The Wrong Man (27 page)

“The new thing?” I said.

“Right,” he said.

The new thing.
My heart did a flip.

“You free for lunch?” I asked.

He said, “Just what I was thinking.”

Patrick Cahill and his partner, Dwyer, had spent the better part of the last hour walking the block of Jason Kolarich’s townhouse. The lawyer lived on a relatively isolated residential street near the lake, and the sidewalks weren’t heavily traveled with the temperatures in the mid-thirties, all of which made the two of them conspicuous standing out here, not doing much of anything but studying the townhouse.

Cahill didn’t have a better idea. Kolarich had aborted his run this morning. Cahill didn’t know why. Maybe it was a one-off, an exception, and tomorrow he’d return to his routine. Maybe Cahill could wait that one more day.

But he needed a plan B. And he hadn’t come prepared with one. It wasn’t like he’d spent weeks planning this thing. It had all happened pretty fast: the guy was nosing around, he had to be eliminated, they knew he went for jogs along the lake—Patrick, get rid of him. Okay, well, now Patrick had to improvise.

He knew where Kolarich worked, but it was a downtown high-rise building, and it wasn’t the easiest or cleanest thing in the world to go after someone in a building like that. There were cameras and locked doors and security guards and people in relatively confined spaces. It would take lots of preparation and planning, and Cahill had time for neither.

But Kolarich had to come home at night. It was only noon right now, so that was hours away, especially for a lawyer getting ready for a trial in
less than a week. Maybe he wouldn’t come home until two in the morning. But he’d come home. And they had to be ready.

“The garage,” said Cahill. Next to his brick townhome with white trim was a brick garage with white trim. It was a one-car job but presumably had some room built in for movement.

“Two possibilities,” he said. “We break into the garage and wait for him inside. But I’m not sure how we get in there. There isn’t a window. The door’s automatic, so it won’t lift manually. So the better idea is we wait for him outside. He pulls into the driveway, he opens the garage door, as he pulls the car into the garage, we slip in before he lowers the door.”

“So we’re doing it inside a closed garage. Good,” Dwyer agreed. “And where do we wait?”

The answer, Cahill thought, was blindingly obvious. Cahill pointed to a thin strip between Kolarich’s townhouse and the one next to it to the east. It was technically the neighbor’s property, a walkway that ran the length of the townhomes and dead-ended into a gate accessing the neighbor’s back patio. God, these city people didn’t have much real estate. Cahill was sure he could stand on that walkway, extend his arms, and touch both houses.

“We can squat down there,” he said. “We’ll pick a spot so we can see his car coming, but as he pulls in, the angle will be so he can’t see us. Not that he’d be looking.”

“Right.”

“Then we move forward and once he pulls his car in, we scoot inside. He hits the garage door button without thinking. It closes up and we make our move.”

“And this is still supposed to look like a robbery?”

“Forget that.” Cahill shook his head. “Mr. Manning said dead was the most important thing. I’m done screwing around with this guy. We should be back home getting ready, and instead we’re wasting another full day on this lawyer. I’m going to put more holes in that grunt than a piñata.”

“Good. Sounds good.”

Cahill checked his watch. “No sense sitting around now, freezing to death. He’s not coming home for a long time.”

Cahill and Dwyer walked down the block to where their car, a blue Ford Explorer, was parked. They got in and drove off. Aside from getting
some food and whiling away a few hours, Cahill wanted some long underwear and extra layers of clothing and a thermos of hot coffee for what could be a long night of recon. It felt good to him, like old times, he thought, when he was in the military.

It was going to feel even better when he could tell Mr. Manning he’d solved the problem.

“Okay,” said Bradley John, reading over the last of our responses to the prosecution’s pretrial motions. “I see what I wasn’t giving you the first time around.”

“You did a good job structurally,” I said. “Really. You cited the cases, you gave good legal reasoning. But it didn’t have any heart.”

“Heart?”

