“I heard about what happened to… ,” he starts.
“Calvin,” I say.
He nods. “Calvin. And I thought you might need some help.”
Kevin has made the kind of terrific gesture that only a good friend would make, but one that immediately triggers my overactive guilt gland. “What about Carol and the wedding?” I ask. “And then the honeymoon?”
“I asked Carol to marry me. She said no.”
“Gee, I’m sorry, Kev. Maybe she’ll change her mind.”
He shakes his head. “After she said no, she said ‘never.’ ”
“She said ‘never’?”
He nods. “Right before she said ‘not in a million years.’ So I was thinking I should come here and pitch in… if you want me.”
Kevin is a terrific attorney; there’s no question that I want him, and I tell him so. But I remind him about the pitfalls, like the need to be rather flexible with our fee structure and the fact that the person he’s replacing was killed while doing his job. None of this deters him, so I welcome him on board.
“But, Kev, it’s not winter yet. You might not need quite so much clothing. This is Wisconsin in October… not the Russian front in January.”
“It’s a preemptive action,” he says. “If I catch a cold early in the season, I have it all winter. Remember how much I was sneezing last year?”
I don’t remember anything about his sneezing, but I don’t want to hurt him by saying so, so I nod. “That was a nightmare,” I say.
We go into the house, and Kevin begins to describe in excruciating detail his other cold-prevention measures. When he starts listing the different forms of zinc he takes, Marcus, who has barely said a word since Kevin arrived, shakes his head and goes upstairs.
“Marcus is staying here?” Kevin asks.
“Yes.”
“Have you got room for me as well?”
This is getting worse by the day; pretty soon the house is going to need a resident adviser. “Sure. There’s an extra bedroom next to his.”
“I’m going to need to keep the house at a minimum of seventy-two point five degrees,” he says. “For my sinuses. Are you going to be okay with that?”
“Seventy-two point five?” I ask.
He nods. “Minimum.”
“Okay with me,” I say. “But why don’t you clear it with Marcus?”
• • • • •
THE FAX MACHINE in the kitchen is already going full blast when I wake up in the morning. As I walk toward it, I notice that Kevin is wearing an overcoat while cooking breakfast, and one of the windows is open. My guess is that Marcus didn’t think much of his 72.5 temperature plan.
Marcus, meanwhile, sits shirtless at the kitchen table, drinking an entire pitcher of orange juice without seeming to pause to swallow.
I feel like I’m in a fraternity house: Phi Loony Toony.
I check the fax coming in and am not surprised that Sam has once again come through, providing us with copies of the same documents that we’re scheduled to receive from Stephen Drummond. Right now they’re of no value to us, but when Drummond provides us with his, we’ll be ready to swing into action.
Word has come from Lester that he will not provide us with investigative reports on Calvin’s death in discovery, claiming, as I anticipated, that it is not related to Jeremy’s case. Judge Morrison has agreed to my request for an urgent hearing on the matter, and it’s been scheduled for three o’clock this afternoon.
For breakfast Kevin and I eat the five percent of the food that Marcus leaves behind, and then we continue the process of familiarizing ourselves with every bit of the prosecution evidence. More discovery documents are coming in every day, and the new ones are the ones I read. Kevin, since he just arrived, has started from the beginning.
Very often discovery documents contain an item that is understated so as to seem an insignificant fact, yet it will turn out to be a key part of the prosecution’s case. It is for that reason that I must know everything before I enter the courtroom; there must be absolutely no chance that I will be surprised.
It is while I’m reading through a new statement by one of the people at the bar the night of the murder that I find something that troubles me. I take Kevin and we drive out to the bar, which I have visited twice before. It is basically midway between Center City and Findlay.
We park in the lot and get out, taking the statements with us, so that we can re-create in our minds what took place.
“Jeremy’s truck was here,” I say, “and Liz’s car was parked over there.”
“Right. Under the light.” He adds that last fact because Jeremy said he couldn’t see who was in the car with her, yet the prosecution will use the presence of the light to try to discredit that.
“So she gets out of the car and comes over here, they talk, then argue, and she leaves. Then, according to Jeremy, he debates whether to go into the bar and get drunk, decides against it, and goes home.” I point. “Which is that way.”
“Shit,” Kevin says, realizing what I’m getting at.
I hold up one of the statements. “But Stacy Martin of Lancaster says she was leaving the parking lot at the same time as Jeremy and that she drove off behind him, going west.” I point in the opposite direction that I pointed before.
“Which is towards Lancaster and Center City,” Kevin says.
If Stacy Martin is correct, then Jeremy did not drive back to Findlay.
If Stacy Martin is correct, Jeremy Davidson lied to his lawyer.
Me.
Kevin and I go back to Jeremy’s house to look around there again. I had always been vaguely troubled by the fact that the bodies had been buried out behind the house, with the only access road to that area being in the front. Yet Jeremy, who claimed to have been home, never heard a thing.
My point of view on this was that the bodies may well have been put there the next day, when Jeremy might not have been home. Jeremy’s apparent lie about where he went after leaving the bar raises two more possibilities: Jeremy did not hear anything because he wasn’t at home that night, or Jeremy was the one doing the burying.
Richard Davidson is home when we get there, and I ask to look around inside, while Kevin does so outside. Davidson seems surprised by the sudden request, especially since I’ve been there before. “Anything new?” he probes.
“Nothing much… just going over things again. Where is Jeremy’s bedroom?”
“In the guesthouse, second floor. But you can’t go in there now… it’s not stable.”
The Davidsons haven’t started rebuilding the damaged guesthouse from the firebombing, so I walk outside of where Jeremy’s window was. I can clearly see Kevin, perhaps seventy-five yards away, standing near the area where the bodies were buried. This makes it even less likely that Jeremy was home and didn’t notice anything going on.
Kevin and I leave without sharing our concerns with Richard, and we head down to the jail to meet with Jeremy. He is brought into the meeting room, and a guard remains posted outside.
“What’s going on?” Jeremy asks, hopeful as always.
This is no time for small talk. “You didn’t drive home from the bar that night. You drove to Center City.” I don’t know if that last part is true, but since it’s a worst case, I say it as if I know for sure, to see how he will react.
I can see a flash of panic in his eyes. “What are you talking about? I told you, I-”
“This isn’t a debate, Jeremy. I know where you went. What I want you to tell me is why you went there and why you lied about it.”
He seems about to argue that point again and then sits back, as if defeated. I am going to hate what he has to say.