First degree (12 page)

Based on what I know about Dorsey, and the department, the odds are she is correct.

"What exactly did he say?"

"I can't remember exactly, but it was something like 'If they don't back off, they'll never see me again.' And then he laughed and said, 'They'll bury my box, but I won't be in it.'"

"And you never asked him about it?"

She shakes her head. "No, but it was one of the things that changed my perspective on my marriage. It finally helped drive into my thick head what should have been obvious all along: that I had not been an important part of his life for a very long time. I should have left then."

"But you didn't."

"No, and by the time I did he had taken all our money."

"What did he do with it?"

A smile, even sadder this time. "I wish I knew. But if you follow the money, you will find Alex. It's part of what drives him."

"What else drives him?" I ask.

"Power and hatred. And when he can exercise power to get back at those he hates, he is in his glory. I suspect that's what your client is finding out right now."

"Can I ask what drives
you
?"

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"Why did you call me?"

She pauses a moment to think about this. "Alex took the years of love and loyalty I gave to him and treated them like they meant absolutely nothing at all. He hurt people and I stood by and watched, and then I became one of those people. I'm ashamed of how I've acted, and I can't act that way anymore. If there is any way I can help you, I will."

There is a toughness and resolve in her voice that is impressive. This is a delicate, vulnerable woman that I want to have in the foxhole with me when the war starts.

Before I leave, Celia provides me with whatever financial records she has, so that I can try to follow Dorsey's money trail. To that end, I decide to stop off at my office and visit with the best money follower I know, Sam Willis.

Sam is surprised to see me and expresses his concern about Laurie. He assumes I'm there to see how he's doing with cousin Fred, and he tells me that they've hit it off really well and that I'm soon going to be even richer than I am now. Goody, goody.

"I need you to help me find someone," I say. "Or at least his money."

Sam brightens up immediately. This is his kind of assignment. "Who?"

"Alex Dorsey," I say.

"The dead cop? Or, I mean, the not-dead cop?"

"The very one." I give him the financial records that Celia gave me, and he spends a few minutes looking at them. His expression is that of an orthopedic surgeon looking at a CAT scan, calling on his years of experience to make perfect sense out of what to me is bewildering.

"This guy was a cop?" he asks.

I nod. "Yes."

"This is pretty sophisticated stuff."

He calls Barry Leiter in from the other office, and the two of them eagerly devour the records. Every twenty seconds or so, Barry says, "Wow!"

I'm glad to be able to bring such pleasure into their lives, but I'm getting a little impatient "If he moved his money, can you find out where it went?" I ask.

"To a degree," Sam says. "We can tell you a lot about it, but we won't be able to identify the city."

"Why not?"

He shrugs. "Because each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factory. And every stranger's face I see reminds me that I long to be homeward bound."

It's a sign of my desperation that I'm sitting here relying on a compulsive song-talker. Well, I'm simply not going to be drawn into it. "How long is this going to take you?" I ask.

"I won't be doing it at all. I'm going on vacation tomorrow. Barry will take care of it."

I turn to Barry. "You can do this?"

He smiles. "Sure, Mr. Carpenter. No problem. I'll start tonight on my computer at home. Whole thing should be wrapped up by tomorrow."

Sam notices my slightly worried expression and reassures me that this is definitely within Barry's expertise. Additionally, Sam will call in from his trip to make sure everything is going smoothly.

"Where are you going?" I ask.

"Puerto Rico. Do a little gambling ... get some sun ..."

I can't help myself. "So you're leaving on a jet plane? You don't know when you'll be back again?"

He smiles. "Oh, babe, I hate to go."

I'M SICK OF
STUFFING
P
ETE
S
TANTON'S MOUTH
with expensive food, but I do need to talk to him, so I suggest we meet at a Taco Bell. He calls me a "cheap son of a bitch," but since he has a genetic weakness for grilled stuffed burritos, and since I promise him an extra-large Pepsi, he ultimately agrees.

We meet at six o'clock, and I'm finished bringing him up to date on my progress by six-oh-two. He tells me that Sabonis is taking Laurie's report of the phone call seriously and that the investigation into Dorsey's possible whereabouts, as well as the possible misidentification of the body, is proceeding.

