Dog Eat Dog

by David Rosenfelt

  Steinkamp’s next witness is Walt Kapler, who works as a bartender at Parker’s Pub, in Nobleboro. Steinkamp starts by having Kapler state his occupation and his place of employment.

  “Were you working there two years ago, at the time of the murders?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been working at Parker’s for nine years.” Kapler smiles. “My career has sort of hit a plateau.”

  “Did I ask you to drive from the pub to the house where the murders took place?”

  Kapler nods. “Yes, and I did it. There are two ways to do it, so I tried both of them. They took just about the same amount of time.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “About seven minutes.”

  “Have you ever spoken to the defendant, Matthew Jantzen?”

  “Oh, sure. Many times.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “He used to come in the bar a lot. I wouldn’t say he was a regular, but he was in maybe once a week, or a little less.”

  Steinkamp introduces a credit card receipt as evidence and gets Kapler to identify it as Matt’s and confirm it is from the night of the murder.

  “What time was it signed?”

  “Nine forty-seven P.M.”

  “Nine forty-seven,” Steinkamp repeats. He does so for no other reason than the hope that the jury will remember it, since it is within an hour of the estimated time of death. Kapler can’t testify as to the time of death, but Steinkamp will be sure to make the connection later.

  “In your experience with Mr. Jantzen and other customers, is it common for them to leave soon after they pay their bill?”

  “Sure, if you’re not going to drink anymore, what are you there for, you know?”

  Steinkamp turns the witness over to me. “Mr. Kapler,” I ask, “were you working at the bar the night of the murders?”

  “I don’t remember. The bar doesn’t keep records that far back and I sure don’t keep my calendars.”

  “How many nights a week were you working back then?” I know all these answers from the interview turned over to us in discovery.

  “Three or four, depending on the week.”

  “So it’s about a fifty percent chance that you were there that night?”

  “I’d say that’s right, yeah.”

  “But if you were there, you don’t remember anything about it specifically, correct?”

  He nods. “Right.”

  “Did Matt Jantzen usually come in and sit alone?”

  “No, they had a pretty big group. They were buddies.”

  “Did they ever leave drunk and get into their cars and drive?”

  “No way.” Kapler describes how they would always have a designated driver who didn’t drink, and how one person always paid for everybody. They alternated paying.

  “Did the person who paid act as the designated driver?”

  “No, the guy who paid always drank. I guess he got his money’s worth.”

  “So considering the size of this bill, based on your experience is it likely that Mr. Jantzen did not drive there that night?”

  Steinkamp objects that the witness could not testify to something he had no direct knowledge about, but Judge Pressley lets him answer.

  “I never thought of that, but he probably didn’t drive.”

  “Were there ever women at the bar?”

  “Sure. Lots of times.”

  “And sometimes they would form couples with the guys, and maybe a man and woman would leave together?”

  “Oh, yeah. Happened all the time.”

  “So it’s possible that Matt Jantzen left the bar with a woman that night?”

  Kapler nods. “Possible. Yeah.”

  “But you don’t know one way or the other, because you don’t even remember being there yourself.”

  “Right.”

  I frown and feign annoyance that I even had to deal with such a ridiculous witness. I’m a good annoyance-feigner. “No further questions.”

  This trial feels like we are slowly being dragged to the edge of a cliff.

  The first two witnesses have not gone badly; one could argue that we have not suffered any real damage and that we’ve even scored some points. But anyone on our side taking heart in that would be buying into an illusion, because it doesn’t matter.

  What matters is the DNA, and that testimony will be coming fairly soon; it’s just over the edge of that cliff. Steinkamp has it cocked and loaded, ready to use whenever he is in the mood.

  I know where this is going; it is headed to a certain conviction. It’s as certain as the ending of a movie I have seen before. We will have fought the good fight, and we will have lost. Then we can throw up our hands and say we did all that we could, and Matt Jantzen can go to jail for the rest of his life, convicted of murders I don’t believe he committed.

  All we have now are Peter Charkin’s connections to two violent worlds. One is Donnelly and drugs; Charkin was taking them, and his buddy and employer Mitchell was tied up in a neat bow with Donnelly and his dealer lieutenant Carmody.

  The other is McCaskill and the Liberators militia. We know and can demonstrate the connection is real; we originally got it from the police reports in the discovery documents, from back before they decided that Matt Jantzen was the guilty party.

  We don’t know much more about the militia side, except that the FBI has an active investigation that is causing them to worry a lot. I can’t worry about their worry; it only interests me if it has something to do with our case.

  But because the trial result seems inevitable, we need to take action on both fronts. We have to do more than show that Charkin hung out with bad guys; we have to demonstrate that he did bad things himself, and that’s what got him killed.

  It’s easy to decide to be aggressive; this is that rare time that everyone on the team shares that goal. The difficult part is to figure out the form for that aggression. To that end, everybody gathers in Laurie’s and my suite one evening after the day in court to discuss it and make our plans.

