Deck the Hounds--An Andy Carpenter Mystery

by David Rosenfelt

  They’ve since bought more; I would be surprised if a sequoia could stand up under the weight. I do know one thing; if they’ve added any more lights, then when they turn them on, planes will start landing in our living room.

  Once I get home, we all have dinner and then I take Tara, Sebastian, and Zoey for a walk. For a dog carrying around a bunch of other dogs inside her, Zoey gets around pretty damn well. She can certainly run rings around Sebastian, but then again there are file cabinets than can run rings around Sebastian.

  I love walking with the dogs at this time of year. For some strange reason I like the frigid air, and the dogs clearly prefer it to the heat of summer. But I also like the Christmas lights on the houses, and have since I was a kid.

  When I get back, Ricky is already in bed, and I go to perform the “tuck in” ritual, which is a particular favorite of mine. We always take five minutes to talk about whatever Ricky wants to talk about; usually around this time of year it’s whether the Giants will make the playoffs.

  But this time he asks me how “Mr. Carrigan” is doing. I don’t know if he fully understands what is going on; it seems like he knows that the police think he did something wrong, even though Ricky believes he didn’t.

  If I’m not careful, there will be another defense attorney in the family. That is the kind of development for which the term “God forbid” was coined.

  “He’s doing okay, Rick,” I say, not exactly a full blown answer to his question.

  “Does he miss Zoey?”

  I nod. “Very much. But he knows we’ll take good care of her until he can see her again.”

  “Will he live with her over the garage?”

  “We don’t know that yet.”

  “I hope he does. Just don’t let them live on the cold street. Okay, Dad?”

  “I promise.”

  He smiles, having accomplished his conversational mission. I wouldn’t be surprised if Laurie put him up to it.

  If I were grading police investigative reports, I’d rank this one as borderline pathetic.

  The officer who chronicled it, Sergeant Nathan Robbins, made that clear with the work he put into it; he did everything but write a cover letter saying, “I completely do not give a shit about this investigation.”

  The attempted robbery, or assault, or whatever, of Don Carrigan that night was of no particular concern to Sergeant Robbins. I can’t judge whether Carrigan’s status as “homeless” contributed to that attitude, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

  Perhaps if Carrigan had a tattoo on his forehead that identified him as a former Green Beret, things might have been different. Or perhaps not.

  In fact, the ironic reason that the report was filed at all was probably because of Zoey’s involvement. The video is said to show her biting the assailant, and the man pulling back in pain. I assume that Robbins must have realized that at some point some charges or lawsuits could be filed by somebody, so he had better document it all, rather than just move on.

  But for such a skimpy report, there are a whole collection of things that interest me. For one, there is the video itself, a copy of which is included in these materials. It’s in the form of a DVD, which I pop into my computer, first calling Laurie in to watch it with me. I am nothing if not a romantic.

  The video shows Carrigan and Zoey lying on the ground; they are in the same place that I had seen them the day before, when I gave him the money and the PetSmart card.

  A heavyset man walks into the frame and toward Carrigan. I’m already surprised; Carrigan told me the man was driving a large car, possibly an SUV. But this guy is walking, not driving a vehicle.

  The man leans in, as if talking to him; in the darkness it is hard to tell if he’s carrying a weapon. In any event, he clearly did not get the reaction he expected.

  Carrigan immediately went into action and kicked the guy in the chest, from a prone position. Almost simultaneous to that, as if they had prearranged the choreography, Zoey bit the guy, and he recoiled.

  And I think, though I’m not sure, something went flying out of the guy’s hand.

  “That’s a gun,” Laurie says. She stops the image, goes back and forth a few times, and finally says, “I’m positive it’s a gun.” I still can’t tell, but I’ll take her word for it.

  Suddenly, a black SUV pulls up to where this is all happening, with the passenger door already open. “He wasn’t alone,” I say, stating the obvious. The only alternative is that he was driving the car from outside of it, telepathically.

  We can only see the side of the SUV; the license plates are completely out of the video. I have no idea what the make of the car would be; I’m not into cars at all. It’s possible that someone else could figure it out, should that become necessary.

  The assailant retreats, stopping to pick something off the ground. “He grabbed the gun,” Laurie says. Carrigan seemed unafraid and was moving toward the guy, but he got into the passenger side of the SUV, closed the door, and the car drove off. Carrigan had no way to chase him if he wanted to.

  End of video.

  “You’re sure that was a gun?” I ask.

  “I am.”

  “Then why didn’t he use it? He was a good seven feet from Carrigan at the point he picked it up. Why not turn and fire?”

  She smiles. “My job is to tell you what happened. You’re in charge of figuring out why.”

  The video now dispensed of, I start in on the written documents, and it’s here that we catch a real break. Among the few pieces of evidence that Robbins preserved is a piece of cloth, probably from the sleeve of the assailant.

  With blood on it.

  I file a motion with the court to have a DNA test on the bloody sleeve.

  I ask that it be done on an expedited basis. There is no way that request will be granted, especially since the assault that night really has nothing whatsoever to do with the crime with which Carrigan is charged.

