Airtight

by David Rosenfelt

  “The fact that this happened just as he was reaching a goal, the Court of Appeals, makes it a particularly unspeakable tragedy,” the friend said.

  I had never focused on that fact before. If Steven Gallagher committed the murder, it had nothing to do with Brennan’s appointment to the Appeals Court. Clearly Steven could not have cared less about that, if he knew it at all.

  Instead, Steven’s stabbing Brennan to death would simply have had to do with the fact that Steven was bitter and vengeful about his drug conviction.

  So it was an apparent coincidence. Brennan was ascending to his new position, and receiving substantial publicity for it, just before his murder. Except I don’t believe in coincidences, and had I not focused on Steven, I would have been cognizant of the fact that this one was a whopper.

  So stepping back and looking at it, there were only two choices. One, that Brennan’s judicial appointment and murder coincidentally happened at the same time. Or two, that the appointment and murder were related. For my purposes it did me no good to assume the former; I had to go with the latter.

  That realization opened up a new line of inquiry. Rather than analyze only Judge Brennan’s previous cases to find someone with motive, I could look at his future cases, or at least those in what was supposed to be his future.

  It was well outside of my area of expertise, but I was sure there must be many cases awaiting Brennan when he arrived at the Appeals Court. Maybe someone didn’t want him helping to decide them, and killed him for it.

  I was about to call Julie when she called me. I could hear the strain in her voice.

  “Talk to me, Luke. I need to know what’s going on.”

  “I heard from Bryan. For some reason Gallagher is allowing him to e-mail.”

  “Is he OK?”

  “So far. Julie, can we meet later, maybe have a quick dinner? I’ll download you on all that’s happening, though I wish it were more.”

  “Of course. And I have some information on Gallagher I can give you then. I wish there were more also.”

  “In the meantime, I need to talk to someone who would be familiar with the cases that Brennan would have heard on the Appeals Court.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I’m flailing around, trying everything.”

  “OK. Call Lee Bollinger. No, don’t call him; go see him. He’s at his office in Teaneck; I spoke to him an hour ago. I’ll call ahead and tell him to get started on what you need.”

  “I’m particularly interested in situations where someone knowledgeable would think that Brennan would have voted differently than Susan Dembeck.”

  “OK, I’ll tell him that.”

  “How do you know he’ll see me if I just show up?”

  “Trust me, he’ll see you,” she said. When Julie sounds that certain about something, you can take it to the bank. In this case I would take it to Teaneck to see Lee Bollinger.

  Bollinger is about as big an attorney as you can find on this side of the George Washington Bridge. Most of his clients are corporations, but he also handles some celebrities, especially sports figures. Somehow his cases often make it into the headlines; if a legal case becomes a hot publicity ticket, Bollinger is usually at the center of it.

  But except for when his celebrity clients get hit with DUIs, or a domestic abuse offense or two, Bollinger rarely gets involved in criminal cases, which was why I was surprised that Julie knew him as well as she seemed to.

  Bollinger’s firm has its own three-story building off Route 4 in Teaneck, and if he’s able to fill it with lawyers, then business must be pretty good.

  When I walked into the reception area, I didn’t have to say a word. The receptionist preempted that with, “Lieutenant Somers? Mr. Bollinger is waiting for you.”

  Within forty-five seconds I was sitting in the great man’s office, having just been provided with a cup of the most delicious coffee I’d ever tasted. Bollinger was not yet there, but he came in a few seconds later, carrying a folder and offering a big handshake.

  After our hellos, I said, “Boy, Julie must have pictures of you in a closet with a goat or something.”

  He laughed. “Better than that. She had discretion on a case involving one of my more famous clients, who shall remain nameless. She could have turned it into a huge PR fiasco, or quietly accepted a no contest plea.”

  “So she took the plea?”

  He nodded. “After telling me this morning that she wouldn’t.” He holds up the folder. “So this must be pretty important.”

  “Not as much as you’d think.”

  He smiled, obviously not believing me. “Yeah, right. So Brennan’s killer was a kid strung out on drugs, who was worried about how Brennan might decide future Appeals Court cases?”

  “You remember what you said about Julie using discretion when it came to your client?”

  “Of course.”

  “You might want to use some of your own, or she’ll change her mind and discretion your client’s ass onto every tabloid front page in the country. “

  He looked surprised, so I continued. “Just tell me what you have, and then don’t talk to anyone else about it, counselor.”

  He smiled. “I am a model of discretion.”

  “Good. What have you got?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s only been forty-five minutes since I spoke to Julie, and I put four lawyers on it. This is what they came up with, but I haven’t gotten a chance to look through it. There will be more.”

  “How soon?”

  “End of the day. I’ll messenger it to your office.”

  I thanked him and took the folder.

  “I hope you got the right guy,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  Bryan … he wants me to clear his brother and find out who really killed the Judge. I’m working on it now … the whole department is on it. We’ve got some good early leads. You feeling OK? Anything you can tell me about where you are? Gallagher says he’s not reading these e-mails but he probably is. In any event, tell me whatever you can.

