Dead Even Page 27

  “Then you can—”

  “Hear me out,” he interrupted. “I’m not dropping this case, because Monaghan won’t let you do it alone. But I will agree to colawyer it with you. To everyone else, it’ll look like I’m in charge, but between us, we’ll be equal partners on it.”

  “So I still get to run it and manage it as I see fit?”

  “As we see fit,” Conrad corrected. “You have a lot riding on this case, but I won’t let you do anything illegal or stupid just to make a point. In my experience, emotion always wrecks rational thought. So if you step out of line, I’m going to yank your ass back.”

  “But you’ll help me win?”

  “Make no mistake, Sara, we’re going to win. No matter what your husband does, no matter how many motions he files, no matter how many designer-suit-wearing, expensive-tie-buying, Saab-driving, salon-styling, manicure-getting, mahogany-loving, conspicuous-consuming, overbilling, prestige-sucking, rich-ass lawyers he can find in that overhyped law firm, they’re going to shine our industrial-carpeted floors by the time we’re done with them. And whoever this fucker is that hurt your Pop—when this is all over, we’re going to do our end-zone dance on his mysterious but guaranteed to be kicked-in face.”

  Sara grinned broadly.

  “I knew he was going to say that,” Guff said. “So damn predictable!”

  “Now, do we have a deal?” Conrad asked, offering a handshake.

  “As long as you don’t tell Monaghan about the guy who threatened me.”

  “Monaghan won’t hear a word. The only thing I’ve told him is how aggressive you are as a prosecutor and how late you love to work. You know he loves to hear that. Now, are you sure you’re ready to continue hunting for this guy?”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Sara said, shaking Conrad’s hand.

  “Good,” Conrad said as he sat next to Guff on the couch. “Because that’s where I want to start right now.”

  “Wait, before we do that, tell me something,” Sara said. “What convinced you to keep me on the case?”

  “All I had to do was put myself in your shoes. The moment I did that, I realized I’d want someone to step up for me. Now does that answer your question, or do you need me to feed you some psychological bullshit about how I needed to do this to exorcise my own personal ghosts?”

  “Nope. That’s enough,” Sara said. “But if you keep doing nice things for me, I’m going to start telling people what a big softy you really are.”

  “They’d never believe it,” Conrad said. He opened his briefcase and pulled out a sealed interoffice-mail folder. “Anyway, getting back to personal ghosts, this just arrived from Crime Scene. It looks like the fingerprint results you requested.”

  “The ones from my briefcase? What’d they say?”

  “I didn’t want to open it without my co-counsel,” Conrad said. He threw the envelope to Sara. “You do the honors.”

  Sara ripped open the envelope and flipped through the report. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

  “What?” Guff asked. “The prints belong to that same dead guy?”

  “No, it’s not the same dead guy. It’s a new dead guy. According to the report, the prints on my briefcase belong to Warren Eastham, a petty criminal who was murdered last year.”

  “I don’t understand it,” Guff said. “How the hell does a man have two sets of fingerprints?”

  “Maybe he works in Crime Scene and he’s sabotaging all the searches we run,” Conrad suggested.

  “Or maybe Crime Scene is blowing the searches on its own,” Guff added.

  “I don’t care how he does it,” Sara said. “I just want to know who he is.”

  Dressed in tight black biker shorts and an oversized, faded Michigan sweatshirt, Elliott walked straight into the lobby of the medical examiner’s building. “Messenger,” he announced to the security guard, flashing the bright yellow nylon backpack that hung off his shoulder. “I’m looking for a Dr. Fawcett.”

  “Take the elevator to the basement,” the guard said. “Room B-22.”

  When Elliott reached the basement, he quickly found room B-22. Opening the door, he saw Fawcett sitting behind his desk. “How’re you doing?” Elliott asked with a smile. “I’m here to pick up the final autopsy report on Arnold Doniger.”

