Outfoxed

by David Rosenfelt

  “The state prison.”

  “Why are you there?”

  “I was convicted of assault.”

  “During your time there, did you have occasion to know and speak to the defendant, Brian Atkins?”

  “Yes, a bunch of times.”

  “Where did those conversations take place?”

  “In the mess, the yard, the gym … a bunch of places.”

  “Would you describe your relationship as friendly?”

  “Sure. Yeah. I guess so.”

  “Did you speak with Mr. Atkins in the days before his escape?” Trell asks, as if he didn’t know the answer.

  “Yeah, he said his wife had dumped him. She was screwing around with his ex-partner and he was pissed about it.”

  Trell keeps him on the stand for another ten minutes, breaking the indoor record for most consecutive times asking the same question, but Thigpen basically has nothing more to add.

  He finally turns him over to me. Brian has told me that he doesn’t remember ever speaking to the guy, and I assume that’s true, though I don’t know it for certain. Whether Thigpen is testifying truthfully or not, I can still challenge him.

  “Mr. Thigpen, you said you were convicted of assault.”

  “Right.”

  “Were you guilty?”

  He delays answering for a few moments. I doubt he’s trying to remember whether he committed the assault or not; he’s just trying to figure out which answer will play best and cause him the least harm.

  “No.”

  “The jury was wrong?” I ask.

  “They said what they thought.”

  “And what they thought, that you were guilty, was wrong?” I ask.

  “Yeah. It was wrong.” Hopefully this jury will be insulted on behalf of Thigpen’s jury, but it’s a small victory.

  Thigpen continues. “And I’ve been a model prisoner; that’s why they moved me to minimum security.”

  “Congratulations. All of us, except maybe the woman you threw down the stairs, are happy for you.”

  “Objection,” Trell screams, propelled out of his chair.

  “Sustained.” Hatchet looks sternly at me. “Be careful, Mr. Carpenter.”

  “Certainly, Your Honor. Mr. Thigpen, you say that Mr. Atkins confided in you regarding his feelings about his wife.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you were close friends? You shared intimate details about your lives?”

  “We talked, yeah.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “About what?”

  “About his life,” I say.

  Thigpen is wary and clearly worried. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “For example, where did he go to college? Did he and his wife have any children? Was he married before? Before he was in prison, did he wear boxers or briefs? That kind of thing.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t remember him saying any of that stuff.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “That’s it? He approached you in the prison one day, having told you nothing about his life before, and volunteered that he was angry at his wife and ex-partner?”

  “Right. That’s what happened.”

  “Mr. Thigpen, did you testify at your own trial?”

  “No, my lawyer wouldn’t let me. That’s why I got myself a new lawyer.”

  “So this is your first time testifying in front of a jury?”

  “No, I’ve been in other trials.”

  “Is it true you’ve testified for the prosecution in three different cases, each time claiming that the defendant in those cases confided incriminating information to you?”

  “Yeah, I’m an easy guy to talk to,” he says.

  “A regular Dr. Phil,” I say. Trell objects, and Hatchet sustains. “No further questions.”

  “They don’t even get the Giants games on TV. They get the Packers,” Ricky says. “And they wear these cheese things on their heads, and they think Aaron Rodgers is better than Eli Manning.” Ricky is obviously still trying to adjust to life in Wisconsin.

  “They know not of what they speak, Rick.” I say this even though when it comes to the Rodgers/Manning comparison, they unfortunately know exactly of what they speak.

  “Ask them how many Super Bowl rings Rodgers has,” I say.

  “How many does he have?”

  “One. Eli has two.”

  “Great. That’s a good one. What about the cheese on their heads?”

  “That I can’t help you with. Here’s Mom.”

  I give the phone to Laurie; I really enjoy the morning calls from Ricky, especially since Laurie’s friend has told us that our phones are not tapped.

  Sending him to Wisconsin was a tough call, but it was the right one. Laurie has friends on the police force up there who are keeping an unobtrusive eye on him and have not reported anything unusual. In that small a town, strangers would stand out, especially the kind of strangers that would work for Petrone.

  Hatchet has announced that he had a commitment that would prevent court from starting until 11:00 A.M. today. It might be a doctor’s appointment, though that would indicate that Hatchet is human, so it must be something else.

  In any event, it gives me a chance to take Tara and Sebastian for a longer walk than usual. We pretty much cover Eastside Park, which is empty this time of year. It’s supposed to snow later, and I hope it does. Watching them play and roll over in the snow is one of my favorite things to do. As always, I don’t see Marcus, but I take comfort in the knowledge that he’s out there, watching.

  Though she would growl and never admit it if I said it to her face, having Sebastian in the house has made Tara younger and more active. I thought she might react badly to no longer being the only dog, but she hasn’t. It might be because she knows she’ll always be my favorite. Sebastian, for his part, seems okay with that.

