Bark of Night

by David Rosenfelt

  “Good.”

  “We’ll need to get the team together.”

  She nods. “I’ve already called everybody.”

  “Are you controlling me again?”

  “I think of it as anticipating your every need.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  Billy Cameron is incredibly excited that I’m taking over the Joey Gamble case.

  I can tell because he keeps saying, “This is great … this is great,” and because he doesn’t even mention his touchdown catch against Auburn once.

  “You do know that whatever your fee is, Joey can’t pay it, right?”

  “I understand,” I say. “Can you send me whatever additional discovery you’ve gotten and direct the prosecutor to start sending it to me?”

  “Sure,” he says. “No problem.” Then, “Well, maybe I shouldn’t say ‘no problem.’”

  That sets off an alarm bell. “Why not?”

  He hesitates. “They executed a search warrant on Joey’s house. I don’t think that was in the original material I sent you.”

  The bells are ringing louder, with some alarm sirens thrown in. “No, it wasn’t. What did the search turn up?”

  “Some of Haley’s property was buried behind Joey’s garage, and there was a thirty-eight with it. They’re doing a forensics analysis on it now.”

  “Let me guess. The murder weapon was a thirty-eight.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did I just take on a guilty client?”

  “Everybody is entitled to a good defense, Andy.”

  When I don’t answer, he says, “Speaking of good defense, did I mention that the Auburn defensive back I beat wound up playing six games for the Oakland Raiders?”

  I get off the phone with a pit in my stomach the size of a tractor trailer. Yes, everyone is entitled to a good defense, but that doesn’t mean I have to do the defending. And yes, I know at least as well as anyone that there are two sides to every story, but I also know that one side is almost always bullshit.

  I don’t like to be on the bullshit side.

  I should have told Billy that I changed my mind, but something prevented me from doing it. The deciding factor in taking on the case remains the deciding factor even after the phone call. Truman was owned by James Haley, a murder victim. He wound up in the possession of George Adams, a murderer.

  Those are facts, but there are also facts in the discovery documents that implicate Joey Gamble. Those two sets of facts need to be reconciled, and they apparently need to be reconciled by me.

  I make another trip down to the jail to talk to Gamble. He sees me and says, “I guess you decided.”

  I nod. “I did. I’m your lawyer, if you want me. It’s your call.”

  “I’m good with it,” he says. “I checked you out.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I asked my grandmother, and she looked you up on the computer. She said you’re a big shot, and that you never lose.”

  “Everybody loses,” I say. “They found some of James Haley’s stuff buried behind your garage.”

  “No way, man.”

  “And there was a gun with it.”

  “Hey, come on. Is this some kind of test? I thought you were on my side.”

  “It’s not a test; it’s in the police report.”

  “Then they’re lying. I didn’t take nothing from that guy, and I don’t own a gun.”

  “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to write down everything that happened the day of the murder. What you did and what you saw. Don’t leave out a thing and don’t rush; think about it and give me as much detail as you can.”

  “Somebody is setting me up,” he says.

  “Who would want to do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When you’re done writing down what happened that day, think about who it might be.”

  “Am I going down for this?” he asks, the fear evident in his voice.

  “You’re sitting here in handcuffs, Joey. You’re already down. We’re about to start digging you out.”

  There’s a house on East Thirty-ninth Street in Paterson that is going to be empty for a while.

  For one thing, while it is in a reasonably nice residential neighborhood, it’s not exactly a hot new area. There are no hip hotels with rooftop bars that twentysomethings are trying to convince bouncers to let them into. There are no restaurants at which you simply can’t get a reservation to pay twenty-eight dollars for lobster bisque, nor are there tech companies paying high salaries to talented employees eager to get in the door.

  It is Paterson, after all.

  The house itself is decent enough, comfortable but basically indistinguishable from those around it. But of course there is one thing it has that its neighbors do not.

  It’s a murder scene.

  I doubt strongly that James Haley’s brutal murder will be listed in the “For Rent” real estate ad for this house. For some reason, events like that are right up there with leaky roofs, flooded basements, and rodent infestations as discouragements to potential renters or buyers.

  In any event, Laurie and I are not here to make an offer on the place; we are checking out the murder scene, as we always do when we start a case. I’ve had a lot of murder cases and therefore have been to a lot of murder scenes, and I can’t say I’ve come to enjoy them. They make me uncomfortable for the same reason they keep away future tenants.

  They give me the creeps.

  But this is where Laurie and I are now, and on our arrival, it becomes apparent that it’s going to be a while before some devious real estate agent can successfully conceal the history of the place. That’s because it is guarded by police tape and two of Paterson’s finest. They have been alerted to let us in, which turns out to have been unnecessary since one of the officers knows and obviously likes Laurie.

  We walk down the driveway and enter the house through the back, since that is apparently the way the killer came in. The lock has been picked and broken by someone who knew what they were doing.

  Fifteen feet inside the door is where James Haley breathed his last. That is fairly easy to determine, since that is where his body was found, lying in a large pool of blood. The bloodstain is still on the floor.

