An hour later, Sam calls with the first piece of information. James Ware still lives on Tamarack Lane in Pomona and is a licensed plumber. He is unmarried and seems to live alone, though there is no way to be sure of that. The only thing Sam can say with certainty is no one else has a driver’s license with that address on it.
When she hears this, Laurie says, “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about breaking up a marriage. I think you need to just confront it head-on, tell him straight out.”
“Right.”
“You want me to do it with you?”
“Probably better if you don’t. He’d be more forthcoming with just another guy.”
“I agree,” she says. “But a Rockland County plumber doesn’t sound like a Central Casting sinister figure. It increases the chance that the abduction was not about Dylan at all but rather one of the adults.”
I don’t respond; I’m trying to anticipate what the conversation is going to be like. Laurie asks me what’s wrong.
“I’m picturing how I’d react if some stranger showed up and did what I’m about to do to James Ware.”
“Do you know what he did in the service?” she asks.
“No, why?”
“Well, if he was a Navy SEAL, you might want to bring Marcus.”
ames Ware’s office is in Spring Valley, about fifteen minutes from Pomona. I didn’t call ahead, because I didn’t really want to reveal anything over the phone. I was just hoping that this would be a slow day for plumbing in Rockland County. The fact that there is a van in front of the store that says WARE PLUMBING AND HEATING on it tells me I may have caught a break.
I enter, and there’s a man sitting behind the counter punching some keys on an old-fashioned calculator. He looks up as if surprised to have a visitor; I guess most people call plumbers rather than just show up. It’s fairly difficult to drop your plumbing off at the store, like you would your shirts.
He smiles. “Hey, can I help you?”
“You can if you’re James Ware.”
“That’s me. What can I do for you?”
“My name is Andy Carpenter; I’m an attorney.”
“Oh, shit. Is this about the Anderson job? Those people are crazy. The leak had nothing to do with the work I did. I told them that. It came from an entirely different area of the pipe. I’ve got pictures of the whole thing.”
“I don’t represent the Andersons.”
“Oh, then who do you represent?”
“Actually, I’m not at liberty to say. What I can tell you is that your name came up in connection with an adoption case I am working on.”
He looks surprised and confused. “You mean like a child adoption?”
“Yes.”
“How did my name come up?”
“DNA test results show that you are the child’s father,” I say.
“Excuse me?”
I know he heard what I said the first time, but I repeat it anyway.
“No chance,” he says. “Total bullshit. Are you trying to shake me down?”
“One thing I can promise you is that no one is after your money. We are simply trying to get to the truth. But the test results don’t lie.”
“Well, in this case they do, because I’ve never had a child with anybody. Absolutely no chance. Who is the mother?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that.”
“Well, I can’t, and this is a little too weird for me.”
I nod. “Not exactly another day at the office for me either. Let’s back into this, okay?” I give him the month and year that Dylan would have been conceived, which is almost four years ago, and I ask him if he had a girlfriend around that time. “Is it possible you impregnated a woman and she never told you about it?” I ask.
“No, it’s not possible.”
“Did you have a specific girlfriend back then?”
“I was engaged. I’m getting a little tired of these questions.” Ware is getting angry, which is not good. There aren’t many plumbers I can beat up. There aren’t even many librarians I can beat up.
“But you didn’t marry her?”
“No,” he says.
“So maybe your fiancée had a child and didn’t tell you?”
“Which part of ‘no chance’ don’t you understand?”
“I’m sorry to pry like this, but it really is important.”
“It ain’t important to me, pal. Your test results are bullshit, or you’re making them up.”
“Did you have relations with other women around that time?”
“I’m done talking to you.”
“If you answer my questions now, you can avoid me asking them in court.”
He laughs. “You gonna sue me? Go ahead and do it. I’ll prove you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not going to sue you. I—”
He interrupts. “I don’t care. Just get the hell out of here.”
So I leave.
That didn’t go well.
I have no idea if James Ware was telling the truth, but my guess is that he was telling at least a partial truth. I don’t think he knows anything about the existence of a baby; his reaction to that news seemed genuine.
Where he’s obviously less forthcoming is the question of whether he had other relationships, even one-night stands, while he was engaged. He wouldn’t even answer that question. I’m not sure why he’d want to conceal the information, other than either he’s embarrassed or just doesn’t want to confide in a stranger, or maybe he sees a future of having to pay child support.
Most people are afraid of being dragged into court, but Ware wasn’t, and his certainty that he could prove his position in a legal proceeding seemed genuine.
One thing I’m more certain of is that James Ware is not the type to be a conspirator in any sinister plot that might have led to Keith Wachtel’s being in jail. He’s not involved with big money, and it’s unlikely he’s out partying with dangerous criminals.
