Dog Tags (7 page)

“How about if I take off my top?”

“Even better.”

She laughs and stands up. “You want to hang out here until I get back?”

“Will he look at it right away?”

“Are you kidding? Absolutely.”

“Okay. I’ll wait. That way if I have to I can call Matt Lauer from here.”

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.”

C
OMPARED WITH
B
ILLY
Z
IMMERMAN,
M
ILO’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.”

D
ONOVAN
C
HAMBERS 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.

At this point, Donovan himself did not have any idea as to the location of those future whereabouts. It would have to be someplace
unexciting, and modest, where he would be unlikely to attract atten
tion. It would be boring, but he would be alive, until the moment that he wasn’t alive anymore.

There would not be any flights off the island until the next morning, so he called and reserved a seat. He would pack right
away, so that all he’d have to do in the morning would be to wake up and leave.

Donovan took his loaded gun out of the desk drawer and put it in his pocket. He hadn’t carried it in a while; there wasn’t
any need, and it was illegal. Now it made him feel more comfortable, more secure, as it always had in the past.

But he knew that the feeling of comfort was illusory. When they came at him, it wouldn’t be a gunfight at high noon in the
center of town. He wouldn’t see them coming until it was too late to do anything but die.

Donovan had finished packing and was carrying the suitcases out to the car when the first bullet penetrated his brain. He
never felt it, nor the two that followed.

And he never saw his killer.

“A
RE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?”
is the greeting that Eli Morrison gives me instead of hello. He’s just arrived in court and come straight over to me at the
defense table.

“Fine, how are you, Eli?”

“A bail hearing for a dog?”

“Justice works in strange and wonderful ways.”

“I understand you have fun with this stuff, but some of us have important work to do,” he says.

“Eli, let me ask you something. Are you aware that there is an armed guard stationed around Milo twenty-four hours a day?”

“What?” he asks, though he doesn’t mean that he didn’t hear what I said. It’s clear by his face and tone that he had no idea
about the armed guard, nor can he imagine why it would be done.

“If Milo is important enough to be guarded, he’s damn sure important enough to have a bail hearing.”

I can tell that Eli has more questions, none of which he has the time to ask, or I have the ability to answer. The bailiff
signals the arrival of Judge Catchings, which forces a bewildered and irritated Eli back to the prosecution table.

Judge Horace Catchings takes his seat behind the bench, which
he has been doing for thirty-two years. The first African-American judge in Passaic County, Judge Catchings stands six foot
six, and his frame looms out over the courthouse. It seems as if he can reach out and touch the principals in the room. Baseball
hitters might describe the experience of facing tall pitchers like Randy Johnson in much the same way. Judge Catchings can’t
throw the curveball, but he has a wicked contempt of court.

The judge has already agreed that I can call witnesses to support my case, but that my presentation is to take no more than
two hours. I pretended that it would be difficult to stay within that time frame, though in reality I couldn’t stretch it
that long if I included a rendition of “MacArthur Park.”