Outfoxed: An Andy Carpenter Mystery (5 page)

“Like what?” he asks.

“I’m not sure; it’s up to them to decide what to ask. But for example, what did you do with the gun after you shot them?”

“I stopped and threw it in a Dumpster a few miles away.”

“Which Dumpster?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What kind of gun was it?”

“I don’t know; guns aren’t my thing.”

“Did it have a really sharp point?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the victims were stabbed. Which makes you full of shit, and also makes you innocent.”

He looks at me and doesn’t say anything for at least thirty seconds. Then, “There was a lot of blood.”

I nod. “That often happens when knives are plunged into human bodies.”

He doesn’t say anything, so I continue. “You can plead guilty, Brian. But if you do, I’m going to ask the court to let me withdraw as your attorney, because I don’t agree with the plea. But don’t worry, you’ll find a lawyer that will go along.”

“Andy, I’ve had enough. Okay? I’ve just had enough.”

“Feeling guilty isn’t the same as being guilty, Brian. I’m spitballing here, but it seems like you’re blaming yourself for somehow putting Denise in a dangerous position. So you’re trying to get the state of New Jersey to punish you.”

“I would say that’s accurate, whether or not you think it’s justified.”

“So in the process, you’re preventing the state of New Jersey from punishing anyone else.”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t kill her, but somebody else did. Somebody who knows that they used a knife, and not a gun.”

“So?”

“So doesn’t that person deserve at least as much blame as you? Do you think the police are going to hunt down that real killer if you’ve already admitted to the crime?”

“So I say I’m innocent, like last time, and they convict me anyway. Then what, are the police going to keep searching for someone they don’t think exists?”

There is a quick knock on the door, and then it opens. It’s the bailiff, with a simple message. “It’s time.”

“Just a second,” I say. Then, to Brian, “Why did you run?”

“What do you mean?”

“After you found the bodies, why did you run? Why not call the police?”

“Because I knew they would think I did it,” he says.

“So what? You’re going to plead guilty anyway.”

He thinks for a minute. “I thought that if I surrendered, I’d never be able to find out who really did it, and get revenge.”

“Well,” I say, “this is your chance.”

We head into the courtroom, which is as crowded as I expected. This is a case in which wealthy people were murdered, and the accused is wealthy himself. Throw in the jilted-husband aspect, as well as a prison escape, and it’s close to a perfect media storm.

The presiding judge is Henry Henderson, nicknamed Hatchet by all the lawyers who have had the misfortune to try a case in his courtroom. Hatchet hates lawyers and makes no effort to hide it. He hates wiseass lawyers most of all, which has put me directly in his sights.

The prosecutor is Norman Trell, who has long been considered an up-and-comer in the department. If he has tried a case this important before, I’m not aware of it, and his getting the assignment may be a sign that the state thinks Brian will plead guilty. Of course, if Brian’s own attorney has no idea how he will plead, it seems unlikely that New Jersey has any special insight.

Hatchet asks both sides if we are ready to proceed, and we both say that we are. I’m dreading where this is going. If Brian pleads guilty, then a person I know to be innocent will be punished for a crime he did not commit. Even worse, the person or persons who did commit it will remain free.

If he pleads not guilty, then I’m stuck in a murder trial that I don’t want to be a part of and that I have a small chance of winning.

It’s the definition of a lose-lose. I’d rather be home carving pumpkins.

Hatchet goes through a bunch of housekeeping details, and then he has the prosecution present the charges. Finally, he asks Brian and me to stand, and asks how he will plead. This only relates to the murder charges; we’ve already copped to the escape charge.

I think there’s a chance I got through to him, but he hasn’t given me any indication either way, so all I can do is wait like everybody else.

“Not guilty,” Brian says, his voice surprisingly firm and determined.

“Well, gentlemen,” Hatchet says after telling the clerk to record the “not guilty” plea, “looks like we have a trial to schedule.”

Yes, we do. It’s going to be wall-to-wall work, and I have only myself to blame.

The real question is: How am I going to tell Edna?

“Do you think the judge will grant the change of venue?” Laurie asks.

