As Dog Is My Witness Read online

  At that point, what was going on took a back seat to the noise from inside Justin Fowler’s bedroom. Tearing paper, knocking on walls that could legitimately be described as “banging,” and howls from someone—I assumed Justin—all came at once. The sudden explosion of sound was startling, but Mary was already heading for the door before I recovered. She reached it, but found it locked.

  “Justin?”

  “GO AWAY!” The voice was that of a very angry adolescent— loud, annoyed, and full of tension. More banging on the wall came with each syllable: “GO (Bang!) A- (Bang!) WAY! (Bang!)”

  “I’m sorry, Aaron,” she said. “If he doesn’t want to talk to me, I don’t think he’ll want to talk to you.”

  I nodded, but asked softly, pointing to the door, “Do you mind if I try?”

  She seemed surprised, but nodded. I walked to the door and knocked softly. “Justin,” I said, “can I talk to you?”

  The noises stopped, and a quiet, puzzled voice came through the door. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Aaron Tucker. I’m a reporter. Lori Shery sent me.”

  A long soundless moment followed. Then the lock in the bedroom door clicked, and the door opened slowly. Mary’s eyes opened wide, and Justin Fowler stuck his head through the opening in the doorway.

  It was a blond head, with a large forelock of hair that he’d surely brush back with some regularity. The eyes, when they made contact with mine—which wasn’t often—were blue and piercing, and the mouth was thin and serious. Even smiling, Justin Fowler would be smiling seriously—like Gregory Peck with a bleach job and Asperger’s.

  “You’re pretty short,” he said, looking me over.

  “So I’ve been told. Can I come in?”

  He looked behind himself, into the room. “It’s pretty messy,” he said.

  “So’s my whole house,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

  Justin thought about it, and still didn’t look me in the eye. “Okay,” he said, and let his mother and me into the room.

  He wasn’t kidding about the mess. The gun posters had been ripped to shreds, and those that managed to hang onto the walls were only shards of their former selves. Justin was mad, all right, and probably at guns. For a young man with AS, having the central focus in his life turn on him like this must have been devastating.

  Justin seemed nervous, watching Mary as she assessed the room. “Sorry, Mom,” he said, then looked away.

  “It’s okay, honey. I understand.” Mary turned away from her son so he wouldn’t see her eyes moisten.

  I decided to step in. “Justin, can you tell me why you’re here?”

  His brows met in the middle and his lips pursed—Justin, it seems, had never heard such a stupid question before. “I live here,” he said, voice full of condescension.

  “I mean, can you tell me how you got out of jail?”

  Justin’s eyes clouded over and his voice got softer. “I got bailed out,” he said.

  “Who bailed you out?”

  I didn’t even get the words out of my mouth—I was still in the middle of “out”—when Justin began speaking. “Did you know that the Booth deringer is currently on display at the Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.?”

  “Justin,” I said, hoping to use some of the tactics that worked with Ethan, “look at my eyes.”

  But he didn’t. He kept walking around the room in a circle and talking, louder by the second. “It is a .44-caliber single-shot, muzzle-loading, percussion cap-fired Deringer pistol manufactured by the Henry Deringer Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It has a black walnut stock with checkering, a barrel with an octagonal upper portion, a round lower portion, and scrollwork on the sideplates.”

  “Justin,” I said, trying again. His voice was rising in pitch, too, becoming more agitated. I wasn’t doing well.

  “It has an S-shaped trigger guard and the words ‘Deringer Philadela’ stamped on the lock plate and the top of the breech plug.”

  This wasn’t helping. I looked to Mary, but she shook her head. “He’s avoiding you,” she said. “He doesn’t want to answer your questions.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Most people spell ‘Deringer’ wrong. They use two ‘r’s when they shouldn’t.” Justin was not really in the same room as us anymore, so Mary and I walked out.

  Justin, carefully this time, locked the door behind us. She walked me toward the door.

