The Wrong Man (26 page)

“Lightner,” I said into my cell phone, once I was back inside my car. “Get over to the law firm. Someone just tried to kill me. Shauna and Bradley and Marie are sitting ducks over there.”

“Jesus, what the hell happened?”

“Can’t talk now. Just get over there. I’ll see you soon.”

I punched out the phone and dialed Tori’s cell phone.

“Hello?”

“Tori, it’s Jason. Where are you?”

“I’m at my condo. I’m working on an Internet search—”

“Listen, you still have that gun you used five years ago?”

She was silent for a moment. “What kind of a question is—”

“You could be in danger,” I said. “Lock your door and don’t let anyone in. They saw you with me yesterday at Summerset Farms. They just tried to kill me, and you could be next. I’ll be there in less than half an hour. Okay?”

“Okay, sure. Are
you
okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“What about everyone else? Shauna and the others?”

“I just talked to them. They’re still at our office. Joel’s going over there.”

“Maybe I should, too.”

That wasn’t a bad idea. Keep us all together. “Can you get to your car safely?”

“I—sure. My condo building’s secure. We have a doorman, and the garage is underground. You’d have to go through the lobby to get to it.”

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence, Tori.”

“It’ll be fine,” she promised. “I’ll leave right now. I’ll go straight to the law firm.”

“I don’t know.…”

“I think you’re being paranoid,” she said. “Why would someone want to kill me?”

I sat in a chair in the conference room, staring up at the ceiling.

“Well, this is just insane,” said Shauna. “We need to go to the judge. We need to tell him that we’re obviously onto something here, and our lives are at risk. We need a continuance of the trial and protection.”

Bradley and Joel Lightner were sitting here with me. Tori had just arrived and had taken a seat, too. Everyone was tense. This was turning into something nobody had expected.

“You’re forgetting something,” I said. “You’re forgetting I left the scene. There are two dead bodies and I’m nowhere to be found. Hell, I could be a suspect.”

In hindsight, it was probably dumb of me to flee. It was an instinct. Someone had just tried to kill me, and getting as far away as possible, as fast as possible, had seemed like a pretty swell idea at the time.

“It’s only been an hour or so,” said Shauna. “Let’s call the cops now and go in.”

I shook my head. “I could get tied up for days with those guys. I don’t have those days. I have a client who needs me to be focusing on his trial.”

“But think about it, Jason. You tell them what happened, and the judge will have to delay things. Wendy Kotowski would probably agree.”

That might be true. But I couldn’t trust Judge Nash. He was too unpredictable, and I was on his shit list now. And my story was a real crowd-pleaser. Some mobsters tried to kill me because I’d uncovered a plot between the Mob and a wealthy downstate CEO to kill Kathy Rubinkowski,
but the ambush was thwarted when someone miraculously saved me. Who, I have no idea. Yeah, that was a real winner. Until I had something more to back it up, I’d sound like a paranoid freak. I sure as hell couldn’t count on help from our judge.

Tori said, “Are you sure they were the same guys who were hassling me at Vic’s that night?”

I’d left things a little strangely with Tori on Thanksgiving night, after we’d slept together. I wasn’t sure how it would work out going forward. But any awkwardness was erased by the turn of events tonight.

I nodded. “No doubt. The one guy said, ‘We meet again.’ And when I asked him how his shoulder was doing, he started to answer. That was just before he got shot.”

Tori shook her head. Nobody had a ready explanation.

“They’ve been watching me all along,” I said. “The Mob. The Capparellis. That was back when all this started. When Lorenzo Fowler came to see me. They must have been wise to it. They were afraid he was going to tell me something. So they wanted to keep an eye on me.” I threw my hands up. “That’s the best I can figure.”

“So, if the Capparellis wanted to kill you,” said Joel, “who came to your rescue tonight?”

I had no idea. “Someone who’s a pretty good shot,” I said. “I know, Joel, I know. You’re thinking it was the infamous Gin Rummy. But Gin Rummy works for the Capparellis. Gin Rummy, if anything, should want me dead. He wouldn’t try to save me.”

Nobody knew what to say. It was getting easier and easier to draw up a list of people who wanted me dead. But not so easy to think of who would want to rescue me.