I simply cannot see Ware being a key player in whatever the hell it is I’m looking into. The mother of the child, whoever she is, might be a different story. But unless he has a major change of heart and attitude, we’re not going to be able to learn her identity through James Ware.
The one piece of good news for the day comes in a phone call from Pete Stanton when I’m on my way home. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m starting an investigation into the death of Stanley Butler,” he says. “I thought you’d want to know.”
“I’m very glad to hear that. What tipped the scale?”
“According to the autopsy report, he had needle marks in his arms and drugs in his system. That information about the needle marks never came out, because there was no hearing of any kind. The coroner just came up with the cause of death, and apparently, no one questioned the details.”
“So?”
“So I spoke with his wife. It turns out he was deathly afraid of needles, totally phobic. She said he was over his problems with drugs, but even when he was using, it was always pills. She said he wouldn’t even get a flu shot; no needles, never.”
“And that’s enough to open the case?” I ask.
“That and what you told me. I’m not saying he was murdered, but I think it’s time somebody checked it out.”
“I don’t want to overstate this,” I say, “but you’re doing the right thing here, and there is a chance that you might be a decent human being.”
“Thanks. I live for your approval.”
illis called the company,” Sam says. “And the company called him.”
“Which company? Finding Home?” I ask.
“The very one. He called it from his cell phone three times over a six-month period, and they called him once.”
“Is there any way of telling who he spoke to there?”
“No, it goes through a switchboard, so it could have been anyone in the building.”
“You have the dates and times of the calls?”
“Of course.”
/>
“When did the company call him?”
He gives me the exact time of the call, and I tell him to hold on for a minute. I check my calendar, and for the first time in a while, my hunch pays off. Kyle Gillis received a phone call from Finding Home literally minutes after I left my meeting with Zachary Alford. So it appears that poor, overworked Mr. Alford, before he had to rush to his next meeting, had time to make a call to a guy who would soon be following me at night with a gun.
“You have his other calls?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t gone through the list yet. The company calls just jumped out at me.”
“Great job, Sam. I’m going to get Zachary Alford’s cell phone number. I think it’s time for Mr. Alford to get the equivalent of a cyber rectal exam. And while you’re at it, that guy you checked out, James Ware…”
“What about him?”
“He was engaged about four years ago. I need the name of his fiancée. Any way we can get that?”
“Five minutes on Facebook.”
“What do you mean?”
“When people get engaged, they tell the world. Unless they are the exceptions, either he or his girlfriend posted about it. I’ll check it out.”
I hang up and call Laurie. “I need Zachary Alford’s cell phone number,” I say.
“And you think I have it?”
“No, but Jill must. I assume all those top executives share their numbers. Can you get it from her?”
“She’s going to ask me why,” Laurie says, which is a point worth considering.
“True, and I don’t want her knowing we are suspicious of Alford. I don’t know her relationship with him or who she talks to. She could say the wrong thing without knowing it.”
“How about this?” Laurie asks. “I’ll ask her for a company list with all the cell phones, and I’ll tell her we don’t know who we might want to reach or when. That we’re just covering our bases, just in case.”
“Perfect. Once you get the number, please give it to Sam.”
There are all kinds of explanations for anything if one wants to find them. But sometimes if it walks and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Zachary Alford, the multimillionaire CEO of Finding Home, with an emphasis on the multi, spoke on the phone with Kyle Gillis, the hired gun whose head Marcus Clark crushed like an overripe melon.
It’s true that I cannot definitively say that it was Alford who spoke to Gillis, but a call was placed from the company moments after I left. To think that it was anyone other than Alford is to violate my strict “no coincidence” policy. And Alford was put in place by the Parsons Group, which means he was put in place by notorious bad guy Renny Kaiser.
Zachary Alford is a duck.
It is obvious that if Alford and Gillis had a relationship, then there was money involved. Based on their relative positions, it is even more obvious that Alford was the employer and Gillis the employee.
And if I accept all that obvious stuff, and it’s obvious that I should, then Alford employed Gillis to either track me, warn me, hurt me, or kill me. And he would not have done so because I am sarcastic and annoying; he would have done so because he believed I posed a threat to him or to his company.
Obviously.
So whatever I’m doing is causing him to worry big-time. I just wish I knew what I was doing.
I believe all the answers to all my questions in defending Keith Wachtel can be found at Finding Home. It’s where the key players were, and it’s where the money is.
The actions of the company are by themselves revealing. In a short time, they raised a large amount of capital and executed an almost complete changeover of personnel.
Keith was removed, very possibly because of fabricated evidence of corporate espionage, and then his team was dismissed because they were feared to have been tainted by him.
Then, and possibly most important, Jill essentially withdrew from the company as a result of Dylan’s abduction. Could that have been the reason for the abduction in the first place? To get her out? It seems unlikely, but not impossible.
