Bury the Lead - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,61
not.”
“Let me worry about getting it admitted,” I say.
“Andy, think this through. If word of this got out, every murderer in every prison in the country would be filing appeals saying that Lassiter was the real murderer and that he planted all the conclusive evidence their prosecutors used.”
I understand her point, and I don’t try to refute it, at least for now. The fact is that her testimony would not be admissible at this stage anyhow. I would first need to independently tie Lassiter into Daniel’s case, and neither Marcus’s informant nor Dominic Petrone is about to raise his right hand and tell it to the jury.
She adds, “Be careful with this, Andy. Lassiter is more than a tad insane.”
I nod, change the subject, and we have a thoroughly pleasant dinner, absent talk of serial killers and severed hands. She waits until we’re having coffee to smile and make her announcement. “Todd and I are getting married.”
“Congratulations. Who the hell is Todd?”
“I told you about him. He’s a Boston cop. A captain.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Three months,” she says. “But I would have said yes after three weeks. When you know, you know.”
I nod, silently wondering why, if Todd and Cindy and I all seem to “know,” Laurie remains in the dark.
“Things still well with you and Laurie?” Cindy asks.
She seems to have read my mind, so I get a little defensive. “Yes, well . . . very well . . . totally well . . .”
She smiles. “Sounds like you’ve reached new levels of wellness.”
“We have.”
“So when are you getting married?” she asks.
“Married? Me? No, thank you. I’m a free spirit . . . an eagle. No woman can clip my wings. I’ve got women all over the world. Paterson, Passaic, Trenton . . . you name it.”
“So Laurie doesn’t want to get married?”
I shrug. “Not so far.”
On the flight home I try to figure out what I’ve learned and what I still have to learn. I now completely believe that Tommy Lassiter killed Linda Padilla, though demonstrating that to a jury is very much another matter. What I don’t know is who, if anyone, hired him, or why he needed to kill three other women in the process.
Also puzzling to me is why he chose Daniel to frame. There are much less visible people, with far fewer resources, that he could have more easily pinned it on. He chose Daniel in such a way that the entire series of murders played out as a public spectacle, yet Lassiter’s previous history was always to lurk in the shadows.
He could have planted the incriminating evidence on virtually anyone, yet he chose Daniel. Daniel must have made himself an inviting target, or perhaps he had a previous connection to Lassiter that he hasn’t shared with me.
It’s time to talk to my client.
• • • • •
“HE TOLD ME HE KILLED my wife.” Daniel says this after considerable prodding, actually berating, on my part. He says it after I told him that he was going to lose this case unless I knew all the facts, every single one of them. And he says it with a shaky voice, the emotion of that night and the night his wife died coming back to him in torrents.
He seems so upset that I restrain my very real desire to strangle him with his handcuffs. This represents something that was critical for me to have known at the very beginning, not now, at the beginning of the end.
“When did he tell you that?” I ask, maintaining a calm demeanor.
“The night he killed Linda Padilla. That’s what he said when he first called me.”
“What else did he say?”
“That he would meet me in the park. That he would tell me who paid him to kill my wife . . . to kill Margaret.”
“And you believed that he killed her?”
He nods. “He was telling the truth. Absolutely.”
“How do you know that?”
“He knew what she was wearing . . . a bracelet I had given her for her anniversary. He said he took it . . . he described it.” He nods vigorously to punctuate his point. “There’s no doubt, Andy. He killed her.”
“Okay. So you got to the park . . . and then what?”
“I went to the place we were supposed to meet, the steps near the pavilion. He must have come up on me from behind, because the next thing I remember I was lying on the steps and talking to the cop.”
“Why didn’t you