Dead Center ac-5

by David Rosenfelt

  The preliminary hearing is set for ten days from now, and this session is adjourned. The courtroom quickly empties out, Laurie included. Calvin, Jeremy, and I move to an anteroom, with a guard planted outside the door in case the handcuffed Jeremy attempts an escape.

  Jeremy looks shaken but comes right to the point. “My father says you’re the best.”

  “He’s only repeating what he’s been told.”

  “So you’re not the best?”

  “Jeremy, I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here to talk about you.”

  He sits back. “Okay… I’m sorry. What do you want to know?”

  “When did you see Elizabeth and Sheryl last?”

  He takes a deep breath. “I saw Liz the night she died. We met at the Crows Nest… it’s a bar out on Highway 57.”

  “So it was a date?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “No, she had already broken up with me. I got her to come out there just to… to ask her to come back.”

  “But she said no?”

  He nods. “She said no. She was only there maybe ten minutes. And I think her ex-boyfriend was waiting for her in the car.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I saw somebody in the driver’s seat, but it was pretty far away, and it was dark, so I couldn’t make out his face.”

  “Could it have been Sheryl Hendricks?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I asked Liz straight out if this was about her old boyfriend. She said that in a way it was, but that there was more to it than that. Then she said they were running away; she seemed really upset.”

  “What was the boyfriend’s name?”

  “I don’t know. She never mentioned his name. She always told me that she was going to make decisions for herself and that their relationship was a thing of the past.” He shakes his head sadly. “And then I guess all of a sudden it wasn’t.”

  “So she told you again that it was over between you. Then what happened?”

  “I got mad, and I started yelling at her, saying she was being unfair, making a big mistake, that kind of thing. But she didn’t want to listen to me anymore. She said I just couldn’t understand, and then she just left. I… never saw her again.”

  “After she left, what did you do?” I ask.

  “I was going to go into the bar and get a drink. I felt like getting drunk, you know? But I had the truck with me, and no other way to get home, so I didn’t. I just went home and went to sleep.”

  “Truck?”

  He nods. “A pickup truck; that’s what I drive.”

  “Were your parents at home when you arrived?”

  He shakes his head. “No, they were out of town, visiting my aunt and uncle in Milwaukee.”

  “Did you know Sheryl?”

  “No, I actually never met her, but she was Liz’s best friend from Center City,” he says. “Liz talked about her a lot.”

  Calvin asks, “Why did Liz break up with you?” He’s obviously been over this ground with Jeremy, so if he’s asking this question, it’s an answer he wants me to hear.

  “It was because of her religion,” Jeremy says with more than a trace of bitterness.

  “You were of different religions?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

  He nods. “She’s a Centurion. To be one, you have to be born in that town.”

  “People can’t convert to it and move there?”

  “Nope. Not according to Liz.”

  This is something of a surprise; it’s rare that a religion would turn down members.

  “Any idea who might have killed her?”

  “No.”

  “Was there anybody else she ever mentioned she had a problem with? Something or someone she was afraid of?”

  “No… I’ve been racking my brain.”

  Jeremy has little more to offer, and the session evolves into an effort by him to get me to take on the case. I don’t commit, and Calvin doesn’t seem fazed by the implied insult that Jeremy and his father don’t seem to think they’re in sufficiently good hands with Calvin.

  I leave after telling Jeremy I’ll likely have a decision within twenty-four hours, but that either way he’ll be well represented. I owe that to him and Calvin as well, though in truth I’ve done nothing toward advancing my decision-making process. Calvin gives me some papers relating to the case to go over; he’s prepared a brief summary of the events, or at least his knowledge of them. It’s a professional gesture that I appreciate, and I tell him so. He also invites me to come to his house later for a drink so that we can discuss the case further. He even says I can bring Tara, so I agree to come.

  I feel vaguely out of sorts here in Findlay, and I certainly don’t have a feel for the case. It’s disconcerting, though on the positive side I haven’t thought about Laurie for almost an hour, which represents a record for me.

  Right now I just want to go home, and the closest thing to that is Tara, waiting at the hotel. The man behind the desk in the lobby tells me that they have the TV ready to install, but they were afraid to do so with “that dog” in the room. Little do they know that “that dog” is probably smart enough to have installed it herself.

  Tara is beyond thrilled to see me and just about drags me to the elevator. We go for a long walk, maybe an hour, which pretty much covers all of Findlay. I mentally guess which houses could be Laurie’s, but it’s not that challenging a game, and my thoughts switch to the case.

  Jeremy doesn’t seem like a young man capable of slashing two coeds to death, but I certainly can’t be anywhere near sure of that. I’ve never seen him enraged or rejected or distraught, and I have no idea what those powerful emotions might do to him. Or cause him to do.

  The bottom line is that this is probably a case I would take if the murder were committed in North Jersey. It has the elements that can make what’s left of my legal juices flow. But I have to look at this on a personal, perhaps selfish level. A murder case takes an enormous amount of time and energy, and I really don’t want to turn my life upside down for the duration. It’s a good case, but it’s in little danger of being referred to as the trial of the century.

