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  “As I said earlier, there’s a protocol to this,” he explained, standing a couple of arms lengths away from Ronald, who’d now taken a seat on the bench outside the cage. “We’re just following it.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Fremmer said.

  “After he leaves, I want my call,” Ronald announced.

  “We gave you the phone,” Gray said. “You didn’t call anybody. Who do you want to call?”

  “Him,” he said, pointing at Fremmer.

  Gray looked at Fremmer, who couldn’t help cracking a smile, then back at Ronald. Gray wasn’t happy.

  “Why do you want to call him?”

  “I have his phone number,” Ronald said. “He said to call him. Happy New Year.”

  Gray shook his head, flummoxed. It was September.

  “Is my lawyer here yet?” Fremmer asked.

  Gray didn’t answer. He just walked out. Then he came back a minute later with two uniformed officers, one of which produced the keys to the cell while the other kept his eye on Ronald. After they let Fremmer out Ronald took his place inside the cell.

  “I want my call,” he called as Gray led Fremmer back toward the bullpen area.

  Gray took Fremmer to his desk, told him to sit tight, then left. On the other side of the room Fremmer saw a couple of cops looking at a TV screen mounted up near the ceiling. A few other TVs, tuned to the same channel, showed a woman news reporter talking to the camera. He couldn’t quite hear what she was saying but he noticed a familiar-looking building in the background behind her: The station house they were in.

  One of the cops turned up the volume and Fremmer heard the reporter say, “Police have yet to make an arrest, but they say they have a suspect in custody. My sources are telling me it’s a person … a person who lives on the streets,” she said, struggling to categorize Ronald in a politically correct way. “Someone we typically describe as a homeless person. That’s what I’m being told.”

  The camera cut to the anchorman. “And has your source said anything about a motive, why he would do something like this?”

  “No, no motive, Brad. But hopefully we’ll get more information soon.”

  “OK, thank you, Ellen,” the anchor said. “That’s Ellen Park, live at the 20th Precinct on the Upper West Side. We’ll check back in a little while to see if she has any more information about this terrible incident. A woman was pushed in front of a car this morning on Central Park West while walking her dog.”

  He then began chatting with his co-anchor. Like many visitors and transplants to the city, she’d long harbored fears of being pushed in front of a subway.

  “On the platform, I always stand well back from the yellow line,” she said. “You just don’t know who’s out there, who’s standing next to you. You just don’t know.”

  “No, you don’t,” the male anchor concurred, and they moved on to the next story.

  The cop lowered the volume and shortly thereafter Gray returned. He handed Fremmer a piece of paper that Fremmer thought was a ticket of some sort. But it wasn’t a ticket exactly, it was instructions for how to pay the license suspension termination fee.

  “It’s fifty bucks,” Gray said. “You can pay online.”

  “So this is to reinstate my suspended virtual license, which automatically disappears once I pay the fee?”

  “Best I can do,” Gray said. “But the good news is you don’t have to pay for the parking ticket. Too much time has passed.”

  Fremmer laughed. “Fantastic. You held me for not paying a parking ticket I now don’t have to pay.”

  “Best I can do,” Gray repeated. “Exit’s this way,” he said, motioning for him to get up and follow him. “Your lawyer’s out in the waiting room with your belongings. You’re free to go. However, we will want to talk to you in the future. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. We’ll be in touch.” He took a card out of his shirt pocket. “Call me anytime. My cell is on there,” he told Fremmer, handing him the card.

  Fremmer stopped at the exit door, looked at the card, then back up at Gray.

  “So, that’s it?”

  “You’re free to go, Mr. Fremmer.”

  “But you got him? That guy in there did it? He pushed her?”

  “We have evidence that suggests he’s the perpetrator. That’s all I can say at this time.”

  “You arrested him already? You read him his rights and all that?”

  Gray offered a faint nod. He barely moved his head, but the acknowledgment was there.

  “But what about this oracle?”

