A Farewell to Legs (13 page)

I
called HRT Forensic, and
sure enough, was immediately told that any ongoing investigations
were none of my business, that their activities were not a matter
of public record, and that my voice sounded sexy. But I told the
guy I wasn’t interested.

Barry Dutton called just before the kids normally
get home from school. “I’ve done some asking around about your
Preston Burke,” he said.

“He’s not
my
Preston Burke,” I told him. “As
far as I know, I don’t have a Preston Burke.”

“Nevertheless. The State Police, the local police,
no matter who you talk to, this was the one time the idiot actually
got involved in anything violent. There’s no question he shot his
girlfriend, but he hasn’t hurt anybody, neither before nor since.”
This may be the spot to observe that few police chiefs in New
Jersey, if not the nation, would have added that “n” before the
“or.” Barry Dutton: criminologist, administrator, linguist.

“Does that mean I shouldn’t be worried about the
rock through my front window?” I asked.

“No, it means that you can breathe a little easier,
knowing this guy isn’t a repeat offender with deadly weapons. He’s
out on bail, conducting his daily life.”

“Anybody know where he was at 1:30 this
morning?”

“He says he was home asleep. Strangely, since the
whole shooting thing, he’s had problems finding somebody to sleep
with him, so he can’t give us an alibi.” Barry grunted a little,
letting me know he wasn’t happy with the way this was playing out,
either.

“Where does he live?” I asked.

“Teaneck,” said Barry. “Hell of a long way to come
and throw a rock through somebody’s window.”

“No wonder he got here so late. Barry, explain to me
why I don’t want to go talk to Preston Burke.”

“Because it might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever
suggested to me, and you know that’s saying something,” he said
immediately. “If it was Burke who threw the rock, and he is
threatening Abby, you don’t want to get him mad. If it wasn’t
Burke. . .”

“I don’t want to give him any ideas,” I finished his
sentence for him.

“Exactly.”

“Suppose I was cagey, and didn’t tell him who I was
or why I was there.” He could probably hear the wheels spinning in
my head through the phone.

“Suppose I were from Krypton and could see through
Halle Berry’s underwear,” said Barry.

“I might tell your wife on you,” I warned.

“Aaron, there aren’t words for how wrong it would be
to go see Preston Burke,” Barry said.

“I guess.”

His voice became more intense. “Tell me you’re not
going to see Preston Burke, Aaron.”

“Barry. . .”

“
Tell me
,” he said.

“I’ve got to go help Leah with her math, Barry.”

“
Aaron
!”

I hung up, but I felt really bad about it
immediately after. So bad, I actually went and helped Leah with her
math.

S
tephanie Jacobs phoned me
well after dinner that night, and I had to avoid the rueful gaze of
my wife as I sat and took the call at my desk. Abigail Stein is not
to be trifled with. And even though I wasn’t trifling with her, she
was looking at me as if I were.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner,” Steph said. “I’ve
been all over the place. First, there was Louis’ mother, and
then. . .”

“Listen,” I said more urgently than necessary. “I
talked to the D.C. cops. They’re planning on making an arrest in
Legs’ murder, soon.”

“I know,” she said. “They’re going to arrest
me.”

Leah and Ethan were engaging in the traditional
“whose-side-of-the-couch-this-is” argument, and I stared at them
for a long moment, digesting what Stephanie had just said.

“You know they’re going to arrest you?” I said.

“Yes. You know, I hear things, too.” She sounded a
bit miffed that I assumed I was the only one monitoring her arrest
status.

“You sound awfully calm about it,” I said. She
was
taking a good deal of the fun out of it for me, and I
must have sounded disappointed.

“I suppose I could panic,” she said, “but I don’t
see how that would help. Besides, my attorney is already taking
their case apart, and he says he might be able to stop this before
it happens.”

“That would be a first.”

“Aaron, I’ve set up a time you can talk to Louis’
mother, but his brother Lester wants to be there,” Stephanie said,
her change in tone not nearly as smooth as Abigail’s. “Is that okay
with you? Louise really hasn’t been too strong since
Louis. . .”

“I have no problem with it,” I told her. “I wanted
to talk to Lester, anyway.”

