The Lawyer's Lawyer

CHAPTER Thirty-Nine



Jack sat on the floor after hanging up with Henry. He didn’t want to get up. Getting up meant dealing with what had happened. Maybe if I just stay here it will all go away. But he knew that was childish thinking. Besides, it wouldn’t work. No matter where he was, he couldn’t just turn off his mind. Couldn’t force himself to go to sleep. There was at least one way to turn it off though. He stood up, walked to the kitchen, grabbed a glass with his right hand, the Jack Daniel’s with his left, and headed for the patio.

He wanted to howl at the moon, although it was a little too early to do that. He wanted to scream about the unfairness of life. But life hadn’t been unfair to him. He’d lost Pat, his wife, to cancer, but that was a far cry from losing both your wife and your daughter at the hands of a psychopathic murderer. Sam Jeffries, not Jack, had an absolute right to howl at the moon. Jack took a long pull from the bottle. He hadn’t needed the glass after all.

Only when he was good and drunk could he return to the scene of what he considered his crime. When he was devoid of the ability to rationalize his actions—that’s when he went back. His soul needed condemnation not vindication.

It was vanity! that little voice inside his head told him when he arrived at the state of mind he so craved. It was all about your vanity! Nobody had ever gotten a serial killer off before—nobody but the great Jack Tobin. You should be proud of yourself, Jack. You did it! And don’t let it bother you, don’t let it ruin your night that the son of a bitch was actually guilty. Somebody else got killed, it’s true, and there may be more, but there are always casualties on a man’s road to success. Some have to fall for others to rise. It’s the nature of the universe.

If Henry was there, Henry would have reminded him of the true facts: You and I came to see Ben Chapman at Chapman’s request, Jack. You didn’t want to take this case. You didn’t even want to look at the file. I talked you into it. Once you saw this man had been set up by the police, that’s when you couldn’t let it go. Vanity had nothing to do with it, Jack. Injustice was the culprit.

But Henry wasn’t there.