Pete’s fine with that and tells me that I can go. As we reach the street, Willie Miller screeches to a halt in his car and jumps out. He sees me, and his eyes just about bug out of his head. “Man, they said you…”
Without another word he hugs me. I can count the number of male hugs I’ve liked on very few fingers, and I don’t like this one, but I appreciate it. After a few moments I break it off. “Adam was killed, Willie. They shot him thinking it was me.”
Willie looks at me disbelieving, then his face briefly contorts in a kind of rage I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. Without a word, in a lightning-quick move he puts his hand through the front window of his car, smashing it to bits. I know Willie holds a black belt in karate, but it’s still an amazing sight to behold.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Come on, we’ll drive you home.”
Laurie drives, and after we drop Willie off, we go home. She makes us drinks, and we sit down in the den. I just can’t seem to clear my head, to accept as fact what has happened. I don’t want to be a part of this; I don’t want people to die because of what I do for a living. I don’t want to be around this anymore.
“You want to talk, Andy?” Laurie asks.
“All I do is talk.”
“It’s not your fault,” Laurie says. “You couldn’t know this was going to happen.”
“What do I need this for? I’m a lawyer. Did I cut the class in law school when they said that people were going to die just because they knew me?”
“Andy-”
I interrupt. “I want to do what other lawyers do. I want to sue doctors for malpractice because they forgot to remove the sponge after my client’s appendectomy. I want to represent huge corporations when they merge with other huge corporations. I want to make cheating husbands pay through the nose in alimony. I want to do everything but what I’m doing.”
“No,” she says, “you’re doing exactly what you should be doing. And you do it better than anyone I know. As one of your former clients, I can say with certainty that you’re needed right where you are.”
I shake my head, not giving an inch. “No, you’ve got the right idea,” I say. “Findlay is a better place to live than this. I think you should go. I should go with you.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t run away, Andy. I won’t do that, and I won’t let you do it either. If I go, if we go, we’ll be going toward something, not running away.”
I know she’s right, but I refuse to say so, because then I might have to stop feeling sorry for myself. An old Joe Louis expression pops into my head, as if he were talking about me. “He can run, but he can’t hide.”
Right now all I want to do is hide.
* * * * *
I TAKE IT UPON myself to call Adam’s parents in Kansas and notify them of the death of their son. It is one of the more difficult conversations I’ve ever had in my life, but I can only imagine how much worse it is for them. They want his body flown home for the funeral service, and I promise I will help them make the arrangements. It’s a murder case, so by law an autopsy must take place first, but I don’t see any need to mention that right now.
They seem not to want to end the phone call, as if I am their final connection to their son and they want to keep that connection going as long as possible. They show incredible generosity by telling me that they had been receiving phone calls from Adam, telling them how much he enjoyed working with me and how excited he was to be meeting important sportswriters. He’d been meeting football players, not sportswriters, but I certainly don’t bother to correct them. Memories are all they have, and I don’t want to blur them in any fashion.
I tell them Adam was hoping to buy them a house, that he talked about them lovingly and often. They thank me and finally say goodbye, to retreat into their agony.
In the morning I have Kevin, Sam, Marcus, and Edna join Laurie and me at the house for a rare Sunday meeting. Willie comes over as well, since he wants to be involved in whatever way he can in protecting me and nailing Adam’s killer. I’m happy to have him; the trial is not going to stop while we mourn for Adam, and I have to make sure that as a group we are ready to deal with what happened and move on.
We spend the first hour or so talking about Adam and how we felt about him. He had made a very deep impression on each of us with his enthusiasm for life, an enthusiasm that makes his death feel that much more tragic. Marcus even adds two words to the discourse: “Good guy.” It’s the Marcus equivalent of a normal person delivering an impassioned twenty-minute eulogy.
Kevin forces us to look at the impact that this horrible event will have on the Schilling case. I’ve been thinking about asking Judge Harrison for a two-day recess, to give me time to get my head together, as well as helping to catch up on the work Adam was doing.
Kevin thinks a recess is a bad idea, that the publicity from Adam’s killing can only have the unintended and ironic effect of helping in Kenny’s defense. Despite Judge Harrison’s admonition to the jurors not to expose themselves to media coverage of this case, there is no realistic possibility that they haven’t heard what has happened. The inescapable conclusion to be reached is that there are murderers, not sitting next to me at the defense table, who are involved in this case. We might be able to convince the jury that it is “reasonable” to assume that those same people murdered Troy Preston as well.
I think Kevin is probably right, though his point is probably moot, since it is unlikely Judge Harrison would actually grant the recess anyway. So I decide to push on, even though there is nothing I would rather do less.
I ask Sam to bring us up-to-date as best he can on Adam’s work, but there isn’t much he can offer. Adam had given him specific things to do, and their assignments really didn’t overlap. We are not even aware of how Adam put together the list of people he was checking out. When Pete returns Adam’s notes, it will make Sam’s job easier.
Sam has been working hard, though, and his report on his own progress is very worrisome. He has managed to place Kenny within a three-hour drive of three of the deaths, not including Matt Lane’s hunting accident. This is no small revelation: We are talking about four cities in very different parts of the country. To make matters worse, Sam hasn’t ruled out Kenny’s presence in the other death locations; he just hasn’t finished the complicated process of checking.
I am both nearing and dreading the time when I will confront Kenny with what we have learned. His reaction, his explanation, will determine how I handle things and, more important, will most likely determine his entire future.
Laurie brings up the matter of my protection. Quintana is in jail, but Pete has told us off the record that there is little concrete evidence to tie him to Adam’s death. He undoubtedly hired someone to do the killing, keeping his own hands clean. There is a real possibility that he will be released, and a just as strong possibility that he will come after me again.
Laurie makes the suggestion that Marcus’s total focus be on protecting me and that he recruit some of his more energetic colleagues to help in that endeavor. Marcus grunts his agreement, but it is clear that he considers more aggressive action necessary. He’s got a point: Had we let him go after Quintana when he suggested it the first time, Adam would be alive today.
Everybody leaves, and I start to go over my case notes, hoping to get myself emotionally geared up for the resumption of the trial tomorrow. It’s not going to be easy, and within a half hour I find myself turning on the television and taking comfort in NFL football.
In the morning Judge Harrison once again calls Dylan and me into his chambers to discuss the events outside of court. He and Dylan express their condolences, and Dylan is somewhat regretful for his comments last time, when he intimated that my revelation of the threat was mostly an attempt to sway the jury.