Play Dead Part 29

I nod. "One way or the other."

Karen gets out of her seat in the front row and hugs Richard from behind. She's not supposed to do that, but the guards who would ordinarily prevent her understand that these are extraordinary circ.u.mstances.

Kevin looks pained and miserable. I have seen him in stressful situations like this, and they tend to increase his hypochondria fivefold. Right now I'm afraid he's going to have urology issues under the defense table.

Judge Gordon takes his seat at the bench and asks that the jury be brought in. It takes either ten seconds or ten minutes for them to do so; time doesn't seem to have structure or meaning at moments like this.

For some reason it always bothers me to know that the jury's decision has already been made, even though we're first finding out about it now. It's like watching a football game on tape and not knowing the final score; it doesn't help to root, because the boat has already sailed.

This verdict has already sailed.

Judge Gordon asks the foreman if a verdict has in fact been reached, and he confirms that it has. He hands the verdict slip to the clerk, who hands it to Gordon.

Gordon reads it, and his face remains as unrevealing as those of the jury members. He hands it back to the clerk and asks Richard to stand. Richard, Kevin, and I all do so, and out of the corner of my eye I see Karen rise in her seat, a gesture of total solidarity. If I'm ever in a foxhole, I want her with me.

I put my arm on Richard's right shoulder, as much to support myself as him. He grabs my arm and holds it, and we brace ourselves. Here it comes...

The clerk starts to read at the pace of what feels like one word every three hours. "In the matter of the State of New Jersey versus Richard Evans, State of New Jersey versus Richard Evans, we the jury find the defendant, Richard Evans... guilty of murder in the first degree." we the jury find the defendant, Richard Evans... guilty of murder in the first degree."

Richard lowers his head for about fifteen seconds, then turns to Kevin and me and says, "We gave it our best shot." The courtroom is deathly quiet, and I can clearly hear Karen behind me, sobbing.

I put my arm on Richard's shoulder and lean down toward him. "It's not over," I whisper. "I swear to you, it's not over." He doesn't answer, probably because he doesn't believe me. And there's no reason he should.

I'm sure Richard feels worse than I do, but right now it seems impossible that anyone could. My client was innocent, and I couldn't get a jury to believe me. Hawpe got twelve people to vote on his side, even though his side was wrong.

Judge Gordon thanks the jury for their service and schedules sentencing for three weeks from now. The gavel pounds again, bringing the proceedings to a close. The jury files out, and the guards lead Richard away.

If there's a moment in my life that I've hated more than this one, I don't remember it. Maybe when my father died.

Maybe not.

BEFORE I I LEAVE LEAVE, I ask the court clerk to get me in to see Judge Gordon.

It is not necessary to include Hawpe in the meeting, because the trial is over. This is just between Judge Gordon and me.

The clerk gets me back into his chambers right away, and Judge Gordon starts the conversation with "Tough loss in there."

I nod my agreement. "Very tough. Your Honor, I am here to report that I am aware of a crime about to be committed."

He's obviously surprised to hear this. "By whom?"

"My client, Richard Evans. As you know, even though it was told to me in a privileged conversation, I am permitted to reveal it because it involves a future crime. I am actually compelled compelled to reveal it." to reveal it."

"What is the crime?" he asks.

"Suicide. Mr. Evans had revealed to me his intention to kill himself in prison should he be convicted."

"What is it you want me to do?" he asks.

"My request is that you take affirmative action to stop the crime from occurring, by ordering that Mr. Evans be kept on a suicide watch in prison."

Judge Gordon thinks about this for a while, but he really has no choice in what to do. He nods and says, "Thirty days, at which point we will revisit this."

"Thank you, Your Honor."

Karen and Kevin are waiting for me back in the courtroom when I leave the judge's chambers. Karen comes toward me and we hug, one of the longest hugs I can remember, without either of us saying a word.

When we break it off, she says, "You're not going to give up, right?"

"Right. Whatever it takes."

I want to talk to Karen about what she can do to keep Richard's spirits up, but I don't want to do it here. We make plans to have dinner tonight, even though I know my preference will be to hide under the covers.

When I get home, the answering machine tells me that Laurie has already called me twice. She's going to tell me how I can't blame myself, how I did the best I could, and how the odds were stacked against me. It has absolutely no chance of helping.

I call her back, and she tries her best to make me feel better, but I'm certainly not having any of it. "I started the case with an innocent client and a dog. Now my client is in jail for the rest of his life, and the dog is gone. I pulled off the daily double."

"Andy, I'm not saying you shouldn't feel terrible; I'm just saying that you can't wallow in it. And you can't let it prevent you from capitalizing on your progress."

"Which progress might that be?" I ask.

"Come on, you know as well as I do that you've learned an amazing amount about the crime. All along you've been operating on two parallel tracks, the investigation and the trial. You've been wis.h.i.+ng that they could coincide, but they didn't. The good news is, you only had to win one of them to win."

She's right, of course. I could have won by getting Richard acquitted, but I can just as certainly win by finding out the real killers and bringing them to justice. And we have taken some substantial steps toward doing that.

