Now I’m back in my office on a Friday, reading a brief on my computer. Tommy walks in and says he’s gotten word that Devlin Walker is going to have Jennifer Yamura’s house gone over again.
“My friend tells me they’re going to search every nook and cranny of the place for hair, prints, lint—breath molecules—everything. Walker thinks that whoever was Yamura’s source about the grand-jury investigation was probably at her house at least once, so maybe he left a DNA calling card.”
I lean back in my chair and consider this. I’m about to make a suggestion when Tommy beats me to the punch. “I think we should get into that house first.”
“Good idea.” I call Vaughn into my office and tell him to draw up a motion for a scene inspection. I explain that the ADA is planning to scour the house soon and that I want to see it once before then.
“Should I call Hanson, tell him to be there with us when we search?”
“I don’t think we’ll need him there.” I hang up with Vaughn and look over at Tommy. “Want to grab lunch?”
“Nah, can’t today,” he says, getting up.
“Gotta see a man about a horse?” I smile, but Tommy’s eyes darken.
“What’s the matter?”
“Lot on my mind. No big deal.”
“Going tent camping again?”
“Maybe.” Tommy turns and walks out of my office.
I watch him go, the visual of Tommy roughing it under the stars taking me back to when we were teenagers. By the time he was in tenth grade, my brother had his life all mapped out. After graduation he was going to enlist in the military, Special Forces. He would serve our country on the most dangerous assignments. When he was discharged, he would go into law enforcement. “Big-city cop,” he told me. “The front line. Down and dirty.” I had no trouble even then envisioning my brother as a hard-ass cop in Philly, New York, Chicago, even Detroit.
When Tommy was in eighth grade, he began pumping iron in our basement. Then he bought a punching bag and started taking boxing lessons in a gym downtown. After a year of lifting, Tommy had gained thirty pounds and was ripped. The boxing lessons made him quick with his hands and feet. He once conned me into going a few rounds with him out in the backyard. Two minutes after we started, I was bent over, sucking wind.
In tenth grade, Tommy joined the wrestling team. Most of his teammates had already been wrestling for years, and Tommy was way behind them on technique. But he was a quick study, and it didn’t take long for him to catch up. What impressed his coaches, however, wasn’t the sharpness of Tommy’s learning curve but his brute strength. Tommy’s teammates called him “The Slab” because he was as hard as marble. Tommy was strong enough that, unlike his teammates, he didn’t starve and sweat himself to wrestle in a class below his normal weight. He wrestled at 185, going up against guys who normally walked around ten to fifteen pounds heavier. And he beat them.
The summer after tenth grade, Tommy worked in the lumberyard. It was grueling, bull work under the hot sun. He loved it. Every morning, he would leave our house at six armed with two thermoses of grape Kool-Aid and a paper bag carrying his five sandwiches, chips, and carrots. He’d walk to the bus stop and catch the bus into town. Twelve hours later, he’d walk back in the door, filthy with sweat and sawdust, his hair matted, his shirt torn more often than not. And he’d be in the best mood—more energized than I was, even though I’d only put in eight hours doing light work at the local farmer’s market.
Tommy was set to return to the lumberyard following eleventh grade. Then one of his friends at school told Tommy about his own job with a sporting outfit that hosted whitewater rafting tours in Jim Thorpe. Tommy accompanied his friend to the Poconos the weekend after school let out and was instantly hooked. When he got back that Monday morning, Tommy got our father’s permission to leave for Jim Thorpe for the summer.
At the end of the summer, Tommy came home with a dark tan and dozens of pictures of him camping, in the raft, and with various groups. He looked like a bronze god of the river.
A wave of sadness sweeps across my chest as I sit in my office, thinking of Tommy back then. Confident, strong, tough. My brother was ready to meet the future on his own terms. Little did he know the future that was steamrolling toward him didn’t look anything like he expected.
Our motion to inspect Jennifer Yamura’s house is granted the week after we file it, and Tommy and I find ourselves walking from the office toward Addison Street. It’s Thursday, July 26. The morning rain is gone, and the clouds are clearing, but the eighty-five-degree air is heavy with humidity, making it feel more like a hundred. Tommy carries a camera in case we want to take pictures. As we walk west on Addison, we come to the house near the end of the block. It’s a three-story brick row home. The shutters are trimmed in green, as is the door. A piece of yellow crime-scene tape hangs broken in the doorway.
As Tommy and I reach the front door, it opens. A uniformed cop exits the house and descends three worn, white-marble steps to the street. Behind him, John Tredesco appears in the doorway. He isn’t wearing his jacket; his sweat stains show.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. “The court’s order was clear: a uniformed officer can watch us enter and leave, but we inspect the house by ourselves.”
Tredesco smiles. “You know, it’s funny. We all refer to this place as Yamura’s house. But she didn’t own it at all.”
I don’t know where Tredesco is going with this, but it makes me uneasy.
“Cut to the chase, John. I don’t have all day.”
“It wasn’t easy to unravel it,” Tredesco answers. “The recorder of deeds lists the owner as HD Holdings, some corporation out of Delaware. But that corporation is owned by another corporation, HDD Holdings, also of Delaware, which is owned by yet another corporation, HWD Holdings, in the Virgin Islands, which—guess what—is owned by yet another company. A huge conglomerate registered to do business in Delaware but operating almost everywhere in the world. You know, sometimes I wonder whether, when you get to the bottom of it, the whole fucking country isn’t owned by a single company.”
I pull out my cell phone and click a picture of Tredesco. “Unless you get out of my way in the next two seconds, I’m going to call the judge and tell him that you’re interfering with a court-ordered view of the crime scene.”
The detective ignores me. “When I contacted the company that owns this place, they forwarded me to their legal department. I left messages, but no one returned my calls. I figure that’s because the company’s legal department is shorthanded, seeing as how its general counsel is away on leave pending the results of his upcoming murder trial.”
Fuck. It takes everything I have not to say it out loud. I turn abruptly and walk to the end of the street. I’m seething as I dial David’s number.