he is privy to every conversation that goes on there.
“Of course not,” Cotner says. “That would be impossible.”
“How many conversations that took place there yesterday, that you were not directly involved in, can you relate to us today?”
“None.”
“Thank you.”
I usually have lunch at a coffee shop near the courthouse.
I often take Hike with me, more for self-discipline than anything else. His conversation makes me not want to linger over lunch, and gets me back to our courthouse office to bone up on the next witnesses.
This time Hike is talking about the local rodent population, and how they have infiltrated every restaurant in the area, including and especially the one we’re in.
“They’re out of control,” he says. “Fortunately they’re not very bright as far as animals go. There are so many of them that if they ever organized and got their act together, we’d be on the menu instead of them.”
I try not to respond to his ramblings, but this time I can’t help it. “What the hell does that mean? I don’t see any ‘rodent’ on the menu.”
“Just don’t ask the waiter what today’s specials really are.”
“So you think they serve baked rat?” I ask.
“I can’t prove anything, but did you notice I only order salads?”
I decide to drop it, mainly because the hamburger I’m eating is growing “chewier” by the moment. But I would have dropped it anyway, because just then Sam walks in the door. He never comes to court, so this must be something pretty important.
It is.
“Morris Fishman found something,” he says. “I figured you’d want to hear it right away.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a guy on the missing persons report, the one from your friend at the FBI, named Steven Lockman. Young guy, thirty-four years old… married… his wife was five months pregnant when he disappeared. He was reported missing two days after the fire, to his local police department.”
“Where?”
“East Brunswick. Lived there for three years; nobody in the community had any idea where he went, and the police never found anything. Never been heard from since.”
It’s just like Sam to dramatically hold back the reason we should be interested in Lockman until after he tells us the details. Even though I’m dying to know, I can’t help having some fun with him.
“Okay, Sam, thanks. That’s helpful.”
“What’s helpful?” Sam asks, knowing he hasn’t gotten to the key point yet.
“Lockman’s information. Tell Morris he did good.”
“Don’t you want to know why Lockman is important?”
I open my mouth and cover it with my hand, as if I’m shocked. “You mean there’s more?”
Sam finally gets it and smiles. “You’re busting my chops, right?”
“Right,” I say. “Tell me the rest about Lockman.”
“You know that company Bauer is trying to take over? Milgram Oil and Gas? Well, Lockman worked for them.”
“Whoa, that is important, Sam.” If anything, I’m understating the case; this is way too big to chalk up to coincidence. “You digging into this guy’s life?”
“I’ve got Hilda and Morris working full-time on it.”
I tell Hike that I’ll handle court by myself this afternoon; I want him to hang out with Sam and the gang and keep me posted on all developments. We need to focus on this as much as we can.
The afternoon court session is relatively uneventful. I introduce a series of witnesses, all of whom knew Noah in the weeks before and after the fire. They all claim to be unfamiliar with Danny Butler, and quite sure that Noah would not have confided in him.
All also say that Noah never talked to them about the fire. Dylan has some success on cross, but basically I’ve used the day to make it seem unlikely that Noah would have confessed a mass murder to Butler.
If Butler’s statement was the only evidence Dylan had, our success today might even mean something.
Gail Lockman doesn’t want to talk to me, but feels she has to.
She has suffered these past six years from the loss of her husband. He didn’t die, or at least if he did she doesn’t know it. He rather just disappeared, without a trace, or a hint of explanation.
She has never really entertained the possibility that he left willingly, not even in her most private thoughts. They were happy, in fact had never been happier. Their baby was soon to be born, and it is inconceivable to her that Steven could have voluntarily spent all this time without any contact with either of them.
So she is sure he must have lost his life, somehow, yet not a day goes by that she doesn’t remain alert, looking everywhere for a sign of him.
That’s where I come in. I had Laurie call her, because to have her talk to Hike would have been the icing on her Depression Cake. Laurie asked if she would see me tonight, to talk about something that has come up regarding Steven. I’m sure she would rather do anything other than talk to a stranger about Steven, but there is always that hope…
Gail works in the admissions office at Rutgers University, and wants to meet me in the student center coffee shop. Laurie and I drive down, park, and walk across campus to meet her. I watch as one male student after another stares at Laurie. If any co-eds eyed me, they did it without my knowledge.
Gail is waiting for us, sitting at a table and looking at her watch impatiently. We’re not late, so she’s either counting the minutes until this is over, or hoping that we will be late so she can leave. When we introduce ourselves, I can’t tell if the look on her face is disappointment, anxiety, or hopefulness.
In any event, it’s soon replaced by a practiced smile, if not a desire to chitchat. “I understand you want to talk about Steven,” she says.
“Yes. His name has come up in connection with a case we’re working on. It may have nothing to do with him, but I felt it important to follow up.”
“The Galloway case?”
She obviously and not surprisingly has done some homework on me since getting the call. “Yes. Your husband disappeared around the time of the fire, and the company he worked for, Milgram, has become part of the investigation.”
“Milgram? In what way?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say,” I lie. “It’s covered by attorney-client privilege.”
I need to start asking questions rather than answering them, and Laurie picks up on this. “Have you at any time considered that Steven’s disappearance could in some way have been connected to his work?”
“As you can imagine, I’ve analyzed it from every angle, including that one, but I haven’t come up with anything. Steven seemed mostly happy with what he was doing. In fact, in the days before he left…”
She pauses for a moment. She used the word “left,” but it seems as if she has never really come up with a word that she is comfortable with, or that seems to fit. She continues. “He was particularly upbeat. That’s one of the things that has always seemed so strange…”
“So nothing about his work was bothering him in any way?” I ask. “You said ‘mostly happy.’”
She shrugs. “He wasn’t making as much money as he thought he should, but he felt that was going to change. We were about to have the baby, and earning money had become very important to him.”
“What exactly did he do for Milgram?”
“He was what they call an assayer. He had a master’s in quarrying and extraction, and he went to land that Milgram owned and estimated how much oil and gas, or other resources, were there. You know, so they’d know whether to drill or not, I guess.” She smiles. “Truth is, I never really understood it myself.”
“Is that why he traveled so much?” Laurie asks.
She nods. “It wasn’t so much, just more than I would have liked. I wanted him home as much as possible.” She shakes her head and smiles sadly, “Look how that worked out.”
“Would you have any way of knowing where he traveled in, say, the two months before he disappeared?”
She nods. “Absolutely. I gave the police all of that information, his records, his calendar… and they gave them
