The Occupied Read online

  Yet, on the surface at least, the facts were hard to ignore. My wife had died of a drug overdose. I had been disbarred from the practice of law. Around the same time, I experienced a series of confrontations with spirit beings from hell. Bobby had been murdered, and Augie had killed himself. Which had left Dan Hoover, with his busy, successful music career and a demeanor that seemed content with life.

  About fifteen minutes before Dan was to start playing, my food arrived, but it wasn’t what I had ordered. Instead of the simple burger that I had asked for, she brought out short ribs and mashed potatoes, my personal favorite. The server then said it was compliments of the band. A nice touch on Dan’s part. I wondered how he had convinced the kitchen to stay open for a full meal so late. I was suddenly ravenous and I devoured everything.

  I was on the last bite when the Jersey Dan Quartet took the stage. I had seen a few recent pictures of Dan, but up close he looked different. His hair, receding, was cut short. He had kept himself slim, and he had a close-cropped beard. In jeans and a sport coat, he looked like he could have been a college prof or a computer consultant, except for the haggard face.

  Dan was always a virtuoso, but that night he impressed me all over again. His guitar work reminded me a little of Eric Clapton—infinitely effortless and smooth yet always on the verge of shimmying to the edge. He finished his last set with his rendition of the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five,” but instead of the keyboard or the sax leading the way, Dan re-created the song on his Fender guitar. It was masterful.

  After Dan ended the set and the applause and the crowds slowly cleared away, it was just Dan and me at a table in the middle of the empty room, with two cups of coffee. The staff was cleaning up but told us there was no rush.

  Before I could give him fist bumps for his superb musicianship, Dan immediately asked about Augie, and I told him most of what I knew, although I spared him the gory details about what was left of Augie as he lay on the floor of the incinerator building. Unfortunately I had to explain how he did it.

  Dan was shell-shocked. Finally he said, “Nobody does something like that, man. Not that way.”

  He looked pensive when I told him how Augie left the Judas message in his own blood. And how I had speculated about the possible parallels between Judas and Augie, Bible-wise, and how, no matter which way you looked at it, that one-word message looked like a confession.

  “Confession of what?”

  “Here’s the other bad news. Don’t ask me specifics, but the Judas thing and the timing makes me think that Augie may have been connected in some way to Bobby’s murder.”

  A change of expression flashed across Dan’s face. Cynical anger. After a somber minute of silence, Dan asked, “What are the cops doing about all of this?”

  “They have a suspect in custody. I don’t know if he’s actually the guy who did it, or if he is, whether he’s the only guy involved. At first, the detective was bringing me into the guts of the investigation, but now I’ve been shut out. No matter. I’m going to find out what really happened.” I took a sip of my coffee. “Did you learn anything when you tried to locate Augie a while ago?”

  “I was on tour, so I asked my agent if he could help. He knew this guy who’s a skip tracer and got him to do a favor for us. The skip tracer said that the local court records showed a divorce filed against him by his wife, Susan . . . You remember, Susan Cambridge from high school?”

  Yes, of course I remembered.

  Dan continued. “But he said the divorce was dismissed, so I guess they got back together. The only other thing he could find out was the fact that, in the last year or so, Augie had been running a local head shop in Manitou. You know how, back in high school, Augie was always hooked up. Always knew where to get the stuff. I’m surprised he stayed clean during football season. Or maybe he didn’t.” Then Dan exhaled and added, “This is really heavy.”

  I nodded.

  “Speaking of drugs,” Dan said, “you look clean and sober.”

  “After high school, drugs weren’t my particular poison,” I replied. “I struggled with other things.”

  “Well,” Dan said, “it was my poison all right. Definitely.” He clasped his hands on the tabletop and looked directly at me. “Still is my poison. I’m working on that. One of the reasons me and Nancy—my ex—we didn’t make it. That, and also my being on the road all the time. By the way, I heard about your wife. Really sorry about that.”

  I said, “You’re like the town crier, with all the local news. How do you know all of this?”

  Dan said, “I keep up with our high school class on social media.”

  I told him that in my criminal defense practice the only time I used Facebook was to size up prosecution witnesses and prospective jurors in my cases, so I could pick them apart.

  Dan smiled. “You lawyers are so nasty.”

  “Was,” I replied. “I’m not lawyering anymore, remember? Anyway, the path I am on now, even with the disturbing things I have been dealing with—even with all that, I’ve got some peace.”

  The instant the words came out of my mouth I knew they were true. And I knew that even in the middle of the dark and stormy parts of life, some good things had happened to me along the way.

  Dan stared at me. It was late, almost three in the morning, and he started to yawn, but even as he did, he kept looking straight at me. “You’ve changed, I think.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “How?”

  “You were the restless one. Always trying to figure things out. And don’t let this go to your big fat head, but maybe you were the smart one too.”

  “Naw, that was Bobby. Straight As in class. Mr. PhD in environmental science.”

  Dan said, “I don’t mean it that way. I mean, like you were always trying to figure out the big stuff. Trevor Black, mystery chaser. Mister ‘searching for the meaning of life.’ Now I’m looking at you. Listening. You look like you’ve gotten some answers.”

