Bark of Night

by David Rosenfelt

  Today marks a shift in preparation for me, and one I probably should have made a while ago. Until now we’ve been focused on the investigative phase, mostly trying to figure out who actually committed the murder, since our obvious position is that our client did not. Clearly we think it’s Adams, so we’ve been trying to find proof of that theory.

  But it won’t be long before the prosecution is parading a group of witnesses in front of the jury, all of whom will tell a story incriminating Joey Gamble. We need to prepare a defense to rebut those witnesses. Defense is what defense attorneys like me are supposed to do.

  In this trial, the simplicity of the prosecution’s case will make a defense that much harder to mount. Dylan is not going to rely on witnesses whom I could challenge to make it appear that they are lying or mistaken.

  Joey’s fingerprints were all over Haley’s house, and the stolen merchandise and murder weapon were found on Joey’s property. Those are facts that can’t be challenged on credibility grounds. All we can do is try to explain them, try to give them a benign meaning, which is a very tall order.

  Laurie makes pancakes for breakfast this morning, because if Sam is coming over, he’s coming for breakfast. Sam is Marcus-like when it comes to his ability to eat pancakes, and Laurie’s are his favorites. Or so he says.

  Sure enough, Sam is right on time. He’s brought a large folder full of material, but I tell him to eat first. Otherwise he might drool all over the papers.

  Eleven pancakes later, we’re sitting in the den as Sam starts to unload the folder. “I don’t know what to make of this,” Sam says. “I sort of couldn’t believe it as I was doing it.”

  “Any luck with Adams’s phone?” Laurie asks. Sam has been trying to get through the fingerprint identification problem on Adams’s iPhone.

  He shakes his head. “No. He had another level of protection installed on it. But I’m getting there.”

  I’m sure that if it can be done, Sam will do it, so I don’t press him. “So you said this is about Tolbert?”

  “In a way. At least, that’s where it started out. You remember you asked me to check into him, to find out what I could, in case there was more to him than meets the eye? I was looking for something that would have made him a logical candidate for someone to want to kill him.”

  I nod. “Right. Did you find anything?”

  “No. You also told me about the Philadelphia killings and wanted to see if I could find a connection between Tolbert and them.”

  Sam has a way of recounting past history as a way of setting the scene for his revelations. It can turn a five-minute conversation into an hour-long marathon. “Sam, I know what we asked you to do. Did you find the connection?”

  “No.”

  “Well, now we’re getting someplace.”

  Laurie jumps in. “What did you want to show us, Sam?”

  “I’m getting there. You know I can get into a lot of computer databases, and in some cases law enforcement ones.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to know,” I say.

  He nods. “I understand. Well, I didn’t do that in this case. I can, and it might turn up a lot more, but so far I haven’t.”

  I think I am going to bang my head against the wall until Sam stops dragging this out. “Sam…”

  “So I was just using a bunch of different search terms, you know, describing the victims, the murder, the type of killing, that kind of stuff. I was searching for information about Tolbert and also the Philadelphia homeless victims.”

  “Good,” Laurie says. I think she’s getting frustrated too; she just hides it better.

  “Here’s the thing,” Sam says. “I started finding other cases, all within the last six months, that have the same or a very similar set of facts.” He looks at the papers. “So when I found some, I started looking for more. So far I’ve discovered a total of eighteen.”

  “Eighteen murders?”

  He nods. “Not including the three you know about.”

  “Where?”

  “All over. All fairly large cities, urban areas, where you would expect to find a homeless problem. But LA, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, you name it.”

  “Take us through them,” I say.

  So Sam goes through them, one by one, and it certainly seems remarkable. Now, I am sure that homeless people are often victimized, but this has to be over the top.

  “If you want me to go into law enforcement computers, I might be able to eliminate some of these cases with more detailed information,” Sam says. “But I bet you I find a bunch that we don’t even know about.”

  “Don’t, Sam, at least for now. Let us sit with this awhile and figure out what to do. But you did great work. Now go back and crack Adams’s phone.”

  Once Sam leaves, Laurie quickly makes it clear that she finds this information as stunning as I do. But it’s a big country; maybe this is just more generally common than we think?

  Laurie calls Sergeant Rubin in Philadelphia to see if there have been any developments in the Denise Adams murder. She puts me on the other phone so I can hear his responses. “Not my case,” he says. “But I don’t think so. I would have heard.”

  “What about the killings of the two homeless people?”

  “Now you’re interested in that?” he asks.

  “Laurie has a murder fascination,” I say. “She’s trying to deal with it in therapy.”

  He laughs. “Well, sorry to disappoint, but nothing new on that front either.”

  We don’t want to reveal too much to him, at least not right now, so she asks him in general terms about homeless murders and whether it is a widespread problem around the country. He says he’s sure it must be, but by his answer we can tell that what might have happened in other cities is not yet part of his case. He doesn’t know what we know; that much is clear.

  “Time to call Cindy,” Laurie says.

  “I think we should wait and see if this can impact our case,” I say, since my first allegiance has to be to my client.

