Play Dead

I get off the phone and try to sleep, and my exhaustion enters into a pitched battle with my adrenaline, the result of which is, I don’t sleep well at all. I get up at seven to take Tara for her walk; it will give me time to consider the impact that what happened last night will have on our investigation.

Karen was obviously the target, since the shooter could not have known that I would be there. But the reason for the attempt on her life is bewildering. How could she possibly be a threat to their conspiracy? It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself since she got shot, and I’m no closer to the answer than before.

Pete Stanton makes the situation slightly clearer when he calls and says that the fingerprints of the guy I killed showed that he was, in fact, Mike Carelli, the Special Forces officer who supposedly piloted the chopper. I didn’t recognize him from the picture, but as in the case of Archie Durelle, the picture I had seen was seven years old.

Either way, I’m getting a little tired of people trying to kill people that I care about, including myself. And I’m getting more than a little angry about my government standing by and not doing anything to prevent it.

I call Alice Massengale at her Newark office and tell her I want to see her about her representations at the hearing. She seems reluctant, so I use the same approach on her that I used on Hamadi: I tell her that if she doesn’t meet with me today, she can learn what I have to say by turning on the television tomorrow. It works again, and an hour later I’m in her office.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter.”

Cindy Spodek said that Massengale can be trusted completely, but at this point I’m not ready to give her the complete benefit of the doubt. I’m certainly not concerned about the social niceties. “You misled the court about Stacy Harriman.”

If she’s cowed by my direct approach, she hides it well. “That’s a serious accusation.”

I nod. “And an inaccurate one. I should have said, “You misled the court about Diana Carmichael.”

“Diana Carmichael,” she says, concealing whether the name has any meaning for her. “Suppose you tell me what you are talking about.”

I continue. “Here’s some of what I know.” I then proceed to detail some, but not all, of the facts I have learned about Hamadi et al. I tell her that a group of people stole billions during the chaotic reconstruction period in Afghanistan and then faked their deaths and disappeared.

“But it is difficult to disappear with a huge amount of ill-gotten money and exist in society. So an elaborate scheme was set up, whereby fake companies would do fake business with each other, showing huge earnings in the process. But in reality they were earning nothing; the money that they received was the stolen money, effectively laundering it. Hamadi was the front man for the operation.

“I know a lot more than that,” I say, “and what I don’t know, I am going to discover through the Freedom of Information Act.”

“Mr. Carpenter, you can believe me or not, but the story you are telling is one I am completely unfamiliar with.”

“If that’s true, then you were set up to mislead the court, and you should want to help me get the truth out. Because I am going to prove that the government you represent knowingly withheld information, stifled investigations, and then deliberately misled the court. It resulted in my client twice being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.”

“All I can say is that I will look into your allegations.”

“Good. You should start with Hamadi.”

She nods and asks me if I can write out all the particulars of what I know about him.

I start to do so, and I’m almost finished when I realize something else I can give her. “I have pictures of the people at his funeral. They meant nothing to me, but maybe…”

I stop talking, and the pause becomes so long that she says, “Maybe what?”

All of a sudden I’m not inclined to explain it to her. All I want to do is get out of her office and go home, because I just realized who is not in those funeral pictures.

On the way home I call Sam Willis and ask him to come right over with the pictures. I want to go through them again, just to make sure I’m right.

Next I call Kevin and ask him to check whether a golden retriever was reported missing to the Essex County Animal Shelter during a specific one-week period back in March.

Sam is already at my house and set up when I arrive, and I look at each one slowly and carefully. I still don’t recognize anyone, which is exactly what I was hoping.

I call Karen, Pete Stanton, and Marcus and ask them all to come over on a matter of urgent importance. I want Pete with us where we’re going, because law enforcement should be present, and I want Marcus with us in case we run into a couple of hundred bad guys with machetes and bazookas.

Karen, Pete, Marcus, and I are in the car and heading off within forty-five minutes. Kevin calls me on my cell while we’re on the road, and he confirms exactly what I suspected about the animal shelter records.