Who Let the Dog Out? (8 page)

I outline the parameters of the case to the team, telling them what we know so far. “We have one client, but we’re investigating two murders,” I say. “And I don’t believe that the answers will be found in the Downey murder. Even though that’s the one our client is charged with, I think the key is the murder of Michael Caruso, in which Eric Brantley is the suspect.

“The two killings are tied together by a dog. She was owned by a murder suspect, and stolen by someone else, a few minutes before the thief became a murder victim himself. That is not a coincidence; there is a definite connection, and we have to find the link.”

“How strong a case do they have against Brantley?” Hike asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “They think it’s strong, but they’ve been wrong before. Just like they’re going to be wrong about Tommy Infante.”

“So you think Brantley is innocent?”

“Could be.”

Hike laughs. “Because of the dog, right? You think anyone who loves a dog that much must be a good guy.”

I think about it for a minute and realize that Hike is not far off in his assessment. “Let’s put it this way: someone will have to prove otherwise.”

We kick things around a bit more, focusing on how we might find Brantley before the police do. Laurie says, “I think we should be watching Stephanie Manning. You said Zoe went crazy when she saw her, and a dog wouldn’t act that way unless she spent a lot of time with her. Which leads to the obvious conclusion that she and Eric Brantley are very close.”

“So you think she could lead us to him,” I say, once again showing a mastery of the obvious.

“I do.”

Since we have no one for Marcus to pound into a pulp at the moment, Laurie assigns him to watch Stephanie. It’ll be a piece of cake for him. Even though Marcus is the scariest person in the western hemisphere, he has an amazing ability to go invisible when trailing someone.

“You okay with this, Marcus?” Laurie asks.

“Yuh,” says Marcus, understating the case.

I know very little about Markham College. That isn’t typical of me; I actually know a great deal about many of our nation’s finest academic institutions. For example, even though it’s only April, I can tell you which school Notre Dame is playing in their opening game. And I can probably predict three of the Heisman finalists right now, though not a pass has yet been thrown.

The thing about Markham that keeps it off my radar is that it pretty much doesn’t have a single team that I can bet on, or against. I’m not saying that reflects negatively on Markham as an institution; it is known for turning out leaders in fields as diverse as the sciences, math, engineering, and the arts.

That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t get you into a bowl game.

Of course, these days Markham is known for more than academic achievement and mediocre athletics. It has been plunged into the news in a way that this small northern New Jersey college has never been before. Markham may have turned out some very accomplished scholars, but right now none are as famous as Eric Brantley and the late Michael Caruso.

I’m here to see Professor Charles Horowitz, who runs the chemistry department at Markham. He was the person that both Brantley and Caruso reported to, which means he has been besieged with interview requests from the media. I read somewhere that he has been turning them all down, so rather than call him direct and get shot down, I called Robby Divine.

I originally met Robby while sitting next to him at a charity dinner. I have almost thirty million dollars, much of it inherited, but if that much money slipped through a hole in Robby’s pocket, he probably wouldn’t notice it.

He’s a multibillionaire and a graduate of Markham, but wealthy alums don’t necessarily impress the Markham administrators. Wealthy alums who donate twenty million dollars to the school do make an impression, however, and that is the category that Robby falls into.

It’s fair to say that they have an interest in keeping Robby happy, so when he called and said he would like Professor Horowitz to meet with me, the word made its way down to the good professor that he should do just that.

So he is. Today. But that doesn’t mean he has to like it, and I’m expecting quite a bit of resistance. I’ll probably be called on to use a significant amount of the Andy Carpenter charm. Fortunately I have it in ample supply.

If I called central casting and asked them to send down a chemistry professor, he would look nothing like Charles Horowitz. Horowitz is at least six foot six, maybe 190 pounds, and he can’t be more than forty years old. He looks like he’d be more at home on a basketball court getting a rebound than hunched over a Bunsen burner or microscope or whatever the hell chemists hunch over.