Laurie and I talk it out for a while. The truth is, we know who Stacy Harriman really was, and we can a.s.sume that she was killed to prevent her from someday testifying. We even have a rough idea of the conspirators involved in her murder. What we need to do is keep pus.h.i.+ng until we and the rest of the world know everything. And I'm going to make that happen if I have to hire every investigator in America.

I take Tara for a walk and then drive to Karen's to take her to dinner. The devastating verdict has left her subdued, and it's obvious that she has done quite a bit of crying.

During dinner we talk mostly about Richard and the need to keep him hopeful. It may be false hope, something I usually try to avoid in dealing with clients, but this time it's necessary. The suicide watch will not last forever, and if Richard is determined to kill himself, he will manage to do so.

Karen promises to do what she can and asks a bunch of questions about the status of the investigation. I tell her everything, and I can feel her optimism starting to return the more she hears.

It's almost eleven o'clock when we leave the restaurant. As we near Karen's house, she says, "Do you think I can visit Richard tomorrow?"

I shake my head. "I doubt it; they'll be transferring him back to Rahway. I'll be able to see him because I'm his lawyer. I want to explain to him that it's my doing he's under a suicide watch."

"Andy, I wrote a letter to him this afternoon. I wanted so badly to talk to him, but I couldn't, so it helped me to write it. Could you give it to him tomorrow?"

"Sure."

We pull up in front of Karen's darkened house, and we both get out of the car. Karen starts to get her keys out as we go up the steps, but it's hard for her to see in the dark. "I hope we didn't have some kind of power failure," she says.

"Why?"

"Because I'm sure I left some lights on."

I look over at the attached garage and see that there is a small light coming from underneath the garage door, which is open a few inches. I'm about to say that she obviously has electricity, when suddenly I'm gripped by a clarity of thought and an instinct I didn't know I possessed.

"Karen!" I yell, and I pull her arm just as her key reaches the door. She screams in surprise, and we lose our balance and fall back down the two steps. At the very moment this is happening, the front door seems to explode at its center in front of us.

Another noise comes from inside the house, and I grab Karen and we start to run. I make a quick decision that the street is not the place for us; it is too well lit. Instead I lead her into the alley, back into a darkened area that serves as a corridor between the houses on this block and the block behind it.

There are sheds and Dumpsters back there as well, but it's hard to navigate in the darkness. I can hear someone pursuing us from behind, so I pull Karen down behind one of the Dumpsters. It is so dark that I can't see Karen, which means the intruder shouldn't be able to see us.

My heart is pounding so hard that it feels like somebody is using the Dumpster we're leaning on for a bongo drum. "Andy?" Karen whispers-I guess, to confirm that I'm still there, since we're not actually touching. I reach out and touch her arm, hoping it will stop her from talking.

I can clearly hear someone coming toward us, stalking us. I'm in a near panic, not knowing whether we should try to run some more or stay there and hope the night makes us invisible. The danger in running is that we are likely to bang into something and call attention to ourselves. Based on what happened to the door, the shooter has such a powerful weapon that he will not have to be terribly accurate to hit us in this enclosed area.

I can hear the shooter coming closer. I can't tell how close, but I would guess he's thirty feet away. It is impossible to avoid the realization that this person is going to kill us unless I do something to stop him. I have no idea how to do so, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't have the courage or ability to pull it off.

On the other hand, I do have Karen, and she pushes something into me which feels rock hard. I reach out and take it; it feels like a piece of firewood. It makes sense; if she or her neighbor has a fireplace, this would be a likely place to keep the wood.

So I have a log, and he has a large gun. Advantage, bad guy, although I wouldn't feel confident even if the weapons were reversed.

I whisper to Karen: "Move as slowly and quietly as you can away from the Dumpster and back toward that wall." I say it so softly that I'm not even sure if actual sounds are coming out of my mouth, but she must hear me, because I can feel her slowly move away.

I can hear the shooter's footsteps move toward me, and I force myself to come up with a plan. It's not a good one, but it's the best that I can do.

As he gets closer, I slowly stand, dreading the clicking sound that my knee usually makes when I get up after sitting for a while. This time it doesn't; I wonder if fear-induced adrenaline is a cure for knee clicking.

Taking a deep breath, I quickly raise the lid of the Dumpster a few inches and let it drop. It is a distinctive sound, and I want the shooter to think we have taken refuge inside.

It seems to work, because I can hear him move quickly to the Dumpster. He opens the lid, and the next sounds I hear are bullets being fired into it.

Using that deafening sound to camouflage the sounds I will make, I stand and start swinging the log at the spot where his head and body are most likely to be. I seem to strike him a glancing blow, probably on the shoulder, and I hear him yell in pain.

I know that he must be readying the gun to fire, and I make an adjustment and bring the log down as hard as I can at where I think his head must be. It makes a crunching sound, and he moans and seems to fall.

I'm not taking anything for granted, and I keep swinging the log at him, alternating between hitting cement, Dumpster, and something else that I hope is his head. I'm sure the sound of wood hitting skull is quite disgusting to most humans, but right now it sounds pretty good to me.

