Sudden Death (3 page)

He nods uncertainly. “Are you going to help me?”

“I’m going to help you.” It’s not really a lie; I certainly haven’t decided to take this case, but for the time being I will get him through the opening phase. If I decide not to represent him, which basically means if I believe he’s guilty, I’ll help him get another attorney.

“They won’t let me talk to my wife.”

He seems to be trying to delay the inevitable surrender. “Where is she?” I ask.

“In Seattle, at her mother’s. They said she’s flying back. They won’t let me talk to her.”

“You’ll talk to her, but not right now. Now it’s time to end this.” I say it as firmly as I can, and he nods in resignation and stands up.

I walk outside first, as previously planned, and make a motion to Dessens to indicate that Kenny is following me, without his gun. It goes smoothly and professionally, and within a few minutes Kenny has been read his rights and is on the way downtown.

He’s scared, and he should be. No matter how this turns out, life as he knows it is over.

I
PICK UP
T
ARA
at Kevin’s house. She seems a little miffed that I had abandoned her but grudgingly accepts my peace offering of a biscuit. As a further way of getting on her good side, I tell her that I’ll recommend she be allowed to play herself in the movie.

Kevin has followed the day’s events on television, and we make plans to meet in the office at eight
A.M.
I’m starting to get used to high-profile cases; they have a life of their own, and it’s vitally important to get on top of them immediately. And if one star football player goes on trial for murdering another, it’s going to make my previous cases look like tiffs in small-claims court.

As I enter my house, I’m struck by the now familiar feeling of comfort that envelops me. Two years ago, after my father’s death, I moved back to Paterson, New Jersey, to live in the house in which I grew up. Except for rescuing and adopting Tara from the animal shelter, coming back to this house is the single best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve hardly changed the interior at all; the house was already perfectly furnished with memories and emotions that only I can see and feel.

I’ve barely had time to put a frozen pizza in the oven when Laurie calls from Findlay. Such was the intensity of today’s events that I haven’t thought about her in hours.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “I saw what happened on television. I’ve been trying you all day on your cell phone.”

I left my cell phone in my suitcase, which the airline has delivered and is in the living room. “I’m fine. But we may have ourselves a client.”

“Is it true the victim’s body was in his house?” she asks.

“In the closet,” I confirm.

“Sounds rather incriminating.”

“Which is why you have to come home and uncover the kind of evidence that will let me display my courtroom brilliance.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she says. “I’ve missed you terribly.”

I let the words roll gently over me, sort of like a verbal massage. I know she loves me, but I have an embarrassing need for reassurance. At least it would be embarrassing if I were to reveal it to her. Which I won’t. Ever.

“Have you had fun?” I ask.

“It’s been an amazing experience, Andy. These are people I haven’t seen or thought about in more than fifteen years. And in five minutes all the memories came back… I even recognized their mannerisms. It makes me wonder why I cut off from them… why we never stayed in touch.”

Laurie’s father was a police officer in Findlay but decided to leave for a higher-paying job back East in Paterson, which qualified as the “big city.” He died five years ago, and I never got to meet him, but Laurie tells me he felt the move was the biggest mistake he ever made. I don’t recall her ever telling me if she shares that view.

We talk some more about reconnecting with old friends; she knows I completely understand because of my experience in moving back to Paterson. “The Internet is the way to stay in touch,” I say. “E-mailing makes it easy, and there are no pregnant pauses in the conversation.”

She doesn’t seem convinced, in fact seems vaguely troubled. I could ask her about this honestly and directly, but that would require too great a change in style. So instead, I change the subject. “If we take this case, we won’t be able to go away.” We had talked about a vacation.

“That’s okay,” she says, and again I hear the tone of voice that I don’t recognize as belonging to Laurie. It’s a halfhearted statement in a mostly halfhearted conversation. I’m not sure why, and I’m certainly not sure if I want to find out.

I get up really early in the morning to take Tara for a long walk. She attacks the route eagerly—tail-wagging and nose-sniffing every step of the way. We’ve gone this way a thousand times, yet each time she takes fresh delight in the sights and smells. Tara is not a “been there, done that” type of dog, and it’s a trait I admire and envy.

As I get dressed to go to the office, I catch up on what the media are saying about the Schilling case. There are reports that Schilling and Preston were out together the night Preston disappeared and that witnesses claim the last time Preston was seen was when Schilling gave him a ride home.

The striking part of the media coverage is not the information that is revealed, but the overwhelming nature of the effort to reveal it. I have 240 channels on my cable system, and it seems as if 230 of them are all over this case. One of the cable networks has already given a name to it, and their reports are emblazoned with the words “Murder in the Backfield” scrawled across the screen. They seem unconcerned with the fact that the victim was a wide receiver.

As has become standard operating procedure, guilt seems to be widely assumed, especially in light of the way Schilling was taken into custody. His were not the actions of the innocent, and if we ever go to trial, that is going to be a major hill to climb. The fact that a national television audience watched as he fended off police with a gun only makes the hill that much steeper.

Kevin and I don’t have much to talk about, and we just compare notes on what we’ve learned from the media. I’ve got a ten o’clock appointment at the jail to meet with Schilling, and Kevin plans to use the time to learn what the prosecution is planning in terms of arraignment. Kevin knows my feelings about defending guilty clients, feelings that he shares, and he’s relieved when I tell him that I’ve made no decision on whether to take on Schilling as a client.

We both leave at nine-forty-five, which is when Edna is arriving. I’ve always felt that a secretary should arrive very early and have the office up and running by the time everyone else arrives. Unfortunately, Edna has always felt pretty much the opposite, so basically, she comes in whenever she wants. Though she is one of the financial beneficiaries of the commission from the Willie Miller case, I can honestly say that the money hasn’t changed her. She’s worked for me for five years and is just as unproductive today as before she was rich.

