I called HRT Forensic, and sure enough, was immediately told that any ongoing investigations were none of my business, that their activities were not a matter of public record, and that my voice sounded sexy. But I told the guy I wasn’t interested.
Barry Dutton called just before the kids normally get home from school. “I’ve done some asking around about your Preston Burke,” he said.
“He’s not my Preston Burke,” I told him. “As far as I know, I don’t have a Preston Burke.”
“Nevertheless. The State Police, the local police, no matter who you talk to, this was the one time the idiot actually got involved in anything violent. There’s no question he shot his girlfriend, but he hasn’t hurt anybody, neither before nor since.” This may be the spot to observe that few police chiefs in New Jersey, if not the nation, would have added that “n” before the “or.” Barry Dutton: criminologist, administrator, linguist.
“Does that mean I shouldn’t be worried about the rock through my front window?” I asked.
“No, it means that you can breathe a little easier, knowing this guy isn’t a repeat offender with deadly weapons. He’s out on bail, conducting his daily life.”
“Anybody know where he was at 1:30 this morning?”
“He says he was home asleep. Strangely, since the whole shooting thing, he’s had problems finding somebody to sleep with him, so he can’t give us an alibi.” Barry grunted a little, letting me know he wasn’t happy with the way this was playing out, either.
“Where does he live?” I asked.
“Teaneck,” said Barry. “Hell of a long way to come and throw a rock through somebody’s window.”
“No wonder he got here so late. Barry, explain to me why I don’t want to go talk to Preston Burke.”
“Because it might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever suggested to me, and you know that’s saying something,” he said immediately. “If it was Burke who threw the rock, and he is threatening Abby, you don’t want to get him mad. If it wasn’t Burke. . .”
“I don’t want to give him any ideas,” I finished his sentence for him.
“Exactly.”
“Suppose I was cagey, and didn’t tell him who I was or why I was there.” He could probably hear the wheels spinning in my head through the phone.
“Suppose I were from Krypton and could see through Halle Berry’s underwear,” said Barry.
“I might tell your wife on you,” I warned.
“Aaron, there aren’t words for how wrong it would be to go see Preston Burke,” Barry said.
“I guess.”
His voice became more intense. “Tell me you’re not going to see Preston Burke, Aaron.”
“Barry. . .”
“Tell me,” he said.
“I’ve got to go help Leah with her math, Barry.”
“Aaron!”
I hung up, but I felt really bad about it immediately after. So bad, I actually went and helped Leah with her math.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Stephanie Jacobs phoned me well after dinner that night, and I had to avoid the rueful gaze of my wife as I sat and took the call at my desk. Abigail Stein is not to be trifled with. And even though I wasn’t trifling with her, she was looking at me as if I were.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner,” Steph said. “I’ve been all over the place. First, there was Louis’ mother, and then. . .”
“Listen,” I said more urgently than necessary. “I talked to the D.C. cops. They’re planning on making an arrest in Legs’ murder, soon.”
“I know,” she said. “They’re going to arrest me.”
Leah and Ethan were engaging in the traditional “whose-side-of-the-couch-this-is” argument, and I stared at them for a long moment, digesting what Stephanie had just said.
“You know they’re going to arrest you?” I said.
“Yes. You know, I hear things, too.” She sounded a bit miffed that I assumed I was the only one monitoring her arrest status.
“You sound awfully calm about it,” I said. She was taking a good deal of the fun out of it for me, and I must have sounded disappointed.
“I suppose I could panic,” she said, “but I don’t see how that would help. Besides, my attorney is already taking their case apart, and he says he might be able to stop this before it happens.”
“That would be a first.”
“Aaron, I’ve set up a time you can talk to Louis’ mother, but his brother Lester wants to be there,” Stephanie said, her change in tone not nearly as smooth as Abigail’s. “Is that okay with you? Louise really hasn’t been too strong since Louis. . .”
“I have no problem with it,” I told her. “I wanted to talk to Lester, anyway.”
“I don’t know if he’ll talk to you,” she said quickly. “He said he just wanted to be there for the interview with his mother.”
