Since then we’ve maintained a close friendship punctuated by sexual banter, and Rita can often be helpful as I try to navigate the court system. She is also a dog lover, with two mastiffs of her own, so she was the ideal candidate for the task at hand.
Rita has manipulated the system to make sure that our filed petition lands on the desk of Judge Seymour Markinson. Judge Markinson, though he shares his colleagues’ disdain for me and my courtroom antics, absolutely loves dogs. If anyone would be willing to see past the irritation that I represent to protect Simon, he’s the one.
Corey has taken a risk by allowing himself to be quoted for Vince’s article, which might provoke some retaliation by his bosses in the Paterson PD. He’s even doing a couple of follow-up interviews with other news outlets who are picking up the story.
Even though he’s retiring, his bosses can still cause him aggravation, so it’s all pretty gutsy on his part. But to me it’s a clear sign that he cares about Simon.
I’ve taken a chance by going so public with this, especially so early. It will certainly generate the grassroots support that I want; no one living on the New Jersey section of Planet Earth would back the Paterson PD over a hero dog.
But it could definitely get the opposition’s back up. They might resist simply to show that they cannot be intimidated, and definitely not by an annoying defense attorney.
My being an annoying defense attorney, though, is why I took this approach. Corey had already gone about it the right way. He had spoken to his superiors, and when they’d refused his request, he had followed proper procedure and gone to the Appeals Board. He got nowhere; they brushed him aside.
The chance that Andy Carpenter would go through the same “proper” channels and get a different result is pretty close to absolute zero. It would also be considerably less fun and much less satisfying. If these jerks can’t find it in their hearts to let Simon retire a year early, after all he has put in, then they deserve to be publicly humiliated.
Which is where I come in.
Hike and I are in my office going over the information that Sam Willis has dug up, as well as deciding who we will call as witnesses. That’s all dependent on Judge Markinson’s granting the hearing that we’ve requested. If he doesn’t, then we’ve gotten dressed up for a party that doesn’t exist.
As we’re wrapping up, Rita Gordon calls me on my cell. “The judge is pissed.”
“How pissed?”
“He mentioned something about disemboweling you with a butter knife.”
“Did he smile when he said it?”
“Andy, you didn’t need to turn this into a public relations thing. You know that judges do not like to be pressured.”
“I wasn’t pressuring him; I was pressuring the Paterson PD.”
“That’s what I told him,” Rita says.
“What did he say to that?”
“That’s when he mentioned the disemboweling.”
“Did we get the hearing?” I ask, since that is all that matters.
“Friday at ten A.M.”
“Rita, you are fantastic.”
“I am keenly aware of that.”
So things are looking up. We’ve got the hearing we’ve been seeking and are pretty well along in our preparation. The other good news is that while Laurie has been looking into the arrest of Noah Traynor, she doesn’t seem to have found anything that would call for us to intervene. It’s possible that she is relaxing her self-imposed rules on being a Christmas-wish genie.
I head home to take Tara and Sebastian for a walk and wait for Ricky to get home from school. Tonight there is both NBA and college basketball to watch on television.
Life is good.
The first sign of life’s possibly not being as good as I thought is a strange car in the driveway of our house. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but I have a sense of foreboding.
When I get into the house, Laurie hears me and calls out, “Andy, we’re in the kitchen.” My keen sense of deduction tells me that “we’re” refers to Laurie and the driver of that car.
When I get to the kitchen, I see that Laurie is having coffee with a woman I don’t recognize.
“Andy Carpenter,” Laurie says, “meet Julie Traynor.”
I have a feeling life just took a turn for the worse.
“What’s going on?” I ask, after the requisite hellos.
“Julie called and asked if she could come over, and she’s just arrived,” Laurie says. “So we can hear what she has to say together.”
Tara and Sebastian are lying at Laurie’s feet, munching on chewies. Their expressions are impassive; they are obviously as much in the dark as Laurie and me.
“I’m sorry I was so cold to you when you came over,” Julie says to Laurie. Julie’s voice and demeanor scream out distraught. I’ve had rectal exams that I’ve looked forward to more than this conversation.
Julie continues, “But I was already so worried and frightened, and when I heard that you had been a police officer, I guess I was afraid to trust you.”
“I understand,” Laurie says, which makes one of us.
“But then when Noah was arrested … you know about that?”
Laurie nods. “We do.”
“I didn’t know where to turn,” Julie says, then turns to me, meaning that she may have figured out where to turn. “My cousin is a lawyer; his name is Marvin Simmons. He’s not a criminal attorney … he works for an insurance company. But when he heard that I had sort of a connection to you, he said that your reputation is that you’re the best.”
I don’t know her cousin Marvin, but I already hope he and his company never win another case.
“Andy is definitely the best,” Laurie says, obviously casting her lot with Cousin Marvin.
“We don’t have much money,” Julie says, “but I would pay whatever you charge no matter how long it takes me.”