  “It’s not about being smart.”

  “Then what’s it about?” Dan asked.

  “Seeing things the way they really are. The things that I used to ridicule, I now buy into. There are spiritual forces—and some are very dangerous—but God’s at work too. So you have to choose sides. Neutrality isn’t an option. Not really.”

  Dan leaned back with a half smile. “Well, I’ve learned surprising stuff. Never thought I’d have to go through rehab. And maybe I’ll be going there again. My promoters and my agent, they keep threatening to pull the plug on me unless I go back into treatment. So I’m enjoying the music. Obviously. Sometimes, though, I feel a little like I’m going in circles. Drifting.”

  I didn’t respond, just listened.

  “You, on the other hand . . . You look like a man on a mission.”

  “You want it straight?” I asked.

  “Why not.”

  “I’m on a mission from God.”

  Dan’s face lit up, and he chuckled. “You mean like Belushi and Aykroyd?”

  “Too late for movie trivia,” I said. “And no, not really like that.”

  The club manager poked his head into the room and said he was ready to lock the doors. So we closed down the conversation.

  “My gear is already packed up,” Dan said, rising slowly to his feet. “So I’ll say adios right here.” He gave me a fist bump and then looked like he remembered something. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about Susan, Augie’s wife. More bad stuff. Where’s my head? You hear about her?”

  “No.”

  Dan winced. “Killed in a car accident. I guess it was a few years ago. Ran through the stop sign on the Manitou bypass—you know that tricky hill that intersects Highway A? Hit broadside by a truck. I heard they put up a stoplight there after that.”

  Before I could ask how Dan knew about that, he answered like a mind reader. “Facebook.”

  As he walked away Dan shouted back to me, perhaps to end on an upbeat note. “Brush up on
your blues harp again, and one of these days you and I could jam together.”

  33

  The next day—or later that same day, depending how you look at it—on the drive back to Wisconsin, Detective Ashley Linderman was on my mind. She still hadn’t called me back.

  But I knew at least one reason why she might be avoiding me. Ashley could have been grappling with Augie’s possible criminal involvement in Bobby’s death and how it would destroy their case against Donny Ray Borzsted, the defendant they had indicted. That was reason enough.

  As I drove north on I-94 toward the Wisconsin border, I hooked up my earbuds with my cell and made a series of calls until I tracked down the defense lawyer for Donny Ray Borzsted. Donny Ray had been found indigent and had been given a public defender, a lawyer by the name of Howard Taggley. At a tollway oasis, I pulled out my iPad and checked him out on the Web. He was a career public defender, never rising above the level of assistant deputy PD.

  I called Taggley and explained to him my background as a former criminal defense lawyer, my personal connection to Bobby Budleigh, and my desire to get to the truth. After that, I cut to the chase, even though I knew the legal pitfalls: “I was wondering if you would permit me to interview your client, under conditions of strict confidentiality, of course.”

  “Only way to enforce confidentiality,” he replied, “is to make you a part of our defense team for Mr. Borzsted.”

  “I can’t do that. I’ve got to remain impartial.”

  After a few seconds, Taggley lowered his voice and slowed down to a sly cadence, like he was telling a dirty joke. “Now, you’re the lawyer who got disbarred. Right? And you got disbarred in New York City, as I understand it, for telling a judge that your client had a demon inside of him. I think I’ve got that straight, right?”

  Somehow all that had sounded better when it had come out of Ashley Linderman’s mouth rather than Taggley’s. I replied only, “Bad news travels fast.”

  “I had heard you were in town nosing around. I’m not surprised you called.”

  “Oh?”

  Then the public defender held out a ray of hope. “Okay, listen, I’m supposed to meet with Borzsted shortly. In jail. I’ll bring this up with him. I’ll get back to you.”

  After we ended the call, I thought it over. If I were in Taggley’s position, and I had any kind of reasonable defense at all in the case, I would never let me interview this client. Not in a million years. There was no legal privilege that would protect my conversation with him; the prosecution could subpoena me and force me to spit out everything Borzsted had said in our meeting. I figured, when all was said and done, my request would hit a dead end.

  But three hours later, Taggley called me back. “We may have a deal.”

  “What kind of a deal?”

  “You sign a confidentiality agreement, pledging not to voluntarily divulge your conversation with my client to anyone—not the prosecution, or Detective Linderman or any law enforcement person, or the press, or anyone else in the universe—and you agree to defend vigorously against any attempt by the prosecution to force you to share your conversation with Borzsted.”

  “And if I get subpoenaed, and we file a motion to quash the subpoena, and the court disagrees and orders me to testify? Then what?”

  “Then you’re off the hook.”

  “So, that’s it?” I said.

  “With just one more caveat.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I sit in on the interview. And you can expect me to instruct my witness not to share certain information as we go along.”

  I was dumbstruck at the door that had just opened. “You’ve got a deal. So, when?”

  “I’ll get back to you promptly.”

  “One other thing,” I said, deciding to push for more. “How about sharing the discovery you’ve obtained so far?”

  “Rather than that, how about I give you the criminal indictment. It’s public now.”

  I thanked him for the courtesy.

