The Lawyer's Lawyer

CHAPTER Ten



Alice Jeffries was a lonely woman these days. Her husband, Sam, was spending fourteen- to sixteen-hour days at the office with the occasional middle-of-the-night rendezvous at murder sites around the city of Oakville. It had started the night of the first murder four months ago. Sam ran the homicide division at the Sheriff’s Department. If all the murders are in Oakville, why is my husband, a captain in the Apache County Sheriff’s Department, responsible for solving them when Oakville has its own police department? Alice asked herself, usually in the middle of the night when he had gone out to a scene and she was left alone in their bed. She knew the answer, but she asked the question anyway because she was angry and exasperated.

Oakville was in Apache County so it was part of the sheriff’s jurisdiction. Besides, this case was a different animal. Hell, the FBI was here. And Sam was now the head of the whole investigation. That acknowledgment didn’t make her feel one bit better. Oh, she was proud of Sam, but this murderer was killing their marriage along with those coeds. I guess I’m being a little selfish, she told herself from time to time.

Alice was the second-grade teacher at White Springs Elementary School, a five-minute drive from her house. She went to work at seven every weekday morning during the school year and was home at four most days. Before the murders had begun, she would often meet Sam as he was pulling into the driveway, his job hours being as predictable as hers. They’d married when they were both twenty. It was a shotgun wedding with little Johnny arriving six months later. Kathleen was born two years after that. The kids had gone off to college now and were pursuing their own careers, Johnny in D.C., and Kathleen in Miami. At the ripe old age of forty-five, Alice was living in the proverbial empty nest.

It was fine when she and Sam were on the same schedule. They’d go out for a bite to eat, maybe a movie if they felt up to it. Or they’d prepare a meal together at home. Cooking was a hobby they both enjoyed. After the first murder, Sam started working ungodly hours. Alice just went home and amused herself with a good book or the television. A couple of months later, however, she’d taken to going out a night or two during the weekend with some of her girlfriends from work. Nothing fancy, just a few drinks at the local tavern. She overdid it a few times, but not very often. It was awkward at first since most people knew she was the wife of a captain in the Sheriff’s Department. But after a while she fit right in. She’d always get home early, well before Sam arrived.

Alice was a petite, pretty woman, with short brown hair and green eyes, and she maintained her figure with a strict diet and regular exercise on her home treadmill. She and Sam made an odd couple because he was so massive. Many times when they were out to eat she’d catch people looking at the two of them. She knew what they were wondering. Yeah, I get on top, she’d wanted to say, and it’s great.

This Saturday night, she’d had a little too much at the bar because a man she’d never met before—actually, she didn’t even meet him that night—kept sending over drinks for her and her girlfriends. She’d swerved a little bit on the five-block drive back to the house. Keep it steady, she told herself. Sam would not be too happy if you got a DUI. F*ck you, Sam. No f*ck me, Sam. Please. Just so I can remember what it feels like once again before I die.

It was a tad overdramatic, she knew. After all it had only been four months and there was a reason for it. Poor Sam was working his ass off, night and day. Some couples their age never had sex. She stumbled out of the car and up to the doorway. It took her almost two minutes to get the key into the door. She chuckled to herself as she kept missing the keyhole. Finally she was in. She slammed the door behind her and headed upstairs to the bedroom. When Sam got home, she wanted to be asleep. You can’t question a sleeping beauty, she reasoned.

Standing in the bathroom in her bra and panties brushing her teeth with her eyes closed, Alice started dreaming about this guy she’d met at the bar a couple of weeks back. He’d asked her to dance. She’d refused, of course, but she’d wanted to and now she pictured herself on the dance floor twirling around, carefree. You’re not an old maid, she told herself as she swayed to the imaginary music. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.

She didn’t see the lights go out because her eyes were closed and she was more than a little drunk. In her dreamlike state, she didn’t even hear the click of the switch. The first sign of trouble for Alice was when she felt a sharp pain at her throat. Suddenly she was yanked off the ground by something around her neck. She opened her eyes then but couldn’t see anything. She felt him behind her and tried to turn and grab him, but she had no leverage. The pain was unbearable now. She was gasping for breath and flailing her arms. Whatever it was around her neck was cutting her badly. She tried to grab hold of it and release the pressure but she couldn’t. It was a wire! She made a last-ditch effort to scratch his face but it was too late. She felt herself slipping into unconsciousness.

Sam came home a half hour later. He headed for the kitchen and made himself a ham sandwich. Then he turned on the TV in the living room and watched it for an hour or so before heading up to bed. As he flipped on the light switch in the bathroom to take his last piss of the evening, he almost fell over Alice’s corpse.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed, recoiling from the body on the floor. He could feel himself starting to hyperventilate as Alice’s cold dead eyes seemed to stare right at him. Then the cop took over. He knelt down and checked her pulse. There was no doubt she was dead. He called 911 and made his report. After that, he checked the entire house for clues.

When he was finished, the twenty-year veteran who had recently presided over so many ghastly crime scenes of young women went back up to the bathroom, sat down next to his wife, held her cold, rigid hand in his, and wept.