Who Let the Dog Out? (23 page)

“Absolutely,” I say, and take my place close to her, so I can grab some of the popcorn.

It’s early in the film, and Broderick is just learning who the Brando character is, and the kind of power he possesses. He comes to Brando’s home, and is greeted at the door by his daughter, who lets him in.

Sitting above the fireplace is a replica of the
Mona Lisa,
except the daughter casually informs Broderick that it’s not a replica at all, but rather the real thing. It had been stolen, she says, and the painting hanging in the Louvre is the copy.

Overall, it’s a very funny scene, but I’m not laughing. Instead I’m dialing the phone, calling Sam Willis. It’s eleven-thirty at night, but as always he answers on the first ring.

“Talk to me,” he says, alert and as if he were waiting for my call.

“Sam, I know it’s late, but can you come over here?”

“What’s up?”

“I need you to help me google.”

“What’s that?”

“I need help googling something.”

“Are you serious? Any moron can google. I can teach you over the phone. Laurie can teach you. Ricky can teach you. I bet Tara can teach you.”

“Sam, I can google. But I need to do a really in-depth search, and you can get to more places than I can.”

He agrees to come over, and arrives within fifteen minutes. I use the time to tell Laurie what I’m looking for, and I have to admit I’m relieved when she doesn’t laugh at me.

I start Sam off by asking him to search for a particular article I read, maybe a year ago. I don’t know where or when I saw it, and I can only describe it in basic terms. Of course, Sam finds it in about twenty seconds. Once he does, it gives him some other terms to search for. The information starts to pour out; I have a laser printer, but it can’t keep up.

I won’t say that Sam finishes what he’s doing; there is so much information available that he effectively could continue and never finish. But after about an hour, we decide that we have enough, and we take the next hour to read through what we have.

It doesn’t confirm my theory; it’s not possible for it to have done that. But it does confirm that it is possible, and that is all I hoped it would do.

I no longer believe that Eric Brantley was involved with smuggling diamonds into the country.

I believe he was creating them.

The article and others like it talk about copying valuable treasures. Huge strides have been made in artificially duplicating works of art, primarily through 3-D printing. I don’t begin to understand it, and I don’t have to; it’s enough to know that things like this exist.

Less advanced, but getting there, is the ability of scientists to artificially produce diamonds. There are a number of processes to do so, the most promising of which is something called chemical vapor deposition. I have taken and sat through many depositions in my career, but none of the chemical vapor variety.

To this point, the created diamonds are very close to the real thing, and certainly beyond the ability of consumers to tell the difference. But they’re not exact; among other things they’re not quite as hard, and experts using their examining equipment can usually detect the fakes.

But everyone seems to acknowledge that perfect duplications are only a matter of time, and certainly in both art and precious stones, the implications are enormous.

How many wealthy people will be willing to pay huge sums to have Picassos hanging on their walls if both they and their guests have no idea if they are real or not? Will anyone buy an enormously expensive diamond, if they have no way of knowing if it’s fake?

Certainly, many people spend crazy money to buy these rocks because they consider them beautiful. But I would guess that just as many, and maybe more, buy them to impress others. Will they keep buying them if the people they’re trying to impress doubt that they are real? And what about their investment value? How much is a precious stone worth if it might not even be precious?

I’m going to need some time to digest what this might mean for our case, and for the situation Eric Brantley must have been in. He was by all accounts a brilliant chemist, and I’m assuming that he and his partner, Caruso, perfected the process, and did so in secret. But he must have decided there was much more money in the real stones than the fake ones, so he tried to bring his creations to market as real.

Doing so was fraud, a criminal act, so he tried to align himself with the criminals that were already trading in illegal stones. It was na
ï
ve of him, but clearly would have provided him with the best chance to make huge amounts of money from his discovery.

But how would his new associates have viewed Brantley’s entry on the scene, with his newly created diamonds? They could have reacted in one of two ways. They might have seen it as a huge plus, providing an unending supply of perfect diamonds without the need to pay for them.

