Animal Instinct

by Rosenfelt, David

  “Maybe she had a standard one that she always used. A dog’s name, something like that. Go on.”

  “Do you use T-A-R-A?”

  He frowns. “Damn, now I have to change it.”

  “I didn’t buy it that he knew her passwords, but it’s possible. But then he painstakingly returned the most recent email for all these friendships she supposedly had? People he didn’t even know? That’s what published obituaries are for.”

  Andy nods again. “Right. And the Lisa Yates thing bothered me. He remembered her right away when we asked, but didn’t remember returning her email? The one in which she said she was afraid for her life from a drug dealer? And we didn’t see his email to her on the pages Sam gave us. The guy was playing us. Although the part about admiring me and being a fan did ring true.”

  When we get to Andy’s house, we update Laurie on our conversation with Steven Landry. She asks the obvious question: “Why would he lie?”

  “Could have been to make himself look good,” I say. “The caring son, involved in his mother’s life to the point where he contacted all of her friends on her passing. It’s possible that the last time he saw her was twelve years ago this Tuesday; don’t forget, they lived nowhere near each other.”

  Andy nods in agreement. “Also could be that, under questioning by a famous lawyer for whom he has such admiration, he didn’t want to admit that he knew about Lisa’s drug issues and her fear of being murdered. He might feel bad or embarrassed that he didn’t come forward in a manner that could have saved her life.”

  “Okay,” Laurie says. “All good points. Now come up with a scenario in which he lied for a reason that relates to our case. What could the death of Doris Landry have to do with the murder of Lisa Yates?”

  Unfortunately, that question leaves me stumped and seems to have the same effect on Andy. The truth is that it’s possible Steven Landry was basically telling the truth, albeit with a little starstruck embellishment. Maybe it’s even probable.

  But if Andy and I are right and he actually was lying, I have no idea how it could have anything to do with Lisa Yates’s death. And it’s another giant step removed from the murder of Gerald Kline, which is the charge I am facing.

  Andy responds to Laurie by saying, “Why do you have to ruin everything with your logical questions? It’s a very unattractive trait.”

  Laurie smiles. “Sorry about that.” She says that she’ll have Sam check out Steven Landry, but I think she’s doing it more to humor us than anything else.

  “As long as you’re doing that, why don’t we ask Sam to get Lisa Yates’s phone records for the last few months?” I ask. “It would be interesting to know if she talked to Doris Landry, or for that matter the two other people whose obits she had. And while we’re at it, he should get Kline’s phone records as well.”

  I’ve become increasingly comfortable with using Sam to hack into computer systems in ways that are somewhat less than legal. That’s what facing life in prison can do to a person.

  “Will do,” Laurie says. “And in the meantime, here’s what I suggest. We take the information you learned from Steven Landry, including and especially the fact that you think he was lying, and file it away. Hopefully, as we investigate further, it will click into place and make sense.”

  The “investigate further” part is a bit of a problem. I have another person to talk to at Ardmore, but I am running out of “furthers” to investigate.

  “Well, then let me help you with that,” Laurie says. “While you and Andy were off having a lovely all-boys breakfast, Marcus and I were actually getting things done.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I think we’ve found Rico.”

  “How?” Andy asks.

  “I asked Gerry Kimbrell; he’s a DEA agent I once worked with on a case. He wasn’t familiar with Rico, but asked around and came up with Rico Barnes, a dealer in Passaic. He’s very loosely connected to Joseph Russo, Jr.’s family, meaning he’s an independent contractor who pays them a percentage so he can operate.”

  “And Marcus?”

  “He came up with the same name,” she says. “I don’t know how; I guess just by being Marcus. Marcus is checking him out now.”

  “Knowing who he is and linking him to Gerald Kline’s murder are two very different things,” I point out.

  “We can subpoena Lisa’s emails and use that in court, right, Andy? The cops dropped the ball by not checking them in the first place.”

