Animal Instinct

by Rosenfelt, David

  “Does he know you call him that?”

  “I think so. I say it to his face.”

  “How does that affect me?”

  “If he hates me, then he hates you. It’s a principle of the law; the Latin name for it is antagonis transferris.”

  “Wonderful. Is there anyone in the legal system who doesn’t hate you?”

  Andy shakes his head. “Not since Laurie retired.”

  The judge is Nelson Wallace, which Andy considers relatively good news. He describes Wallace as fair and more willing to tolerate unconventional courtroom tactics than most judges. Andy’s specialty is unconventional courtroom tactics.

  Judge Wallace gavels in the proceedings, and Dylan presents the charges. There’s some back-and-forth between Andy and the judge regarding pretrial motions and court procedures, but nothing that is particularly interesting to me. I am totally focused on the issue of bail.

  Andy finally brings up the matter of bail, and Dylan immediately jumps up, obviously anticipating the request. “Your Honor, the State vigorously opposes bail in this case. The nature of the crime is so heinous, and the evidence so compelling, that public safety demands that the defendant be remanded to the county jail.”

  Andy shakes his head disapprovingly. “Your Honor, first of all, the evidence is always compelling to Mr. Campbell, yet based on my history with him, juries often seem to disagree. Secondly, though he has made a rush to judgment in the matter, he has not rushed to turn over discovery to the defense. But sight unseen, I can assure Your Honor that the evidence cannot be compelling, because Mr. Douglas is innocent.

  “Mr. Douglas served as a police officer for twenty-five years and amassed an impeccable service record. During that time he was armed by the city and given the significant power that a badge carries, yet the public safety managed to have emerged unscathed. He protected the public; he did not endanger it.”

  “Mr. Douglas was never charged with murder during those years,” Dylan says.

  Andy nods. “Thank you for making my point for me. He was never charged with anything. Not once. Not ever. Not until this ludicrous charge was filed.”

  “What do you propose, Mr. Carpenter?” asks Judge Wallace.

  “A substantial bail, the amount to obviously be set at your discretion. Also we would be comfortable with Mr. Douglas wearing a GPS monitor and staying within a seventy-five-mile radius of his home. He needs to be able to work; his obvious talent and experience make him an integral part of his own defense.”

  It looks like the judge is frowning a bit while Andy talks; I hope it’s just gas. Finally, Wallace speaks: “Bail will be set at one million dollars. Defendant will wear a GPS monitor and will be limited to a fifty-mile radius.”

  He adjourns the session with a pounding of the gavel.

  “One million dollars? It might as well be a billion,” I say to Andy. “Can we negotiate it down to something I can afford?”

  “Like what?”

  “Five grand?”

  “Seems unlikely. Let me see what I can do.”

  The bailiffs are on the way over to get me, so Andy gets up and says something to them, which I cannot hear. They pause in place as Andy goes over to the court clerk. He’s there for less than five minutes and comes back.

  “The bailiffs are going to take you in the back, and you’ll get the GPS monitor.”

  “What happened with the bail?”

  “I put it up.”

  “A million dollars?”

  Andy shakes his head. “No, a hundred grand. Ten percent is all that’s required.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “If I didn’t, Laurie would have skinned me alive.”

  “You can never take credit for doing something nice for someone?”

  He shrugs. “Not if I want to preserve my reputation.”

  DANI is waiting for me at my house when Andy drops me off.

  We had spoken from the jail on the phone, but it was a quick conversation. I didn’t call to tell her the result from the arraignment because I was heading directly home.

  After a long, satisfying hug, she asks, “Did you get bail or did you escape? I’m fine either way, but if we’re going to go on the run, I really need to get my hair cut first. And I’ll need running shoes, and a fake mustache, and—”

  I interrupt, “I made bail, but get your hair cut just in case I decide we should make a break for it.”

  “How much was your bail? I’m sorry if I’m being nosy, but that’s a question I ask all my boyfriends.”

  “A million dollars.”

  “That’s going to leave you a little strapped for cash, no?”

  “Andy put up the ten percent.”

  “This is the same Andy who’s working your case for nothing? The one you told me was a complete pain in the ass?”

  “He has his moments. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To pick up Simon.”

  “You came for me before Simon? I’m truly flattered.”

  We don’t talk much on the way to Laurie and Andy’s, but I do ask, “Aren’t you going to ask me if I did it? You know I couldn’t stand Kline, and that I thought he was getting away with murder.”

  “Corey, if I was going to ask you if you did it, I wouldn’t be here to ask you if you did it.”

  When we arrive, Laurie, Andy, Marcus, Sam Willis, Simon, Tara, and Sebastian are here to greet us. It’s a welcome show of support, even if Sebastian is sound asleep. Nobody seems surprised that I’ve brought Dani along. They know her to be smart, and I also suspect that they think our relationship is further along than I am generally willing to admit.

  The first thing I do, after I pet Simon, is ask Andy to come into the kitchen so I can talk to him alone. Once we get there, I say, “You know I’ve always considered you a pain in the ass.”