“I hope this isn’t about Eric Brantley,” he says.

“Your hope is about to be dashed,” I say.

“I’ve told the police everything I know, which isn’t much.”

“Then let’s start not with what you know, but what you think. Do you think Brantley killed his partner?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Just a feeling I have. I simply don’t see him capable of that kind of violence. He and Michael were best friends, which makes it even harder to believe, but that’s not what I base it on. It’s just not Eric.”

“Why did they leave their jobs? Were they fired?”

He thinks for a moment, though that shouldn’t be that tough a question to answer. “Not really, though by the time Eric left, I would describe it as a mutual parting.”

“What caused it?”

“I’m not really sure. Eric just seemed to lose interest in what he was supposed to be doing. His research work slacked off, as did his teaching. It was uncharacteristic, to say the least.”

“Do you have any suspicions about what was going on?”

He nods. “I think both Eric and Michael were doing work not sanctioned by the university, which they chose to keep from me. They were here long hours, but the output that we were shown never corresponded to those hours.”

“What kind of work did they specialize in?”

“Eric is both an organic and physical chemist, absolutely outstanding. We were lucky to have him as long as we did; he would have been welcomed at any institution, and certainly could have called his shot in private industry.”

“And Caruso?”

“Talented, probably on my level, but not in Eric’s league. Very few are in Eric’s league.”

I ask Horowitz the obligatory questions about whether he has knowledge of Brantley’s whereabouts, and he says that he doesn’t. I believe him, though I’m certain he would not tell me if he did know.

As I’m about to leave, I ask, “Did you ever meet Eric’s dog?”

Horowitz smiles. “Zoe? I certainly did; Eric made bringing the dog to work a condition of his employment. He loves that dog … she is very sweet. What happened to her?”

“Well, I would say she’s been leading an interesting life.”

For Stephanie Manning, things had gone from horrifying to surreal. First came the news that Michael Caruso was murdered. She had met Michael a bunch of times, of course through Eric, but really didn’t know him that well. Eric didn’t talk about his work much, and Stephanie always assumed that was because he correctly gauged that she wouldn’t understand any of it.

But Stephanie had never been connected to any kind of violence like that. A distant cousin of hers had once been raped, but Stephanie was just ten at the time, and she hadn’t really fully understood the implications. She also had never met the cousin, so she wasn’t emotionally impacted by it.

Then, right on the heels of the news about Michael was the revelation that Eric was a suspect. She just assumed that it was a terrible mistake, and that he would explain things to the authorities in a way that would clear him.

Following that, the third of a three-punch devastating combination was learning that Eric was missing. That’s not how the police characterized it; “missing” implied that he might somehow also be a victim. It was clear they thought he had fled out of fear of prosecution.

But Stephanie didn’t believe it, not for a second. Eric was innocent; Michael was his closest friend in the world, her excluded. In fact, they were two of the only friends that Eric, a true loner, had. That, coupled with the fact that Eric was as gentle a soul as she had ever met, precluded his guilt. It made no sense that he would run, rather than stay and prove his innocence.

So the truth, she feared, had to be worse. Whoever had killed Michael must have been after Eric as well, and either captured him, killed him, or caused him to go into hiding.

Stephanie was a logical person, and could not hide from the fact that Eric’s being in hiding made little sense. He shouldn’t be so afraid of the people that killed Michael that he’d need to run; if he turned himself in to the police, and told what he knew, he would be protected.

So every day the situation grew more frightening, and more surreal. Just seeing Eric’s picture on every newscast, with the announcers talking about him like he was a murderer, was hard for her to process as reality.

But if Eric was okay, then he was watching those newscasts as well, and he was not reaching out to anyone. Not the authorities. Not Stephanie.

Stephanie stayed home as much as she could; as a freelance features writer, her time was pretty much her own. She did not want to leave the phone, in case Eric called her. He had her cell number if she went out, but service in her area was occasionally spotty, and she didn’t want to take a chance on missing his call.