"How many lieutenants are there in the department?" I ask.

"Why? You thinking of signing up? You'll have to start a little lower."

"Come on ... how many?"

He thinks for a few moments. "Including me ... six."

"Are they the same as two years ago, when Dorsey was being investigated?"

He thinks a little longer. "Well, Dorsey was part of the group then. As far as the rest? Almost the same ... I think we had five then. I'm pretty sure McReynolds got promoted a while after that. Now you gonna tell me why you want to know?"

I nod. "I have information that Dorsey was working with another lieutenant. They weren't defending the cause of truth and justice. Any idea who it could be?"

"No." His answer is a little too quick, a little defensive. "I don't buy it. Not that group."

"What about Sabonis?" I ask.

He shakes his head firmly. "Nick? Absolutely not possible; Nick's as straight as they come. There's more chance it was me."

Having taken that as far as it can go, I move on. "They identified the body against Dorsey's DNA. Where would they have gotten it from?"

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"Well, I don't keep a bottle of DNA in my medicine cabinet. How would they have Dorsey's?"

"Every cop has to give blood for typing when we join the force," he says. "I assume they used that."

"Where is it kept?" I ask.

He shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe the precinct first-aid room, maybe the lab."

"Could somebody, could a cop, have gotten in there?"

"You mean could Dorsey have gotten in there before he disappeared, and replaced his blood with somebody else's? I don't see why not. Especially if it's in the first-aid room. It's not high-security."

"You think you could find out where the blood is kept?"

"I believe that everybody is put on this good earth for a purpose," he says. "Mine is to carry out whatever assignments you have for me."

"And you're doing a hell of a job."

I get home about eight o'clock, a half hour later than I told Laurie I would. She had dinner prepared, and my being late probably made that difficult, but that isn't the kind of thing that upsets her. She is, however, growing increasingly frustrated that she can't help defend herself, and that frustration translates to isolation. I understand it, but I can't fix it.

Actually, we're living a kind of weird sit-com. Maybe I'll head out to Hollywood and pitch it to some TV executive. "It's about two people who decide to move in together, and they start to get on each other's nerves. But she can't move out, you see, because--get this ... she's wearing this ankle bracelet ..."

One thing that I've noticed is how bonded Laurie and Tara have become. Tara is constantly at her side, graciously accepting the petting that Laurie seems comforted to give. Tara might even be more inclined to be near Laurie than to be with me. A less secure person than myself would be jealous, but the way I figure it, whenever I have the chance to be stroked by either Laurie's hand or my own, it's a no-brainer to pick Laurie's. Why should I expect a smart dog like Tara to make a different choice?

Laurie and I have settled into a kind of pattern, where after we have dinner, we sit in the living room and I bring her up to date on the events of the day. Very often she knows a lot of it, since my office is operating out of the house. But in this case I tell her about Celia Dorsey and ask her if she can make an educated guess as to the identity of the other lieutenant who was in cahoots with Alex. It seems as improbable to her as it did to Pete.

We're finished talking at about ten o'clock, and we go upstairs to bed. I'm just falling asleep when the phone rings, and I get it.

It's Barry Leiter's voice on the line, a little tentative. "Mr. Carpenter? This is Barry ... from Sam's office? I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I found something, and I figured--"

I interrupt. "You traced the money?"

"Part of the way, and then I sort of ran into a road-block. I wanted to talk to you before I went any further."

"What about?"

"These guys are good--I mean really good. I think ... well, they were waiting for somebody to try and follow this money."

This isn't terribly surprising news: Once we knew that Dorsey was alive, it became a predictable way to try to follow him. "How do you know that?"

"Believe me, I can tell," he says. "But that's not the strange part. The strange part is they were geared up to trace the tracer. That's what I thought you should know."

"I don't even know what you're talking about," I say.

"I mean they were set up to know who was tracking the money. They know it's me."

Now I'm fully alert and growing uneasy. "Did you give them your name or address?"