  Corey, Laurie, Sam, Marcus, and I hash it out. It’s my case, so I have the final word, but I am conflicted. There simply do not seem to be any promising options, but we wind up with what seems to be the best of a weak bunch.

  Laurie and I are going to confront Danny McCaskill again. We will make vague threats about knowing of his connection to Gavin Helms, and about how the militia was supplying Charkin with cash infusions. We’ll throw in the FBI’s imminent plan to come down on both of them. We’ll tell him that revealing all he knows, including about Charkin’s murder, is the only chance he’ll have to save himself.

  It’s 80 percent bullshit, and the rest is speculation, but at least we’ll be doing something.

  Corey and Marcus have an even vaguer assignment. They’re heading for Vermont, where the cell phone GPS places Gavin Helms’s location. Google Earth shows it to be in the middle of nowhere, and we want to at least find out what is going on there, and who Helms is with.

  What they do with that information will be up to Corey and Marcus, depending on what they find. In a perfect world they can get Helms or others to talk about Charkin.

  Once again it seems like a fantasy that we’ll find out anything to tie to the murders and our case, but the more stuff we can learn, the more I can throw on the jury wall, hoping something sticks.

  Nobody is terribly happy with these plans, least of all Sam Willis. Like always, he wants to be out in the field, shooting bad guys and taking no prisoners. He’ll stay behind and be in charge of communications, including monitoring the electronic surveillance on the truck that makes the deliveries to the Maine Lighthouse brewery.

  I wish I could trade places with him.

  The trial day today is going to feel even longer than usual.

  Usually, when the prosecution is presenting its case, a day seems to last for a little over a week, maybe longer. Today will feel like about a month, because after court Laurie and I are going to confront Danny McCaskill.

&n
bsp; The last time I saw McCaskill, he just about threatened to beat the hell out of Charlie Tilton and me. He’s less likely to pull it off this time because Laurie is tougher than Charlie and me put together. She also carries a gun, which can be useful in such situations.

  But I still don’t like confrontations that might end in violence, and I especially hate the ones where I have to rely on my wife for protection. But it is what it is, and I am what I am. That doesn’t mean I don’t dread it.

  Steinkamp’s first witness is Sergeant Robert Prentice of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office. He was one of the first officers on the scene at Tina Welker’s house the night of the murders.

  Once Steinkamp has established that Prentice has fifteen years of exemplary service in the department, he asks how Prentice came to be at the house.

  “A neighbor called nine-one-one. He reported that shots were fired, although he wasn’t sure where they came from.”

  The neighbor was originally on Steinkamp’s witness list, but he apparently won’t be called. Apparently he has learned his lesson not to overdo it.

  “What did you do when you arrived on the scene?”

  “We went to the neighbor’s house, and he informed us as to the general direction from where he heard the shots. I called in four more officers, and we fanned out and checked each house.”

  “Was Tina Welker’s house one of the ones you went to?”

  Prentice nods. “It was the first house that my partner and I checked. The front door was slightly ajar, and no one answered the bell when we rang repeatedly. We were concerned that someone might be hurt inside, so we went in.”

  Prentice was careful to voice that concern so that it wouldn’t be considered an illegal entry. Therefore any evidence found within would be admissible.

  “What did you find when you went inside?”

  “Two deceased adults, later identified as Tina Welker and Peter Charkin. They were tied to chairs and shot through the head, one shot each.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “We confirmed that the adults were deceased. Then we called in backup and set about determining that the killer was no longer in the house. Once we did that, we secured the scene and waited for Robbery-Homicide and forensics to arrive.”

  “So no one interfered with any evidence? No contamination?”

  “None. The scene was secured and locked down until forensics got there.”

  “Did you notice any other injuries on the deceased other than from the gunshots?”

  Prentice nods. “Mr. Charkin appeared to have facial injuries, bruises or lacerations. It was hard for me to tell because of all the blood from the gunshot wounds, and I didn’t want to get too close for fear of contaminating possible evidence.”

  Steinkamp displays the crime-scene photographs on a screen that has been set up. They are obviously horrible, which is why Steinkamp wanted them shown.

  The jury sees the two people, tied up and helpless, with their heads blown open and blood everywhere. Not only would they vote to convict Jantzen at this moment; they would hang him themselves in the courtroom if the judge would let them.

  Steinkamp turns the witness over to me. He didn’t cause me much damage, except for creating the general impression that the area remained sterile and untouched. So I will just ask a few questions and get out.

  “Sergeant Prentice, you said that you confirmed the two victims were deceased before you did anything else?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I felt for a pulse on their necks.”

  “You also said that you didn’t want to get too close to the bodies, because doing so might contaminate evidence. How did you go about feeling their necks without getting close?”

  “That’s all I did. I felt their necks and moved away.”

  “So getting close might contaminate the evidence, and you did get close? You just didn’t get close repeatedly? Is that your testimony?”

  “I needed to confirm that they were deceased.”