  “I’m sorry I upset him,” I told her.

  “Don’t be,” Mary answered. “At least you got him to stop tearing up his walls.” She chuckled humorlessly.

  “If he gets into a more receptive state of mind, would you call me?” I gave her a business card with my 1,600 contact possibilities on it—business land phone, cell phone, email, fax, business address, guy next door who can come call me . .

  “Certainly,” she said, but I knew she considered the possibility to be remote.

  “Maybe I can bring him something next time,” I said. “What does he like? “Mary opened the door for me and, as I pulled on my gloves, the cold wind caused us both to stiffen.

  “Guns,” she said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mahoney’s next patient was close to home, in Edison, so I drove to Oak Tree Road and began watching, again to no avail. But, par for the course, Mahoney informed me via cell phone that the Florham Park car, which I hadn’t gotten to, had been sabotaged.

  “All it needed was a tire. Can you believe it?” Mahoney moaned. “And he slashed it in exactly the same place as the one I’d fixed. If I didn’t put the flat tire in my van, I’d start to think I wasn’t doing the work.”

  “Wow, a dead battery and a flat tire,” I said. “You get all the tough repairs, don’t you?”

  His voice took on a professorial tone. “These are all pretty new cars. Most of them require simple repairs. In fact, tires and batteries are the most common. These are even things you could do.”

  “Touché.”

  “But when something big comes up, they need someone who really knows his stuff,” said Mahoney, never one to take his work lightly.

  I, on the other hand, did. “Bicycle Repair Man!” I shouted, re-call-ing the vintage Monty Python sketch.

  A growl from the cell phone. “Very amusing.”

  He finished his work (a fan belt) relatively quickly, and drove off. And the result was pretty much the same as the last time—no saboteur, and no difficulty. I drove home.

  Four seconds after I walked in the door, the phone rang, and naturally, it was the person I was least prepared to talk to. I checked the caller ID box, saw who it was, sighed, and picked it up.

  “Hi, Glenn,” I said, hopefully without a tinge of weariness in my voice.

  “Mr. Tucker? This is Jackie from Mr. Waterman’s office.” Like most people in Hollywood, Glenn felt the need to impress everybody with how busy he was. So he had people call you and then tell him you were on the line. That way, if you weren’t there, he hadn’t wasted his precious fifteen seconds dialing your number. “I have Mr. Waterman on the line for you.”

  “I’ll try to contain my excitement.”

  A split second later, Glenn’s voice broke through, and like most people who have someone else call you up, he felt compelled to sound surprised. “Aaron! How are you?”

  “Wait . . . who is this? Glenn? My goodness! How surprising to hear your voice, after someone called up and said it’d be you!”

  He snickered, but I couldn’t tell if his heart was in it or not. “Okay, I get the message. Always have to shoot down the pompous, eh?”

  “That’s me,” I said, “the old pompous-shooter.” It doesn’t always come out the way you want it to.

  “Okay, Aaron,” he said. “How far have you gotten?”

  “I made it all the way through college,” I offered, but I knew that wasn’t what he was asking. I was stalling for time.

  “You know what I mean,” Glenn said. “How are the revisions going?”

&nb
sp; There was no point. I’d have to level with him. “Great,” I told him. “I think you’ll be pleased.” Okay, so some things are more level than others. I have the same philosophy when it comes to home repair, which is why all the shelves on my walls are slightly off.

  “Terrific,” Glenn gushed distractedly. “How far have you gotten?”

  “How far?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far have I gotten?”

  I could sense him sitting up behind his desk, suddenly concerned. “That was the question, Aaron,” Glenn said.

  “Well . . . Come on, Tucker, you make stuff up for money—say something! “I’m not really doing it in sequence, you know. I’m fixing the little things first, then moving on to the heavy lifting.”

  The crinkling in the earpiece told me Waterman was relaxing back into his leather chair (PETA be damned!). “You had me worried there for a minute.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “me too.”

