Collared

by David Rosenfelt

  “Yes. Cell phone records confirmed that she did.”

  “Did Mr. Butler die soon after that?”

  “Two weeks later in a car crash.”

  “Under suspicious circumstances?”

  “It was originally ruled an accident due to the impairment of the driver. It is now being investigated as a murder.”

  His affirmative statement about disbelieving Teresa Mullins would have been a better way to finish his testimony, but this way Stanley Butler got his well-deserved day in court.

  “Thank you, Captain,” is what I say. What we both know I mean is, “Thank you, Captain … the burgers and beer are on me.”

  ’m so focused on the case that I’ve almost forgotten a dangerous drug dealer wants to kill me. That is not the norm for me; usually, my personal safety is a priority. Of course, on Laurie’s instructions, Marcus has been watching my back, which is rather comforting. Under Marcus’s protection, I wouldn’t be worried if the Kremlin wanted me dead.

  On the other hand, it’s not like Kaiser and I are going to line up at center ice after the trial for the traditional handshake. His desire to kill me will continue when the case is over, and Marcus cannot follow me forever.

  I would love for events to transpire that would remove Kaiser as a threat. My first choice would be for him to get hit by a truck, but I don’t have the guts or the truck to pull it off. My second choice would be for him to get arrested and go to prison for drug dealing, but I don’t have the smarts or the evidence to pull that off. He’s been successfully evading the authorities for a very long time.

  Maybe I’ll catch a break and the DNA test will show he’s Dylan’s father, and he can be arrested for kidnapping his own son. I think these kinds of thoughts are the textbook definition of grasping at straws, so my time is best served getting back to focusing on the trial.

  The key part of our case is over, and it’s gone well. I think Teresa Mullins has been completely discredited. She lied when she identified Keith; there’s no doubt about that. But it’s a jump from there to finding him not guilty; there’s other evidence against him.

  Having said that, I’m feeling pretty good as I head into the final phase of the case. I want to attack the remaining evidence as best I can and do some work on Keith’s character.

  Keith asks me if I think he should testify, and I say that I absolutely do not. He agrees, a change in attitude from the way he felt as the trial was about to begin. I assume he’s pleased with the way things are going as well.

  My next witness is Richard Eddington, a forensic scientist who will testify about the presence of the dog hair in Keith’s apartment. As an expert witness, he’s costing me $5,000 for this appearance, which pretty much eats up the one-dollar retainer that Keith gave me.

  This trial has not been a profit-making enterprise, but I can’t in good conscience skimp and hurt Keith’s chances of getting his life back.

  Eddington talks about transference, how the amount of dog hair found is consistent with Keith having contacted the dog previously and then brought the hairs home with him on his clothes. He’s my own witness, but I think he’s full of it. I think the hairs were planted there.

  Kelly does an effective job on cross, making the point that the hairs were found in the den and front hall, logical places for Keith to have entered the house with Cody and kept him for a brief time. There were none in the bedroom, where Keith theoretically would have changed his clothes and transferred more hair than in any other room.

  My final witness is Thomas Holiday, who worked at Finding Home as the number-two chemist under Keith, back in the day. He’s a supporter of Keith’s and has contacted me a number of times with offers to serve as a character witness.

  “Keith was a company guy all the way,” Holiday says. “He was the first one in the office in the morning and the last one out. His work was really important to him, and he tried to instill it in everyone under him.”

  “So you never saw evidence of him doing anything unethical, like stealing confidential documents?”

  “No. I thought it was bull when I heard about it, and I think it’s bull now. And the worst part of it was that just when the company was about to take off, they cut him loose. And then they cut us loose.”

  I don’t want to get into the mass layoffs after Keith left, because it could lead the jury to think that Holiday is just a disgruntled ex-employee testifying to stick it to Finding Home.

  But he is not to be deterred, and he launches into a mini-rant about how they’ve doubled the staff at Finding Home yet won’t rehire any of their former loyal employees. “I’ve got a friend in payroll who tells me they’re working around the clock there,” he says with obvious and probably justified annoyance.

  Once Holiday is off the stand, Judge Moran asks me to call my next witness, forcing me to say something that I hate to say, because once it’s out of my mouth, I can’t get it back.

  “Your Honor, the defense rests.”

  Kelly tells Judge Moran that he wants to call one witness in his rebuttal case, and that is a local psychotherapist named Karen Abernathy. She’s testified in a number of my cases in the past, and always on the side of the prosecution.

  “Ms. Abernathy, you are familiar with the circumstances of the crime in this case?”

  “I am,” she says. “Both from newspaper reports and from some documents you sent me.”

  “So you know that there has been testimony that Teresa Mullins changed her identity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “Definitely not. She was involved in a terribly tragic, terribly stressful event. Even though it might seem illogical, she very likely could blame herself for not adequately protecting that poor child. She would want to escape the memory of that, and the ultimate escape is to forget who she is. Not only would she want to remove herself from the spotlight, from the attention of others, but she might literally want to erase herself entirely and start over.”