But the more farsighted among them could have seen it as a poison pill. They would have reasoned that the truth would eventually come out, and their lifeblood, diamonds, would be devalued forever.

“It fits,” Laurie says. “It might have created a war of sorts. Maybe one side wanted to work with Brantley, and the other didn’t. When they couldn’t work it out, a lot of people paid with their lives.”

There’s no way to know if we’re right about this, but if we are, it explains a lot. “This is why Brantley created such a stir,” I say. “I couldn’t figure out why a newcomer with no money and no contacts would have been treated with such importance. This makes that understandable.”

She nods. “It also would explain why the stones that Downey had were not registered. Brantley had created them, and used them to pay Downey to steal Zoe from us.”

“Right. And I think the equipment stolen from the college was what was taken from that barn in Maine. It had to have been the equipment used to make the diamonds.”

“I think you’ve got this one right, Andy.”

I’m pleased that I’ve come up with this theory; like Laurie, I instinctively feel that it’s right. But unfortunately, my enthusiasm is somewhat tempered by the reality staring me in the face.

“This would be good news if we could prove it, which we can’t,” I say. “And it would be great news if our goal was to solve a smuggling case. But I don’t see how it does anything for Tommy Infante.”

Willie Miller is the first witness I call in the defense case. It’s the riskiest way to begin, akin to a seven-year-old Wallenda kid choosing the Grand Canyon for his first tightrope walk, rather than a two-foot-high wire in the backyard. Willie doesn’t have the same filters and verbal safeguards as the rest of us do; he is likely to say anything at any time.

The only saving grace is that he wasn’t born with the “lying gene” that so many of us have been blessed with, so whatever does come flying out of his mouth is going to be the truth as he understands it. And the truth is all I want from him now.

In any event, I have no choice but to take the risk. I can’t question myself, so I need Willie to testify to the theft of Zoe by Gerald Downey, since that is the first step in tying Downey to Brantley and the carnage that has been the diamond smuggling side of this case.

I start by having Willie give some of his own background, including his seven-year wrongful imprisonment on a murder charge. Dylan will only bring it up anyway, and he’ll make it sound sinister, as if perhaps Willie really was guilty. But I didn’t get him off on a technicality; he was innocent, and we found the real killer.

Once that has been accomplished, we move on to Willie’s partnership with me in the Tara Foundation. He talks about what we do and how we do it, and I can see the dog-loving members of the jury nod their heads in appreciation and approval.

“How many dogs are in the building at any one time?” I ask.

“We have room for twenty-five, so that’s how many we always have,” he says. “As soon as we find a home for one of them, we rescue another to take its place.”

I ask Willie if he telephoned me on the evening of Downey’s murder, and he says that he did. He says, “Because the burglar alarm at the foundation went off, and when I got down there I saw that Cheyenne had been stolen.”

“Cheyenne is a name that we had given her because we didn’t know her real name?” I ask.

He nods. “Right.”

I introduce the surveillance camera tape as evidence, which shows the thief entering the building. His sweatshirt is pulled up, covering his face, but anyone can clearly see that the word
SYRACUSE
is emblazoned on it. The jurors know from the murder scene pictures that Downey was wearing a sweatshirt just like it when he was killed.

“And you knew which dog was stolen?” I ask.

“Of course. It was Cheyenne.”

He describes how we followed the GPS device in Cheyenne’s collar to Downey’s house, and he heard her bark, even though no one came to the door.

“What did you do?”

“Well, Pete was there, and—”

“You mean Captain Stanton of the Paterson Police?”

He nods. “Yeah. Pete. So the three of us went in, and you found Cheyenne, next to Downey’s body.”

“Had you ever seen Mr. Downey before that?”

“Yeah, he had come in looking to adopt a dog.”

“Did he adopt one?” I ask.

“No, I threw him out.”

“Why?”

“He said the dog would sleep in a doghouse. That ain’t happening,” he says, as most of the jury smile their approval.

