The Lawyer's Lawyer (20 page)

D
anni hadn’t sat out on her back porch in the evening for over a week. She loved to sit out there at the end of the day with
a cup of decaf—no caffeine after six—and listen to the sounds of the evening. It was still pleasant this time of year when
the sun went down. There was a cool breeze, fireflies were out, the crickets weren’t too bad. It was peaceful and serene.
She looked out at the woods and let the tension release itself from her body.

She’d gone about the task of waiting for Felton’s assault with the precision of a professional. Now that the danger had passed,
she could finally acknowledge how stressful it all had been and take the necessary time to let it go.

She’d called Henry as soon as she left the station and talked to both him and Hannah and given them a synopsis of what had
happened. The decision was made that Hannah would head back to school immediately. The semester was not yet lost. Hannah could
still bone up and take her exams. Worrying about exams was a whole lot easier than worrying about the threat of a serial killer.

“How’s Jack holding up?” Henry asked, surprised to learn that Jack and Danni had been together when the police arrived. When
they had actually started talking to each other again was still a mystery to him. It didn’t matter though. He’d find out soon
enough.

“I haven’t talked to him since we went to the station. They split us up after that. You know, police procedure and all that
stuff. He left a message though saying that he was fine.”

“There aren’t any problems, are there?”

“Well, Jack said Felton had a gun and so far they haven’t found the gun. I don’t think it’s a big deal, but at this point,
I don’t know.”

“I’ll head straight for Oakville after I drop Hannah off, just in case.”

“Good idea. I’ll see you when you get here. And Henry—”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for taking care of my baby.”

“It was a pleasure. We had fun. And Hannah had her cultural experience.”

Danni laughed. “Good. I’ll see you soon.”

As she sat on her porch that evening thinking about the events of the day, Danni heard a loud noise from the woods on her
far left. It was a quarter moon so there was some light in the backyard and she thought she saw a figure emerge from the thicket.

Calm down
,
she told herself.
The danger has passed.
Still, she checked to make sure she had her Glock with her.

The figure moved closer. Danni fingered her weapon.

“Is somebody out there?” she yelled forcefully.

“It’s me,” came the reply. She recognized the voice immediately. It was Jack.

Thirty seconds later he was standing on the porch, dressed in jeans and a black tee shirt and carrying a flashlight.

“What were you doing out there?” she asked.

“Looking for Felton’s gun.”

“All the way over there? Felton’s body was straight out from this porch.”

“I circled around. There are SWAT team guys out there. Sam told me that he was pulling everybody off when it got dark so I
was going to do my own search. Then I find he didn’t do what he said he was going to.”

“‘Sam?’ Is that what you said? You guys are on a first-name basis all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, well, we had a fairly long conversation this afternoon. He was calling me Jack and I was calling him Sam. It was a
little strange, really.”

“Very strange. Don’t go trusting him, Jack. The man isn’t himself. I don’t care how he acts.”

“I hear you. He already didn’t do what he told me he was going to do, and I’m not sure why.”

“Would you like a cup of decaf?”

“Sure.”

Danni went inside and returned a minute later with a cup for Jack. Jack watched her the whole way.

“Have I told you lately how beautiful you are?” he asked.

Danni smiled. “No, you haven’t.”

“Well, you are.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

Jack just sat there looking at her for the longest time.

“What happened to us, Danni? I know we started too fast and I know I was too intense, but I really thought we had something.”

Danni took a sip of her coffee and looked away toward the quarter moon.

“We did, Jack. We definitely had something. I could tell you that we started too fast and that it was too intense and maybe
I didn’t feel as strongly as you did. I could tell you that we had different perceptions. You know, perception is reality,
and we had two different realities going on. But what gets in the way of all that is truth. There is always an absolute truth
even if neither of us sees it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know. I’m going to tell you something—something I didn’t admit to myself until just recently, although I think you’ve always
known. It wasn’t about us starting too fast or you feeling more than me. It was my fear. I can’t have a relationship with
you because I can’t trust, and without trust I can’t open my heart. I thought it might be different with you, but it wasn’t
and it had nothing to do with you, so don’t beat yourself up about it. I just run up against a brick wall and I can’t get
through it. That’s the truth.”

“Can’t we work on it together? Can’t I help you?”

“I’m sorry, Jack. The only way anything is ever going to happen is if I get through that wall myself. At least I now see the
problem. I’m not lying to myself anymore.”

“We can still be friends.”

“Of course we’ll always be friends but not close friends. I’m not going to do that to you and I won’t allow you to do it to
yourself.”

Jack smiled at her. “I still think you’re beautiful.”

“That’s just your perception.”

“No. It’s the truth.”

Danni had another unexpected visitor at midmorning the next day. She was just getting ready to go out and run some errands
when there was a knock at the front door. When she answered it, Sam Jeffries was standing there.

“Do you have a minute, Danni? I want to talk to you about something.”

“If you can make it quick, Sam. I was just heading out to run some errands.”

She turned and walked back toward the kitchen. Sam followed her.

“It will only take a few minutes. I just want to tell you a few things we found out about your boy Tobin.”