  So I also ask for a piece of the evidence, with enough of the blood on it that it can be tested. That is within my right, and the judge orders it. The prosecution has the right to sit in on any testing I do, but they decline, for two obvious reasons.

  One is that they don’t see how it has anything to do with their case, and the other is that they have preserved the majority of the material, so they could conduct their own tests at a later date if for some reason they wanted to challenge whatever result I come up with.

  I ask Hike to pick up the piece of the sleeve that we’re being given, which is at the evidence room in Passaic County. I tell him to bring it to me at the state lab in Newark, where I will be kissing the ass of one Horace Persky.

  Horace and I have done mutually beneficial business in the past. He is said to be a genius at what he does, but since I’m far from a genius at what he does, I have no way to judge the accuracy of that assessment.

  Horace is the number two person at the lab, and has been for as long as I can remember. Three “number ones” have come and gone during his tenure, but each time he has turned down the opportunity for promotion. His expressed reason, which I have no cause to doubt, is that he doesn’t need the aggravation.

  On a number of occasions I have needed lab work done on a very expedited basis, and Horace always comes through for me. Coincidentally, it comes at a time when he needs tickets to a particular sporting event, and I’ve come through for him.

  Hike brings me the sleeve in an evidence bag, and I give it to Horace with the comment that I need it as soon as humanly possible. I really don’t, but since I’m going to have to pay for this big time, I might as well make some demands of my own.

  His response is to nod and say, “Giants-Eagles is a big one this Sunday, huh?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Giants win and they make the playoffs.”

  “Sure do. You know, Horace, I was just thinking. I have two tickets to the game lying around which I can’t use. Any chance you’d want them?”

  “I might,” he says. “What yard line?”r />
  “I don’t know yet. They’re lying around at a ticket broker.”

  We consummate the deal, as we always do, and I leave him to do his work, while I call my scalper to get ripped off on the two tickets. Then I head off to see my client again at the jail.

  As I always do when I visit a client in jail, I ask how he’s doing and whether I can do anything to make his life more comfortable. Carrigan always shrugs it off with an “everything’s fine.” Considering he was lying on frozen cement in front of a pawn shop and wondering where his next meal was coming from, he’s probably telling the truth.

  I give him a picture of Zoey, sitting on a recliner chair and looking regal. He smiles when he sees it. “She looks happy,” he says. “I hope I get to see her again.”

  “So do I,” I say. Then, “I saw the video of the attack on you, when she bit that guy.”

  He smiles. “She seemed to take a pretty good chunk out of him. I rewarded her with a biscuit, which probably wasn’t the right thing to do.”

  “You handled yourself pretty well also.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Laurie thinks the guy had a gun.”

  Carrigan nods. “He did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “You didn’t ask; we didn’t even talk about that night. What does it have to do with the murder I’m supposed to have committed?”

  “So a guy comes after you with a gun, and you don’t think it’s worth mentioning?” I ask.

  “Andy, we live in different worlds. If he shot me, I would have mentioned it.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Yes. Something like ‘get up and come with me,’ or ‘let’s go,’ or words to that effect. I’m paraphrasing, but I would think with reasonable accuracy. We didn’t have a long conversation. He made his demand, and I successfully resisted.”

  “When he backed off, he picked up the gun and took it with him,” I say.

  “Yes. I recall that.”

  “Why didn’t he shoot you?”

  He shrugs. “You’d have to ask him that. But I don’t think he had any intention of shooting me. If he had, he wouldn’t have had to come so close in the first place. He could have shot from ten feet away, without waking me up and with little chance of missing.”

  “So he wanted you to go with him?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Any idea why?”

  He shakes his head. “Not the slightest.”

  “You also didn’t tell me he wasn’t alone, that there was someone else driving the SUV.”

  “I refer you to my previous explanation about you not asking me. Can I in turn ask why this is important?”

  “Here’s how these things work,” I say. “Everything is important, until it isn’t.”

  He stops to consider this for a moment, then, “Your current world, and my former one, are not so different after all.”

  “In both, it is you that is facing the risk.”

  “They give us an hour’s access to the computers in the prison library,” he says, “though they rather rigorously manage what we can access. I’ve been reading about you.”

  “Uh, oh.”

  “As you know but won’t admit, your record is stellar. But there’s one newspaper article that talks of you as only being willing to represent people you are convinced are innocent.”

  I nod. “I’m lucky to have the resources to be able to stick with that.”

  “You believe in my innocence? On a gut level?”

  “I didn’t; now I do. Laurie has all along.”

  He nods. “Your gut is right. But there’s something you should know. With the way … with the way I am, I am not living my life out in a cage. There is no way, and there is no amount of medication that could make that palatable.”

  I don’t want to think about the implications of that, and I don’t want to focus on the fact that I don’t blame him.

  The hunt for the sniper doesn’t seem to be going well, but that hasn’t stopped the media from obsessing about it. There are any number of rumors and false alarms about where the elusive Chuck Simmons could be; psychics have even weighed in to report that he has killed himself, has escaped to Mexico, and was spotted at a Giants game.

