Outfoxed: An Andy Carpenter Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

Laurie already asleep; this motherhood thing must be really exhausting. But she wakes up when I enter the bedroom, and asks me to update her on what happened with Brian.
    “So he’s blaming himself for the murders without admitting to them?”
    “That’s right, though it seems like he’s only talking about Denise. He says he encouraged her, whatever that means.”
    “What did you take it to mean?”
    “That he maybe said something that put her in the position she was in, that made her vulnerable. But I could be completely wrong about that. Maybe he killed her but is in some sort of denial. Or maybe he’s just lying to me, though if he’s pleading guilty anyway, I don’t know what he’d have to gain by it.”
    “What is your obligation as his attorney?” she asks.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Can you let him enter a guilty plea if he says he’s innocent?”
    “I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m sure I can. There’s a Supreme Court case, Alford v. North Carolina, that speaks to it. In fact, when a client says he’s innocent but pleads guilty, it’s called an ‘Alford plea.’ All the court needs is some evidence of actual guilt.”
    “There’s plenty of that,” she says.
    “That’s for sure.”
    “So that’s your answer.”
    I shake my head. “That’s ‘the’ answer; it’s not ‘my’ answer.”
    “Because you want to know if he really did it.”
    “Right,” I say.
    “Why would he plead guilty if he wasn’t really guilty?”
    “He’s depressed; his wife was just killed, and he’s facing life in prison. Maybe he just doesn’t want to fight anymore.”
    It’s not until three hours later that I wake up from a sound sleep, the answer somehow clearer now. I’m not sure why I think better asleep than awake. I sit up, no longer tired, because of what I’ve realized.
    Laurie wakes up herself and sees me sitting there. “What is it?” she asks. “Too many M&M’S?”
    “Brian’s not guilty.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “When he told me he didn’t do it, he said that he ‘didn’t pull the trigger’ but that he was responsible.”
    “So?”
    “So they were stabbed. He didn’t even know how they died.”
    “Maybe ‘pulling the trigger’ was just a figure of speech,” she says.
    “I don’t think so. I think if you murder someone you’d be damn precise about how you did it. I think he just assumed they were shot.”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.”

 
    I’m not in a huge hurry to see Brian again. The arraignment is not until tomorrow afternoon, and since it’s just a formality designed to file charges and elicit a plea, there’s really little preparation that needs to be done for it.
    Brian’s not going anywhere, that much is certain, so I can let him sit and think about his situation before I visit him again. In the meantime, I want to learn as much as I can about his original case. I know very little about it, because he was Nathan’s client, and I’ve only been handling the parole application.
    I call Sam Willis, who handles two main functions for me. He’s my accountant, and even though I’m ridiculously wealthy, that is not a challenging job. My investments are pretty straightforward, and my tax return isn’t that complicated.
    The other role Sam has assumed is somewhat different. He has taken to referring to himself as my “director of investigative information.” Sam is a genius on the computer; he can find whatever he wants on the Web, and everything is out there. He also has the ability to hack into anything he wants, no matter how secure the target thinks it is.
    Much of that hacking is illegal, but we don’t often let that stand in our way. Our rationale is that we use the information to further the causes of truth and justice, and sometimes that’s even true. I’d hate to have to argue that rationale in court, so I’m frequently reminding Sam to be careful.
    “We got a case?”