Dead Center ac-5

by David Rosenfelt

  The room explodes, and in the moment Jeremy looks at me, hoping that I will confirm that it means what he thinks it means. I smile the confirmation, and he puts his head in his hands and starts to sob his happiness. Richard and Allie Davidson move up from their seats in the front row and hug their son, then me, and then Kevin.

  Judge Morrison’s ruling was an obvious victory for our side, but not necessarily a permanent one. The phrase “without prejudice” means that the charges against Jeremy could be brought again at some future time, should the facts change. Because the trial against Jeremy had not actually started, jeopardy did not attach, so double jeopardy cannot come into play.

  I start to move toward the exit doors when I see that Laurie has made her way over to me. “Will you stay until tomorrow? Maybe we can have dinner tonight?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’d like that.”

  “Congratulations on the ruling.”

  “Thanks.”

  Laurie leaves to attend to her business, and I head back to the house with Kevin. Marcus comes over to confirm that I’ll no longer be needing his services.

  “Unhh,” he says. Saying good-bye to Marcus is always a poignant event; right now I don’t think there’s a dry eye in the room.

  Marcus starts walking toward the door but stops and turns to me. “Kid didn’t hang himself.”

  I nod. “I know. I think this time both the good guys and the bad guys go free.”

  “Unhh,” says Marcus, and leaves.

  I sit down on the couch, apparently looking unhappy, because Kevin says, “You down about the case or leaving Laurie?”

  “I’m not down. I’m one happy camper,” I say.

  “Yeah… right.” He tells me that he’s on an evening flight back home and that this has been a positive experience for him. Even more positive is that Carol has left a message on his answering machine at home, saying that she wants to “talk.” It’s nothing definite, but I think that Kevin harbors the hope that before long he can get back on WebMD and start planning that honeymoon.

  Kevin goes off to pack, and I get a phone call from Richard Davidson, once again thanking me for saving his son and asking me to send him a bill for my services. I tell him I’ll get around to it, but not to mortgage the farm.

  I have a genetic resistance to packing until moments before I am about to leave for somewhere, so instead I use my monthly ten-minute allowance for introspection to think about why I’m down. It’s not about the case; I’m delighted that Jeremy is free, and although I believe the real murderer is still out there, that can’t be my concern. Guilty people get away with things all the time; my job is to make sure that innocent people don’t get put away in their stead.

  I’m also not about to miss Findlay. It hasn’t been an unpleasant stay, and it really is a nice town, but I can take just so much fresh air and wholesomeness. I feel more at home in a place where crime and grime are far more prevalent.

  That leaves Laurie, and leaving Laurie is without doubt the reason I’m depressed. She put it very well at lunch the other day, and her words apply to me as well as her. We love each other, but there is no way we can live in the same place.

  Laurie comes over at five o’clock with three bags full of groceries. She vows to make me a dinner I will never forget, but she knows better. Food has never been that important to me; give me a burger and fries and I’m happy.

  Laurie makes some fantastic fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and we spend a quiet evening together, capped off by a far-from-quiet time in the bedroom. But as wonderful as this all could be under different circumstances, it suffers from a general sadness that we both feel. We are splitting up again, and this time likely for good. It would be unrealistic to expect Findlay to have more brutal murders resulting in wrongly charged defendants to lure me back.

  When Laurie left last time, I at least had anger to fall back on; now I don’t even have that. All I feel is the impending loss, and there’s no conflicting emotion to deflect the pain. She warned me this could happen, and she let me call the shots, but here I am.

  We wake up in the morning, and Laurie asks if I’ll come down to her office with her. Now that Jeremy has been freed, it is incumbent on her to restart a full investigation into the deaths of Liz and Sheryl. It’s likely that the investigation will be forced to conclude that Eddie was the killer, but she has to go through the process anyway. As the person who discovered Eddie’s body, I’m a witness who has to be interviewed.

  “Can’t you interview me here?” I ask. “Or do you have to put me under hot lights and sweat it out of me?”

  She smiles. “I wouldn’t have to pressure you… you’d cave quickly enough. But I do need to record it.”

  I agree to meet her there at ten-thirty, giving me plenty of time to take Tara for one last walk around Findlay. I run a little late, so I bring Tara with me to the police station. The sergeant at the desk doesn’t look terribly kindly at that.

  “You can tie her up outside while you meet with Chief Collins,” he says.

  “Are you familiar with the phrase ‘no way, no how’?” I ask. “Please call Chief Collins and tell her that Andy Carpenter and his trusted companion are here to see her.”

  The sergeant does that, though he substitutes the word “dog” for “trusted companion.” Laurie comes out and smiles when she sees Tara, telling the sergeant that they can bend the “no canines” rule just this one time.

  Laurie brings us into the interview room, and I sit down. She closes the door behind her.

  “You’re going to do this alone?” I ask.

  She smiles. “I believe I can handle the likes of you on my own.”

  She starts the recorder, gives the time and date, and then asks me to identify myself. Once I do so, she launches right into questions surrounding my involvement with Eddie and my presence in his motel room on the day he died.

