Collared

by David Rosenfelt

  “What are we hoping to accomplish?”

  “To find out what the hell really happened.”

  “Is this still in your role as Keith’s lawyer?”

  “More in my role as superhero defender of truth and justice.”

  She nods. “I’ll hold your cape. But first I’ll call Jill.”

  Laurie dials Jill on the car phone, so that it will be on speaker and we both can hear.

  “Jill, Andy and I are coming over to talk to you.”

  “Enough talking,” Jill says, panic in her voice. “I need this story corrected.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Afraid? I’m not afraid of anything. Keith is not the father, and I don’t want anyone to think that he is.”

  “Keith is the father, Jill. We know that. And we also know that you are Dylan’s natural mother. That’s why we are coming over to talk.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Jill,” Laurie says, calmly and patiently, “I’m not telling you what we think. I’m telling you what we know. You need to talk to us and tell us what is going on before it’s too late.”

  There is a long pause, and the silence probably stretches to fifteen seconds. Believe me when I tell you it feels longer than that.

  “Okay,” she says, and I can almost see her sag through the phone. “Come on over. We can talk.”

  nless Jill changes her mind in the next twenty-five minutes, this should be quite a meeting. On the way there, Keith calls me from the prison and is not exactly calm and composed himself. He’s been made aware that the story of his fatherhood is out there in the world, and he obviously wants to know what effect this might have on the trial.

  I tell him the truth, straight out, which is that I don’t have the slightest idea. For some reason, he doesn’t find that calming.

  I still haven’t had a chance to pursue any wrongdoing possibilities by Renny Kaiser and Finding Home; events have just been coming too fast and furious on the trial front. At this point, I don’t see that whatever they are doing has anything to do with Keith’s case, so it has to remain on the back burner. For now.

  In the car, Laurie asks, “Do you think she knows what happened to Dylan and where he is?”

  “It’s certainly a possibility,” I say. “She lied about the birth, about the abandonment and adoption, and there is a very good chance she was a party to getting Teresa Mullins to lie about who kidnapped him. Why would she all of a sudden start telling the truth about where he is?”

  “You think she engineered the kidnapping?”

  “Certainly could be. Teresa worked for her; she cared for the baby well before Jill adopted him. It’s hard to see Teresa lying about Keith being the abductor without Jill knowing about it. But I’m not sure about it, and hopefully we’re about to find out.”

  We arrive at Jill’s Derrom Avenue house, parking across the street because there is already another car parked in front of it. Laurie and I both get out and start to cross the street when I hear a sound. It’s not that loud, sort of like a firecracker that might have gone off under a mattress.

  “That’s a gunshot, Andy,” Laurie says, total certainty in her voice. I barely have time to register what she has said when a man comes out the front door of Jill’s house and starts to head down the fairly long flight of stairs to the street.

  He sees us instantly and stops running down the steps. The reason he stops is so that he can aim better. He has a gun in his hand, and it’s pointing in our direction.

  In the moment, I do the most courageous thing I have ever done in my life, though there is admittedly not a lot of competition for that honor. I turn my body and lunge toward Laurie, hoping to protect her from the bullet. At the same time, I don’t take my eyes off the shooter, who I can see clearly, and almost in slow motion, start to pull the trigger.

  My courageous action execution needs some work, as I come up short. I dive and don’t quite reach Laurie; all I really wind up protecting is a manhole cover in the center of the street.

  It’s just as well. I hear the gunshot, and after quickly determining that no bullet has entered my body, I look and see that it is Laurie that fired the shot. She must have drawn her gun the instant she heard the gunshot from the house. I had other considerations on my mind, like trying to avoid pissing in my pants.

  I get up and turn toward the shooter in time to see him reach the bottom step, headfirst. He doesn’t move when he reaches the bottom, and a second later, Marcus is standing over him, making sure he isn’t somehow a continuing threat.

  Marcus has been protecting me, but this time he was a few seconds late. It’s a good thing Laurie wasn’t.

  “Check him out, Marcus,” Laurie says, now in full cop mode, running toward the house. Her gun is still drawn, no doubt out of concern that the downed shooter isn’t alone.

  Marcus goes over to the shooter and feels his neck for a pulse. He turns to me and gives the thumb-in-the-air “out” sign, like a baseball ump. I’m assuming he means “out” as in “out of the world of the living,” because he then follows Laurie into the house.

  So Marcus is in the house with Laurie, the shooter is sprawled dead at the bottom of the steps, and I’m on all fours on top of a manhole cover in the middle of the street, looking like a jerk. It is a role I am not unaccustomed to.

  Finally, I get up and head toward the house. I’m in no hurry; I’m certainly not taking the steps two at a time. It doesn’t take a genius to know what I’m going to find in there.

  Mercifully, Laurie and Marcus are coming out as I reach the door. She’s holding on to Cody by his collar, and it’s a good sign that she has put her gun away. “Jill’s dead,” Laurie says. “One shot in the head. Not sure you want to go in there.”