  You can punch me in the mouth when I get you out.

  Keith Hernandez couldn’t carry Don Mattingly’s glove. Mattingly belongs in the Hall of Fame. Hernandez belongs on Seinfeld.

  In all the time I was a cop, I never framed anyone.

  I’m not just talking about out-and-out frames, where evidence is created and planted to implicate an innocent party. I’m talking about shadings, about things like not aggressively pursuing evidence that might help the accused, when I thought the accused was guilty.

  I always prided myself on going after the truth whether or not it might butt up against my preconceived notions; I’d much rather adjust my point of view than adjust the evidence in any way.

  I’m not looking for praise in saying this; it’s my job, and I could say the same of every cop I’ve ever worked with, with the possible exception of one or two. Or three at the most.

  But I’d never been faced with a situation like this before, and my strategy was evolving. And it was becoming increasingly clear to me that in order to succeed, I was going to have to frame someone for the murder of Judge Danny Brennan.

  My victim wouldn’t be going to jail; he or she wouldn’t even be going to trial. The sole judge and jury who would decide the case was Chris Gallagher. I had to credibly make a case to him that someone, other than his brother, committed the murder.

  But I couldn’t come up with a perpetrator out of whole cloth. I also needed a motive, and an ability for someone to have committed the crime. And that was basically why I had gotten the information about the Appeals Court cases. I did not believe that anyone involved in those cases had slaughtered Danny Brennan in his garage. But I needed to make Chris Gallagher believe that they did.

  I spent a few hours going over the information in the folder, plus additional material that Bollinger, as promised, messengered over. Much of it was legalese, which I only partially understood, but I identified at least three poss
ible cases to pursue. I would bring it to dinner with Julie, since she was far more knowledgeable about this stuff than I was.

  We met at Spumoni’s, a casual Italian place in Englewood. I’d eaten there a number of times with Julie and Bryan; sometimes I brought a date, and sometimes I didn’t. I even remember some of their names.

  I got there first and took a quiet table near the back. Julie came in a few minutes later, the strain evident on her face. She still looked fantastic; that was a given. But this time she looked fantastic and very, very stressed.

  We didn’t kiss hello; we never did. I don’t think I know another woman in the world, outside of work, who doesn’t kiss me hello, but Julie never did. At least not since the night we did a lot more than kiss.

  She just about grabbed the waiter and ordered a drink, a favorite of hers called a “Dark and Stormy.” She asked for it the way she might ask for a life preserver on a ship about to go down, but didn’t wait for it to come before handing me the envelope she had brought.

  “Everything you ever wanted to know about Christopher Gallagher,” she said.

  “Summarize it,” I said.

  “No, it’s bedtime reading for you, but you won’t sleep much after you read it. You do the talking.”

  I took her through everything that had transpired since we last talked, including showing her printed copies of the e-mails that Bryan and I had exchanged. It was depressing in the telling, as it drove home the reality that we were getting nowhere.

  I was getting nowhere.

  “Do you think I should bring in the Feds?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “And I don’t think you should.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re a machine, and they will do what they’re programmed to do. They’ll try and catch Gallagher, though I don’t think they’ll be able to. But if they did catch him, it wouldn’t go the way that we want.”

  “I’m chasing something that doesn’t exist,” I said.

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “I’m going to have to fake it,” I said.

  She nodded again, and pointed to the folder that I had brought. “Which is why you wanted the case information from Bollinger.”

  “Right. I need you to go through it. I saw a few possibilities that we can go after, maybe find a credible villain…”

  “So I’ve got my own bedtime reading,” she said.

  “Yeah. Julie, is there anything you want me to say to Bryan for you? Or you could e-mail him yourself.”

  “I don’t think I should. This is a nightmare for him, and I want it to be as bearable as possible. If he wanted to hear from me, he would e-mail me. You think I’m wrong?”

  I nodded. “I think you’re wrong.”

  She thought about it for a while. “Tell him I love him. And tell him I’m sorry.”

  Chris Gallagher was waiting on my porch when I got home.

  He was sitting there, not a care in the world, like he belonged and was thinking of organizing a neighborhood block party. I wasn’t particularly surprised.

  “How come you didn’t break in?” I asked.

  “No need for the drama anymore,” he said. “You want to talk inside, or out here?”

  “Inside.”

  We went into the kitchen, and I stopped at the refrigerator. I took out two bottles of beer, and tossed one to Gallagher.

  “The gracious host,” he said.

  “Hopefully you’re doing the same for my brother.”

  “I assume you’re asking him in your e-mails,” he said.

  “And I assume you’re reading them.”

  He shook his head. “No. I could, but I’m not.”

  “You’re full of shit,” I said.

  He smiled. “I am many things, but I am not full of shit. I don’t say words unless I mean them.”

  “So why are you letting him e-mail?”

