Wanda cuts in with the crusher. “My real name ain't Morris, and my father's been dead for ten years.”
Walling almost gleefully turns to me. “Mr. Carpenter?”
I look at Wanda, then at the hysterical reporters, then back to Walling.
“The defense rests,” I say.
It goes downhill from there. With an accusation like this taking place in open court, Walling is obligated to turn the matter over to the District Attorney for investigation. A hearing is set for two months from now to hear the results of that investigation, and Wanda is directed to appear. She says that she will, but she won't. This was her closing performance.
When I finally get out of the courtroom, I run into Lynn Carmody. She tries to stop giggling long enough to talk to me. It's going to take a while, so I walk past her. She turns and walks with me, finally controlling her laughter.
“I'm sorry, I just couldn't tell you.”
I stop and turn toward her. “So you knew about this?”
She nods. “My colleagues would have killed me if I tipped you off.”
“Who set me up?”
“I don't have any idea.” She holds up her hand as if taking an oath. “Honestly, I don't.”
I believe her. If she were protecting a source she'd say she's protecting a source.
“And you're going to print the story?” I ask.
“Andy, are you kidding? It'll be page one.”
I just shake my head and walk away, and she calls after me to tell me that if I find out how this happened, I should tell her and she'll print that also. Somehow I don't find this all that comforting.
I leave the courthouse and stop at the newsstand. It's still closed, and I have this unsettling feeling that it is never going to open again. What the hell happened to Cal Morris?
The next morning I get to the office and experience a first: Edna has the newspaper opened to other than the crossword page. Actually, the paper isn't really open at all, since Edna, Laurie, and Kevin are all looking at the front page. I don't want to look at it, but I can't help myself. There's a picture of Wanda and me, with the headline “A Different Kind of Client?”
I moan, and Edna tries to make me feel better by telling me that it's a good picture, that it makes me look like a slightly fatter version of her Uncle Sidney. Laurie chimes in with the revelation that she has been around a long time, and she's never seen a better looking pimp. I smile and try to seem good-natured about it all. I have as good a sense of humor as the next guy, but I generally prefer it when the joke is on the next guy.
This is disturbing on a level beyond the total public humiliation. Somebody has gone to an incredible amount of trouble to do this to me, and has demonstrated remarkable power in the process. If I'm right, they have even made a person, Cal, disappear. I don't think Cal even has a daughter, and if he did Wanda certainly isn't her. He was either frightened into doing this or paid off; this was no minor prank to embarrass me. This was designed to impress me with strength. It wasn't a severed horse's head in my bed, but it did the trick.
Once my staff finishes giggling, we kick around the possibilities. I come to believe Cal was paid off, and I further believe it would have taken serious money to do it. Since Laurie and I have been prying into the lives of Markham and Brownfield, people with very serious money, there seems a possibility that one or both of them are involved.
It's a long-shot hunch, but my instinct says I'm right. Representing the opposing view are Laurie and Kevin, who say I'm nuts. I hope they're right, because if they're not, then my father was somehow involved in something so bad that these people are desperate to conceal it.
After half an hour of unproductively debating all of this, Laurie offers to try and find Cal. I tell her that I will want her to do that, but not now. Now we have to focus all our attention on Willie Miller.
Kevin's brief on the change of venue is thoroughly professional and well reasoned. I make one or two nitpick changes, wipe off a couple of mustard stains, and then instruct him to file it with Hatchet. I also assign him to deal with the DA's office on all discovery matters. It's only been a couple of days, but I already have the confidence that I can turn something over to him knowing it will be done. It's a nice feeling.
Laurie reports on her progress, which is less favorable. I expected this; when a murder was committed this long ago there's little likelihood of turning up much new. More disturbing is her inability to find Willie's lawyer, Robert Hinton. His elusiveness is puzzling. Lawyers generally don't like to disappear; it causes them to have trouble attracting new clients.
Laurie is going to redouble her efforts to find Hinton, as well as arrange to interview the eyewitness whose testimony helped to bury Willie in the first trial. She's also recruited a DNA expert for us to possibly use to rebut the state's evidence, or to help us prevent it getting in. Like the change of venue and just about everything else involved with the case, it's pretty much a lost cause, but I agree to see him at three o'clock this afternoon.
We're wrapping things up when the phone rings. Edna, despite having been told not to interrupt us, does so anyway.
“I think you'll want to take this,” she says.
“Who is it?”
“It's your wife. It sounds like an emergency.”
I pick up the phone and conduct a ten-second conversation during which Nicole tells me what has happened. I hang up and start walking toward the door.
“Is everything okay?” Laurie asks.
I tell her. “Nicole found a threatening message on the downstairs answering machine.”
“What did it say?”
I shake my head. “I don't know yet. But whatever it says, that's not the worst part.”
“What's the worst part?”
“We don't have a downstairs answering machine.”
I make it home in record time. Nicole was borderline hysterical when I spoke to her, and she's not likely to have calmed down before I get there. She's also not likely to calm down after I get there.
I pull up to the house, and I see that she is peeking out from behind the drapes, watching for me. She opens the door and leads me to the answering machine, which is hooked up in the den. It is not a machine I have ever seen before.
So as not to smudge any fingerprints, and so I could appear to know what I'm doing, I use the point of a pen to press play. The voice is computer-generated, effectively concealing the speaker.
“Think of your embarrassment in court as just the beginning … a small sign of our power. We are bigger than you, Carpenter … much bigger. We can do what we want … when we want. So drop your crusade, before it is too late. The past is past.”
Nicole looks at me, as if I can say something that will take away her fear. Something like, “Oh, is that all? Don't worry. I had told a friend he could break into the house and drop off a threatening answering machine.”
She sees I have nothing comforting to offer, so she says, with great drama, “Andy, they were in here. While we were sleeping. They were in our house.”
My mind flashes to Michael Corleone, speaking to Pentan-geli after gunmen shot up his house. “In my bedroom, where my wife sleeps! Where my children come to play with their toys!”
I decide not to mention the Godfather reference to Nicole. Instead I ask, “Did you check the doors and windows?”
“No, I didn't,” she says before she explodes. “I'm not a policeman, Andy. I don't want this to happen in my house!”
“Of course you don't, Nicole, and neither do I. But …”
She's now more under control, but with an intensity in her voice that I don't think I have ever heard. It strikes me that I've never seen Nicole afraid. She did not grow up in a world where she ever had reason to be afraid.