  “Are you from the DA’s office?” Fawcett asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, yeah,” Elliott said, pulling a clipboard from his backpack. “Let’s see here—I’m supposed to deliver it to Assistant District Attorney Sara Tate at 80 Centre Street ASAP. She apparently wants it yesterday.”

  “They always do,” Fawcett joked. He handed Elliott the sealed envelope.

  “Thanks, doc,” Elliott said, putting the envelope in his backpack. “Say hi to the stiffs for me. Tell them they’re really stinking up the place.”

  “Will do,” Fawcett said as Elliott left the office.

  Two and a half weeks later, a sharp October wind signaled the early arrival of winter. Although wool overcoats began to decorate the urban landscape, there was no other sign that anything was different in the city that never noticed. Sirens were still blaring, traffic was still overwhelming, Chinese food was still being delivered at all hours of the night, and Sara, Conrad, and Guff were still struggling to put together the pieces of the case.

  “I got it,” Guff said, waving a stack of papers in his hand as he entered Sara’s office.

  “Got what?” Conrad asked, leaning against Sara’s filing cabinet.

  “Oh, my good man, do you not know what you thus miss? I have acquired that most honored of all items—the tome of worldly bequests.”

  “The what?” Conrad asked.

  “His will,” Sara explained, sitting at her desk. “The surrogate court finally agreed to turn over Arnold Doniger’s will.”

  “Agreed?” Conrad asked. “You should’ve subpoenaed it from them.”

  “You subpoena, I ask,” Sara said. “The result’s the same.” Turning to Guff, she asked, “So what’s it say?”

  “You were right about one thing—Arnold Doniger wasn’t lacking in the rich department. If you total all the monetary gifts in his will, he was worth at least seven million dollars. And that doesn’t include his New York City house, his weekend home in Connecticut, or his interest in Echo Enterprises, which I’m assuming is his business.”

  “Big deal,” Conrad said. “Half the East Side can go dollar-for-dollar. The real question is, who benefits?”

  “That’s the crazy part,” Guff said, handing Sara the will. “We’ve been assuming Claire Doniger hired Kozlow to cash in on her husband, but according to the will, Claire doesn’t get a single cent. When they were married ten months ago, she signed the prenup to end all prenups.”

  “But can’t she still take her elective share?” Conrad asked. “From what I remember from law school, spouses can always get a guaranteed percentage, even when they’re left out.”

  “Not in this case,” Sara said. “Claire waived her elective share and everything else in her prenup. She doesn’t even get the house they lived in.”

  “So you’re telling me Claire doesn’t have a motive to kill her husband?” Conrad asked.

  “Not if that motive was an inheritance in the will. Based on this, she doesn’t get a thing.”

  “Then who does?”

  “Again, there’s no one in particular. The monetary gifts are designated for a dozen or so different charities, the house in Connecticut goes to the local historical society, and the proceeds from selling the New York house are earmarked for Princeton, his alma mater.”

  “He doesn’t have any other family?”

  “No kids and no siblings. He’s got a few cousins and an aunt in Florida, but all they get is a few thousand. Nothing worth killing anyone for.”

  “What about the business?” Conrad asked. “Who gets that?”

  “Echo Enterprises is given to the other partners of the firm. My guess is he didn’t want to mix family and business.�
��

  “I don’t believe this,” Sara said, standing up. “How can Claire not be the one who hired Kozlow? It made such perfect sense.”

  “Sure it did,” Conrad said. “Except for the small fact that she doesn’t have a motive.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” Guff said. “Maybe she had him killed precisely because she didn’t take anything under the will.”

  “I don’t know,” Conrad said. “That seems a little shortsighted. Once her husband dies, she loses her home, her security, her entire livelihood. If I were Claire, and I was pissed about being left out of the will, I’d keep my hubby alive and sock away all the money I could.”

  “Maybe she simply hated her husband,” Sara suggested. “That’s possible.”

  “Now you’re projecting.”

  “I’m serious,” Sara said. “Why do we need her to take money under the will? Tons of people kill their spouses for lesser reasons than that.”

