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

we meet? Maybe talk about this some more, while preserving your confidentiality?”

“No. Good-bye. Good luck.” Click.

As soon as Andy got off the phone, he told Laurie what transpired and then called Sam Willis and Corey Douglas. Andy gave Sam Harold Marshall’s name and phone number and asked him to check him out. Andy also asked Sam and Corey to come to his house for a 7:00 A.M. meeting before court, where Sam could share what he’d learned in the interim.

When Andy got off, he asked, “What do you think?”

“Hard to say. I don’t usually trust helpful information that comes out of nowhere,” Laurie said.

“I don’t either, but this one sounded legit, and he sounded scared.”

“Let’s see what Sam comes up with.”

“HAROLD Marshall lives in Pittsburgh. He’s forty-eight years old, has been married for twenty-two years, and has two children, one sixteen and the other eleven. He went to Penn State undergrad and med school and is a pediatrician. House is worth $1.6 million, drives an Audi, and both kids are in private school. That’s all I’ve got so far,” Sam says.

Andy turns to Laurie and me. “So, what do we think?”

“My instinct is to be skeptical,” I say. “But if this person is not real, I don’t know what he could have to gain by coming forward.”

“Maybe try and change our defense?” Laurie asks.

Andy shakes his head. “He can’t do that. We don’t have a defense.”

I laugh at that in the hope that Andy is joking. Then, “It does fit neatly. Anybody have a guess as to how many records companies like Ardmore have?”

“How many people are there in the country?” Andy says. “Everybody has medical records, and almost all of them would be on file somewhere.”

“So hundreds of millions. If the tiniest percentage are people with money who have blackmailable information in there, then the bad guys could make a fortune. It also fits with Lisa’s email about Rico, who we think is Richard Mahler. He’s dispensing this information to people who are doing the blackmailing and paying him a percentage.”

I continue, “Kline was the recruiter. He was screening people that he thought could handle the assignments. It ties together.”

“So why kill Kline?” Laurie asks.

“Maybe he was turning on them. Just speculating, but it could have had to do with Lisa Yates’s death. Maybe that crossed a line in his mind, and maybe he did have something to show you that night that was a danger to Mahler and whoever else.”

“So let’s say it’s real,” Andy says, “mainly because right now we don’t have a reason to think it isn’t. What do we do with it? And soon, because we’re running out of time.”

“I think the key is Jason Musgrove. He has to be at the top of this chain, for a few reasons. One, he’s the CEO; unless his head is buried in the sand, then he should know what’s going on in his company. Two, he’s the one who depended on Kline to recommend personnel, most of whom they hired. Three, and most important, it’s Musgrove who fired Don Crystal and installed Mahler. That couldn’t be a coincidence; they had to have had this planned.”

“So?” Laurie asks, obviously hoping that my rambling is leading to a potential course of action.

“So we lean on Mahler to turn on Musgrove. We tell him about Marshall and we threaten to blow the lid on the whole thing in court. He wouldn’t know that Marshall won’t come forward. He would assume that if we know about Marshall, then Marshall clearly has made the decision to tell what he knows.”

Everybody seems to agree that my plan is either a good idea or a bad idea; nobody knows. The other thing we agree on is that if we do confront Mahler, then Andy should be the one to do it.

As I’m leaving, Andy says, “See you in court. Dylan should be done tomorrow or the next day, and then we’re up.”

“I guess I should ask you now; are you going to put me on the stand?” I know that defense attorneys hate the idea of their clients testifying.

“I might,” he says, surprising me. “Unless I can think of another way.”

“Another way to do what?”

“The problem we had at the beginning of the case is still the problem we have now. Your stuff … clothing, sneakers, knife … were found at the scene. We have no way to explain that, other than you.”

“You think the jury will buy my saying I had an instinct my house was broken into, but I didn’t notice anything missing and didn’t bother to report it?”

He frowns. “I doubt it, but we have nothing else. It is what it is. Juries can’t handle a vacuum; if we don’t fill it with an explanation, they’ll assume that none exists. They might reject ours, but at least it will be there for them to consider.”

I turn to leave and then stop. “There’s one other thing.”

“Not the money again?”

“No, something more important. I want to ask you that, if this goes south, if you would take Simon.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t mean take for your foundation to place in a home. I mean to take him to live out his life here, as a member of your family.”

“I know what you meant. And the answer is ‘of course.’ But I don’t think it will be necessary.”

“No?”

“No. I think one way or another we are going to win this thing.”

TODAY is science and forensics day.

Dylan wants to tie me to the killing beyond a shadow of a doubt, but he also wants an excuse to show the crime scene photos on the big screen again. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a bloody one is worth half a million.

He starts with Janet Carlson, the medical examiner, who testifies that Gerald Kline had his throat slashed and that he therefore bled to death. I know Janet well; I consider her a friend and have worked with her on a number of occasions. She’s an