Animal Instinct by Rosenfelt, David (novels for students TXT) 📕

“Okay. If you’re old friends, I’m probably going to get my ass kicked for asking this question, but … what are the chances that he would do something unethical? I’m talking about manipulating health data for his own financial benefit, and much worse.”

She just about does a double take and looks me right in the eye. “Rico? No chance. Absolutely no chance.”

“What did you call him?” I ask, though I know the answer.

“Rico. That was his nickname in high school. Not sure why, but that’s what we called him.”

“MAYBE we misread the email,” Laurie says. “Maybe it’s not about drugs at all.”

Andy takes the email that Lisa Yates sent to Doris Landry out of his file, and we all read it again:

Lisa: It’s getting worse. Gerald doesn’t think that Rico will do anything. I think he’s crazy.… Rico doesn’t just dispense this stuff for nothing. He’s a dangerous guy; he’s connected to people. I’m afraid to leave my house.

Doris Landry: Are you still going to quit your job?

Lisa: I think so. I can’t live here anymore. If I go somewhere else and get clean, I can start all over. Without Gerald.

Doris Landry: You can do it, Lisa. You have strength you don’t even realize.

Lisa: I’m going to need it.

“It seems clear to me,” I say. “She’s talking about drugs.”

Andy shakes his head. “Laurie may be right. There are two references in here which made us think it was drug related. One is ‘dispense this stuff’ and the other is her comment that she wants to ‘get clean.’ But what if the stuff he was dispensing was illegal information that they were profiting from? And what if ‘get clean’ simply meant go straight?”

“I’d like to believe it, but it’s a stretch.”

“Even in light of what we’ve learned? There never was any evidence of drug use by either Lisa or Kline; neither autopsy showed any trace of it. And we believe that there is crime, probably informational computer crime, going on at Ardmore. Doesn’t this all fit right into that?”

“It does, just not neatly enough for my taste. What does it do for us legally?”

“It helps,” Andy says. “One of our best pieces of evidence is the email. We didn’t have a Rico to tie it to, but now we do. Will Stephanie Downes testify?”

“You mean to calling him Rico in high school? I would assume so. They were friends, but she’s not exactly accusing him of anything. If she resisted and we forced her to come, I don’t think she’d lie about it.”

“Don’t approach her yet,” Andy says. “We don’t want to take a chance of word getting back to him that we suspect anything.”

“Can we force him into a mistake?” Laurie asks.

It’s a good question, but I don’t have a good answer.

We all agree that we will think about that. For now we will assume that Mahler and probably Jason Musgrove, his boss, are dirty. Unfortunately, in light of our debacle in getting the data from the subpoena, we don’t know what they’re doing. We just know that they have committed at least three murders to preserve it.

Andy says that he’s heading into the den to prepare for tomorrow’s court session. Robbie Lillard is going to be Dylan’s main witness; he’s the homicide detective who worked the case and who arrested me.

“You want me to go over it with you?” I ask.

“No.”

“You sure? I know Robbie pretty well; I might be able to help.”

“No.”

“I’m getting the feeling you don’t want my help.”

“What tipped you off?” Andy says on the way into the den.

“LIEUTENANT Lillard, you questioned Mr. Douglas at the scene?”

Dylan has painstakingly taken Lillard through his actions that night, starting with the alert he received of the 911 call. Now Dylan’s ready to get to the serious stuff.

“I did.”

“How did he describe what happened?”

“He said that Mr. Kline had called him and said that he had something to show him, something related to the murder of Lisa Yates. He wouldn’t say what it was, just that if Douglas didn’t come over, he would give it to the police the next morning.”

“Did you ask him why he didn’t just let Mr. Kline turn whatever it was over to the police?”

Lillard nods. “Yes. He said that he was working the case, and that it was important to him to know what it was Kline had. He said that he had already spoken to Kline a few days before, and that he had threatened to nail him for the Yates murder.”

“What else did Mr. Douglas say?”

“That he and his dog came in and went to the room where the television was on. They assumed Kline was in there. He said they found him dead on the floor.”

Dylan uses the opportunity to introduce photos from the scene. They are obviously gory and the jury recoils from them; I’m sure they can’t wait to get their own revenge on the animal who did this. Unfortunately, they think that I’m that animal.

“Do these photos accurately reflect the scene in Mr. Kline’s house when you arrived?”

“They do. I directed the police photographer myself.”

“It was a very bloody scene. Did Mr. Douglas have blood on his clothing?”

“Just some on the bottom of his shoes. He said he went to Mr. Kline’s body to feel for a pulse, but there was none.”

“At some point, did you tell Mr. Douglas he could leave?”

“Yes, he wrote out a statement and then left. I remained with my officers and with a forensics team. The coroner’s office took Mr. Kline’s body.”

“Did you conduct a search of the area?”

Lillard describes the search and finding bloody clothing and the knife in a plastic garbage bag in a Dumpster, four houses down. DNA tests showed that the blood was Kline’s, but that there was a substantial amount of my DNA as well. Kline’s blood was also on the knife.

“Were there bloody footprints leading out of the house to the back?”

“Yes. They matched the sneakers found