statement is predictable.

  “Your Honor, this is ridiculous, and we strongly request that you put a stop to it. The defense wants to present a case, then let them present their case. But we are entitled to prepare for their witnesses.”

  “In the course of presenting our case, we will be demonstrating why our witness list is unavoidably not complete,” I say.

  Judge Hurdle frowns. “That’s a little cryptic for me.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but my witnesses keep getting murdered.”

  “You mean Denise Price?” Bader asks.

  “No. I would have called her, but I’m sure she would have refused to testify. I’m talking about other potential witnesses who have met the same fate.”

  Bader turns to Judge Hurdle in frustration. “Your Honor, he’s attempting to get in witness testimony that would never have a chance of seeing the light of day in an actual trial. This is why he asked for a preliminary hearing.”

  I snap my fingers in mock dismay. “I’m sorry, I must have cut class the day they taught that I was required to reveal my motive for wanting a preliminary hearing. I was probably out late the night before … you know how that is—”

  Hurdle cuts me off, which was fine, because I was pretty much finished with that speech. “Mr. Carpenter, who are your first two witnesses going to be?”

  Bader’s level of frustration is about to be multiplied by ten. “First, we’ll be calling Lieutenant Jennings back to the stand.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To question him about matters that weren’t brought up on direct and that I therefore couldn’t cross-examine him on.”

  Hurdle nods; that seems reasonable. “And your second witness?”

  “That will be me, Your Honor.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I will be testifying myself, with Your Honor’s permission.”

  Bader practically launches himself from his seat. “Your Honor, that is completely improper.”

  I shake my head. “It is not. As an officer of the court, I submit that I am the only person with knowledge of the events and substance that I will testify to. To prevent me from doing so would inhibit the search for the truth while accomplishing nothing.”

  “Mr. Carpenter obviously considers proper procedure and the dignity of this court to be ‘nothing,’” says Bader.

  I’ve been looking at and talking to Judge Hurdle the entire time, as if Bader is not there, and it’s driving him nuts. So nuts that he just gave me an opening.

  “Judge, you and I know that you are quite capable of maintaining proper procedure and the dignity of your courtroom. That isn’t the issue here. The issue is whether or not Sam Willis should be deprived of his liberty and held over for trial. To do that you need all relevant information, and I am telling you, and I will demonstrate, that my testifying is the only way to get that information out there for you to consider.”

  Hurdle does not look convinced. “Mr. Bader?”

  Bader makes an obvious effort to appear calm and reasonable. “I would submit that Mr. Carpenter’s motive here is not to ensure that the court has sufficient information. He is playing to the media and the potential jurors who are following this hearing.”

  I smile, as if amused by Bader’s tactic. “For days now the prosecution has been presenting their own witnesses, yet I heard no concern that the jury pool out there might hear their point of view.”

  “That is information that they will hear at trial,” Bader says. “Your fishing expedition witnesses will never get near the trial.”

  “I hadn’t realized you had decided yet that there would even be a trial, Judge. I thought that’s what this hearing was all about.”

  “Don’t play me, Mr. Carpenter.”

  I nod. “Here’s the reality of the situation, Your Honor. It’s a preliminary hearing, so you have complete discretion as to what you will allow and what you won’t allow. More important, since you will be making the final decision as to whether there is probable cause, you can listen to our case, to my testimony, and assign whatever weight to it you wish. Or give it no weight at all. It’s all up to you; there is no jury here for me to unduly influence.”

  I continue before Bader can jump in. “And if Mr. Bader is right, that I’m somehow playing games and interfering with the dignity of the court, then you can cut me off at any time and admonish me in front of the media that Mr. Bader suddenly seems so concerned about.”

  “And I will do exactly that if I deem it necessary,” Hurdle says, to Bader’s obvious distress. “I will also direct you to
move quickly. We must adjourn early today, because the court has housekeeping issues to deal with. And as you know, we are five days from Memorial Day weekend. When we get there, this hearing had better be in my rearview mirror.”

  “Lieutenant Jennings, welcome back.”

  “Thank you,” he says, but he’s looking at me as if my welcome was insincere. Why must these people judge me so harshly?

  “Sorry to again take you away from your important work,” I say. “I’ll try not to keep you long. By the way, what important work have you been doing?”

  “Police work.”

  I give an exaggerated nod and snap of the fingers, as if I should have known better than to ask such a silly question. “Of course, police work. Because you’re a policeman. What kind of police work?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I assume you haven’t been working traffic crossings or giving out parking tickets. What have you been doing?”

  “Investigative work.”

  “Of course,” I say. “Because you’re an investigator.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been investigating things related to this case?”

  “Among others,” he says.

  “If we looked at the murder book and your time sheets, would we see that a good portion of that time has been on this case?”

  “A good amount, not all of it.”

  “As I recall, Denise Price told you that she and Sam Willis had been having an affair,” I say. “Do you remember that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you been investigating that claim?”

  He nods. “I have.”

  “We didn’t hear anything about that in the prosecution’s case, so this is your chance to add it to the record.”

  “What are you asking me?”

  “Well, since Denise Price told you this weeks ago, what have you learned since then to support her claim that she and Sam Willis were having an affair?”

  “A number of her friends have confirmed that she was having an affair.”

  “With Sam Willis?”

  “They did not know the identity of the man. They couldn’t rule him out.”