Who Let the Dog Out? (12 page)

I suggest that Stephanie wait in the car with Zoe as I go in. The owner, a man named Warren Storch, greets me and seems eager to share what happened. “I was renting storage space to a guy that was new in town, back there in that smaller barn.” He points in a direction behind where we were standing.

“What was the guy’s name?”

“He told me his name was Walter, but he paid in cash, so I can’t say for sure that was really his name, not after what happened. Anyway, he got himself killed yesterday, right up the road from here. And around the same time, somebody broke into that barn.”

“Did you see the thief?”

He shakes his head. “No, but they cleaned the place out.”

“What had been in there?” I ask.

“I don’t know; it wasn’t any of my business. I gave him a key, and he kept the place locked. Then yesterday the door was wide open, and it was empty.”

He has little more to offer, so I get back into the car and we’re on our way. Stephanie has barely said a word, and we’ve been driving for almost three hours. I’ve kept the radio off; even though I’d like to hear news reports about the shootings, I’m afraid of the effect it would have on her.

My second choice would be to listen to sports talk radio, but I don’t turn that on either. The woman has just experienced a devastating shock and is in mourning; I don’t think she cares whether the Giants should draft a running back or an offensive lineman.

Zoe is in the backseat, sleeping. Occasionally she wakes up, looks out the window, and then goes back to sleep. The trip must be going fast for her; I wish she and I could change places.

We stop to walk Zoe at a rest area. I take her on the leash and am surprised when Stephanie gets out of the car and walks alongside us. We walk about twenty feet, and then she says, “He hadn’t been the same for a while.”

I obviously know she is talking about Eric, so I just ask, “How so?”

“Something was on his mind, driving him. There was always something with Eric; usually it was work, but it could have been anything. He’d get into a topic, and it would consume him. It would be all he would talk about.”

“And that changed?”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so. But the difference was that this time he didn’t talk about it. He kept it from me; I think he kept it from everyone, except maybe Michael.”

“You have no idea what it was?” I ask.

“No,” she says, then is silent for a while. It’s not until we’re turning back toward the car that she says, “I think it was about money.”

“What do you mean?”

“Money was never really important to Eric; he could have made much more working in private industry. He wanted to be where he could do the best work.”

“And that changed?”

She nods. “One day he said to me, ‘What would you do if you won the lottery?’”

“A lot of people ask that question.”

“Not Eric,” she says. “I was surprised he even knew there was a lottery. You’d have to know him to understand, but the question came completely out of left field. And there were others. Once he asked me where I would live if I could live anywhere in the world. These were just not the kind of things Eric ever talked about before.”

“How long ago did this start?”

“Maybe a year. I think I noticed it for the first time after he came back from one of those conferences he was always going to.”

I ask her where the conference might have been, or what it was about, but she has no idea. To her they were boring scientific meetings, and she wouldn’t have gone to one if her life depended on it.

The second half of the trip home is the exact opposite of the first. Whereas she wouldn’t talk before, now she can’t seem to stop. It’s probably cathartic for her, so I just listen. I’m not above pumping her for information that could help my client, but I just don’t think she has any.

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” she says. “I just wanted to help Eric, and I knew he didn’t kill anyone. Do you think people will realize that now?”

“I do,” I say, which is the truth. The logical conclusion is that the same person that killed Michael Caruso killed Eric. It isn’t necessarily true, but that will be the best guess.

“Do you think I somehow did something that led them to him?”

“I don’t,” I say, which is not the truth. I think his contacting her and asking her to come up there may well have in some way revealed his location, but I don’t know how. “What was in the FedEx package?” I ask.

“You knew about that? It was from Eric, a cell phone, the one he called me on.”

She gets quiet for a while, then, “Eric told me he paid someone to take Zoe from you.”

I’m not surprised by this, but glad to have it confirmed. “Did he say why?”

“He loved her, and he missed her. Don’t you think that’s reason enough?” she asks.