  “He must have heard the noise of the guy breaking in and come down to see what was going on,” Laurie says. “The guy probably fired from the doorway.”

  “He was shot in the back and then again in the head,” I say, having read it in the discovery documents.

  She nods. “Right. Haley saw the killer with the gun and turned to run, but couldn’t get away.” She walks over to the chalk outline of the body. “You see that hole in the floor? My guess is that the head shot happened from above while Haley was down, to make sure he was dead.”

  “An execution,” I say. “By someone with no conscience. Someone who was calm, and who has probably done this before.”

  “No way to prove that,” she says. “But probably true. Did neighbors hear the shots?”

  “Nobody has said that they did.”

  “Which means he was using a silencer, or that no one wanted to get involved in any possible trouble. More likely the former, because the 9-1-1 call was made by a neighbor after he saw Haley’s body through the back doorway. That same neighbor claimed not to have heard the shot.”

  We walk into the main area of the house, which looks like a cyclone went through it. Drawers are open and tossed around, clothing and accessories are everywhere. There are also the unmistakable markings where fingerprints—many of which we know turned out to be Joey Gamble’s—were taken.

  “If the killer was calm and unhurried back there, he sure changed his approach in here,” Laurie says. “Unless he wanted to give that appearance.”

  I nod, understanding what she means. The signs of robbery are over the top, consistent with someone wanting to make it look like the motive was a robbery, and a frenzied one at that. Of course, it could turn out that the appearan
ce is the reality; there is no way to tell at this point.

  “What stolen items did they find in Gamble’s house?”

  “Haley’s wallet, with no cash in it, as well as some jewelry, a watch, and a ring.”

  We go into the bedroom and Laurie points to a large, professional-looking video camera, which was obviously Haley’s, sitting on a table. “That thing is probably more valuable than everything else in here combined,” she says. “Why wouldn’t the killer take it?”

  “Maybe it was too large, and he was afraid he’d be seen with it.”

  We walk over to the camera and see that there is a small open panel on it. “That must be where the film or tape or whatever they use in cameras now goes,” I say. “It’s empty.”

  She nods. “Maybe the police took it for analysis, to see if what was on it implicates anyone.”

  “It’s not likely to help us if it does,” I say. “At this point, I can’t think of any reason for George Adams to be on any film that Haley took. He’s here from Philadelphia; he wouldn’t likely be hanging out in downtown Paterson.”

  “But Joey told you that Haley was filming his interview. That will serve to support his case. He didn’t shoot Haley at the back door and then sit down for an interview.”

  On the way home, Laurie says, “I’m afraid there isn’t much about this that looks good.”

  I do a double take. “You wanted me to take the case.”

  She nods. “I am keenly aware of that.”

  I’m not surprised that Laurie has done this about-face. She’s an ex-cop, so her natural instincts are to believe that if the police make an arrest, they probably are doing so for a very good reason. Also, when she was in favor of my getting involved, we didn’t yet know about the police finding incriminating evidence in Gamble’s possession.

  “What do you think I should do?” I ask.

  “Well, for one thing, you should stop listening to me.”

  Any urgency for the Philadelphia cops to interview Debra about George Adams has disappeared.

  The search for him just took a fairly dramatic swing when his body turned up on the bank of the Passaic River.

  Based on media reports, they’ve probably ruled out that he drowned while out for a swim. For one thing, nobody swims in the Passaic River, and in this case George would have been no exception, seeing as how he had entry and exit bullet wounds in the front and back of his head.

  Call it Truman’s Revenge.

  Of course, while this has effectively eliminated Adams as a target for Andy Carpenter–style legal retribution, it has made me more inclined to entertain the possibility that Joey Gamble is a victim here, and not a perpetrator. Gamble certainly didn’t kill Adams; his residence in the jail is a rather ironclad alibi. So at the very least we know that there is a murderer out there, since Adams turned up in the river. It is not that far a logical leap, at least for me, to believe that whoever that murderer is, he, or more likely Adams, killed James Haley.

  I know Laurie has called the members of our legal team to inform them that we have a new client. I can picture their reactions to it.

  In some cases, like my assistant, Edna, it would have been horror. She prefers not doing any work whatsoever; she makes me look like a dynamo.

  Hike Lynch, the other lawyer in the firm, would have been fine with our taking on a client, since he likes earning money. But as the leading pessimist on the planet, he would be sure that our efforts will be for naught and our client will spend the rest of his life in prison.

  I call Hike, much as I dread doing so. “Laurie told you about our client?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Sounds like a real beauty.”

  Hike’s voice sounds raspy, as if he has a cold. I also think he’s exaggerating it, wanting me to ask if he’s okay. Therefore, I don’t. “He’s innocent,” I say. “That’s the official position of our firm.”

  “Okay. By the way, sorry about my voice.”

  “Why are you sorry about your voice?” I ask.

  “Bronchitis,” he says.

  Hike never has a cold; he always self-diagnoses it as bronchitis. “Could have fooled me,” I say. “You sound great. When you answered I thought I had reached Frank Sinatra, but then I realized, hey, wait a minute, Sinatra is dead, so it can’t be him.”