  I take her through my actions, leading up to the day he ran away from me at the Parker Motel. I don’t include everything, since some insignificant details are subject to lawyer-client privilege, but I so inform her when I leave something out.

  “So when you arrived at the Parker, what did you do?” she asks.

  “Kevin and I went into the office and convinced the clerk to give us his room number. Then we went outside, up to the second floor, and around to his room. The door was open, and he was nowhere to be found. Some of his possessions were still there, as if he had left in a hurry.”

  “When did you hear from him next?” she asks.

  “The next day. He called me and…” My mouth is searching for the words to finish the sentence, but my brain has intercepted them on the way and is in a state of shock.

  Laurie prompts me. “He called you and…”

  “Turn off the recorder,” I say.

  “What? Andy…”

  “Turn it off, please.”

  She does so, probably because my tone of voice has changed so much. “What is it?” she asks.

  “Laurie, when Eddie called me that day, he told me that he had run away from the Parker because he thought it might be Drummond that was chasing him. He said he hadn’t known it was me.”

  “So?”

  “So how did he find out it was me? I didn’t leave a card in his room… I didn’t give my name to the clerk. It wasn’t on television or in the newspaper. Yet by the next day he had found out that it was me at the Parker. Someone had to have told him.”

  “Who did you tell?” she asks.

  “You,” I say.

  “No one else?”

  “No. Kevin knew, of course, because he was there, but that’s it.”

  I can see her mind racing to answer the next question even before I ask it. “Who did you tell?” I ask.

  “Some of my officers,” she says, “but I’d vouch for them completely.” She pauses as the realization hits her. “Damn.”

  “What is it?”

  “I told Liz Barlow’s mother. You said I should confront her with it.”


  “Was Drummond or anyone else there?”

  She shakes her head. “No, I wouldn’t allow it. Wait a minute, her daughter was there. She heard the whole thing. I forget her name…”

  Madeline.

  Bingo.

  • • • • •

  EDDIE CARSON DIED because of me. There can be no doubt about that now. I got Cindy Spodek to help find him, and then I set him up to be murdered. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t do it intentionally; what matters is that I did it.

  I can’t be sure that it was Madeline Barlow who told him I was the one looking for him. It could have been her mother, though that seems to defy logic. Or he could have found out some other way that is not yet apparent to me.

  Also unknown right now is how whoever murdered him learned his new location. “Maybe they followed you,” Laurie suggests.

  I shake my head. “No, Marcus followed us out there. If there were someone else following us, Marcus would have seen them. Besides, Eddie had been dead for a while when we got there.”

  “I’ll check to make sure your phone isn’t tapped,” Laurie says, and then makes a quick phone call to get that accomplished.

  “I’ve got a feeling it was Madeline,” I say. “There was something about that kid. She was the only one in that town who seemed like she had a mind of her own.”

  “She could have set Eddie up to be killed,” Laurie says, “without necessarily realizing she was doing it.”

  The idea that I was a setup man for Eddie’s murder is burning a hole in my stomach, and Laurie can see it in my face. “It’s not your fault, Andy,” she says. “Let it go.”

  “Let it go? Let it go?” She must know me well enough to know that is impossible. “Earth to Laurie, come in, please. Come in, please.”

  She tries to suppress a smile but can’t. “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  “You’re thinking of staying to try to solve this.”

  “I’m doing more than thinking about it,” I admit, realizing it for the first time myself.

  “Sorry. I love having you around, but I’m the police here, Andy. This is my job. Besides, you don’t catch slimeballs, you defend them. Remember?”

  “I won’t get in your way.”

  “All right,” she says, “let me try another approach. You’d be going after people who may well have killed four people that we know of, including a lawyer.”

  “I’m not going to subdue them, Laurie. I’m going to find out who they are and then turn them over to the proper authority. And if you play your cards right, that proper authority might be you.”

  She’s not willing to accept this. “You’re a lawyer, Andy. With no case, no client, and no role to play in this.”

  “I’m staying, Laurie.”

  She smiles. “Good. So how about dinner tonight?”

  “You got it. Now you can turn on the recorder.”

  “After you tell me you’re going to get Marcus back here.”

  I shake my head. “No, I don’t need a babysitter… at least not now.” I can see that she’s not thrilled with my answer, so I continue. “I’m not going to do anything stupid or dangerous… honestly. Besides, with the trial canceled, the bad guys would have no reason to think of me as a threat anymore.”

  She frowns but turns on the recorder, and we continue the interview. I tell her the events as they happened, but my mind is elsewhere, trying to figure out how to trap what is rapidly becoming a mass murderer.

  Reestablishing myself in Findlay is not a difficult matter. Basically, all I have to do is tell the real estate agent I’ll be taking the place for at least another month, and dump the stuff in my suitcases back into drawers. Tara seems understanding as well, especially since I give her two biscuits to soften the blow.

  I feel fairly confident that the people I’m after are in Center City; what is disconcerting is how little I know about the place. To that end I call Catherine Gerard, the woman who contacted me before the hearing. She dropped the bomb that the Centurions killed her husband, a charge that carries some weight with me in light of the recent carnage.