  On a local level, it’s been similar to when that plane went down somewhere in the Pacific, with no trace of where it crashed. Even with no new news, they kept finding new angles and new so-called experts to talk to. It seems like every psychologist in America has opined on Simmons, why he has done what he’s done, and what he’s likely to do next.

  But eventually they are going to run out of stuff to write, which is why there are fortunately new murders and disasters to step in and fill the breach. The one that is being reported this morning is the shooting death of Ernie Vinson.

  While it took place at a Holiday Inn in New London, Connecticut, it gets coverage here because Ernie is a local New Jersey guy. It wouldn’t be correct to describe him as a favorite son, or even a respected citizen. Ernie’s fame comes from the fact that he is, or rather was, a gangster. He was an enforcer in the Joseph Russo crime family.

  Mob killings are big news because they could lead to mob wars, which are even bigger news.

  The details are understandably sketchy, both because the murder was just discovered and because the police are unlikely to be sharing anything significant with the media at this point. All that the media knows is that the killer was believed to be a professional. I suspect that in this case that means he was efficient in the manner of the killing, and probably that he was smart and experienced enough to have dodged video camera surveillance.

  Hike calls with the first piece of good news we have received; the change of venue motion that he filed has been granted. It doesn’t change the facts of the case, or even really the dynamics of the trial, but it will be a hell of a lot more convenient.

  Of course, the downside to it is that we’ll have a judge who knows me. Where judges are concerned, to know me is to dislike me, since I don’t always do everything by the book, and they generally worship the book. On the other hand, if we tried the case in Essex County, whichever judge we got would learn to dislike me by the time we got through jury selection.

  My feeling good about this news lasts for about twenty minutes, and is brought to a crashing halt by another phone call from Hike. “This is bad,” he says.

  Coming from Hike, “this is bad” does not necessarily portend anything serious, because he thinks everything is bad.

  But this time he’s correct. “They have a witness who claims our client admitted to the McMaster murder. The guy says Carrigan bragged about it.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Someone who apparently met Carrigan at a soup kitchen, or a shelter, or whatever the hell it is. It’s in downtown Paterson, same place where they found the ring. We just got discovery on it.”

  “Get it to me, please.”

  “Will do.”

  This has the potential to be a major problem, depending on the credibility of the witness. If we’re contending that Carrigan was framed for the murder, and that’s our most likely way for claiming how the hat got left at the scene and the ring was in the locker, then this new witness could be part of the frame. At least that is how we will try to spin it.

  I’ve dealt with jailhouse snitches a lot, and they are not exactly the most reliable witnesses. Usually they see their testimony as a way to lessen their own sentences, and very often they are correct.

  I’ve never had any experience with soup kitchen snitches, so I’m breaking new ground here. They might have their own reasons to lie; I would guess money being right up there. But each case is different, so we’ll see.

  I tell Hike to file a motion seeking to interview the witness, whose name is Jaime Tomasino. It won’t work; in criminal cases the defense does not have an automatic right to depose an adverse witness. But I believe in giving everything a shot.

  In typical fashion, the prosecution did not include a
ny information about Tomasino, such as his address, because they don’t want to give us a chance to get at him before trial. This does not present much of a problem, because of the existence of Sam Willis.

  So next I call Sam and ask him to try to track down Tomasino. He’s got an unusual name, so I would think Sam would have a good chance of learning things about him, even without any more information. I specifically say that I’d like a photo and an address. Then I head into the bedroom to tell Laurie what has happened.

  This proves rather difficult to accomplish, because she’s on an exercise bike, pedaling away, and wearing headphones. I assume she’s listening to music; she says that doing so propels her to greater cycling heights. We have different tastes in music; my choices invariably lull me to sleep.

  I make a hand motion indicating that I need to talk to her, and she holds up one finger, in effect telling me she’ll be with me in a minute; she just needs to finish the program. One minute becomes five, as I stand here like a lazy idiot watching her exhaust herself. Five minutes watching a biker doesn’t feel as long as five minutes actually being on a bike, which feels like five decades, but it still seems to take forever.

  Finally she stops pedaling and takes off her headphones. “Good ride?” I ask.

  She’s getting her breath. “Great ride.”

  “Yet you remain in the exact place you started.”

  She nods. “That’s the beauty of it.”

  I tell her the news about Jaime Tomasino, the witness that the prosecution has uncovered. “Have you talked to Carrigan?” she asks.

  “Not yet; we just got the discovery. But his position is that he didn’t commit the murder, so he certainly won’t say that he told Tomasino that he did.”

  “But he might say whether or not he knows the guy.”

  That’s a good point, and I’ll certainly ask Carrigan about it. Laurie gets off the bike, and I follow her into the kitchen. I’m going to have a cup of coffee while she makes herself some kind of healthy shake, composed of every revolting green vegetable known to humanity. She also adds some kind of powder, which I have to assume is a crushed and dried version of a revolting vegetable.