David Rosenfelt - Dog Tags

It takes Rita more than forty-five minutes to return to her office. Obviously they had more business to discuss than just New Jersey v. Milo Zimmerman. She finds me stretched out on her couch, hands clasped behind my head.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she says.

“Without a pillow? I don’t think so. Did we get the hearing? It took you long enough.”

“Nine o’clock Wednesday morning. He cleared his calendar.”

“Did he say anything?’

“I couldn’t tell. He was laughing too hard.”

CHAPTER 14

COMPARED WITH BILLY ZIMMERMAN, MILO’S CASE IS A SLAM DUNK.

That’s because the police finally revealed the identity of the guy that Billy is accused of murdering the other night. The victim was, as Billy said, one Jack Erskine. The problem is that his full name and title was Major Jack Erskine, recently returned from a four-year deployment in Iraq.

The negative implication for Billy in all this is that Erskine was in charge of security operations in and around the Baghdad area, which meant that Billy was under his command. The papers are already speculating that this was a revenge killing, that Billy somehow blamed Erskine for his terrible injury.

In any event, the Carpenterian theory holds that there are no such things as coincidences in murder cases, and there’s no way that this has a chance of disproving it. Billy’s connection to the victim, whatever the circumstances, is going to be a mountain for his lawyer to scale.

I spend the day with Eddie Lynch in the office, going over preparations for tomorrow’s hearing. Eddie’s starting to grow on me; I’m finding that if I absolutely tune out everything he says, he’s not that annoying. And his mind is sharp as a tack. He might even be Kevin’s equal as an attorney.

“By the way, why do people call you Hike?”

He shrugs. “My brother is four years older than me. When he was around ten, he wouldn’t let me play football with him and his friends. So I used to cry to my mother about it, and she forced him to let me play.”

“Let me guess,” I say. “All they would do is let you hike the ball.”

“You got it.”

Having solved that mystery, I turn my attention back to the hearing tomorrow. Once I’m sure we are as prepared as we’re going to be, I head home. Laurie and I take Tara for a walk through Eastside Park, and then drive over to The Bonfire for dinner. It’s a restaurant that’s been in the same location on Market Street forever; my parents told me they used to hang out there when they were in high school.

Laurie and I don’t do small talk; we never have, and hopefully we never will. We have the ability to either talk about things that are of consequence to us, or stay silent without any discomfort at all.

As soon as we sit down, Laurie starts asking me questions about how I’m doing on Milo’s case, which leads into more probing questions about Billy Zimmerman.

I can see that she’s much more interested in it than I am. “You miss it, Laurie.”

“Is it that obvious?”

I nod. Laurie has spent her entire life in law enforcement, either public or private, and I can tell that she misses the action. “It is. I thought you liked teaching?”

“I do. I really do. But teaching is something I enjoy. Being out on the street is something I am.”

“You’re not ready. You know that.” It took a while for her to recover from the shooting; she bled so severely that her brain did not receive oxygen for a while, long enough to sustain some damage. She still has some weakness on her left side, and she tires easily. Her progress has been tremendous, amazing even her doctors, but she’s not all the way back yet.

“My mind is ready.”

“So?”

“So I want to help on the case.”

“It’ll be all over one way or the other tomorrow.”

“I’m not talking about Milo. I’m talking about Billy Zimmerman.”

“He doesn’t want a lawyer,” I say. “He thinks he’s going to deal himself out of it.”

“When he finds out he can’t, he’s going to come to you for help.”

I shake my head. “Not me. I’m a one-Zimmerman attorney. Milo is my man. Billy can find somebody else.”

“You know better than that, Andy. You’ll come up with a reason to take him on as a client. Maybe you’ll want Milo to have his father back, or maybe it’ll be as a favor to Pete. Or maybe you’ll think the guy’s innocent. But you’ll do it, and I’ll help you.”

“What about your teaching?”

“I’ll do that as well. It’s called multitasking. I can do a lot if I set my mind to it.”

“And you’ll still take care of my ravenous sexual appetite?”

“I’m not a miracle woman, Andy. I can’t do everything.”

“Laurie, I want to be upfront about this. I’m not taking on Billy Zimmerman as a client to keep you busy, or to get you back in the action.”

“Fair enough. But there will be other clients.”

“Don’t depress me,” I say. “I’m having a nice dinner, and I want to focus on what I want for dessert.”

“Really? I was looking forward to getting you into bed and showing you how I multitask.”

“Check, please.”

CHAPTER 15

DONOVAN CHAMBERS LEARNED OF HIS IMPENDING DEATH IN THE NEWSPAPER. That was unusual in and of itself, but to find it buried on page seven of the Nassau Advocate was also a little demeaning. To read it sitting on a glorious beach while simultaneously soaking up sun and a piña colada… well, that was about as weird as it got.

Not that Donovan was mentioned by name in the story; he wasn’t even referred to indirectly. But the message he received was as clear as if the headline had read, “Donovan Chambers About to Be Murdered.”

The story was a two-paragraph item that identified the victim of a murder outside a New Jersey club the week before. Donovan couldn’t remember reading about the murder previously, but he knew that it would not have interested him if it hadn’t named the victim as Major Jack Erskine.

The identity of the victim meant that Donovan himself was going to die. And living in this exotic, out-of-the-way locale would not protect him at all. These were the kind of people that would find you no matter where you were hiding.

He never should have confided in Erskine.

Donovan had no way of knowing whether the story was itself dated. The Nassau Advocate would sometimes run pieces days after picking them up from mainland newspapers. If this was one of those cases, then those who’d be after him already had a head start.

Not that they would need it.

Donovan wasn’t feeling fear, though he assumed that would come later. His dominant emotion was sadness. He was finally living the life he always wanted, but never thought possible. And now it was over.

Donovan wasn’t going to give up; that wasn’t his style. And he certainly wasn’t going to go to the cops and tell them what he knew, or what he had done. That would simply guarantee a prison sentence, and that would be the easiest place of all for his killers to find him.

What he would do would be to run, and to hide, and he was good at both. It would make things easier that he had so much money; there would be no need to get a job and risk exposure in that way. He had concocted better plans for the money, but that was now in the past.

Donovan briefly considered whether to spend the rest of the afternoon on the beach, since it would be the last time he was there. He decided against it. Time was not something he had the luxury of wasting; it might be too late already.

He walked up the beach toward his house, a sprawling one-level place sitting on a small cliff overlooking the water. It was an absolutely spectacular setting. He was renting it with an option to buy, an option he had been about to exercise. Now he was glad he hadn’t yet done so, since the process of selling it would no doubt provide clues to his whereabouts.