“This is a murder trial, Bradley. Somebody died, and a second person’s life is on the line in this trial. The stakes are high. Emotions are high. Judges aren’t immune to that. Look, some of these motions are routine. But the one on the prior military history, that’s the whole ball game for us, right? So right there in our response, we need the judge to read about Tom’s military background. I think he’s going to feel bad excluding it. We start there, with the psychological aspect. Not too heavy or it feels like pandering but enough to gain his sympathy—hopefully.”

“Okay.”

It was an important lesson, one too many lawyers forgot, and too many young lawyers failed to appreciate. Judges are human. The law—statutory language, court decisions—are obviously important, but if the
facts
make them want to rule your way, their brains will start working in that direction. They’ll want to believe you’re right. They’ll try to find a way to rule in your favor, even if they don’t realize they’re doing it. Now, that won’t win every argument every time. If you’re way off, you’ll still lose. But in a close case, when it could go either way, judges want to feel good
about themselves. They’ll want to feel like they’re doing a good thing. Even Judge Nash, I hoped.

And then, once you get them wanting to be on your side, you give them the case law to support your position, so they can feel good about being on your side. You’re telling them, here’s backup for your gut feeling. Here’s legal support for what you really want to do in your heart.

When I was done explaining all of this, Bradley looked up at me. “I see that now. Thanks, Jason. Really, this is helpful.”

I wagged my finger at him. “Don’t ever forget the human side of this, young man.” I looked at my watch. “Now, it’s almost midnight. Probably best we head out. We can finish these up tomorrow. Let me just check a couple of things.”

I glanced again at the newspaper, the story in the Metro section about the deaths of two men in an alley on the southwest side who were reputed figures in the Capparelli crime family. That made three dead Capparellis, counting Lorenzo Fowler, and the paper speculated about a possible war brewing between the Capparellis and the Morettis.

I dialed Lightner on my cell phone. “How we doing?” I asked.

“Good,” he said. “No change.”

“Good. I’m leaving now.”

I hung up and dialed my friend Ross Vander Way.

“Hey, Ross, it’s Jason.”

“Hey, man.”

“Still all good?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Okay. I’m leaving now,” I said.

I walked down the hall to Shauna’s office. She was typing up a cross-examination on her computer. She was wearing her reading glasses, which I thought was kind of hot. Which I thought was kind of weird, since she was like a sister to me. Which I thought was bizarre, because I used to sleep with her once upon a time. Anyway.

“Ready to go, sweetheart?”

She stretched her arms. “Sure, probably a good idea. This is a marathon, not a sprint, right?”

“Yeah, plus, y’know—we should get going.”

She nodded grimly. The simple task of leaving the office and walking
to our car, these days, was a hazardous activity. I had my gun with me just in case, but I wasn’t much of a shot.

Anyway, I was relatively sure we were safe for the time being.

Bradley, Shauna, and I—the lawyers of Tasker & Kolarich—headed down the elevator to my car.

Patrick Cahill and his partner, Dwyer, squatted down in the small walkway between Jason Kolarich’s townhouse and the townhouse next door. It was past one
A.M.
now, and they were tired and cold, having sat in this spot for the better part of seven hours now. But the later it got, the more likely he was to show up any minute.

They were lucky, too. This was a uniquely advantageous hiding place. It was right next to the garage, it was poorly lit, and it was such a tiny space—no more than five feet wide—that Kolarich almost assuredly wouldn’t even think to look for them.

And the neighbor, whoever he or she or they were, didn’t have a window on the ground or even the second floor that overlooked this walkway. There was a window directly above them on the third floor, but the occupant would have to go out of his way to stick his head out the window and look all the way down at the walkway, and even then the visibility would be relatively poor.

They’d purchased thermal underwear and black hooded sweatshirts and extra pairs of socks, and they wore all of them now. It was cold regardless. The temperature was probably in the teens. But they were doing okay. Their biggest problem was that their legs were getting cramped. Every half-hour, one of them walked up and down the walkway between the houses to keep himself limber.

Above them, for the first time, they heard the voices of the neighbors. Muted sounds, presumably coming from the third floor and traveling
through the window to their ears. Dwyer nudged Cahill and they listened.

“Disgusting. That’s disgusting!”

It was a woman’s voice, shouting.

“You’re overreacting!” a man called out.

