Longhorn Law 2: A Legal Thriller

by Dave Daren

  “Inmates,” I repeated right back at her and felt like my sanity might have been fraying just a little bit at the edges.

  Luckily for my mental well being, however, she didn’t repeat the word a third time and instead gave a slow, thoughtful nod. Her thin lips twisted into a pursed scowl as she seemed to be sorting through the same things that Brody and I had sifted through the day before.

  What was Thompson after? Was the election important to his corruption or was it just a reason for us to back off? How much more was he doing that we hadn’t been able to see? How many other people had suffered at the hands of his crooked behavior that had never come forward? And worst of all, were we in any sort of danger following his threats?

  There were too many questions with not enough answers, and it made my skin crawl.

  Brody scratched at his head and ruffled his thinning hair. That morning he had dressed in a much nicer shirt than the ones he usually favored, a vibrant shade of red that had white piping along the collar, which presumably meant his wife had dressed him. He looked undeniably like a cowboy, but when I had gone to make the joke, he’d fixed me with a tired, annoyed look that had me raise my hands up in surrender instead.

  “What’s our next course of action, then?” Brody asked as he dropped his hand back down to rest on his belt buckle and glanced between Evelyn and I with an expectant quirk of a thick eyebrow.

  I pushed my hand up through my hair and exhaled a slow sigh as I tried to think of what we should do. Unlike Brody, I had not opted for the cowboy look and had instead settled for jeans and a t-shirt again.

  The less formal look had worked well the day before, and I figured that if I was going to have to sniff around the police, I should try to look as little like a lawyer as I could manage.

  I shifted from foot to foot and waffled my head from side-to-side in thought.

  “I think,” I began with a slow creep to my words. “That we should try to talk to the rest of the people on Todd’s list. We already have Todd, Natalie, and Jackson who’ve explained that the police unlawfully took their belongings, and I think that I trust Todd’s information about the others.”

  I couldn’t vouch for how trustworthy Todd was overall, but I had a good sense for people, and he didn’t strike me as someone that would purposefully mislead us or feed us false information.

  He’d been right about Jackson, after all, and after a cursory Google search about his former shooting range, Carson’s Caliber, the information he’d given us about his own life seemed to check out, too.

  I could tell based on the ever so faint twitch of her eye that Evelyn wasn’t too fond of the idea that we were going to base much of our investigation on the word of the alleged town crazy, but I elected to ignore that.

  “How many people were even left on the list?” Brody asked, and I gave silent thanks that he was on my side without question.

  I figured that his lack of hesitancy probably had something to do with the fact that he’d actually met both Jackson and Todd and saw the way they looked when they’d described the things that had happened to them.

  There were some things that you just couldn’t fake, and the despair in both of their eyes as they told their stories was certainly one of them.

  “Four other people,” I said after doing the mental calculations.

  I couldn’t quite remember their names, but I knew that the number was correct.

  “Hang on,” I said and raised my finger to halt any potential conversation. “I still have it on my desk.”

  I didn’t wait for a response before I pushed myself out of the doorway of my office and back into my office itself. I swiveled on my heels and made my way over toward my desk.

  The surface was cluttered from all the things I’d gathered over the course of the investigation the last few days as well as the cases we’d already had opened, despite my best efforts to keep things organized.

  This case might have taken the forefront of my mind, but that didn’t mean we didn’t have other cases we were working on at the same time. Nor did it mean that our other clients weren’t as important as what was going on with Thompson.

  Unfortunately, sometimes cases just captured my attention in a way that made them consume my thoughts, and this case was one of them. It made me feel like a dog with a bone that refused to share with its owner.

  I scanned the surface of my desk for the small scrap of notebook paper that Todd had given me with all of the names. Once again, I was grateful that the people involved in this investigation were the sort of people that liked to take things into their own hands until they hit a wall. It meant most of the initial work was already done, and all we had to do was carry the ball over the goal line.

  In the case of the Sheriff, Todd protested, Jackson went to auctions, and Natalie came to talk to us when it became clear that Thompson wouldn’t listen to her. If it hadn't been for the three of them taking steps toward justice, Thompson would continue to operate unchecked until he did something truly catastrophic, and that thought made me feel a bit ill because I was sure he’d find a way to bring down the town as well.

  I eventually found the small scrap tucked under the edge of my calendar and leaned over to snag it free. I smoothed it out on the leg of my jeans and skimmed the names once again as I started to walk back toward the hallway where Brody and Evelyn waited.

  In Todd’s chicken scratch scrawl were the names Tina Goodman, Richard Belk, Leigh Stefwater, and Tristan Daniels, along with their contact information.

  I pressed my shoulder back into the doorway and passed the note to Evelyn’s already waiting hand.

  Her eyes skimmed over the names before she passed it to Brody.

  “We have their phone numbers,” she said. “We could easily try to reach out to them from the office.”

  “Good idea,” I said with a small nod as I rubbed at my chin. “I would hope that it isn’t too difficult, but I have no idea if those numbers are work numbers or cell phone numbers. Hell, they could even be home phone numbers.”

