Koppell’s office is in a two-story building that, according to the directory, is inhabited exclusively by lawyers. His office is in suite 206, though that doesn’t distinguish him in any fashion, as all the offices are labeled suites.
I enter the small reception area, which contains a desk, two chairs, and an absolutely beautiful young woman-maybe twenty-five, with black, curly hair and a wide, perfect smile. She finishes typing something with incredible speed, then turns and welcomes me, offering me my choice of coffee, tea, a soft drink, or water.
This is a woman with whom Edna has absolutely nothing in common.
“Do you do crossword puzzles?” I ask, just to make sure.
She shakes her head while maintaining the smile. “No, I really don’t have the time. Any free time I have, I go surfing or hiking or skiing-in the winter, of course.”
“Of course,” I say, trying to picture Edna on a surfboard. Once I successfully picture it, I wish I hadn’t tried.
She leads me into Koppell’s office, which isn’t that much larger than hers. He is on the phone but signals for me to sit down and then holds up one finger, which I take to mean he’ll be off the phone in a moment.
“I’m sure he is a good boy, Mr. Givens,” he says into the phone. “But the problem, as I told you, is that in the eyes of the law he is not a boy. He became a man two weeks ago, on his eighteenth birthday. Which makes the marijuana possession more difficult to deal with.”
He listens for a moment and then says, “I didn’t say impossible; I said difficult.”
He concludes by setting a date for the man to come in with his son so they can discuss his legal options. It is a case that will be boring and of very little consequence, and I’m sure Koppell must handle a hundred of them every year.
I don’t, which makes me one lucky lawyer.
Once he’s off the phone, Koppell turns to me and says, “So I hear I’m out of a job.” Then he smiles and says, “Not that it’s been a full-time job.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“You’re representing Richard Evans.”
“He told you that?” I’m surprised; prison inmates don’t have that much access to outside communication, and I don’t know why he would have bothered to call Koppell.
“No, I heard about it on the radio coming in today. They said that you had registered with the court as his lawyer, and that you would likely be seeking a new trial.”
It’s amazing that this could be considered news. All I did was register, and the reporter must have assumed I would be seeking a new trial, since what other purpose could there be for me taking him on as a client? The media had barely covered the murder and the trial, and a lawyer change qualifies as a news event? I shake my head. “Must be a slow news day.”
“Hey, man, you’re a star. Tom Cruise gets headlines when he changes breakfast cereals.”
I make a mental note to mention to Laurie that I’ve been compared to Tom Cruise, even if it’s by a middle- aged, overweight male lawyer.
“Anyway, yes, Richard has hired me. I’m sorry you had to hear it on the radio.”
He shrugs. “No problem. You didn’t come all the way down here to tell me that, did you?”
“No, I wanted to talk to you about the case and to get access to your files.”
“They’ll be in storage, but I’ll have them sent here, and then I’ll send them on to you.”
“Thanks. Did you see anything on television about the case I handled recently? Where I defended the dog?”
He smiles. “I thought that was great. I’m thinking of hanging around the local shelter to get clients.”
“That was Richard Evans’s dog,” I say.
His surprise is obvious. “Are you serious?”
I nod. “There’s no doubt about it.”
He thinks for a moment. “Then that changes a lot. If I remember correctly, two witnesses saw the dog with Evans when he boarded the boat.”
“That’s the kind of information I need.”
“It’ll all be in the files,” he says. “Damn, how the hell could that dog be alive?”
“That’s what I need to find out. But things apparently did not happen on that boat the way the prosecution claimed.”
“I’m going to be straight with you,” he says. “There was nothing, not a shred, that pointed to Richard’s innocence. I worked my ass off trying to find something.”
“You think there was anything there to find?” I ask.
“I did when it started, but I didn’t by the end.”
“What about the forensics?” I ask.
He shrugs. “They seemed solid, but we didn’t have much money to hire experts. That’s an area you could pursue.” He pauses, then shakes his head in amazement. “Damn, that dog is really
“Definitely.”
“You know, I never could figure out why he killed the dog. I mean, everybody said how much he loved it, and what would have been the harm in letting it live? What the hell could he have been afraid of, that it would be an eyewitness? It just didn’t make any sense.”
I have been wrestling with this from the beginning; it’s one of the major reasons I took the case. If Richard was planning to kill his fiancee, he would have left Reggie at home. That’s what I would have done if I were a murderer. And suicidal. And engaged. And had a boat.
Koppell promises to get the files to me as soon as he has them, and I thank him and leave. I make some wrong turns on the way out, and I feel trapped in a suburban maze. It takes me a half hour to reach the Garden State Parkway and the safety of a huge traffic jam.
I finally make it back home, though I’m there only long enough to get Reggie and put him in the car. We drive to the Teaneck office of Dr. Erin Ruff, as perfect a name for a veterinarian as you’re going to find.
Karen Evans had told me that Dr. Ruff used to be Reggie’s vet, and when I made an appointment, I explained that I was Richard’s lawyer and I wanted to talk about the case. I asked her to have Reggie’s medical records available, but I did not mention that Reggie might be alive.
When I get to Dr. Ruff’s office, the receptionist is properly surprised when I have a dog with me, since I had said I was just coming in to talk. She asks his name, and I say, “Yogi.”
“And what are we seeing Yogi for today?” she asks.
“Just a checkup.”
I’m ushered into a small room to wait for the doctor. It’s pretty much like every small doctor’s room I’ve ever been in, though this time I get to keep my pants on.
In about five minutes, the door opens and Dr. Ruff comes in, a smile on her face and a folder in her left hand. She reaches out her right hand to shake mine, when she sees Reggie.
“Oh, my God,” she says. She looks as if she’d seen a ghost, and in a way she has. “That can’t be…”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
She’s not getting it. “Those cut marks… He’s supposed to be dead.”
I nod. “And someday he will be, but not yet.”
I explain that the reason we are here is to find out if there is anything in Reggie’s five-year-old records that would help identify him today.
“Is he the dog who was on the news the other day? The one you went to court about?”
“Yes. He’s had his fifteen minutes of fame, but if he’s Richard Evans’s dog, he’s going to get another dose.”
Dr. Ruff goes over and pets Reggie, who wags his tail in appreciation. She gently lifts his head and looks to see if the marks are also under his chin, which, of course, they are. “It’s as I remember it,” she says.
I ask her if there are other factors she can point to that can help identify him, and she starts to look through his records. “We’re in luck,” she says. “When Richard rescued him, he had three bad teeth, probably from chewing on rocks. I extracted them.”
She walks over to Reggie and opens his mouth. He obliges, probably because he thinks she’ll fill that mouth
