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“The other triple homicide or Gregg McCall’s disappearance?”
“All of it. We never close.”
I take back roads tonight coming home from Riverhead—not because I’m looking to beat Friday night traffic necessarily, just because I prefer back roads. They always make it easier for me to remember what it was like before everybody seemed to decide that the world would stop spinning on its axis if they didn’t rent out here in the summer.
And this ride is more peaceful, at least for me—gives me some time with the phone off and music playing to think about what will happen when Ahearn does wrap up his case and I begin to mount my defense of Rob Jacobson.
Such as it is.
And whatever it’s going to be.
I know all the holes in my defense of Rob Jacobson and his occasionally cockeyed defense of himself. As much time as I have spent with him, spent listening to him, sometimes to the point where I imagine my head exploding, it occurs to me how little I really know of him. I just get the version of Rob Jacobson that he wants to be, and the one he wants me to see, in his continuing charm offensive, almost as if he can’t help himself.
I am even considering having Dr. Ben look after Rip on either Saturday or Sunday and taking a ride into the city to get myself more face time with the cops who worked the murder-suicide of Jacobson’s father. I know a lot about that case by now. But I feel as if I need to know even more, as a way of knowing my client better. Or at least understanding him more than I do.
Because the thought has never been far away that if his old man was capable of a monstrous—and completely mad—crime like that, then maybe he is, too.
The teenage Rob Jacobson was the one to find the bodies. His mother was in Southampton at the time, at what was once the family estate. Rob was an only child, in his room, when he heard the first shot, according to what he told police at the time.
The kid was on his way up the stairs when he heard the second shot.
He was still there with the bodies when the cops showed up, at which point young Rob Jacobson gave them what became the money quote in theDaily Newsand thePost,one both of the tabs ran with for a week.
“I always wondered if there was somebody out there mean enough to kill my father,” he said. “Turns out there was.”
The father was a killer. Did it take some sort of great leap to think the son could be one, too, despite his proclamations of innocence and being set up?
I had another weekend to ponder that, along with other mysteries of the universe.
But for now, heading east on Scuttle Hole Road, I look in the rearview mirror and see myself smiling.
And know why.
The dog will be waiting for me when I come through the front door. Waiting to watch a tough guy like Jane Smith do a complete melt when I see him.
We haven’t been together that long. But I’ve discovered I like having a dog. And love this particular dog.
Till death do us part.
I’m cutting across Sagg Road when Jimmy calls and informs me he’s inviting himself for dinner. He asks where I am. I tell him. He tells me to get my ass home and start boiling up some water.
“Then what?”
“I got tired of waiting for you to offer to cook me dinner.”
“It would be a shame for you to cheat death this week and then die of my cooking.”
“Nobody has ever listed pasta as a cause of death,” he says, and I tell him he doesn’t watch nearly enough Scorsese movies.
I finally pull into my driveway, grab my bag off the passenger seat. And remember to take my gun out of the glove compartment. After what happened at McCall’s when Jimmy walked into an empty house, I have been on high alert.
I unlock the front door, take the gun out, and say, “Honey, I’m hoooooome.”
I already have a treat in my free hand.
No Rip.
I head for the kitchen, whistling and calling out his name. One of the big dog beds I’ve bought for him is in there.
