Outfoxed

by David Rosenfelt

  Real jobs were for suckers.

  When he got home, they were waiting for him. He didn’t know that their names were Tony and Richie; they hadn’t told him that when they warned him the first time. He also didn’t know how they had gotten into his house, since he had an alarm system that he thought was effective. It must not have been, because Richie and Tony were sitting on his couch, smiling when they saw him enter.

  “Hello, Lenny,” Richie said. “Where you been?”

  They couldn’t know; there was no way they could know. So he had to assume they didn’t and bluff, because if they did know, then all was lost. “Out having a few drinks. What are you guys doing here?”

  “You pay cash for those drinks?” Richie asked.

  “Yeah. Twenty bucks. Why?”

  “Empty your pockets on that table.”

  “Come on, you guys. What’s going on? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Your pockets,” Richie said.

  Panic setting in, Lenny walked to the table. They knew what he had done, and if they didn’t then it would be clear when he emptied his pockets, or they emptied them for him. He probably had six thousand in cash, way too much to explain away.

  The answer was in another pocket, not the one the cash was in. He had a .22 in there, and he would kill them with it. He was opting for the lesser of two very bad evils. If he did it, his life would never be the same. He would have to start running, and might never stop.

  If he didn’t do it, he would himself be killed.

  That made the decision fairly easy.

  Lenny walked over to the table and started to empty his pockets. Richie walked toward him while he did so, but Tony maintained his position on the couch. First Lenny emptied a pocket of some papers and change.

  Then, using his body to shield what he was doing, he took out his handgun. Finger on the trigger, he turned slowly, in a manner designed not to provoke any reaction.

  The bullet entered Lenny’s forehead before he had a chance to fire his weapon. It came from Tony’s gun, the sound cushioned by the silencer. He was dead before he hit the floor. He was dead before he even starting falling to the floor.

  Richie finished the job of searching Lenny’s pockets, finding the money and keeping it. Tony, meanwhile, was searching the house for an appropriate weapon. He found it in Lenny’s bedroom, a baseball bat signed by a member of the New York Mets.

  He brought the bat back into the room and proceeded to crush Lenny’s arms and legs with it. They could have done it while Lenny was alive, but then there would have been all that screaming. Besides, Richie and Tony were hit men, not torturers.

  The bat wielding was only necessary because the word would get out about it. People would assume that it was done while Lenny was alive, and the thought of it would deter “future Lennys” from doing what he did.

  But there would be others, there always were, and they would pay the same price that Lenny did.

  I need to accept that what Brian is saying is true. It very well may not be, but at this point I get nowhere by questioning it. If he’s lying, if he broke out of jail and stabbed those two people to death, then I will come up empty in my investigation, and he will go down. Our only chance is if he’s telling the truth, which means there’s something out there to find.

  My preliminary assumption is that the answer has to involve Starlight Systems, the company that Brian and Gerald Wright founded and built. If someone framed Brian, the likely reason I can see for doing so would have been to get him out of the company.

  Starlight provides equipment that Wall Street companies needed, and that I assume helped them make barrels of money. When it comes to motivations for murder, money always ranks high up on the list. It’s on a par with sex, but without the sweating and panting.

  Also, Starlight is a company that specializes in computing, and if Brian is right, then his arrest and conviction were accomplished through computer sleight of hand. That is another reason to think that the company is at the center of this whole thing.

  Of course, Gerry Wright had the computer expertise and the financial incentive to put his partner away. He also appears to have been interested in Brian’s soon-to-be ex-wife. All of this gives Wright a reason to have framed Brian and gotten rid of him.

  Unfortunately, that would also have given Brian a motive to kill Gerry. So Brian could well be not guilty of the embezzlement but guilty of the murders.

  Ugh.

  I do what I always do in these situations and call a meeting of our legal and investigative team. We’ll convene in my office tomorrow morning, so I can tell them all that I know so far, which isn’t a hell of a lot.

  The thing I do first is visit the scene of the crime. I clear it with Pete Stanton, who really has no choice but to allow me in. He knows that if he doesn’t, I can have a judge order him to, and he’d look bad for refusing.

  Since Ricky is in school, Laurie is able to go with me, as she always does. And as an ex-cop, she knows her way around a crime scene better than I do.

  On the way there, she says, “Ricky really seems to be into football.”

  I nod. “Like father, like son.”

  “Today he asked me about the line on the Giants game this Sunday. I asked him if he meant offensive or defensive line.”

  Uh-oh.

  She continued, “But he meant the betting line.”

  I don’t say anything, because in the moment nothing comes to me. I’ve got a hunch that if the moment lasted until next August, nothing would come to me.

  “Andy, I don’t believe in pushing a child into a career path, but I would be unhappy to see him become a bookmaker. It would hurt his chances to become president.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I say.

  “What are you going to say?”

  “Trust me. I’ll take care of it.” She doesn’t look terribly trusting, so I say, “What are you worried about?”

