He sees me immediately and comes over. We just stare at each other for a few moments.
“It took you long enough,” I say.
He smiles. “Sorry-I was tied up.”
With that we hug. I’m not a big fan of hugs, and man hugs are my least favorite, but this one is okay.
“Come on,” I say. “There’s somebody at my house who wants to see you.”
When we pull up to my house, Karen, Reggie, and Tara are on the porch waiting for us. Richard has the door open even before I bring the car to a full stop, and he heads for the porch. He doesn’t quite get there, because Reggie comes bounding down the steps and leaps on him.
Within moments Richard and Reggie are on the ground, with Richard on his knees, hugging and petting him. Reggie’s tail is wagging a mile a minute, and he seems to be doing his best to lick the skin off Richard’s face.
“You saved me, buddy. You saved me.” Richard says it over and over, punctuated by laughs. Reggie doesn’t comment, so I assume he agrees and is being modest. And Reggie did save Richard’s life, as certainly as Lassie ever saved anyone.
“Is this great, or what?” says Karen, constantly dabbing at her eyes. She comes over to hug Richard, but Reggie doesn’t seem to be in the mood to share.
Yes, it’s definitely great.
Tara stands off to the side, watching the scene, clearly bewildered that she is not receiving any of this affection. She comes over to me, and I pick up the slack and pet her, but she knows she’s getting the short end of the stick.
We go into the house, and I fill Richard in on what I have learned from Pete or figured out on my own.
“Do you have any idea where Reggie was all these years?” he asks.
I nod. “With Stacy. She drugged you on the boat, and when you were unconscious, she left on another boat with one of her partners. She took Reggie with her.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “I think she genuinely loved him. It’s why she had him taken from my house.”
“So how did he get away from her?”
“There was a storm last March, and a tree fell and badly damaged the house she was living in. My guess is that Reggie was home alone and that he took off when that happened.”
“Where did he go?” Richard asks.
“Looking for you. The guy who found him, Warren Shaheen, lived only about six blocks from your old house.”
This causes Richard to hug Reggie once again and call him an “amazing dog.” He’s got that right.
“So Stacy was with me because of my job? So they could work their customs scam?”
“I can’t say that for sure, Richard.” My statement is true; I can’t say it for sure, but I believe he is right. And I believe she found a more willing conspirator in Franklin, which set this whole thing in motion.
“What are you going to do now?” I ask.
“Well, I have to find a place to live, I have to earn a living, and I have to pay your fee. Because if anyone has earned his money, it’s you.”
I look over at Karen and smile. “You didn’t tell him?” she asks.
I have not told Richard about the monetary settlement. “No, I thought I’d leave that pleasure to you.”
“What are you two talking about?” Richard asks.
“Let’s put it this way,” says Karen as she points to Reggie and Tara. “These guys are going to be sleeping in Gucci dog beds.”
About the Author
DAVID ROSENFELT was the marketing president for Tri-Star Pictures before becoming a writer of novels and screenplays. His debut novel, Open and Shut, won Edgar® and Shamus award nominations. First Degree, his second novel, was a Publishers Weekly selection for one of the top mysteries of the year, and Bury the Lead was chosen as a Today Show Book Club pick. He and his wife established the Tara Foundation, which has rescued over four thousand dogs, mostly golden retrievers. For more information about the author, you can visit his Web site at www.davidrosenfelt.com.
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“ANDY CARPENTER, LAWYER to the Dogs.”
That was the USA Today headline on a piece that ran about me a couple of months ago. It was a favorable story overall, but the headline was obviously designed to make a humorous comparison between me and those celebrity attorneys who are often referred to as “lawyers to the stars.”
While you would naturally think it would have exposed me to ridicule from my colleagues in the legal profession and my friends, it really hasn’t. This is because I don’t hang out with colleagues in the legal profession, and my friends already have plenty of other reasons to ridicule me.
Actually, referring to me this way makes perfect sense. Last year I went to court to defend a golden retriever who had been scheduled to die at the hands of the animal control system here in Paterson, New Jersey. I saved his life, and the media ate it up with a spoon. Then I learned that the dog was a witness to a murder five years prior, and I successfully defended his owner, the man who had been wrongly convicted and imprisoned for that murder.
Three months ago I cemented my reputation as a dog lunatic by representing all the dogs in the Passaic County Animal Shelter in a class action suit. I correctly claimed that my clients were being treated inhumanely, a legally difficult posture since the opposition took the position that a key part of “humane” is “human,” and my clients fell a little short in that area.
With the media covering it as if it were the trial of the century, we won, and living conditions in the shelters have been improved dramatically. I’m in a good position to confirm this, because my former client Willie Miller and I run a dog-rescue operation called the Tara Foundation, named after my own golden retriever. We are in the shelters frequently to rescue dogs to place in homes, and if we see any slippage back to the old policies, we’re not exactly shy about pointing it out.
Since that stirring court victory, I’ve been on a three-month vacation from work. I find that my vacations are getting longer and longer, almost to the point that vacationing is my status quo, from which I take infrequent “work breaks.” Two things enable me to do this: my mostly inherited wealth, and my laziness.
Unfortunately, my extended siesta is about to come to an unwelcome conclusion. I’ve been summoned to the courthouse by Judge Henry Henderson, nicknamed “Hatchet” by lawyers who have practiced in his court. It’s not exactly a term of endearment.
Hatchet’s not inviting me to make a social call, and it’s unlikely we’ll be sipping tea. He doesn’t like me and finds me rather annoying, which doesn’t make him particularly unique. The problem is that he’s in a position to do something about it.
Hatchet has been assigned to a murder case that has dominated the local media. Walter Timmerman, a man who could accurately be referred to as a semi-titan in the pharmaceutical industry, was murdered three weeks ago. It was not your everyday case of “semi-titan-murdering”; he wasn’t killed on the golf course at the country club, or by an intruder breaking into his mansion. Timmerman was killed at night in the most run-down area of downtown Paterson, a neighborhood filled with hookers and drug dealers, not caddies or butlers.
Within twenty-four hours, police arrested a twenty-two-year-old Hispanic man for the crime. He was in possession of Timmerman’s wallet the day after the murder. The police are operating on the safe assumption that Timmerman did not give the wallet to this young man for safekeeping, knowing he was soon to be murdered.