They heard the scraping and shifting of wood, the unmistakable sound of the window opening directly above them on the third floor. Cahill and Dwyer braced themselves and tucked in their chins, froze in their crouch, doing their best to conceal themselves. But they were probably okay, Cahill thought. These people were just arguing. Someone would have to look straight down, three stories, into the dark, to see them crouched down.

“It’s not that big a deal,” the man called out. “Calm down.”

“You want me to be calm? I’ll be calm when it’s out of my house.”

“Honey, listen!”

“No!”

Another sound, something close, right by the window. Cahill looked up just in time to see something at the window, maybe a—a bucket?—

It hit them in one sudden, heavy splash, so hard it knocked them into each other and to the asphalt.

“What the fuck—” Dwyer began, but Cahill squeezed his arm.

“Shut up!”
Cahill ordered in a harsh whisper. “If you can hear her, she can hear you.”

“You don’t think this was on purpose?” he whispered back.

Cahill had no idea. But it sounded like a domestic dispute.

“There!” came the woman’s voice from the window. “It’s gone now!”

“You threw it out?”

“I sure did. And that better be the last time I see that in my house!”

Was this—oil? He could hardly see his hand in front of his face so he couldn’t tell—he didn’t dare taste it—but that smell.

“It’s fucking motor oil!”
Dwyer hissed.

“Keep your voice down, God damn it.”

It was oil. That lady had just dumped a bucket of motor oil on them.

“What the hell is going on?” Dwyer whispered. “Why the fuck did she dump motor—”

“Shh. I don’t fucking know. Keep your mouth shut.”

Above them, they heard the man and woman continue to argue.

“Why are you always getting on my case?”

“Why are you such a slob?”

Then they heard the familiar grinding and whining of gears as Kolarich’s garage door began to lift. Cahill grabbed Dwyer and motioned to him. They both heard it. They moved back against the brick wall of Kolarich’s garage and saw the headlights of a truck bounce as the truck came off the street and onto Kolarich’s driveway.

Cahill was still stunned, and now everything was happening at once. He didn’t have time to worry about the oil covering his head and shoulders. Jason Kolarich had arrived home.

“Game time.”

But the truck didn’t move farther up the driveway. It stayed back near the sidewalk, the headlights trained toward the garage.

Why?

Cahill and Dwyer didn’t move, didn’t breathe, for a long time.

“You think he spotted us?” Dwyer whispered.

“Don’t know.” Cahill was still in a daze from the oil dumping on him. He wasn’t entirely sure
what
the hell was going on right now. Did that lady deliberately dump oil on them?

At the base of Kolarich’s driveway, where the truck remained idled, the driver’s side door opened, and the driver exited and sprinted west along the sidewalk, quickly out of their view.

“What the—”

And then Cahill heard another sound from above. He looked up and was hit smack in the face with a heavy powder that invaded his nose and mouth and caused him to gag.

He fell back against the wall, Dwyer on top of him.

Sand, he thought, as he coughed.

She had just dumped a bucket of sand on them.

“Fuck!” Dwyer shouted. “What the fuck!” He jumped to his feet. “Let’s go get this asshole!” he shouted. He first pointed the gun up at the window, but hesitated, unsure of where to direct his fury. Then he turned around and ran toward Kolarich’s driveway.

Cahill didn’t know what the hell was happening. More than half his body was covered with motor oil and now sand particles were embedded in it.

Dwyer had already begun to run down the driveway after Kolarich. He should have known better. They’d both seen Kolarich run before. There was no way they were going to catch him, wherever it was he’d run. Cahill coughed again, spat, and got to his feet.

What the hell had just happened? Were those neighbors working with Kolarich—

The truck,
he thought. They could use Kolarich’s truck, which was idling in the driveway, and give chase.

When Cahill stumbled to the driveway, he found Dwyer standing still, staring at the truck, his gun at his side.

Dwyer looked totally ridiculous, doused in thick black oil and then with a healthy coat of sand on top of it. Cahill assumed he looked equally preposterous. Were they—where was Kolarich?

Dwyer pointed at the truck. Only then did Cahill realize that this wasn’t a vehicle that Jason Kolarich owned.