One Dog Night

by David Rosenfelt

  But while walking along the land would tell you very little, walking under it would be a revelation. Because down there was a series of underground mines and tunnels, built over the last six years. It was done without the knowledge of Milgram or any government entity, by people who literally came in under the cover of darkness.

  As desolate as the land was, detection was always a danger. Milgram employed security, which patrolled the area on a random basis. As land leased by the government, federal agencies also had eyes occasionally open and watching. And the mining efforts themselves caused rumblings within the ground, detectable by instruments.

  So the work was done in total secrecy, a little at a time, which was one of a number of reasons it was so time-consuming. Another was the danger inherent in the operation. Mining always came with its perils, but what these men were preparing to take out of the ground increased that danger many times over. To make it even more difficult, it was the deepest mine any of them had ever worked in.

  But now the work was nearing a conclusion, and the men could only bide their time and wait for the signal.

  The signal that would change the world forever.

  If I’m ever in a foxhole, I want Becky Galloway in there with me.

  Under the tremendous pressure and stress of the experience, she still acted intelligently and courageously. In a similar circumstance, I would have pissed in my pants and started calling for my mommy.

  Her first concern was for Noah, and she didn’t want to do anything that could impact negatively on his situation. So after calling the school and arranging for Adam to go to a neighbor’s house, she called me. In a shaky, but remarkably calm voice, she told me what happened.

  “Where is the package now?” I ask.

  “Still on the seat of my car, in the grocery store parking lot. I put the lid back over it so no one can see in.”

  “Can you drive the car?” I’m not asking it literally, I mean is she emotionally able to get back in the car.

  “It’s not my first choice, but I can do it.”

  “Okay, then…” I start, then change my mind in mid-sentence. I am concerned that the guy who threatened her might come back. “Go in the store, but keep an eye on your car. Somebody is going to come there; he’s going to be the scariest person you’ve ever seen, but he’s on our side.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Marcus. You get in the backseat, and he’ll drive the car.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” she says. Then, “Andy, I’m scared.”

  “I know, but it’s going to get better.”

  I hang up and update Laurie on the conversation. She immediately calls Marcus and gives him his instructions. He’s to bring Becky and the car to my house, where he will park it in the garage. Then we can figure out what to do.

  Legally, our options are one and done. We are obligated to report what has happened, not so much because of the threat, but because of the severed head. We have knowledge of a crime, and even though that crime has long ago been reported in Vegas, it does not lessen our obligation.

  Of course, I am not above disregarding legalities; it’s part of my charm. My first concern is for my client, and a disclosure of this incident will not go well for him. Dylan is already planning to imply that Noah’s friends disposed of Danny in a revenge killing; Noah’s wife being in the possession of the missing head can only make the implication much stronger.

  Then, of course, there is the matter of the threat to Becky and her child, and we will have to protect her. There is also the question of what we tell Noah, and how he will react. Knowing him as I do, he could decide to protect his family by pleading guilty, since that was his instinct in the first place.

  Marcus pulls the car into the garage, and as I watch, he opens the back door for Becky to get out. Marcus with manners; the world must be spinning in the wrong direction.

  He takes the box off the front seat, and he, Becky, and Danny’s head come into the house. Laurie gives Becky a warm, comforting hug, and holds her as she breaks down crying. She kept her composure a lot longer than I would have.

  Marcus puts the box with the decapitated head in it on the table. I take a quick look at it and instantly regret doing so. It is one ugly head.

  Laurie examines it in a longer, more professional manner, and somehow deduces that Danny was strangled, and that his head was cut off after he was already dead. The fact that I sleep every night with a severed-head expert is a tad disconcerting.

  “I’m sorry,” Becky says when she’s composed herself. “It was very frightening.”

  “Did you get a look at the man?” Laurie asks.

  She shakes her head. “No. He was careful about that. But I think I would recognize his voice if I heard it again.”

  Under my prodding, she recounts everything she can remember about the incident. There is nothing in there that gives us a clue to his identity, and her mentioning that he was wearing gloves removes the chance of our getting fingerprints out of the car.

  “Okay, first things first,” I say. “We need to protect you and your son.”

  She nods. “I’ve thought about it. Adam and I can stay at my parents’ house in Ohio. My father will come get us.”

  Laurie nods approvingly. “Good. Until he gets here Marcus can watch you.”

  “We need to tell Noah; he has a right to know about this.”

  Becky nods. “I’ll do that, but it’s not going to be fun.”

  “His reaction will be to consider changing his plea,” I say.

  “Maybe at first, but believe it or not, Noah is a fighter. He won’t want these people to win. And the fact that they’re out there will increase his belief in his own innocence. But there’s one other problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Our dog. My father is allergic to her.”

  It’s funny, but even though a dog was the reason I’m defending Noah in the first place, I never thought to ask if he has one now. I’m about to say that their dog can board at the Tara Foundation, when Laurie says, “She can stay here. What’s her name?”

  “Bailey.”

