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that investigation. That keeps the evidence from becoming part of the public record. If it was in the public record, any newspaper idiot could request all evidence that we found at the trailer and we’d have to give it to them. Hell, they’d get more than we gave the defense in discovery. We’d look very bad. We need to hide that information for now and this is the best way. Down the road when the hubbub dies down, we’ll declassify it, so to speak. The Feds do this all the time.”
    Once again Wes was impressed with the way Clay was thinking everything through. He obviously had a talent for this kind of thing. He left Clay’s office shaking his head. He still couldn’t believe how great the meeting went. He’d been looking for a prosecutor like this all his life.

Nine
    While Clay Evans IV was plotting to parlay her son’s life into new career choices for himself, Elena was making arrangements to visit the law offices of Tracey James for her initial consultation. Austin had made the call for her and scheduled the meeting for the following Tuesday. Elena was amazed that he’d managed to get her in so quickly. Austin conveniently neglected to tell her that he was an interested party.
    “Her main office is in Vero Beach,” Austin told her. “You have to go there if you want to see her on Tuesday.”
    “That will work out fine, Austin. Thank you so much for setting this up.”
    “No problem, Elena. I was happy to do it for you.” And for myself, of course.
    Elena didn’t mind the drive at all. Rudy was under investigation for murder. If she had been asked to walk to Vero Beach to clear his name, she would gladly have done it.
    Tracey James’s headquarters was an ostentatious three-story building northwest of Vero. It originally had been built as a nursing home, but when the financing for the project fell through, the building lay empty until Tracey discovered it and purchased it for a song. There had been relatively little needed in the way of renovation. The second and third floors were all patient rooms except for the cafeteria, and Tracey filled those rooms with her adjusters. It was the downstairs and the outside that needed to be fixed. Outside, she had installed a circular driveway with a fountain in the middle. On both sides of the entrance to the grounds she had placed huge identical stones with the words “The James Law Firm” and “ Let the James gang fight for you!” carved in the center. Columns were placed at the grandiose entrance. Inside, she had built a marvelous marble-floored foyer and waiting room. The receptionist’s desk, an antique mahogany table with a phone, anchored the middle of the waiting room, which was always empty.
    Tracey scheduled her clients hours apart, a technique designed to make each one feel special. At the appointed hour, the chosen one was brought through a narrow hallway to Tracey’s office, which took up a full third of the downstairs and was bordered on the entire west side by a picture window that looked out on a magnificent multi-flowered garden, a garden that Tracey had never set foot in. Nor could she name one flower that sprung from its rich soil. The garden was designed to soothe the client. The magnificent Persian rug, the plaques, the white mahogany desk, the soft blue leather couch and matching chairs—all of it was there to impress on each of them that they were in the presence of a great lawyer.
    Elena was born in Puerto Rico in a run-down shack on a farm where her father was a sharecropper. When she was five, her family moved to New York City and she grew up on the tough streets of Spanish Harlem. At twenty-two, when she realized her husband was a hopeless alcoholic, she took her son and two hundred dollars and moved to Florida to start a new life. She had lived in squalor without heat and running water. She had worked for the worst people imaginable. She was a hard person to impress and, as she sat in the soft leather chair looking out at the garden