The Lawyer's Lawyer

by James Sheehan

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  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  To my Aunt Ann: my mother’s twin sister, my second mother, and my biggest fan; and to my lifelong great friend, Christopher Anthony Dennehy, who we lost recently and who was an inspiration for so many of my literary characters

  Prologue

  Oakville, Florida, December 30, 1991

  Can I have a Budweiser?” the young man shouted at the bartender. He had to shout because the place was packed and everybody was crowded around the bar jostling and yelling above the din for beer, the only commodity being sold, the wine having run out hours ago.

  “No Budweiser,” the bartender said. “All we’ve got is Lone Star and it’s not that cold. We’re selling it too fast.”

  “Shit, man. What’s that about?”

  “It’s about three bucks and you’ve got three seconds to make a decision. Otherwise, this beer is going to the guy behind you. One, two—”

  “All right, all right. Here’s the money.”

  The bartender took the bills, placed them in the cash drawer, opened another beer, and found another customer. There were three men behind the bar, the oldest guys in the place, all performing the same function. They had experience tending bar, but it was rusty experience. Two of the men at least owned bars. The third, Jack Tobin, was a very successful lawyer from Miami.

  The havoc continued until seven thirty when it died abruptly. A couple of young women lingered at the bar flirting with the older men, who still looked good despite their age. Basketball was their sport and they played regularly to stay fit, although Jack did triathlons as well.

  At about eleven thirty, the revelry ignited again. College kids descended on the place like locusts. At least the Lone Star was cold this time around.

  The Gator Bowl was in Oakville that year because a new stadium was being built in Jacksonville. Jack Tobin’s close friend Ron had chosen to open his new bar, The Swamp, on that day. Ron called on Jack and another friend, Pete, who owned a college bar in Blacksburg, Virginia, to help him. The three men had been friends for over twenty years.

  By 2 a.m., when they finally closed the doors, they were beyond exhaustion. Sitting at a large round table, each one pulled up an extra chair to rest his legs on while drinking the beer they had been serving all night, Lone Star.

  “This stuff isn’t bad,” Jack said, taking a sip. “I never had it before. Never even knew it existed.”

  “Me neither,” Ron said. “Until the local distributor showed me the sheet with all the beers he was carrying and the prices. This stuff is cheap—a good bang for your buck. I needed a lot of beer tonight so I needed cheap.”

  “So what do you think of our boy’s bartending debut tonight?” Pete asked, pointing at Jack.

  “Him?” Ron said. “He doesn’t have a prayer. He’s too polite. The house is caving in and he’s having conversations with people. Me—if I don’t see three dollars in your hand, you’re not getting a beer. Nothing to discuss. Case closed.”

  Pete laughed. “Looks like you’re going to have to go back to making millions as a big-time Miami lawyer, Jack.” Jack had started his own firm in Miami twenty years earlier. It now had a hundred lawyers.

  “Not for long,” Jack replied. “I’m going fishing soon. Five years, max.”

  “Retiring?” Pete asked. “At your age?”

  “Yeah,” Ron cut in. “Jack’s planning on moving to some rinky-dink, hole-in-the-wall town called Bass Creek, down by the Okalatchee near the big lake. He fancies himself a fisherman. You’ll be bored stiff in a year, Jack. Are you going to find yourself a toothless old woman to hang out with?”

  They were all laughing now, letting go of the exhaustion from the evening’s work. Jack was the foil for the moment and he relished the role. Nothing like old friends to keep you grounded.

  “Maybe I’ll get along without a woman,” Jack said. His third wife, Renee, had divorced him less than three months before. “Maybe I’ll find peace in solitude.”

  “Shoot him now, Ronnie. He’s finished,” Pete said. When they were younger, Pete had been the ladies’ man of the group. He was of eastern European descent with a handsome face, piercing brown eyes, and thick dark hair.

  “No, he’s not,” Ronnie objected. “He’s just taking a break from women. You would too if you’d been married to the princesses he’s been with. Sorry, Jack, but you haven’t chosen well, at least not up to this point.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t lived up to the expectations of such an esteemed pair as you two. If I meet another woman, I’ll be sure to run her by you guys.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Ron continued. “But I’ve got a better one, Jackie boy. Move up here. I’ll introduce you to some beautiful women.”

  “Thanks, Ronnie, but I’ve got my heart set on being a small-town country lawyer and fishing a little every day.”

  “This is the place for you, Jack. We’ve got running trails, hiking trails, natural springs, and the most beautiful rivers in all of Florida.”

  “Sorry, Ronnie. I’m hooked on Bass Creek. It’s a sleepy little backwoods town that sits next to a pretty big fishing pond. A man can lose track of time in a place like that.” The “pond” Jack was referring to was the great Lake Okeechobee.

  “That’ll change. As a matter of fact, I predict someday you’ll come here to Oakville, Jack, maybe for a case or something, and you’ll decide to stay.”

  “Wow, this is getting heavy,” Pete said. “Predictions of the future.”

