She starts the recorder, gives the time and date, and then asks me to identify myself. Once I do so, she launches right into questions surrounding my involvement with Eddie and my presence in his motel room on the day he died.
I take her through my actions, leading up to the day he ran away from me at the Parker Motel. I don’t include everything, since some insignificant details are subject to lawyer-client privilege, but I so inform her when I leave something out.
“So when you arrived at the Parker, what did you do?” she asks.
“Kevin and I went into the office and convinced the clerk to give us his room number. Then we went outside, up to the second floor, and around to his room. The door was open, and he was nowhere to be found. Some of his possessions were still there, as if he had left in a hurry.”
“When did you hear from him next?” she asks.
“The next day. He called me and…” My mouth is searching for the words to finish the sentence, but my brain has intercepted them on the way and is in a state of shock.
Laurie prompts me. “He called you and…”
“Turn off the recorder,” I say.
“What? Andy…”
“Turn it off, please.”
She does so, probably because my tone of voice has changed so much. “What is it?” she asks.
“Laurie, when Eddie called me that day, he told me that he had run away from the Parker because he thought it might be Drummond that was chasing him. He said he hadn’t known it was me.”
“So?”
“So how did he find out it was me? I didn’t leave a card in his room… I didn’t give my name to the clerk. It wasn’t on television or in the newspaper. Yet by the next day he had found out that it was me at the Parker. Someone had to have told him.”
“Who did you tell?” she asks.
“You,” I say.
“No one else?”
“No. Kevin knew, of course, because he was there, but that’s it.”
I can see her mind racing to answer the next question even before I ask it. “Who did you tell?” I ask.
“Some of my officers,” she says, “but I’d vouch for them completely.” She pauses as the realization hits her. “Damn.”
“What is it?”
“I told Liz Barlow’s mother. You said I should confront her with it.”
“Was Drummond or anyone else there?”
She shakes her head. “No, I wouldn’t allow it. Wait a minute, her daughter was there. She heard the whole thing. I forget her name…”
Madeline.
Bingo.
• • • • •
EDDIE CARSON DIED because of me. There can be no doubt about that now. I got Cindy Spodek to help find him, and then I set him up to be murdered. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t do it intentionally; what matters is that I did it.
I can’t be sure that it was Madeline Barlow who told him I was the one looking for him. It could have been her mother, though that seems to defy logic. Or he could have found out some other way that is not yet apparent to me.
Also unknown right now is how whoever murdered him learned his new location. “Maybe they followed you,” Laurie suggests.
I shake my head. “No, Marcus followed us out there. If there were someone else following us, Marcus would have seen them. Besides, Eddie had been dead for a while when we got there.”
“I’ll check to make sure your phone isn’t tapped,” Laurie says, and then makes a quick phone call to get that accomplished.
“I’ve got a feeling it was Madeline,” I say. “There was something about that kid. She was the only one in that town who seemed like she had a mind of her own.”
“She could have set Eddie up to be killed,” Laurie says, “without necessarily realizing she was doing it.”
The idea that I was a setup man for Eddie’s murder is burning a hole in my stomach, and Laurie can see it in my face. “It’s not your fault, Andy,” she says. “Let it go.”
“Let it go? Let it go?” She must know me well enough to know that is impossible. “Earth to Laurie, come in, please. Come in, please.”
She tries to suppress a smile but can’t. “What’s so funny?” I ask.
“You’re thinking of staying to try to solve this.”
“I’m doing more than thinking about it,” I admit, realizing it for the first time myself.
“Sorry. I love having you around, but I’m the police here, Andy. This is my job. Besides, you don’t catch slimeballs, you defend them. Remember?”
“I won’t get in your way.”
“All right,” she says, “let me try another approach. You’d be going after people who may well have killed four people that we know of, including a lawyer.”
“I’m not going to subdue them, Laurie. I’m going to find out who they are and then turn them over to the proper authority. And if you play your cards right, that proper authority might be you.”
She’s not willing to accept this. “You’re a lawyer, Andy. With no case, no client, and no role to play in this.”
“I’m staying, Laurie.”
She smiles. “Good. So how about dinner tonight?”
“You got it. Now you can turn on the recorder.”
“After you tell me you’re going to get Marcus back here.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t need a babysitter… at least not now.” I can see that she’s not thrilled with my answer, so I continue. “I’m not going to do anything stupid or dangerous… honestly. Besides, with the trial canceled, the bad guys would have no reason to think of me as a threat anymore.”