  “And if she somehow came into possession of the dog that was abducted … let’s say hypothetically that the kidnappers let the dog loose, and he was able to return to a human that he was familiar with and loved … is it surprising that she would not report this event to authorities?”

  “No, that is also consistent with the state of mind as I described it. Coming forward would remove the anonymity that she clearly coveted and reopen the wound. And this way, she could protect the dog in a way she could not protect the child.

  “She was clearly in great pain. People in such pain do not always act the way we would like them to or the way we believe we would act in a similar situation.”

  On cross-examination, I start with, “Ms. Abernathy, you’re essentially saying that the mind is a powerful thing, and the mind of Teresa Mullins caused her to behave in ways that we might find strange?”

  “Exactly,” she says.

  “Let’s examine just how strong a mind can be, shall we? For example, can the power of the mind conjure up seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a wire transfer from the Cayman Islands?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Teresa Mullins was murdered; someone set fire to her cabin. Is that a result of the power of her mind?”

  “I’m not familiar with all the circumstances of that event.”

  “You say that she was racked with guilt. Is it possible that there could be another reason for her guilt? Perhaps that she incriminated an innocent person? Is that possible?”

  “Anything is possible.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  udge Moran takes center stage, telling the jury what will be happening next in the trial. “The cases in chief have been concluded,” he says, “and I would like to personally thank you for your attentiveness, concentration, and effort. I know it has been a long haul and that what you’re doing is not easy.

  “Tomorrow will be devoted to closing arguments; then you will have the weekend off before beginning deliberation
s on Monday. I will be offering what we call a charge before that happens, and that basically means we will talk about what is expected of you.

  “For now, as always, do not talk to anyone about the trial, including among yourselves. And do not put yourself in a position where you might get exposure to any media coverage. Thank you again.”

  He adjourns court, and Keith leans over to me and says, “Man, you did a great job. If this doesn’t go well, it’s sure not your fault.”

  “Think in terms of it going well,” I say.

  “I’ll try. But either way, you were worth every penny.”

  At least he smiles when he says it.

  As the bailiff is heading over to get Keith and take him back into custody, I notice that Laurie is standing in the back of the courtroom. It’s unusual that she’s here, especially since she hadn’t told me she was coming.

  She motions that she wants to talk to me, so I excuse myself to Keith and head back there. When I get there, she pulls me to the side a bit so that no one can hear what we are saying, although the courtroom has mostly emptied out.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “Is something wrong?”

  “Cindy just called me with the results of the DNA test. There’s an ID for one of the parents.”

  I don’t like the look on her face or the sound of her voice, so I gird myself for bad news.

  “What did it say?”

  “Dylan Hickman’s father is Keith Wachtel.”

  I feel like Marcus just hit me in the stomach. I instinctively look over and see Keith being led out of court by the bailiff. He’s looking at Laurie and me, and when he sees me look over, he smiles and waves.

  I don’t wave back.

  t’s not often that I am completely baffled. Actually, it happens a lot, but this feels like a level beyond baffled. I feel like I’ve entered another dimension, and I forgot to bring my power to reason with me.

  Keith Wachtel is Dylan Hickman’s father. DNA tests don’t lie, or at least they don’t lie when it isn’t Finding Home performing them.

  The mother is not in the registry, which is a shame, because that is important. Keith was in the process of breaking up with Jill around that time, so theoretically it could be her.

  But that makes no sense. It would mean that the mother of the child adopted him, and the father then was convicted of kidnapping him. That’s not how it usually works. Usually parents that have a child that they want tend to just keep that child.

  Also, Jill was never pregnant, which is basically a prerequisite for giving birth to a baby.

  Keith openly admitted to me that he had a few affairs around the same time. Could one of them be the mother without Keith knowing it? That would mean that Keith’s child just happened to be adopted by Jill, his ex-fiancée and employer? That doesn’t just violate the no-coincidence rule; it obliterates it.

  In fact, the no-coincidence rule basically eliminates any chance that Keith does not know he is Dylan’s father. It would mean that he first impregnated a woman that did not tell him about it. Then she abandoned the baby, after which he happened to be adopted by Keith’s former fiancée. Then that child was kidnapped, and Keith happened to be accused of the crime.

  Not possible.

  If Keith did know, then it still leaves many questions unanswered. Did he somehow arrange for Jill to adopt the baby? Did he know she was interested in adopting a child, and did he then mention this one to her?

  But if he wanted the child enough to kidnap it, why not keep him or adopt him in the first place? Why go through the process of convincing Jill to adopt him, without telling her the truth, if Keith wanted the baby himself?

  And if this was all about Keith and his baby, then why did Renny Kaiser send Kyle Gillis after me? And why did they fake the DNA test in the first place? It couldn’t have been to protect the mother, whoever she might be, because she isn’t in the registry, and they of all people would know that.

  And hovering above this all is the most important question: If Keith really was the abductor, then where the hell is Dylan Hickman? Could he have arranged the adoption by Jill and then start to hate her so much that he would abduct and kill him just to hurt her?

