The Lawyer's Lawyer

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.”