  “What do you want, Andy?” Hike asks, meaning he has surrendered the point.

  “Can you call and find out who the prosecutor assigned to our case is?”

  “I don’t have to,” Hike says. “He’s already called us. It’s Dylan Campbell.”

  “Shit,” I say. Campbell is a tough, smart lawyer, but that’s not why I’m sorry he’s on the case. I’ve beaten him in a couple of big cases, and he clearly resents it and can’t stand me. This, despite the fact that I am lovable.

  I don’t mind that he hates me; it actually makes it easier for me to goad him during the trial. But he will fight me on things that shouldn’t call for a fight, especially in the pretrial stages, thereby making everything a hassle. I find that every year I get older, I am less in the mood for hassles.

  “Why did he call?” I ask.

  “He wants to meet.”

  “Okay, good. Please call him and tell him I’m on my way.”

  There’s no doubt what Dylan wants to meet about; he believes that the evidence is such that we are going to plead the case out. He’ll take that as a victory, which is why he wants to do it in person rather than over the phone. That way he can savor it.

  I’m willing to take the meeting for two reasons. First of all, I am going to deprive him of his triumph, at least for the moment, and I’d like to enjoy it in person. Joey Gamble might well plead guilty later on, but we have not even discussed it yet.

  The other reason is that I am going to make a rather unusual discovery request. Dylan will probably refuse, because that’s his style, and we’ll have to petition the court for relief. If that’s the case, we might as well get the process under way.

  Dylan greets me in his fake-friendly mode, a sure sign that he thinks he has the upper hand. “Damn, it’s good to see you, Andy,” he lies. “How long has it been?”

  “A couple of years,” I say. “Last time I saw you was right after the ‘not guilty’ verdict in the Tommy Infante case.” I take every chance I can to jab Dylan; I want him to be angry at me. It makes him more prone to mistakes.

  Dylan literally winces at the memory, but recovers quickly. “Yeah, well, that was then, this is now.”

  “Beautifully put.”

  “Are you up to speed yet on the Joey Gamble matter?”

  “Getting there.”

  “I can give you forty years for Gamble, out in thirty. And that’s way too generous.”

  “Stop, I’m starting to get teary-eyed,” I say, dabbing my eyes for effect. “When did you become an old softie?”

  “The offer is good for exactly one week, then we go to trial.”

  I pretend to fiddle with my watch.”Exactly one week,” I say. “Let me set my alarm.”

  “I think we’re done here,” he says.

  “Not quite. A guy named George Adams was found murdered today in the Passaic River. That case has a bearing on ours, so I want discovery related to him as well.”

  He smiles. “Right … the dog thing. What is it with you and dogs?”

  “They provide unconditional love, though in your case they might put some conditions on it.” I’m not surprised that he knows about Truman and our view of Adams’s connection to him. Pete, being a good and careful cop, would have put it in the file. Dylan, unfortunately being a good and careful lawyer, would have read it.

  “Why would I want to give you that?” Dylan asks.

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll get the court to force you to. And you’ll look as if you are not seeking to find the truth.”

  He thinks about it, no doubt realizing that I will ultimately get what I want. The court would only require us to present some evidence that Adams relates to our case, and Debra’s testimony
should suffice.

  Leeway is given to the defense in matters like this, since it really doesn’t hurt the other side, and takes away a possible avenue of appeal later on. Whether we can ultimately get information about Adams admitted at trial remains to be seen, but depriving us of discovery is not something the court would reasonably consider.

  I can almost see all this going through Dylan’s mind, and it results in a shrug. “Sure, why not? Knock yourself out.”

  It’s a meeting I preferred not to have, at least not in this decade.

  The team is back together, and not for a karaoke night or a birthday party. It’s because we have a case, which means we are about to start a long, arduous, and uncertain process.

  Although as awful as the prospect is, I’d still rather do this than karaoke. I’d rather have a root canal and go on an all-asparagus diet than do karaoke. I’d rather become a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader than do karaoke. Scuba diving versus karaoke would be a tough call.

  The meeting is in my office space, which consists of three rooms … my private office, Hike’s office, and a reception area/conference room. The setup is not typical of a big-time law firm, since very few big-time law firms sit atop a fruit stand on Van Houten Street in Paterson.

  At one point, back when I thought of myself as a practicing attorney, I considered moving to a larger space. We couldn’t have done so in this building, because the rest of it is the fruit stand on the first floor, run by our landlord, Sofia Hernandez.

  She might have been willing to sell if I offered enough money, but what we would be gaining in space and comfort would be offset by our not having access to perfectly ripe cantaloupes.

  Hike Lynch and Sam Willis are both here. Hike will assist me during the trial and write most of the briefs and positions we have to submit to the court. He’s outstanding at it. Sam’s computer skills make him our entire “cyber-investigative” unit.

  Edna is also here, and she approaches me before we begin. “Andy, I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure, Edna,” I say, trying not to cringe. I hate talks that “need” to happen.