I start screaming to Karen to run into the house and call 911. I eventually stop swinging the log, because the shooter is completely silent and apparently unmoving. Lights go on in Karen's neighbor's house, probably because they are wondering what the racket is about.

My eyes adjust to the dim light, and I can see the shooter at my feet. His head is literally smashed in, and a pool of blood is forming next to him.

I can't see his face, and I gently move him with my foot so that I'll be able to. I'm guessing it's Banks, Carelli, or Winston, since they are the unaccounted-for people in that alleged helicopter crash.

I've seen pictures of them all, but the damaged face on the shooter does not seem to match any of them. It's disappointing; there seems to be enough people in this conspiracy to fill Yankee Stadium, all of whom want to kill Karen.

Within a few minutes the area is filled with seemingly every cop in New Jersey, and the paramedics arrive moments later. But this particular conspirator is not going to kill anyone ever again.

He is dead, just the latest bad guy to learn that you don't mess with Andy Carpenter.

KAREN AND I don't get back to my house until four in the morning. I don't get back to my house until four in the morning.

It would have been even later, but Pete Stanton arrived on the scene at Karen's house and ushered us out of there faster than another detective would have.

After what happened, Karen hadn't wanted to spend the night at her house, which was totally understandable. Right now we're both exhausted, and I show Karen the bedroom where she can sleep, and head to my own to go to bed. I call Laurie to tell her what happened, since I know she would want to hear about it as soon as possible.

I wake her, but she quickly becomes alert when I start to tell her what happened. This is the first time I have ever told a story about my own actions that is simultaneously heroic and truthful. I faced death without Marcus to protect me, and I prevailed. The mind boggles.

Laurie has many questions for me about tonight's events, the last of which is, "Andy, are you okay?"

I know that right now she is referring to my state of mind, my emotional health. I have killed a man, violently and at close range, and that is known to have an often terrible effect on one's psyche.

Not on mine.

Maybe it will set in later, but I feel absolutely no remorse or revulsion about what I've done. This is a guy who deserved to die, whose intent was to gun down Karen and me. "Better him than us" is an understatement.

I get off the phone and try to sleep, and my exhaustion enters into a pitched battle with my adrenaline, the result of which is, I don't sleep well at all. I get up at seven to take Tara for her walk; it will give me time to consider the impact that what happened last night will have on our investigation.

Karen was obviously the target, since the shooter could not have known that I would be there. But the reason for the attempt on her life is bewildering. How could she possibly be a threat to their conspiracy? It's the same question I've been asking myself since she got shot, and I'm no closer to the answer than before.

Pete Stanton makes the situation slightly clearer when he calls and says that the fingerprints of the guy I killed showed that he was, in fact, Mike Carelli, the Special Forces officer who supposedly piloted the chopper. I didn't recognize him from the picture, but as in the case of Archie Durelle, the picture I had seen was seven years old.

Either way, I'm getting a little tired of people trying to kill people that I care about, including myself. And I'm getting more than a little angry about my government standing by and not doing anything to prevent it.

I call Alice Ma.s.sengale at her Newark office and tell her I want to see her about her representations at the hearing. She seems reluctant, so I use the same approach on her that I used on Hamadi: I tell her that if she doesn't meet with me today, she can learn what I have to say by turning on the television tomorrow. It works again, and an hour later I'm in her office.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter."

Cindy Spodek said that Ma.s.sengale can be trusted completely, but at this point I'm not ready to give her the complete benefit of the doubt. I'm certainly not concerned about the social niceties. "You misled the court about Stacy Harriman."

If she's cowed by my direct approach, she hides it well. "That's a serious accusation."

I nod. "And an inaccurate one. I should have said, "You misled the court about Diana Carmichael."

"Diana Carmichael," she says, concealing whether the name has any meaning for her. "Suppose you tell me what you are talking about."

I continue. "Here's some of what I know." I then proceed to detail some, but not all, of the facts I have learned about Hamadi et al. I tell her that a group of people stole billions during the chaotic reconstruction period in Afghanistan and then faked their deaths and disappeared.

"But it is difficult to disappear with a huge amount of ill-gotten money and exist in society. So an elaborate scheme was set up, whereby fake companies would do fake business with each other, showing huge earnings in the process. But in reality they were earning nothing; the money that they received was the stolen money, effectively laundering it. Hamadi was the front man for the operation.

"I know a lot more than that," I say, "and what I don't know, I am going to discover through the Freedom of Information Act."

"Mr. Carpenter, you can believe me or not, but the story you are telling is one I am completely unfamiliar with."

"If that's true, then you were set up to mislead the court, and you should want to help me get the truth out. Because I am going to prove that the government you represent knowingly withheld information, stifled investigations, and then deliberately misled the court. It resulted in my client twice being convicted of a crime he didn't commit."

"All I can say is that I will look into your allegations."

"Good. You should start with Hamadi."

She nods and asks me if I can write out all the particulars of what I know about him.