Page 109 of The Lincoln Lawyer

“Well, Roulet’s your only client right now, isn’t he?”

“I have a lot of clients. But I told you, I can’t tell you.”

“Think maybe we should run the charts from his ankle bracelet and see if he’s been to your place lately?”

“Do whatever you want. He actually has been here. We had a meeting here once. In my office.”

“Maybe that’s when he took it.”

“I’m not telling you he took it, Detective.”

“Yeah, well, that bracelet gives Roulet a pass on the Levin thing, anyway. We checked the GPS. So I guess that leaves you, Counselor.”

“And that leaves you wasting your time.”

I suddenly realized something about Roulet’s ankle bracelet but tried not to show it. Maybe a line on the trapdoor to his Houdini act. It was something I would need to check into later.

“Are we just going to sit here?”

Lankford turned and got out. He then opened my door because the inside handle had been disabled for transporting suspects and custodies. I looked at the two detectives.

“You want me to show you the gun box? Maybe when you see it is empty, you can just leave and save us all the time.”

“Not quite, Counselor,” Lankford said. “We’re going through this whole place. I’ll take the car and Detective Sobel will start in the house.”

I shook my head.

“Not quite, Detective. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t trust you. Your warrant is bent, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re bent. You stay together so I can watch you both or we wait until I can get a second observer up here. My case manager could be here in ten minutes. I could bring her up here to watch and you could also ask her about calling me on the morning Raul Levin got killed.”

Lankford’s face grew dark with insult and anger that he looked like he was having trouble controlling. I decided to push it. I took out my cell phone and opened it.

“I’m going to call your judge right now and see if he—”

“Fine,” Lankford said. “We’ll start with the car. Together. We’ll work our way inside the house.”

I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket.

“Fine.”

I walked over to a keypad on the wall outside the garage. I tapped in the combination and the garage door started to rise, revealing the blue-black Lincoln awaiting inspection. Its license plate read NT GLTY. Lankford looked at it and shook his head.

“Yeah, right.”

He stepped into the garage, his face still tight with anger. I decided to ease things a little bit.

“Hey, Detective,” I said. “What’s the difference between a catfish and a defense attorney?”

He didn’t respond. He stared angrily at the license plate on my Lincoln.

“One’s a bottom-feeding shit sucker,” I said. “And the other one’s a fish.”

For a moment his face remained frozen. Then a smile creased it and he broke into a long and hard laugh. Sobel stepped into the garage, having not heard the joke.

“What?” she said.

“I’ll tell you later,” Lankford said.

Thirty-one