  “Is she a golden?” I ask.

  “No. Thank you, Noah wouldn’t have been able to stand it knowing she was in a dog run or a cage. He’ll be happy she’s here, with you and Tara, and so will I.”

  I tell her to bring the dog over any time, and then I look over at the box. “Okay, we all understand that any talk about this head cannot leave this room. But the head itself is definitely going to leave this room. Any thoughts about what we should do with it?”

  “It’s well preserved in the plastic,” Laurie says. “I don’t think we should bury or destroy it, in case we change our minds later and decide to report it to the authorities.”

  “And then there’s the matter of the money,” I say. “It looks like a few thousand dollars, but I don’t want to be the one to count it.”

  “Let’s save it for a party when we win,” Becky says.

  Marcus, who hasn’t said a word this entire time, picks up the box, and puts it under his arm.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I say.

  Becky was not quite as persuasive with Noah as she had predicted.

  She reported that he freaked out, so much so that the guard came in from outside the door to settle things down. Noah finally regained control; sometimes being chained to the table can do that for you. But he wouldn’t agree to anything until he talked to me.

  “Who is this guy?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But I know what he wants; he wants to stop the trial.”

  “Why would it be so important for him for me to be convicted?”

  “My guess, and it’s just a guess, is that you’re not the point here. It’s the trial he cares about. He’s afraid of what might come out; he doesn’t want a spotlight put on this crime. Not after all these years.”

  “Then why send Danny Butler in the first place?”

  “I don’t know that either. But when we find t
hat out we’ll know the key to everything.”

  “And how are we going to protect Becky and Adam? I mean protect them beyond any doubt.”

  I explain the arrangements we are making, which Becky has already told him about. Marcus will watch her for the two days it will take for her father to get here, and they will bring the dog to live with us. As a recently retired police officer, Becky’s father will have the friends and resources to protect her at his house in Ohio.

  “Becky seemed to have confidence in this guy Marcus,” he says.

  “Marcus could beat up North Korea.”

  “Andy, you have no idea what it’s like being in here, and having Becky and Adam in danger. It is the most frightening experience of my life.”

  “Noah, they will be safe, I promise you that.”

  “I can insure that by pleading guilty.”

  “Which would also insure Becky not having a husband and Adam not having a father, all because of a crime you didn’t commit.”

  “You still believe that?”

  “I’m positive of it. But we have to focus on proving it.”

  “Okay. On one condition. You move the trial date up; I want it to start as soon as possible.”

  “It’s already too early,” I say. “It’s not in your best interest.”

  “When the trial starts it takes away the incentive to threaten Becky; it would be too late.”

  “Noah…”

  “Who’d stop you from moving it earlier? The prosecutor?”

  “Are you kidding? Dylan would be happy to start in twenty minutes. It’s the defense that benefits from delay. You, in case you were wondering, are the defense.”

  “What about the judge?” he asks.

  I shrug. “His calendar is clear enough. He’d be willing to adjust the start date.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I checked; I knew you’d head in this direction.”

  He nods; his decision final. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  “Noah, it can significantly impact your chances. We haven’t nearly developed our case enough yet.”

  “I understand that, Andy, really I do. But I’m more worried about Becky and Adam. My eyes are wide open on this.”

  “I hear you,” I say. “And I’ll take care of it. But I’ve got a demand of my own, equally nonnegotiable.”

  “I’m not going to like this.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I say. “But I’m going to take the steps necessary to get you put in solitary confinement.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a sure way to stop a trial is to make it so that the defendant is no longer alive. That is something we need to avoid. For one thing, it would leave me alone at the defense table with Hike.”

  Noah laughs. “He can be a bit of a downer, huh?”

  “He makes other downers look like uppers.”

  “Okay, solitary can’t be any worse than this. But Andy, there’s something I don’t understand. Someone gets Danny Butler to come forward to accuse me, resulting in my arrest and trial. Then those same people kill Butler, and seem willing to do anything to prevent that trial. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Noah, I’m not the hardest worker in the world, and if I never had another case I’d be fine with it. But if there’s one thing I like about my job, one thing I like about the system, it’s that at its core it always makes sense. It’s just up to us to find the sense in it. The answer is there; we just have to locate it.”

  “Are you always able to?”

  “No. That’s one of the parts I don’t like.”

  “This guy spent a lot of time on the phone,” Sam said.

  He’s talking about the owner of the New York cell phone that Camby called a number of times in the month before he took the bullet in the hotel room. The one registered in the name of Trevor Berbick.

  “How many calls did he make?”

  “A hundred and seventy-eight in the past month. To thirty-eight different numbers. And he called all over the country, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco … eleven calls to Washington, D.C., and fourteen to Vegas. He made four calls to Camby’s phone as well, including an hour before Camby died. And get this; he called Danny Butler three times.”

  “But we still can’t identify him?”

  “No chance; not from his phone records.”

  “What about Camby’s motel room phone?”