  When I get home, Laurie says that Willie called to report that Joseph Russo told him to tell me to lay off. I’m not happy about it, but I’m sort of surprised that Russo handled it in that manner. To me it seems uncharacteristically weak and ineffectual, and I know plenty about weak and ineffectual.

  I go into the kitchen to feed the dogs, and I hear the doorbell ring. Laurie yells out that she’ll get it, so I finish the feeding and then go to see who it is.

  Marcus and Laurie are in the den, and on the table next to them is a bag about the size of a plastic grocery bag. It seems to be made of nylon, or some synthetic fabric. “What’s going on?” I say. My hope is that Laurie will be the one to respond, since she’s the only one of the two that I can understand.

  She does. “After you left last night, Marcus went looking for Winters as he picked up and left betting winnings. A lot of the places he stopped were the same as the night you followed him, so he was easy to track.”

  As she talks, I realize that the bag looks like the one Winters deposited in some mailboxes that night.

  “He put this in one of the mailboxes, and Marcus decided to get a closer look at it. It isn’t filled with money; it’s filled with cocaine.”

  I walk over and take a look, though I wouldn’t know cocaine from talcum powder. “I should have realized it,” I say. “There was no way that many people could have been collecting winnings. That didn’t make sense.”

  “So what does it mean to you?”

  “Well, it’s no surprise that Petrone is in the drug business as well as gambling. The real question is whether he’s selling it online, and using the Starlight technology. I’m betting that he is.”

  “Can you use it?” she asks.

  “Not so far. We could always set Winters up to be caught with the drugs the next time he goes on his route, but he’d have to be crazy to testify against Petrone. And even if he did, I don’t have a connection to my case.”

  “What do we do with this?” Laurie asks.

  “Might as well flush it down the toilet. It’s already going to cause
some chaos when the customer complains he didn’t get it. The most interesting thing to me is that Winters is still on the job.”

  “Why?”

  “It most likely means that Winters didn’t tell Russo or Petrone that Marcus and I paid him a visit, and took the five thousand. Which makes it even less likely that Bowie was killed because of anything I did. It had to have been something else.”

  “Winters will suspect that you or Marcus took the drugs,” she says.

  I nod. “Probably. But he won’t say anything, because he’d have to explain why he thinks it. That’s not something he’s willing to risk.”

  “So now what?”

  “Now it’s back to court.”

  Nancy Roosevelt is going to make a very good witness. She’s attractive, which never hurts, but she also comes across as intelligent and levelheaded. She will give Trell exactly what he wants, and the jury will believe her. The only positive in all this is that what she is going to say will not be terribly damaging.

  Trell takes a little time for the jury to get to know her, asking her where she lives and what she does for a living. She runs a popular thrice-weekly Web magazine called A Sharp Eye, doing much of the writing and editing herself, and he lets her explain it some before getting down to the reason she is here.

  He prompts her to say that she was parked in a strip mall parking lot about a mile and a half from the prison on the day that Brian escaped. “I was sending a package,” she says. “There is a UPS store there.”

  “What happened when you went out to your car?”

  “I saw a man standing outside the store; I noticed him staring at me, so I walked a little faster toward my car. When I opened the door, there he was right behind me. He grabbed my arm with his hand.”

  “Is that man in the courtroom today?”

  “Yes.”

  Trell gets her to point to Brian for confirmation, and just to beat it to death, he has her confirm that she’s talking about the defendant.

  “What did he say?”

  “That I shouldn’t scream, and that he didn’t want to hurt me. He said he needed my car.”

  “Did he have a weapon?”

  “He said that he did, but I didn’t see it.”

  “Did you feel threatened?” he asks.

  “Of course.”

  “For your life?”

  She frowns slightly, as if annoyed by the question. “Of course.”

  “Can you describe his demeanor?”

  “He looked desperate to me. Like he was in a hurry, but more than that. He looked scared, maybe panicked.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I gave him the key, and I backed away. He got in the car and drove off.”

  Trell turns the witness over to me. Her story is true, and I’m not about to shake it. “That must have been a frightening experience for you, Ms. Roosevelt,” I say.

  She nods. “It was.”

  “Did he say why he needed your car?”

  “No.”

  “And he didn’t threaten you with a weapon?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “You never saw it?”

  “No, but he said he had one.”

  “Did he say what kind?”

  “No, just that he had a weapon. Looking back, I think he was saying that to get me to hurry up and give him the key. I have no idea if he actually had a weapon or not.”

  “Did he say anything after you gave him the key?’

  “Yes. He said he was sorry, and that he wished he didn’t have to do this.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Roosevelt. No further questions.”

  When court ends, I listen to a message on my cell phone. It’s from Linda Westman, widow of the hedge funder who ended it all on the Saw Mill River Parkway. She sounds worried and says that she needs to see me right away.

  I return the call with more dread than curiosity. The only connection Joseph Westman had to our case is that he had spoken to Gerry Wright on the phone, and when Laurie and I spoke to Linda Westman the first time, we got nothing out of it. It may sound harsh, but I don’t want to spend time getting drawn into her world; I have enough problems in mine.

