by Sydney Bauer
‘So what approach does Katherine take?’ asked Joe, perhaps feeling the need to cut the silence short.
‘She tells him the truth,’ said Barbara.
‘She what?’ asked an incredulous Sara.
But Barbara hesitated before answering, her eyes once again meeting David’s, as if sensing that he knew exactly what Katherine de Castro had to do, and should be the one to voice it.
‘Katherine has to tell him what we are up to,’ he said. ‘She must go to him and tell him that you came to see her.’ David looked over at Sara. ‘She must repeat a version of your conversation – tell him what you claimed, tell him we think he is a diabolical monster and that we want her help to bring him down.’
‘No,’ said Sara. ‘David this is . . .’
But then David saw the realisation in her eyes – that it was the only thing Logan would believe. That it was the only approach that would keep Katherine de Castro safe – and force Jeffrey Logan into a position where he would do exactly what they wanted.
‘I’m sorry, Sara, but David’s right,’ said Barbara. ‘We have to flush him out. We have to convince him that we are closing in – and that he has no choice but to act. Don’t forget the man has an inherent need to feed whatever his particular urge might be, and if his urge is a need to be near his weapons, then we need to give him a reason to seek them out.’
‘You want to use Katherine to feed Logan’s desire to go after his massive collection of weaponry somewhere in Chatham so that he can return to Boston and hunt David down?’ said Sara, her cheeks now flushed with anger. ‘This was not how this was supposed to go,’ she continued, her eyes pooling with tears.
‘Sara,’ said Joe, feeling the need to reassure her, ‘I don’t like this any more than you do.’ He looked across at David. ‘But this may be our only way out. If Logan goes for his guns we will be on his tail within minutes and sticking to him like glue. And the minute we find his arsenal we can trace each and every one of his guns back to their original purchaser – Jason Nagol. And if David is right about Stephanie’s father, if we get that exhumation order and find a bullet in his head, we may even be able to match the bullet to the weapon and nail this bastard for good.’
‘And what about his mother, Joe?’ asked Sara. ‘What if that poor woman finds the guns first? We all know she must be aware of Logan’s arsenal – I mean, why else would she have dragged herself from her hospital bed to trek from one side of the country to the other?’
‘We traced her call to a payphone in Chatham, Sara,’ said Joe. ‘There are only so many places she could be staying. We’ll find her before she puts herself or anyone else in danger, and then me and Frank will be free to . . .’
‘To what, Joe? Paint a target on David’s back?’
There was silence as Sara met David’s eye, her chest heaving in a series of short, sharp breaths. She looked to those around her, perhaps sensing that there was no way she was going to convince them. And in that moment David wished beyond anything that things were different – but they weren’t, and they wouldn’t be, until Jeffrey Logan was brought to justice.
‘I can help,’ said Tony Bishop, a new voice in the mix, his eyes following a now defeated Sara as she slowly re-took her seat.
‘Help how?’ asked David, reaching under the table to take Sara’s hand.
‘You want to make him angry enough to go for the guns? I think I know exactly how that can be achieved.’ Tony took a breath before going on. ‘Maybe all that evidence you don’t have could be used to your advantage – I mean, you may not have a list of witnesses to rat this lowlife out, but Logan doesn’t need to know that, does he?’
‘I don’t understand, Tony,’ said David. ‘What the hell are you saying?’
‘I am saying that maybe it is about time Logan’s ghosts came back to haunt him – and I know exactly the person to open their cage and let them loose.’
69
The banging was loud enough to wake her – the banging and intermittent buzzing and now thumping on her high-rise apartment door. ‘Jesus,’ said Amanda Carmichael, as she prised open her pale blue eyes, the brightness of the moonlight now squeezing her pupils into pinpricks. ‘Who in the hell?’
She rose from her bed, grabbing her pink silk gown from the night-stand before making her way across the apartment. Her heart was racing, partly because she had been pulled from a deep and much sought after sleep (it had been midnight before she had managed to drift off), and partly because she was instinctively suspecting (hoping) the person on the other side of the door might be the same one she had kissed, unexpectedly, mere nights before. But a glance through the peephole showed it to be none other than Tony Bishop, the expression on his face pure panic.
‘Jesus, Tony,’ she said, as she pulled the door open. ‘It’s nearly 1am for Christ’s sake. What the hell is your problem?’
‘I’m not the one with the problem, Amanda,’ he said, moving past her to pace her expansive living room. ‘I did not know what else to do . . . I mean, I have a moral obligation, to my client.’
Amanda studied her ex-lover before her; Tony was genuinely flummoxed. She had never seen him so agitated before.
‘What is it, Tony?’ she asked, shutting the door behind him.
‘It’s David – I mean . . . shit, Amanda, you have no idea how hard this is for me. DC is one of my oldest friends, but Logan is a long-term client and you are prosecutor in his children’s case and . . .’
‘You know something . . . about Cavanaugh?’ she asked, her curiosity well and truly piqued. ‘You have some information about his defence which you have a moral obligation to disclose.’ She knew she was leading him, but she did not give a damn.