I rolled my eyes, since she couldn’t see me, anyway. Leah got up from the couch, threw a pillow at Ethan, and ran up the stairs.
“Well,” I told Steph, “we’ll play it by ear. When and where should I show up?”
She told me, and I wrote it down. I was about to ask how an attorney—any attorney—could stop an arrest before it happens when a bloodcurdling scream came from the upstairs of my house. A small, female bloodcurdling scream—from Leah.
I told Steph I had to go and hung up, and within one frame of film was on my feet, running for the stairs. Abby, running from the kitchen, was just behind me. We exchanged a glance that said: Preston Burke? But that thought was too awful.
I was first up the stairs, and first into Leah’s room. The usual tangle of clothes, toys, hangers, books, and CDs was scattered about the floor, and in the center of it was my daughter, crying, holding out the index finger on her left hand.
“It was E-LIZ-abeth!” she wailed. “She bit me!”
There was such outrage, such a sense of betrayal, in that little voice that I scooped her up into my arms and was halfway to the bathroom before something struck me. I stopped in mid-hallway, and looked at my sobbing daughter.
“Leah,” I said, “where is the lizard?” The fact that it wasn’t in its tank had just registered on my brain.
“I don’t know,” cried Leah. “I took her out to play with me, and she bit me. I dropped her.”
I handed Leah off to Abby, and as parents, we exchanged another glance which said, “ugh, a lizard running loose in our daughter’s bedroom.”
While Abigail got Leah into the bathroom and began seeing to her finger, which was not bleeding, I got down on all fours and began searching for the Mini-Me version of It, The Terror From Beyond Space.
I can now definitively report that there is no more rewarding an experience than crawling around on sharp plastic toys and beads in search of a bloodthirsty pet that looks like it just left the auditions for a GEICO commercial.
It took a good fifteen minutes (and that “good” is a subjective term if ever I’ve used one), during which Leah, her finger washed, dried and bandaged, refused to walk into her own room because she was afraid of her beloved pet, now on the loose. I managed to cut my left palm on the edge of. . . some toy or another, then crunch a CD jewel box with my knee, bang my head on her bed frame, and get nipped by E-LIZ-abeth when I finally found her/him/it hiding in a doll house, lounging on the four-poster bed Barbie used to sleep in before Leah decided Barbie was “stupid.”
After a good deal of crying and whimpering, some of it from my daughter, Leah was put to bed. I washed my various wounds and hobbled down the stairs. Ethan, on the sofa in the living room, hadn’t moved a muscle through the whole adventure. After all, The Bernie Mac Show was on. Ethan thinks he’s a riot.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
The next morning, I got out my Bergen County phone book and plucked out Preston Burke’s address—(I get most of the books for New Jersey from Verizon every year—they help enormously with Star-Ledger work). Then I hit MapQuest.com for driving directions,
put on an actual suit and tie, and got into the 1997 Saturn we use when we want to impress people.
Before leaving, I used my “call forwarding” option to bounce any incoming calls to my cell phone. You never know when the school will call about Ethan, or an actual paying gig will turn up— in the freelance biz, it’s always better to be near a ringing phone.
Halfway up the Garden State Parkway, the phone rang, and Barry Dutton was on the other end. “You hung up on me yesterday,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. I had to go help Leah with her math.”
“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Aaron. Leah’s in third grade. Her math homework is way too hard for you.” Barry, alas, knew me too well.
“I didn’t want to listen to your lecture then, Barry. It’s my wife we’re talking about.”
Barry’s voice hardened. “Yeah, and if you’re really concerned about her safety, you’ll listen to the professional here.” There was a quick pause, while I tried to come up with an argument against his logic. “Aaron, are you in the car? Did you bounce your calls? Aaron, you’re on your way to Teaneck, aren’t you?”
“Sorry, Barry, I have to help Leah with her math.” I hung up. The phone rang a couple of times not long after, but I checked the incoming number, and chose not to answer.