  “Mark my words,” Ronnie continued. “Jack will be here. It’ll be for either a big case or a woman or both.”

  “Look at him,” Jack countered. “He has one good night and all of a sudden he thinks he’s Carnac the Magnificent.”

  “It was a good night,” Pete said.

  “Yeah,” Ron replied. “Now if I can just find a way to have a championship football game played at the stadium every night of the week, I may survive in this business.”

  PART ONE

  October 1993

  Oakville, Florida

  Chapter One

  Stacey Kincaid had been at the University of North Central Florida at Oakville all of two months, but she already knew her way around. A pretty brunette with large greenish-hazel eyes, she stood out among the sea of blue-eyed blondes on campus.

  It was a gloomy Monday afternoon. The rain had just stopped as she descended the steps of Fogarty Hall reading from her psychology textbook, a dangerous practice even on dry, sunny days. She looked up for a moment and spotted him walking in the grass about a hundred feet in front of her, stooped over, limping along, his right leg in a cast below the knee.

  Carrying too many books in his outstretched arms, he appeared to slip on the wet surface. Both he and the books flew into the air as he performed an awkward and involuntary swan dive, hitting the ground headfirst.

  Instinctively, Stacey rushed to the rescue.

  “Are you okay?” she asked as she helped him to his feet.

  “Yes,” he said in a soft, almost helpless voice. “Thank you so much.”

  The books were scattered everywhere and he began to pick them up, his mannerisms deliberate, like those of an older man, although he looked to be in his midtwenties—thirty at the most
. Thin, with shoulder-length blond hair and a scraggly beard, he was dressed like a sixties hippy in jeans, a tie-dyed tee shirt, and one dirty white Converse All-Star. The cast leg was shoeless. The front part of his body was soaking wet.

  “Let me help you,” she said as she started to pick up some of the books.

  “Thanks. I don’t know if I can make it to my car. It’s just a block off campus,” he said when the books were all gathered and she was still holding a few in her hands along with her own psychology textbook and a notebook.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She walked beside him until they reached the car, an old beat-up, two-door orange Volkswagen Bug. The man struggled to find his keys with the books in his hands, then fidgeted with the lock. Finally, he succeeded in opening the car door. Stacey smiled patiently as she watched him.

  What a klutz, she thought. No wonder he’s in a cast.

  The man pulled the passenger seat down and deposited his books in the back. Stacey didn’t notice him linger for a moment before he withdrew himself from the rear of the car.

  “You can put those books on the floor in front,” he told her, pointing to the empty floor on the passenger side.

  Stacey leaned down and set the books on the floor of the front seat. For some reason, she stole a glance back at him as she set the books in place. She didn’t know why she did it—perhaps it was simply intuition, perhaps it stemmed from her training in tae kwon do. Whatever the reason, that quick glance saved her life.

  She saw the man raising his right arm to strike her with a small club that had appeared in his hand. She pivoted quickly, placing her left forearm high enough to blunt the force of the blow before the man’s arm had gained enough speed on its downward trajectory. Without thinking, she latched her left hand onto his right shoulder as she used him to pull herself up and toward him. When she was almost standing, her right leg came forward and she kneed him hard in the groin and whirled him around using both hands.

  He first doubled in pain from the blow, then lost his balance and found himself on the ground on his back. She had deftly twisted him off his feet.

  He instantly regained his balance, however, reaching for something lodged under his left pant leg and turned back toward her catlike, swinging his right arm as he did so. The awkward, bumbling fool of minutes ago had disappeared. The cast, obviously fake judging from the maneuvers he was now making, had fallen off. Stacey saw a new object in his right hand: a large bowie knife. No time to run. When he shifted his weight forward, she took a step back with her left leg and swung her right one as a soccer player might, snapping it quickly as it connected with the man’s wrist. The wrist hit the top part of the doorframe. The man screamed in pain as the knife went flying into the air. Stacey kicked him twice more, once in the throat and once in the jaw. He fell back into the front passenger seat as the knife landed harmlessly in front of her.

  She stared at it for a moment. It had an unusual handle. She’d seen the design before in one of her classes—a grotesquely carved figure popular in the Middle Ages called a gargoyle.

  The fight was not over, however. The man reached for something again, this time under the passenger seat.

  It’s a gun! Stacey thought. There was no time to stop him. She could take a chance and try to knock the gun out of his hands, but the element of surprise was gone. The better decision was to run, and she started at full speed toward College Avenue, a block and a half away. There would be plenty of people on the avenue. She ran with total abandon as if the bullet were already in the air and she needed to distance herself from it. But the bullet never came. And when she finally took a look back, her attacker was nowhere in sight. Still, she kept on until she reached The Swamp, a popular bar and restaurant in town.

  “Please call the police!” she said to the bartender, a woman not much older than herself. “A man just tried to kill me. I think he’s still after me.”