  “What about him?”

  “Who is he?”

  “You tell me,” Gray said.

  “I would if I could.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  With that, Gray pushed the bar on the door, which automatically locked shut from the inside, and stood aside to let him pass. When the door opened, Fremmer saw Carlos Morton standing there. Fremmer’s scooter and backpack were on the floor next to him.

  He went out and shook Morton’s hand. His friend smiled and said:

  “I show up and magic happens.”

  “You do anything?” Fremmer asked.

  “Not really.”

  “You talk to the detectives?”

  “We had a quick chat. Let’s just say I made my presence felt. Sometimes that’s all that’s necessary.”

  It wasn’t hard for Morton to make his presence felt. He was six-four, and, while he seemed to have lost a little weight since Fremmer last saw him, was still heavy, well over two-hundred-fifty pounds. His head was completely shaved and he wore a set of gold wireframe glasses that gave him sort of a bookish appearance, though at first sight he gave the impression he’d played the line for his high school football team. In fact, he hadn’t, and claimed he wasn’t athletic. Neither were his two kids, which was a shame considering both were considerably bigger than the other kids in their age groups.

  It was hard to tell whether Morton was black, Hispanic, or Pacific Islander. When you asked him what his family background was, he always said, “I check all the boxes, brochacho. I’m the united colors of Benetton. Got a bit of everything.” He liked to think he had chameleon-like qualities, especially when it came to getting a jury to like him. He could tweak his personality a little one way or another to curry favor with certain jurors. Or so he claimed.

  “Everybody’s racist,” he once explained. “People are so busy accusing white people of being racist they sometimes forget that black people are, too. You can play to that. I go Asian, too. You don’t think I can, but I can. I’m a man of the streets. People like me. They think I’m a mensch, especially you Jewboys.”

  “I think they used me as a plant,” Fremmer told him. “They were trying to get a guy back there in the cage to make incriminating statements.”

  “Did he?”

  Distracted, Fremmer didn’t answer. He was looking behind Morton, where a uniformed cop was standing, chatting to a guy in plainclothes, probably also from the police department. They were talking about the television crew outside but Fremmer couldn’t tell exactly what they were saying. In contrast to when he first arrived, the room was now bustling with activity. People were moving in and out. The only stationary person was an older guy sitting in one of the fiberglass bucket seats, just sitting there holding his phone in front him, typing something. After he finished typing, he turned and looked in Fremmer’s direction. Their eyes locked and Fremmer realized he knew him. It was Braden, the guy from the Lucidity Center. The guy with the prosthetic hand.

  “They pulled you in here, too, huh?” Fremmer said to him.

  Braden looked momentarily discombobulated. He seemed to recognize Fremmer but didn’t know from where, so Fremmer clued him in:

  “Max Fremmer,” he said. “I met you with Candace at an event. You’re the guy from the lucid dreaming center, right?”

  Braden stood up. “Oh, yes. It’s terrible what happened. I just heard they caught the guy. Why would he do such a thing?”

&n
bsp; Braden’s good hand was his right hand, so the handshake ritual wasn’t awkward. When Morton introduced himself he probably didn’t even notice the guy had one hand.

  “Lucid dreaming,” Morton said, “that’s that thing where you realize you’re dreaming and are able control what’s going on?”

  “That’s one way to describe it,” Braden said.

  “And there’s an institute for it in the city?”

  “Yes, a center. We teach techniques and have nutritional supplements that enhance the probability of achieving such a state. And we have a research wing as well.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Morton said.

  As the two continued to speak, Fremmer thought there was something a little off about Braden’s face. His nose seemed a little too perfectly constructed, his cheekbones a little too high and angular, his neck a little too smooth. Fremmer was no plastic surgery expert, but it looked like the guy had a little work done. The odd thing was that both the hair on his head and his neatly trimmed goatee were distinctly gray. Someone who really wanted to look younger would also have dyed his hair, Fremmer thought.

