Phillip Margolin - Ties That Bind

"Are you involved in something dangerous, Amanda?"

She looked up. Dodson saw fear in his patient's eyes.

"Why would you ask that?" Amanda said.

"Your face for one thing and . . . well, something happened . . . ."

"Something involving me?"

She was terrified. Had Ben been threatened? Were the men who attacked her coming after him?

"I may be wrong but I think someone broke into my office and went through your file."

Dodson explained about finding the paper from Amanda's file under his desk.

"My secretary didn't look at your file and I'm certain that the paper was not under my desk the evening before I found it because I remember dropping a pen on the floor. The paper was sticking out. I'd have seen it when I picked up the pen."

Amanda stopped listening to Dodson. The men who had kidnapped her had read her file and Dodson's diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. The pockmarked man had used the phrase "experiments in pain." When she'd been taken hostage by the surgeon, he terrified her with his plans to subject her to experiments that would measure her pain threshold. The surgeon had stripped her, and that is why her captors had forced her to strip. Amanda's fear was replaced by anger. The bastards had intentionally manipulated her emotions to force her to relive the horror of her capture by the surgeon.

"Amanda?"

Dodson's voice brought her out of her reverie.

"I don't want to frighten you, but I felt that I had a duty to let you know."

"I'm glad you told me," Amanda said. Dodson was struck by the steel in her voice. "You've helped a lot."

Chapter Forty.

Amanda shut the door to her father's office. He came to his feet when he saw her face.

"Jesus, Amanda--what happened?"

"I was attacked last night. Three men kidnapped me in the parking garage."

Frank rounded his desk. "Are you okay? Did they . . ."

"They hit me a few times, but they didn't do anything else. Physically, I'm fine. I'm just scared, and that's what they wanted. But I'm mad, too."

"Did you call the police?"

"No. I can't. You'll understand when I explain what happened. Sit down, Dad, this could take a while."

Amanda started by telling Frank Billie Brewster's story about the Michael Israel suicide and the assertion of Pedro Aragon's man, Sammy Cortez, that Israel had really been murdered on the orders of powerful men who worked with Aragon and called themselves The Vaughn Street Glee Club.

"Cortez was willing to talk about Pedro Aragon and the club until Wendell Hayes visited him at the jail. Billie thinks that Aragon's men kidnapped Cortez's daughter to shut him up and used Hayes as the messenger."

"Any lawyer would tell a client not to talk to the cops."

"I don't think that Hayes was just any lawyer. Remember Paul Baylor told me that he thought the wounds on Dupre's hands and forearm were defense wounds?" Frank nodded. "Dupre says that Hayes smuggled the knife in and attacked him."

"I don't know, Amanda. This sounds very far-fetched."

"Jon Dupre supplied Senator Travis with women, including Lori Andrews, the woman whose body was found in Forest Park. Travis was connected to Aragon. And I discovered a connection between Aragon and Hayes that goes back to the seventies."

Amanda told Frank about the drug-house massacre and the guns stolen from Wendell Hayes's home that were linked to it.

"Here's the kicker, Dad. The house where the massacre took place was on Vaughn Street. I think that The Glee Club exists. I think it started at that drug house when Aragon and Hayes were still in their teens."

"This is pretty hard to believe, Amanda. I know these men."

"How well, Dad? You said that you didn't really socialize with Hayes. You played golf with Senator Travis shortly before he was killed, but how well did you really know him?"

"Not that well," Frank admitted. He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, he sounded distraught.

"You've got to resign from Dupre's case."

"I can't. If I drop off, it could put us in danger and they would just go after the next lawyer who was appointed to represent Dupre. Besides, the more I learn about Dupre's case, the more convinced I am that he's innocent of both murders."

Frank pounded a fist on the arm of his chair. "There's got to be something we can do."

"I haven't come up with a thing. I feel like I'm sealed in a box."

Frank started pacing. It was comforting to see her father working with her on a case and to know that he was there for her.

"Okay, help me on this," Frank said. "The case against Dupre for killing Wendell Hayes is almost impossible to win, isn't it, even with this theory about this conspiracy?"

"Judge Robard won't even let me argue its existence without hard evidence and I don't have any."

"Then why did they come after you? Why let you know that you're onto them?" he paused. "You did something that scared them enough to force them into the open."

"I know about the suicide victims with the same drugs in their systems, but they were so far apart, and there's no evidence connecting the deaths. Besides, how would they know about Kate's investigation? She only told me about it this morning."

"There's got to be something else."

"Paul Baylor's opinion that Jon's wounds are defense wounds will give me a chance to argue that Hayes tried to murder Jon, but I can't see them trying to kill me over that."

"What did you say?"

"I can't think of anything I've done that would make them want to kill me."

Frank snapped his fingers. "They didn't kill you."

"I don't understand."

"If they wanted you dead they would have killed you last night. For some reason you're more valuable to them alive than dead."

"They want me to throw Dupre's case."

"The case is open and shut. They don't need you to throw it. No, you did something that can't be corrected by killing you. You must have left a trail of breadcrumbs that a new lawyer would follow even if you were dead. They think a lawyer who was assigned to replace you would see what they don't want seen."

"Which is what? I can't think of a single thing that would represent a huge threat to these people. Hell, Dad, we can't even prove they exist."

"It's not something you know, it's something . . . What have you filed with the court?"

"Motions, jury questionnaires, a lot of stuff."

"Whatever it is that's scaring them could be in the circuit court files. Otherwise they would have forced you to bring them your paperwork. But the court has your motions; the judge has them, the DA's office. They can't get rid of all the copies of everything you filed. And any lawyer appointed to represent Dupre would read what you filed. Go over your pleadings. You've stumbled onto something very dangerous to these people. You have to figure out what's keeping you alive."

"What will you do?"

"I don't know yet," Frank answered, but he had an idea he didn't want to discuss with Amanda until he'd worked it all out.

Chapter Forty-One.

Frank insisted that Amanda move in with him until they could figure out what to do. She had protested half-heartedly that she was probably being watched and the move would signal that she'd told her father what had happened to her. When Frank refused to change his mind, Amanda gave in without much of a fight.

Frank went with Amanda to her apartment and waited while she packed her bags. The first thing Frank did when they arrived at his house was to give her a .38 snubnose to carry with her. Frank had taken Amanda shooting since she was a little girl and she was comfortable with guns. The idea that she might have to shoot a person made her queasy, but after what she'd been through she knew she could do it. She wished that she'd had a gun in the parking garage.