We find the park easily enough, but there is no way to drive all the way to the north end. We leave the car in the parking area and start walking toward where Emmonds is supposed to be waiting.
When we see the building in the distance, Marcus tells me to wait behind. He doesn’t say so in so many words; instead he grunts and pushes me up against a tree. He’s either making sure that it’s safe to go farther or he’s just sick of me.
Fifteen minutes later, I see Marcus, and he’s waving for me to come toward him. “He’s dead,” Marcus says, which qualifies as a soliloquy coming from him, and a scary one at that.
We break into a run and get to the greenhouse, and sure enough, there is a very dead Emmonds lying on the building floor. I don’t see any blood, but his neck and head are at an angle that probably would not sustain life.
I want to ask Marcus if he killed him, but I’m afraid to. I’m pretty confident he didn’t, because he’d have no reason to. He knows we came here to talk to Emmonds, not to bury him.
Instead I ask Marcus if he saw the killer, and he says, “Nunh,” which pretty much says it all.
Protocol mandates that I call 9-1-1 and report this and then wait around for the police to arrive, at which point they would take hours to question me in detail. Park Ridge is out of Pete Stanton’s jurisdiction, so it would take even longer with local cops who don’t know me.
I don’t have time for that. Marcus and I run to the car, and once we’re in it, I call Pete and tell him I have to see him right away.
“What now?”
“Pete, I want you to trust me on this. It’s urgent.”
“Are you with another dead body?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
He tells me to come right down to the station, and I hang up. My next call is to the Park Ridge police to report a dead body in the greenhouse at the north end of the park.
“Are you there now, sir?” the operator asks.
“No.”
“You need to return to that area, sir, unless you feel in personal danger.”
“If you need me, contact Captain Pete Stanton of the Paterson Police Department,” I say and then hang up.
I get to Pete’s office in less than a half hour. I ask Marcus to wait in the lobby; he’s not really involved in what I’m about to say, and I’m not sure I want him to hear me say it.
Pete comes out to meet me and says, “The Park Ridge police say you’re a suspect in a murder.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I’ll be happy to make the arrest. What the hell is going on?”
We go back to his office, and I start by describing how we found Emmonds’s body.
“What were you doing there?”
“He told me he was going to give me even more detail about what was going on at Finding Home, and then he’d let me bring him to the police to turn himself in.”
“So you had spoken to him before?”
“Yes, and that’s why I didn’t wait around there and instead came here. You need to get a search warrant right away; you can take down the entire operation.”
“Which entire operation might that be?” he asks.
I proceed to tell him about the drug-manufacturing operation at Finding Home, Renny Kaiser’s involvement at the head of it, and Kaiser’s planned evening departure tonight.
“Emmonds told you all this?”
It’s the moment of truth or non-truth. I had agreed with Laurie that we might revisit the idea of my lying later. Well, this is as later as it gets, so here goes. “He did; in a phone call last night,” I say.
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”
“You don’t know,” I say. “And if you choose to, you can sit on your ass and do nothing and then find out I was right. And Renny Kaiser can sit in Dubai with an abducted child and laugh in your face.”
“Give me some proof,” he says, apparently uncowed.
“Okay. Emmonds gave me the aviation company that Kaiser reserved the plane with. He’s leaving with his family tonight at six. Check it out.”
“What’s the name of the company?”
I tell him, and Pete calls someone with the instructions to check it out, without revealing anything. Fifteen minutes later, he gets a phone call, listens briefly, and then hangs up. “It checks out,” he says.
“I accept your apology,” I say. “Now get the damn search warrant.”
The phone rings again, and Pete picks it up. “Yeah, he’s here,” he says. “Okay, I’ll tell him.”
He puts down the phone and says, “There’s a verdict.”
don’t want to be in court right now. I want to be with Pete to make sure he gets the damn search warrant. And then I want to be at Finding Home when it’s executed.
My fear is that if Kaiser had thought Emmonds had turned on him, and that’s why he had him killed, then he might have pulled the plug on the whole operation. He could even have cleaned out the building where the drugs were being manufactured; by now it could be a day care center, or an ice-skating rink.
If the search doesn’t happen, or if it doesn’t turn up what I know was there, then all is lost. I also will be in very deep shit, but I can’t worry about that now. All I can do is go to court, hear the verdict, and hope Pete doesn’t screw it up.
I am worried about the verdict; I think we’ll probably lose. All that does is put added pressure on what is happening outside the courthouse. If Kaiser is arrested and Dylan Hickman is proven to have been in his house all along, then even if Keith is convicted, he will soon be out of jail.
But if Kaiser gets away, then Keith will have lost his last chance at freedom.
Keith is brought to the defense table, and Judge Moran and the jury follow shortly. The tension is etched in Keith’s face, and just before we are told to rise, he says, “What do you think?”
“Thinking is not my specialty,” I say. “I’m better at listening.”
“Hike thinks we’re going to lose,” he says.