  Chapter Two

  I want you to do me a favor,” Detective Danielle Jansen said to Stacey. They were sitting in one of those sterile interrogation rooms in the Oakville Police Department: white walls, metal desk, four metal chairs. Stacey felt a little like a suspect who was being interrogated although Detective Jansen was very nice.

  “What?” Stacey asked.

  “This will be a little hard because of what you’ve just been through, but I want you to close your eyes and bring up the image of the man who attacked you. Can you do that?”

  There was another person in the room with them, a sketch artist the department had borrowed from Dade County for a few weeks. He was sitting off in the corner with a sketchpad on his lap. And behind the window that looked into the room were seven men: another detective from the Oakville Police Department, two detectives from the Apache County Sheriff’s Department, and four FBI agents.

  “I’ll try,” Stacey replied. It had been a long day already and she was tired. When the attack came, she had acted forcefully without thinking. Now, after learning who her attacker might have been, she was a bundle of nerves. It was going to be difficult to bring that man back to life in her mind. She closed her eyes.

  “Can you see him?” Detective Jansen asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can you see his eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “What color are they?”

  “Blue, I think.”

  “Are they large or small?”

  “I’d say large.”

  “What about his eyebrows—can you see them?”

  “Not really. I mean, he’s got eyebrows but they don’t stand out.”

  “What about his nose?”

  “It’s straight, almost pointy. Not big.”

  “That’s good, very good. What about the lips?”

  “Thin.”

  “Chin?”

  “It doesn’t stick out or anything.”

  “Ears?”

  “Can’t see them. His hair is covering them.”

  “You said he had long blond hair—is it straight or curly?”

  “Curly.”

  “And his beard—is it full?”

  “No, it’s kind of stubbly, not very long.”

  “How about his teeth?”

  “Can’t see them.”

  “Anything else? A mole maybe, or a scar—something that will help us identify him?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Okay, Stacey, you can open your eyes.”

  Stacey took a deep breath. It hadn’t been so bad. The sketch artist came over and showed them the face he had drawn based on Stacey’s observations.

  “Does that look like him?” Detective Jansen asked her.

  “Kinda.”

  “Is there anything you would change?”

  “I think his face is thinner, that’s all.”

  The man went back to his desk and started working on a revision. Within minutes he had a new sketch, which Detective Jansen again showed to Stacey.

  “That’s good,” Stacey said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay. Come on over and sit with me at my desk.” Detective Jansen put her arm on Stacey’s shoulder like a mother comforting a troubled child and walked with her out of the room and over to her desk.

  Stacey liked Detective Jansen. There was something about her that made Stacey calm down even though she felt like a Mexican jumping bean inside. “Can I ask you a question, Detective Jansen?”

  “Sure, and call me Danni. That’s what everybody around here calls me.”

  “Isn’t this a hard job to do, I mean, for a woman?”

  Danni smiled, looking around the room and seeing what Stacey was observing for the first time. “At times it’s a challenge, but I love what I do.”

  Detective Jansen’s desk was located in a large room with other desks. Men were everywhere, bustling about, hairy arms protruding from long-sleeved shirts that were folded just below the elbows as if they were all in uniform even though they were detec
tives. Stacey noticed that Danni was dressed somewhat like the men: She wore pants and a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves folded to just below the elbow. She even had a man’s nickname. Her shirt was pink, however, her arms smooth and tanned, her short hair fashionably styled, and she wore makeup. There was no mistaking her radiant face amid that sea of stubble. She was fitting in with the boys but only so far.

  “Have you called your parents and told them what happened?” Danni asked.

  “Yeah,” Stacey replied. “Right after I called you guys. They’re coming up.”

  “From where?”

  “St. Petersburg. I think they might take me out of school. I don’t want that to happen.”

  She was sitting in a chair next to Danni’s desk now. It was Danni’s turn to take a good hard look at this young girl who had so recently fought off a serial killer. She was about five foot six, a couple of inches shorter than Danni herself but taller than the five other victims. And she had the look of an athlete, her body firm and toned. None of that would have helped if it weren’t for the martial arts training. That training had made her the only coed so far to survive the attack of a serial killer. By doing so, Stacey had given the police their first real evidence to work with.

  Danni put her hands on Stacey’s shoulders and looked into her eyes.

  “Listen to me. I don’t know if you appreciate fully what happened today. You saved your own life because of what you did. You were unbelievably brave but you were still lucky. We’ll keep your name out of the papers and we can keep tabs on you for a few days, but eventually you’re going to be on your own again. We haven’t established a pattern for this killer yet. Once he knows that we have an accurate description, he will realize that you are the only person who can identify him. It may be wise to take the semester off while we catch this guy.”

  “But I don’t want to.”

  Danni understood the sentiment. She’d been eighteen once. All eighteen-year-olds were immortal in their own minds no matter what the potential danger. However, she understood Stacey’s parents’ concern as well. She had a daughter of her own, Hannah, and she was a single parent. The fact that her daughter was only ten years old did not allay her fears.