  “Andy, people are dying.”

  I nod. “You’re right. Time to call Cindy.”

  Cindy Spodek is the second in command of the Boston FBI office.

  That is not why we are calling her; it will come as no surprise to hear that there are closer FBI offices to Paterson. We are calling her because she is a very close friend of Laurie’s and, by the principle of marital extension, mine.

  This won’t be the first time we have gone to the “favor well,” and in the past Cindy has helped us a great deal. It’s often worked out to her benefit, but that’s sort of not the point. I call her when I need help. She knows that, of course, and usually gives me a hard time. Laurie, being Laurie, mediates, and we get through it.

  But this time is different, as I tell Cindy when Laurie puts me on the phone. Laurie always does a little “friend talk” first, smoothing the way for me to swoop in and ask the favor. “What do you need, Andy?” Cindy asks, a note of resignation in her voice.

  “You think I’m calling for a favor?”

  “Of course. This is Andy Carpenter, right?”

  “You’re probably not going to believe it, but I’m actually calling to do you a favor. This is something you need to hear.”

  She sighs, obviously not convinced. “Fine, let’s hear it.”

  “No, you should see it as well as hear it. I need to come up there.”

  “Excuse me? This is actually not you looking for help on a case?”

  “It’s possible, but that’s a long shot. This is something else,” I say.

  “Okay, come on up. When do you want to meet?”

  “Tonight. I’ll take you to dinner and show you.”

  “So this is really that important?” she asks.

  “This is very important. Or not important at all. But you have the resources to make that judgment. I don’t.”

  “Are there conditions attached to this?

  “Of course,” I say. “But nothing terrible. I’ll tell you about it when
I see you.”

  “I’ll make a reservation someplace quiet and very, very expensive,” she says.

  It’s about a four-hour drive to Boston, which means it’s much faster to drive than to take a thirty-five-minute flight, after you factor in going to the airport, getting through security, renting a car, etc., etc., etc. And that’s assuming the flights are on time, which, from a New York airport, is as likely as the Mets winning the World Series. In four games.

  Of course, the three hours assumes no traffic, which is an absolute impossibility. I’ve done this drive at least ten times, and every time I hit traffic in Connecticut. Connecticut? Why would there be so many people on the road in Connecticut? Are they going to a Yale game? Or maybe they’re on their way to Muffy and Buffy’s for watercress sandwiches?

  So the drive takes four and a half hours, meaning I don’t even have time to check in at the hotel before going to the restaurant Cindy has chosen, Mamma Maria. It’s in the North End, in a nineteenth-century townhouse, which indicates that Cindy is going to deliver on her promise of “expensive.” There aren’t too many Taco Bells set in nineteenth-century townhouses.

  I assume Marcus is also here, watching over me, but very often he likes to remain unseen, even by me. I’m fine with that.

  I’m brought to a private room where Cindy is waiting for me. The server closes the door behind me, leaving Cindy and me alone. Privacy is not going to be a problem.

  We make small talk for a bit and look at the menus. At first I’m worried when I see things like “snail” and “rabbit,” but then I see more normal stuff at surprisingly reasonable prices. I order a salad and a lobster pasta. Cindy gets crab cakes and the same pasta.

  Finally, she says, “Talk to me. I’m intrigued.”

  “Okay, but first a short preamble.” I have no intention of discussing my case with her. It’s not just because there is attorney-client privilege involved; it’s also because I have found that in my dealings with the Bureau, information is the currency of the realm.

  I might want to trade what I know later on; there is no reason for me to give it away now. “My preamble basically consists of setting up a quid pro quo,” I say.

  She smiles. “You never travel without your quid pro quo.”

  “How true. So I’m about to give you the reason for this lovely dinner. In return, should you find it compelling and worthy of an FBI investigation, you will keep me as updated as you can about its progress. Especially about anything that relates to my client’s case.”

  “I don’t know anything about your client’s case.”

  “That’s a fair point. You just give me the information and I’ll judge if it’s relevant.”

  “I’ll keep you updated to the extent that I can,” she says. It’s the answer I expected and the only one she could have given. It’s good enough for me because it is Cindy who has said it; if it were one of her colleagues, I might feel differently about it.

  “Fair enough. There’s a Philadelphia gangster named George Adams, who has recently become a dead Philadelphia gangster. He is connected to my case, so I talked to a Philadelphia cop to get background on him.

  “During that conversation, the cop mentioned that there were two recent homicides of homeless men being investigated. The circumstances were nearly exactly like those of a case that we had in Clifton. A homeless man named Christopher Tolbert was killed, execution-style.”

  “Okay…” she prompts, which is FBI-ese for “Tell me more.”

  “In all three cases, gunshot wounds were the cause of death, and there was no evidence of drugs in the toxicological tests.”

  “So you think there’s a connection? And you’re here because it’s taken place across two states and is therefore federal?”

  “You’re getting warm,” I say. “Our investigator, using only publicly available records, news stories, etc. has identified eighteen additional cases that match the original three almost exactly.”

  “Holy shit,” she says. “Where?”

