Karen comes back with a sack of doughnuts, jelly and cream filled, and three packages of chocolate Neccos, which she holds up triumphantly. I could send Edna out this afternoon, give her until a year from August, and she would not manage such a feat.

"Kid," I say to Karen, "I think you've got a future in this business."

I STOP AT STOP AT home to feed and walk Tara and Reggie. home to feed and walk Tara and Reggie.

Tara really seems to like having him around, and it makes me far less guilty when I have to spend long hours away from the house. This morning I even saw them playfully tugging at opposite ends of a toy. I'm not sure how Tara will react if I get Richard Evans out of jail, so Reggie can go back to him. Of course, right now that is not exactly an imminent danger.

As we leave the house, Willie Miller pulls up in his car. I feel an instant pang of guilt on seeing him; I have recently been of no help whatsoever in our dog rescue operation. Willie and Sondra have been doing all the work.

I apologize for my uselessness, but Willie characteristically will hear none of it. "Forget it, man. You got another job to do; I don't. And Sondra and I love it. You know that."

He has come by to update me on the weekly events, and he does so as he walks with us. Our foundation-or, more accurately, Willie and Sondra-has placed twenty-one dogs in homes this week. We average about fifteen, so this has been a very good week.

"You did good saving Reggie," he says.

"Thanks."

"I hear you got shot at the other day."

"Who told you?" I ask.

"Laurie. She's worried about you. Getting out of the way of bullets wouldn't be one of your strong points, you know? I told her I'd look out for you."

"She knows I have Marcus."

Willie nods. "And you have me if you need me. Just pick up the d.a.m.n phone, and I'm there."

"Thanks, Willie. I will."

Willie goes off to have dinner with Sondra, and I drop off Tara and Reggie at home. I then head down to Charlie's to meet Pete and Vince Sanders. Charlie's is a sports bar / restaurant that is truly my home away from home. Everything about it is perfect, from the large-screen TVs to the well-done french fries, to the ice-cold beer.

When people successfully make it through a terribly difficult emotional experience, they will sometimes credit their faith, their work, or their family for getting them through. When Laurie and I split up, Charlie's was my crutch.

Vince and Pete are at our regular table when I arrive. This particular table was chosen because of its proximity to four different TV screens, and it's large enough to handle the empty plates and beer bottles that often acc.u.mulate faster than the waitress can take them away.

We grunt our h.e.l.los, and they bring me up to date on the progress of the basketball games. They've placed bets that I've previously agreed to share, since I did not have time today to pick my own teams. We're losing three out of four, but each game is in the first quarter. Since it's the NBA, there is no way to predict how any of them will end up.

Once I've ordered my burger and beer, I turn to Pete. "Did you find out anything?"

He nods. "That I did. And you are not going to believe it."

He's piqued my interest; for Pete to say something like that means the information is going to be stunning. "Let's hear it."

"After you pay the check," he says.

"Come on, you know d.a.m.n well I'm gonna pay. You want to hold my credit card?"

He shakes his head. "I can't. I'm allergic to platinum."

Vince says, "I'll hold it."

"No, you won't," I say.

"You think I'm going to steal your ident.i.ty?"

"That doesn't worry me, Vince. What scares the s.h.i.+t out of me is, you'll try and trade ident.i.ties. Come on, Pete."

Pete sighs and takes a couple of sheets of paper out of his pocket. He reads from them. "The driver was Antwan Cooper, a small-time hood from the Bronx. The shooter was Archie Durelle, ex-Army, served in the first Gulf war and Afghanistan. Hometown was Albuquerque."

I've never heard of these guys; their names mean nothing to me. "So what's the big news?" I ask.

"Well, it turns out that Durelle didn't just serve in Afghanistan. He also died there."

"What?" I ask, as penetrating and clever a retort as I can muster.

"His chopper went down, and all four guys on board died. He was one of them."

"There obviously has to be a mistake."

"No s.h.i.+t, Sherlock."