  “Come on, stop … I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.”

  “Thank you for proving my point. But seriously, what you did today, what you are doing, is above and beyond. And you can’t lay it off on Laurie. You are doing it, and I appreciate it.”

  “I’m happy to do it. Except for the part about actually doing it.”

  I know what he means; he’s been unsuccessfully trying to retire from lawyering for a long time. “But we have to talk about money,” I say. “And I don’t mean the bail, because you’re going to get that back.”

  “Good. Because if you skip bail, I will hunt you down if it takes me forever.”

  That draws a smile from me; Andy as a hunter of anything is a funny image. “You know what I mean; defenses are expensive, and I don’t have that kind of money.”

  He frowns, as if annoyed and frustrated that we have to have this conversation. “Okay, here’s the situation. I’m just going to say this once, so please refer back to it every time you consider bringing this up again. Laurie and I have more money than we will ever need. After this trial, if there is a trial, we will still have more money than we will ever need.

  “You and Laurie are on the same team; you’re friends. You and I are friends, in a can’t-stand-each-other sort of way. She and I take friendship pretty seriously.”

  “But…”

  “No buts. Every second you spend worrying about this is a second you’re not spending clearing yourself. Much as I like to beat the hell out of Dylan Campbell, I want you and Laurie and Marcus and me … and Simon … to clear you before this gets into court.”

  “Fair enough. More than fair enough. But I thank you, and I owe you, big-time.”

  “One more thing. Since I am now your lawyer, and you are in legal jeopardy, our relationship has changed.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you need to listen to my wise counsel, so as to prevent you from making your situation worse.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Are we done here?”

  “We’re done here.”

  We go into the other room to discuss our strategy.
“I’ve been thinking about the situation, which may not come as a surprise,” I say. “But I think there are certain assumptions we can make. One is that whoever was behind the murder of Lisa Yates was also behind the murder of Gerald Kline.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?” Laurie asks.

  “Don’t misunderstand; I’m not saying that Kline was not involved in the Yates killing. I would not be the least surprised if he was. But there is someone else, above Kline on whatever totem pole we’re dealing with, who is pulling the strings.

  “The next assumption is that my confronting Kline at his house the other night ultimately led to his death. Not just because it followed so quickly, but more because of their so far successful attempt at framing me. I said something which worried Kline, and which in turn must have worried his bosses. So they got rid of both problems, by killing Kline and framing me.”

  “Which means it was not a domestic dispute, or a broken relationship, that caused this,” Andy says. “You may have originally thought that’s what you were dealing with, but you stumbled into something much bigger. And there is big money involved.”

  “Why do you say that?” Laurie asks.

  I jump in. “Because someone hired the person who killed Lisa Yates. Maybe it was the twenty-five grand in cash that Kline took out, or maybe not. But either way it didn’t come cheap. And I would think there is a good chance that Kline’s killer was hired as well. Could very well have been the same person.”

  “I’m going to offer a third assumption,” Laurie says. “I don’t believe that there was anything Kline was going to show you that night. I think he was either forced to say that or was a willing participant, not realizing it was going to result in his death. He may have thought he was setting you up to be killed, Corey.”

  “I agree,” I say. “So where do we go from here?”

  Laurie turns to Marcus, who has not said a word. “Marcus, can you try to find out who was hired to kill Lisa Yates?”

  “Yunhh.” I assume that means yes because Marcus nods when he says it.

  “How will you do that?” I ask.

  Marcus just shrugs, so Laurie picks up the slack. “Marcus knows people in that world. He has a knack for getting information from those people. If the guy is local, we have a chance. If he was brought in, it’s less likely.”

  “I have an idea,” Sam Willis says, the first time he has talked as well. He says it a little sheepishly, as if not sure he should be speaking up.

  “That’s what you’re here for,” Laurie says.

  He nods. “Okay. We monitored Kline’s phone after you left that night, and he didn’t make any calls for the next twenty-four hours. Yet it seems obvious that he spoke to someone about you.”

  “Right,” I say. “But they could have met in person.”

  “That’s possible,” Sam says. “But maybe he called on a different phone, one we don’t know about. Maybe one that isn’t even in his name.”

  “So?”

  “So virtually every phone has a GPS in it. The phone company can tell you where a specific phone is at a specific time.”

  “How does that help us?” Andy asks.

  “It can also be cross-checked to reveal what phones are in a specific location. If Kline had a different phone in that house, I believe I can tell you the number, by cross-checking the GPS data.”

  “And if they met in person?” Laurie asks.

  “If it was at Kline’s house, then I can tell you what phone his visitor was using. And if it was elsewhere, I can follow Kline’s phone and tell you where he was.”

  Laurie turns to me. “Corey?”

  She’s asking me the question because she knows about my reluctance to let Sam use “extralegal” methods. The issue is whether I will feel differently now that it’s my ass on the line.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I say.

  Dani smiles. “That’s my little hypocrite.”

  THERE is not a huge amount of publicity about my arrest.

