Sudden Death (19 page)

M
Y CLIENT IS INNOCENT.
I am almost positive of that now. It would be nice if I had known it sooner, since I might have been able to develop an effective strategy to defend him. A secondary but significant benefit would be that Cesar Quintana would not be hell-bent on killing me.

There are a few questions that need to be resolved before I can include Bobby Pollard on my list of legitimate suspects. The primary one is his injury: I’m not sure he is really paralyzed. If I’m wrong about that, I’m wrong about his possible guilt, because there’s no way he could have committed these murders without mobility.

The key factor that applies to both Bobby and Kenny, the one that leads me to suspect Bobby, is their availability. Most of these deaths occurred while the Giants were in a nearby town for a game. Players are pretty busy during those trips, and I’m not sure they would have the time to plan and execute these camouflaged killings. I assume that trainers also have serious constraints on their time, but I’ll have to check that out. But if Kenny was in the town, Bobby was there as well.

I call Kevin and Sam, give them each some assignments, and ask them to come over tomorrow at noon. I’ll be spending the morning at the jail, talking to Kenny.

I have a tough time sleeping tonight. There is so much to be done, and we have very little time and no real idea how to proceed. That’s not a great combination.

I’m up early and leave for the jail by eight-thirty. Willie arrives just before I go, for the purpose of accompanying me. He seems to be relishing the role of bodyguard, and that’s fine with me because my concern about Quintana is pretty much with me twenty-four hours a day.

We’re at the jail by nine o’clock, and though I don’t offer Willie the option of going inside with me, he makes it a point to decline just in case. Willie spent a lot of years in prison and is not about to enter one again, even if he’s free to leave.

Kenny thinks I’m there to discuss the possibility of him testifying. It’s something he has expressed a desire to do, but until now I’ve put off the discussion as premature. That hasn’t changed.

“That’s not what I want to talk about,” I say. “Something important has come up.”

If a person can look hopeful and cringe at the same time, Kenny pulls it off. He doesn’t know whether this is going to be good or bad news, but he instinctively knows it will be important. “Talk to me,” he says.

“I want you to think back to your senior year in high school, when that magazine made you an all-American and brought you to New York for the weekend.”

He nods. “That’s where I met Troy. I told you that.”

“Can you think of anything unusual, memorable, that happened on that weekend?”

He thinks for a moment, then shakes his head and smiles. “Not unless you call drinking beer unusual.”

“I’m thinking a little more unusual than that.”

“Then I can’t think of anything,” he says.

“On that Saturday night you went to a restaurant with the rest of the players. There was a sportswriter there, and you and the other members of the offense asked him to leave the room so you could have a team meeting. Do you remember that?”

Again he thinks for a while, searching his memory. That weekend seems not to be something that he has thought about in a long time and maybe never was terribly significant in his life. I’m finding I believe his reactions, now that I believe in his innocence. It’s a feeling of substantial relief.

“It definitely rings a bell. Let me think about it for a minute,” he says.

“Take your time.”

He does, and after a short while he smiles slightly and nods. “I remember… we had it all figured out. We knew some of us would make it big in the pros someday and that some wouldn’t. Nobody thought they’d be the ones not to make it, but with injuries and stuff you never know.”

“Right,” I say, hoping to move him along.

“So we decided that the ones who did make it would get these huge bonuses, and we all agreed that they would take care of the guys who didn’t. Like an insurance policy.”

“So it was a pact?” I ask.

He grins. “Yeah. I told you we had a lot of beer.”

“This pact… is that why you’ve taken care of Bobby Pollard all these years? Gotten him a job as your trainer?”

He shakes his head. “Of course not. I hadn’t even remembered about that high school thing until you just asked. Bobby’s a friend… and everything he dreamed about fell apart. So I helped him. But it wasn’t charity, you know? He’s a damn good trainer.”

“Could anyone in that room have taken that pact seriously? Could Bobby?”

His head shake is firm. “No way… once the beer wore off… no way. Come on… we were kids. Why are you asking me this stuff?”

“Remember those guys I asked you about… the ones that had died? They were all there that night. They were all members of the offense on the
Inside Football
high school all-American team.” I take out the list and show it to him, along with the list of the deceased.

“Goddamn,” he says, and then he says it again, and again. “You’re sure about this?”

I nod. “And I’m also sure that you were in the general area at the time of each death. You and Bobby Pollard.” I’m not yet positive that what I’m saying about Pollard is true, but I have no doubt that the facts will come out that way.

“You think Bobby killed these people?” he asks.

“Somebody did, and he’s as good a bet as any. And he may have killed a young man who was working for me as well, when that young man discovered the truth.”

“It just doesn’t seem possible. Why would he kill them? Because they didn’t give him part of their bonuses? Some of these guys didn’t even get drafted by the NFL.”

It’s a good point, and one of the things I’m going to have to figure out. “How good a player was Bobby?” I ask.

“He was okay… not as good as he thought. He wasn’t real quick, but in high school he was bigger than the guys he was playing against. In college, and especially the pros, everybody is big. So you gotta be fast.”

“So Bobby wouldn’t have made it in the NFL if he hadn’t gotten hurt?”

“Nah. He wouldn’t even have been that good in college. But he’d never admit that, and don’t tell him I said it.”

Kenny asks me what effect my theory will have on his trial and is not happy when I tell him that right now I haven’t decided how to handle it. What I don’t tell him is that his life will depend on my making the right decision.

Willie and I head back home, where Laurie, Kevin, and Sam are waiting for me. Sam has spent the night and morning performing more miracles on the computer and has already placed Pollard geographically within range of the murders.

