Even gambling on sports doesn’t help. In normal times a Sunday spent gambling on televised games allows me to escape from anything, but Laurie’s leaving is the Alcatraz of emotional problems. I can’t get away from it, no matter what I do.
I spend half of my time waiting for the phone to ring, hoping that Laurie is calling to change her mind and beg my forgiveness. The other half of my time I spend considering whether to call and tell her I’ll be on the first plane to Findlay. But she won’t call, and neither will I, not now, not ever.
Tonight Pete, Kevin, Vince, and Sam have taken me to Charlie’s to watch Monday Night Football. The Giants are playing the Eagles, which would be a big deal if I gave a shit about it. I don’t.
Halftime has apparently been designated as the time to convince me to get on with my life. They’ve got women to fix me up with, vacations I should take, and cases I should start working on. None of those things have any appeal, and I tell them so. The chance of my going on a blind date, or taking on a new case, is about equal in likelihood to my setting fire to myself. Maybe less.
Sam drives me home and is sensitive enough not to song-talk, though he would have no shortage of sad tunes to pick from. Instead, he thanks me for the opportunity I gave him to work on the case; it’s something he loves and would like to do more of in the future.
I remind him that both Barry Leiter and Adam have died in the last couple of years doing the same kind of work. “Why don’t you do something safer, like become a fighter pilot or work for the bomb squad?” I ask.
Sam drops me off at home, and I open the door to a tail-wagging Tara. I believe she knows I need more love and support than usual, and she’s trying to provide it. I appreciate it, but this may be that rare job bigger than Tara.
I get into bed and take a few minutes to convince myself that tomorrow will be a better day. I mean, the fact is that Laurie was my girlfriend. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s just not that big a deal. Who’s going to feel sorry for you just because you and your girlfriend broke up? It’s not exactly high up on the list of personal tragedies. In fact, if somebody hears you say it, the question they would be expected to ask is something like, “Well, then, who are you going to take to the prom?”
With that self-administered pep talk having failed once again to get through to me, I remember that I had set up a therapy session with Carlotta Abbruzze tomorrow, hoping that she could help me deal with Laurie’s leaving. My view now is that the only way Carlotta can help me is if she calls Laurie and talks her into coming back.
In the morning I take Tara for a walk, and we’re halfway through it when I realize I had scheduled a meeting with Kenny Schilling at his house at ten. After every case I wait a while and then meet with the client. It’s to go over my final bill, but, more important, to find out how the client is adjusting and to answer any remaining questions he or she has. It’s always nice when that meeting is not in prison.
Kenny and Tanya graciously welcome me into their home, and Tanya goes off to get coffee. Kenny’s wearing a sweat suit, aptly named because it’s drenched with sweat.
“Sorry I didn’t get dressed all fancy for my lawyer,” he says with a smile, “but I’ve got to get in shape.”
“I won’t keep you long,” I say, and we quickly go over my bill, which despite its large size draws no objection from him. It’s actually less than the estimate I had given him at the start of the trial.
“I still can’t believe Bobby killed all those people,” Kenny says.
“Could you believe he wasn’t paralyzed?” I ask.
“No, that just blew me away.”
Kenny and Tanya have very few questions; they’re still flushed with relief that their lives haven’t been permanently derailed. I finish my coffee and get up to leave.
“Man, can’t you stay another couple of hours? I need an excuse not to work out.”
“That’s probably the only athletic thing we have in common. Hey, let me ask you a question,” I say, and then describe in detail my plan to become a placekicker for the Giants.
“That sounds pretty good,” he says.
“You think it could work?”
“Not a chance in hell,” he says, and laughs.
He’s challenging my manhood. “Be careful or I’ll be on that field before you will,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. They’re looking to activate me next week in time for the game at Cincinnati.”
Tanya stands to pick up the coffee cups. “Don’t remind me,” she says, smiling.
The comment surprises me. “You don’t want him to play?”
“Not in Cincinnati. I’ve got bad memories of that. But this time I’m going… Watching it on television was horrible.”
Kenny explains. “I got my bell rung in the fourth quarter when we were out there two years ago. I was out cold. Late hit.”
I nod. “I think I remember that.”
“Only time that ever happened to me. Man, that was scary as hell. Next thing I knew it was four hours later in the hospital. I didn’t even know who won. Bobby had to tell me.” He shakes his head sadly, probably at the awareness that Bobby won’t be there to tell him anything anymore.
I head out to the car, and I’m three blocks away when it hits me. I drive the three blocks back to the house about twice as fast, then jump out and pop open the trunk. I’ve brought a lot of my case files with me, in case I needed to refer to them to answer any questions about my bill, and now I pore through them until I find the piece of information I need.
Tanya Schilling is surprised to find me standing there when she answers the doorbell. “Sorry, but I need to talk to Kenny.”
“Sure, come on in,” she says. “He’s still in the den goofing off.”
She goes into the kitchen while I go back into the den. Kenny is also surprised by my reappearance. “Hey, you forget something?”
“Are you positive that Bobby was with you in the hospital in Cincinnati?” I ask.