  “That the two of you will switch our vacation from Disney World to Vegas.”

  We arrive at Gerry Wright’s house, and the area looks much different from the last time I was here. Then there were all kinds of police vehicles, cops everywhere, and neighbors milling about trying to get a look at what was going on. Now there is just one police car, one cop standing on the front porch, and not a neighbor to be found.

  Pete has cleared the way for us to enter the house, but it probably wouldn’t have been necessary. The cop on the front porch greets Laurie like a long-lost best friend, though he sneers at me. Her former colleagues on the force cannot seem to grasp the concept that she is married to a defense attorney. It’s a shame she may never live down.

  Everything about the inside of the house says luxurious living, from the clearly expensive furniture to the fine art hanging on the walls. I know zero about vases, but there’s one sitting on a stand that I would bet could be traded in for a Porsche.

  This is a room that was meticulously and carefully designed; great thought must have gone into every piece, and money was no object. The kind of money represented here makes me think about Brian, Wright’s partner and former business equal, who has spent years living in a seven-by-ten-foot cement cell. Of course, at this point, given the chance, I’m sure Wright would happily trade places with him.

  All of this poshness makes the bloodstains all over the floor even more incongruous than one would expect. They are still more jarring because the carpet is so white. Two people died violently in this room, but the considerate killers seemed not to have disturbed so much as an ashtray.

  I always find it weird and very disconcerting to be at the spot where lives were snuffed out, but when I turn to mention something like that to Laurie, I notice that she’s not in the room. “Laurie?”

  “In the kitchen,” she responds, and while I have no idea where the kitchen is, I move toward an open door, since that seems to be the direction her voice was coming from. Sure enough, my detective skills are intact, and I reach the kitchen.

  Laurie is on he
r knees, near another open door. I walk over and see that the door is to a walk-in pantry. Plenty of people live in apartments smaller than this pantry.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The female victim—”

  “Denise,” I say.

  “Denise was hiding in here. They went and found her, and brought her into the other room, where she was killed.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She holds up her hands, with something apparently squeezed between her fingers. “Was she blond?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll bet she was, though it’s not her natural color. I found at least five hairs; I’d bet they grabbed her by the hair.”

  “Couldn’t five hairs be there because she lived here, or spent a lot of time here? Brian is sure they were having an affair.”

  “Possible, but forensics would have already picked up a lot of them. The fact that five were left behind means there were many more. And this door was open, which is not consistent with how neatly this house was kept. And look at this.”

  She points to a small streak or stain of some kind on the floor.

  “What is it?”

  “I’d bet it’s from her shoes. She was dragged.”

  “That backs up Brian’s story,” I say.

  “How?”

  I think Laurie knows the answer to her own question, but it’s a technique she and I have come up with, without ever acknowledging it. We get each other to talk about stuff, even when it’s obvious, because the act of discussing it seems to help us think more clearly.

  “If Brian was the killer, he would have killed her where he found her. There would have been no reason to drag her in there. Especially if he was in a jealous rage.”

  “Why would the killer have wanted to kill them together?” she asks.

  I shrug. “Hard to know. Maybe he wanted to get information out of Wright, and he threatened to kill Denise to get him to talk.”

  “Why do you think the killer used knives? To make it look like a crime of passion and set up Brian as the patsy?”

  I shake my head. “Doesn’t seem possible. As far as anyone knew, he was in prison. That’s a pretty good alibi. It’s more likely he just didn’t want neighbors to hear the gunshots.” I don’t mention it, but the use of knives has troubled me because it doesn’t fit with my theory. It is not the way Petrone’s people normally operate.

  We don’t talk for a couple of minutes. I’m digesting the horror of what went on in this room, and I suspect she’s doing the same.

  She breaks the silence and says, “This guy is the definition of a cold-blooded killer. Not the way you think of cybercriminals, or computer nerds.”

  I nod. “Let’s find him.”

  It’s my turn to walk Ricky to school. Laurie and I basically alternate doing so, though she probably winds up doing it two-thirds of the time. I’m going to utilize this morning’s walk to have my talk with Ricky, and I’m a little nervous about it.

  “Rick, do you know what gambling is?” is the way I start.

  “Sure, it’s what you do on football. If your team wins, you win money.”

  “Right, but I can also lose.”

  “I know,” he says. “You lose when you take the Giants.”

  “Rick, gambling is not a good thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because people can lose money that they need.”

  “Do you lose money that you need?” he asks.

  “No. But it’s still not a good thing.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “It’s a bad habit I picked up.” This is not going well, and it’s aggravating. The truth is I don’t bet very much on games; it’s just a way to keep me interested. But having this conversation is making me feel like Jimmy the Greek. “But you’d be better off going outside and playing sports, rather than staying inside and watching them.”

  “So you can’t stop?” he asks.

  “I can stop.”

  “So it’s a bad thing, and you can stop, but you keep doing it?”

  Mrs. Dembeck is right; this is one smart kid.