“And I’m gonna get the medical records,” he says with a smile.

“When will you have them?” I ask.

“As soon as you let me get the hell out of here.”

“Can’t you do it from here? Adam got killed for doing just what you’re doing.”

He shakes his head. “Adam got killed because he called Pollard and must have mistakenly alerted him to what was going on. At the time, he probably didn’t realize Pollard was the killer, but Pollard must have known he’d figure it out soon. I won’t make the same mistake.”

“Come on, Sam, you’re going way too fast. We’re not nearly that sure that Pollard is our guy.”

Sam just smiles. “No harm, no foul.”

He knows I’ll understand his cryptic comment, and I do. It’s a basketball phrase, which when twisted into this situation means that if we pursue this strategy and come up empty, what have we lost? We might as well go for it full out and see what happens. He’s right.

“Okay, but can’t you do all this on
my
computer?”

He snorts. “You call that thing you have a computer? You want this to take forever?”

I don’t, so I let Sam leave. Kevin then brings me up-to-date on our legal situation and the few precedents that deal with the kind of predicament we are in.

None of what we are doing has in any fashion been introduced into the trial. The judge, jury, and prosecution all have no idea that Troy Preston’s murder is one in a series or that Bobby Pollard is a suspect. All we have done as a defense is try to poke holes in the prosecution’s case and shift suspicion onto Troy’s drug connections.

What we have learned would be a bomb detonating in the courtroom, and we have to figure out how to minimize the damage our client might suffer in the explosion. After all, we could be setting up Kenny as a serial killer. Right now our only credible reason for thinking the killer is Pollard, rather than Kenny, is the fact that the imprisoned Kenny could not have killed Adam. It is possible that Quintana really did kill Adam, thinking he was me. Perhaps Adam just placed his notes in a location that the police haven’t uncovered. I don’t believe that scenario, but it’s only important what Judge Harrison and the jury believe.

An even more immediate problem is how to get all this admitted in the first place. There is a very real possibility that Judge Harrison won’t let it in. We can’t even prove that the other deaths were murders; in each case the police say otherwise. Harrison could rule that none of this is relevant, and there’s not an appeals court in the free world that would overturn him.

Laurie has learned from the doctor that a drug form of potassium not only can cause heart attacks when administered in an overdose but would be undetectable in an autopsy unless the coroner had a specific reason to screen for potassium poisoning. The reason it’s so hard to find is that once death occurs, cells in the body break down and release potassium on their own. Potassium as an agent of homicide is very unlikely to be discovered by a coroner, especially in small-town jurisdictions.

This news points even more directly at Pollard, since as a team trainer he has substantial contact with the medical staff and the drugs that they use. He would also have access to their prescription pads.

I have a four o’clock meeting with Pollard, which had been planned to discuss his potential testimony, scheduled for sometime this week. I don’t want to cancel it because I don’t want to give him the slightest hint that there is anything unusual going on.

Laurie wants to come with me, no doubt because she remembers all too well what happened to Adam. I decide to go alone, for the same reason I didn’t want to cancel the meeting. I don’t want Bobby Pollard to have the slightest inkling that there are new developments.

We meet at the Pollards’, in deference to his difficulty in getting around. I’m growing increasingly suspicious of that difficulty, but I’m not about to reveal that suspicion.

Teri Pollard greets me as warmly as she did the first time I was at their house, and I accept lemonade and home-baked cookies from the myriad of refreshments that she offers me. I can’t help feeling sorry for her; she has devoted her life to Bobby Pollard, and if I’m right, and successful, it’s all going to come crashing down on her.

Having been a reluctant witness herself in Dylan’s case, Teri asks if I mind if she sits in on my meeting with Bobby. I tell her that’s fine, and she brings me into the den, where Bobby waits in his wheelchair. I start my conversation with either Bobby Pollard an innocent paraplegic or Bobby Pollard an injury-faking serial killer.

I don’t want to lie to him at this point, so I’m careful in how I phrase my comments and questions. “Character witnesses don’t generally add to the facts of the case, but simply offer their high opinions of the defendant. I assume your view would be that Kenny Schilling is not the type of man that would commit murder?”

He nods. “Absolutely. I know him better than anyone.”

We go through these platitudes for about ten minutes, at which point I switch to questions that Dylan might ask him, so as to prepare him. I don’t make the questions too difficult, since Dylan would have no reason to attack him.

Once we’re finished, we chat in more general terms about football and the Giants’ prospects without Kenny. His hope is to have Kenny back in a couple of weeks, which would be ample time for a play-off run.

I tell Bobby that I’ll give him at least twenty-four hours’ notice before he testifies. I leave out the part about ripping him apart on the stand and about making sure he spends the rest of his life in a seven-by-ten-foot cell. There’ll be time to tell him that later.

I head home and prepare for my meeting with Dominic Petrone. His people pick me up at eight
P.M.
sharp. Except for shrinks, mobsters are the most punctual people I know. The driver tells me to sit in the passenger seat, and I notice when I do that his partner is stationed directly behind me. I feel like Paulie being driven by Clemenza into the city to find apartments where the button men can go to the “mattresses.” This driver doesn’t have any cannoli, but if he pulls over to get out and take a piss, I’m outta here.

They drive me to the back entrance of Vico’s, an Italian restaurant in Totowa. It has always been considered a mob hangout, a rumor that I can now officially confirm.

The driver tells me to walk in through the back door, which I do. I’m met by an enormous man who frisks me and brings me into a private room where Dominic Petrone is waiting.