“He’s not my boy. And stop using that term. It’s offensive.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I thought he was your friend at least.”

“Just get to it, Sam.”

“All right, we found some things in Felton’s possession that are very interesting.”

They were once again sitting at the little table in the kitchen. Danni wasn’t offering any coffee this time. Sam pulled out
some papers from his jacket pocket. He handed some of them to Danni.

“This is a claims bill that Tobin was planning on filing on behalf of Felton. They were going to ask the Florida legislature
for twenty million dollars.”

Danni scanned the document. “So? It’s my understanding that every prisoner who has been wrongfully imprisoned for an extended
period of time files a claims bill—especially people on death row. They might ask for twenty million but they’re not going
to get it. What’s your point?”

“Take a look at this.” Jeffries gave her the other papers in his hands. As she perused them, he kept talking. “That’s a contingency
fee agreement giving Tobin one-third of whatever Felton recovered from the legislature. This guy is a fraud. He’s making money
on these death penalty cases. Maybe Felton wouldn’t have gotten twenty million but if he got five, Tobin’s payout is over
a million and a half. You hit one of these babies every couple of years and you’re making a lot of money for very little work.
He’s motivated to get people off because there’s a payoff at the end and not for the noble reasons that he pretends. He’s
a phony.”

“You said that already.”

“It’s worth saying twice.”

Danni wouldn’t admit it to Sam, but the documents did trouble her. Jack wasn’t doing anything illegal, but these documents
showed that he was profiting from his work and not telling anybody about it, which made him exactly what Sam said he was—a
fraud.

“Why are you showing me these things, Sam? Why do you want to involve me in this?”

“I care about you, number one. I really don’t know your relationship with Tobin, and I want to make sure you’re not taken
in by this guy.”

“And number two?”

“I figure Tobin had to be pretty pissed off when Felton killed his opportunity for a payday by killing my daughter. He might
have had a little vendetta of his own.”

Danni was starting to get where this was going. “Are you suggesting that the loss of a fee was a motivation for murder? That’s
outrageous. The guy was sitting out in the woods trying to protect me.”

“That’s what he told you. Felton had a cell phone on him. Tobin called him two nights before he was killed and again just
before he was killed.”

“So you’re suggesting Jack lured him out there to kill him?”

“Why else would he be calling him?” Sam said.

“I don’t know but why would he be out in the woods?”

“Why not? I don’t know what he told Felton to get him into the woods but killing Felton behind your backyard is a perfect
alibi for Tobin.”

“It’s just too crazy, Sam. How do you explain Jack coming directly to my house, concerned for my welfare? If he’d committed
the murder, he would have gone directly to the body and put a gun in Felton’s hand and said Felton had tried to shoot him—not
run to my house. How do you explain that?”

“I think what you just said was Tobin’s original plan. What he didn’t plan on was me showing up. I think he heard me barreling
through the woods as soon as that gun went off and decided he might not be able to get to Felton’s body before I did. I was
there pretty fast. So he went to your house, great guy that he is, to check on your welfare.”

It was an incredible story but as a homicide detective Danni knew that the stories behind some murders were sometimes pretty
incredible. So far, she wasn’t buying any of it, not with Jack. She knew Jack, or at least she thought she did, and this was
not the person she knew. And she didn’t trust Sam. He’d been through too much.

“Let’s follow this logically, Sam. If Tobin was going to plant the gun but didn’t or couldn’t, what happened to the gun? I
mean, he was at my house right away. I was with him right up until the time we went to the station. You guys had him empty
his pockets at the station. I’m sure somebody did a pat down.”

“They did.”

“So where did the gun go that he was supposedly going to plant?”

“The only thing he could have done was throw it away as he was running toward your house. He’s right-handed so he probably
threw it off to his right. I didn’t piece all this information together until this morning so I didn’t know enough to have
somebody check that area before today. We had nothing to keep Tobin so we let him go late yesterday. I suspect that if he
threw the gun away, he would have been back last night to retrieve it. You didn’t happen to see him last night, did you?”

So that’s why Sam is here. He’s looking for this last little piece of information to incriminate Jack.
Danni hadn’t bought anything so far, but now she recalled seeing that dark figure coming out of the woods from the left as
she sat on her porch.
That would have been Jack’s right if he was running from the woods toward my house.
She remembered him saying he was looking for the gun and she remembered asking him why he was all the way over toward the
left, nowhere near the body.
What was it he said? He was there because Sam told him the police were going to stop looking for the gun at dark. What else
did he say?
“I had to circle around because Sam sent a SWAT team out to the scene.”

“Sam, did you send a SWAT team out to the scene last night?”

“No.”

“Did you tell Tobin you were quitting the search at dark?”

“Hell, no. He’s a suspect. I wouldn’t tell him anything. Now, did you see him last night or not?”

Danni had to answer the question. Thomas Felton’s case had caused her to do things she never would have done before, and she
regretted them. Now Sam Jeffries had asked her a question. She could lie and say she hadn’t seen Jack last night or she could
tell the truth. Lying meant making her own decision about Jack’s guilt or innocence. Telling the truth meant letting the police,
the state attorney, and possibly the judicial system make that decision.