  “That’s true,” Conrad said. “But when a not-so-wealthy fifty-year-old woman kills her sixty-six-year-old, recently married millionaire husband, there’s got to be a good reason for it. And in all of my years working here, it’s almost always got to do with money.”

  “Which is the one thing Claire doesn’t get.”

  “Maybe that’s the point,” Guff said. “Maybe Claire isn’t involved with this at all.”

  “No way,” Sara said. “Claire is definitely involved with this. She’s acted way too weird to not have some connection.”

  “Then we need to figure out what that connection is,” Conrad added. “Otherwise, we’re going to have a hard time making this case.”

  “So we have the victim, and the cause of death, and the will, and the possible triggerman, but we still don’t have the motive,” Guff said.

  “And without the motive, we’re stuck.”

  “They know,” Claire Doniger said, fidgeting with her wedding band as her daily juice and jasmine tea sat untouched in front of her. “They definitely know.”

  “Don’t get hysterical,” he said. “If they knew, you’d already be indicted as an accomplice. They can’t prove a thing.”

  “But how long is that going to last? They keep asking me when they can look through the house. What if they find something that—”

  “I told you, I’m taking care of everything. Jared is working right now to make sure that visit never happens.”

  Claire stood and nervously started to clear the table. “You’ve been saying that all along. But what if he can’t stop them? What if—”

  Grabbing Claire’s wrists, he forced her to set down the teacup and saucer she was holding. He then pulled her toward his chair and onto his lap. “I want you to take a deep breath for me and listen to what I’m about to say: If it were only about the money, I would’ve walked away weeks ago. Do you understand? I don’t like being alone. So no matter what it takes, no matter what I have to do, I’m not letting them take my best prize away from me. You’re the reason I got into this, and no matter the consequences, we’re going to come out of it together.” Holding both of Claire’s hands in his own, he added, “Now tell me who loves you.”

  Forcing a weak smile, Claire said, “You do.”

  “You’re damn right I do,” Rafferty said. “Damn right.”

  Massaging his temples and doing his best to ignore his throbbing headache, Jared stared at his computer screen. For the past two weeks, he’d sought out the firm’s best criminal-defense attorneys. From each one, he tried to learn one more trick, one more hint, one more maneuver to win the case and save his wife.

  Even the poster board was getting more attention than usual. Every day, he stared adamantly at the layout of the crime scene. Arriving no later than seven in the morning, he spent the first fifteen minutes of each day playing it through his head. Leaving no earlier than eleven at night, he always took one final look. He catalogued every moment. He indexed every minute. He did everything in his power to visualize every nuance of the crime.

  Finally, to pick up where Barrow left off, Jared hired a well-recommended private detective, who scoured every inch of every block between Doniger’s house and the spot where McCabe picked up Kozlow. Under Jared’s instructions, the detective spoke to the garbagemen who did the early morning pickup, questioned the late-shift doormen from nearby buildings, and even called local taxi companies to see which drivers were in the neighborhood on the night in question. No matter how tenuous, how unlikely, or how outrageous the lead was, Jared and his staff searched for anyone who might be able to put Kozlow at a spot that was different from the one where McCabe said he was. But, in the end, after all the examining and exhaustive research, they couldn’t find a single new witness.

  “There must be someone we’re forgetting,” Jared said, staring at the poster on his wall.

  “Are you kidding?” Kathleen asked. “We’ve thought of everyone.”

  “Did you ever find out about the paperboys?”

  “Which ones? The New York Times, New York Post, Daily News, or Newsday? I spoke to all of them and none of them started delivering before five-thirty that morning.”

  “What about—”

  “There’s no one else,” Kathleen interjected. “We’ve been through everyone. The local bakeries that start kneading dough at sunrise, the corner groceries that are open all night, even the high-end escort services that frequent the area. I think the only person we haven’t spoken to is Arnold Doniger, and that’s only because he’s dead.”

