He doesn't seem to know what I mean. "My style?" he asks.
"Right, that's right. Your style."
Marcus turns to Kevin. "He serious?"
Kevin, who hasn't said two words during this entire meeting, is surprised to be called in at this point. Marcus and I have to wait until Kevin chews the pound and a half of hamburger in his mouth. I think Kevin actually stores food in his mouth, just in case he should get hungry.
"I suppose," Kevin says with a shrug, a stunning statement clearly worth waiting for.
Marcus matches the shrug and turns back to me. "My style is, you tell me what you want to know, and I find out."
"How?" His stare gets a little meaner, so I soften the question. "I mean, generally …"
"I ask people questions," he says, "and they answer them. I'm real easy to talk to."
I accept his explanation, even though I personally would rather be questioned by the SS. I decide to hire him, but I don't have to announce it, since he did so earlier. I have reservations, but Kevin and Laurie recommended him highly, and they know as much about this stuff as I do, in Laurie's case even more.
We bid Marcus a warm and poignant goodbye, then Kevin and I drive to my house. We pull up in front, and Edna comes rushing out to meet us.
"Have you noticed Edna is a little high-energy these days?" I ask.
Before Kevin can answer, Edna reaches the car. "Come inside, quick."
The look on her face says that she's not calling us in for calisthenics, that something is wrong.
"What is it?" I ask, already on my way inside.
"Laurie should be the one to tell you."
Kevin and I break into a run, and Laurie is at the front door when we open it. Her cell phone is in her hand, which seems to be shaking.
"I just got a phone call," she says in a nervous voice.
"From who?"
"Alex Dorsey."
I try not to overreact to this announcement, and Kevin and I take Laurie into the den to talk. There are no rules for situations like this, but I instinctively feel that phone calls from headless murder victims should be viewed calmly and rationally.
Laurie explains that she had answered her cell phone and immediately heard a voice she recognized as Dorsey's say, "Hello, Laurie, it's Alex."
Laurie says she was momentarily too stunned to respond, and Dorsey went on to say that it was payback time, that she'd be sorry for what she did to him, and now was the time.
"Can you tell us his exact words?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "No, I don't know what his exact words were. I was pretty shocked that he was calling. But that's definitely close to what he said."
"What did you say?"
"That it wouldn't work, that somebody would find him, that he should give it up now."
"And his response?"
"All he said was, 'So long, rookie,' and hung up."
"But you're positive it was him?" I ask.
She nods. "As positive as I can be. It sounded just like him, and he used to call me 'rookie' because he knew it irritated me. Andy, I don't understand this. They said they ran a DNA test. The body was definitely Dorsey."
We spend the next hour kicking around how we should handle this. Laurie's testimony as to the facts would have no practical significance. For the accused to announce that she and she alone knows that the victim is really alive would obviously be recognized as self-serving and suspect. Nor does she have an obligation to report what has happened; it is not up to the defense to provide the prosecution with information of any kind.
But it is obviously in our interest to bring this to the attention of the authorities. The phone call opens up questions that must be investigated. For example, can the call be traced? How could the DNA test have gone wrong? Whose body was burned in that warehouse? Where is Dorsey, and how can we get the police to try to find someone they believe to be dead?
Kevin believes that we should call Dylan immediately and make the judge aware of the development as well. I disagree; Dylan will ridicule our claims and not act on them at all. For me the issue is whether to bring this to the police or the press. At this point Lieutenant Sabonis has not given me reason to mistrust him, so I decide to start with the police. The press will be backup if Sabonis doesn't take action.
Most important is what we have learned from this. Obviously, and most significant, we have learned that Dorsey is alive. And while we have always known that someone was framing Laurie for Dorsey's murder, now we know it is Dorsey himself doing the framing. Dorsey must have sent Stynes.
Making the phone call, though, was a brazen and overly self-confident act on Dorsey's part. It also reveals the depth of his hatred for Laurie. It is not triumph enough for him to ruin her life; he wants her to know that it is he himself who is ruining it.
I call Sabonis and ask to meet with him as soon as possible on a new development. He is surprised and a little uncomfortable with the request, since normal protocol would be for me to go through Dylan.
"This information is too important to get buried," I say. "Obviously, you can discuss it with whoever you want once I tell you, but it's important to me that you hear it directly."
He agrees, and I ask if he can come to us, since Laurie can answer any related questions he might have. He says that he'll be over in twenty minutes.
I use the time to brief Laurie on how to answer his questions. She has been the questioner, but never the accused, and I tell her that she is to pause before answering anything, so that if I want to intervene, I'll have the time to do so. Having a client answer police questions is uncomfortable for a defense attorney, but in this case it is necessary, as long as those questions relate to the Dorsey phone call.
Sabonis arrives five minutes early. I thank him for coming and bring him into the den, where Laurie proceeds to describe the phone call. He listens quietly and respectfully, not saying anything at all until she's finished.
"I assume you didn't tape the call?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "No, it was on my cell phone."
"Who has that number?"
"A lot of people, mostly my friends. But calls to my home are being routed to it."
"Did you have that phone number when you were on the force? Would it have been in your file?"
She nods. "I think so."
"What do you think, Nick?" I ask.
He pauses a moment, then, "I think you were right in not bringing this to Dylan; he'd throw you out of his office and laugh in your face while he was doing it. My reaction would be the same with typical murder suspects, but Laurie is not your typical murder suspect."
"So," I ask, "will you treat it as a reliable piece of information and keep me posted on what you learn?"