She thought Jack was innocent, but she wasn’t absolutely sure.

“Did you see him last night or not, Danni?” Sam asked for the third time.

“I did.”

“Where was he?”

Danni got up from the table and walked to the back door that led out to the patio. Sam followed her. She pointed to her left.

“I saw him coming out of the woods over there. He told me he was looking for Felton’s gun. He said there was a SWAT team up
by the scene.”

“One last question. I can check this out on my own but your answering the question will make my job easier. Did Tobin call
you anytime in the last two days?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’d like to see the number in your phone.”

“Sure.” Danni opened her cell phone and pointed to Jack’s number.

“Did he leave a message?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t erase it. I’m going to need that phone eventually.”

“Then you’d better get a warrant.”

As she heard the words leave her mouth, Danni realized that giving Sam Jeffries any information had been the wrong decision.

S
am Jeffries had one major obstacle left in his quest to try and make Jack Tobin pay for the murder of his daughter, Kathleen.
He had to convince the new state attorney, Robert Merton, to prosecute Tobin for the murder of Thomas Felton.

Merton had made his reputation as an aggressive prosecutor but as the state attorney, he’d been rather conservative. He had
made the decision not to prosecute Thomas Felton for the attempted murder of Stacey Kincaid, a decision that ultimately resulted
in the murder of Kathleen Jeffries. Consequently, there was no love lost between him and Sam. Still, Sam needed Merton’s help
to prosecute Jack, and that was the most important thing right now. In his crazy mind, he needed the attorney who had made
the decision to set Felton free, to prosecute the attorney who had started the process to set Felton free. It was nuts, and
it made for strange bedfellows but Sam didn’t care. He just wanted his revenge.

The two men met in Merton’s corner office, the one he’d been occupying for just a short period of time. Sam quickly went over
the evidence he had concocted against Jack. Merton had many of the same questions Danni did. Sam answered them all. His conversation
with Danni had prepared him well.

“This is insanity, Sam,” Merton said finally. “You want me to prosecute one of the most famous lawyers in Florida, maybe the
whole United States.”

“That’s right.”

“This guy probably doesn’t have a speeding ticket on his record.”

“So?”

“So I’m not going to commit political suicide here. If you recall, I’m the guy who wouldn’t prosecute Felton on that attempted
murder charge.”

“Yeah. How did that work for you? You think you’ve got a shot at dogcatcher next election?”

“At least I can explain that decision and leave myself a chance. I prosecute Tobin and lose, I may as well leave the state.”

“Let me give you a different perspective,” Sam said. “Let’s say the people in this county want Tobin prosecuted. Let’s say
they’re angry at him for getting Felton off and for giving Felton the opportunity to kill my daughter. And let’s say, as Kathleen’s
father, I’m grateful to you for at least taking the shot. Don’t you think with my support, win or lose, you have a better
chance at re-election by prosecuting this case? You took action. You didn’t sit on your ass and let Tobin walk away when I
presented you with these facts. People are going to appreciate that, Bob. It will make up for your past inaction.”

Sam watched as Merton took in his words. He could see they’d had the desired effect by the look on Merton’s face. He looked
surprised. He hadn’t thought of the situation in that light. But he still wasn’t ready to take the big bite from the apple.

“Tobin will move for a change of venue. It won’t even be tried here. People won’t give a shit.”

A change of venue was a request to move the trial somewhere else on the premise that the defendant would not get a fair trial
in the jurisdiction where the criminal act had occurred. Evidence had to be presented for the court to grant a motion to change
venue. Sam had anticipated this argument as well and he had an answer.

“What would be the basis for a motion for change of venue—that people here are angry at Tobin for getting Felton released,
therefore he can’t get a fair trial? You’ve got a great counter-argument. Think about it: The people here all know or at least
believe that Felton was a serial killer. The fact that, in the eyes of the law, Felton was an innocent man at the time of
his death is not going to make a difference here. Everybody here is going to know that Tobin is being prosecuted for ridding
this county of a serial killer. That should even out any sentiment against Tobin and give you a pretty compelling response
to any motion Tobin or his lawyer can file.

“They need evidence as well and they’re not going to get it. I know Art Grumman, the editor of the
Oakville Sun
, real well. I’ve gotten his kids out of a few scrapes. He owes me. I’ll make sure there are no editorials about Tobin’s guilt,
and I’ll get the rabble-rousers under control, too. There will be no demonstrations or any of that crap. Tobin will be tried
here in Apache County, I promise you. And if you try the case and seek the death penalty, win or lose, you will be re-elected
to office. Hell, with the publicity from this case, you may become attorney general or governor.”

It was a compelling argument by a man committed to his cause. All of Merton’s fears about what would happen if he tried to
prosecute Jack were replaced by new fears about what would certainly happen if he didn’t.

“Okay,” he said to Sam. “I’ll take this case to the grand jury and let them decide. But I want your commitment that you will
support me for re-election.”

“You’ve got it but only on the condition that you try this case yourself.”

“Done.”