  I’m sure I don’t want to go in there, so instead I take out my cell phone and call Pete Stanton. I’m also sure that this street is going to be filled with cops in seconds anyway; there must be some neighbors who heard or witnessed the shootout at the Derrom Avenue corral.

  “Pete, you might want to get over to Jill Hickman’s house. We’ve got two dead bodies, one of which is hers.”

  “Shit,” is his eloquent response. Then, “Where’s the shooter?”

  “He’s the other body.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  At that moment three squad cars screech to a halt in the street in front of Jill’s house.

  “Your cavalry is already here,” I say.

  “Does anyone ever get killed when you’re not around?” Pete asks. “You’re a real good-luck charm.”

  Click.

  aurie knows two of the cops on the scene, so they don’t treat us like we’re the killers. They start to ask questions, but we don’t bother to answer; instead I just point to the arriving Pete Stanton. He’ll be in charge and have enough questions all by himself.

  “You guys okay?” Pete asks. I don’t think he’d be so solicitous if it were just me and Marcus; it’s Laurie’s presence that has him acting concerned and respectful.

  “We’re fine,” I say.

  Pete points to the dead shooter on the ground. He has one bullet, right where his intact heart used to be. “Who put him down?”

  “That would be me,” Laurie says.

  “Where were you when you fired?”

  She points. “About five feet from our car.”

  He looks in that direction, then back at the shooter. “Not bad.”

  “I taught her well,” I say.

  “Yeah. Where’s Jill Hickman?”

  “Inside,” Laurie says. “Doorway to the kitchen.”

  He nods. “Okay, you guys wait here.”

  There are already a bunch of cops inside, so he goes in to join them, maybe to make sure they don’t tromp around on any evidence. But this is not a whodunit; the guy whodunit won’t be doing it anymore.

  I call Willie and ask him to come get Cody, and he’s here within five minutes. He asks if we need his help for anything else, but we don’t.
>
  Pete comes out about ten minutes later and asks us to take him through it, showing us exactly where we were and what happened at each moment. It doesn’t take long to do that; the whole thing had taken a matter of a few seconds.

  Once we’re done, he tells us that we’ll need to go down to the station to answer questions and make our statements. It’s a drill I’m getting all too used to.

  Just as we’re about to leave, Pete takes my arm and pulls me to the side. “Is Wachtel really the kid’s father?” he asks.

  “One hundred percent positive.”

  “Damn. Did he snatch the kid?”

  I shake my head. “One hundred percent negative.”

  He frowns. “Look who I’m asking.”

  Three hours later, we’re heading home. While we were at the station, Laurie had made some calls and arranged for Nancy to take Ricky to Will Rubenstein’s house. He’s going to sleep over there.

  When we get home, I walk Tara and Sebastian, and Laurie goes with me. I don’t think we say five words to each other; we’re both lost in thought. In fact, I think the only thing I say the whole time is, “Sebastian, get that out of your mouth.”

  After the walk, Laurie and I sit in the den with glasses of wine. “Maybe you shouldn’t have sent in that license renewal,” she says.

  “Now you come up with that?”

  “I know, and you have a right to be annoyed. But we have a child now, and we can’t have all this ugly stuff in our lives.”

  “We shield him from it pretty well.”

  “Maybe, but Ricky is smart, and so are the other kids. And they hear things. I can imagine someone coming up to Ricky during recess tomorrow and saying, ‘Hey, I hear your mother killed somebody yesterday.’”

  “I don’t want to reverse the roles here,” I say, “but we’re on the right side of this. We’re the good guys.”

  “I know,” she says, not sounding convinced. Then, “You tried to save my life today.”

  I nod. “Just protecting the little woman.”

  “It was wonderful. Not very effective, but wonderful.”

  “I need to work on my technique,” I say.

  She puts her glass down and says, “I think your technique is fine.” Then, “Let’s go to bed.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “The comment about technique and the one about going to bed were not related,” she says.

  “Oh, I was hoping they were.”

  “Will you hold me?”

  “If I have to,” I say. “I am your willing servant.”

  She sees the look in my eye and says, “That’s all you’re going to do for now.”

  “What about for later?”

  “We can worry about later, later.”

  I nod. “That works.”

  udge Moran conducts a formal hearing in the courtroom, rather than the planned meeting in chambers. It’s a sign that Jill’s murder has elevated the issue in his mind, and it certainly should. The jury is not present, nor are any media or members of the public. Just the judge, clerk, bailiff, attorneys, and Keith.

  I spent about fifteen minutes alone with Keith at the defense table before this hearing and updated him on what has gone on. He knew, of course, that Jill had been killed. It dominated the news so much that it pushed the Keith-fatherhood story to the side.

  What Keith didn’t know, but which I told him, was my strong belief that Jill was Dylan’s mother. Actually, it’s more than a strong belief; Jill’s reaction when Laurie confronted her about it makes it a certainty.

  “So why would she have gone through that whole adoption thing? Why not just have the baby and keep him?”

  “Maybe this was her way of keeping you out of it? You wouldn’t press to be a co-parent if you didn’t know you were the father.”

  He shook his head. “No way she or anyone would go to those lengths for that,” he says.