  “How soon do you expect to be done?” he asked.

  “How soon?”

  “Don’t start this again, Aaron,” Waterman warned.

  “Soon,” I said firmly. “Very soon. What’s our drop-dead date on this?”

  Waterman thought for a moment. He was calculating the real deadline versus what he thought he should tell me, so I’d be done sooner, or, if I went over “deadline,” still be on time. I understand the impulse—I do it to interview subjects all the time. “I can give you a week,” he said finally.

  A week! I did everything I could to avoid an audible intake of breath, then gritted my teeth and lied directly through them. “No problem,” I said. “Nothing to it.”

  “Good enough,” said Glenn. “Aaron, if you want to confer with me on anything, bounce something off me, feel free. I’ll always take your call. You know that, I hope.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  I hung up as quickly as I could and opened the “Minivan” computer file for the first time since I’d arrived home. The changes Glenn wanted really weren’t all that extensive, and if I put the effort into it, I could certainly finish in time.

  The phone rang. I considered not picking up, what with having all this newfound resolve and everything, but the number, from within my own area code, was one I didn’t recognize. Curiosity didn’t necessarily kill the freelance writer, but it more than likely wasn’t going to make him a lot of money, either.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Tucker, this is Arnold Rezenbach.” He waited, as if the very mention of his name usually brought awed gasps or prayers muttered under one’s breath. I was pretty sure I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t remember where. “I’m the attorney for Karen Huston,” he added, realizing I wasn’t providing an adequate amount of shaking-in-my-boots.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, mostly to myself. I immediately switched into freelance reporter mode, noting with some pride how quickly gungho screenwriter mode had evaporated. If I played this right, I might be able to pave the way for eventually getting an interview with Michael Huston’s widow. “I was calling about an article I’m writing for Snapdragon.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Rezenbach said. “I’m calling to inform you that Ms. Huston has consented to an interview.”

  Damn, I’m good.

  Chapter Twelve

  I had an hour and a half before the kids would come home, so I rushed to Karen Huston’s home in North Brunswick before she or her lawyer could change their minds. He was already there, as it turned out, having called me on the cell phone from Karen’s living room. I love being dependable, while people like Rezenbach just assume you’ll be available at their convenience.

  Karen’s house was lovely. A small Victorian, it had been detailed within an inch of its life by whoever painted it last, and was a tasteful combination of blue, aqua, and white, with a white railing on the wrap-around porch and plants hanging from the exposed beams on the screened-in section of the porch, insulated now by glass so the plants were actually alive and well. This contrasted with my house, where any plant that enters during any season might just as well abandon all hope.

  Rezenbach answered the door himself, which surprised me. I figured he’d have minions with him, since these guys always have minions. I also figured out that one of them would handle the more mundane tasks, like opening doors. But there he was, showing off his turning and pulling skills like a real pro.

  The room I entered was not atypical in this part of New Jersey. Long before television, it was built to be a living room, where people would gather, perhaps sip a little brandy, and generally wish someone would invent television so they could stop being so damn bored. Today, of course, a large-screen TV dominated the room, with a cabinet for the corresponding audio system (we used to call them “stereos” in my day, which was October 2, 1978). A sofa and two wing chairs served the god of television entertainment quietly and subserviently.

  This room, while not demonstrably different than most, was, without qualification, better. The paint job was a little more detailed, the carpet a tad softer, the furnishings chosen and arranged more ergonomically, but with perfect placement to create the homey-yet-elegant effect. Paintings—not framed prints, but real paintings on real canvasses—were hung on the walls in just the spots where paintings should be hung. The fireplace was brick, and designed to be warm and inviting, not spectacular and intimidating.

  It was, in short, a perfect room, but not in a Martha Stewart-anal-retentive-magazine-layout sort of way. It was a room that invited you in, asked you to sit, be comfortable, enjoy yourself, and share in the entertainment offered. It was not something that shouted about its superiority, but spoke calmly about days gone by.