Teaneck, New Jersey, is a lovely town in the Northern county of Bergen, where the people with actual money actually live. It is the part of New Jersey where Tony Soprano lives, but not where he works, if you catch my drift. Actually, Tony is more likely residing in Upper Saddle River or Livingston.
Teaneck, which is in the same general vicinity, has both an affluent section and a not-as-affluent-but-hardly-poor section, which is where Preston Burke lived. The clapboard two-family house that matched his address was not at all descript, and didn’t look like the kind of place where a wildly violent maniac might reside. Of course, Jeffrey Dahmer probably had very nice mini-blinds in his windows, too.
I rang the bell marked “Burke,” and waited. A thin, unshaven, balding man opened the door a few moments later.
“Yeah?” A Jersey voice. Slightly suspicious, but not aggressively so.
“Preston Burke?” I tried to sound official, but concerned.
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m Aaron Tucker,” I said, flashing my Central Jersey YM/YWHA membership card, a finger over the organization’s name. “I’m here representing the New Jersey Bar Association.”
“Why?” Still not challenging, but not totally accepting, either.
“May I come in?”
He thought about it, but couldn’t come up with a reason I shouldn’t. “Okay,” he said, and moved aside. We walked up the stairs to his apartment, him first.
The place was simple, but it wasn’t cheap. There were good rugs on the floors, the furniture was Ikea, maybe, but not Unclaimed Freight. I did not look into the refrigerator to see if there were any body parts, but if there were, they had probably been cleaned up nicely. Things were in their place, which made it look different than my house.
We sat on an overstuffed sofa, and Burke continued to look warily at me. I took out a reporter’s notebook and a pen. “I’m here to discuss your recent change of counsel,” I said. “We like to investigate some random incidents, so we can determine if there has been any problem with the original attorney assigned or engaged for the case.”
Burke wasn’t stupid, but he also wasn’t used to people talking to him that way. Frankly, I wasn’t used to it, either, and I was-n’t sure I’d said everything the way I wanted to. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t matter.
“You want to talk about my lawyer?” he said. Good. He had accepted and deciphered my babble.
“That’s right,” I said with my most imperious voice. “You had originally engaged a. . .” I reached into my inside jacket pocket and took out a Buzbee School announcement about an upcoming round of parent/teacher conferences. I did my best to scan the “official document,” and continued. “Ms. Abigail Stein, of the firm Nolan, Delford, and Lincoln, to defend you in the aggravated assault charge. Is that correct?”
“That’s right.” Burke was clearly not comfortable with the words “aggravated assault.”
“But you dismissed Ms. Stein after the verdict and have obtained new counsel for the appeal?”
“Right again.”
“May I ask why?”
“Well, she lost, didn’t she?” Burke was stating the obvious to a complete idiot.
“A lot of good attorneys lose cases, Mr. Burke. In fact, all attorneys lose cases. Perry Mason was a fictional character. Was there something about Ms. Stein’s defense that you felt was incompetent, or showed anything but an honest effort on her part to defend you adequately?”
“She lost,” he repeated most vehemently. “I didn’t do it, and she lost the case. Why should I keep her as my lawyer? So she can lose again?”
“So this was not a personality issue, or some problem you had with Ms. Stein’s professional demeanor. You would have replaced any attorney who lost that trial.” I wanted to hear him agree to that.
“No,” Burke said. “There were other reasons I got a new lawyer.”
I pretended to perk up, writing incomprehensible notes in my notebook. “What would those be, Mr. Burke?”
The cell phone in my pocket rang. Burke, expecting me to answer it, waited. I looked at the incoming number. Abby’s office. If I answered, it could be bad. On the other hand, Burke was waiting. I’d be quick.
“Aaron Tucker.”
“Aaron Tucker? Since when do you answer the phone ‘Aaron Tucker?’” asked my wife.
“I’m right in the middle of something right now. . .”
“I just got a call from Barry Dutton,” Abby went on. “He says you were talking about going to see Preston Burke.”
Burke’s eyes flashed at the mention of his name. He must have heard it clearly enough.
