We’re meeting at Laurie’s house, which is what we usually do. That way I can bring Simon, and he can play with Laurie and her husband Andy’s dogs. Tara is their golden retriever, and Simon’s best friend. Sebastian is their basset hound, who shows little interest in playing, or, for that matter, moving. Sebastian is into energy conservation.
Besides myself, the human members of the team are Laurie Collins and Marcus Clark. Laurie is also a former cop, a lieutenant in the Paterson police force. At one point she also went back to her hometown of Findlay, Wisconsin, where she spent a year as their police chief.
She came back because she missed the man that would eventually become her husband, Andy Carpenter. Andy is a defense attorney, and Laurie served as his chief investigator, until the K Team took over that role. Andy is a brilliant attorney, and I say that grudgingly, because he is also a major pain in the ass. Laurie’s weakness for him, as far as I can tell, is her only flaw.
Marcus Clark is fairly tough to describe. You know that line about someone being the type you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley? You wouldn’t want to meet Marcus in a dark alley, or a well-lit alley, or a back alley, or a bowling alley, or an alley-oop.
Marcus is an incredibly scary guy, and he’s tougher than he is scary. But he’s on our side, which is quite comforting.
I haven’t told Laurie and Marcus why we’re meeting, but I’m going to do so now. “I don’t know if you guys read about it, but a woman named Lisa Yates was murdered last Saturday night in Teaneck. She had just had dinner with a friend at Manero’s. She was fired on from someone in a moving car, and two other people were also wounded. Their injuries seem not to be life threatening.
“Lisa and her dinner companion had just said good-bye, and Lisa walked to her car. As she reached the door, she was shot twice and died at the scene.”
“I read about it,” Laurie says. Marcus doesn’t say anything, which is no surprise because Marcus almost never says anything. When he does talk, it comes out as grunts that are indecipherable to everyone but Laurie.
“About three months before I left the force, which makes it about a year ago, there was a labor-management dispute within the department over lack of raises.”
Laurie nods; she was long gone from the force at that point, but as an ex-cop I’m sure she remembers it and was supportive. It was a pretty big media story in Paterson, mainly because there was what they called a blue-out, which means that a bunch of cops called in sick in protest.
“Those of us that showed up were given assignments that weren’t typical for us, depending on where the shortages were. I wound up working the streets without Simon; he got some time off. I also worked alone; there just weren’t enough cops to have two in a car.
“One night I got a call for a suspected domestic violence on Derrom Avenue, on the other side of the park. A neighbor heard yelling and what sounded like a woman screaming in pain. He called nine-one-one and reported that it was not the first time this had happened.
“It was a really nice house; whoever lived there was obviously well-off. There were two people in the home, a man and woman. His name was Gerald Kline. Her name, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, was Lisa Yates. The house was owned by her.
“They claimed not to be married, but lived there together. Lisa was clearly upset and had a red welt on the side of her face.
“Both of them swore that no domestic violence had occurred, that Lisa had tripped and fell and that’s how she got the bruise. I didn’t believe it, not even close, so I put them in separate rooms so I could talk to her without the guy present.
“She wouldn’t change her story that nothing happened and that of course therefore she would not press charges. I told her that I didn’t believe her, and that I would protect her if she told me what really happened, but I got nowhere.
“I went back into the other room and told Gerald Kline that if he ever laid a finger on her again, I would beat the shit out of him, and then beat the shit out of him again, just to show that the first time wasn’t a fluke. He just smiled this annoying smile; he was silently telling me that he wasn’t afraid of me and would do whatever the hell he wanted. In just that brief encounter, I disliked him intensely.
“But I left because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I filed a report and that was the end of it. I still don’t know what else I could have done that night, but it has bugged me ever since. Police procedure was clear, and I followed it. But I should have checked on her later on, since then, to make sure she was okay.
“So I filed a report and went on my way. And now she’s dead.”
“This is not something you should be blaming yourself for, Corey,” Laurie says. “You did it by the book. What should you have done? Followed her for a year? Served as her bodyguard?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I could have checked up on her once in a while. Maybe I could have demonstrated to her asshole boyfriend that he really had something to be afraid of. Maybe I could have done something so that she wouldn’t be dead.”
Marcus just shakes his head, his way of registering his disagreement with what I’m saying.
“So why are we meeting about this?” Laurie asks.
“Because I’m going to be out of commission for a while. I know we’re in the middle of wrapping up two cases, but you don’t need me to finish them. I