  Normally, all that perfection would have sent me into the night screaming for my mommy, but here, somehow, it worked perfectly. I didn’t want to run away at top speed.

  Rezenbach, a thin, bony man who would have done well in auditions for the role of Death, merely nodded his head at me when I entered, foregoing the traditional handshake. No doubt he was worried that my sub-zero grip from the arctic winds outside would warm up his own hand too much, and he’d have to go back to his tomb to reach his natural body temperature of 23 degrees Fahrenheit.

  “Mr. Tucker?” he asked, as if someone would actually pretend to be me. I assured him I hadn’t been abducted, then replaced with an exact replica. His voice, which hadn’t actually been booming to begin with, dropped to something between a whisper and a hush.

  “Karen is in the bedroom,” he said. “I’d like to ask you to go easy on her.”

  “I wasn’t planning on pulling out the bright lights and the rubberhose, Mr. Rezenbach. I realize what she’s been through.”

  Though unappreciative of the imagery, he nodded, and walked down a corridor to what must have been the master bedroom. I did not follow. From somewhere nearby, toward the entrance to the attached garage, I heard something.

  Growling.

  It wasn’t the kind of sound that set one’s mind at ease, but I didn’t have the time to consider it. Rezenbach returned, holding the hand of a woman about ten years younger than I am. She was dark blonde, with a fit, athletic body, concealed in a too-formal dress that wasn’t exactly black, but was pretending to be. Her eyes, normally blue, registered mostly red.

  I don’t know anything about murder investigations, despite having done two earlier ones. But writers, particularly those who deal in fiction, train themselves to understand human emotion. And we’re usually fairly good at being able to distinguish between the genuine and the artificial. Karen Huston’s grieving, which I could see from 20 feet away, fell unquestionably into the “genuine” category. She had been kicked in the gut by her husband’s murder, and was just barely catching her breath.

  She, however, held out a hand, and I took it gently. “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Mr. Tucker,” she said in a soft, melodic voice. Karen seemed much older than her years, older than my years, even, and it was the weight of her recent suffering that wore her down. Her
mouth was clearly more given to smiling.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Huston. And call me Aaron, please.”

  I sat in one of the wing chairs, clumsily removing the reporter’s notebook from the back pocket of my jeans. Rezenbach, who had actually taken my coat and gloves, hung them on an elegant wooden coat rack. But, not wanting to stray too far from his client, he sat next to her on the sofa. He was—or was it my imagination?— proprietary about Karen Huston.

  “I’m so sorry to be meeting you under these circumstances,” I told her. I had rehearsed that line the whole drive down. Cops always say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” which has become something of a cliché, and therefore has lost all its emotional meaning. This wasn’t much better, but at least Jesse L. Martin didn’t say it on TV every week.

  “I understand,” Karen said. “But I don’t know why you’re writing about this. Isn’t it just a local matter?” She stumbled on the word “matter,” as if she were first going to say “murder,” but couldn’t bring herself to utter the word.

  “It is, and it’s not,” I told her. “The young man who was charged with . . . the crime has a disorder called Asperger’s Syndrome. I’m examining the incident with that in mind.”

  Rezenbach’s mouth tightened when I mentioned Justin, but Karen didn’t seem to anger. She nodded slowly and looked at the coffee table. “Yes,” she said. “The poor young man.”

  The growling got louder, and—sue me—I must have looked. I’m not used to the walls making a hostile noise when I’m in the room.

  Karen turned and shouted at the wall. “Dalma! No!”

  The growling ceased, replaced by whimpering. Karen looked at me, and must have seen the admiration in my eyes. “She’s really a good dog,” she said.

  “I’ll say,” I told her. “I can’t get my dog to breathe on command.”

  Karen smiled a little. “She misses Michael,” she said quietly, then looked up. “Do you mind . . . ?”