“You will probably never say a more meaningless sentence for the rest of your life,” I say.
Judge Moran asks the bailiff to bring him the verdict form, and he reads it without changing his expression. The bailiff then takes it to the court clerk, who reads it in the same expressionless monotone that she used to read Teresa Mullins’s testimony.
“As it relates to count one, we, the jury, in the case of the State of New Jersey v. Keith Wachtel, find the defendant, Keith Wachtel, not guilty of the crime of kidnapping.”
Keith sags slightly and then turns and hugs me. I’m not a big fan of hugs in any circumstances, unless Laurie is involved. But this time I like it even less, because it eats up precious seconds.
“You did an amazing job,” he says. “I can never thank you enough.”
“Keith, I’m beyond happy that we won and that you’re free. But I gotta go.”
As I’m running to the car, I call Pete on his cell phone but get no answer. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but by the time I get to the car, I’ve made my decision. I’m going to Finding Home.
The thirty-minute drive feels like it takes a little more than a week. When I finally get there and pull onto the campus, I see a beautiful sight: flashing red lights. There are Paterson police cars, Park Ridge police cars, and a couple of DEA vans. I’m sure somewhere in that mass of law enforcement are some FBI agents as well.
I don’t see Pete or his car, so I don’t even bother to stop and get out. They won’t let me near the place anyway, and that’s okay. Based on the activity level, I’m pretty confident that things are working out on this end.
It’s the other end I’m worried about. It’s almost five o’clock, and Westchester County Airport is a good drive from here. I’m hoping that is where Pete is headed, and I further hope that he called ahead to get some cops or agents there.
I hit a lot of traffic, and I’m pretty much going insane as I watch the clock move toward six o’clock. For all I know, Kaiser
moved up the flight because things in his world were deteriorating; maybe he’s on his third in-flight cocktail already.
I get to the airport just in time to see two police cars pulling out. I recognize the passengers in the back seats from their Google images. In one of the cars is Kaiser’s wife and older child, and in the other is Dylan Hickman.
In the back seat with Dylan is a woman, hopefully a therapist of some sort brought here for this purpose. Dylan is crying; he’s just been wrenched from the only family he’s ever known, and while I am happy about it, it breaks my heart. I’m glad I got here a few minutes late so I didn’t have to watch that scene unfold.
I go into the airport and am stopped by police, who have set up something of a perimeter. I see Pete, and more importantly, he sees me, and he instructs the cop to let me in. Pete is standing with other officers and six other guys who must be FBI agents, because they’re all dressed in the same suit.
Two of them are putting Renny into the back seat of one of their vehicles. He’s dressed casually in a sport shirt, sneakers, and jeans, not even wearing a coat. I wonder if he was already on the plane before they got to him.
He sees me approaching, and I give him a little smile and wave. I don’t want to overdo the victory lap; even though he’s not going to be in a position to kill me for many years, I’m sure he knows people who would happily step in to fill the breach.
He doesn’t wave back.
Pete comes over to me and says, “This worked out pretty well.”
“You’re welcome,” I say.
“If Emmonds already told you everything and was turning himself in, why the hell would he want to meet you in a secluded area of a park?”
“That is indeed a vexing question,” I say. “But it is destined to be an eternal one, because alas, we’re never going to get to ask him.”
“I don’t believe he told you anything. You told me what you thought was the case, and Emmonds had nothing to do with it. I think you lied to me.”
“Pete, you’re a hero. You made an arrest the feds have been dying to make for years, and you saved a little boy. You’ll probably be on the goddamn Today show. You’ll be so famous and so admired that you might someday even be able to get a woman to go out with you. So my sincere advice to you is, let it go.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“Do you think you can pay for your own beer and hamburgers for the rest of your life?”
He thinks about it for a few seconds and says, “On the other hand, all’s well that ends well.”
e always have a small party at Charlie’s to celebrate a winning case. This one is a bit different from most of the others, though, in that the victorious defendant hasn’t shown up. He said he’d try to stop in for a few minutes later, as soon as a neighbor showed up to watch Dylan.
Laurie, Willie, Sondra, Sam, Marcus, Edna, Pete, and Vince are here. I don’t even know if Pete and Vince knew there was a party; I think they just came here to eat, drink, and watch sports like any other night. So for them it’s no different; they never pick up a check anyway.
This time, I extract a price from Pete; I make him tell me the status of the case against Renny Kaiser. It’s going very, very well.
Hike isn’t here; he went down to South Carolina to go fishing with his buddies. I’ve come to terms with the pods having taken over Hike’s mind and body; they’ve actually done a really good job with it.
The talk gets around to the case, as it always does, and Laurie asks me why Jill had the baby in the first place.
“I don’t think she ever wanted him,” I say. “She used Dylan to draw Renny in by telling him the baby was his; for all I know, she faked DNA results to make him believe it. Both Renny and his wife wanted the baby very badly; she can’t have kids, and their older child is adopted.