  “Remind me again how you know Candace?”

  It took a moment for Fremmer to realize the question was directed at him. “I’m her editor,” he said.

  “I thought so,” Braden replied. “We need to talk. You have something of ours.”

  “I do?”

  “A manuscript she wrote. She told us you were working on it.”

  Fremmer thought about it before he shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “We hired her to write it. We advanced her money.”

  “You, too, huh? That’s why they had me in here. Because they thought I had something to do with pushing her. Fifteen grand she owed me. I wouldn’t push someone over fifteen grand. So, who pulled you in? The guy with the Eagles jersey, Chu? Mr. Undercover Cop?”

  He felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Mr. Undercover Cop himself, Detective Chu, standing right next to him.

  “Don’t you have a spinning class to teach?” Chu said.

  “Thanks to you, probably not anymore. But hey, if they put me back on the schedule, I’ll get you a pass and you can come take it as my guest. I’ll put together a special playlist of cop-show theme songs. There are some good ones.”

  “You do that,” Chu said. Then, moving past him, he extended a hand to Braden and thanked him for coming in. “I’ve been reading about what you do. Interesting stuff. I’m just going to have you come to my desk where we can speak privately. It shouldn’t take long.”

  After they left, Morton lowered his voice and said, “You know, Max, you can’t play around with these guys like that. This is a no bullshit situation you’re involved in here. You can’t mess around.”

  “What the hell was that about?” Fremmer said.

  “What?”

  “She told them I had their manuscript. Why would she do that?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Morton said.

  “You get Jamie?”

  “Yeah, I dropped him off at home.”

  “Well, hang out for a minute. We gotta wait for a call.”

  “From who?”

  “The son of a bitch they say pushed my client in front of that car.”

  “Why are we doing that?”

  Fremmer pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to check whether he was getting a signal. The indicator showed four dots out of five. Good. Back at full strength. Or close enough.

  He went to put the phone away, but just as he did, a caller ID number he didn’t recognize flashed across the screen and he felt the phone vibrate in his hand. He slid open the virtual lock and handed the phone to Morton.

  “Meet Ronald,” Fremmer said. “He needs a lawyer.”

  10/ A Strange Request

  THE QUADCOPTER TOOK OFF FROM WERRY PARK, WHICH REALLY wasn’t much of a park, more like a small grassy area with a jungle gym surrounded by trees just south of Stanford Avenue on Dartmouth. It ascended straight up to about sixty feet, hovered there, then slowly began to make its way in an east, passing over Harvard, Princeton, and Oberlin, before turning south at Cornell.

  The area was made up of smaller houses, fairly densely packed, many of them cottages or bungalows on quarter-acre lots. Back in the day the houses were cheap; two- and three-bedrooms had cost a couple hundred thousand. Now sellers were getting two million for an 800-square-foot cottage that might very well be demolished and replaced by a much larger home.

  “We started doing this a couple years ago,” Marcus said as the reconnaissance video played on the large-screen TV in the same spartan white office Madden had visited a few weeks earlier. “Right now we only do it for our trophy properties, but it’s a great marketing tool, especially for folks who are newer to the area. You get a real sense of the neighborhood and it really captures the grandeur of it all. We even do some stuff where we walk a drone through the house. It creates a Steadicam effect for a fraction of the cost. Looks great. You can get some really cool shots. I’ve also got a guy working on some VR stuff for me.”

  The drone came to a stop over a particular house and hovered there for a moment.

  “That’s it alright,” Bronsky said.

  He, Madden, Dupuy, and Marcus comprised the small audience gathered in front of the television screen. Marcus’s wife, Kendra Hargrove, a tall woman with very short blond hair sculpted in such a way that made you think she’d just come off a runway in Paris or Milan or the set of a science-fiction movie, had welcomed them warmly when they first arrived. Now she sat at a desk in the back of the room, working quietly on the computer. Somehow her presence hovered over the proceedings like her husband’s drone. She had neither the time nor the interest to spend on her husband’s high-tech presentation.

