Dog Tags (28 page)

I’m far from ready to say that any of these people were the targets, but it’s something interesting for me to follow up on.

Once I’ve finished with the file, I still have about half an hour until Santiago’s expected arrival with Marcus. I use that
time to do an abbreviated trust session with Milo.

It seems to go well; they always seem to go well. But pretty soon I’m going to put it to the test, and then we’ll know if
I’ve been wasting my time.

“What’s the story, Milo? You been playing me for a sucker?”

Milo just stares at me, stone-faced and noncommittal. He’s playing it close to the vest, no doubt a tactic he learned at the
police academy. I look over at Tara, who stares right back at me, defiant and still not about to give up her friend.

I’m locked with the two of them in a serious battle of the minds, and I’m coming in third.

M
ARCUS CALLS AND TELLS
L
AURIE THAT HE AND SANTIAGO ARE ON THE WAY.
I was afraid the man would take one look at Marcus and decide he’d rather be back in the war zone, but that apparently is
not the case. It’s not a great early sign; if he’s not afraid of Marcus, it’s unlikely I’ll scare him into submission.

Marcus pulls the car into my garage, and he and Santiago come inside. Santiago’s a big guy, at least six two, 220 pounds,
and he has an air of confidence about him that surprises me. It’s hard to reconcile with Laurie’s comment that he had sounded
very frightened on the phone; he’s obviously used the intervening time to compose himself.

Santiago and I go into the den, with Laurie and Marcus staying behind. Laurie and I have discussed this, and we think I’ll
have a better chance of getting something out of Santiago one-on-one.

Santiago wastes no time on chitchat. “Billy didn’t do Erskine,” he says. “No chance.”

“Do you know who did?” I ask.

He nods. “I don’t know who pulled the trigger, but I know who paid for the gun and the bullets.”

“Who might that be?”

He answers a question with a question; never a good sign. “You find Jason?” he asks.

“Greer?” Jason Greer is one of the two soldiers we’ve learned nothing about in our investigation.

“Yeah. You find him?”

“Not yet,” I say.

“Then I’m your only chance. Because they would have gone after him first.”

“Why?”

“Because they think he’s the only one who knows. But it ain’t true. He told me.”

“Told you what?”

“I want full immunity, and guaranteed entry into the witness protection program.”

“I’m not a government official,” I point out.

“So make it happen.”

“You need to give me something; that’s the only way I can help you. There are some things we know, but—”

He interrupts me midsentence, which is just as well, since I wasn’t sure how to finish it. “You know nothing,” he says. “And
you have no interest in helping me. You want to get your client off the hook, and I can do that for you.”

I decide to go at this from a different direction. “Who was the target that day?”

“In Baghdad?”

“Yes. Who was the target of the bomber?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea, and I couldn’t care less.”

“So what was your job?”

“To make sure she got in. Once we made sure of that, whoever she went after was way, way above my pay grade.”

I keep running into walls. “What do you want immunity for?”

“For the eighteen people who died that day. If I talk, the shit is going to hit the fan, and I want to be well out of the
way.”

“What about money? Nobody gets rich in witness protection.” Since we know that the other two soldiers left large amounts of
cash behind, I’m fishing to find out if Santiago has similarly enriched himself.

“Money’s not a problem; don’t worry about it.”

I nod. “Okay, here are my terms. I’m going to get you protected by the state police; the judge has already ordered it. Once
you’re safe, I will try to get you immunity. It’s not going to be easy, because generally a person in your position needs
to reveal a part of his future testimony as a sign of good faith.”

I expect him to rebel against the idea of state police protection, but he does not. Maybe he’s not as confident and unafraid
as he appears. He accepts my terms, which is not exactly a triumph for me, since those terms have been dramatically scaled
back from my original goal. I’ve learned nothing, and according to Santiago I know nothing.

Business as usual.

I call Captain Dessens, who has disliked me for a very long time. We’ve had run-ins on a few cases, and he makes no effort
to conceal his disdain for me. Therefore it gives me some pleasure to be able to give him his marching orders in this case,
and I tell him that Santiago is ready to be picked up.

It takes Dessens’s officers about twenty minutes to get here, during which time Santiago and I sit in fairly uncomfortable
silence. The frustrating part for me is that I believe him when he says he has the answers to my questions, and the logical
extension of that is he probably can get Billy acquitted.

That is my primary goal, of course, but this situation has also become intellectually personal for me. If Billy were to get
off
tomorrow on a technicality, I would stay on this case, trying to find out the truth, for two reasons.

I don’t want whoever killed eighteen people to get away with mass murder.

And I’m sick of being in the dark.

