David Rosenfelt: Bury the Lead

He’s speaking to me as if I am an annoying child. This is unacceptable and demeaning, but I back off, so as to avoid getting sent to my room for a time-out.

Cummings, coherent enough in his injured state to know that he’ll get no help from me, begins to tell his story. He had received a phone call on his cell phone while driving on Route 3, about fifteen minutes from here. It was the killer, who told him that the next victim was about to be killed in Eastside Park, near the pavilion.

Millen interrupts. “How did he know you’d be out with your cell phone?”

Cummings shrugs. “For all I know, he tried me at home first.”

As the conversation continues, I learn that the police had been tapping all of Cummings’s phones except the cell phone that the killer called on. It was not Cummings’s personal phone; it was one supplied by the paper, which he kept in the car and rarely used. He hadn’t thought to mention it to the police and is baffled as to how the killer could have gotten the number, since he doesn’t even know it himself.

“What did you do next?”

“I rushed here, of course. And I tried to keep him on the phone as long as I could. I thought maybe I could save whoever . . . if he was talking to me . . . well, he couldn’t do anything.” He glances over toward the inside of the pavilion, where Ms. Padilla’s body lay covered. “Finally, we got cut off as I reached here. I tried calling you, but there wasn’t any cell phone reception. So I went in . . . hoping to stop . . .”

My own cell phone goes off, rather untimely considering what my client has just said.

“Hello?”

It’s Laurie, calling from the airport. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Eastside Park . . . there’s been a murder.”

Millen looks over at me, then back to Cummings. “How come his cell phone works here?”

Cummings has a flash of anger at Millen. “I don’t know . . . and I really don’t care.”

“Who was murdered?” Laurie asks.

“Linda Padilla,” I say. “Take a cab home. I’ll call you.”

I hang up, having smoothly accomplished the difficult feat of making my own client look like a liar.

“Good job” is Vince’s sarcastic whisper.

I shrug as Millen questions Cummings in excruciating detail about the phone conversation, seeking to find out every possible nuance, probing for exact words used, tone of voice, et cetera. Finally, Cummings tells Millen that he doesn’t remember much more. He was apparently hit on the side of the head by an unseen assailant. He was knocked out, though he doesn’t know for how long, and when he came to, he called the police, since the cell phone’s reception had somehow been restored.

“Did you see him at all?” Millen asks.

“No.”

“His car?”

“No.”

Cummings seems to wince in pain and touches the bandage on his head.

“Captain,” I say, “he needs to get to a hospital.”

Millen seems about to argue, then changes his mind. “We’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

The paramedics load the reluctant Cummings into the ambulance, which will take him to the hospital for X rays. Once he is gone, Vince and I walk off to talk alone.

“What do you think?” Vince asks.

“How well do you know Cummings?”

“Very well,” says Vince, a little too quickly. “Well enough. Why?”

“He was lying. The cell phone story was bullshit. I walk Tara around here all the time, and I’ve never had a problem with reception. And I heard Laurie clear as a bell.”

“So maybe your-”

“You got one? Call your office.”

Vince takes out his phone and dials his office. After a few moments he cuts off the call; it obviously worked.

“Why would he lie?” Vince asks.

“I don’t know . . . maybe he wants to be a hero and catch the killer himself. But if I knew he was lying, then you can be sure Millen knew it even faster. And with the pressure that’s about to come down, he’s not a guy to jerk around.”

Vince doesn’t say anything for a few moments, worry etched on his face. There’s something going on here, and as the lawyer, it would be nice if I knew what it was.

“Vince, are you telling me everything? Because I feel like there’s a whole bunch of missing pieces here.”

“I’ve told you everything I know. Why wouldn’t I?”

I shrug, since I have no idea, and he continues. “I’ll talk to Daniel in the morning. You wanna go grab a beer at Charlie’s?”

Charlie’s is a combination sports bar/restaurant that is my favorite sports bar/restaurant in the entire world. Simply put, it is the Tara of sports bar/restaurants. But there is absolutely no chance that I will be going there tonight with Vince.

“Let me see . . . ,” I say. “A beer with Vince, or seeing Laurie for the first time in two weeks? Mmmm . . . Vince or Laurie . . . Laurie or Vince? Gorgeous woman . . . or fat slob? A terrific evening with the woman I love . . . or a night of burping and slurping with a pain in the ass? Help me out here . . . I just can’t decide.”

“I’m buying,” he offers.

“Even though that would be a historic event, I’m going to pass. Call me in the morning after you’ve spoken to our boy.”

I leave Eastside Park and stop off at my house to pick up Tara before I go to Laurie’s. I never leave Tara alone in the house all night, and my plan is to spend this particular night at Laurie’s. Of course, it’s always possible that she’ll have a different plan. It’s her first night home . . . she might be tired or just feel like being alone.

I ring her doorbell and she comes to the door. She’s wearing one of my T-shirts and nothing else, and she kisses me in such a way as to make me confident that my plan is going to work.

And it does. Brilliantly.

• • • • •

THE FIRST THING I do in the morning is turn on the television to see the kind of play the Linda Padilla murder is getting. It’s as big as I expected: national news and the lead story on the Today show.

I’m surprised when Daniel Cummings is Katie Couric’s first interview, from his hospital room. He tells what happened with a heavy emphasis on his heroism in the face of danger; if Eastside Park were Iwo Jima, Daniel would be commissioning someone to paint him planting the flag. It’s becoming increasingly clear that my client is trying to use these murders to achieve stardom.

As an ex-cop, Laurie is anxious to hear more about the situation, and she peppers me with questions. She can’t quite understand my role in this any better than I can, questioning why Vince brought me into the case. And questioning even more why I agreed to do it.

“He’s my friend,” I point out.

“But you don’t think he’s telling you everything.”

I nod. “That’s true.”

“Why are you letting him get away with that?” she asks.

“He’s my friend.”

She leans over and kisses me. “I love your simplicity.”

I nod. “Along with my virility, it’s one of my best traits. You want to work on the case with me?”

“For free?”

“Yup. But you’ll get to watch my simplicity close-up.”

“I’m weakening,” she says.

“And there’s absolutely nothing for us to do.”

“Then I’m in.”

I’ve now accomplished my main goal, which is to have company while I’m wasting my time. Had Laurie not agreed to be my investigator, I probably would have asked Tara next.

Since I have nowhere else to go, I suggest that our first stop should be the hospital to check on Cummings’s condition, though he seemed fine when he talked to Katie Couric. Laurie asks that we first stop off at the murder scene; she wants to get a feel for what happened.