I tell her to bring the dog over any time, and then I look over at the box. “Okay, we all understand that any talk about this head cannot leave this room. But the head itself is definitely going to leave this room. Any thoughts about what we should do with it?”
“It’s well preserved in the plastic,” Laurie says. “I don’t think we should bury or destroy it, in case we change our minds later and decide to report it to the authorities.”
“And then there’s the matter of the money,” I say. “It looks like a few thousand dollars, but I don’t want to be the one to count it.”
“Let’s save it for a party when we win,” Becky says.
Marcus, who hasn’t said a word this entire time, picks up the box, and puts it under his arm.
“Sounds like a plan,” I say.
Becky was not quite as persuasive with Noah as she had predicted.
She reported that he freaked out, so much so that the guard came in from outside the door to settle things down. Noah finally regained control; sometimes being chained to the table can do that for you. But he wouldn’t agree to anything until he talked to me.
“Who is this guy?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I know what he wants; he wants to stop the trial.”
“Why would it be so important for him for me to be convicted?”
“My guess, and it’s just a guess, is that you’re not the point here. It’s the trial he cares about. He’s afraid of what might come out; he doesn’t want a spotlight put on this crime. Not after all these years.”
“Then why send Danny Butler in the first place?”
“I don’t know that either. But when we find that out we’ll know the key to everything.”
“And how are we going to protect Becky and Adam? I mean protect them beyond any doubt.”
I explain the arrangements we are making, which Becky has already told him about. Marcus will watch her for the two days it will take for her father to get here, and they will bring the dog to live with us. As a recently retired police officer, Becky’s father will have the friends and resources to protect her at his house in Ohio.
“Becky seemed to have confidence in this guy Marcus,” he says.
“Marcus could beat up North Korea.”
“Andy, you have no idea what it’s like being in here, and having Becky and Adam in danger. It is the most frightening experience of my life.”
“Noah, they will be safe, I promise you that.”
“I can insure that by pleading guilty.”
“Which would also insure Becky not having a husband and Adam not having a father, all because of a crime you didn’t commit.”
“You still believe that?”
“I’m positive of it. But we have to focus on proving it.”
“Okay. On one condition. You move the trial date up; I want it to start as soon as possible.”
“It’s already too early,” I say. “It’s not in your best interest.”
“When the trial starts it takes away the incentive to threaten Becky; it would be too late.”
“Noah…”
“Who’d stop you from moving it earlier? The prosecutor?”
“Are you kidding? Dylan would be happy to start in twenty minutes. It’s the defense that benefits from delay. You, in case you were wondering, are the defense.”
“What about the judge?” he asks.
I shrug. “His calendar is clear enough. He’d be willing to adjust the start date.”
“How do you know that?”
“I checked; I knew you’d head in this direction.”
He nods; his decision final. “Okay, let’s do it.”
“Noah, it can significantly impact your chances. We haven’t nearly developed our case enough yet.”
“I understand that, Andy, really I do. But I’m more worried about Becky and Adam. My eyes are wide open on this.”
“I hear you,” I say. “And I’ll take care of it. But I’ve got a demand of my own, equally nonnegotiable.”
“I’m not going to like this.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I say. “But I’m going to take the steps necessary to get you put in solitary confinement.”
“Why?”
“Because a sure way to stop a trial is to make it so that the defendant is no longer alive. That is something we need to avoid. For one thing, it would leave me alone at the defense table with Hike.”
Noah laughs. “He can be a bit of a downer, huh?”
“He makes other downers look like uppers.”
“Okay, solitary can’t be any worse than this. But Andy, there’s something I don’t understand. Someone gets Danny Butler to come forward to accuse me, resulting in my arrest and trial. Then those same people kill Butler, and seem willing to do anything to prevent that trial. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Noah, I’m not the hardest worker in the world, and if I never had another case I’d be fine with it. But if there’s one thing I like about my job, one thing I like about the system, it’s that at its core it always makes sense. It’s just up to us to find the sense in it. The answer is there; we just have to locate it.”
“Are you always able to?”
“No. That’s one of the parts I don’t like.”
“This guy spent a lot of time on the phone,” Sam said.
He’s talking about the owner of the New York cell phone that Camby called a number of times in the month before he took the bullet in the hotel room. The one registered in the name of Trevor Berbick.
“How many calls did he make?”
“A hundred and seventy-eight in the past month. To thirty-eight different numbers. And he called all over the country, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco… eleven calls to Washington, D.C., and fourteen to Vegas. He made four calls to Camby’s phone as well, including an hour before Camby died. And get this; he called Danny Butler three times.”
“But we still can’t identify him?”
“No chance; not from his phone records.”
“What about Camby’s motel room phone?”
“No calls went out; there’s no way to know if any came in.”
It’s a sign of how grim our situation is that this is our most promising lead. Someone who followed me, and who was subsequently murdered, called a cell phone. We now have the records of numbers called by that second cell phone.
Big deal.
“I’m trying to attach names to the numbers that he called,” Sam says. “It may take a day or so.”
“Thanks, Sam. You’re doing a great job.”
He leaves, and I tell Laurie that I want to go with her today. She’s been interviewing family and friends of the victims that Sam has been able to find. It’s obviously unpleasant, and has so far yielded no significant information. I basically want to sit in on today’s sessions because I have nothing else to do.
Our first stop is a small garden apartment on Garfield Avenue in Elmwood Park. It starts to snow as we pull up, not a blizzard but enough that it will stick if it continues like this. I love it when it snows, an emotional remnant of childhood days when snow meant the possibility of school being canceled.
When we get out of the car, I hear a voice calling out, “Ms. Collins! Ms. Collins!”
The door to one of the garden apartments is open, and an elderly woman is standing there, frantically motioning us in. We head for the door, and I realize that she had opened the door and come out because of the weather, not wanting us to stay out in the elements a moment more than necessary.
When we get there, she ushers us in, muttering about how terrible the weather is. Before we even have a chance to introduce ourselves, we have cups of hot tea in our hands. I don’t even like tea, but I drink it gratefully.
Laurie finally introduces me to Mrs. Martha Leavitt, who is probably pushing eighty. She lost her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson in the fire. I’m not sure how anyone gets through that, but she seems vibrant and alert, and has a warmth about her that makes her immediately likable.
“I’m sorry to have to talk to you about this,” I say. “I’m sure you’d rather think about anything else.”