“Absolutely. And not just because he was my friend. He was my trainer… it was his job to be there.”
“Kenny, I’m going to ask you something I’ve asked you before. Last time you wouldn’t answer; this time you’ve got to.”
“What is it?”
“The night you dropped Troy off at his house… the night he died… who was the woman you were arguing about?”
“I told you, I don’t remember,” he says. He can see by my face that I’m not going to drop it, so he changes his approach. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“I think she’s got everything to do with it,” I say.
“Tell him, Kenny.” It’s Tanya, standing in the doorway.
Kenny looks like the classic deer in the headlights. “Tell him what?” he asks, but it’s clear he knows what. And he now knows that she knows.
Her voice is firm. “You tell him or I will.”
I press him. “Who were you arguing about that night, Kenny?”
He nods in resignation. “Teri Pollard. Bobby’s wife.”
I already knew the answer to that question, and I can make a good guess at the answer to the next one. “Why were you arguing?”
Kenny looks at Tanya, gets no help, and turns back to me. “Troy was fooling around with her.”
“Why did you care?”
“Bobby was my friend. They had a good marriage… they had a son… I didn’t want him breaking them up.”
“There’s more to it than that,” I say.
“No,” Kenny says, “that’s it.”
I turn to Tanya. “Can you tell me?”
She nods. “Yes, I’ll tell you. Jason Pollard is Kenny’s son.”
Kenny whirls in surprise. “How did you know that?”
“Because I know you. Because I live with you. Because I understand you. You think I could watch you for all these years and not know what was going on? How stupid do you think I am?”
With no need to keep the secret from Tanya anymore, the story
pours out. Kenny had a brief affair with Teri back when they were graduating high school; he thinks it was not long after the all-American weekend, but he can’t be sure. Teri was planning to marry Bobby at the time and went ahead with it.
“When did she tell you that you were the father?” I ask.
“Maybe six months after Bobby’s accident. I had just met Tanya. I’ve helped support Jason ever since.” He looks at Tanya. “Teri insisted that I keep it a secret, or she would cut me off from Jason. I didn’t want that to happen. I’m so sorry.”
“Did Teri want to leave Bobby for you?”
He nods. “Yeah, at first. But that was years ago. Why do you need to know all this?”
“Unless I’m very wrong, Teri Pollard killed Troy Preston. She killed her husband. She killed all of them.”
SHE ASKED ME TO come over tomorrow night.” It’s the first sentence Kenny can manage to say after he processes what I’ve just told him.
“Why?” I ask.
“She said she was going through Bobby’s stuff, and she needed some help, and that there might be some things I’d want to keep for myself. I told her I’d be there at eight.”
“You’re not going,” Tanya says.
Kenny looks to me for guidance. “Don’t say anything to Teri right now,” I say. “Let me think about this for a while. We have until tomorrow night.”
I promise to get back to them later today. I leave to be on time for my twelve-fifteen session with Carlotta, which has just changed in content and increased in importance.
Carlotta’s door opens at exactly twelve-fifteen, not one minute sooner or later. This would be true if we were sitting just below an erupting volcano, with hot lava raining down on us, or if we were in Baghdad dodging cruise missiles. I suspect that punctuality is a trait common to all shrinks, but it is nonetheless amazing.
Once I’m seated in the chair opposite her, Carlotta asks, “So, Andy, why are you here?”
“Laurie left and I’m in such pain that sometimes I think I can’t breathe,” I say. “But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”
She laughs. “Of course not. Why would it be?”
She’s familiar with the case, having testified, but I proceed to tell her everything that I have just learned about Teri Pollard and Kenny Schilling, stopping frequently to answer her questions. Finally, I say, “I know it’s hard for you to judge people from a distance, but if you can enlighten me at all, I’d appreciate it.”
“Well,” she says, “assuming Teri is the murderer, we can also assume two other things. One is that she is terribly unstable, in layman’s terms a wacko. Such people only flirt with rationality, and it’s not always helpful to try and predict their actions using logic. Two is that she took the pact that those young men made that weekend very seriously, maybe even more seriously than her husband did. When he had his accident, she thought she could rely on that pact, that the others would support her husband, and by extension her, in the manner in which they had promised. When they didn’t, she exacted her revenge. She was possibly taking out on them her anger at her husband for failing her.”
“But why commit the other killings in secret and Preston’s so publicly? And why frame Kenny? Why not kill him also?”
“I think she would have felt that Kenny deserved a special kind of demise, of torture, compared to the others. He loved her, at least in a physical sense, and then abandoned her and her child. Plus, he succeeded dramatically in the NFL, which in her eyes made him the most guilty of nonsupport.”
“But he provided support,” I say. “He made sure her husband was employed, and gave her money to raise the child.”
Carlotta shakes her head. “Not enough. In her eyes not nearly enough. She wanted to be married to a star, and instead in her eyes she thought she was living with a cripple.”
“Why now? Why would she wait and then choose to go after Kenny now?”
She shrugs. “That’s beyond my range of knowledge. Did anything significant happen in Kenny’s football career recently? Any special achievement?”