  “No calls went out; there’s no way to know if any came in.”

  It’s a sign of how grim our situation is that this is our most promising lead. Someone who followed me, and who was subsequently murdered, called a cell phone. We now have the records of numbers called by that second cell phone.

  Big deal.

  “I’m trying to attach names to the numbers that he called,” Sam says. “It may take a day or so.”

  “Thanks, Sam. You’re doing a great job.”

  He leaves, and I tell Laurie that I want to go with her today. She’s been interviewing family and friends of the victims that Sam has been able to find. It’s obviously unpleasant, and has so far yielded no significant information. I basically want to sit in on today’s sessions because I have nothing else to do.

  Our first stop is a small garden apartment on Garfield Avenue in Elmwood Park. It starts to snow as we pull up, not a blizzard but enough that it will stick if it continues like this. I love it when it snows, an emotional remnant of childhood days when snow meant the possibility of school being canceled.

  When we get out of the car, I hear a voice calling out, “Ms. Collins! Ms. Collins!”

  The door to one of the garden apartments is open, and an elderly woman is standing there, frantically motioning us in. We head for the door, and I realize that she had opened the door and come out because of the weather, not wanting us to stay out in the elements a moment more than necessary.

  When we get there, she ushers us in, muttering about how terrible the weather is. Before we even have a chance to introduce ourselves, we have cups of hot tea in our hands. I don’t even like tea, but I drink it gratefully.

  Laurie finally introduces me to Mrs. Martha Leavitt, who is probably pushing eighty. She lost her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson in the fire. I’m not sure how anyone gets through that, but she seems vibrant and alert, and has a warmth about her that makes her immediately likable.

  “I’m sorry to have to talk to you about this,” I say. “I’m sure you’d rather think about anything else.”

  She smiles sadly. “I think about it all day, every day, Mr. Carpenter. I even talk about it to myself, out loud. The only difference now is you’re here to listen to me.”

  She goes on to talk about the family members that she lost, showing us pictures and telling stories that are painful to listen to, and absolutely of no use to our case. The truth is that she knows nothing at all about the fire that wasn’t in the papers.

  Laurie says, “Mrs. Leavitt, one of the things we are trying to do is understand why that house was chosen by the arsonist. We believe that someone in that house was the target, but we don’t know who that might be.”

  She seems surprised by this. “Oh my, I never thought about it in those terms.” She is silent for a few moments. “I guess it didn’t really matter; they were gone, and they weren’t coming back, no matter the reason.”

  “Do you know of anyone who might have had a reason to hurt your family? Did any of them have any enemies?”

  “Oh, no, that’s just not possible. Not possible at all.”

  We ask her a bunch of questions to gently probe the matter, but there is no way she could ever entertain the thought that the people that she loved could have been the targets of such evil.

  Our next stop is Morlot Avenue in Fair Lawn, where Jesse Briggs has agreed to meet us at a coffee shop. Laurie says that when she told him on the phone who we were representing, he was reluctant to meet at all. He finally consented to the coffee shop, and Laurie felt it was because he didn’t want people who were on Noah Galloway’s sid
e in his house.

  Briggs is in his early fifties, but looks older because his hair is completely white. He makes an effort to be polite to us, but it’s clear that he resents the intrusion.

  “All this time nobody talks to me about this, and now twice this month. Where’s everyone been for the last six years?”

  “Who else spoke to you?” I ask.

  “A policeman.”

  I’m surprised and annoyed to hear this. I’ve read the discovery documents cover to cover a few times, and there was no mention of Mr. Briggs being interviewed recently, or at all, for that matter. I make a mental note to torture Dylan for holding out on me.

  Briggs lost his daughter, Natasha, and his infant grandson. He is clearly still embittered about it, as I would certainly be. If something like that happened to me, I would try and burn down Earth.

  “What about your daughter’s husband?” I ask. “He wasn’t there?”

  “She didn’t have a husband.”

  “Was the baby’s father there?”

  “Natasha never told me who the father was. But you can be sure he wasn’t there. If I knew who he was I’d have killed him myself.”

  A few tears start to slip down his face, and he grabs a napkin from the dispenser on the table, quickly wiping them away.

  “But it wasn’t the father’s fault that they died,” he says, softly. “It was mine. I’m the one who told her to move back here. I’m the one who said I would take care of her and my grandson.”

  “It wasn’t your fault either, Mr. Briggs. It was the fault of the piece of garbage who set the fire.”

  “The man you’re trying to let walk free,” he says.

  “I don’t believe that to be the case, sir. I truly don’t.”

  He looks at me for a few moments, then, “I’ve got cancer, Mr. Carpenter. It’s spread to places I didn’t even know I had. The doctors said I had about six months, and they said that eight months ago. The only thing I’ve wanted for the last six years was for them to catch and put away the man that did this. So I hope you’re wrong.”

  Laurie and I tell him that we understand, that we wish him well, and that we appreciate his talking to us. Then we pay the check, and leave.