Free Open and Shut by David Rosenfelt Page A

lashing out at me, culinarily speaking. She also lashes out financially speaking, by signing for a big tip and telling the delivery guy to charge the whole thing to my account.
    She starts to unpack the food, so I ask her what she's ordered.
    “Steamed broccoli, stir-fried asparagus tips, and broiled seaweed with tofu.”
    This is not exactly making my mouth water. “Are you catering a rabbit convention?”
    “It's good for you, unlike that greasy poison you always order.” She takes two bites, then looks at her watch. “Are we almost finished here? Because I've got plans.”
    Uh, oh. The dreaded plans. I get a pit in my stomach the size of Argentina.
    “Plans?”
    “Yes, plans,” she says. “Like in, I have a life so I make plans.”
    “Okay. I deserve that.”
    “No. If I gave you what you deserve, I'd be in the same situation as Willie Miller.”
    I'm getting annoyed, and my level of annoyance has always been directly proportional to my level of courage. Actually, it's a theory of mine as well. I believe that all real heroes demonstrated their bravery only when they got angry. You think Nathan Hale liked the guys who put the rope around his neck? You think Davy Crockett considered the Mexicans coming over the Alamo walls his good buddies? I'm no different. Piss me off enough and before you know it they'll be writing songs about me.
    Here goes. “Look, we started to get involved. It was nice … really nice … but we never took an oath.”
    She's ready for this. “Right. You and Nicole are the ones that took an oath.”
    “As a matter of fact, we did. And one of us may wind up breaking that oath, but we won't know that for a while.”
    She stands up. “I'm happy for you, but I've got plans. Now what is it you want me to do next?”
    I guess she's not going to eat the Chinese food next, leaving it all for me. Yummm. I'll have enough left over to make broiled seaweed sandwiches tomorrow.
    “Check out the eyewitness … Cathy Pearl. Maybe we can shake her. Maybe she did it, for Christ's sake.”
    “Great idea!” she enthuses. “I'll also ask people I meet at the supermarket if by any chance
they
killed Denise McGregor. Maybe we can shake someone else into confessing.”
    “Aside from our personal situation, what is your problem with this case?”
    She looks me straight in the eye, though that is what she always does. She's an inveterate eye looker; I on the other hand look at people's mouths when they talk.
    “My problem is that we're defending a brutal murderer, Andy. If we're successful, which we won't be, he goes back on the street.”
    “And if he didn't do it, then the guy who did is
already
out on the street.”
    She sighs with resignation, as well as the fact that down deep she knows I'm right. We've been over this ground before. We have a role to play, and if we don't play it to the hilt the system doesn't function.
    “Okay. It's a job and we do it. Where are
you
going to start?”
    “With Denise McGregor.”

V INCE S ANDERS IS A GRUFF, UNKEMPT, VERY overweight man who has spent one hundred twelve of his fifty-one years working on newspapers up and down the East Coast. He's the type that you think must still be pounding stories out on his old Smith-Corona while all his colleagues are using high-tech computers. When I show up at his office, he is doing research at warp speed on the Internet. Oh, well.
    Vince was Denise's boss on the
Newark Star-Ledger.
I ask him if Denise was working on something at the time she was killed, and he laughs. Not a hah-hah, friendly laugh, but any port in a storm.
    “Working on something? Are you kidding me? Denise was always working on something.”
    I ask him if he knows what she was working on. He doesn't.
    “She wouldn't tell me, but she was really excited. And it must have been good, 'cause she asked me to meet her in here the next day, which was a Saturday. She knew damn well I don't get off my fat ass on Saturdays.”
    I laugh, since it seems like I'm