  My level of guilt at the selfishness of my approach is pretty low. Calvin is probably competent to give Jeremy a good defense, but that will be a decision Jeremy and his father can make. If they have the money to hire me, they have the money to hire pretty much anybody they want, so my departure will not mean he will have poor representation.

  Basically, it comes down to this: I want to stay in my own house, I don’t want Tara stuck in a hotel, I want to go to Charlie’s with Vince and Pete when I feel like it, and I don’t want to worry that every time I go somewhere I could run into Laurie. Or worse yet, Laurie and some boyfriend.

  As my mother would have said, “Why do I need the aggravation?”

  • • • • •

  OUR WALK ENDS at Calvin’s house, and he’s waiting on the porch for us. He spends some time petting Tara which immediately wins her over. In Tara’s mind petters are good people, nonpetters are not. I pretty much look at life the same way.

  We sit on the porch for a while, with Calvin and me literally in rocking chairs. I keep waiting for Aunt Bea to appear with homemade apple pie and ice cream. But it feels comfortable, and I briefly wonder if I could stay here long-term. There’s no doubt that I couldn’t; I’d go absolutely nuts. But for this moment it’s okay.

  “This is actually a pretty nice town,” I say. It comes out more condescending than I intended.

  “Depends on who you are,” he says with a trace of bitterness.

  “What do you mean?”

  He looks at me with a mixture of disdain and surprise. “You have any idea what it’s like to be the only openly gay person in a town like this?”

  Now it’s my turn to be surprised. “You’re gay?”

  “Nope,” he says, and then laughs at his nailing me with another lie. “Come on in.”

  We go inside, and Calvin takes Tara and me into
what he calls his sports room. It’s a small guest bedroom that has been converted into a shrine to the long-departed Milwaukee Braves baseball franchise.

  There is baseball memorabilia everywhere, all relating to the Braves. Calvin was only eight years old when the Braves won the 1957 World Series, but he remembers virtually every pitch.

  His prized possessions are a foul ball that Warren Spahn hit into the stands and Calvin’s father caught one-handed, and a piece of gum that Eddie Matthews spit onto the ground on the way into the stadium. “It’s one of the few pieces of baseball memorabilia that could be authenticated with a DNA test,” he says.

  Tara and I spend an hour at Calvin’s, but he and I talk very little about the case. This is more my choice than his; my decision is clearly going to be more personal, more about me than about Jeremy Davidson’s legal situation.

  As I’m getting ready to leave, Calvin asks me, “You think you’re gonna do this?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “I’m not saying I’m a traveling superhero, but for me to inject myself into this situation, to transfer my life here, I sort of need to think an injustice has been committed. I’m just not sure it has.”

  “I know the kid may have done it,” he says, “but I just don’t think he did. To tell you the truth, I’d defend him either way.”

  “And that’s another point,” I say. “He’s already got you.”

  “You know, I don’t spend all my time scaling cards into wastebaskets,” he says. “I checked you out, read some transcripts of your cases…”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a good attorney… competent. I cover all the bases,” he says.

  “And?”

  “And Jeremy Davidson needs more than that. He needs you.”

  “More bullshit?” I ask, ever wary.

  He shakes his head. “Not this time.”

  I tell him that it’s flattering but not necessarily convincing, and he doesn’t make any further effort to recruit me. Another effort he doesn’t make is to feed me and Tara, and by the time we head back to the hotel, we are famished. As evidence that there is indeed a merciful God, He has placed a pizzeria just a block from the hotel. I order a large pie with a thin crust, but “thin” must be a relative term. This crust is almost an inch thick and is stuffed with cheese. I’m starting to discover that in Wisconsin, even the cheese is stuffed with cheese.

  Tara and I sit at a little table outside the pizzeria and chow down. It’s not an East Coast pizza, but it’s not bad. I get Tara some bread, which she seems to find to her liking. Pigs that we are, we order a second pie and some more bread, and by the time we’re finished, we look and feel like the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Pillsbury Dough Dog.

  We go for another hour walk to get rid of the bloated feeling, which again takes us through the entire town. By the time we approach the hotel, it’s almost seven o’clock and we’ve gotten enough exercise that it’s soon going to be time to think about an evening snack. Perhaps a couple of pizzas…

  To my surprise and delight, the hotel gets cable TV, including the ESPNs and CNN. Between the pizza and a Knicks-Spurs game, for the first time I feel like Findlay is providing the intellectual and cultural stimulation I require. I settle down on the bed and start reading through the case notes that Calvin gave me, with the basketball game on as background music.

  There is a knock on the door, and when I open it, I see the bellman, who is bringing me a small coffeemaker that I had requested. He gives it to me, and I hand him a five-dollar bill, the smallest that I have. For a moment I’m afraid he’s going to have a stroke.

  “You gave me a five-dollar bill.”

  “I know that.”

  He’s clearly unsettled by this. “I don’t have change.”

  “I didn’t ask for any.”

  It finally dawns on him that this is for real, and he goes through an endless vow that if there’s anything I need, ever, all I have to do is ask. I promise that I will, and he finally leaves.

