Laurie is asleep, and I wake her. She can tell from the sound of my voice that something is wrong.
"What's going on?" she asks.
"Call Pete Stanton and tell him that there's an armed break-in taking place at three eighty-three Vreeland."
"Is there?"
"Not if I can help it."
I'm out the door and running to my car. I can run really fast when I'm scared, and this is just about the fastest I've ever run.
Barry lives on the other side of town from me. It would ordinarily take me about twenty minutes, but there's no traffic and I'm not stopping at any lights, so it takes me fifteen. It feels like an hour.
As I turn onto his street, I'm glad to see that the police have beaten me there. There's about half a dozen police cars, lights flashing. I see Pete standing in front of Barry's house and I pull up in the driveway. He's going to be pissed at me, but it's a lot better than the alternative.
I get out and walk over to Pete. "Thanks for coming," I say.
He nods. "I wish it could have been a few minutes earlier. You know the victim?"
It feels as though somebody has lifted Barry's house off the ground and dropped it on my head. The pressure literally pushes me to my knees. "Don't say that, Pete. Don't say there is a victim. Please …"
"I'm sorry, Andy … the guy who lived in the house. He was shot once through the head."
"Oh, no … no …" I don't think I can stand this.
"We got the perp, Andy. He's on the floor in the kitchen."
I start walking toward the house. Pete yells ahead for the officers to let me through and then follows me. It feels like it takes me an hour to get to the front door, but in truth Barry lived on a small piece of property.
We finally reach the kitchen. There is blood everywhere, obviously that of the murderer, whose bullet-ridden body lies on the floor next to the counter.
"You know him?" Pete asks.
He's lying on his stomach, with his head turned away from me, so I have to walk around toward the counter to get a better view.
I'm struck by how little I'm surprised that I'm looking at the very dead face of Geoffrey Stynes.
Pete mentions the obvious, that he needs me to detail what I know about tonight's incident to him. He drives me down to the precinct, having somebody else follow in my car. I ask him to have someone call Laurie and tell her what happened, and then I don't think either of us says another word the entire way there.
My mind is still something of a blur, and the only clarity that is able to get through is the fact that I am responsible for Barry Leiter being murdered, as surely as if I pulled the trigger. I brought this craziness, this sickness, into his twenty-three-year-old life, and he paid the price.
We reach the precinct and go into an interrogation room so that Pete can record what is said. I tell him everything, starting with the moment Stynes walked into my office. He raises his eyebrows when he hears that it was Stynes, the man he tried to find at my behest.
When I'm finished, I have a couple of questions for Pete. "Stynes was shot a bunch of times. Did he resist?"
Pete shakes his head. "He committed suicide." When he sees my surprise, he explains. "We had him dead to rights, half a dozen of us, guns pointed at him. We yelled, he saw the odds, and he raised his gun to fire, forcing us to shoot him. He had to know he would die, but in his mind it was better than letting us take him into custody."
"How can you be sure about that?" I ask.
"I saw his eyes," he said. "They weren't scared … they were already dead."
It's almost two o'clock in the morning when I leave the precinct, after assuring Pete that I'm okay to drive. He promises to update me on whatever he learns about Stynes, and tells me I'll probably have to answer more questions from Sabonis in the next day or two. He's also going to track Sam down and tell him what happened, and ask where Barry's family is.
Laurie is waiting up for me when I get home. She heard from Pete's underling what happened. The numbness I felt is wearing off, and the pain is changing from a dull throb to a piercing agony. Laurie has a million questions, but she hardly asks any of them. She just holds me, and Tara nuzzles against me, until it's morning.
It doesn't make me feel better, but it doesn't make me feel worse. Nothing could make me feel worse.
MARCUS CLARK SCARES EDNA HALF TO death when he comes to the house to give his first weekly report. I assure her that he's on our side, but I don't think she can reconcile his menacing presence with the fact that he's one of the good guys.
Then Laurie comes into the room, and the transformation is immediate. She and Marcus hug warmly, and he inquires as to her health, her mental outlook, anything she might need, etc. Edna grudgingly accepts him as one of the team, though she occasionally glances over at him, as if to make sure he doesn't turn on us.
Marcus essentially has made no progress, which in his eyes is in itself a sign of progress. He has not found a trace of Dorsey, and since he firmly believes he can find anyone, he considers his failure a sure sign that Dorsey is dead.
"I spoke to him," Laurie points out.
"Or somebody trying to sound like him" is Marcus's response.
She pushes back. "It was him."
They kick around this unresolvable issue until finally Marcus allows as how it's possible Dorsey is alive, but with a lot of help powerful enough to keep him totally hidden. We all agree that only somebody like Dominic Petrone has that kind of power, but Marcus doesn't believe that Petrone would have let Dorsey make the phone call. That was the act of a man with intensely personal motivations, and Petrone would look at this as strictly business.
The court clerk calls to announce that Hatchet has reviewed Dorsey's files and set a meeting for tomorrow morning in his chambers to discuss our motion to receive them in discovery. Hatchet likes to resolve these matters without a formal hearing, and that's fine with me. I'm glad he didn't call it for this morning, because I've got the meeting with Willie Miller and the attorney representing the estates we are suing.
The easiest way for me to explain how Willie is reacting to his impending wealth is to say that he asks me to pick him up at a Mercedes dealership. He's standing out front when I pull up, and he gets in the car.
"How come you weren't inside kicking the tires?" I ask.
"They weren't taking me seriously. They don't think I can afford one of those pieces of junk. Shows what they know."
"How much do you have in your checking account?" I ask.
"I don't have no checking account," he says, and then he smiles his broad smile. "But I'm gonna."
The conversation during the rest of the drive to the lawyer's office involves Laurie. Like everybody else who knows her, Willie is concerned, and he has a better idea than most how unjust the justice system can be.
We arrive at the law firm of Bertram, Smith, and Cates, a respected civil litigation firm in Teaneck. I have spoken a couple of times to Stephen Cates, the attorney representing the defendants, and he has been properly noncommittal as to his position, pending this meeting.
He greets us cordially, sits us at a conference table with a large fruit bowl, offers us something to drink, and gets right down to business.
"I understand you've been approached by the daughter of one of my clients," he says, referring to Nicole.
I nod. "I have."
"I apologize for your being put in that position. I, of course, had no idea until after the fact."
"No problem," I say.