“I don’t know if he’ll talk to you,” she said
quickly. “He said he just wanted to be there for the interview with
his mother.”

I rolled my eyes, since she couldn’t see me, anyway.
Leah got up from the couch, threw a pillow at Ethan, and ran up the
stairs.

“Well,” I told Steph, “we’ll play it by ear. When
and where should I show up?”

She told me, and I wrote it down. I was about to ask
how an attorney—any attorney—could stop an arrest before it happens
when a bloodcurdling scream came from the upstairs of my house. A
small, female bloodcurdling scream—from Leah.

I told Steph I had to go and hung up, and within one
frame of film was on my feet, running for the stairs. Abby, running
from the kitchen, was just behind me. We exchanged a glance that
said: Preston Burke? But that thought was too awful.

I was first up the stairs, and first into Leah’s
room. The usual tangle of clothes, toys, hangers, books, and CDs
was scattered about the floor, and in the center of it was my
daughter, crying, holding out the index finger on her left
hand.

“It was E-
LIZ
-abeth!” she wailed. “She
bit
me!”

There was such outrage, such a sense of betrayal, in
that little voice that I scooped her up into my arms and was
halfway to the bathroom before something struck me. I stopped in
mid-hallway, and looked at my sobbing daughter.

“Leah,” I said, “where is the lizard?” The fact that
it wasn’t in its tank had just registered on my brain.

“I don’t know,” cried Leah. “I took her out to play
with me, and she bit me. I dropped her.”

I handed Leah off to Abby, and as parents, we
exchanged another glance which said, “ugh, a lizard running loose
in our daughter’s bedroom.”

While Abigail got Leah into the bathroom and began
seeing to her finger, which was not bleeding, I got down on all
fours and began searching for the Mini-Me version of It, The Terror
From Beyond Space.

I can now definitively report that there is no more
rewarding an experience than crawling around on sharp plastic toys
and beads in search of a bloodthirsty pet that looks like it just
left the auditions for a GEICO commercial.

It took a good fifteen minutes (and that “good” is a
subjective term if ever I’ve used one), during which Leah, her
finger washed, dried and bandaged, refused to walk into her own
room because she was afraid of her beloved pet, now on the loose. I
managed to cut my left palm on the edge of. . . some toy
or another, then crunch a CD jewel box with my knee, bang my head
on her bed frame, and get nipped by E-
LIZ
-abeth when I
finally found her/him/it hiding in a doll house, lounging on the
four-poster bed Barbie used to sleep in before Leah decided Barbie
was “stupid.”

After a good deal of crying and whimpering, some of
it from my daughter, Leah was put to bed. I washed my various
wounds and hobbled down the stairs. Ethan, on the sofa in the
living room, hadn’t moved a muscle through the whole adventure.
After all,
The Bernie Mac Show
was on. Ethan thinks he’s a
riot.

T
he next morning, I got out
my Bergen County phone book and plucked out Preston Burke’s
address—(I get most of the books for New Jersey from Verizon every
year—they help enormously with
Star-Ledger
work). Then I hit
MapQuest.com for driving directions, put on an actual suit and tie,
and got into the 1997 Saturn we use when we want to impress
people.

Before leaving, I used my “call forwarding” option
to bounce any incoming calls to my cell phone. You never know when
the school will call about Ethan, or an actual paying gig will turn
up— in the freelance biz, it’s always better to be near a ringing
phone.

Halfway up the Garden State Parkway, the phone rang,
and Barry Dutton was on the other end. “You hung up on me
yesterday,” he said.

“No, I didn’t. I had to go help Leah with her
math.”

“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Aaron. Leah’s
in third grade. Her math homework is way too hard for you.” Barry,
alas, knew me too well.

“I didn’t want to listen to your lecture then,
Barry. It’s my wife we’re talking about.”

Barry’s voice hardened. “Yeah, and if you’re really
concerned about her safety, you’ll listen to the
professional
here.” There was a quick pause, while I tried
to come up with an argument against his logic. “Aaron, are you in
the car? Did you bounce your calls? Aaron, you’re on your way to
Teaneck, aren’t you?”