This is not getting better as we go along. “Why don’t you tell us your story,” I say. “That way we will have a better sense of where things stand.”
“There is simply no way that Noah killed that girl. If you knew Noah, you would know that it is simply an impossibility.”
“Why do the police think he did?”
“DNA. He had a brief relationship with her and was with her outside that stadium, just before it happened. He knew he must have left DNA that the police would have gotten. It was about two years before we met. He was just a kid. But they could never connect him to it because they didn’t have his DNA on file.
“Then Noah’s brother, who didn’t know anything about this, sent his own DNA in to one of those websites … you know, those genealogy sites? They tell you your nationality, connect you with relatives … things like that. Once Noah heard about that, he knew this day was coming.”
I know what she’s talking about. People get their DNA results, then upload them to a website that tells them about possible relatives they have, but might not know. Uploading the information removes the right to privacy, and the police can access those databases. Once they saw Noah’s brother’s DNA results and matched it up against the evidence from the murder, it was an easy next step to go after Noah.
“And you knew about his connection to the murdered woman all these years?”
“He told me about five years ago. I wanted him to go to the police, but he said that they would arrest him. It’s not like he could direct them to the real killer. So we’ve lived in fear.”
“What more can you tell us?” Laurie asks.
“I don’t know all the details. But if you would talk to Noah. Please, if you would just talk to him.”
“Of course we’ll talk to him,” Laurie says.
If I say, No, we won’t, I don’t think it will go over well. And the truth is that I feel sorry enough for Julie Traynor to at least want to do that much for her. It doesn’t mean I think her husband is worthy of representing; a wife thinking her husband is innocent is not exactly an earthshaking development.
So I
throw in an “Of course,” accompanied by a nod. It’s the closest I can come to a ringing endorsement.
Ricky walks in, having just been dropped off by the school bus. Laurie introduces him to Mrs. Traynor, and his presence will effectively end the talk about murder. Too bad he didn’t get here sooner.
Tara and Sebastian both go over to Ricky to get their expected petting, and he is only too happy to oblige.
“My son, Danny, is about your age,” Julie says. “He loves dogs too.”
“Do you have one?” Ricky asks.
She smiles and nods. “We do. His name is Murphy and he’s a dachshund.”
“What do they look like?” Ricky asks.
She shows all of us a picture of Murphy that she has on her phone. He’s adorable, which I admit grudgingly, because if not for Murphy, Danny would not have placed a wish on the pet store Christmas tree. And I wouldn’t be going to the jail to talk to an accused murderer.
“Wow,” Ricky says. “What a cool-looking dog. Can I come see him sometime?”
“Sure,” Julie says.
Once Julie leaves, we all go for a family walk in Eastside Park. This time we don’t run into any cops with their police dogs; it’s just a pleasant, slow, incredibly comfortable walk, during which Ricky tells us about his day at school. For the moment I am not even thinking about Julie or Noah Traynor.
Life is once again good … it does seem to bounce up and down a lot.
Laurie comes with me to the jail to talk to Noah Traynor.
I register as his attorney, listing Laurie as my associate. That enables us to meet in a private room, outside the range of prison microphones. At least that’s the way it is supposed to be; one never knows.
Noah is brought into the room in handcuffs, as is customary, and the guard attaches those cuffs to the metal table. Then the guard takes a position outside the only door to the windowless room. It’s a good bet Noah is not going to be able to use this meeting as an opportunity to escape.
He’s about six feet tall, thin at maybe 160 pounds. Like all incarcerated people, especially first-timers, he looks scared. But that’s not the dominant aspect of his appearance. Trumping it all is that he looks tired.
“I’ve been running in place for fourteen years,” he says, after we introduce ourselves. Then, “Thank you for coming here. I’m very glad that Julie has not lost her power of persuasion.”
“Just to be clear,” I say, “we are here to listen and gather information. We have not committed to represent you, nor have you asked us to.”
He nods. “I understand. The public defender has been here and handled the arraignment. I pled not guilty.”
I nod. “I know. Why don’t you just tell us your story from the beginning.”
He nods. “With all that has gone on, over so many years, there actually isn’t that much to tell. I was nineteen years old when I met Kristen McNeil in a bar. It was called the Moonraker and was on Route Four in Paramus. It’s not there anymore.”
“How long did you know her before her death?”
“About three weeks. But I only actually saw her three or four times. She was very secretive about it; she didn’t want me to meet her friends or even spend time with me in public.”
“Did she say why?”
“No. I asked her but she sort of shrugged it off. I figured it must have had to do with some other relationship she had; as it turns out, she had an existing boyfriend, but I didn’t know that then. The truth is that I found her attractive, so I was fine with it.”
“Did you have sex with her the day she died?” Laurie asks.
“No. I wanted to, and she said she wanted to. That was the reason we went out to that part of town.”
“So describe what happened that day,” I say.
“We met near the Falls, near Hinchliffe Stadium. It was pretty much understood we were going to have sex; we had danced around the idea, but we both knew. I brought some beer, and we were drinking. Not too much; certainly neither of us was drunk.