There it is; I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it. “He just signed a fourteen-million-dollar, three-year deal, plus incentives.”
She smiles. “That might be rather significant, don’t you think?”
I nod. “What is she likely to do next?”
“It’s hard to say. She could continue to try to exact her revenge on Kenny, and that desire could be increased by her husband’s death, even if she is the one that killed him. Or she could try to win him over, in the misguided notion that her husband stood between them. She might think that Kenny will now love her and they can ride off into the sunset together. One thing you can be sure of, though: She will do something. This doesn’t end here.”
On that ominous note I head down to the police station to meet with Pete Stanton. He is a very good friend of Laurie’s, and I have to resist a strong temptation to ask if he’s heard from her. Instead, I repeat the saga of Teri Pollard.
Since he’s a good cop, his first reaction is skepticism that someone like Teri Pollard could have pulled off all these killings.
“Think about it,” I say. “Most of them were heart attacks, and I’ll bet she used potassium, or something just like it. As a nurse she would have had even greater access to it than Bobby. As for the other deaths, Kenny told me she grew up in Kentucky and as a girl went hunting with her father, so she could handle a rifle. And a hit-and-run, anybody could do that.”
“Have you established that she was present in the cities where the deaths took place?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Not yet. But Bobby said she went on all the road trips with him. That’s why she couldn’t hold down a full-time nursing job. She had the same access he did.”
He’s looking doubtful, so I add, “And there was evidence that a woman called a taxi from the convenience store near where Kenny’s car was found. No one made the connection until now.”
“What about her husband’s suicide?” Pete asks. “He fired the weapon that killed him; there was gun residue all over his hands.”
“I’d be willing to bet she had given him a drug to knock him out… probably potassium as well. She held the gun to his head with his own hand.”
He still doesn’t fully believe me but is cautious enough to be alarmed by Kenny’s plan to visit her tomorrow night. He also knows that if I’m right, then Kenny’s canceling the visit is not going to solve the problem. She’d keep coming after him.
We come up with a plan, but one that requires Kenny’s participation. Pete comes with me to Kenny’s house to present it, and Tanya joins us as we do so. Basically, we want Kenny to go to Teri’s wearing a wire, and with a contingent of police secretly stationed right outside the house. If she makes a threatening or incriminating move, they will rush in and arrest her.
It’s obviously dangerous, and Tanya predictably is against it. “If you’re so sure she’s the one, why don’t you just arrest her now?” she asks.
“Because there’s not enough evidence to make it stick,” I say, and Pete voices his agreement. I go on, “Tanya, if we’re right, she’s going to keep coming after Kenny. We can either wait for her to do it on her terms or get her to do it on ours, when we’re ready.”
Kenny, who has been silent, considering this is his life we’ve been talking about, nods. “Let’s do it. I want this over with.”
PETE ALLOWS ME TO sit in the police communications van, situated just around the corner from Teri’s house. Small cameras and microphones have been surreptitiously placed to monitor everything that goes on inside, and it’s all in front of us on screens.
In the van are two technicians, plus Pete and I. The armed units are stationed near the house, out of sight from the street because, although it’s seven-forty-five, Teri isn’t home yet. Kenny is due in fifteen minutes, and we’ve told him to be right on time.
I’m vaguely uncomfortable with Teri’s late arrival. If we’re right, and she’s going to make an attempt
on Kenny’s life, it’s the type of thing you’d think she’d want to prepare for. You wouldn’t expect her to be somewhere looking at her watch and thinking to herself, “Gee, I’m running late. I’m supposed to be killing Kenny Schilling in fifteen minutes.”
“She might have made us somehow,” Pete says. “She may know we’re here. Or maybe something happened with her kid.”
“She told Kenny that the son was at his grandmother’s and wasn’t coming back until next week.” I don’t mention that the boy is Kenny’s biological son; it’s not something that Pete needs to know.
At eight o’clock sharp, Kenny arrives. He rings the bell and gets no answer, then seems confused as to what to do. He looks around at the street, possibly hoping that we’ll show up and tell him what the hell is going on, but of course we can’t do so, since Teri might arrive at any time. Kenny does the proper thing: He sits on the porch and waits.
Another five minutes go by, and still no Teri. Kenny just sits there on the porch, completely and rightfully confused. Pete says, “Poor guy is getting stood up by the person supposed to kill him. You can’t get much lower than that.”
One of the technicians laughs and says, “Maybe she changed her mind and wants to date him. My dates stand me up all the time.”
I don’t share in the laughter, because what he has just said triggers a recollection of Carlotta saying that Teri might no longer want to kill Kenny, that with Bobby out of the way, she might want to win Kenny back. And that recollection sends a cold chill down my spine.
“Come on!” I yell. I open the door and jump out of the van. Pete is behind me, asking what the hell is going on. I rush to his car and say, “Hurry up! I’ll tell you on the way!”
I tell him how to get to Kenny’s house and that he should get backup to follow us. Once he’s done so, I say, “Teri invited Kenny over to get him out of the house. Tanya’s the target.”
Sudden Death Page 23