  She answers the phone in the middle of the first ring, as if she has been waiting by the phone for my call. She is very anxious to meet with me, as I am with her. Currently, she is living in Winston, about a four-hour drive from Findlay, and expresses a nervousness about coming back to this area because of its proximity to Center City.

  Winston is out in the direction of the lake where Laurie and I had lunch, so I suggest we meet at the same restaurant. It has the double advantage of being midway between Findlay and Winston and having fantastic french fries. We agree to meet tomorrow.

  The tech guy that Laurie sends to my house to see if the phones are tapped, or if bugs have been placed, turns up nothing. The information about Eddie did not come from me, increasing the likelihood that it was Madeline or Mrs. Barlow. I’m still betting it’s Madeline.

  The obvious difficulty is how to talk to Madeline without Drummond, Wallace, and the rest of Center City finding out and either preventing or monitoring our conversation. The trick is in luring her out of that town and away from their oversight.

  I come up with an idea to do just that, a plan that would require the help of Jeremy Davidson. I had planned to speak with him and his parents anyway, partially to explain an ethical dilemma that I have. Simply put, the purpose of my continuing investigation is to prove that the real killer of Liz Barlow and Sheryl Hendricks was not Eddie Carson and that his suicide note was coerced. Since that note is what prompted the dismissal of the charges against Jeremy, there is a risk that my success in this investigation could expose him to renewed jeopardy.

  I call Jeremy and ask if he and his parents are available to meet with me. They are surprised that I haven’t left town already, and Jeremy himself was just leaving to go back to school. Allie is not home, but Richard and Jeremy agree to wait for me, and I head right over there.

  I start off by taking them through the ethical dilemma I’m facing over possibly exposing Jeremy to renewed jeopardy. I can see the concern and confusion on their faces as I do so.

  “So what would have to happen for the police to come after Jeremy again?” Richard asks.

  “Two things,” I say. “One, I would have to prove that the note was faked and that Eddie did not murder Liz and Sheryl. Two, even though I could prove that Eddie was murdered and the note coerced, I could not show who did it.”

  “But Jeremy couldn’t have murdered Eddie. He was in jail,” Richard correctly points out.

  I nod. “But someone could have done it on his behalf.”

  Richard is obviously troubled by this situation, as any father would be. “Let’s say all this happened… would you be allowed to go to the police? Isn’t your first obligation to Jeremy, your client?”

  “Generally, but in this case it’s a gray area. I would be telling the police what I learned about Eddie’s death, without mentioning or referring to Jeremy. But it could have an indirect effect on Jeremy if the prosecution and police then turn their attention back to him.”

  “Andy, I know your intentions are good here, but it makes me a little uncomfortable,” Richard says.

  Jeremy, who hasn’t spoken up yet, responds, “No, I’m okay with it. Please do what you have to do.”

  “Jeremy… ,” Richard says.

  “Dad, if Eddie didn’t kill Liz and Sheryl, then whoever did shouldn’t be walking around. He should be strapped to a goddamn table getting a needle in his arm.”

  I can tell that Richard is as surprised as I am by the intensity of Jeremy’s remarks. Richard relents, and after I once again make sure that Jeremy understands the complexities of the situation, I tell him I need his help in getting to Madeline Barlow.

  “I hardly know her,” he says. “I only met her that one time when she came to see Liz at school.”

  “Did she meet any of Liz’s friends?” I ask.

  “Definitely. She hung out with them for a whole weekend. I was studying for a midter
m I had that Monday, but Liz said she had a great time. She kept wanting to come back, but her mother wouldn’t let her.”

  I describe my plan, which is to have Jeremy recruit a couple of Liz’s friends to call Madeline and ask her if she wants to come to the school to pick up some of Liz’s things, things that had been in the possession of those friends. It could be CDs or makeup or anything that might be appealing to Madeline to retrieve. They should also dangle in front of Madeline the prospect of hanging out and perhaps going to a party. When Madeline arrives, I’ll be there waiting to talk to her.

  Once again it is Richard who is leery and protective of his son, and once again it is Jeremy who steps up and embraces the idea. He tells me that as soon as he gets back to school, he will speak to two of Liz’s friends, and he’s confident they’ll jump at the opportunity to help in any way they can.

  I leave them, satisfied that I have a plan of attack, but all too aware that attacking is not my strong point. I’m a lawyer; my version of aggressive confrontation is to file nasty motions.

  This promises to get even rougher than that.

  • • • • •

  HENRY WAS KILLED four and a half years ago. About a year after he left Center City and about six months after the articles appeared.”

  Catherine Gerard is wasting no time in getting to the point; we haven’t even looked at our menus yet. “How was he killed?” I ask.

  “A hunting accident. At least the police ruled it an accident, but it wasn’t. They killed him.”

  “They being the Centurions?”

  She nods. “Yes.”

  “Why would they kill him? Because of the articles?”

  She nods again. “He exposed the secrets of their religion. No one had ever done that before, and they wanted to make sure that no one did it again.”

  “Why did he leave Center City in the first place?”

  “Because of me,” she says. “He was an accountant, and so am I. We met at a conference; they send some of their people out into the world to learn specialties. Mostly professional people. Henry and I hit it off right away; he didn’t tell me until later that he was married.”