So she was home when the UPS truck pulled up and the driver walked to her porch, carrying a small package. She signed for it and saw that the sender’s name was Robert Boyle. It was a name that was vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn’t place it.

She opened the package, and inside was another, smaller package. She opened that as well, and took out a cell phone, the kind that you can buy at a store without signing a contract.

Stephanie’s hand started to shake at the realization of what this meant, so much so that she had to steady herself to turn the phone on. She knew without a doubt that it was from Eric, and that meant that he was alive.

She also knew that he was going to contact her, but probably feared that her phones might be bugged. So he would call her on this phone, and he would explain everything.

All she had to do was wait.

Hike had filed the motion, and it should have been just a formality. But Dylan challenged it, for no other reason than that Dylan challenges everything.

That’s why we’re having this hearing in open court before Judge Klingman to decide the issue. Each side has explained their position in writing, and oral arguments should be brief.

“As we stated, Your Honor, we want a defense expert to examine the diamonds that were found in the victim’s possession. The police confiscated them, which by definition means that they consider them possible evidence, and the defense is entitled to its own examination of all the evidence. As the court is no doubt aware, we are not exactly creating new law with this request; it is standard procedure.”

The judge turns to Dylan. “Mr. Campbell?”

Dylan stands. “No one is questioning the defense’s right to examine evidence, Your Honor. We are simply objecting to the timing; we have not even had time to examine it ourselves.”

“Your Honor,” I say, “the examination should not take more than a couple of hours. They’ve had three weeks.”

“Three weeks is not a lot of time to examine all of the evidence in this case,” Dylan says.

I nod and speak to the judge. “That’s reasonable. So if the prosecution was planning to examine the diamonds today, we’ll wait until tomorrow. If they were not going to do it today, then we’ll take them and have them back tomorrow. That won’t set them back at all.”

Judge Klingman turns to Dylan. “Were you planning to have your experts examine the diamonds today?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Possibly,” Dylan lies. The truth is he has no idea when they would do so; it may not even have been on their list of things to do.

“Perfect,” I say, even though no one asked for my opinion. “We can go get them now, and we’ll have them back tomorrow. Mr. Campbell can have one of his associates present for the examination if he likes. But we’ll be quick, because the last thing we want to do is obstruct Mr. Campbell’s schedule.” I smile at Dylan, but he doesn’t smile back.

“I’ll sign the order,” the judge says, and then continues, staring admonishingly at Dylan. “I think we’re done here; we never should have had to be here in the first place.”

I send Hike down to get the diamonds, and call Willie to have him meet Hike there. Hike is even less physical than I am, and if he’s going to be carrying around two valuable stones, I want Willie nearby as protection. I had alerted Willie to this possibility, and he’s going to bring Zoe with him. He doesn’t want to leave her out of his sight, or leave Sondra alone with her.

I head back to the office to do some paperwork, and am surprised to see Laurie and Sam there. “What’s up?” I ask, because I am the curious type.

“Marcus called in,” Laurie says. “Stephanie Manning got a FedEx package.”

“Do we know what was in it?”

She shakes her head. “We don’t. But we know who and where it was from. Sam got it out of the FedEx computer.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope it came from Eric Brantley?”

“That remains to be seen,” she says, and Sam chimes in, “It was sent by Robert Boyle, from a UPS office in Brunswick, Maine. It was paid for in cash.”

“Anything significant about that?” I ask.

“Robert Boyle is considered to be the first modern chemist,” Laurie says.

“And he lives in Maine?”

“No, he died in the seventeenth century.”

“And he’s still sending packages?”

Laurie frowns at my attempts at humor. “Eric Brantley was a chemist. Stephanie Manning gets a FedEx from someone with a famous chemist’s name, who paid in cash. It’s certainly possible the sender was Brantley.”

“I can put my team on it,” Sam says. “We can check out all the Robert Boyles in the Brunswick area, and try to connect one of them to Stephanie Manning.”