‘Yes,’ said Tony, now moving quickly towards her. ‘He . . . he has a new list . . . an extended one, which he obviously does not intend to disclose until he begins his presentation of evidence and . . .’
‘Slow down, Tony,’ she said, taking his arm. ‘What list? What is Cavanaugh hiding?’
‘His witness list. I saw it . . . I mean, it was by accident, of course. I met him for a drink after work. We’ve been friends for years and I was worried this case had come between us . . . which it hasn’t, at least not yet, but . . . then he went to the men’s room and this drunk guy, he walked past our bar stools and knocked over DC’s briefcase and this folder fell out and . . .’
‘You saw his witness list?’ she asked, her eyes now wide with excitement. ‘But the list he provided for the court contained only a handful of names – character witnesses for the children, the kids’ psychologist, the kids themselves.’
‘This one is different,’ said Tony.
‘Different how?’
‘There are at least five new names – and their addresses are from all over the country, from Nevada and Maine to . . .’
‘Jesus, Tony, who are these people? Did you memorise them? Jeffrey Logan is your client after all and . . .’
‘I wrote them down,’ he said, pulling a small piece of notepaper from his crumpled shirt pocket, his face a mixture of resolution and self-disgust.
‘Tony, I . . .’ She could barely contain herself. She would have even embraced the sweaty, panicking man before her if she had not been in such a hurry to study the names on the list. But then her brow furrowed.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Who the hell are these people? Carleton Blackmore, William ‘Little Willie’ Dukes, Gerald and Calvin Garretson – well, they are the gun traders but . . . a Mrs Deirdre McCall, a Detective Michael Lopez of the Las Vegas Police . . . who . . . why in God’s name would he be . . . ?’
‘I have no idea, Amanda, but these names have to mean something to somebody.’
The cogs in Amanda’s brain turned in double-time, as she tried to put it all together. ‘Cavanaugh has a bee in his bonnet about Logan, Logan was born in Vegas, this has to have something to do with him.’
‘Then maybe he will know who these people are?’ said Tony.
Amand
a nodded, before looking at her watch. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’
‘It’s the middle of the trial,’ countered Tony.
And Amanda sensed that Tony was right – there was no way she was waiting another six hours to find out what the hell Cavanaugh was up to.
‘Grab that telephone behind you,’ she said, pointing to the hands-free on the coffee table. ‘And get Logan on the line – now!’
Moments later, just as Tony Bishop was listening to the ring of Jeffrey Logan’s telephone, Sara Davis was lying two miles east, praying for an end to this madness and wishing, beyond all else, that her unborn child would not be brought up without a father.
‘I’m so sorry, Sara,’ said David, knowing she was not asleep. They had spent the previous hour arguing, their heated to-ing and fro-ing getting them nowhere, before Sara had finally caved in to exhaustion and made her way to bed.
‘I wish things were different. I wish I knew how to let things go, to turn my back and move on.’ He took a breath. ‘But you knew who I was when you . . .’
And Sara knew he was about to say ‘married me’ – but he stopped when he remembered they had never actually got around to the marriage thing – something they knew would come eventually, but had been delayed by their work, by her pregnancy, by . . .
‘I don’t know what else I can promise you,’ David went on, ‘aside from my assurance that I won’t take any unnecessary risks. I mean, if all goes to plan, Joe and Frank will have Logan in custody before he gets anywhere near me.’
‘No,’ she said after a time. ‘He’s too smart, David, and you are all too busy playing caped crusader to see it. Logan will go after those guns with a clear and singular purpose – to rid him of the one person who has the power to bring him down. He’ll be going after you, David, and there is nothing you can do to stop him.’
David said nothing for a long, long time.
‘Sara?’ he whispered at last.
‘Yes.’
‘Will you marry me?’
Then more silence until: ‘Yes.’
And they lay there, quietly, gently, the two of them – or, more to the point, three – until finally they fell asleep, the images of what was meant to be playing hopefully in their dreams.
70
On, off. On, off.
It was early, barely past seven, and the lights in the almost empty courtroom 908 were flickering, creating a strobe-like effect on the one inhabitant who, at first glance, appeared to be dancing around the high-ceilinged expanse with a long white stick.
‘Judge,’ said David, obviously scaring the dogged-faced Kessler who was now jumping up and down with her head craned towards the ceiling above her.
‘For goodness’ sake, Counsellor,’ she said, the lights finally returning to show the aforementioned stick now stuck in the soft wood ceiling above her. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she said, pointing to the circular light fitting above.
And finally David realised what she was doing. Years ago many of the courtrooms in the Superior Court building had been fitted with sensor lights – designed to come on and go off when people entered and left the room. They were installed in an attempt to conserve energy – which now seemed somewhat ironic considering the red-faced judge before him.
‘The ceilings are too bloody high! These lights are made for your average-sized room – not one with eighteen-foot ceilings. So I thought if I got that pole,’ she said, pointing to the long stick suspended above her, ‘. . . the one the clerks used to open the high eastern windows, that I could wave it around underneath the lights and force them to . . .’
‘Come on,’ said David, who smiled, despite himself.
