The Lawyer's Lawyer

CHAPTER Eleven



After she checked out the crime scene with the other members of the task force, Danni went looking for Sam. She found him downstairs in his den with the door closed, sitting at his desk smoking a cigarette. Sam was not a smoker.

When she walked in, Sam stood up and gave her a hug and started weeping again with his head on her shoulder.

“I don’t want anybody to see me like this.”

“They’re your friends, Sam. They understand.”

Sam let her go at that point and sat back down in his chair. “It’s funny—up until a few minutes ago I believed wholeheartedly what you just said. We’re in the business of murder. We understand. The reality is I never understood all those people who were crying over their loved ones. I never got it until now. Now it’s my Alice.” He fought back the tears again. “Twenty-five years we were together. Twenty-five years. What am I going to tell my kids?”

Danni didn’t know what to say so she said nothing, just stood next to him with her hand on his shoulder. They stayed there like that for several minutes.

“We’ve gotta get that bastard,” Sam finally said.

“We will, Sam. We will.”

“If he finds out where your daughter is, he’s going to kill her. You know that, don’t you?”

It was the first thing Danni had thought about when she heard about Alice. “Yes, I know.”

“I should have gotten that search warrant for you. I don’t know if that kid is innocent or guilty, but we can’t leave any stone unturned. I know how you feel now.”

“It’s too late for that, Sam, but we’ll catch this guy.”

Sam wasn’t listening though. He was in his own nightmare.

“I put you off,” he said, standing up and walking around the room. He was such a big man that he immediately made the room look smaller. “I sent you to Jane and then I sent her a memo basically telling her to give you lip service. She told you she was going to go to the judge but she did the same thing with him that I did with her. People are dying out there and she’s sitting with the judge telling him about a hysterical police officer. What the hell were we thinking?”

Danni had already figured out how the search warrant deal had gone down so she was not all that upset by Sam’s confession. She was worried about him though. He was losing it. She stopped him and put her hands on his shoulders as she looked him in the eye.

“Look, you were right about the search warrant. Besides, it’s not important now. You’ve got to pull yourself together, Sam. Your kids are going to need your strength. They’re going to look for it.”

Sam loved his kids. Danni expected him to straighten up when she mentioned them but he didn’t. The head lowered again.

“I don’t know what to say to them.”

“You’ll find the words.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll help you. Now, I know this is not going to sound that reassuring, but I want you to give me your gun.”

Sam lifted his head and gave her a quizzical look. “My gun? What do you think I’m going to do?”

“Nothing, but I don’t know for sure. Neither do you. Nobody knows how they will handle a situation like this. Give it to me. I’ll hold it for seventy-two hours, then I’ll give it back to you. I’ll tell the sheriff informally what I’ve done so they don’t try to do anything formally.”

Sam knew the protocol. He knew they could put him on leave and ask him for his gun. Danni was trying to save him from all of that.

“I don’t want to miss a day looking for this guy.”

“Come on, Sam. You’ve got to bury your wife. You have to tend to your children. You need at least a couple of weeks.”

“I’m not taking that long.” He almost shouted the words. “I’m gonna get this piece of shit.”

“We’ll see. For now, give me your gun for seventy-two hours.”

Sam took his Glock out of his holster and reluctantly handed it to her.

“I’m sure this isn’t the only gun you have,” she said as she took the Glock.

Sam looked at her again. “Do you want to leave me defenseless?”

“He’s not coming after you, Sam. You’re the wrong sex. Now where’s your other gun?”

Sam reached into the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a key. “I’ve got a few,” he said and opened the door to what appeared to be a closet. Danni watched, expecting him to pull a gun out of his shoebox or something. Instead, he walked into the closet, which was free of clothing, reached down to an almost invisible latch on the right-hand side of the back wall, inserted the key, turned it, and the wall became a sliding door revealing a small room on the other side that contained a mini arsenal. Sam entered the room with Danni right behind him. There was a rifle with a scope (Danni couldn’t make out the model) mounted on the wall with several shotguns, and an AK-47. Sam had built a long thin table underneath the mounted guns. In the middle of the table were some tools, cleaning materials, two high-intensity lamps, and a chair for Sam to sit in while he was doing his work. On each side of the chair, laid out in a row, were five semiautomatic guns: two to the left, three to the right.

“I built this den with my own hands,” Sam said. “And I put this little room in for myself. Nobody knew about it but Alice, and now you.”

“What the hell are you getting ready for, World War III?” Danni asked.

“I’m a collector. It’s my hobby. Rifles, shotguns, semiautomatic weapons.”

“No revolvers?” Danni asked for no particular reason.

“I don’t like revolvers,” Sam replied.

Danni thought for a brief moment about how Sam had dismissed her argument that Thomas Felton might have been a collector of exotic knives, but she let it pass. This was not the time. She put the Glock on the left side of the table to make the distribution even.

“Is that the only key to this room?” she asked.

“It sure as hell is.”

“Why don’t you lock up and give me the key.”

To Danni’s surprise, Sam did exactly as she requested, which made her believe he had another gun hidden somewhere else.

“I’ll give this back to you in a few days, I promise.”

“I wouldn’t have given it to you if I didn’t trust you, Danni.”