C
APTAIN
R
OBERT
D
ESSENS WAS PISSED OFF.
That would by no means qualify as breaking news; after twenty-one years on the job “pissed off” had become his natural order
of things. But the situation he was now finding himself in kicked it up to a new level of annoyance.

First there was having to deal with Carpenter. As far as Dessens was concerned, defense lawyers placed just above pedophiles
on the low-life scale, and Carpenter was the worst of the bunch. Dessens fully understood that defense lawyers had their job
to do; he just would rather they did it on a planet other than earth.

He was not opposed to all possible dealings with Carpenter. For instance, he would take great pleasure in arresting him. But
having to wait for Carpenter’s phone call, and then having to take his instructions on when and where to pick up the witness,
was asking too much.

Then there was the witness himself. Dessens didn’t know Santiago, in fact knew almost nothing about him, which was precisely
the point. The Erskine murder was a case that Dessens’s state police were not involved in, not even peripherally. They had
more than
enough on their plate already; to have to use manpower to protect Santiago was a drain that contained no upside.

As if all of that were not enough to drive Dessens nuts, he was being forced to deal with the feds. Almost as soon as Judge
Catchings issued the order, Dessens received word from the state chief of police that FBI and US Army investigators wanted
to question Santiago the moment he was taken into protective custody.

If Dessens were more introspective, he might have seen the irony. It was commonplace for him to be resentful at what he saw
as intrusion by the feds in his cases. In this situation, he was experiencing the same feeling even though it wasn’t his case,
and in fact he was resentful about being involved himself.

So Dessens found himself sitting in room 242 at the Marriott hotel, adjacent to the Paramus Park shopping center. With him
were Special Agent Wilbur Briggs and US Army Captain Derek Meade. The room was what the hotel considered a junior suite, and
sat at the far end of the hallway, flanked by two adjacent rooms that the state police had also taken over for their officers.

“You going to question him separately?” Dessens asked Briggs and Meade. Ordinarily he wouldn’t care what they did, except
for the fact that he was under instructions from his chief not to leave until they were finished with their interrogation.

“No,” Briggs said. “And it won’t take long, because he won’t say a word without immunity.”

Meade nodded his agreement. “It’s jerk-off time.”

Dessens checked his watch. Twenty minutes since his officers picked up Santiago from Carpenter’s house. They should be showing
up anytime. With any luck Dessens could be heading home in an hour, in time to watch the Yankees game from the West Coast.

While the men in the room did not expect Santiago to say anything when he arrived, the officers transporting him to the hotel
couldn’t get him to shut up. Maybe it was nervous energy, but
Santiago was waxing semi-eloquent on baseball, politics, police procedure, and women, not necessarily in that order.

Occasionally the two officers would make eye contact with each other in the front seat, conveying their common feeling that
they would be quite happy when they deposited Santiago and got the hell out of there.

They pulled up to the front of the hotel, where another two officers were waiting. The two in the front seat got out of the
car, while the two waiting scanned the area for any sign of danger. Seeing none, they opened the door, and Santiago got out.

The moment Santiago’s head rose above the car, it ceased to exist. A bullet crashed into it, entering through the right temple
and exploding on impact.

The officers dove for cover. None was attempting to protect Santiago; they were not Secret Service, and he was sure as hell
not the president. One look at him would have dissuaded them anyway; unless he had a spare head in the trunk, protecting him
would be as futile an act as one could imagine.

M had used a silencer, and therefore the men in room 242 had no idea what happened outside. It was three minutes before the
officers at the front of the hotel decided that the killer was no longer a present danger, and at that point they called Captain
Dessens and told him what had happened.

Dessens immediately called homicide, which would come in with a full team. He, Briggs, and Meade rushed downstairs, but by
that point there was nothing to be done.

Dessens knew that, just as certainly as he knew one other thing.

He was going to miss the Yankees game.

J
UDGES DO NOT CALL ME AT HOME.
Not ever. There is more of a chance that the president of the United States will call and invite me to a state dinner, or
that Tom Coughlin will call and ask me to quarterback the Giants.

A judge would view such a call as somehow crossing a line that judges have no interest in crossing. If they have something
to tell me, and I happen to be at home, they have the court clerk call and summon me to their office.

So when I hear Judge Catchings’s voice on the other end of the phone, at ten
PM
, I immediately get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hate stomach-pit feelings, so I gird myself for the worst.
I’m in bed with Laurie next to me, and I sit up leaning on one elbow, which is my preferred girding position.

When I say, “Hello, Your Honor,” Laurie sits up, knowing that this must be something important. Tara and Milo are at the end
of the bed, but they seem considerably less concerned.