  Madden had met her a few times. His early impressions were that she shared some of Dupuy’s no-bullshit, cut-to-chase qualities. But he knew Dupuy well enough to understand that some of her boldness emanated from her insecurities. He’d seen her vulnerable side over the years. Hargrove seemed more emotionally detached, and Madden thought both she and Marcus had played against their personality types in forging their relationship. Marcus was the better looking of the two, she the more charismatic. The result was that when the two were in each other’s company she came across more shallow while he gained some depth.

  “It’s changed a little,” Bronsky observed of his old residence, “though not that much. They redid the deck.”

  The small redwood-colored deck had what looked like a hot tub, kidney shaped, with a dark brown cover over it, built in at one end. The deck overlooked a small lawn—probably no more than twenty-five feet squared—that was surrounded by shrubs, flowering plants and some trees. They could see some brown patches of grass, a byproduct of the drought and city-enforced water rationing, but it wasn’t totally dead like some of the lawns the drone had flown over.

  “As you can see, there’s some landscaping,” Marcus said, pausing the video. “It’s not a big space, but you’re still probably looking at five to ten grand at least to really rip everything up and put it back exactly as it was or make it better.”

  They’d assembled to discuss strategies for approaching the owners about excavating their backyard. Over the years Madden had searched homes and yards for evidence, but in those instances he’d been issued a search warrant that gave him the authority to go traipsing about private property. But here he had no authority, and despite being a mostly by-the-book guy during his career, for purely selfish reasons he wasn’t ready call the Palo Alto PD or his old pals at the MPPD and encourage them to investigate. For starters, he wanted to preserve a clear path to Shelby’s reward, but just as importantly he didn’t want to look foolish if they didn’t find anything. So he’d asked Marcus, the real-estate expert, what tactics they might employ to gain access discreetly. Marcus came up with the idea of a reconnaissance video.

  “You don’t have to do the lawn,” Bronsky said. “I would have known if someone had
buried her there. I would have seen that the ground was disturbed.”

  “You sure about that?” Dupuy asked.

  “I went out there pretty regularly,” he said. “You can’t dig a grave in the middle of a lawn and not notice it.”

  They considered that for a moment, but before anybody could comment, Bronsky got up and went to the screen.

  “I think you’re just looking at the plant beds here,” he said, running his finger around the perimeter of the lawn. “You could come into the lawn a little.”

  “If we’re going to go to the trouble of doing it,” Madden interjected, “we might as well do the whole thing. It’s a small area. We could go over the place with a ground radar machine first, but it may not show anything.”

  Dupuy agreed. “Let’s not leave any doubt.”

  “I would like to bring your attention to one small detail,” Marcus said.

  Now it was his turn to approach the screen. He hit a button on the remote to restart the video. After a few seconds the drone gradually began to descend. It hovered over the middle of the lawn at about ten to fifteen feet then made a slow right turn. Marcus hit the pause button.

  He went to the screen and drew an imaginary circle around a set of plants on one side of the garden. “You see that,” he said. “Our occupants are cultivating a little patch of cannabis.”

  Marcus was right. A set of five or six plants clustered together each bore the distinct leaf pattern of marijuana.

  “How’s that help us?” Dupuy asked.

  “I was thinking the opposite,” Marcus said. “It may actually hurt. These people may not want anybody near their backyard, especially anybody remotely associated with law enforcement.”

  “Who are they anyway?” Dupuy asked.

  “Young couple,” Kendra Hargrove interjected from the back of the room in a commanding voice. “The guy works at IDEO, the design company. The woman does PR for some sort of Kickstarter-backed fitness-tracking device and a couple of other start-ups. She’s got a gmail address on this press release so I’d bet this phone number is for her cell. I’ll call her right now. You guys need to stop over-thinking this. Just give me a budget, Mr. Madden. What are you comfortable with?”