The question surprises me. “I wasn’t planning to ask for one,” I say. “You think I should?”

“Well, since you’re going to be in Florida anyway, I thought you might want to try the case there.”

“Oh, damn. I forgot.” We have an upcoming family vacation to Disney World planned, and it totally slipped my mind. Trial preparation and the trial itself will make it impossible. “Now what?”

Laurie smiles. “Now we move the trip to spring break. It’s not your fault, Andy.”

“You think Ricky will be okay with it?”

She nods. “As long as we go. We promised him.”

“We’ll definitely go. Should I talk to him?”

“I’ll do it; he’ll be fine. This way we’ll be home and he can get presents under the Christmas tree.”

“The tree?” I was hoping that the vacation would remove the need to have a tree. I’ve got nothing against Christmas trees in theory; it’s the setting up I don’t like. Laurie becomes an artiste when it comes to us putting up lights and trinkets; it took less time to create Mount Rushmore.

“No trip means a tree,” she says. “I’ll buy the lights this week.”

Canceling the Disney trip is my first taste of feeling like a rotten parent; I have a hunch it won’t be the last. But in this case, work comes first, giving me still another reason to eliminate work from my life.

I turn on the news and see that the murders are prominently featured. The local ABC affiliate has gotten an interview with Sarah Maurer, the neighbor who discovered the bodies.

She tells the reporter that the police asked her not to speak about the case, then proceeds to speak about the case. She describes how she saw Brian running from the house, and then found the dead bodies. She starts to sob as she talks.

The fact that the prospective jury pool is out there watching this is a nightmare, and makes me think that maybe I should ask for a change of venue. Orlando might be a good choice; maybe I should tell Laurie to hold off on the lights.

I head back down to the jail to speak to Brian. He seems down, which is obviously the appropriate way for someone in his situation to be. Before I see him, I confirm with prison officials that he will soon be removed from solitary and put back in with the general prison population.

“It’s not a big deal either way,” he says, when I tell him. “I don’t have too many close friends here anyway. It’s not like we hang out around the water cooler, you know?”

Brian didn’t testify in his own defense during his first trial, so my reading of the transcript didn’t tell me much about his side of the story. Sometimes lawyers can get a client’s point of view in front of the jury without having the client testify, but Nathan was not successful in that regard.

Having a client take the stand is always risky, and most lawyers, myself included, try to avoid it whenever possible. Just reading the transcript, it seems that Brian’s testimony was necessary, but since I don’t know what he would have said, I can’t be sure.

Though my reading told me quite a bit about Brian’s case, I question him as if I’m starting from zero. I ask him to take me through the original embezzlement charge, and he starts off by proclaiming his innocence, a position he has never wavered on.

The case against him was convincing, as the prosecution showed clear evidence of money leaving the firm’s accounts improperly and of that same money showing up in personal accounts of Brian’s that were set up in secret, some overseas.

“I had nothing to do with any of that,” he says. “Someone else did it in my name.”

“Why and who?” I ask.

“The why part is obvious,” he says. “To get me in here, or at least to get me out of the company. The who part is a little tricky.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Everything was done by computer,” he says. “I wasn’t accused of breaking into the company vault and carrying out the money in a bag. All the transactions were done by computer. So it could have been Gerry, or it could have been some guy sitting at a terminal in Bangladesh. Distance doesn’t matter; it’s all about access.” The Gerry he is referring to is Gerald Wright, his now-deceased ex-partner.

I don’t bother to ask how some outside party could have access, since I know that Sam Willis can access anything he wants. “So you think it might have been someone on the inside of the company, like your partner?”

“Gerry’s my best guess, since he was the one most likely to profit from my leaving. But it also could be someone he was doing business with.”

“Like who?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. But our products were remarkable, and we were making improvements in them daily. In the wrong hands they could be even more valuable than they are when used legally.”

“Who will take over the business now?”

He shrugs. “I’m not exactly part of management anymore, so I can only guess. But there’s a board of directors, and they’ll appoint someone. Probably either Ted Yates, who is the CFO, or Jason Mathers.”