“I do.”

“What’s going to happen to her?”

“What would you like to happen?” I ask.

“I would love for her to be my dog.”

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Our goal is to find good homes for dogs with people who will love them. If Zoe went to Stephanie’s, it would be a good home where she is already loved. “I think that can be arranged, if you really want her,” I say.

Stephanie starts to cry, so I’ll take that as a yes.

I drop off Stephanie and Zoe at Stephanie’s house, and then drive home. As soon as she is out of the car, I turn the radio on. They are not yet reporting the name of the other victim, nor whether the police have any suspects. The only piece of information they are revealing is the one I was dreading, the fact that I was at the murder scene.

Knowing this, I’m not surprised that there is a media mob scene in front of my house when I pull up. I actually have trouble opening the car door because of the throng that surrounds my car, and they fire questions at me as I make my way toward the house.

It’s hard to hear everything they are saying, but the gist is that they want to know what I was doing in Maine, and if I have any idea who killed Eric Brantley. I just keep saying no comment, until I’m nearing my front porch, at which point I come to my senses.

None of these people have asked me about the Infante case, because they have no reason to make the connection. Here I have this golden opportunity to enlighten them, as well as the prospective jury pool out there, and I almost blew it. I have definitely lost a foot off my legal fastball.

I stand on my front porch and hold my hands up, asking for quiet. It’s sort of an impromptu press conference situation, as I am standing on the top steps and the media is in front of and below me. I am above the masses and they are hanging on my every word; I feel like I should sing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.”

“I don’t have too much to say” is how I begin. “It’s been a long couple of days, and there’s a lot I can’t say about it. But I do want everyone to understand that what happened in Maine yesterday was a terrible tragedy. My condolences and thoughts go to the victims and their families.

“There is obviously a lot of confusion surrounding these events, but one thing is absolutely clear. Tommy Infante sits in jail, wrongfully accused of murder. My hope is that the prosecutor, Mr. Campbell, will not be the last one to realize this. Thank you.”

As I finish, there is a moment of strange silence. I can see in their faces that they want to throw out questions, but they are trying to process what Tommy Infante possibly could have to do with the murders in Maine.

It’s all I can do not to laugh as I turn and go into the house. I’m no sooner in the door than Ricky comes running up to me, with Laurie behind him.

“Dad! I just saw you on television! You were in front of our house!”

“I know, Rick.”

“Why were you on?”

“It was for my job,” I say.

“Cool! I want to do that job when I get big. Can I?”

“Sure. You can go to law school in the offseason. Spring training doesn’t start until February.”

Satisfied with the outcome of the conversation, Ricky turns to Laurie. “Hey, Mom! Dad says I can go to law school before spring something!”

“That’s wonderful, Rick.”

“I’m going to be on television!”

Ricky runs out of the room, probably to start filling out his law school applications. That leaves Laurie and I alone, so we can talk about shootings and murders and robberies, the things that she and I can romantically share.

“You doing okay?” she asks. “You’ve been having a rough time lately.”

I nod. “It’s pretty hard to get used to. It was an ugly scene, and for Stephanie to walk in on it…”

“You said they were executed? Shot in the back of the head?”

“That’s what it looked like to me. I didn’t hang around in there much.”

She looks puzzled. “They just ran a report on CNN … you might want to turn it on.”

I walk over and turn the television on to CNN, and it has a huge
BREAKING NEWS
banner plastered across the bottom of the screen. It’s part of the trend in television news, everything is treated as a monumental revelation worthy of being declared
BREAKING NEWS
. I’m waiting for the time when they announce the
BREAKING NEWS
that there is no
BREAKING NEWS
.

It’s what’s under the banner that gets my attention. It says, “FBI: Brantley Death is Murder-Suicide.” There is no way that can be the case, unless one of the victims shot the other, then lay facedown, reached around, and shot himself in the head. Then, remarkably, his dead body would have had to discard the gun, since I didn’t see any weapon near the bodies.