  As pleased as I was with Todd’s legwork, I would have preferred a few more details, but I supposed that if the information had been intended for him alone, he wouldn’t have needed to write anything else down.

  I chided myself for not asking him for more information the day we’d met him outside the sheriff’s department, but then I hadn’t expected this matter to grow into the beast it had become.

  Brody passed the list back to me and shifted his stance against the wall of the hallway.

  “Do you want to divide up the names to split up the workload?” he asked with a tilt of his head to the side.

  I bobbed my head from side-to-side as if I was physically tossing up his suggestion, and I remembered all of the other case files stacked on my desk.

  “I think it would be best if one of you was dedicated to calling the people on Todd’s list, and the other worked through our other open cases,” I finally said. “Most of them were at standstill points when we started this a few days ago, but I don’t want to let them get left behind because we got too wrapped up in this.”

  Brody and Evelyn exchanged a look that seemed to hold an entire conversation, and my eyes darted between the two of them as I tried to figure out what was going unsaid, at least to me. I felt a little like I was watching a ping pong match as my head swiveled back and forth between the two.

  “I’ll take the list,” Brody said and broke the sort of trance I’d fallen into while watching them.

  In truth, that end result didn’t exactly shock me. While Evelyn was good with people in her own strange way, I felt like Brody was better at dealing with the sort of people Todd connected with. They were the type of people that might have done shameful things, like Jackson and Natalie, but were ultimately good people, and I knew that Brody could relate to something like that.

  “I”ll take the cases we already have,” Evelyn said despite the fact there had only been one option left. “I’ve already spent the last hour parsing t
hrough emails from the receptionist at Watkins, Merrit, and Chase about the Queensbury case.”

  I skimmed my mental catalogue for a moment to try and recall exactly what the Queensbury case had entailed before I remembered that it was the alimony suit that had taken on a life of its own.

  Brody glanced back up at me and raised his eyebrows in question.

  “What are you going to do, kid?” he asked.

  I exhaled a slow breath and pressed my shoulder a little harder into the doorframe as if it could support more of my weight. I knew what I needed to do, but it was no less welcome.

  “I’m going to head down to the sheriff’s department to see if any of the deputies are willing to talk to me about Thompson,” I said with a heavy sigh.

  I knew before I even looked at the expressions on Brody and Evelyn’s faces that they thought it was a horrible idea. Hell, I thought it was a horrible idea, but sometimes I had to do stupid things for the good of a case, and talking to Thompson’s deputies was one such stupid thing.

  I could hear Thompson’s threats echo around my skull, and they practically rattled like pinballs.

  “And you think that’s a good idea?” Brody said with a slowness that I knew he used to make me realize how bad of an idea it actually was.

  I didn’t point out that I knew it was a bad idea, and instead, I just gave as easy of a smile as I could manage.

  “It’s more fun to make bad decisions, isn’t it?” I joked with a soft laugh and a shrug of my shoulders.

  I’d resigned myself to the stupidity of the idea the second I’d first had it, and now, I just had to dedicate myself to the mission and follow through.

  “It’s not,” Evelyn huffed as she rolled her eyes to punctuate her sentence and then folded her arms back over her chest. “But I know there’s no talking you out of it.”

  She turned on her heels to head back to her awaiting desk chair.

  “Just try not to get shot this time,” she called over her shoulder.

  I could hear the traces of concern under the layers of sarcasm in her tone, and I couldn’t help but be a little touched.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said without actually knowing whether or not I’d be fine.

  I’d always subscribed to the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ school of thought, and this situation was no different.

  Brody heaved a sigh of his own and shook his head before he walked across the hallway to clap me on the shoulder. He didn’t say anything, but I could feel the kind intentions in the gesture, and I watched as he turned back around to retreat into his own office.

  Soon, I was left alone in the hallway with only my thoughts for company as Brody and Evelyn started up their tasks for the day. With a sigh, I tried to block out those thoughts that kept telling me this was a bad idea, and I hurried back to my car before I could change my mind.

  I made my way over to my car at the far end of the parking lot and wedged myself into the driver’s seat. I tossed my phone onto the passenger seat along with the small notebook I had started to intermittently carry around.

  After my phone was shot during the Knox investigation, I realized how much I relied on my phone for everything, and so I’d started trying to rely on it a little less. It was a noble goal, but it would work better if I actually remembered to stick to it more than once a month.

  I took another deep breath, just to steel myself against whatever might come, and pulled out of the parking lot to head toward the sheriff’s department a few minutes away.

  The short drive passed in uneventful silence as I tried to organize my thoughts and the questions I needed to ask whatever deputies were willing to talk with me.

  But I’d seen how they’d closed ranks the day before at the auction, and I didn’t look forward to watching as it happened again before my eyes. All I could do was hope one of the deputies actually had a conscience, or at the very least, a mostly true north moral compass.