“Okay, listen up,” I said. I sat up and looked around the table. “Starting right now, each of you has permission to drop off this case.”

“I needed your permission?” Lightner asked.

I ignored him. “Go on vacation or something. I know our witnesses and I know their witnesses. I can handle it. I don’t need anyone’s death on my conscience. No foolin’, guys. This is my problem, not yours.”

The room went quiet. They were probably thinking it over. They should. I was serious. They’d done enough prep work for me. I could try
this case alone. I didn’t want to have to worry about the health and safety of two lawyers, a private eye, and Tori.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Shauna.

“Me, neither,” Bradley added.

“Six weeks of work without pay, and now someone’s going to shoot at me, too? Count me in!” That was Lightner’s attempt at humor.

Tori shrugged. “I don’t know how much help I am, but I want to stick around.”

“Okay, so we’re all very courageous,” I said. “Then I say we stay together in groups.”

“Right,” said Lightner. “That way, they can save time by shooting us in bunches.”

Shauna said, “Report this to the police, Jason. Get it out in the open. It will make it harder for the Mob to come after you a second time if you’ve already publicly accused them of trying to come after you once.”

I’d considered that. But I didn’t think these guys felt a whole lot of fear. They had ways of killing people without leaving a lot of fingerprints. And like I said, my story would sound too far-fetched.

And as much as I might appreciate a delay from a tactical point of view, I was beginning to wonder if we weren’t better off going to trial in a few days.

“No cops,” I said. “We go forward. And we start by asking who the hell was it who saved my ass tonight?”

Patrick Cahill watched the majestic sight of the Saturday-morning sun appearing over the lake, while he clutched in his hand the gun that he would use to kill Jason Kolarich.

He stood at ground level, near the grass embankment to the highway, keeping his breathing even, awaiting the word through his earpiece. He had stretched and restretched his limbs. He was on high alert, realizing that he’d only have about thirty, maybe forty-five, seconds’ notice that Jason Kolarich was on his way down the ramp and through the tunnel, coming toward Cahill.

His partner, Dwyer, was serving as the marker. He was parked on Ash a half-block down from the ramp. Dwyer would tell Cahill via the earpiece when he first spotted Kolarich, and then when he was heading down the ramp.

The tunnel was where it would happen. The cover of darkness and complete privacy made it the perfect choice. Cahill would start jogging into the tunnel from the direction opposite Kolarich. If Kolarich saw him standing still, essentially lying in wait, it would raise his radar. But seeing a fellow runner come jogging into the tunnel would seem perfectly normal to him.

Cahill hopped around, did some high-knees in place, worked out the nerves. He checked his watch. It was just after seven now. The sun had reared its head, bathing him in warm light, the color of the sky beginning
with a burst of orange at the horizon and fading into pinks and reds as it moved upward.

By seven-fifteen, the sun had fully shown its shape over the water. By seven-thirty, the sky reminded him of rainbow sherbet. But where the fuck was Kolarich?

“Sleeping in on a Saturday?” Cahill said.

“Maybe.”

By eight o’clock, Cahill didn’t give a flying fuck about the sunrise anymore. By eight-thirty, he wasn’t sure what to do, because the lakefront was beginning to swell with joggers and bikers and skaters and speed-walkers. Didn’t they realize it was thirty degrees out here?

“Dammit. This is all fucked now.”

“Should I go by his house?”
Dwyer asked.

“What good would that do?”

“Okay. Then what’s plan B?”

“There isn’t a fucking plan B. I was told this guy is like clockwork, running along the lake at dawn. You think he took a different route?”

“I don’t know. Probably we should wait, right?”

Cahill looked around. Joggers and bikers and skaters and walkers aside, the tunnel would still be dark and, hopefully, empty, thus remaining viable as a kill spot. He’d have to improvise. Once he got word about Kolarich from Dwyer, he’d have to quickly assess the situation and determine whether it was still workable.

At nine o’clock, Dwyer said into Cahill’s earpiece,
“There’s a traffic lady handing out tickets. I have to move. It’s thirty-minute parking here.”

“Great.”

“I’ll do a lap and come back around.”

