Rainey.
'Listen to this,' Vail said. He waited until Rainey had the headphones adjusted and then pressed the play button. They watched as Rainey listened. He took off the 'phones and handed it back to Vail.
'So? Somebody shooting a gun.'
'It's clear that the first shot came from the shotgun,' Vail said.
'Is that what we're here about? This dummied-up tape. What kinda scam are you trying to pull, Martin?'
'I'll tell you right now, Paul, I have an unimpeachable witness who'll testify that the tape is accurate,' said Vail.
'So what,' Rainey said, obviously getting annoyed.
'So your guy's been lying to you, which is understandable, considering he killed his wife in cold blood. Point is, he hasn't been level with you. You're flying blind at this point and he's navigating you right into a mountain.'
'Where are you going with this, Marty?'
'I'm offering you a deal, Paul. We'll let him plead to second-degree murder. He gets twenty years without parole. I'm offering you twenty years and he's out. He'll be fifty-something and broke, but he'll be out. I think society will be happy with that arrangement.'
'You're crazier than a Christmas mouse, you know that?'
'I know you, Paul. I know you believe that Darby's innocent and it happened the way he said it happened. But I hate to see you get conned by your own client. Listen to the tape again.'
'I don't have to listen to the tape again. I heard the tape. It doesn't mean a damn thing.'
'It means Darby came into his house, walked over to his wife, who was watching TV, and shot her in the head. Then he put the .38 in her hand, fired four shots - one into the ceiling - and then backed off and shot her in the side with the shotgun. And it also means it was premeditated. Malice aforethought. The whole magilla.'
'If you're so damn sure you got him, you wouldn't be offering me a deal. I know you. You'd take me to the limit.'
'Look, I don't have the staff or the time for depositions and tracking down witnesses and pretrial and trial and then your appeal and on and on. I've got a desk full of cases and now I have to handle Jack's business, too. We settle this, I save the taxpayers a couple hundred thousand bucks, I save myself a lot of aggravation, you save face, and your client stays alive.'
Vail took out the warrant, laid it on the table and slid it in front of Paul Rainey.
'I'll serve this on you if you'll accept it. You can bring him in by, say, eight tonight?' he said.
Rainey opened the warrant for first-degree murder on Darby. He looked up at Vail with surprise, then looked back down at the warrant. His jaw began to spasm as his anger rose.
'I can't believe you're pulling this stunt,' he said finally.
'There's another thing,' Vail said. 'He's dead broke, I talked to Tom Smoot at New York Life last night. They're freezing the insurance funds pending the resolution of this case.'
'Never miss a trick, do you?' Rainey said, and there was ire in every word. 'Know what I think? I think you're giving up an awful lot of information, that's what I think.'
'There's a lot more,' Parver said softly.
'Oh?'
'Well, there's the slip with the phone number on it. We think the phone number beside the phone was written by Darby to make it appear as though his wife called Palmer. I don't think Poppy Palmer ever talked to Ramona Darby.'
'You've had more than one shot at the Palmer woman,' said Rainey. 'You can't prove any of this. It's all conjecture. You want to talk to her again? Go ahead, be my guest.'
'We'd like to, Paul, if we could find her,' Shana Parver said in a matter-of-fact tone.
'What the hell're you talking about?'
'Poppy Palmer flew the coop,' Vail said.
Rainey's gaze jumped back and forth between Vail and Parver.
'She called her boss yesterday, about two hours after Shana
