Dog Tags ac-8

by David Rosenfelt

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she says.

  “Without a pillow? I don’t think so. Did we get the hearing? It took you long enough.”

  “Nine o’clock Wednesday morning. He cleared his calendar.”

  “Did he say anything?’

  “I couldn’t tell. He was laughing too hard.”

  CHAPTER 14

  COMPARED WITH BILLY ZIMMERMAN, MILO’S CASE IS A SLAM DUNK.

  That’s because the police finally revealed the identity of the guy that Billy is accused of murdering the other night. The victim was, as Billy said, one Jack Erskine. The problem is that his full name and title was Major Jack Erskine, recently returned from a four-year deployment in Iraq.

  The negative implication for Billy in all this is that Erskine was in charge of security operations in and around the Baghdad area, which meant that Billy was under his command. The papers are already speculating that this was a revenge killing, that Billy somehow blamed Erskine for his terrible injury.

  In any event, the Carpenterian theory holds that there are no such things as coincidences in murder cases, and there’s no way that this has a chance of disproving it. Billy’s connection to the victim, whatever the circumstances, is going to be a mountain for his lawyer to scale.

  I spend the day with Eddie Lynch in the office, going over preparations for tomorrow’s hearing. Eddie’s starting to grow on me; I’m finding that if I absolutely tune out everything he says, he’s not that annoying. And his mind is sharp as a tack. He might even be Kevin’s equal as an attorney.

  “By the way, why do people call you Hike?”

  He shrugs. “My brother is four years older than me. When he was around ten, he wouldn’t let me play football with him and his friends. So I used to cry to my mother about it, and she forced him to let me play.”

  “Let me guess,” I say. “All they would do is let you hike the ball.”

  “You got it.”

  Having solved that mystery, I turn my attention back to the hearing tomorrow. Once I’m sure we are as prepared as we’re going to be, I head home. Laurie and I take Tara for a walk through Eastside Park, and then drive over to The Bonfire for dinner. It’s a restaurant that’s been in the same location on Market Street forever; my parents told me they used to hang out there when they were in high school.

  Laurie and I don’t do small talk; we never have, and hopefully we never will. We have the ability to either talk about things that are of consequence to us, or stay silent without any discomfort at all.

  As soon as we sit down, Laurie starts asking me questions about how I’m doing on Milo’s case, which leads into more probing questions about Billy Zimmerman.

  I can see that she’s much more interested in it than I am. “You miss it, Laurie.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  I nod. Laurie has spent her entire life in law enforcement, either public or private, and I can tell that she misses the action. “It is. I thought you liked teaching?”

  “I do. I really do. But teaching is something I enjoy. Being out on the street is something I am.”

  “You’re not ready. You know that.” It took a while for her to recover from the shooting; she bled so severely that her brain did not receive oxygen for a while, long enough to sustain some damage. She still has some weakness on her left side, and she tires easily. Her progress has been tremendous, amazing even her doctors, but she’s not all the way back yet.

  “My mind is ready.”

  “So?”

  “So I want to help on the case.”

  “It’ll be all over one way or the other tomorrow.”

  “I’m not talking about Milo. I’m talking about Billy Zimmerman.”

  “He doesn’t want a lawyer,” I say. “He thinks he’s going to deal himself out of it.”

  “When he finds out he can’t, he’s going to come to you for help.”

  I shake my head. “Not me. I’m a one-Zimmerman attorney. Milo is my man. Billy can find somebody else.”

  “You know better than that, Andy. You’ll come up with a reason to take him on as a client. Maybe you’ll want Milo to have his father back, or maybe it’ll be as a favor to Pete. Or maybe you’ll think the guy’s innocent. But you’ll do it, and I’ll help you.”

  “What about your teaching?”

  “I’ll do that as well. It’s called multitasking. I can do a lot if I set my mind to it.”

  “And you’ll still take care of my ravenous sexual appetite?”

  “I’m not a miracle woman, Andy. I can’t do everything.”

  “Laurie, I want to be upfront about this. I’m not taking on Billy Zimmerman as a client to keep you busy, or to get you back in the action.”

  “Fair enough. But there will be other clients.”

  “Don’t depress me,” I say. “I’m having a nice dinner, and I want to focus on what I want for dessert.”

  “Really? I was looking forward to getting you into bed and showing you how I multitask.”

  “Check, please.”

  CHAPTER 15

  DONOVAN CHAMBERS LEARNED OF HIS IMPENDING DEATH IN THE NEWSPAPER. That was unusual in and of itself, but to find it buried on page seven of the Nassau Advocate was also a little demeaning. To read it sitting on a glorious beach while simultaneously soaking up sun and a piña colada… well, that was about as weird as it got.

  Not that Donovan was mentioned by name in the story; he wasn’t even referred to indirectly. But the message he received was as clear as if the headline had read, “Donovan Chambers About to Be Murdered.”

  The story was a two-paragraph item that identified the victim of a murder outside a New Jersey club the week before. Donovan couldn’t remember reading about the murder previously, but he knew that it would not have interested him if it hadn’t named the victim as Major Jack Erskine.