“This is crap,” I say, since I am nothing if not eloquent.

Laurie nods. “That’s what I thought you’d say. You were under a lot of stress; is it possible you saw it wrong?”

“It is not possible. But you should check with Marcus. He got in the room even before I did, and he is not familiar with the concept of stress.”

“So let’s assume you remember it correctly. Why would they be giving out false information?”

“The easy answer is there is something they want to conceal, and it must be something significant, because in this day and age it’s hard to sell bullshit stories like this. The local cops on the scene know the truth. Marcus, Stephanie, and I know the truth. But the FBI seems to have created their own truth.”

As I am saying that, another significant question comes to mind. “And why the hell was the FBI there in the first place? Two guys got murdered in a city in Maine; what about that brings the Bureau in?”

“It’s interstate,” Laurie says. “Brantley’s case goes from New Jersey to Maine.”

“Maybe, but the FBI was in on it immediately. They swooped in like they were ready for it; there wasn’t time for the locals to have invited them in.”

I’m thinking about this like a lawyer, which I guess is sort of appropriate, since that’s what I am. But I don’t care that much about what it is they’re hiding about Eric Brantley; my focus is how I can use my knowledge of the truth as a bargaining chip for Tommy Infante.

“Have they said anything about the other victim?” I ask.

“I don’t think so, unless it’s been in the last few minutes. I think one of the commentators referred to him as an associate of Brantley’s.”

I nod. “Getting killed with someone definitely makes him worthy of the associate label.”

“So where are you going to take this?” she asks.

“Nowhere. They’re going to come to us.”

Alan Divac was experiencing a particular feeling for the first time. It was the sense that things were moving out of his control, something that simply did not happen to him. Divac was used to calling the shots, and never, ever being surprised.

The visit from the lawyer, Carpenter, was a little disconcerting, but no big deal. Carpenter was flailing around in the dark, with no real knowledge about what was happening. The fact that he wanted Divac to provide him with a road map to the illegal diamond business was unintentionally comical, but it was not a joke that Divac could share with him.

Divac had believed that Downey’s death was unrelated to his own business, and that Carpenter was defending a guilty man. Now he was not so sure. Because now Brantley was dead, and Divac’s sources told him that Healy was as well. Divac hadn’t ordered the killings, although he certainly was not going to mourn for Brantley. Brantley was a competitor, and though that didn’t warrant a death sentence, it wasn’t going to keep Divac up nights.

But the fact that it had happened without his knowledge, and more importantly the fact that Healy was another victim, added a new and ominous aspect to the situation. Divac was feeling isolated, and unsure of his next move. He had taken to relying on Healy to help deal with these kinds of situations, but now Healy was gone.

All of this meant that a new player had entered the game, and if that player was able to handle Healy, he was going to be hard to deal with.

As I predicted, it doesn’t take long for the FBI to show up. I came down to the office, since that’s the most likely place they’d be looking for me. And sure enough, thirty minutes after I get here, two FBI agents come walking through the door.

So my prediction has come to pass, except for the fact that while they look and sound exactly like FBI agents, that’s not what they are. They are with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE.

One of them is at least six-three, and the other no more than five-eleven. They are wearing the exact same navy suit, different only in that one of them must have four inches less material. Usually I find that it’s the shorter agent who speaks first, though I have no idea why.

Once again my short/tall theory holds, and the shorter one speaks. “I’m Agent Hernandez, and this is Agent Gardiner.”

I find it important to demonstrate early on in these conversations that I am not intimidated. “Both of your first names are Agent? Wow, what are the odds against that?”

“I heard you were a pain in the ass,” he says.

“How? I’ve never dealt with ICE before. Are you guys finally communicating between agencies? That’s comforting.”

They are obviously quick learners, because we are only a few seconds into a conversation, and they’ve already learned to ignore my bullshit. “What were you doing in Maine yesterday?” Hernandez asks.