  “You’re probably right, but she was very upset when she heard that you were the father.” Even as the words leave my mouth, I’m aware that they aren’t completely true. Jill was more upset about the news getting out than the content of the news.

  But more importantly, I just figured out what that means. I don’t say anything, because Keith is not the one to say it to and because Mitch Kelly walks over to us.

  “Some weekend,” Kelly says, shaking my hand.

  I nod and return the shake. “Some weekend,” I say.

  So far this is not exactly an Algonquin roundtable conversation.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” he says and then walks away.

  I don’t have time to ponder this sudden burst of humanity from the opposition, because Judge Moran is calling the hearing to order.

  “Well, gentlemen, we have some new developments to ponder. I am obviously concerned about the effects all of this might have had on the jury, should they have been exposed to it. Can I have your comments?”

  Keith told me before court that he did not want a mistrial under any circumstances, that he did not want to go through this again or sit in prison one day more than necessary.

  “The defense has confidence that the jurors followed your directive, Your Honor. We think that the proper course is for the jury to begin their deliberations.”

  Kelly has the opposite view. “Your Honor, the media coverage this weekend was not just intense, it was in the nature of an onslaught. Even if the jurors in good faith tried to avoid it, I don’t see how all of them could have.”

  “So what would your remedy be?” Judge Moran asks.

  “Much as I hate to say it, I think a mistrial is called for. Justice demands it.”

  I think that Kelly is more worried about the effect Jill’s murder will have on the jurors than the unmasking of Keith as Dylan’s father. This is the second murder in the case—Teresa Mullins was the first—and both have happened while Keith has been in jail. It certainly sends the message that there are other bad guys out there, and if they could commit murder, they could commit a child abduction.

  It’s also possible that he’s starting to get the idea that Keith might be innocent and that he’s spent a hell of a long time putting the wrong man behind bars. Maybe he considers a mistrial less of a humiliation than a loss and not as much of a stab to his conscience as another win.

  I can feel Keith flinch next to me when Kelly says the word mistrial. I stand and say, “Your Honor, I don’t think we can just take for granted that the jurors have violated a court directive. Your Honor should at least question them individually before making that determination. And if one or two have been exposed, well, that’s what we have alternates for.”

  Judge Moran agrees, and the jurors are brought into court individually. He has told us that he will do all the questioning, which is fine with me.

  I’m feeling pretty confident here. The jurors are being asked if they violated repeated orders from the judge, and the judge has no way of knowing if they are telling the truth. If these jurors are dumb or honest enough to admit to it, they are too dumb and honest to serve.

  Sure enough, they all turn out to be as pure as the driven snow. None of them saw or heard anything in the media; they all spent the weekend huddled in the cone of silence.

  At this point, having agreed to go through this process, the judge has no basis to do anything other than move forward. So that’s what he does, sending the jurors off to deliberate.

  Which is good news for us, or bad news for us.

  As always in these situations, we’ll know when we know.

  Just before the bailiff takes Keith away, he leans in and asks me the key question.

  “Andy, with all that’s gone on … do you know where my son is?”

  I tell him that I don’t.

  But I do.

  nce I’m home, I tell Laurie what I realized when I was talking to Keith. “I told Keith how upset Jill was to find out that he was the father. But like I told you, she was more upset that the news got out. And I think I’ve figured out why.”


  “Don’t keep me in suspense,” Laurie says.

  “I think Jill has either known Keith was the father, or more likely knew there was a chance it was him. But she was upset that it was out in the media, because she just didn’t want other people to know, or more likely, some specific person.”

  “Renny Kaiser?”

  I nod. “Renny Kaiser.”

  “Where are you getting this from?” she asks, not buying into what I’m saying, at least not yet.

  “The dark recesses of my mind. But it makes sense; hear me out, okay? She had to know that Keith might be the father, I mean, she was sleeping with him, right?”

  “Clearly,” Laurie says.

  “So why was she so freaked out about it getting out? The embarrassment? That couldn’t be it, because the stories didn’t say that she was the mother. So she would have no reason to be embarrassed; what’s the difference who the natural father of an abandoned and adopted baby turned out to be?

  “The only reason to be so upset about the publicity saying Keith was the father is that she told someone else a different story, and now they were going to find out the truth.”

  “Keep going,” Laurie says. “You’re on a roll.”

  “I think she was sleeping with Renny Kaiser at the same time, and she wanted him to think that he was the father. She was using that information to get something, probably money to save her company. And the news report blew the whole scam out of the water; Renny was going to find out the truth.”

  Laurie nods. “Which explains her reaction.”

  “Right. You talked to her just like I did. Think about how she sounded. She wasn’t just upset; she was afraid. Actually, forget afraid; she was in a panic.”

  “It turns out that she had a right to be,” she says.

  “Exactly. The person that she lied to about the fatherhood felt betrayed by it, so he killed her. Which brings us back to Renny Kaiser. You weren’t far off when you said he was the father. Because the truth is that he thought he was the father.”

  Another nod from Laurie. “And that little boy living with the Kaisers is Keith and Jill’s son, Dylan Hickman.”