“Sorry, Barry, I have to help Leah with her math.” I
hung up. The phone rang a couple of times not long after, but I
checked the incoming number, and chose not to answer.

Teaneck, New Jersey, is a lovely town in the
Northern county of Bergen, where the people with actual money
actually live. It is the part of New Jersey where Tony Soprano
lives, but not where he works, if you catch my drift. Actually,
Tony is more likely residing in Upper Saddle River or
Livingston.

Teaneck, which is in the same general vicinity, has
both an affluent section and a not-as-affluent-but-hardly-poor
section, which is where Preston Burke lived. The clapboard
two-family house that matched his address was not at all descript,
and didn’t look like the kind of place where a wildly violent
maniac might reside. Of course, Jeffrey Dahmer probably had very
nice mini-blinds in
his
windows, too.

I rang the bell marked “Burke,” and waited. A thin,
unshaven, balding man opened the door a few moments later.

“Yeah?” A Jersey voice. Slightly suspicious, but not
aggressively so.

“Preston Burke?” I tried to sound official, but
concerned.

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Aaron Tucker,” I said, flashing my Central
Jersey YM/YWHA membership card, a finger over the organization’s
name. “I’m here representing the New Jersey Bar Association.”

“Why?” Still not challenging, but not totally
accepting, either.

“May I come in?”

He thought about it, but couldn’t come up with a
reason I shouldn’t. “Okay,” he said, and moved aside. We walked up
the stairs to his apartment, him first.

The place was simple, but it wasn’t cheap. There
were good rugs on the floors, the furniture was Ikea, maybe, but
not Unclaimed Freight. I did not look into the refrigerator to see
if there were any body parts, but if there were, they had probably
been cleaned up nicely. Things were in their place, which made it
look different than my house.

We sat on an overstuffed sofa, and Burke continued
to look warily at me. I took out a reporter’s notebook and a pen.
“I’m here to discuss your recent change of counsel,” I said. “We
like to investigate some random incidents, so we can determine if
there has been any problem with the original attorney assigned or
engaged for the case.”

Burke wasn’t stupid, but he also wasn’t used to
people talking to him that way. Frankly, I wasn’t used to it,
either, and I was-n’t sure I’d said everything the way I wanted to.
In all likelihood, it wouldn’t matter.

“You want to talk about my lawyer?” he said. Good.
He had accepted and deciphered my babble.

“That’s right,” I said with my most imperious voice.
“You had originally engaged a. . .” I reached into my
inside jacket pocket and took out a Buzbee School announcement
about an upcoming round of parent/teacher conferences. I did my
best to scan the “official document,” and continued. “Ms. Abigail
Stein, of the firm Nolan, Delford, and Lincoln, to defend you in
the aggravated assault charge. Is that correct?”

“That’s right.” Burke was clearly not comfortable
with the words “aggravated assault.”

“But you dismissed Ms. Stein after the verdict and
have obtained new counsel for the appeal?”

“Right again.”

“May I ask why?”

“Well, she lost, didn’t she?” Burke was stating the
obvious to a complete idiot.

“A lot of good attorneys lose cases, Mr. Burke. In
fact, all attorneys lose cases. Perry Mason was a fictional
character. Was there something about Ms. Stein’s defense that you
felt was incompetent, or showed anything but an honest effort on
her part to defend you adequately?”

“She
lost
,” he repeated most vehemently. “I
didn’t do it, and she lost the case. Why should I keep her as my
lawyer? So she can lose
again
?”

“So this was not a personality issue, or some
problem you had with Ms. Stein’s professional demeanor. You would
have replaced any attorney who lost that trial.” I wanted to hear
him agree to that.

“No,” Burke said. “There were other reasons I got a
new lawyer.”

I pretended to perk up, writing incomprehensible
notes in my notebook. “What would those be, Mr. Burke?”

The cell phone in my pocket rang. Burke, expecting
me to answer it, waited. I looked at the incoming number. Abby’s
office. If I answered, it could be bad. On the other hand, Burke
was waiting. I’d be quick.

“Aaron Tucker.”

“Aaron Tucker? Since when do you answer the phone
‘Aaron Tucker?’” asked my wife.