  I pulled into the department’s parking lot and wedged my car between a light post and one of the ancient-looking squad cars that sat nearest to the mouth of the lot. I wanted to be able to make a speedy escape in case anyone tried to chase me off. Getting slapped with a trespassing offense, even temporarily, wouldn’t look good for me no matter how unjustified or illegal it was.

  The parking lot looked empty save for the squad cars and a singular unmarked vehicle that could have easily belonged to a citizen or the department itself. But there were no deputies in the lot, and no one ran out of the building and told me to move my car.

  So I slipped out of my car with my phone and my notepad tucked into the back pocket of my jeans and clicked the lock on my keyfob before I started up toward the narrow, sepia-tinted front door of the department.

  I’d only been inside the building on a few occasions, and it was never any more impressive than it had been on my first visit. The singular air conditioning unit in the department worked overtime from where it hung in the narrow window near the ceiling. The colored pieces of ribbon tied to the grate looked like they’d been changed since the last time I was here, and were now various shades of blue. The pop of color didn’t do much to compliment the green-gray metal of the desks and the yellowed overtones that saturated everything else in the lobby.

  I’d always thought that the sheriff’s department looked like the last time the building had been renovated was in the 70s, and even then that felt generous. It did make me wonder where all of their budget had gone, since it clearly wasn’t the cars for the deputies or the building they worked in. At first, I had assumed that the budget went to things like their weapons or the gear they used, or maybe to upgrade the radio systems in their squad cars.

  But with the memories of Thompson’s property and the seized asset auction etched into the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder if things were more nefarious than I’d originally considered.

  I shifted my stance in front of the department’s door as I scanned the room. Unless someone was hiding behind a desk, the room was completely empty.

  The sight wasn’t exactly reassuring, but I supposed walking into an empty department was a little better than walking into a lobby filled with armed people that seemed to be out for my blood.

  I didn’t dare walk through the lobby toward the hallway that led toward Thompson’s office. The entire point of this excursion was to talk to the people around Thompson without having to talk to Thompson himself.

  I hesitated before I cleared my throat.

  “Hello?” I called out with a tentative edge to my tone.

  The department couldn’t be empty, could it? Despite how corrupt the department seemed, I couldn’t imagine that they’d just leave the building completely unstaffed at nine in the morning on a Friday.

  When no one answered my call, I shifted from one foot to the other and tossed around my options.

  I could sit down and wait for someone to appear and run the risk of it being Thompson or one of the more volatile deputies, or I could leave and come back later. And then there was the third and more dangerous option to wander the precinct unaccompanied in the search of someone, anyone, but that option felt like a good way to be slapped in cuffs by a gleefully vindictive cop.

  I heaved a deep sigh before I shuffled over and lowered myself into one of the tiny, uncomfortable plastic chairs that lined the wall in front of the short row of desks where the deputies worked.

  Before I could even pull my phone from my pocket to entertain myself while I waited, however, someone emerged from the hallway with a massive, beaten-up plastic coffee mug in hand.

  It looked like one of those mugs that rest stops sold, the ones that had their labels on the front in big letters, but whatever had been on the front of this mug had completely worn off with time.

  The arm connected to the mug led up to a familiar pockmarked face, and I could feel relief warm its way through my body as I recognized Deputy Jenkins.

  Months prior when I’d come into the department to report the attempt on my lif
e and the illegal chemical dump I had witnessed, Jenkins had taken my statement before Thompson had swooped in to dismiss him. He didn’t seem like the most competent law enforcement officer, but he also had never been openly hostile to me in the months after the Knox incident.

  Under the yellow fluorescents, Jenkins’ pale-blond hair looked like straw, and the lighting didn’t do many favors toward his acne, either, but I was oddly pleased to see that his skin did seem to have cleared up some since our last real interaction.

  Jenkins’ seemed oblivious to my presence as he walked into the room and moved over toward the desk in the front left corner of the room, the one that sat just underneath the air conditioner.

  I stood up and cleared my throat once again, and Jenkins all but jumped in shock.

  His eyes blew open wide, and he gripped at his chest with one hand while clutching his coffee cup with the other.

  “Oh, my God,” he wheezed in his thin, high voice. “How long have you been here?”

  He continued to clutch his chest as he lowered himself into his chair. He wore the same unflattering brown uniform that all the deputies wore, and it hung off his bony frame in a way that made him look smaller than he probably was.

  I wondered if the department hadn’t been able to afford properly-sized uniforms, or if Jenkins really was just that bony.

  I flashed him an apologetic smile as I crossed the small room and dragged one of the plastic chairs from the line along the wall on the left side of the room toward his desk before I sat down in front of him.

  “Only a few minutes,” I said while I kept the smile on my face. “Jenkins, right?”

  I said it as if he wasn’t wearing a little plastic name tag below his badge and that I hadn’t recognized him on sight.

  Jenkins set his coffee cup down on the very corner of his cluttered desk and nodded as he took a deep, gulping breath. Despite the air conditioning pumping in mildly cool air, his hair stuck ever so slightly to his forehead.