  “All across the country. You might be able to find a lot more of them, should you choose to look.”

  “I will choose to look,” she says.

  “Good. What’s for dessert?”

  The good news is that Sam has cracked Adams’s phone.

  The bad news is obvious the moment he says, “There’s not much here, Andy.”

  I’m in Sam’s office, which is right down the hall from mine, where he has all the information in hard copy, laid out on his desk. It’s not a good sign that it takes up barely half the desk.

  “He just didn’t use this phone much,” Sam says. “There are only eighteen phone calls in the two months before he died, and eleven of them were to his house. He was probably calling his wife.”

  “What about the others?”

  He shrugs. “All to numbers in Philadelphia. I’ve got the names listed there,” he says, pointing to one of the papers on the desk, “but they don’t mean anything to me. Two of them are to a restaurant; for all I know he was picking up take-out.”

  “What else have you got?”

  “Not much. The guy didn’t even use apps; no music, no Words with Friends, nothing.”

  “Maybe he had another phone, which might be why he didn’t have this one with him when he died.”

  “But why would he have hidden this one in that drawer?” Sam asks. “There’s nothing incriminating on it.”

  “Add that to the list of questions,” I say. “What about GPS? Can you find out where the phone has been?” Smartphones are equipped with a GPS, and the phone company knows where they are at all times; they can even access the information retroactively.

  Sam has broken into the phone company’s computers for us and retrieved similar information on a number of occasions; I have found it to be both illegal and very helpful, not necessarily in that order.

  He looks at me with disdain; I expect him to say “Duh.” Instead he says, “Of course I did that already. Mostly stuff around Philadelphia. I checked as best I could but didn’t see much. Nothing near the murder scenes of the homeless victims, but I don’t know that they were killed where they were found.”

  “Does it show when he came up here?”

  He nods. “Yes, and—”

  I interrupt. “That might clear him of his wife’s murder. You were going to say something?”

  “Yes. He seems to have stopped at a motel near East Brunswick.”

  “To stay overnight? Or a bathroom break?”

  “He didn’t stay overnight, and if it was a bathroom break, he had a really bad stomach. He stayed four hours, then he drove the rest of the way up here.”

  “You have the name and address of the motel?”

  “Of course.”

  “You want to take a ride? Did you bring your shoe leather?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Before we go, I call Laurie and tell her what’s going on and where we’re going. I know Marcus is watching out for me, and whether I like it or not, he’ll be doing it when we go to the motel. He might as well know where we’re going.

  “Do you think Marcus would want to ride with us?’ I ask this with some level of dread. An hour-long drive with Marcus is a conversational wasteland, even with Sam in the car.

  “No, he can do his job better watching you rather than being with you,” she says.

  “Damn. I was so looking forward to chatting with him.”

  So Sam and I head down to the Bay View Motel in East Brunswick. The name is somewhat misleading. It’s not anywhere near a bay, and although it does have a view, that view seems to be of a Chinese restaurant and a laundromat.

  It’s serviceable—not a dump, but also not a particularly nice place. I don’t know why Adams stopped here, but it seems as if the main things it has going for it are that it would guarantee some anonymity and has a fairly close proximity to the turnpike.

  The motel itself looks to have about sixty rooms on two levels, all with outside access. In fact, that is the only access
; guests park their cars near their rooms and either walk in from the parking lot or go up the steps to the second floor. I don’t see any signs of an elevator.

  We drive quickly around the parking lot, checking the place out, and then head for the office. I ask the man behind the desk for the manager and he says, “You’re talking to him.”

  I introduce myself and Sam, and the man says his name is Peter Ambler. “Friends call me Pete,” he says, which doesn’t really speak to much creativity on the part of his friends.

  “Pete, we’re interested in someone who was here a while back.”

  “Why?”

  I explain that I am an attorney and that the matter is relevant to a case currently before the court. I imply rather strongly that if he doesn’t willingly yield to my charm and answer my questions, he just might have to explain his refusal to the judge.

  That empty threat seems to work, so I show him a picture of George Adams, but if there’s a flash of recognition in his eyes, he’s hiding it well.

  “When was he here?” he asks, and I tell him. “But he was only here for about four hours.”

  That information seems to perk him up a bit. “When did you say it was?” he asks, and I give him the date again.

  “That might be the guy,” he says. He goes over to his computer and starts typing. “I think that’s him. But the name he used was Charlie Henderson.”

  Charlie Henderson is the name Adams used when he turned Truman in and when he rented his apartment, so it’s obvious we have the right guy.

  “You remember him?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t, but I know my wife does.”

  “He met your wife?” I ask.

  “She does the housekeeping … cleans the rooms … makes the beds.” He shrugs. “It’s a family business.”

  “And she remembers him? Is she working today? Is she here?”

  “She’s home, but I’m sure she’d come by. We live right next door.” Another shrug. “It cuts down on the commute.”

  I ask Ambler to call her, and sure enough, within five minutes Peggy Ambler shows up at the office. She continues the family propensity for wild nicknames by telling us that people call her “Peg.”