  “I’ll tell you what: Let’s both stop,” I say. “No more gambling for us.”

  “Is this Mom’s idea?”

  “Nope,” I lie. “It’s mine. We have a deal?”

  He shrugs. “Okay. But can we still watch football together?”

  “Absolutely,” I say, sticking out my hand. He shakes it and the deal is done.

  I am not pleased.

  I drop Ricky off and head down to my office for our initial case meeting. Laurie arrives as I do, and we walk in together. Everyone is there: Sam Willis, Willie, Edna, Marcus Clark, and Hike, the other lawyer in my firm.

  They are sitting at the long table in what serves as my conference room. The way they are situated makes the table look like a park seesaw. Marcus is at one end, and all the others are at the other end. Everyone here is afraid of Marcus, which makes perfect sense, since Marcus is one scary human being.

  Hike is in the middle of one of his rants, talking to anyone who will listen, which as far as I can tell is no one. Hike is a complete and total pessimist, as distinguished from a worrier, since a worrier fears the worst but recognizes the possibility that it might not happen. Hike does not allow for the chance that there will ever be a good outcome of anything.

  Hike’s discourse today is on alien life and the certainty that it’s out there. “You know how many planets there are? Three trillion. You think they’re all just sitting out there with no one on them? Come on.”

  I’m not sure why nobody at the table answers him. It could be one of two things. Either they are not listening at all, or they don’t want to encourage him to continue speaking.

  Unfortunately, he doesn’t need any encouragement. “You can be sure they’re coming here,” he says. “And they’re not coming to hang out, you know? Before they even get here, they’ll send a weird virus into our atmosphere. By the time they arrive, we’ll all either be dead or have sores all over our bodies and a body temperature of a hundred and twelve. It’s going to make Independence Day look like a Saturday-morning cartoon.”

  On the one hand, I’d like to see how long Hike can go on with absolutely no encouragement from his audience, but I need to interrupt. “On the off chance that the invaders don’t get here before the trial, we probably should prepare,” I say.

  I bring everyone up to date on the basics, starting with Brian’s escape, which they already know about from newspaper accounts. When I tell them about Pete’s following Willie and me and capturing Brian, I look over at Marcus expecting disapproval at our carelessness. I don’t find any; he is expressionless, either unconscious or asleep or both.

  Willie jumps in to mention that Brian risked his life to save Boomer, and Hike and Edna nod, understanding that this is why we are taking the case.

  “I think the answer lies in their business,” I say, “and Sam, we’re going to need your expertise in this area. I know nothing about computers and all that technological stuff … my eyes start to glaze over when I hear it. So you’re going to have to study their company and educate me in a way that I can understand it.”

  “I’m on it,” Sam says, though I think he’s disappointed he won’t get to shoot anybody.

  “If I’m right, then we are dealing with people capable of framing Brian using computer expertise, and also of stabbing two people to death in cold blood.”

  “Denise Atkins worked at Starlight as well, didn’t she?” Laurie asks.

  I nod. “According to Brian, she’s been there from the beginning; she was a technology whiz in her own right. Brian says that his being there kept her from advancing too far; the board was concerned about nepotism. She works in the technology area.”

  “So you don’t think she was at least one of the targets in these killings?” Laurie asks.

  “I don’t, but I don’t want us to take that for granted. My guess is that she was in the wrong place at the wr
ong time. I think Brian and Gerald Wright were the two intended victims here, and what they had in common was the business that they ran. Denise was probably collateral damage. But, as always, I could be wrong.”

  Nobody jumps in to disagree with my comment that I can always be wrong, so I continue. “The wild card in all this is Dominic Petrone. It’s hard to know where he figures in it, if at all. But Denise mentioned him to Brian, so that certainly points to his involvement.”

  “Doesn’t sound like his kind of thing,” Hike points out.

  “True,” I say, because dealing with computers and large corporations is not something Petrone has traditionally focused on. “But maybe Petrone is branching out. We need to keep an open mind, while treading very carefully.”

  I give out the initial assignments. Sam is going to focus on the business end, learning just what the hell that company does. Hike will attempt to speed up the turning over of discovery documents to us, and will also prepare a change-of-venue motion. I don’t think it has a chance in hell of succeeding, but it’s something we should pursue anyway.

  Laurie will head up the investigating team, and Marcus will work for her. He likes her, and she’s the only one of us not petrified to be near him, so that will work fine. Edna will hang around and answer the phones, if she can find the time. Willie has no responsibility at this point, but he usually comes in handy.

  When the meeting breaks up and the others leave, Laurie asks me if I talked to Ricky.

  “I did,” I say.

  “And?”

  “And we’re on the same page.”

  “Which page might that be?”

  “Neither of us is going to gamble anymore,” I say.

  “You told him that?”

  “We shook on it.”

  “Wow,” she says. “You know you have to keep your word, right?”

  “I do?”

  “He’s your son, Andy.”