  The identity of the victim meant that Donovan himself was going to die. And living in this exotic, out-of-the-way locale would not protect him at all. These were the kind of people that would find you no matter where you were hiding.

  He never should have confided in Erskine.

  Donovan had no way of knowing whether the story was itself dated. The Nassau Advocate would sometimes run pieces days after picking them up from mainland newspapers. If this was one of those cases, then those who’d be after him already had a head start.

  Not that they would need it.

  Donovan wasn’t feeling fear, though he assumed that would come later. His dominant emotion was sadness. He was finally living the life he always wanted, but never thought possible. And now it was over.

  Donovan wasn’t going to give up; that wasn’t his style. And he certainly wasn’t going to go to the cops and tell them what he knew, or what he had done. That would simply guarantee a prison sentence, and that would be the easiest place of all for his killers to find him.

  What he would do would be to run, and to hide, and he was good at both. It would make things easier that he had so much money; there would be no need to get a job and risk exposure in that way. He had concocted better plans for the money, but that was now in the past.

  Donovan briefly considered whether to spend the rest of the afternoon on the beach, since it would be the last time he was there. He decided against it. Time was not something he had the luxury of wasting; it might be too late already.

  He walked up the beach toward his house, a sprawling one-level place sitting on a small cliff overlooking the water. It was an absolutely spectacular setting. He was renting it with an option to buy, an option he had been about to exercise. Now he was glad he hadn’t yet done so, since the process of selling it would no doubt provide clues to his whereabouts.

  At this point, Donovan himself did not have any idea as to the location of those future whereabouts. It would have to be someplace unexciting, and modest, where he would be unlikely to attract attention. It would be boring, but he would be alive, until the moment that he wasn’t alive anymore.

  There would not b
e any flights off the island until the next morning, so he called and reserved a seat. He would pack right away, so that all he’d have to do in the morning would be to wake up and leave.

  Donovan took his loaded gun out of the desk drawer and put it in his pocket. He hadn’t carried it in a while; there wasn’t any need, and it was illegal. Now it made him feel more comfortable, more secure, as it always had in the past.

  But he knew that the feeling of comfort was illusory. When they came at him, it wouldn’t be a gunfight at high noon in the center of town. He wouldn’t see them coming until it was too late to do anything but die.

  Donovan had finished packing and was carrying the suitcases out to the car when the first bullet penetrated his brain. He never felt it, nor the two that followed.

  And he never saw his killer.

  CHAPTER 16

  “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?” is the greeting that Eli Morrison gives me instead of hello. He’s just arrived in court and come straight over to me at the defense table.

  “Fine, how are you, Eli?”

  “A bail hearing for a dog?”

  “Justice works in strange and wonderful ways.”

  “I understand you have fun with this stuff, but some of us have important work to do,” he says.

  “Eli, let me ask you something. Are you aware that there is an armed guard stationed around Milo twenty-four hours a day?”

  “What?” he asks, though he doesn’t mean that he didn’t hear what I said. It’s clear by his face and tone that he had no idea about the armed guard, nor can he imagine why it would be done.

  “If Milo is important enough to be guarded, he’s damn sure important enough to have a bail hearing.”

  I can tell that Eli has more questions, none of which he has the time to ask, or I have the ability to answer. The bailiff signals the arrival of Judge Catchings, which forces a bewildered and irritated Eli back to the prosecution table.

  Judge Horace Catchings takes his seat behind the bench, which he has been doing for thirty-two years. The first African-American judge in Passaic County, Judge Catchings stands six foot six, and his frame looms out over the courthouse. It seems as if he can reach out and touch the principals in the room. Baseball hitters might describe the experience of facing tall pitchers like Randy Johnson in much the same way. Judge Catchings can’t throw the curveball, but he has a wicked contempt of court.

  The judge has already agreed that I can call witnesses to support my case, but that my presentation is to take no more than two hours. I pretended that it would be difficult to stay within that time frame, though in reality I couldn’t stretch it that long if I included a rendition of “MacArthur Park.”

  I have avoided notifying the press about today’s hearing, mainly because I used them as a threat to get the judge to allow it in the first place. While they may be valuable to me later, bringing them in now would only risk pissing Catchings off, and since there is no jury, that wouldn’t be wise.

  Willie Miller is next to me, sitting in his seat and looking around as if he were at a Broadway theater. “This is really cool,” he says. Kevin’s courtroom comments, as I recall, were generally more helpful.

  Eddie Lynch is not here. I didn’t think it necessary that he come, and he seemed to show no great desire to do so. But I will be relying on his brief to a considerable degree.

  Judge Catchings welcomes us to his courtroom and admonishes us not to be long-winded. He also asks us if we have anything to say before we begin.

  Eli stands and says, “Your Honor, while we have not had much time to prepare on this issue, and it is unique to say the least, I cannot find in any statute any right to bail for an animal.”

  “That may be true,” the judge says. “The way I look at it is that we are here to decide if the continuing confinement of the dog known as Milo is warranted. As Mr. Carpenter’s brief points out, there are any number of ways that his release could be handled legally. Bail is simply one of them.”