Yeah, thought Cahill, and let’s hope Kolarich doesn’t choose that window of time to come barreling down Ash and through the tunnel.

At nine-thirty, a police squad car lazily cruised along the beach, passing directly by Cahill about fifty feet away. Cahill made a big point of stretching to not arouse their attention.

“Enough,” he said. “Come pick me up, Dwyer. It’s time to come up with a plan B.”

“Hi,” Tori said, answering the phone, presumably seeing me on caller ID.

“Just checking to see if you’re still alive,” I said. “Are you still alive?”

“I am. Are you?”

“I think so.”

“How’s the knee?”

“It’s seen better days.” I had my left leg up on a chair in my office. Keeping it straight kept it from stiffening up. When I got out of bed this morning, I couldn’t even put weight on it. I had to hop on one foot into the shower. I wasn’t really sure how I’d hurt it—I was a little preoccupied with bullets flying past me and ducking for cover—but I was hoping it was just a sprain and not ligament damage or anything.

I hated immobility. I tweaked a hammy my freshman year at State and could barely walk for a few days and I went crazy. Today, I missed my morning run for the first time in weeks, but worse, I’d have trouble pacing, which was how I did my best thinking.

Tori said, “And you’re positive those guys from last night were the same ones who bought me those drinks and grabbed me at Vic’s?”

“I’m sure, Tori.”

“That’s so weird.”

“Not really. It tells me the Capparellis were looking at me. I checked my date book. That friendly encounter at Vic’s came after Lorenzo Fowler had called to make an appointment. It was before we actually met but after he’d set up the meeting with my secretary. So they knew he was
coming my way and they were watching me. They’ve been watching me the whole time.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she said.

It did, but something about it still felt wrong. I wasn’t sure what.

“Be careful,” I said. “We’re all here at the firm if you want to join us.”

I hung up with her and returned my attention to the motions in limine that the prosecution had filed. As much as I hated paper and preferred the give-and-take of witness testimony, pretrial motions could have a devastating impact on a trial. You prepare for months or years for a trial and in the final days, the other side takes a shot at excluding your prime piece of evidence or your best argument, and you hold your breath and pray for the right outcome. The wrong result can fundamentally redirect your defense on virtually the eve of trial.

The principal bomb that Wendy Kotowski had dropped was asking the judge to exclude any evidence of Tom Stoller’s heroic military background and, thus, the testimony of Sergeant Bobby Hilton, his friend. Now that the defense of post-traumatic stress disorder had been excluded by the court, she argued, Tom’s military biography had no relevance to whether he killed Kathy Rubinkowski.

She was right. But getting sympathy out of the jury for a war hero who lost everything when he returned home was one of the only arrows I had left in the quiver. So we had our work cut out for us to convince the judge to allow the evidence, and Bradley John’s first draft of the defense’s response, which was due Monday, wasn’t satisfactory, to my mind.

If Judge Nash was a normal human being, he’d feel like he owed me one at this point. That’s how most judges think—if they stick one side with an adverse ruling, they try to restore the equilibrium with a favorable ruling on something else. They want to finish a trial knowing that they screwed over each side about the same.

All told, Wendy had filed no less than sixteen motions in limine. It was a routine tactic to inundate the other side with these motions so they spent their last days before trial tied up in paper and legal research. It was a tactic of which I disapproved. I deplored it, in fact. The adversarial system wasn’t intended to be a game of one-upsmanship but, rather, a sincere search for the truth.

Which was why I filed only fifteen motions on our side.

Either way, it was going to be a long weekend.

My office phone rang, my direct line that almost nobody knows.

“Yeah, hello?”

“Yeah, hello,” Joel Lightner said. He was back at his office, doing his digging on Randall Manning and those other shady characters. Another investigator was helping him. He’d warned me that he’d have trouble getting to some information until Monday, when everyone returned from the long holiday weekend, so I hadn’t expected magic from him yet.

“You don’t answer your cell now?” he complained.

“Oh, sorry.” It was sitting on my desk, but somehow I’d missed the buzzing.

“So I got something.”

“On that one thing?”

“No, the other thing.”

I’d grown paranoid since someone tried to ice me last night, so I was assuming the worst—including that my phones were tapped. Thus, the code-speak.