The fire started just past midnight on a winter morning, and the building was quickly engulfed in flames. By the time the fire department arrived there was nothing they could do, except listen to the last of the screams of the people inside.
There was no way to be sure how many of them might have escaped, had the exit doors not been locked and bolted from the outside. Twenty-six people died that day, including six children, and their death was ensured by the arsonist. It was not done to destroy a building; it was designed to destroy the inhabitants of that building.
Newspaper reports at the time quoted fire officials as saying that certain chemicals were used in setting the blaze that made it the most intense fire they had ever had to combat.
Pete quickly determined that one of the apartments had been used as a base from which to sell drugs, and therefore the theory was that those people were the targets, while everyone else had the misfortune to live in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But there was no way to confirm that theory, because despite an enormous police effort, the killers were never found.
They say that every homicide cop has at least one unsolved case that haunts him. The Hamilton Village case is Pete’s, and it’s twenty-six for the price of one.
“You’re thinking about Pete?” Laurie has just come over, though I hadn’t noticed.
“How did you know?”
“The Giants just got a pick-six, and you didn’t even look up.”
Among the great things about Laurie is the fact that she knows a “pick-six” is an interception returned for a touchdown. Having said that, it’s not her best quality. Not even close.
“I tried to look, but my neck was frozen.”
“It will be a weight off of him,” she says.
“But he wanted to solve it himself.”
She nods. “I know. But this is better than nothing. Way better; it puts the slime who did it off the streets.”
“The alleged slime.”
She smiles. “Even in your frozen state you remain a defense attorney.”
The Giants recover a fumble on the kickoff, and Kenny runs twenty-one yards for a touchdown. Then with thirty-one seconds on the clock, Manning hits Steve Smith in the end zone for the game-winning touchdown.
By this time I’m no longer cold; I’m screaming as loud as anyone in the stadium. And when it’s over, Kenny comes over and gives me the ball he scored the touchdown with.
He expresses his gratefulness for probably the fifty-thousandth time for my proving his innocence and keeping him out of jail. Then he signs the ball, “To Andy Carpenter, the reason I’m here.” It’s a poignant, heartfelt moment, and my eyes fill with ice chips.
I don’t think about Pete or the murders again until we’re on the way home and listening to the radio. The arrest is all over the news, and for the first time I hear the accused’s name.
Noah Galloway.
Noah-Goddamn-Galloway.
Noah Galloway broke into my house almost seven years ago.
Actually that may be overstating it. He didn’t actually get into the house, but he tried to. Fortunately, he was so filled with prescription medication that he passed out at the rear door of the house.
I was married to Nicole at the time, though we were approaching our first separation. She was from an incredibly wealthy family, a woman of privilege who for some bizarre reason married me, a guy who represented people she felt belonged on another planet altogether, in special colonies.
Noah Galloway was the last straw, or at least he was the last straw until we reconciled the following year, at which point there was no shortage of straws. But Nicole believed that Noah and the break-in were somehow connected to my defense-attorney practice, and it both frightened and infuriated her.
Noah was arrested, and my curiosity led me to check into his life. He was a graduate of Stanford, with the unlikely educational résumé of holding a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and a master’s in sociology. He also had been a walk-on defensive back as a sophomore for the football team, but in his third game he hurt his back.
Three operations and years of agony later, he was addicted to prescription pain medication, and his life unraveled. He had no family to lose, only a sister who tried to stand by him, but there was really no one to cushion his fall. And he fell to the bottom.
The night I told Nicole that I wasn’t pressing charges against Noah was the night we decided to separate. It started as a screaming match, prompted by Nicole’s certainty that once he was freed, he would come back and break into our house, this time successfully, and murder us.
“Nicole,” I said patiently, “this is a guy whose life has fallen apart. He’s a Stanford graduate, a brilliant guy. This is a first offense. I just think Noah Galloway deserves another chance.”
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT NOAH-GODDAMN-GALLOWAY!” It was a stunning sentence, if not eloquent, simply because for Nicole the word “goddamn” was the equivalent of a barrage of profanity from anyone else.
So Nicole went off to live in one of her family’s homes, and Noah Galloway went free. I checked up on him a couple of times from a distance. He left the New York/New Jersey area, and when he came back I heard he had licked the disease, and in fact had become a drug counselor.
Within a couple of years he was running an antidrug program for the city, and gaining significant recognition for his innovative techniques. He was being consulted by other cities for his expertise, and I had heard he was taking a job with the federal government.
I was glad that I had played a small part in helping the man I knew as “Noah-Goddamn-Galloway.”
Until today.
“That’s the guy?” Laurie asked.
I nodded. “That’s the guy. I don’t remember exactly when the fire was, but I think it was after we found him at the back door.”
“Don’t go there, Andy. This has nothing to do with you.”
She thinks I’m blaming myself for allowing him to be out on the street, and being available to murder those people. She knows me better than I know me.
“Maybe.”
“What do you think? If you had pressed charges on a first-degree trespassing that he would be sent away for life? He didn’t even get in the house.”
“Laurie, I know I didn’t light the match, all right? But things might have been different, who knows?”
The truth is, I’m not exactly racked with guilt, at least not yet. I need much more information before I’ll get there. But I am very capable of getting there.
“So look into it if you have to,” Laurie says. “Talk to Pete; he’ll find out everything about this. Maybe it happened before the break-in, and then you’ll let yourself off the hook.”
“Good idea.”
“Just don’t find out too much about Galloway. You’ll wind up defending him.”
“No chance. Nohow.”
“Good,” she says. “That wouldn’t go over too well with Pete.”
“It isn’t possible, Noah. It simply isn’t possible.”
Noah knew that she would react this way, by vehemently denying what was right in front of her. She would get angry, not at him, but at the injustice. It was a coping mechanism, made stronger by the fact that she truly could not believe him capable of such an atrocity.
“It’s true, Becky. Believe me, I wish more than anything it wasn’t.”
She flinched at his confession, which he had just made for at least the fifth time since she had arrived at the prison meeting room. Becky was not concerned that they would be overheard; she had registered as his attorney, so there would be no microphones or cameras eavesdropping on them.
“Have you said that to anyone else?”
He shook his head. “No, but I’m going to. I’ve known for years that I needed to be punished; I’m just sorry you and Adam have to go through this as well.” When he mentioned Adam he started to choke up, but quickly stifled it. Noah was going to be strong for her; he was going to be a strong, despicable mass murderer.