Pete grudgingly agrees to try to find out more about Durelle, but he retaliates for the imposition by ordering the most expensive beer on the menu. It's a small price to pay, and far smaller than the price I'll have to pay the bookmaker, since all our bets on the NBA games lose.

I head home and call Laurie before going to sleep. She pumps me with questions about the case, mostly motivated by the close call with the highway shooter. I can hear the relief in her voice when I tell her I've hired Marcus.

It feels strange to wake up in the morning and go to the office, but that's what I do. I get there at nine thirty, and waiting for me are Kevin and the files that Koppell had retrieved from storage. Edna walks in about an hour later, glancing at her watch in surprise at the fact that she's not the first to arrive.

Kevin and I spend most of the day going through the information. There's a huge amount to digest, and we'll be better prepared to gauge the value after we are more familiar with the case in its entirety. There are no exculpatory bombsh.e.l.ls, but we didn't expect any. Koppell was looking for them, and if he'd found one, Richard wouldn't be in jail.

By late afternoon we are feeling confident enough in our knowledge of the case to set up another interview for tomorrow morning with our client. At least now we know what questions to ask.

THERE IS A noticeable spring in Richard's step when he is brought into the interview room. Since this is an official attorney's visit, Kevin and I don't have to talk to him through the gla.s.s in the visitors' area. We get to talk in this private room, a risk the state is willing to take because Richard is in handcuffs and leg shackles. Should this prove insufficient, two guards are stationed outside the room, probably armed with tactical nuclear weapons. noticeable spring in Richard's step when he is brought into the interview room. Since this is an official attorney's visit, Kevin and I don't have to talk to him through the gla.s.s in the visitors' area. We get to talk in this private room, a risk the state is willing to take because Richard is in handcuffs and leg shackles. Should this prove insufficient, two guards are stationed outside the room, probably armed with tactical nuclear weapons.

Despite the fact that our chances for success are remote, Richard's improved outlook is at least somewhat warranted. For the past five years he has had absolutely no reason to be hopeful; no one was working on his behalf to win his freedom or supporting his cause. Now we're doing that, and for the first time Richard can believe that things are happening.

I introduce Kevin, and then we get right to it. I start by giving the standard speech about how we can help him only if we know everything, and that he should leave nothing out when answering our questions. Any detail, however small or insignificant it might seem, can be the crucial one.

"Tell us about that night," I say.

"There was nothing unusual about it except for the way it ended," he says. "It was summer, and Stacy and I would go out on the boat most weekends, at least when the weather was good. When it wasn't, we'd go to a cabin I have in upstate New York." He pauses a moment. "That's the ironic thing. If we had known a storm was coming, we would probably have gone to the cabin. But it wasn't predicted."

"When you went out on the boat, did Reggie always go along?"

He nods. "Absolutely. Reggie went everywhere with us. Stacy loved him almost as much as I did."

"You slept on the boat?"

He nods. "Most of the time. It was a forty-footer... slept six."

"So there was nothing out of the ordinary about that night that you can remember?"

"Nothing. I've thought about it a thousand times. We went to bed at about nine o'clock. By then we had heard there was a chance of weather coming in, and I set the warning system up loud so I would definitely hear it."

"Warning system?" Kevin asks. He knows as little about boating as I do.

Richard nods. "If there are weather warnings, a general alert is sent out. We were only about four miles out, so we'd have plenty of time to get back if we had to."

"And you never heard a warning?" I ask.

"I never heard anything. I went to sleep and woke up in the hospital."

"Do you remember taking the sleeping pills?" Kevin asks.

Richard shakes his head vigorously. "I never took sleeping pills. Not that night, not ever in my life. I didn't even have any. They were not mine."

"Were they Stacy's?" I ask.

"I don't believe so. If they were, she never mentioned it. I never knew her to have trouble sleeping."

"So you have no idea how they got in your system?"

He shakes his head. "None at all."

We talk some more about the night of the murder, but he has little else to add. While the important things were happening, he was asleep. All he remembers is a pleasant night out on the water, dinner, some wine, and an early trip to bed since he was tired from working all day.