“I’ll call you back later,” I tried.
“Oh my god, you’re there, aren’t you? Oh, Aaron, I could just. . .”
“Good talking to you,” I said, and hung up.
Burke looked at me. “Who are you?” he said.
“I told you, Mr. Burke, I’m Aaron Tucker of the. . .”
“Oh yeah? Let me see your business card again, Mr. Tucker.”
Oops. I hadn’t printed any up before I left the house. Funny how you forget those little details when you’re trying to misrepresent yourself. I made a show of reaching around in my jacket pockets.
“I seem to have run out,” I said. “I’ll make sure to send you one when I get back to my office.”
Burke stood, and suddenly he didn’t seem so skinny and unassuming anymore. “Who are you?” he said again, advancing on me. I stood up.
“Mr. Burke, I can see you’re getting agitated, and I think perhaps it’s time to conclude this interview.” I started backing toward the stairs.
“Yeah, you go ahead,” said Burke. “I’ll watch you leave. And with my binoculars, I’ll be able to see your license plate nice and clear. And once I find out who you really are, Mr. Tucker, I’m sure our paths will cross again.” The very words he’d used in Abby’s letter.
I backed down the stairs, cursing myself for parking within sight of Burke’s front window. And once outside, I ripped off the tie (how do other men make it through the day in those things?) and jumped into my car, driving away as fast as I could.
Damn. This kind of thing used to work all the time for Humphrey Bogart. I guess he had better writers working for him.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
On the long drive home, I took stock. I turned off the tape I had in the cassette deck (Invisible Band by Travis), so I could think more clearly.
First, talking to Preston Burke had been a huge mistake. I couldn’t understand why Barry Dutton had been so in favor of the move. It had just gotten Burke mad at me, Dutton mad at me, and worst of all, Abby really mad at me. So I was driving away from a man who h
ad probably thrown a rock at my window, and toward a wife and a police chief who might very well throw rocks at my head.
Meanwhile, back in the detective business, the “Case of the Mysterious Stink Bomber(s)” was far from solved. Here, a problem that would have taken Encyclopedia Brown maybe a page and a half to solve, and I was no closer to a solution than I had been a week and a half before. I didn’t so much as have a plan of action.
And then there was the investigative reporter business, where I was seriously stumped in my examination of the Crazy Legs Gibson murder. The cops were probably staking out Stephanie’s house, other reporters were down in D.C. interviewing actual witnesses and players in the case, and I was in New Jersey, having spoken to a grand total of one person who had been involved at all. Luckily, she was the one who everybody else wanted to talk to, and who wouldn’t talk to anyone but me. That, and that alone, was the edge I held in this story. And so far, it had gotten me almost as far as I had gotten in the stink bomb case.
This wasn’t turning out to be my October.
My cell phone hadn’t rung since Burke’s house. This was not a good sign, as it indicated that my wife didn’t actually care whether I was in the clutches of a possible serial killer.
I had to concentrate on just one problem at a time, and since $10,000 was riding on only one, I chose Crazy Legs. If there were DNA evidence, it would have to place Stephanie at the scene of the crime to get the cops moving on her so quickly. If it wasn’t DNA, but a witness who was actually there, it would be weird. The only people who could be in a place like that would be the killer, the victim, who in all likelihood wasn’t talking, and the girlfriend, who had already been interviewed and insisted she’d been in the shower and hadn’t heard anything. Maybe she’d recanted her previous testimony. (You freely use words like “recanted” when your nightly bedmate is a lawyer. And when you have impersonated one unsuccessfully in the recent past.)
Could there have been someone else there? Stephanie had definitely been in New Jersey a couple of hours after the killing— I could personally attest to that. If she’d been in D.C. in time for the murder and New Jersey in time for the reunion, she’d have had to fly. But she’d had her car—the D.C. plates were evident on the BMW she was driving at my house that night. For that matter, on my block, the BMW was pretty evident all by itself. And a BMW is not the kind of thing you can place in the overhead bin as a carry-on item.
A Farewell to Legs Page 10