He laughs. "Mr. Carpenter, no offense, but this is the twenty-first century. They can get that by pressing a button."

It's amazing how fast unease can turn to panic. "What's your address?"

"Three eighty-three Vreeland Avenue."

"Okay. Barry, lock your doors and turn your lights off. I'm coming right over. Don't let anybody in unless you know it's me."

"Why? What's going on?"

"Just do what I tell you." I hang up the phone and get dressed.

Laurie is asleep, and I wake her. She can tell from the sound of my voice that something is wrong.

"What's going on?" she asks.

"Call Pete Stanton and tell him that there's an armed break-in taking place at three eighty-three Vreeland."

"Is there?"

"Not if I can help it."

I'm out the door and running to my car. I can run really fast when I'm scared, and this is just about the fastest I've ever run.

Barry lives on the other side of town from me. It would ordinarily take me about twenty minutes, but there's no traffic and I'm not stopping at any lights, so it takes me fifteen. It feels like an hour.

As I turn onto his street, I'm glad to see that the police have beaten me there. There's about half a dozen police cars, lights flashing. I see Pete standing in front of Barry's house and I pull up in the driveway. He's going to be pissed at me, but it's a lot better than the alternative.

I get out and walk over to Pete. "Thanks for coming," I say.

He nods. "I wish it could have been a few minutes earlier. You know the victim?"

It feels as though somebody has lifted Barry's house off the ground and dropped it on my head. The pressure literally pushes me to my knees. "Don't say that, Pete. Don't say there is a victim. Please ..."

"I'm sorry, Andy ... the guy who lived in the house. He was shot once through the head."

"Oh, no ... no ..." I don't think I can stand this.

"We got the perp, Andy. He's on the floor in the kitchen."

I start walking toward the house. Pete yells ahead for the officers to let me through and then follows me. It feels like it takes me an hour to get to the front door, but in truth Barry lived on a small piece of property.

We finally reach the kitchen. There is blood everywhere, obviously that of the murderer, whose bullet-ridden body lies on the floor next to the counter.

"You know him?" Pete asks.

He's lying on his stomach, with his head turned away from me, so I have to walk around toward the counter to get a better view.

I'm struck by how little I'm surprised that I'm looking at the very dead face of Geoffrey Stynes.

Pete mentions the obvious, that he needs me to detail what I know about tonight's incident to him. He drives me down to the precinct, having somebody else follow in my car. I ask him to have someone call Laurie and tell her what happened, and then I don't think either of us says another word the entire way there.

My mind is still something of a blur, and the only clarity that is able to get through is the fact that I am responsible for Barry Leiter being murdered, as surely as if I pulled the trigger. I brought this craziness, this sickness, into his twenty-three-year-old life, and he paid the price.

We reach the precinct and go into an interrogation room so that Pete can record what is said. I tell him everything, starting with the moment Stynes walked into my office. He raises his eyebrows when he hears that it was Stynes, the man he tried to find at my behest.

When I'm finished, I have a couple of questions for Pete. "Stynes was shot a bunch of times. Did he resist?"

Pete shakes his head. "He committed suicide." When he sees my surprise, he explains. "We had him dead to rights, half a dozen of us, guns pointed at him. We yelled, he saw the odds, and he raised his gun to fire, forcing us to shoot him. He had to know he would die, but in his mind it was better than letting us take him into custody."

"How can you be sure about that?" I ask.

"I saw his eyes," he said. "They weren't scared ... they were already dead."

It's almost two o'clock in the morning when I leave the precinct, after assuring Pete that I'm okay to drive. He promises to update me on whatever he learns about Stynes, and tells me I'll probably have to answer more questions from Sabonis in the next day or two. He's also going to track Sam down and tell him what happened, and ask where Barry's family is.

Laurie is waiting up for me when I get home. She heard from Pete's underling what happened. The numbness I felt is wearing off, and the pain is changing from a dull throb to a piercing agony. Laurie has a million questions, but she hardly asks any of them. She just holds me, and Tara nuzzles against me, until it's morning.

It doesn't make me feel better, but it doesn't make me feel worse. Nothing could make me feel worse.