  “Mr. Carpenter, thank you for calling,” she says. “When can I see you?”

  “What is this about?”

  “I’d rather not say on the telephone.”

  “You think your calls are being listened to?” I ask.

  “No, I just think this should be in person. And I have something to show you.”

  It’s rush hour, and in the time it will take me to get to her apartment in the Dakota, I could fly to North Dakota. But I agree to drive there because I am Andy Carpenter, the Considerate and Caring One.

  The George Washington Bridge is unusually crowded for the inbound lanes at the evening rush hour; I can only assume the mayor of Fort Lee has once again pissed off Chris Christie. But once I get off, the West Side Highway is surprisingly quick, and the cross-town traffic is better than usual.

  I’m sitting in Linda Westman’s apartment by seven fifteen. I’m tired and very hungry. She offers me some little triangle-shaped things that look like lettuce sandwiches with a small piece of anchovy on top.

  I’m not that hungry.

  She thanks me for coming and talks about how difficult things have been for her, that Joseph was the one who took care of everything, etc.

  I need to get things moving. “What did you want to show me?” I ask.

  “Well, among the things that Joseph took care of was money. It was only natural; his business was to invest. And when it came to his own money, our own money, he was very prudent.”

  “I understand.”

  “But now I have to do everything, deal with his estate, get a handle on things … I’m embarrassed to say it, but it’s very difficult for me.”

  This is taking so long that those sandwiches are starting to look good.

  “I met with the accountant this morning, and he told me that he found some unusual things in our books and accounts. Joseph had been making large cash withdrawals in the three months before his death.”

  “How large?”

  “At first in increments of $10,000, then $15,000, and ultimately $25,000. All together it came to $210,000. The man has been Joseph’s accountant for years and says he can never recall him doing anything like this.”

  “What do you think was going on?” I say.

  She hesitates for a few moments, then, “Drugs. I’ve discovered prescription drugs, a lot of them, painkillers and such, that I did not know Joseph used. I now believe he had a drug problem.” She starts to tear up. “How could I live with someone for so long and not know him?”

  “So you think he was using that cash to pay for drugs.”

  She nods, sadly. “Don’t you?”

  “Mrs. Westman, the next time I buy illegal drugs will be the first, but that seems like an awful lot of money to pay for them. I think there must have been something else going on.”

  “Like what?” she asks.

  “First let me ask you, why are you telling me all this?”

  “Should I not have?”

  “It’s fine that you did, I’m just not clear why you chose me to tell.”

  She thinks for a few moments, as if trying to understand it herself. Then, “I had no one else. It doesn’t seem to be a matter for the police, and I don’t want to destroy Joseph’s reputation any more than it already has been. I feel like I can trust you, and you were interested.”

  “I’m glad to try and help,” I say. “Mrs. Westman, did your husband have a personal computer that he used at home?”

  “Of course.”

  “Here’s the situation as I see it, and here is what I can do for you. I did not know your husband, or anything about his life. So I can’t begin to say what these strange withdrawals mean. But I do not believe that he was using that much money to buy drugs.” I don’t add the words “unless he was also distributing them” because I don’t think that’s what was going o
n, and it sounds harsh.

  “But I can do this for you. I can take his computer and have a member of my staff go over it for you. It’s very possible that the answer is somewhere on there, and if not, you haven’t lost anything. And I can promise that I will not tell anyone what we find out.”

  “You’re a lawyer, so it would have to be confidential, right?”

  I shake my head. “No, because I’m not your lawyer. You would have to take me at my word, and if you don’t want to do that, I understand.”

  “Can I hire you as my lawyer?”

  “Perhaps, but not now. I don’t think this has anything to do with the current case I’m working on, but on the off chance that it does, taking you on as a client would represent a conflict. If we find out that it does not, then you can certainly hire me, and I would be bound by attorney-client confidentiality.”

  She seems conflicted; my guess is that she would like to find another way, but can’t think of one, which is why she called me in the first place.

  “I’ll get his computer,” she says.

  After declining the sandwiches one more time, I leave with the computer. I call Sam Willis on the way home and relate all of what I know about Joseph Westman, up to and including the conversation I’ve just had with his widow.

  “I have his computer,” I say. “I’d like you to go over it, top to bottom.”

  “What are we looking for?” he asks.

  “An explanation for why he might have been using all of that cash, and why he killed himself. I think the two are probably related.”

  “I thought he killed himself because of the kiddie porn?”

  “That’s true,” I say. “But the cash might tie in to that. I think he might have been blackmailed. He thought he’d wind up in jail, but the police knew nothing about him. It could be that blackmailers were threatening to go to the police.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Atkins?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “But you never know. That’s one of the things I want you to find out.”

  Sam wants to get going on this right away, as I knew he would. He tells me he’ll meet me at home when I get there, to pick up the computer.

  I don’t know what can come from this, but at the very least I might be able to get Linda Westman some answers, and a little peace.