  Tara and I are no sooner settled back on the bed to watch basketball than there is another knock on the door. It’s probably the bellman offering to brush my teeth for me. As I get up to answer the door, I make a silent vow to undertip the rest of my stay here. “Just a second,” I call out.

  I reach the door and open it, but the bellman is not standing there. Laurie is standing there. I’m positive of this; there is absolutely no similarity between them.

  “Hello, Andy,” she says, but before I can answer, a missile comes flying past me. This particular missile is named Tara, and she has literally leaped across the room and up into Laurie’s arms. Tara always loved Laurie, but I thought I had talked her out of that during these past few months.

  Laurie lands on the floor under Tara’s weight, and she struggles to get up, laughing and petting all the while. I stand there watching in a state of semi-shock, which is actually my home state, but finally, I reach a hand down and help Laurie get to her feet.

  She comes inside the room and closes the door behind her. We look at each other for probably five seconds, though it feels like an hour and a half. Then she moves toward me and kisses me, and the anger I have been feeling for the last four and a half months is overwhelmed by something that feels nothing like anger.

  Our clothes are off and we’re in bed so fast that it’s as if we’re in a movie and the scene has been edited… as if the director has mandated they do a quick cut from the clothed scene at the door to the naked scene in bed. In all the times I pictured meeting Laurie, never once did it wind up like this. I need to work on my picturing skills.

  It is the most intense experience I have ever had; I even think that for a moment I lose mental control. I have always, and until now I really mean always, had the ability, or curse, to be able to remain somewhat detached from whatever might be going on. I can view anything with some semblance of reason, and it gives me a feeling of control.

  That control is lost in the excitement, fun, and incredible intensity of these moments. When we are finished, when Laurie is lying back and laughing her joyous laugh, I have to consciously bring myself back into the world of reason. I’m not sure why I do, since not to have to reason gave me a feeling of exhilarating freedom, but back I come.

  She looks over at me and smiles. “Hi, Andy.”

  I act surprised to see her. “Laurie, how are you? I hadn’t recognized you.”

  “I was just coming over to see you, that’s all, I swear. I wanted us to be able to talk without a bunch of people around.”

  I nod. “You did the right thing. This would have created something of a stir at the diner.”

  We both get dressed, maybe a tad self-consciously, and we start some small talk. Laurie wants to know how some of our common friends are doing, and I’m surprised to hear that she’s been in occasional contact with them. I had thought, apparently incorrectly, that they had taken my side in the Andy-Laurie war.

  I ask her how she came to be acting chief of the Findlay Police Department, since she had taken a job as captain, the number two person in the department. She tells me that Chief Helling has been quite ill and has been on a leave of absence. Laurie likes him very much and is rooting for his quick return, but it’s becoming increasingly unlikely. She doesn’t say what the illness is, and I don’t ask.

  A town council vote installed her as acting chief, and the deciding vote in swinging things her way was Richard Davidson. It’s a major reason that she is so sensitive about how it would look if her role in luring me to Wisconsin ever got out; it could seem like she is repaying a political favor.

  Laurie doesn’t think we should even talk about the Davidson case, even after I tell her that I am not likely to take it on. There’s an awkwardness here, and even though it’s slight, it’s not something I was ever used to having with Laurie.

  She prepares to leave. I know this because she takes out her car keys, although she will have to go down the elevator, leave the hotel, and walk across the street to her car bef
ore she’ll need them.

  Taking out car keys is a nonverbal way that people say, “I’ve gotta get out of here.” I do it all the time; sometimes I’ll take them out even if I haven’t driven to the meeting. A friend of mine has a Mercedes that doesn’t use keys; it will start for him just because it is able to identify his fingerprint. I would never get a car like that. How would I get out of meetings? By giving people the finger?

  So Laurie makes her postcoital getaway, much as Rita Gordon did. I’m starting to feel like a piece of meat. There are worse feelings.

  I put those humiliating thoughts aside for the time being, and Tara and I once again settle down to watch some television.

  I’ve been sleeping for almost two hours, based on the clock, when there is another knock on the door. In my groggy state I figure it could be either the bellman or Laurie, and I’m so tired I’m not sure which one I’m rooting for.

  I force myself out of bed and go to the door. When I open it, Laurie is standing there. The look on her face is not one of passion.

  “Andy, something’s happened that you should know about.”

  Her tone makes me instantly clearheaded. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “The Davidson house was firebombed.”

  “Oh, shit. Who did it?”

  “We don’t know yet,” she says. “Come on, I’ll tell you on the way.”

  “On the way where?”

  “To what’s left of the house.”

  • • • • •

  WHAT DO PEOPLE around here think about Jeremy? Do they think he did it?” I ask this because it’s quite likely that someone was getting revenge against Jeremy for his alleged crime by trying to destroy his house.

  Laurie thinks for a few moments before answering. “I haven’t talked to many people about it, but I think it’s probably split down the middle. The ones who know him best can’t imagine him murdering anyone, but others… well, you know how it is. I’ve heard from a lot of angry people these last few days; when someone is charged with a crime, a lot of people assume that person is guilty.”