I wish I could devote full time to this new development, but I can’t.
I’ve got a trial to prepare for.
hate jury selection and juries … not necessarily in that order. I hate jury selection because I consider it a total crapshoot, and a boring one at that. I’ve used jury consultants in the past, but I found that they don’t know any more than I do, and I don’t know anything.
Conventional wisdom in this case is to avoid choosing women for the jury. The theory is that the victim, besides Dylan, is Jill. A mother has lost her child and has been left with no answers as to his fate. Any decent woman juror would be horrified by such a thing and would want to lash out and punish whoever was accused of it.
Of course, I don’t know a man who wouldn’t be similarly horrified. Would a father be less out to punish Keith than a woman who has never borne children?
It all depends on the person, not the gender, or economic status, or race. And as lawyers, we simply do not have the time or opportunity to understand these potential jurors as people.
Of course, our job is made infinitely more difficult by the fact that almost every potential juror lies. That may be too strong; let’s say they either lie or shade the truth. The nature of the lie, or shading, depends totally on whether they want to be selected.
If serving is something they want to avoid, they say what they think we don’t want to hear. If they want to serve, then they try to please us with their answers. Very often their lies are misguided, since they are not sophisticated enough to know what we are looking for.
We don’t even know what we are looking for, so how could they?
So we guess, and we do our best, and then they spend the entire trial deliberately looking impassive and detached, while we continue to try to analyze their every twitch. But the truth is we don’t know how well we guessed until they deliver their verdict.
Which is why I hate jury selection and juries. I would prefer that they would let me experience the trial and then decide guilt or innocence. The Andy Carpenter justice system would be fair and impartial.
Mitch Kelly has three lawyers and a consultant with him to consider and analyze their every move. I have Hike, who is positive that every single potential juror would be a disaster for our side. I haven’t seen any sign of Pod Hike since he came back from Billy’s daughter’s wedding.
I considered asking for a change of venue for the retrial but ultimately decided against it. I do understand that there is no doubt that most of the potential jurors will have some memory of the first trial or at least the crime.
It was a big deal around here, and I sincerely doubt that there were many people who thought Keith was wrongly convicted. Most would have the attitude that if a jury put him away after examining the facts, they were most likely right.
And they usually are.
But the awareness of the Hickman abduction was by no means limited to this area. It was a national story, and certainly widely talked about all over the northeast. Unless we reconvened in Outer Mongolia, the jury pool would be tainted by previous knowledge of the case.
And that knowledge could also work in our favor. Just the fact that there is a retrial by definition gives the impression that something was wrong the first time. All I have to do to take advantage of that fact is get across the point that the retrial is not the result of a technicality.
Jurors are people, and people hate technicalities, unless they have occasion to hide behind them.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the only person in the courtroom who is enjoying the process is Keith. It has been a welcome change in his routine and represents the first time in a very long time that anyone is taking up the fight on his behalf.
He sees action, and in his mind, action is good. I don’t blame him.
It takes two days and two hours of the third day, but we finally impanel a jury. There are seven women and five men, six Caucasians, four Africa
n Americans, and two Hispanics.
It’s a group of people that will carefully consider the evidence and ultimately will be swayed by the power of my logic and arguments.
Or they won’t listen to a word I will say and take an hour to send Keith back to prison for the rest of his life.
I don’t have the slightest idea which.
I hate that.
he reason for the retrial also represents the most difficult legal issue to handle. That is the questionable veracity of the testimony of Teresa Mullins, and more specifically, the fact that she is not here to repeat or defend it.
So the court must decide how to treat that initial testimony, and the solution will provide benefits and difficulties for both sides. The overriding concern is whether or not it would be considered hearsay, since Teresa is not going to be at the trial. Of course, it is literally hearsay, in that it will be introduced only by people who heard her say it.
To eliminate it entirely would be damaging to the prosecution, in that they relied heavily on it during the first trial. Not having it would take away some, but not all of their case.
But that will not happen, and legally, it shouldn’t. Teresa’s testimony falls under two exceptions to the hearsay rule. The first is that she is legitimately unavailable; death can do that to a person. The second is that the original testimony was under oath.
So it will be heard, and while on the face of it that would appear to hurt us, there is also one significant way in which it helps. We are not saying that Teresa was wrong in her testimony, that it was an error or a misidentification. We are saying that she lied and that she did so in collusion with the actual perpetrator.
If the jury buys that, we are home free. It flies in the face of common sense to think that the person she is colluding with is the person she is sending to jail with her testimony. If they don’t accept and agree with our point of view, Keith is never going to be home free again.
Judge Moran makes his ruling on the first morning of court; the testimony of Teresa Mullins will be heard by this jury. He then prepares to make two more crucial rulings on the same basic issue. The first concerns how the testimony will be read into the record.
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