I briefly tell her what is going on; she’s heard absolutely nothing about Schilling or the murder. Never let it be said that Edna has her finger anywhere near the public pulse.

Schilling is being held at County Jail, which is why an entire media city has set itself up outside. Having become all too familiar with this process, I’ve learned about a back entrance which allows me to avoid the crush, and I make use of it this time.

Guarding the door is Luther Hendricks, a court security officer who carries a calendar with him so he can count the days until retirement. “You sure stepped in shit this time,” he says as he lets me in. I know he’s talking about this case, so I don’t even bother to check my shoes.

Nothing moves quickly within a prison bureaucracy, and the high-profile nature of this case doesn’t change that. It takes forty-five minutes for me to be brought back to the room where I will see Kenny Schilling and then another twenty minutes waiting for him to arrive.

He’s brought in cuffed and dressed in prison drab. I had thought he looked bad huddled in the corner of his living room yesterday, but compared to this, he actually appeared triumphant. It looks as if fear and despair are waging a pitched battle to take over his face. The process of losing one’s freedom, even overnight, can be devastating and humiliating. For somebody like Kenny, it’s often much worse, because he’s fallen from such a high perch.

“How are you doing, Kenny?” is my clever opening. “Are they treating you okay?”

“They ain’t beating me, if that’s what you mean. They tried to talk to me, but I said no.”

“Good.”

“They took some blood out of my arm. They said they had the right. And I didn’t care, because all they’re gonna find is blood. I don’t take no drugs or anything.”

They actually don’t have that right, unless they had probable cause to believe that drug usage had something to do with the murder. I have heard nothing about any suspicions that drugs were involved in this case, but then again, I know almost nothing about this case. “You’re sure you’ve never taken any kind of drugs?” I ask.

He shakes his head firmly. “No way; I just told you that.” Then, “Man, you gotta get me out of here. I got money… whatever it takes. I just can’t stay in here.”

I explain that we won’t know the likelihood of bail until the district attorney files charges, but that those charges are likely to be severe, and bail will be very difficult. I’m not sure he really hears me or understands what I’m saying; he needs to cling to a hope that this is all going to blow over and he’ll be back signing autographs instead of giving fingerprints.

I ask him to tell me everything he knows about the night that Preston disappeared. “I didn’t kill him,” he says. “I swear to God.”

I nod. “Good. That covers what you didn’t do. Now let’s focus on what you did do. How well did you know him?”

He shrugs. “Pretty well. I mean, we weren’t best friends or anything—he played for the Jets. But in the off-season a lot of guys hung out…”

“So you hung out with him that night?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Not just him… a whole bunch of people. We went to the Crows Nest. No big deal. We probably did that three or four times a week.”

“How many people were there that night? With you and Troy.”

“Maybe fifteen.”

I take him through the events of the night, which mainly consisted of drinking beer, talking football, and occasionally leering at women. I never realized how much I had in common with star football players. “How long did you stay there?” I ask.

“I was real tired, so we left about twelve-thirty.”

“We?”

He nods. “I gave Troy a ride home.”

This is not good and confirms the media reports. The last time the victim was seen, it was by fifteen people, who watched him leave with my client. “Was that an unusual thing for you to do?”

He shakes his head. “No, he lived about two blocks from me. And I don’t drink that much, so he’d leave his car at the bar, and I guess he’d pick it up in the morning.”

“So he lived in Upper Saddle River?” I ask.

Kenny shakes his head and explains that Preston lived in an apartment in East Rutherford. Kenny did as well; he and his wife had only recently purchased the house in Upper Saddle River and hadn’t fully moved in yet. This explains the boxes spread around the house.

Kenny claims to have spent the fateful night in his East Rutherford apartment, alone. “I dropped Troy off and went home. That’s the last time I saw him.”

“Why did the police come to your house in Upper Saddle River?” I’ll learn all this in discovery, but it’s helpful to hear my client’s version first.

“The next morning my car was gone. I parked it on the street, and I figured it was stolen. Which it was. I reported it to the police. I hadn’t even heard about Troy being missing yet. Then yesterday I got a rental car and went up to the new house. I was unpacking boxes when I saw some blood on the floor. Then I found his body in that closet. I was about to call the cops, but before I could, they showed up at my door with guns. I freaked and wouldn’t let them in.”

“And took a shot at them,” I point out.

“They pulled out guns first… I wasn’t even sure they were cops. They could have been the guys that killed Troy. Even when I figured out who they were, I was afraid they’d come in shooting. Hey, man… I wasn’t trying to hit them. I just figured if they found the body like that, they’d think I did it. Which they did.” He sees the look on my face and moans. “Man, I know it was stupid. I just freaked, that’s all.”

Kenny doesn’t know what brought the police to the Upper Saddle River home, but he believed from their attitude that they were there to arrest him. I’ll find that out soon enough, so I use our remaining time to ask him about his relationship with Preston.

“I met him when we were in high school,” he says. “One of those sports magazines did an all-American high school team, and they brought everybody to New York and put us up in a hotel for the weekend. I think he was from Pennsylvania or Ohio or something…”

“But you’ve never had an argument with him? There is no motive that the prosecution might come up with for your killing him?”

He shakes his head vigorously, the most animated I’ve seen him. “No way, man. You gotta believe me. Why would I kill him? It don’t make any sense.”

The guard comes to take him back to his cell, and I see a quick flash of shock in Kenny’s eyes, as if he thought this meeting could last forever. I tell him that I will get to work finding out whatever I can and that the next time I will see him is at the arraignment.

For now I’m far from sure I believe in his innocence. But I’m not sure that I don’t.