the terminals look like they were positioned by blindfolded dart throwers, and the planes are always late. Yet for a very long time, many upscale Manhattanites wouldn’t dream of taking off from or landing in Newark. The mere suggestion of it drew frowns, as if they were afraid they’d get cow dung on their shoes when they left the terminal. These attitudes have changed somewhat, but if you see somebody check the bottom of their shoes when they reach their car, you can still bet they’re heading toward Manhattan.
Being from New Jersey, I’m used to cow dung, so I don’t even look down as I walk to the terminal. Once I get there, boredom sets in, since the tightened security makes it impossible to get to restaurants or newspaper stands or even chairs, for that matter. All of those things are in that glorious land beyond security.
About twenty minutes before Laurie’s flight is scheduled to arrive, my cell phone rings. I think it might be her, calling to say she’s landed early and wondering where I’m waiting.
Instead, it’s Vince. “Where are you?”
“Newark Airport.”
“How fast can you get to Eastside Park?” he asks.
“I hope that’s a rhetorical question.”
“What?”
“How does a week from Tuesday sound?”
“Andy, I need you down here. There’s been another murder.”
I’m very sorry to hear that, of course, but there’s no way I’m leaving this airport alone. “Vince, I’m a lawyer. I don’t go to crime scenes. I hold up photographs of them in court.”
“Andy . . .”
It’s time to be firm. “I’ll have to read about it in the paper, Vince. Laurie is coming in, and-”
He cuts me off. “The victim is Linda Padilla.”
I’m outta here.
• • • • •
I’M OUT OF THE AIRPORT in five minutes, leaving Laurie to fend for herself. If Linda Padilla has been murdered, then this case is going to explode. And if Cummings is still in the middle of things, then as his lawyer, I have to make sure it doesn’t explode in his face.
Four years ago Linda Padilla was a middle-level bureaucrat working in the State Housing Administration. Having grown up in low-income housing herself, she was aware of the rather large need for improvement in most of these developments.
What she had not been aware of was a conspiracy among some of those above her to embezzle money meant for housing construction. When she discovered it, she feared that it would be swept under the rug, so she went public with the revelations. People went to jail, others turned state’s evidence, and she became an instant media star.
Superstar whistle-blowers don’t remain in bureaucracies long, and Padilla left to start a watchdog operation. Emboldened by her actions and aware of her reputation, others in different areas of government and the private sector started coming to her with their tales of official and executive wrongdoing. Padilla eagerly and effectively presented them to the world. It wasn’t long before people in power were, if not cowering, at least fearful of becoming her next target.
Padilla took advantage of her fame to become very wealthy. She was a highly sought-after figure on the lecture circuit, and the word was, she could command more than fifty thousand dollars per speech. She also wrote a best-selling book on her exploits; she had reinvented herself as a cottage industry and made a fortune in the process.
Three months ago Padilla announced her candidacy for governor in next year’s election. The public responded almost instantly, and poll after poll showed that she had the very real potential to turn the state’s political landscape upside down.
But Vince’s words make all that moot, and her murder is likely to initiate a media earthquake. I listen to the radio on the way there, and the news is sketchy at this point. All that is known is that Linda Padilla has been killed, and there is speculation that she is in fact the latest victim of the serial killer that has been stalking the area.
It takes me almost twenty minutes to get to Eastside Park and another ten minutes to work my way close to the crime scene. If I were a looter anywhere else in New Jersey, I’d be salivating, since there’s no doubt that every cop in the state is here in Eastside Park. There are so many car lights and floodlights that it seems like daytime, though it’s approaching nine P.M.
Since in the eyes of the police I have no standing in this case, I’m limited as to how close I can get. I’m trying to maneuver around that problem by finding cops I recognize when I see Vince pointing to me and talking to an officer. The officer nods and comes over to get me, bringing me inside the barricades. As I walk toward Vince, I look around but don’t see Daniel Cummings.
Vince grabs me by the arm. “Come on.”
He starts taking me toward the crime scene, which means we have to navigate through what seems to be five million people.
“Where’s Cummings?” I ask.
“With the state police.”
“Was he contacted by the killer?”
He laughs a short laugh. “Yeah. You might say that.”
A few moments later I understand his cryptic comment. Cummings is leaning back on a chair as a paramedic bandages his head. It appears the bandage is protecting a wound on the left side of his temple.
The medic finishes and nods silently to Captain Millen, the state cop who ran the press conference and who is in charge of what is rapidly becoming a train wreck of a case. Millen walks over to Cummings and starts talking to him.
“So, Mr. Cummings, you feeling okay?” I can tell his concern lacks something in the sincerity department, since he does not wait for a response. “Tell me everything that happened tonight. Leave out nothing.”
Cummings frowns his displeasure at this. “Captain, I already told the story to the officer. Can’t you-”
“No, I want to hear it from you.”
“Captain Millen, my name is Andy Carpenter,” I say, my voice deep and powerful so as to convey my authority. “I’m representing Mr. Cummings.”
“Good for you.” He doesn’t seem to be cowed.
“My client is obviously injured.”
“And Linda Padilla is obviously dead. So stop interrupting or I’ll have you obviously removed.”
He’s speaking to me as if I am an annoying child. This is unacceptable and demeaning, but I back off, so as to avoid getting sent to my room for a time-out.
Cummings, coherent enough in his injured state to know that he’ll get no help from me, begins to tell his story. He had received a phone call on his cell phone while driving on Route 3, about fifteen minutes from here. It was the killer, who told him that the next victim was about to be killed in Eastside Park, near the pavilion.
Millen interrupts. “How did he know you’d be out with your cell phone?”
Cummings shrugs. “For all I know, he tried me at home first.”
As the conversation continues, I learn that the police had been tapping all of Cummings’s phones except the cell phone that the killer called on. It was not Cummings’s personal phone; it was one supplied by the paper, which he kept in the car and rarely used. He hadn’t thought to mention it to the police and is baffled as to how the killer could have gotten the number, since he doesn’t even know it himself.
“What did you do next?”
“I rushed here, of course. And I tried to keep him on the phone as long as I could. I thought maybe I could save whoever . . . if he was talking to me . . . well, he couldn’t do anything.” He glances over toward the inside of the pavilion, where Ms. Padilla’s body lay covered. “Finally, we got cut off as I reached here. I tried calling you, but there wasn’t any cell phone reception. So I went in . . . hoping to stop . . .”
My own cell phone goes off, rather untimely considering what my client has just said.
“Hello?”
It’s Laurie, calling from the airport. “Where are you?”