  Andy shakes his head. “Yes, we can use it, but it’s possible the cops did check them. We don’t know either way because we don’t have access to discovery for Lisa’s murder. But if Dylan wound up with it, he’s in trouble for not turning it over because she mentions Kline might have been in danger from Rico as well. That’s exculpatory evidence that he’s obligated to disclose to us.”

  “The police didn’t necessarily link the two killings,” I say. “They think Lisa could be a random drive-by and that she wasn’t even necessarily the target. It’s very unlikely they’ve checked an isolated email to an elderly woman in Somers Point from months ago.”

  “So what do we do with Rico?” Laurie asks.

  “We pressure him,” I answer. “Time for Simon to start pulling his weight around here.”

  RICO works out of a parking lot in downtown Passaic.

  I don’t know what his profit margin is like for his work selling drugs, but he’s definitely not blowing his money on office space.

  Marcus has been checking things out for the last two nights, and he has Rico’s evenings down pat. From 8:00 P.M. until 10:00, he’s out making collections from people who have obviously purchased their drugs on the layaway plan. It’s possible that he’s also handing off more merchandise to the buyers; it’s been dark and Marcus hasn’t been able to tell for sure without getting too close. That doesn’t matter to us either way.

  Once he is finished with these rounds, Rico heads back to an apartment building, where he presumably lives. He spends only about ten minutes there, so Marcus assumes he is picking up more merchandise for the rest of the night.

  By ten thirty he is back in his spot at the parking lot; at that hour he has the place pretty much to himself. He clearly sees people by appointment since two purchasers are never there at once. He runs a fairly efficient operation.

  Two men follow Rico around all night. They are obviously bodyguards, but they manage to stay out of the way, while clearly remaining ready to intervene if Rico has any problems.

  Rico is about to have some problems.

  Marcus and Laurie are going to neutralize the two bodyguards and prevent Rico’s customers from keeping their appointments. He seems to see people every fifteen minutes, so there shouldn’t be that many customers to deter. The bigger issue will be the bodyguards, though Marcus specializes in big issues. In this case it’s overkill; Laurie could probably handle it on her own.

  Simon and I will have a chat with Rico. Andy and Laurie again said that I should not be a part of this, but I am not listening this time. It’s my decision because it’s my ass on the line. They disagree, but respect my right to make the call.

  Simon is along because he majored in drug detection at the K-9 Academy, with a minor in scaring drug dealers. This job will be right up his alley.

  We pull up in separate cars. Simon and I park one block east of the lot, and Marcus and Laurie park one block west. Laurie texts, “Ready?” I respond, “Let’s do it.” She must have seen the most recent customer leave, so we know the coast is relatively clear.

  We get out of our respective cars and walk toward the entrance to the outdoor lot, which is where the two bodyguards are stationed. Simon and I get there first, when Laurie and Marcus are still about twenty feet away. “Hey, where you going?” one of the bodyguards asks.

  “To talk to Rico.” Then I point to the approaching Marcus. “He said it was not a problem, that you guys would be cool with it.”

  Now they turn to Marcus and Laurie. “And who the he
ll are you?”

  I think I see the second bodyguard reach for something in his pocket, but it is way too late. Marcus uses two punches to knock them both out cold, which I believe comes out to an average of one punch per bodyguard. I don’t have time to check my math on that because I want to keep my appointment with Rico.

  “Chuck, you good? What’s going on?” Rico has obviously heard some commotion, probably the sound of his bodyguards hitting the cement.

  He’s in our sight line, so I say to Simon, “Hold.” It is the command for Simon to keep the prey, in this case Rico, under control.

  Even in the dim light, I can see the panic in Rico’s eyes as a snarling Simon comes toward him. He starts to reach into his pocket, probably for a weapon, but I already have my gun trained on him and I yell, “Freeze, you piece of shit.” I don’t know Rico, but by definition I consider anyone who would attempt to shoot Simon to be a piece of shit.