  “That would be a good answer if I had asked what you needed to confirm. But that’s not what I asked. I asked if you touched them, even though you thought that would risk contaminating the evidence.”

  “Yes, I did. I had to make sure they were not still alive and in need of medical attention.”

  “You saw what we just saw in those photographs and you thought they might have been just wounded?”

  “You never know.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. No further questions.”

  After lunch Judge Pressley announces that a juror has a medical issue. The juror expects it to be resolved this afternoon, but if not, an alternate will replace that juror.

  Court is adjourned for the day, which is fine with me. I need the time to obsess over tonight.

  The first thing that Corey and Marcus discovered was that Google Earth was right.

  The area that GPS had identified as the location of Gavin Helms’s phone was, in fact, in the middle of nowhere. It was a wooded nowhere, with small paths cut out that may once have been used for hiking, but were now mostly overrun. Corey and Marcus were hopeful that one led to wherever Helms was staying, but there was no way to be sure.

  “They must have their own cell tower,” Corey said, noticing that his phone had good service, even though this was a desolate area. Marcus didn’t respond, which was no surprise; he had said maybe ten indecipherable words the entire way.

  Corey was nominally in charge, and he signaled that Marcus should go down one path, while Corey would take an adjacent one. There was no way to determine how far the paths would diverge, so it was a risk. With no way to communicate with each other, it was far from an ideal situation, but Corey still felt it was better to take separate paths.

  “We meet back here in an hour,” Corey said, and Marcus nodded his assent.

  Corey was glad that he had not brought Simon Garfunkel. This was just a reconnaissance mission, and it would have been rough terrain for a dog heading into his senior years. It made Corey feel more alone, though, since he and Simon had been partners for almost eight years and had faced a great deal together.

  Corey had been walking for about ten minutes when he heard the gunshots. There was no mistaking them; the sound blasted through the dead silence that preceded them.

  For a moment he feared that Marcus had been discovered and was caught in a gunfight, or worse, but then felt relieved as the sounds continued. The number and pace of the shots indicated target practice rather than shots fired with any urgency or under duress.

  Corey judged that the shots came from just a few hundred yards ahead. A major worry was that he and Marcus were heading for the target range itself; the bullets might be coming in their direction, and they might walk into them.

  “Do not move another inch,” the voice said, coming from Corey’s right side. He looked and saw a tall, well-built man, no more than twenty-five years old, pointing a rifle at him.

  The first thing Corey thought was that not bringing Simon was a major, life-threatening mistake. Simon would have detected the guy’s presence earlier, alerted Corey, and most likely disabled the guy with extreme prejudice. “Okay,” Corey said. “But you don’t need the rifle. I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Just out hiking and scouting some land. I’m thinking of buying out here.”

  “Bullshit. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To meet some people who will be interested in hearing what you have to say. And they will get you to say it.”

  The man with the rifle took one step toward Corey, motioning with the rifle for him to continue down the path. At that moment a large tree fell and hit the man on the side of the head. Actually, if he had had the time to register the event before he instantly lost consciousness, he would have assumed it was a large tree, but it was Marcus Clark’s forearm.

  Corey’s first thought was the hope the guy was not
dead. After that his cop instinct kicked in: They were on private property and had attacked someone who probably had the right to be there. That he had held a rifle on Corey was an extenuating circumstance.

  Corey felt for the guy’s pulse and was relieved to discover one. Now it came time to decide whether to go back or forward, and Marcus silently made that decision for them, as he started along the trail toward the gunshots. They had come this far, Marcus was not giving up now.

  They had no way to tie up the unconscious guy, so all Corey could do was take the guy’s rifle and hope he didn’t wake up until they accomplished whatever they needed to. He didn’t look as if consciousness was imminent.

  In another five minutes they came to a clearing and could see the large cabin and the three men at the makeshift target range. Fortunately, Corey and Marcus were to the south, and the men were firing east to west.

  Two men were firing in what appeared to be a competition, while the other watched, also holding a handgun and no doubt awaiting his turn. They were talking and laughing, obviously with no idea that they were being watched, or that one of their colleagues was in never-never land.

  There was no sense in going in, Corey realized. The men were not doing anything illegal and likely had a right to be there. Nor did Corey and Marcus have anything approaching any legal jurisdiction. Added to that, the men were armed and intervention made no sense.

  Corey had had the foresight to bring a camera with a telephoto lens, and he took pictures of the three men and their surroundings. He also checked his phone app for the accurate latitude and longitude of the cabin.

  They left the way they came, passing the guard still crumpled on the ground. Corey felt for the guy’s pulse again, found it to be stronger, and was hopeful that he would soon awaken. If not, the others would no doubt find him.

  Or not. Corey didn’t care that much either way.

  Laurie is annoyingly calm about this.

  I’ve told her that McCaskill is a large person who does not take kindly to being questioned. He is apparently violent and dangerous, two qualities that I am not fond of in anyone not named Marcus.