‘Exactly,’ said Kessler, smiling in return, a rare expression which, David had to admit, made the normally hard-faced woman look surprisingly genuine, sincere, approachable.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ she asked, making a final gesture at both David and the stick as if suggesting he move into the room and help her dislodge the long white pole.
‘Something like that,’ he said, tugging hard on the pole to release it.
‘And why doesn’t that surprise me?’ she said, taking the stick with a nod before returning it to its usual place by the window. ‘This may be my first murder trial, Mr Cavanaugh, but something tells me most of them don’t go quite like this. I can’t say I am a fan of the one-horse race, Counsellor, which, in all honesty, I did not expect this to be.’
‘I suppose I should take that as a compliment,’ said David.
‘Or an insult,’ she countered.
And David knew she was right.
‘I need a favour, Judge.’
‘I would suggest you need more than a favour, Mr Cavanaugh,’ she said, leading him to a bench so that they might take a seat.
‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘But for now, this one favour – well, I am hoping it might snowball onto something else.’
‘Sort of like one small step for man, one giant leap for the Logan children’s defence?’
And David had to admit there was something quite admirable about this woman’s refusal to beat around the bush.
‘Something like that.’
Kessler nodded. ‘Well, what is it, Counsellor? To what do I owe the unexpected delights of this early morning visit?’
‘I need a court order to exhume a body.’
Kessler jumped. ‘You what? Is this some sort of joke? I mean, unless I am mistaken, Counsellor, the cause of death in relation to the victim in this case is irrefutable.’
‘Not the victim,’ he interrupted. ‘The victim’s father.’
‘Malcolm Tyler.’
David was impressed, Kessler had obviously done her homework on the Tyler/Logan clan as a whole.
‘Didn’t he die in some boating accident . . . ?’
‘He was sailing, off the Cape, about a year ago.’
‘And you want to exhume his body because . . . ?’
‘I think he was shot.’
Kessler gave that little jump once again. ‘And you suspect this hypothetical killer is the same person who . . . ?’
‘. . . shot Stephanie Tyler.’
Kessler nodded – a nod that soon transformed into a shake. ‘Do the police know about this?’
‘Lieutenant Joe Mannix is waiting outside, Judge. He is on board with this – but we need to do it quickly and quietly so that . . . well, timing and discretion are everything.’
‘I gather Miss Carmichael has not been informed about your desire to undertake this merry excavation?’
‘Ah – not yet,’ said David. ‘But I promise she will be if anything relevant to the case turns up.’
‘Hmmm,’ considered Kessler. ‘Well I do respect Mannix.’
‘He’s the best,’ said a hopeful David.
‘But such an order would be highly controversial. What about permission from the man’s next of kin?’
‘J.T. and Chelsea Logan are giving “permission to exhume” statements to my co-counsel Sara Davis and another attorney by the name of Tony Bishop as we speak, and as the man’s grandchildren . . .’
‘Children is correct, Mr Cavanaugh. Normally these things require the permission of an adult relative.’
‘If they are old enough to be tried as adults in an adult court, Judge, I would suggest they have earned the right to speak in the best interests of their grandfather’s remains.’
Kessler nodded. ‘Touché, Mr Cavanaugh,’ she said, before meeting David’s eye once again. ‘Is this going to come back to bite me, Counsellor?’ she asked, and David knew she was asking if the media would be involved. There had been cases in the past where desperate defence attorneys had used stunts such as an exhumation to divert attention from their lack of evidence – but David suspected Kessler knew him better than this and was praying he was right.
‘No,’ he answered.
Kessler took a breath. ‘Then I need some comprehensive documentation explaining your grounds for this highly unusual request – and you ha
ve to get me those children’s statements before I commit to anything solid.’
David let out a sigh of relief. He sensed that, given her level of interest, and her obvious desire to be as thorough as possible on her first murder trial, it was unlikely she would deny any request that could come back to bite her at appeal.
‘Thanks, Judge,’ he said.
Kessler nodded before rising from her seat. ‘Just promise me, if anyone asks about that hole in the ceiling,’ she pointed skyward, ‘that you will deny any knowledge as to how it got there.’
‘What hole?’ said David.
‘Exactly,’ said Kessler. ‘What damned hole indeed.’
71
‘Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.’ And here was another one – ‘Great liars are also great magicians.’ And another – ‘The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.’
These were all spoken by history’s greatest manipulator, a man Logan admired beyond all others, the Führer with great foresight and power who understood that ‘The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force’. In other words, as long as you told people what they wanted to hear, then they were more than happy to believe it. And what better way do so than as a man who talks as a profession. It really was quite beautiful – the profoundness of it all.
Jeffrey Logan looked at himself in the mirror as he adjusted his Ralph Lauren tie and ran his hands over his freshly shaven cheeks. He was a good-looking man – and that had certainly helped, but his charisma went beyond the aesthetic. He had a way with people, an inbuilt ability to charm and beguile and sway. And while he would like to think that much of his ‘talent’ was due to his insatiable appetite for self-advancement, he knew that much of his skill had come down to luck – at being born the person he was, devoid of morality and that pesky emotional anchor known as a conscience.