  “I know,” Jared said. “I just don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Jared, killing yourself isn’t going to bring Lenny back. And it’s certainly not going to save your wife. When we find out about your motions, we’ll know a lot more about the shape of the case. But until that happens, you can’t keep running yourself like this.”

  “I’m fine,” Jared said, turning toward his computer screen.

  “Jared, you’re not—”

  “I said I’m fine,” he insisted, raising his voice. “Now let’s move on to the next subject.”

  “How much farther is this place?” Guff asked, sitting between Sara and Conrad in the backseat of the taxi.

  “Stop asking already,” Conrad said as the cab pulled out of the Holland Tunnel. “We’ll be there soon enough.”

  “I can’t help it,” Guff said. “I get anxious during field trips. It makes me feel like I’m back in junior high.”

  “Junior high, huh?” Conrad asked. “Then how’s this? Shut up until we get there, or I’ll stuff you into a gym locker.”

  “Ahhhh, childhood,” Guff said with a smile. “How I miss those now-gone days.”

  Ten minutes later, the cab pulled up to the front entrance of the Hudson County Pistol Range. As the three coworkers got out of the car, Conrad announced, “Here it is—the best firing range in the tristate area.”

  “You mean besides Manhattan itself?” Sara asked.

  Within twenty minutes, Conrad, Sara, and Guff were armed, outfitted, and ready to begin their shooting practice. Following Conrad through the long, understated brick building, Sara and Guff were led to an enormous room that held eight private shooting booths. At the far end of each booth was its respective target. Some booths had standard bull’s-eyes, others had outlines of animals such as deer and lions, and still others had outlines of human beings. The booths were organized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced areas, with the target located twenty feet away for the beginners and thirty yards away for the advanced. Without pause, Conrad walked straight to an advanced booth.

  “I guess we’re beginners,” Sara said to Guff.

  “No way,” Conrad said. “Stay here with me.”

  “But I’ve never shot a gun in my life.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Conrad said. “Best way to teach someone to swim is to throw them in the deep end.”

  “What if I don’t want to learn how to swim?” Sara asked.

  Conrad pointed to the booth next to his. “Everybody swims
. Now get in.”

  When all three of them were in their booths, Conrad put on his protective goggles and headset. “Can everyone hear me?” he asked through the headset’s small chin microphone.

  “I read you loud and clear, Bandit,” Guff said through his own headset. “Now how ’bout helping me with these here smokeys on my tail.”

  Ignoring Guff and getting a thumbs-up from Sara, Conrad picked up the .38-caliber handgun he had rented. With six quick shots, Conrad ripped apart the paper target of the human being thirty yards away.

  “Not bad, Slim, but check this out,” Guff said, aiming his own gun. He fired six shots, then lowered the gun and looked at the target. He hadn’t hit a thing. “My gun’s broken,” he said.

  “Your turn, Sara,” Conrad said.

  “Before I go, I have to once again ask my little question: What the hell are we doing here?”

  “I already told you, we weren’t getting anywhere sitting in the office, so I thought we could use a change of scenery. And whenever I hit a logic wall, this is always the best place to calm down and reevaluate.”

  “This is how you calm down? Wearing yellow glasses and an oversized headset while shooting giant holes through paper people?”

  “Some people like classical music; others prefer a more aggressive aesthetic,” Conrad explained. “Either way, we all needed our heads cleared. Now stop complaining and start shooting.”

  “Whatever you say, colonel,” Sara said. “But I still don’t understand how this helps us with the case.” Holding up her gun, Sara carefully aimed at the target. She fired one shot. Then aimed again. Then fired another shot. Then aimed again. Then fired another shot. After six shots, she hadn’t hit the target once.

  “You’re trying too hard,” Conrad said when Sara was done. “Shooting a gun is an instinctive act. The gun’s an extension of you. It’s like throwing a baseball—you can’t wait around and aim it—you just have to throw it.”

  “Ohhhh, another physical-fitness analogy,” Sara said. “And this time a Zen one.”