  That is already a small victory for me. Now I just have to show that Milo shouldn’t be kept captive; I don’t have to jump through quite as many legal hoops as I anticipated to manage it.

  I nod my thanks to Judge Catchings and say, “Your Honor, the defense calls Thomas Basilio.”

  Thomas Basilio is the forty-one-year-old head of animal control in Passaic County. It is not a coveted position; dogcatchers are not exactly widely loved in most communities, and he is the king of the catchers. Because of the overwhelming number of unwanted dogs, it means that his department must euthanize a good number of them. It’s not a position I’d want to be in.

  I have spent some time socially with Basilio, and he’s a decent guy with a disarming sense of humor. He’s not going to get a chance to use it today.

  “Mr. Basilio, you are aware that you have a German shepherd named Milo in your custody?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s at the shelter in Paterson?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he come to be incarcerated there?”

  “The police turned him over to us.”

  “Why? What did he do wrong?

  “I don’t know that he did anything wrong. They didn’t share that with me.”

  “Are you aware that they have stationed a guard outside his cage twenty-four hours a day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they tell you why?”

  He shakes his head. “No. I asked, but they said it had to do with a case and was confidential.”

  “Under what circumstances do you keep dogs in the shelters?” I ask.

  “There can be a few reasons. Dogs can be found stray, and we hold them until perhaps their owner can find them. If not, we hope they will be adopted by a new owner. Or an owner might not want a dog anymore, and he brings it to our shelter.”

  “Is that it?”

  “No. If a dog is a danger to the community, say if he has attacked or bitten someone, then we keep him confined. Often we have to put those dogs to sleep.”

  “That means kill them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which of those reasons speaks to why Milo is there?”

  He thinks for a moment. “I’m not sure. His owner is, as I understand it, unavailable to take care of him. As far as whether he’s dangerous, I suppose the police would know better about that.”

  I introduce as evidence a letter from Billy Zimmerman giving me ownership of Milo. I had privately assured Billy that it was a temporary, though necessary, move.

  “So if I am the owner of Milo, and I want to take him home and care for him, that would remove one of the reasons for his confinement?”

  Basilio shrugs. “I suppose it would.”

  I turn the witness over to Eli, but he doesn’t have any questions. I suspect that Eli will be reluctant to ask many questions throughout the hearing. Lawyers classically will not ask questions they don’t know the answer to, and since Eli didn’t even know about the guard, he’ll be extra careful.

  We’re off to a good start.

  CHAPTER 17

  DETECTIVE CARL OAKES LOOKS LIKE HE WOULD RATHER BE ANYWHERE ELSE BUT ON THE STAND. His body language and facial expressions seem to indicate that taking his time up on a matter as trivial as this is beneath his dignity. As his adversary, that gives me an advantage, because nothing is beneath my dignity.

  “Detective Oakes, you personally gave the order for Milo to be incarcerated in the Passaic County Animal Shelter?”

  “It wasn’t an order. It was a request.”

  “Did he bite anyone?” I ask.

  “Not that I know of,” he says.

  “Have you ever made a request like this before?”

  “When we arrest someone who has an animal, and there is no one to care for it, it is turned over to the shelter.”

  “You personally do that?” I ask.

  “Not usually.”

  “Ever?”

  “I don’t recall,” he says, obviously annoyed.

  “Why did you
personally make the request in this case?”

  “I told you. There was no one to care for the dog.”

  That doesn’t come close to answering my question, but I let it go.

  “So if I told you I was Milo’s new owner, and that I would care for him, that would alleviate your concern and you would tell the shelter you no longer wanted him held there?”

  “I didn’t say that. The dog committed a theft.”

  I smile. “Milo is a crook?”

  “He committed a theft.”

  “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.” I introduce as evidence the letter I got from Eli, confirming that Milo was being held because of the robbery.

  After I read it out loud, I ask Oakes if he agrees with it.

  “I do,” he says.

  “So now the police and prosecutor are on record as saying that Milo is in jail because he committed a theft. Has he ever been arrested or charged before?”

  Oakes can’t conceal his disgust with my questions. “Come on…,” he says.

  “Is that a no? Has he ever been arrested or charged before?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Not a member of organized crime? Not part of a canine Cosa Nostra?”

  Oakes is not about to be humiliated, so he turns to Judge Catchings for help. “Judge…”

  I turn to Judge Catchings as well. “Your Honor, we’ve established that this is Milo’s first arrest. Bail for a first-time offender is certainly warranted. And he can be released on my recognizance; I will assume full responsibility for his future actions.”

  “I’ll reserve judgment on that,” he says. “Continue.” Then he adds, sternly, “In a serious manner.”

  Before I can ask another question, Oakes says, “The dog is a danger to the community. He could keep stealing things; that’s how he’s been trained.”

  “Where was he trained?”

  “At the police academy.”

  “He learned to be a thief at the police academy?” I ask, and the fifteen or so spectators in the gallery laugh.