Brandt pulled a face and shook his head. “That’s just his first line of defense. He also says he was innocent-another con framed by the pigs-and that he ran off because he was convinced we were going to persecute him. He said he’s never set eyes on Gail Zigman and that on the night in question his car broke down on his way back from work, and that he spent a couple of hours underneath it jury-rigging a repair.”
“What kind of breakdown?”
“Punctured oil pan. We checked the car out and found the repair, all right-he put a screw in the hole-but we also went to the place he said it happened, and the road’s clean as a whistle. According to his own testimony, there was oil all over when he was through.”
“Did he go for help anywhere?”
“Nope. Supposedly, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself or the illegal car, so he did it all on his own. He said it was a long time before he found out what was wrong, put the screw in, replaced the oil, and went on his way.”
“He had extra oil?”
“Yeah-says he uses almost as much oil as gas.”
I nodded in agreement. “Car smokes like it was on fire. And of course he happened to have the perfect screw for the job.”
“Naturally. And when we hit him with the discrepancies, he went stone cold on us. Told us we were a bunch of fuckers out to get him, and that he’d see us in court.”
“What?” I asked, surprised. The popular technique was to stall the process until damn-near all the principals were dead of old age. “Who’s his lawyer?”
“Tom Kelly-he got the nod from the state when the public defender’s office claimed conflict of interest.”
“Is Kelly playing the see-you-in-court angle, too?”
Brandt scratched his head. “I don’t know. It’s a little early-they haven’t even had the status conference yet. After the oil-in-the-road story blew up, Kelly approached Dunn with a plea, but he withdrew it in mid-negotiation. Now, no one knows what he’s up to. He asked for a change of venue, of course, but there was a wrinkle there, too. He said he’d accommodate Dunn by requesting an out-of-county jury instead of actually moving the trial. According to Kelly, that’s because he’s being sensitive to Dunn’s schedule, since Dunn’s out politicking every minute he can find. But according to the scuttlebutt, Kelly made the offer so he can humiliate Dunn on his home turf. Of course, that only works if Kelly’s got a secret weapon, and as far as any of us can see, all he’s got is the last deck chair on the Titanic.”
“What was the plea they were working on?”
“Well, given the rape and the attack on you-not to mention shooting the power-company guy-he’s looking at a life sentence, easy. I think Dunn was offering fifteen to thirty on the rape alone before Kelly lost interest.”
“What’s Dunn’s attitude?”
Tony rolled his eyes. “He’s licking his chops. He knows damn well the case won’t come to court for a year or more, especially with Kelly acting so cagey, so he’s going around to every rubber-chicken banquet in town bragging about putting Vogel in jail in record time. He’s making hay off you, too, since your getting stabbed makes Vogel look guilty as hell. And it’s working. The press is buying it; Women for Women has said it was a job well done, although they’ve started a ‘justice watch,’ as they call it, to make sure Dunn doesn’t let Vogel off with a slap on the wrist. Jack Derby is trying his best to inject a little reality-pointing out that Dunn didn’t have anything to do with Vogel’s arrest-but that just looks like sour grapes. Dunn’s making out like a bandit in the polls. Kelly backing out of the plea process just made it sweeter.”
“You smell a rat?”
Brandt shook his head. “Oh, no. Tom Kelly’s a good guy, but this is a tough one for him. You built a strong case, and he’s got an asshole for a client. He’s going to have to come up with something awfully flashy to beat it. Far as I can see, it looks like Dunn’s been handed a prize bull at no cost. I think Kelly’s being secretive for his own sake, not because he has anything.”
From across the room, my physical therapist looked up from another of her patients and gave me a stern look. I sighed and shrugged apologetically to Tony. “I better get back to it, before she has me doing laps. One last thing, though-how did the power-company guy turn out?”
“Better than you. They pulled a bullet out less than an inch from his heart. He’s already back at work part-time, doing paperwork.”
I shook my head at the workings of fate. “I wonder why Vogel hung around after he shot him?”
Brandt made a face. “That much we did get out of him. Vogel thought the poor bastard had gone all the way down the Glory Hole-that he was dead and out of sight. It was going to be dark in a couple of hours. He doubted anyone would come hunting for the truck before it was due back in, so he was planning on waiting till nightfall and then hitting the road. Lucky for us.” He paused awkwardly and then smiled. “Well… lucky for some of us.”
He rose and patted me on the shoulder, I thought a little gingerly. “Speaking of which, I know what you’re going to say, but you’ve got a Medal of Honor coming your way.”
“Oh, please.”
“It’s not just for you. It makes the department look good, too. We can make it very low-key-a private ceremony.”
I made a face. “I’m really not interested, Tony.”
He looked down at me as if I was becoming more trouble than I was worth. “All right, here’s another argument for accepting it. James Dunn is organizing an award of his own for you-some sort of ‘outstanding achievement’ plaque from the State’s Attorneys’ Association.”
“Jesus Christ… ”
“If you’d agree to the Medal of Honor, it would steal some of his thunder, and you could insist that both awards be given at the same time, in private. Otherwise, he might just bushwhack you with a bunch of press people and slap you with it like a subpoena, whether you like it or not.”
I let out a deep sigh. “Let me think about it, okay?”
He shrugged good-naturedly. “Sure-when do your doctors think you can come back to us, by the way?”
“A few more days here, then three weeks at home with my mother and Leo. They’re only twenty minutes away, and these folks want me back in every three days for a while to check me out.”
“Gail’ll be there, too?”
Gail had been a constant presence since I’d come out of my coma, keeping me company, bringing me newspapers and books, watching TV with me when I became too tired to do anything else, including sleep. She was commuting from Thetford, where she’d been staying with my mother and Leo, like some career-path traveling nurse, displaying much of her old take-charge stamina and making few references to her own troubles. Tony’s question made me realize how much I’d become used to her being continually nearby.
But distracted by that thought, and pondering the unaccustomed ripple it caused across my emotions, all I said to him was, “Yes, she will.”
Tony had taken my self-assessed physical prowess as a joke. In fact, a bench press of three gerbils wasn’t far off the mark. Several days later, when I left the hospital under Gail’s supervision, I did so in a wheelchair-and not because of the hospital’s insurance requirements. I could only manage a few dozen feet before dizziness and exhaustion set me down. The septicemia had sucked my energy down to near empty. Tony may have been right about my having found the perfect diet, but I knew replacing the lost weight with muscle would be hard work, even if I was already brushing my own teeth.
My dread was compounded by the expression I’d seen on Leo’s face as the physical therapist outlined my training regimen earlier. He’d rarely been so receptive. I knew that, bighearted to a fault, he was going to fix me up as good as new in record time-or kill me in the process.