“They believed Dylan was Renny’s natural son, which is why they were so anxious to have him. Renny must have an understanding wife.”
“How do you know all this?” she asks.
“Pete told me. Zachary Alford is trying to make a deal; he’s been singing to the police like they were his board of directors.”
“But why did Jill go through the whole abandonment and adoption routine?”
“It probably took a while to get Renny to commit; and at first he just put in enough money to keep the company afloat. They each had something the other wanted, so they were playing a game of chicken.
“But it turned out that he finally realized he could get much more out of his investment than Dylan, that the company was a potential gold mine as a way to produce his illegal drugs. That’s when he stepped up and bought half the company.
“This scheme also represented a way for everybody to get what they wanted, while getting rid of Keith permanently.”
“Why was that so important?” Sam asks.
“Because of the lawsuit Keith was preparing. The last thing they wanted was to have Finding Home in the kind of spotlight that a court action would bring, with the resulting depositions and financial scrutiny. That’s why they gave all the people they fired such generous exit packages; they wanted a clean break.”
“She gave away her own child,” Laurie says, shaking her head in amazement.
“People do that every day,” I say. “That’s why there are adoptions.”
“But she kept Dylan’s room intact.”
I nod. “It was part of the act, part of the show. She had plenty of other rooms in that house.”
Willie’s turn. “How did Teresa wind up with Cody?”
“I’m just guessing here, but I doubt that the plan was for the abductor to take him. Once he did, Jill would have wanted to make sure he was okay; the irony is she loved that dog. So Teresa, who was going to disappear anyway, was a logical choice.”
“She seemed so anxious to get Dylan back, to find out if we had learned anything about him,” Laurie says. She just can’t wrap her head about a mother using her son as a bargaining chip.
I nod. “Alford told Pete that she knew where he was all along. I think what she really wanted was information on how our investigation was going so she could pass it on to Kaiser and Alford.”
Keith shows up but again apologizes that he can’t stay long.
“How’s it going with Dylan?” Laurie asks.
“It’s a struggle; he misses his family, and there’s nothing I can do. But the therapist says he’s doing very well and that it will get better each day.”
“Are you going to look for work?” Laurie asks.
“No, I think I’m going to devote all my time to being a father, at least for now, thanks to you and Andy.”
Laurie and I have lent Keith a substantial amount of money so that he can live and take care of Dylan without any stress.
We are preparing a civil lawsuit against Finding Home, Renny Kaiser, and Jill Hickman’s estate. There is no doubt that Keith will be a rich man when it’s settled, and he will pay us back. He’s also said that he wants to pay what would have been my bill for representing him.
Minus the one dollar that he’s already put up.
“And how’s Cody?” Willie asks.
“Doing great, but I’m spoiling him with biscuits.” Then he smiles broadly. “Hey, that dog got me out of prison.”
It’s not until Laurie and I are on the way home that she asks me the question I’ve been expecting for three days.
“Did Emmonds really give you the information you used to get the warrant, or did you make it up?”
“Should I tell you what you want to hear or the truth?”
“What I want to hear,” she says.
“He told me everything. I would never lie about it; I’m an officer of the court. Our system depends on complete honesty and integrity from everyone involved.”
“Okay. Now try the truth.”
I take a deep breath. “I lied through my teeth; Emmonds never had a chance to tell me a thing. I’m sorry … actually, I’m not sorry. I could not let that little boy get on
that plane.”
Laurie doesn’t say anything, which is either a good or bad sign.
“Have I dropped down a notch in your eyes because I did that?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes.” Then comes a smile. “But you started from a really high place.”
I exhale for the first time since the conversation started. “So we’re good?”
She takes my hand; it only leaves me with one to drive, which is more than enough. “We’re good,” she says. “Did I ever tell you I find lawyers really sexy?”
“Really?” I ask. “Did I ever tell you I sent that form in?”
ALSO BY DAVID ROSENFELT
ANDY CARPENTER NOVELS
The Twelve Dogs of Christmas
Outfoxed
Who Let the Dog Out?
Hounded
Unleashed
Leader of the Pack
One Dog Night
Dog Tags
New Tricks
Play Dead
Dead Center
Sudden Death
Bury the Lead
First Degree
Open and Shut
THRILLERS
Blackout
Without Warning
Airtight
Heart of a Killer
On Borrowed Time
Down to the Wire
Don’t Tell a Soul
NONFICTION
Lessons from Tara: Life Advice from the World’s Most Brilliant Dog
Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Rosenfelt is the Edgar and Shamus Award–nominated author of several stand-alone books and fourteen previous Andy Carpenter novels, most recently The Twelve Dogs of Christmas. After years living in California, he and his wife moved to Maine with twenty-five golden retrievers that they’ve rescued. Rosenfelt’s hilarious account of this cross-country move, Dogtripping, is available from St. Martin’s Press. You can sign up for email updates here.
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