I turn the focus to his job, that of a senior customs inspector at the Port of Newark. I ask him if there was anything about his job that could have made him a target.

"No, nothing," he says. "It was a slow time."

The answer is a little quick for my tastes. "Richard, I want you to understand something. You may not have committed this murder, but someone did. Someone with a reason. Now, that reason could involve you or Stacy, or the two of you together. So you need to open your mind to anyone who could have possibly hoped to gain from putting you in this position."

"Don't you think I've done nothing but think about that for five years? If someone was trying to get rid of me because I knew something, they shouldn't have bothered, because I sure as h.e.l.l don't know that I know it. Besides, if I was a danger to someone, why not just kill me?"

It's a good question, and one I eventually must answer. But for now I take him through a description of day-to-day life on his job. Border security in this era of terrorism has taken on an obviously extreme importance, and it was Richard's task to make sure that the Port of Newark was as free of contraband as possible.

Finally, I turn the conversation to Stacy, and even five years later, it's evident that his grief over her loss is still powerful. "How did you meet?" I ask.

"At a counter, having lunch. She was sitting next to me, and before I knew it we were having a conversation. We had dinner that night, and it just went from there."

"Where was she from?" Kevin asks.

"Minnesota... a town just outside of Minneapolis. Her parents were killed in a car crash when she was eighteen. She worked there and then decided to move east."

"What did she do?"

"She was a teacher, but what she really wanted was to be a chef. The things she made were incredible. She wanted to open her own restaurant."

He talks about Stacy for a while longer, answering every question but never getting much below surface plat.i.tudes. He makes her sound so perfect she reminds me of Laurie.

"Were you in the Army?" I ask.

He nods. "National Guard. Served three months in Kuwait during the first Gulf war."

"Do the names Archie Durelle or Antwan Cooper mean anything to you?"

His facial expression shows no recognition at all. "No, I don't think so," he says. "Who are they?"

I'm not ready to tell him that they took a shot at me on the highway. "Just some names I've heard; I'm checking out everything I can."

The last ten minutes of our visit are devoted to the obligatory questions he has about progress we might be making and strategy we might be employing. I fend them off because basically we're not making any progress and don't yet have a strategy.

Once Kevin and I are in the car, I ask, "So, what do you think?"

"I find myself wanting to believe him."

"Do you believe him?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "Not yet. His version is just too full of holes. The prosecution has it locked up airtight."

"Except for Reggie. Reggie says he's innocent," I say.

"He told you that?"

"Not in so many barks, but I got the message."

I like dogs considerably more than I like humans. That doesn't make me antihuman; there are plenty of humans I'm very fond of. But generally speaking, if I simultaneously meet a new human and a new dog, I'm going to like the dog more.

I'm certainly going to trust the dog more. They're going to tell me what they think, straight out, and I'm not going to have to read anything into it. They are what they are, while very often humans are what they aren't.

I say this fully aware that dogs cannot replace humans in our day-to-day lives. I have never met a competent dog airline pilot, short-order cook, quarterback, or bookmaker. These are necessary functions that we must trust humans to provide, and I recognize that. It's not that I'm an eccentric about this.

So for now I'm going to pursue this case, even though Richard has nothing going for him.

Except for Reggie.

JOEL M MARSHAL IS on the front lines, protecting our country. on the front lines, protecting our country.

I can't say he looks the part. At about five eight and a hundred and fifty pounds, he's one of the few male adults under ninety that I would be willing to get in the ring with. As a protector of the country, he is not the type you would describe as someone "you want on that wall, you need on that wall."

Marshal is U.S. Customs director for the Port of Newark, and it's his job to ensure that the endless flow of cargo that comes in each year does not include things like drugs, guns, anthrax, and nuclear bombs. It is a daunting task, which is why I'm surprised it was so easy to get an immediate meeting with him.

It may have been a quickly arranged meeting, but it won't be a long one. He's looking at his watch almost as soon as I sit down. It's a common tactic; I think watches are more often used to demonstrate a lack of time than to tell time.