  Rico is smart enough to obey my command, as well as my next one, which is to slowly and carefully take the gun out and place it on the ground. The entire time he has his eye on Simon, who is now in pointing mode, meaning he has detected drugs.

  What Rico doesn’t know is that if I shoot him, I’ll be digging my own legal grave. Killing people while out on bail is considered a major no-no in this jurisdiction.

  “What’s this about?” Rico says. “Whatever, we can work it out, you know?”

  “Talk to me about Lisa Yates and Gerald Kline.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They bought drugs from you, and you had them killed. I am the guy you framed for Kline’s murder after you had someone slit his throat.”

  “You got the wrong guy. Don’t know them.”

  “You paid Jake Gardener to do it. We killed Gardener. You think we’ll hesitate to kill you? Simon…”

  Simon growls at Rico for effect. When Simon gets like this, even I’m scared of him, and he sleeps in my bed at night.

  “Come on, I swear. I don’t know any of these people. And any work needs to be done, I do it myself. I don’t hire nobody.”

  “You’re trying my patience, Rico. And you’re pissing Simon off.”

  “You want money? You want merchandise?” Rico is starting to panic. “I’ll give you whatever you want, but I don’t know those people.”

  I take out my cell phone and call Laurie, who answers on the first ring. “Call them in,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  We’ve planned it so that Laurie’s friends in drug enforcement are waiting for her call. Within minutes they are on the scene, and after searching Rico and finding the drugs, they place him and his two friends under arrest.

  I explain that we were walking Simon in the neighborhood, and he became aware of drugs in the area, from his time on the force in drug interdiction. The bodyguards tried to attack Laurie and Marcus, but they managed to fight them off. All of that constitutes the probable cause for the agents to have searched Rico, and what they come up with will put him on the sidelines for a long time.

  It’s a decent outcome, but not the one we wanted.

  “I hate to say it, but I believed him.”

  We are back at Andy and Laurie’s house to debrief about the evening.

  “He would have said anything to save his ass; Simon had him scared to death. But he wouldn’t cop to having killed Lisa and Kline because I don’t think he knew what the hell I was talking about. And he didn’t react to Jake Gardener’s name at all.”

  “But we know for a fact that Lisa and Kline were buying from him, and that she was afraid of him,” Laurie says.

  I shake my head. “I wish that was true, but I don’t believe it. You saw his operation; this is not a guy who was buying high-priced hit men. And Kline and Lisa were pretty well-off financially, especially Kline. He’d have a classier dealer; he wouldn’t be going to that parking lot in Passaic with an envelope full of cash.”

  “There’s always a chance we had the wrong Rico,” Andy says. “Maybe among drug dealers Rico is like Smith, or Jones.”

  “Or maybe Rico is just the name the dealer used in dealing with Kline and Lisa,” Laurie says. “Maybe his real name is Jeeves, or Shirley.”

  Andy is nodding. “Don’t forget, Kline did a lot of traveling to do his seminars. He could have met Rico in any one of those places. But to cross-check all of those locations against places with drug dealers named Rico is not going to happen.”

  “Has anyone noticed that we seem to run into a lot of dead ends?” I ask. “We’re chasing our tails here; no offense, Simon.”

  Andy nods. “But we still have the knowledge, and Lisa’s email to back it up, that she and Kline were involved with drugs. That remains tremendously significant legally.”

  Sam calls to say that he has gone through Lisa Yates’s phone records, but does not see any calls to Doris Landry or either of the two other people whose obituaries Lisa had. “I did find one other thing that might be of interest. Can I come over and show you?”

  I ask that he come over this afternoon because I want to hear it and I have an appointment first. I’m going to see Richard Mahler, the guy who replaced Don Crystal as head of the IT department at Ardmore Medical Systems. Crystal said his name was “Miller, or Marler, or Marley, or some asshole,” so even though he got the name wrong, he was damn close.