  “Steven e-mailed me in Afghanistan; it’s the way we kept in touch. I heard from him just six hours before you killed him. Unfortunately, all I did with his e-mails was read them.”

  “So Bryan being able to e-mail me satisfies some sense of justice you have?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t try to figure myself out much.”

  “So what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Checking on your progress, assuming you’re making some.”

  “It’s been one day,” I said.

  “You’ve only got seven.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “On behalf of your brother, I’m sorry to hear that. Now tell me where you are.”

  I was having a tough time deciding how much to tell him, since at that point I didn’t even know enough to come up with a credible fake scenario. I decided to be as nonspecific as I could get away with.

  “There’s an entire task force working on this, though they are not aware of the situation with you and Bryan. We’re taking a two-pronged approach. We’re attempting to establish an alibi for Steven, trying to find out where he was at the time of the murder, and whether anyone can place him away from the scene.”

  “How is that going?”

  “We’re not there yet. But I have a proposition for you. I am willing to go on national television and say that Steven was innocent, that I shot the wrong man. And when Bryan is released, I won’t go back on that. I promise.”

  “No good,” he said.

  “Why not? It will clear Steven’s name in the eyes of the world. Isn’t that what this is about? You already believe in him; he doesn’t need to be cleared in your eyes, does he?”

  He ignored this. “You said two-pronged approach; what’s the other one?”

  “We’re trying to identify other suspects. These could come from defendants in Brennan’s courtroom who might have carried a grudge against him, or people with a reason to fear how Brennan might help decide cases before the Appeals Court.”

  Gallagher nodded, apparently agreeing with the approach. “And where are you on all that?” he asked.

  “We’re one day in, Gallagher. One day.”

  “It took less time than that for you to go after Steven,” he said.

  “We were there to question him, that’s all. He had a gun, and he raised it.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  It hit me that Gallagher knew less than I had imagined. “He left a suicide note.”

  Gallagher reacted angrily. “Be careful, Luke. I am not someone you want to bullshit.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. It said that he couldn’t take it anymore. And he said, ‘Tell Chris I’m sorry.’”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “So you’re better at telling the truth than hearing it? I can get the note and show it to you, if you’d like.”

  He was quiet for a few moments, sort of bowing his head. I couldn’t tell whether his eyes were open or not. The really unsettling thing was that I had no idea how he would react; he was a complete mystery to me. Bryan’s life would ultimately depend on whether I figured him out.

  When he finally spoke, it was softly, and the words did not seem to come easily. “He was scared. He was alone, and he was scared, and everything ahead of him seemed awful. But you made sure there was nothing ahead of him.”

  “That’s what Bryan is going through right now.”

  “It’s different for him,” Gallagher said. “He’s got someone to help him. Don’t blow it.”

  “Let him go, and I promise I’ll work just as hard to clear Steven.”

  He stood up. “Six days,” he said, and then left.

  Lucas … I’m feeling OK … I’m comfortable. He’s got me chained, but I can get around, and there’s plenty to eat and drink. Can’t access the Internet, but obviously can e-mail. I have television, local NY stations, and it seems to be satellite, if that helps.

  I watched a clip of you doing a TV interview … you might want to spend some time on the treadmill.

  The idea of punching you in the fac
e is what keeps me going.

  Remember the time Dad took us to a Mets game for the first time and we were amazed at how green the grass looked? I’d sort of like to see grass again sometime.

  Please get me out of here.

  Julie was right that reading about Chris Gallagher would not be fun.

  She had somehow gotten his service record, plus letters written about him by his commanding officers and others he encountered during his military career.

  The service record itself was scary, as much because of what it didn’t say as what it did. There were large gaps that did not detail where he was or what he was doing for months at a time. Instead the only listings during these periods categorized him as being TAD, which I knew to mean Temporarily Assigned Duty.

  Having served in the military myself, I had no doubt what this really meant, and the dates confirmed it. He was Black Ops, meaning he was put into both Iraq and Afghanistan before we entered those countries. They would have been mostly reconnaissance missions, to prepare for our full-scale military entrance.

  While Black Ops are there to scout the enemy, terrain, etc., they are quite prepared to engage any hostile forces they might meet. If they are captured, the US Government will not acknowledge their existence, which in and of itself is not that significant, since they would certainly be killed anyway.

  Suffice it to say that our government uses very few wimps for these missions. They send the toughest of the tough, the most well-trained, disciplined soldiers we have. That was who Chris Gallagher was, and that was who Bryan and I were up against. And if Iraq and Afghanistan did not prove daunting for him, it was unlikely that New Jersey would fill him with fear.

  Gallagher joined the Marines at the age of twenty-three, and was trained as a communications and electronics expert. Eighteen months later he applied for Force Recon status, which involves training in everything from parachute jumping to underwater demolition to enhanced combat techniques in extraordinarily difficult conditions.

  His psychological evaluations seemed unremarkable, though they were filled with words like “resolute,” “determined,” and “purposeful.” The only relative he listed or apparently ever mentioned was his brother, Steven. Their parents were long deceased.