Bury the Lead - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,77
and public somehow became aware of the location, and they’ve shown up en masse.
We limit the party to the core group: Kevin, Laurie, Vince, Daniel, and myself. We are more subdued than usual, possibly because there is no explosion after the tension of waiting for a jury verdict. Relief is etched on Daniel’s face; he claims never to have been so scared in his entire life.
He raises his glass in a toast. “To the best legal team and the best lead lawyer a man could ever have.”
There seems to be no dissent from that opinion, so I’m not about to quibble. I’ve gone from the worst lawyer on the face of the planet for putting Eddie on the stand, to America’s finest legal mind. All because a maniac committed a brutal murder.
The gathering breaks up fairly early, and Daniel gives us each a final hug as we leave. I tell him that we will need to get together to go over my final bill, and he smiles and says, “Anytime. No problem.”
Vince comes up to me and for a moment seems to be readying for a hug himself. At the last moment he veers off, and it becomes a handshake, which is fine with me. “I knew you could do it and you did,” he says. “You did.”
The fact is that I didn’t, but I don’t bother saying that to Vince. Laurie and I head home, and when we’re in bed, she asks, “You okay, Andy?”
“I’m fine. I’m glad it’s over.”
“Are you going to go away?” She’s referring to my traditional post-trial break, where I take Tara and get away for a couple of weeks to decompress.
“I’m not sure. I’m not sure I need to.”
“I thought maybe we could go together,” she says. “The three of us.”
“That sounds nice.”
My reaction sounds less enthusiastic than I actually feel about her suggestion, and she picks up on it. “Unless you don’t want to,” she says. “I know you like to be alone.”
“Laurie, getting away with you sounds wonderful. But not for too long. I was thinking under five years.”
She smiles and kisses me, but we wait until morning to tell Tara the good news.
Kevin is in the office in the morning when I arrive. We go over the hours we put in, and prepare a final bill for Daniel. It’s very substantial; Lassiter could have saved Daniel a lot of money by committing another murder a couple of months earlier.
When we’re finished, I call Daniel to set up a meeting to go over the charges. He’s not yet back working at the paper, so he asks if we can meet at his house at six P.M., which is fine with me.
Kevin and I haven’t really had a chance to discuss the sudden ending to the case, and I can tell he shares my rather disoriented feeling about it. He’s more of a legal purist than I am and is very uncomfortable with the fact that the determining event of the trial happened in a back alley in downtown Paterson.
No matter what angle we look at things from, the actions of Lassiter make no sense. He went to huge trouble to frame Daniel for the murders, only to save him when his efforts were about to be rewarded. Even more puzzling is Lassiter’s motive for the entire murder spree: Could someone be paying him to do this? And if so, why? Is it simply that he is insane?
Kevin thinks that Lassiter is a psychopath who gets off on making fools of the police and is unconcerned about how many people must die to make that happen. The fact is that the only way we are going to get any of these answers is if Lassiter gets caught, and hopefully, that will be accomplished before other women are killed.
I head home and take Tara for a long walk in the park. Laurie and I have decided to rent a house on Long Beach Island for a couple of weeks, and Tara seems fine with that. Tara and I have been there a number of times; it is beautiful and peaceful, especially outside the summer season.
I leave a note for Laurie, suggesting that we have dinner at Charlie’s after my meeting with Daniel. I then drive over to Daniel’s house, which is in a very expensive, heavily wooded section of Englewood Cliffs.
As I pull up to the house, I can see Daniel looking out at me through his front window and smiling. He is dressed