  I do not want to believe that it is possible, yet the scary thing is that it seems the most likely of all the very unlikely scenarios I can come up with.

  Ugh. Why the hell did I have to send in that stupid license renewal?

  Which reminds me, I have a couple of legal considerations here. Fortunately, even though this is probably damaging to my client, I do not have to disclose this information to Kelly. If the reverse were true, and he came up with information that was exculpatory for Keith, he would be under an obligation to give it to me.

  The question is, do I tell Keith what we’ve learned? At this point, there’s a downside to that and little, if any, upside. An example of the former would be that it might prompt him into a confession on the abduction. If he did that, I would then be prohibited from proclaiming his innocence in my summation.

  I can’t see any situation in which his legal position would benefit from my telling him. And the moral issue doesn’t really come into play here. If he knows the truth, then by delaying telling him, he’s not deprived of anything. If he doesn’t know, then waiting until after the trial seems to be rather insignificant.

  Whether or when to tell Jill is another issue entirely, and I’ll discuss that with Laurie. But since it could somehow expose Keith to legal jeopardy should Jill take precipitous action, that will have to wait until the trial is over.

  have my poker face on when I get to court this morning. I don’t want Keith to sense that anything unusual is going on; I’d just as soon not have to lie.

  The problem is that the last time I won in poker was in the seventh grade, playing one-on-one with Rita Tamber. I had a slight advantage in that she didn’t know how to play, and I sort of told her that a pair of kings beat three fours because, you know, they are kings.

  So as soon as I sit down, Keith asks me if there is anything wrong, and I lie and say no. I don’t think he believes me; he’s savvier than Rita was back then.

  Kelly gets up to give his closing argument, which he prefaces with ten seconds of shaking his head sadly, as if he’s disheartened by all this and wishes he didn’t have to be a part of it.

  “Teresa Mullins is a troubled person. I say is instead of was because among the many things the defense didn’t prove is that she became Linda Sanford and subsequently was the one who died in that fire. So I’m going to use is, because for our purposes here, let’s hope and assume that Teresa is alive.

  “But wherever she is now, I think we can all agree that ‘troubled’ is the unfortunately accurate way to describe her after that horrible day when Dylan Hickman was quite literally snatched from her arms.

  “It’s important to know that no evidence was presented to show that Teresa had any emotional difficulties before that day, no ties to criminals, no history of doing anything but being a loving daughter and a wonderful nanny. Yet Mr. Carpenter would have you believe that she turned her back on her whole life to participate in some evil criminal conspiracy.

  “But let’s take some of the defense evidence, unproven and speculative as it is, and let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say that Teresa Mullins became Linda Sanford and was later murdered.

  “You’ve heard from a respected psychologist that her behavior made perfect sense for someone who had gone through the trauma that Teresa Mullins absorbed. She wanted to escape the world and escape herself. Perfectly understandable to a professional in psychology.

  “And the murder of Linda Sanford, or Teresa Mullins, or whoever that was? Again, let’s assume it was Teresa Mullins. In her pain, had she turned to drugs? Might that have brought her into contact with people who might kill? Who knows? We have heard nothing about her life.

  “But Mr. Carpenter would have you believe that somehow it was the abductors that murdered her. Is that logical? He first tells us
that they were her collaborators in the crime, that they were on the same side.

  “If they wanted her dead, if they were afraid of what she might know or tell, why wait three years to kill her? She had already given up the dog; if that was a sign that she was going to turn on them, why hadn’t she done so fully? All she did was give up a dog; she hardly pointed out the real bad guys to the authorities.

  “If they went down to South Carolina to kill her, it means they knew where she lived. So why did they wait until then to do it? Why was she all of a sudden a threat to them? Because she gave up a dog?

  “Teresa Mullins was telling the truth back then, and how do we know that? Because of the other evidence that corroborated her story. And because Keith Wachtel hated Jill Hickman.

  “You’ve heard witnesses that said he felt betrayed by her. She threw him out of her house, and then she threw him out of her company. He wanted to hurt her in any way he could, and he did so in the worst way possible: he took her child from her.

  “The police believed Teresa Mullins, the previous jury believed Teresa Mullins, and they were right to do so.

  “Thank you for listening, and thank you for your service.”

  I get up to give the defense statement; I need to focus and do my best, but for a second I fantasize about opening with “Keith Wachtel is the real father of Dylan Hickman.” That might shake things up a bit.

  Instead I say, “Ladies and gentlemen, I too thank you for your service.”

  We lawyers really appreciate jurors before they render a verdict. Afterward, if they’ve voted against us, we would be fine if they all held hands and jumped off the Empire State Building.

  “I told you when this trial started that Teresa Mullins lied in her testimony against Keith Wachtel. I also told you that we would prove it, and we did.

  “We proved that she had the dog, and how could she have done that if she was not involved with the perpetrators of the crime? We proved that she went into hiding. She didn’t just change her name; she took extraordinary steps to disappear from the planet.