Play Dead

“They’ll be in storage, but I’ll have them sent here, and then I’ll send them on to you.”

“Thanks. Did you see anything on television about the case I handled recently? Where I defended the dog?”

He smiles. “I thought that was great. I’m thinking of hanging around the local shelter to get clients.”

“That was Richard Evans’s dog,” I say.

His surprise is obvious. “Are you serious?”

I nod. “There’s no doubt about it.”

He thinks for a moment. “Then that changes a lot. If I remember correctly, two witnesses saw the dog with Evans when he boarded the boat.”

“That’s the kind of information I need.”

“It’ll all be in the files,” he says. “Damn, how the hell could that dog be alive?”

“That’s what I need to find out. But things apparently did not happen on that boat the way the prosecution claimed.”

“I’m going to be straight with you,” he says. “There was nothing, not a shred, that pointed to Richard’s innocence. I worked my ass off trying to find something.”

“You think there was anything there to find?” I ask.

“I did when it started, but I didn’t by the end.”

“What about the forensics?” I ask.

He shrugs. “They seemed solid, but we didn’t have much money to hire experts. That’s an area you could pursue.” He pauses, then shakes his head in amazement. “Damn, that dog is really alive?”

“Definitely.”

“You know, I never could figure out why he killed the dog. I mean, everybody said how much he loved it, and what would have been the harm in letting it live? What the hell could he have been afraid of, that it would be an eyewitness? It just didn’t make any sense.”

I have been wrestling with this from the beginning; it’s one of the major reasons I took the case. If Richard was planning to kill his fiancée, he would have left Reggie at home. That’s what I would have done if I were a murderer. And suicidal. And engaged. And had a boat.

Koppell promises to get the files to me as soon as he has them, and I thank him and leave. I make some wrong turns on the way out, and I feel trapped in a suburban maze. It takes me a half hour to reach the Garden State Parkway and the safety of a huge traffic jam.

I finally make it back home, though I’m there only long enough to get Reggie and put him in the car. We drive to the Teaneck office of Dr. Erin Ruff, as perfect a name for a veterinarian as you’re going to find.

Karen Evans had told me that Dr. Ruff used to be Reggie’s vet, and when I made an appointment, I explained that I was Richard’s lawyer and I wanted to talk about the case. I asked her to have Reggie’s medical records available, but I did not mention that Reggie might be alive.

When I get to Dr. Ruff’s office, the receptionist is properly surprised when I have a dog with me, since I had said I was just coming in to talk. She asks his name, and I say, “Yogi.”

“And what are we seeing Yogi for today?” she asks.

“Just a checkup.”

I’m ushered into a small room to wait for the doctor. It’s pretty much like every small doctor’s room I’ve ever been in, though this time I get to keep my pants on.

In about five minutes, the door opens and Dr. Ruff comes in, a smile on her face and a folder in her left hand. She reaches out her right hand to shake mine, when she sees Reggie.

“Oh, my God,” she says. She looks as if she’d seen a ghost, and in a way she has. “That can’t be…”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

She’s not getting it. “Those cut marks… He’s supposed to be dead.”

I nod. “And someday he will be, but not yet.”

I explain that the reason we are here is to find out if there is anything in Reggie’s five-year-old records that would help identify him today.

“Is he the dog who was on the news the other day? The one you went to court about?”

“Yes. He’s had his fifteen minutes of fame, but if he’s Richard Evans’s dog, he’s going to get another dose.”

Dr. Ruff goes over and pets Reggie, who wags his tail in appreciation. She gently lifts his head and looks to see if the marks are also under his chin, which, of course, they are. “It’s as I remember it,” she says.

I ask her if there are other factors she can point to that can help identify him, and she starts to look through his records. “We’re in luck,” she says. “When Richard rescued him, he had three bad teeth, probably from chewing on rocks. I extracted them.”

She walks over to Reggie and opens his mouth. He obliges, probably because he thinks she’ll fill that mouth with a biscuit. She looks into the mouth, then looks at the records again, then back in his mouth.

“This is Reggie,” she says. “There’s another thing I want to check-with an X-ray-but this is him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, it’s not DNA, but there’s no doubt in my mind. The cut marks, the same three teeth missing… The coincidence would be overwhelming. But Reggie had a broken leg, and a surgeon put a metal plate in it. If that’s in the X-ray, then you can be absolutely certain.”

She takes Reggie to be x-rayed and brings him back about fifteen minutes later. “It’s there,” she says. “Between the cut marks, the teeth, and the X-ray, it’s one hundred percent.”