“Who is he?”

“Head of the technology division. He and his team are the ones that make the place go.”

“Who would you bet on?”

“Yates. He’s more political; he knows how to work the system. He’ll convince the board that Mathers is a war criminal.”

Brian goes on to tell me about the company’s “products,” very little of which I understand. They make servers and routers, through which computer data travels. They are apparently very fast, which is why Wall Street companies use them, since speed is crucially important to gaining trading advantages.

“Wall Street companies needed us for the speed, and that’s what we provided. But I don’t know where the company is now; I’ve been gone for three years, which in tech is forever. Other people might have found other uses for what the company can do, and it might not be legal.”

“Anybody in mind?” I ask.

“Yeah, one person in particular, someone who I know was involved with Gerry. He was the reason I broke out of jail.”

“Who is that?” I ask, feeling an uncomfortable sensation that a bomb is about to be dropped.

“Dominic Petrone,” he says.

Kaboom.

Dominic Petrone is the scariest anachronism on the planet. In an era when organized crime families are in decline nationally, Petrone has successfully fought against that tide. He’s adapted to changing times, bringing modern business techniques to loan sharking, drugs, gambling, and prostitution.

He even looks the part of a successful CEO: he is a graying sixty-two-year-old whose suits cost enough to pay for a decent used car. But at the core, his business model is based on fear, intimidation, and murder.

I’ve had dealings with Petrone on a few occasions in the past, and I’ve done well in that I’ve managed to at least partially align my interests, and those of my clients, with his. For the most part I’ve accomplished my goals, the primary one being to remain alive.

But I have never had any dealings with him when I was not petrified, and I am not looking forward to going another round. Worse yet, this time we could well be adversaries.

It’s hard for me to speak coherently and panic at the same time, but I manage to do so when I ask Brian, “What does Petrone have to do with this?”

“Most people don’t know this, but Denise and I had decided to end our marriage before any of this happened. Before I was even accused.”

Based on what he just said, I’ve got a feeling he’s going to take the long way to get around to Petrone.

He continues, “The timing just seemed to people like she left me because I was arrested, but that wasn’t it at all. We had recognized that it wasn’t working, and we were ending it as friends.”

I can’t take it; the suspense is killing me. “We were talking about Dominic Petrone,” I say, to move him along.

“I’m getting there. Denise used to come see me here all the time, and we got to the point where we talked about restarting our life together when I got out. It was as if my misfortune was making us closer, was making us realize what was important.

“Then, about a year ago, things started to change. It was the way she talked to me, and the fact that she communicated with me less. She didn’t say it, but I knew she was seeing someone else. I wasn’t angry; I was upset because I had come to realize how much I still loved her. But I didn’t blame her.”

I’m not going to interrupt with any more questions; it will just slow down the time it will take to get to Petrone.

“She never told me who it was, never even admitted that there was someone. But I knew it had to be Gerry; the three of us grew up together. She went out with him before me, and I knew he always resented that I beat him out. They saw each other every day at work, so it just wasn’t surprising.”

He pauses awhile, as if remembering. Then, “Finally she told me that it just wasn’t going to work for us, that she wanted to go through with the divorce this time. She was crying and sorry, but that didn’t change the bottom line. She wanted out. I was upset, but I gave her my blessing.

“Then about three months ago, she told me that she was getting concerned about something. She said that she had overheard some things and that she thought Gerry was involved with some dangerous people. She wondered if it might have anything to do with my case.”

I think I have an idea who one of the dangerous people might be.

He goes on. “She said things were getting really weird, and that she was going to dig around and find out what she could, that maybe there would be a way to help me. I should have told her not to, to just stay out of the whole thing. I should have told her that I was going to be out of prison soon anyway. But I didn’t.” He pauses for a moment, then shakes his head and repeats, “I didn’t. The next day, she told me she was scared. That someone named Dominic Petrone was involved, and that Gerry was leaving town, to try and figure out what to do. He said that she needed to go with him, that nobody was safe. She wanted to know if I still had the cabin.”