  Mahler was reluctant to talk to me when I called him, so I used the Andy Carpenter technique of threatening him with a deposition. Threatening depositions tends to convince people to do things they would not ordinarily do.

  Mahler, like his boss, Jason Musgrove, has an impressive office with the all-glass view of Route 17. I have to admit that it’s hard to picture Mahler’s predecessor, Don Crystal, in this office. I can’t see him sitting behind this desk in his pajamas with feet, offering Tang to his corporate colleagues.

  “Let’s get this over with” is Mahler’s congenial opening comment once I’ve sat down across from him.

  “Works for me. You were Lisa Yates’s boss?”

  “For only a few months before she was tragically killed. I have only been with Ardmore for eleven months.”

  “Did you get to know her?”

  “She did not report to me. I was only involved with her when there were computer-related issues, so I can’t say I got to know her. The times we interacted she seemed pleasant and competent.”

  “Why did they hire you? What I mean is, why was there an opening?”

  “If you met my predecessor, you wouldn’t ask that question.”

  “Don Crystal? Wasn’t he competent enough?”

  “He was very competent, a terrific talent. His sanity, on the other hand, was open to debate.”

  “I’ve met him.”

  Mahler nods. “Then you know.”

  Point taken. Time to move on. “Was Lisa Yates involved in anything controversial? Anything that could have posed a danger to someone?”

  “Not in her work life here at Ardmore. She had no discretion in what she did; data came in, she recorded it and put it into the system.”

  “Medical information?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could she have added or deleted information that could have hurt someone?”

  He shakes his head. “No. I assume you are looking for a motive for murder, but you won’t find it here. If someone felt that Lisa was doing something like that, they could simply have filed a complaint, and an investigation would have restored the accuracy of the data. There would be no reason for physical violence. You need to understand, Lisa and others in her role are messengers, or really conduits, of information.”

  “Would you have seen what she was doing, on a day-to-day basis?”

  “Only if I specifically looked at her work, but I would only have had reason to do so if there was a problem brought to my attention. I don’t recall any issues coming up, so the answer to your question is no.”

  “Do you know why she quit?”

  “Actually, I didn’t realize she had quit until two weeks
after the fact. I don’t recall being surprised, but I didn’t really expect it either. These things happen, especially recently. People with any level of computer skill are much in demand, so they move on to where they can make more money.”

  “Did you know Gerald Kline?”

  “I knew of him, but we never met. When he recommended people, he went through HR, or Jason Musgrove.”

  “Were you aware of any involvement that either of them might have had with drugs?”

  Mahler reacts with surprise. “No. Absolutely not. Where did that come from?”

  I decline to tell him where that came from. I thank Mahler for his time and assure him that a deposition would have been more painful. I learned nothing, which seems par for the course.

  “LIKE I said, Lisa Yates’s phone records do not show calls to the people in the obits,” Sam says. “Of course, they could have called her, and it wouldn’t be in what I’m looking at. I basically have her phone bill information, which only shows outgoing calls. For the most part there is nothing unusual here, but one thing stood out. It could be nothing, but I thought you should see it.”

  “Good. Let’s see it,” Andy says.

  “There’s a woman named Jana Mitchell; she lives in Cincinnati. Lisa called her six times in the month before her death; I could check Mitchell’s phone records, but I would guess she probably called Lisa as well.”

  “Why is this unusual?” I ask. “They could have just been friends.”

  “Well, for one thing, Lisa called her twice the day before she was killed, and the last call was just before midnight. That particular conversation lasted for forty-five minutes. I checked, and Jana Mitchell works for Midwest Medical Networks. They do what Ardmore does, just in a different part of the country.”

  “So?”

  “So it seemed strange to me that they talked so much on their personal phones, rather than their work phones. That, coupled with the timing, struck me as odd. But the other weird thing was that Lisa never emailed her. I checked through her emails twice … nothing there.”