“She had been acting strange … I told you that … but I thought that just might be who she was, you know, high-strung and unpredictable. But then she started telling me that I had to take her with me when I left.”
“Left for where?”
“College. I was leaving a few days later to go to the University of Maryland.”
“Why did she want to go with you?”
“I don’t know, but she said she couldn’t live here anymore, that she had to leave. I asked why she couldn’t just leave on her own, and she said she had no money. It was like she wanted to go with me and then live with me in secret. Really bizarre.”
“What happened next?” I ask.
“When I didn’t say she could come with me, she started to lose it, like she was panicking. I held her arms, trying to calm her down, and she scratched my face. I was bleeding. The whole thing was crazy and sure as hell wasn’t what I expected when I went there.”
“Were her clothes already torn when you left?” Laurie asks, since they were torn when she was found.
“No. Not by me, and not that I saw.”
“What did you do then?” I ask. “After she scratched your face…”
“I left. I mean, the whole thing had blown up.”
“Did she leave also?” Laurie asks.
“No. She was sitting there crying when I left. She had her own car, so I didn’t think I had to worry about her. And the truth was, I wanted to get as far away from her as I could. Things had not exactly gone according to plan, and the truth is I was scared of her and what she might do.”
“What happened next?”
“I didn’t think anything happened, at least at first. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I even heard about it. It was all over the news. They were calling it an attempted sexual-assault murder. Since she had scratched me like that, I thought they would think I killed her.”
“So what did you do?” I ask.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Unless you consider panicking and freaking out to be doing something. I thought they’d come for me, but they never did. Gradually I began to believe that they had no way to connect the two of us. Over time I read up on things and realized that I wasn’t in any DNA data bank. And since none of her friends knew me, I wasn’t on the police radar.”
“And you never told anyone?” I ask.
“I may have mentioned her by name to one or two people; I honestly can’t remember. But I certainly never talked about it after she was killed; the first person I finally told was Julie.”
It wouldn’t have mattered either way whether he told someone that he knew her; with his DNA on the scene, there would be no way to claim otherwise. And his claiming innocence after the fact wouldn’t matter either, as it would obviously be viewed by the prosecution as self-serving. “Didn’t you want to help find the real killer?” I ask.
He nods again. “Yes, of course, but I had nothing to offer. And then, as time went by, it would look worse and worse that I waited so long. So I did absolutely nothing; it was like I was frozen in place. I’m not proud of it, but I didn’t see any other option at the time.”
“And you saw nothing unusual as you were leaving?” I ask. “No people, no cars that seemed out of place? That’s a desolate area.”
“Nothing. Why would I want to kill her? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not a violent guy; I’ve never even been in a fight. But what if I was? What would I have had to gain from killing her?”
He goes on to talk about the DNA test his brother took, and how he realized that would eventually become his undoing. It’s the same story that Julie told us.
“No one will believe me now,” he says, probably accurately assessing his situation. “Not after all these years.”
I tell him that Laurie and I will talk about this and get back to him. “In the meantime,” I say, “I assume the public defender has instructed you not to talk about these matters to anyone.”
“He has.”
�
�It’s excellent advice; follow it.”
“So, do you believe him?” I ask, once we’re in the car.
Laurie thinks about it for a few moments. I’m not sure what to expect. As an ex-cop she is always late to the party when it comes to believing protestations of innocence. But as a granter of Christmas wishes, she wants little Danny’s to come true.
“I’m torn,” she says. “We’re not talking to the person who might have done this. That person was nineteen years old; this is a full-fledged adult. He could have done something bad then, maybe even accidental. Assessing him now is very difficult; we would have had to know him back then to have any chance of knowing the truth.”
“Yet assess we must.”
“We don’t even know the circumstances. If it were a cold-blooded premeditated killing, I might be more likely to believe that he didn’t do it. He was a kid attracted to a girl that was going to have sex with him; why would he want to kill her?”
“What about his not reporting it? Consciousness of guilt?”
She nods. “Maybe. Or panic, or a young person making a bad decision.”
“So where do you net out on it?”
“I’m torn, and not just because of the Christmas wish thing. I know that has to have its limitations. But if he’s innocent, and I admit that is a very big if, I want him to have a chance. And while I know the public defenders are good, hardworking lawyers, they are overloaded. I just don’t think they have the time or resources that would be necessary in a case like this.”
I’m at a loss here. I thought Laurie would have a strong point of view on this, since strong points of view are a specialty of hers. My role is traditionally to take the other side; if she was in favor of defending him, or against, I could simply take whatever the opposing position was and argue it. I’d lose, but at least I would be comfortable with the ground rules, and we would have talked it out.
But Laurie’s being unsure is disorienting and leaves me without a strategy. Worse yet, it puts me in the decision-making role, which doesn’t suit me at all. As roles go, I would do better playing Lady Macbeth.
Dachshund Through the Snow Page 3
