“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.”
59
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 pinata.”
“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.
60
“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 amp; Kolarich-headed down the elevator to my car.