I lead him through the remaining events of the day of the murder, and he is an excellent witness. He only answers the questions that I ask, and does so concisely, sometimes colorfully. I can only hope he’ll get through cross-examination the same way.

It turns out that I don’t seem to have anything to worry about. Dylan starts with, “Mr. Miller, did you see the murderer when you were at Mr. Downey’s house?”

“No. If I did, he’d be sitting over there instead of Tommy Infante.” Willie points to the defense table in case Dylan was unsure what “over there” meant.

Dylan objects to Willie’s answer, and seems irritated by the laughter of pretty much everyone in the courtroom. Judge Klingman sustains the objection, and tells the jury to disregard the answer. Good luck with that.

“It’s a yes-or-no question, Mr. Miller. Did you see the murderer, or had he left already?”

“I didn’t see him,” says Willie.

“Thank you. No further questions.”

Dylan has actually played it smart. Willie didn’t say anything that the jury didn’t know already, so Dylan had no reason to have to challenge him. He knows that Willie can be a loose cannon, so there was no upside to giving that cannon a chance to go off.

Willie looks disappointed when Judge Klingman tells him that he can leave the witness stand. He’s having fun.

That makes one of us.

Stuart Fowler said a silent thank-you when he saw the rest area. The thank-you was because he couldn’t remember the last time he had to go to the bathroom quite that badly. He should have gone at the restaurant, especially after he had two beers, two diet sodas, some water, and a cup of coffee. But he didn’t, and he’d been regretting it ever since he got in the car.

The reason the thank-you was silent was that the woman he’d had dinner with, Marti Laird, was sitting in the passenger seat. It was only their third date and he liked her a lot, but their relationship didn’t seem quite advanced enough for him to verbally agonize over having to go to the bathroom.

So when they saw the sign for the rest area on the Palisades Parkway, Stuart casually said, “I’m going to stop here, if you don’t mind.” He said that even though he would have stopped anyway, even if she did mind. Better he should overrule her on that, than piss in the car.

But Marti said, “Sure. No problem,” as he knew she would. So he pulled in and parked in the lot. It was fairly dark, so he said, “I’m going to lock the door,” and she didn’t try to dissuade him from doing so.

Once that was accomplished, Stuart walked toward the building that he knew would contain the restroom. When he got there, he was stunned to see a sign on the door that apologized for the fact that the restroom was closed. Disbelieving, he tried the door, but it was locked.

There was no way Stuart was getting back in that car without relieving himself, so he casually walked along the building, in the direction heading away from Marti and the car. He acted as if he were looking for another entrance, which is what he wanted her to think, if she could see him in the dim light.

But there was no other entrance, and Stuart did not expect there to be one. He was heading for the back of the building, to do his business in the brush and then continue the ride home. There was nothing wrong with what he was doing; he just felt uncomfortable with Marti knowing it.

When he was finished and feeling much, much better, he continued along the back of the building, so as to come out the other side, where the car was.

He was five feet from the end of the building and still zipping up when, in the near darkness, he tripped over the body of Professor Charles Horowitz.

“You still want the report on Horowitz, right?” Sam asks.

It seems a strange question, or maybe I just think it’s strange because he’s woken me at seven a.m. to ask it. “Of course,” I say. “Why?”

“You didn’t hear? He’s dead. They found his body in a rest area on the Palisades.”

Court is not starting until after lunch today because one of the jurors has a doctor’s appointment, so I ask Sam to come right over. In the meantime, I turn on the news to see what details of Horowitz’s death they might be reporting, but there isn’t much.

“Horowitz was a pretty boring guy,” Sam says to Laurie and me. “Didn’t go out much, and was actually in a bowling league on Tuesday nights. No unusual financial dealings that I can see.”

“Tell me something I can use,” I say.

“I was getting to that. Three days before he disappeared, he made a phone call to Alan Divac.”

“Where? At his home? Cell phone?”

Sam shakes his head. “No. At his company. But on Divac’s private line. I have no way of knowing if he actually talked to Divac.”