  After pulling into the hotel in Manitou and stepping back into my room, I thought about dinner. A steak and seafood place down the road looked like an option. But a telephone call interrupted my dinner plans.

  It was Howard Taggley. He was shifting things into fourth gear. “We can see you in an hour.”

  “Where? The county jail?”

  “That’s it. You know where it is, I suppose; you used to live here.”

  “I remember. The annex next to the courthouse.” Then I asked him, “What about the confidentiality agreement?”

  “I’ll have it typed up and ready for you to sign.”

  34

  Howard Taggley was in the lobby, waiting for me outside the check-in window. He was wearing a wrinkled suit coat and a loud tie that had been loosened at the neck. He looked to be in his fifties. After popping open his briefcase, he yanked out a two-page document that was stapled in the corner.

  He handed it to me. “Here’s the agreement. Look it over. Then sign. No changes. No cross-outs. I had a tough time convincing my client to go along with this.” Then he reached into his briefcase and also pulled out my copy of the criminal indictment. “Remember: my client was reluctant to cooperate with you.”

  I waved the papers in the air. “If your client is innocent, he has nothing to lose by this and everything to gain.”

  Taggley was skeptical. “Mr. Black, with all due respect, I know you had a reputation in New York for pulling rabbits out of hats for your clients, but do you really expect me to buy that? What you just said?”

  I smiled and looked over the agreement, and as I did I was thinking to myself how I had always played my cards close to the vest as a defense attorney. Don’t take excessive chances. Control everything. So, either Taggley was being monumentally sloppy in letting me interview his client, or else he thought he had something to gain. Something valuable.

  The terms of the agreement were exactly as Taggley had represented, so I signed it, and so did he. Then he stuffed it into his briefcase, told me he had e-mailed a copy to me already, and announced us to the jail clerk who was behind the glass window. We both dropped our driver’s licenses into the aluminum slide tray so the clerk could verify our IDs. Taggley also tossed in his professional Wisconsin State Bar card, his evidence of being a licensed attorney. I noticed that fact and remembered that I no longer had one. As memories of my life in New York flashed past me, for an instant there was that momentary pang of regret about my past. But I shook it off. Things were different now. And so was I.

  While we waited for the clerk to check us in, and as we rode the clunking jail elevator to the basement level, I quickly scanned the indictment.

  Bobby’s body had been found at the border where Manitou met the countryside about a quarter of a mile from Country Club Road, off a farmers’ service road, and a few feet from the banks of Pebble Creek. The charging document said he was shot in the head by a pistol, but it omitted mentioning the caliber of the weapon that had been used.

  A witness who was driving down Country Club Road shortly after sunset, around the time Bobby’s death had occurred, had noticed two men, a tall one and a short one, walking down the service road in the direction where Bobby’s body was later found. The short one was in front. Bobby was five feet nine inches, and the witness identified him later from a photo. The witness said the taller one, well over six feet tall, with long hair, was walking right behind him. Borzsted was six-one—not exactly “well over” six feet. The headlights illuminated the men, and Bobby turned around, but the indictment failed to say anything about the tall man turning around. The witness identified Donny Ray Borzsted as the taller man from a photographic array supplied by the police.

  The indictment also indicated that the bootprints found in the mud matched a pair of boots that Borzsted owned. When he was arrested, his apartment was searched, and the police found a handgun in a dresser drawer—make and caliber also unspecified.

  But the criminal charging document failed to men
tion what Dick Valentine had privately told me: about a message, written in Bobby’s blood, having been left on his body. Nor did it say that Bobby’s heart had been extracted. I was sure that Detective Valentine, who had spoken with the county sheriff’s department, had his information correct. Not surprisingly, the prosecutor had chosen not to feed that information to the grand jury. He was obviously saving that for later, for the trial. Nothing unusual about that.

  When we exited the elevator, we walked down to the jail conference room reserved for attorneys. Donny Ray was already waiting for us, sitting at the table with a deputy on either side. The deputies stepped out, and Howard Taggley sat at the head of the table and introduced me.

  Donny Ray was a big fellow with long greasy hair that fell down to his shoulders, and he had tattoos of fierce mythical creatures running up and down both arms and around his neck. He didn’t get up to greet me. Didn’t shake my hand. But stared me down as he fingered his lit cigarette, from which he took long drags with exquisite delight.

  Donny Ray said, “My attorney here okayed with the jailers that I can smoke. And that’s sweet, you know, ’cuz they don’t usually let us smoke. Least not in this room.”

  I explained that I had some questions. But before I could continue, Howard Taggley interrupted.

  “Now, Mr. Black, first off I’ve got some questions for you.”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal,” I said.

  “I know you thought this was your show, but it’s not. It’s mine. I call the shots.”

  Donny Ray started to giggle.

  I asked, “What kind of questions?”

  “How long have you known Detective Ashley Linderman?”

  Donny Ray giggled louder.

  I said, “Only since I arrived here in Manitou. Never knew who she was before that.”

  “Really?” Then Taggley said it again, louder. “Really?”

  “You sound surprised,” I replied. By the tone of Taggley’s voice, it was as if I didn’t know who Madonna was, or Angelina Jolie.