Lisa Gardner - Alone

"So he tries to move fast, we try to move slow," Bobby said quietly.

"He tries to exert his expertise as a criminal court judge. We hope for a countering opinion from the DA. Then what?"

"Then it gets personal."

Bobby stared at the lawyer. Harvey shrugged.

"Basically, it's he said/she said. You're saying you saw a credible threat. The other side is saying you're wrong. To do that, they gotta go after you. They're gonna bring in your family. Were you a violent child, did you always love guns? They're going to dig into your lifestyle-young, single officer. Do you frequent bars, sleep around, get into brawls? Too bad you're not married with kids; it always looks better if you're married with kids. What about a dog? Do you happen to own a cute dog? A black Lab or golden retriever would be perfect."

"No cute dogs." Bobby considered things.

"I'm a landlord. My tenant has cats."

"Is your tenant young and beautiful?" Harvey asked suspiciously.

"Elderly woman on a fixed income."

Harvey brightened noticeably.

"Excellent. You gotta love a man who helps the elderly. Which, of course, brings us to ex-girlfriends."

Bobby rolled his eyes at that segue.

"There's a few," he admitted.

"Which ones hate you?"

"None of them."

"Sure about that?"

He thought of Susan. He honestly didn't know how she was feeling.

"No," he found himself saying.

"I'm not sure."

"They'll talk to your neighbors. They'll look deep into your past. They'll look for incidents of bias-that you don't like blacks or Hispanics or people who drive BMWs."

"I don't have biases," Bobby said, then stopped, frowned, and got a bad feeling.

"The DUI arrest."

"The DUI arrest?"

"Earlier that day. Guy was driving a Hummer while intoxicated. Did a bit of damage, then got bent out of shape when we actually tried to put him in jail. He had an attitude. We, uh, we exchanged some words."

"Words?"

"I called him a rich prick," Bobby said matter-of-factly. Harvey winced.

"Oh yeah, that's gonna hurt. Anything else I should know?"

Bobby looked at the lawyer a long time. He debated what to say, how much to say. In the end, he settled on, "I don't want my father to take the stand."

Harvey regarded him curiously.

"We don't have to call him as a character witness if you don't want us to."

"What if they call him?"

"He's your father. Assuming he's going to testify in your favor, they won't call him."

"But if they do?" Bobby insisted.

Harvey was catching on now.

"What don't I know?" "I don't want him on the stand. Period."

"If they know something, Bobby, if they know something you're not telling me, we may not have a choice."

"What if he's… out of state?"

"They'll subpoena him. If he doesn't answer the summons, he's in contempt of court and they can pursue legal action against him."

Bobby had been afraid of that.

"What if I don't testify?"

"Then you'll lose," Harvey said baldly.

"It'll be just their word on what happened Thursday night, and their word will be that you committed murder."

Bobby nodded again. He hung his head. He was looking into the future; he was trying to see beyond one night when he had done, honest to God, what he'd had to do. Nothing looked promising anymore. Nothing looked good.

"Can I win this?" he asked quietly.

"Do I really have a chance?"

"There's always a chance."

"I don't have his kind of money."

"No."

Bobby was honest.

"I don't have his kind of lawyer."

Harvey was honest back.

"No."

"But you think you can pull this out?"

"If we can delay things long enough for the DA's office ruling, and if the DA's office ruling finds that it was justifiable use offeree, then yes, I think we can win."

"That's a lot of ifs."

"Tell me about it."

"And then?"

Harvey hesitated.

"He can appeal, can't he?" Bobby filled in the blanks for the lawyer.

"If this is the clerk-magistrate, then James Gagnon can appeal to the district court, then the superior court, then the supreme judicial court. It goes on and on and on, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Harvey said.

"And he'll file motions, dozens of motions, most of them frivolous but all of them costing you time and money to refute. I'll do what I can. Call in some favors. I know some young lawyers who will help out for the experience and others who will do it for the exposure. But you're right: this is David and Goliath, and, well, you're not Goliath."

"All it takes is money and time," Bobby murmured.

"He's old," Harvey threw out there.

"You mean one day he'll die," Bobby filled in bluntly.

"That's my best-case scenario. Another death."

Harvey didn't bother to lie.

"Yeah. In a situation like this, that's pretty much it."

Bobby rose to his feet. He got out his checkbook. He'd had this nest egg he'd been building. Thinking of one day maybe buying more property, or maybe, if things between him and Susan had gone differently, it would've helped with a wedding. Now he wrote a check for five thousand dollars and placed it on Harvey Jones's desk.

According to the good lawyer, that might last a week. Of course, Bobby already knew something the lawyer didn't-if his father took the stand, he would lose.

"Is this enough for a retainer?"

Harvey nodded.

"If I'm going to pursue things," Bobby said, "I'll call you tomorrow by five p.m."

They shook hands.

Then Bobby went home and got his guns.

The fifty-foot indoor shooting range at the Massachusetts Rifle Association in Woburn, Massachusetts, was slow for a Sunday afternoon. Bobby rolled two spongy orange plugs between his index finger and thumb, fit them into the canals of his ears, then adjusted his safety glasses. He'd brought his Smith amp; Wesson.38 Special, and just for the hell of it, a.45 Colt Magnum.

When Bobby took his proficiency test each month with his rifle, he never took more than one shot. That was it. You took up to an hour, you set up your shot, and then you fired one single bullet. The cold-bore shot. That's because the very first shot out of any gun had the slug traveling down a cold barrel. That slug heated the barrel, which led to slightly different ballistics for every other shot fired.

As a sniper, the assumption was that he'd never fire any of those other rounds. One shot, one kill, so all that mattered, day after day, training exercise after training exercise, was that single, cold-bore shot.

Now, Bobby plunked down six boxes of ammo. The brass casings jingled inside the containers. He opened the first box and loaded up.

He began with the.38, starting at ten feet to loosen up, then moving the target back to twenty-one. Studies claimed that the average police shooting occurred within twenty-one feet, making it a favorite distance for marksmen. Bobby always wondered who did these studies, and why they never bothered to mention if the police were winning or losing in these infamous shootouts.

He started out horribly. Worst damn shooting of his life, and positively embarrassing for someone who'd earned the NRA classification of High Master. He wondered idly if some private investigator was already waiting in the wings to pluck this target for Bobby's upcoming trial. Guy could hold it up on the stand, with its wildly scattered spray of shots: "See this, your honor. And this is from a guy that State says is an expert?

Maybe he couldn't shoot paper anymore. Maybe once you'd shot a real person, nothing else would do.

That thought depressed him. His eyes stung. He was sad. He was mad. He didn't know what the hell to feel anymore.

He set down the.38. Picked up the.45. Set it down and, for a long time, simply stood there in the cavernous space, pinching the bridge of his nose and fighting for composure against an emotion he couldn't name.