  It obviously made the local papers; the coverage has been greater than it would have been had I not been an ex-cop.

  But as far as I can tell, it hasn’t hit the TV local news. That is a function of geography: since Paterson is under the New York television umbrella, it rarely makes the cut as to what goes on the air. If the media were to cover every murder that happens in the New York metropolitan area, it would be all murder, all the time. There would be no room for weather, and no one would know where the hell the Canadian air is, or what is preventing it from getting here.

  I don’t care that much about the publicity either way, though it’s not fun to be thought of as a slasher/killer. I realize that people naturally assume that someone who is arrested is guilty; I used to have that impression myself. But I feel confident that I will be vindicated, and my reputation restored.

  But the publicity level, or lack of it, does have some independent importance. In the investigation we are going to conduct, I am going to want to talk to a lot of people, some of them friends or colleagues of Kline’s. If they think of me as his killer, it could prove to be a definite conversation stopper.

  We are still figuring out who to approach, while waiting for Marcus and Sam to come back to us with information. In most situations I am incapable of just sitting around, but with a GPS bracelet on my ankle I am particularly anxious. No, anxious is not strong enough … crazed would be the proper description.

  I open my computer and start to get some information off the internet. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, and I’m certainly no Sam Willis, but it gives me something to do.

  I google Lisa Yates and read the stories covering her murder. There’s nothing there that I don’t already know. Biographical information on her is short, but her Facebook page is at least partially enlightening. Apparently Facebook pages stay up after a person dies, which I guess makes sense, since there is no one to take it down. I’m sure Facebook has no interest in monitoring death records; they only make money off the living.

  I switch to googling Gerald Kline. Reading the media stories about his murder is painful, especially the follow-up stories that identify me as having been arrested for the murder.

  The worrisome part, as these stories remind me, is that the police and prosecutor felt confident enough to make the arrest. I get it that I had a grudge against Kline and was foolishly vocal about it. That known bias, coupled with my being present at the scene and calling the police, should have made me a suspect. Maybe I should even have been a prime suspect, although I would have thought my long record on the force would have given them pause.

  One thing they did not do is pause.

  Andy pointed out, and there is no doubt he is correct, that they have other evidence they consider compelling. I am worried about what it could be because the people we are up against seem to be smart and well financed. They could well have done something to set me up.

  My mind is obviously wandering, so I force myself back to the internet. Kline is said to have run seminars that often led to people being hired into the medical services industry, which was his specialty. He was also a headhunter in the industry, which was obviously why his seminars would be well attended. For Kline, one of his jobs fed off the other.

  Kline’s company is called Healthcare Recruitment and Marketing Services. It’s not exactly a catchy name, but the website makes up for it with glitz and cool graphics.

  There are three people in the company, or at least there were three before Kline departed the scene. The cofounder is Stephanie Downes, and if her smiling photograph is current and not photoshopped, then she is probably in her late thirties and quite attractive.

  The third person in the firm, listed as an executive assistant, is Carol Ayers. Ayers looks a good ten years older than Stephanie and considerably less attractive, but they do have the wide smile in common.

  I click on seminars and see that one is scheduled for today at noon at the Woodcliff Lake Hilton. It is to be conducted by Stephanie Downes, and ti
ckets, priced at seventy-five dollars, can be purchased online or at the door.

  I would have thought that Kline’s death would have put the company’s operations on a temporary hold, and maybe the cancellation just happens not to be on the website. On the other hand, they might be going ahead with it, and I have nothing else to do, so my GPS bracelet and I are off to Woodcliff Lake.

  I get to the hotel at eleven forty-five and spend ten minutes navigating the parking lot, looking for a spot. I can’t tell how many of the cars are owned by guests of the hotel or attendees of the seminar; if it’s the latter, then the sponsors are doing well.

  I follow the signs to the ballroom, which is where the seminar is being held. A table is set up outside the room, and two women sit behind it with small metal boxes, I assume to hold cash. They also have credit card machines.

  “I’m not too late, am I?” I ask.

  One of the women smiles at me; I recognize her as Carol Ayers, the executive assistant listed on the website. “No, sir, they’re just starting now.”

  “I’ll pay cash,” I say, and hand her the seventy-five bucks.

  “Thank you. Please fill out this questionnaire before going in.”

  “Why?”

  “So we’ll have your information on file.”

  “You know, it’s the strangest thing, but I don’t want my information on file.”

  Not waiting to debate the point, I open the door and enter the ballroom. It takes about thirty seconds for my weird mind-counter to determine that seventy-nine people are in attendance, not including the woman onstage, Stephanie Downes.

  Speaking into a handheld microphone, she says, “So I looked at him and said, ‘You’re the doctor?’” This gets a large laugh from the attentive audience, so I assume that whatever she said before rendered the line funny.

  Then she turns serious. “But the larger point, which I suspect many of you understand or you wouldn’t be here, is that the medical services industry is only going to get bigger. As we live longer, we develop more and more medical issues.” Then she smiles. “I’m starting to feel it when I try and get out of bed in the morning.”