I see a stain under the door to the closet, and a feeling of dread comes over me. I reluctantly open the door and look inside. What I see is a torso, folded over with a large red stain on its back. I don’t need Al Michaels to tell me that this is Troy Preston, wide receiver for the Jets. And I don’t need anybody to tell me that he is dead.
I walk back into the living room, where Kenny hasn’t moved. “I didn’t do it,” he says.
“Do you know who did?”
He just shakes his head. “What the hell am I gonna do?”
I sit down on the floor next to him. “Look,” I say, “I’m going to have a million questions for you, and then we’re going to have to figure out the best way to help you. But right now we have to deal with
“I don’t see no other way.”
I shake my head. “You know better than that. You asked for me… I’m a lawyer. If you were going to go down fighting, you’d have asked for a priest.”
He wears the fear on his face like a mask. “They’ll kill me.”
“No. You’ll be treated well. They wouldn’t try anything… there’s media all over this. We’re going to walk out together, and you’ll be taken into custody. It’ll take some time to process you into the system, and I probably won’t see you until tomorrow morning. Until then you are to talk to no one-not the police, not the guy in the next cell, no one. Do you understand?”
He nods uncertainly. “Are you going to help me?”
“I’m going to help you.” It’s not really a lie; I certainly haven’t decided to take this case, but for the time being I will get him through the opening phase. If I decide not to represent him, which basically means if I believe he’s guilty, I’ll help him get another attorney.
“They won’t let me talk to my wife.”
He seems to be trying to delay the inevitable surrender. “Where is she?” I ask.
“In Seattle, at her mother’s. They said she’s flying back. They won’t let me talk to her.”
“You’ll talk to her, but not right now. Now it’s time to end this.” I say it as firmly as I can, and he nods in resignation and stands up.
I walk outside first, as previously planned, and make a motion to Dessens to indicate that Kenny is following me, without his gun. It goes smoothly and professionally, and within a few minutes Kenny has been read his rights and is on the way downtown.
He’s scared, and he should be. No matter how this turns out, life as he knows it is over.
* * * * *
I PICK UP TARA at Kevin’s house. She seems a little miffed that I had abandoned her but grudgingly accepts my peace offering of a biscuit. As a further way of getting on her good side, I tell her that I’ll recommend she be allowed to play herself in the movie.
Kevin has followed the day’s events on television, and we make plans to meet in the office at eight A.M. I’m starting to get used to high-profile cases; they have a life of their own, and it’s vitally important to get on top of them immediately. And if one star football player goes on trial for murdering another, it’s going to make my previous cases look like tiffs in small-claims court.
As I enter my house, I’m struck by the now familiar feeling of comfort that envelops me. Two years ago, after my father’s death, I moved back to Paterson, New Jersey, to live in the house in which I grew up. Except for rescuing and adopting Tara from the animal shelter, coming back to this house is the single best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve hardly changed the interior at all; the house was already perfectly furnished with memories and emotions that only I can see and feel.
I’ve barely had time to put a frozen pizza in the oven when Laurie calls from Findlay. Such was the intensity of today’s events that I haven’t thought about her in hours.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “I saw what happened on television. I’ve been trying you all day on your cell phone.”
I left my cell phone in my suitcase, which the airline has delivered and is in the living room. “I’m fine. But we may have ourselves a client.”
“Is it true the victim’s body was in his house?” she asks.
“In the closet,” I confirm.
“Sounds rather incriminating.”
“Which is why you have to come home and uncover the kind of evidence that will let me display my courtroom brilliance.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she says. “I’ve missed you terribly.”
I let the words roll gently over me, sort of like a verbal massage. I know she loves me, but I have an embarrassing need for reassurance. At least it would be embarrassing if I were to reveal it to her. Which I won’t. Ever.
“Have you had fun?” I ask.
“It’s been an amazing experience, Andy. These are people I haven’t seen or thought about in more than fifteen years. And in five minutes all the memories came back… I even recognized their mannerisms. It makes me wonder why I cut off from them… why we never stayed in touch.”
Laurie’s father was a police officer in Findlay but decided to leave for a higher-paying job back East in Paterson, which qualified as the “big city.” He died five years ago, and I never got to meet him, but Laurie tells me he felt the move was the biggest mistake he ever made. I don’t recall her ever telling me if she shares that view.
We talk some more about reconnecting with old friends; she knows I completely understand because of my experience in moving back to Paterson. “The Internet is the way to stay in touch,” I say. “E-mailing makes it easy, and there are no pregnant pauses in the conversation.”
She doesn’t seem convinced, in fact seems vaguely troubled. I could ask her about this honestly and directly, but that would require too great a change in style. So instead, I change the subject. “If we take this case, we won’t be able to go away.” We had talked about a vacation.
“That’s okay,” she says, and again I hear the tone of voice that I don’t recognize as belonging to Laurie. It’s a halfhearted statement in a mostly halfhearted conversation. I’m not sure why, and I’m certainly not sure if I want to find out.
I get up really early in the morning to take Tara for a long walk. She attacks the route eagerly-tail-wagging and nose-sniffing every step of the way. We’ve gone this way a thousand times, yet each time she takes fresh delight in the sights and smells. Tara is not a “been there, done that” type of dog, and it’s a trait I admire and envy.
As I get dressed to go to the office, I catch up on what the media are saying about the Schilling case. There are reports that Schilling and Preston were out together the night Preston disappeared and that witnesses claim the last time Preston was seen was when Schilling gave him a ride home.
The striking part of the media coverage is not the information that is revealed, but the overwhelming nature of the effort to reveal it. I have 240 channels on my cable system, and it seems as if 230 of them are all over this case. One of the cable networks has already given a name to it, and their reports are emblazoned with the words “Murder in the Backfield” scrawled across the screen. They seem unconcerned with the fact that the victim was a wide receiver.
As has become standard operating procedure, guilt seems to be widely assumed, especially in light of the way Schilling was taken into custody. His were not the actions of the innocent, and if we ever go to trial, that is going to be a major hill to climb. The fact that a national television audience watched as he fended off police with a gun only makes the hill that much steeper.
Kevin and I don’t have much to talk about, and we just compare notes on what we’ve learned from the media. I’ve got a ten o’clock appointment at the jail to meet with Schilling, and Kevin plans to use the time to learn what the prosecution is planning in terms of arraignment. Kevin knows my feelings about defending guilty clients, feelings that he shares, and he’s relieved when I tell him that I’ve made no decision on whether to take on Schilling as a client.
