Read The Advocate (The Advocate Series) for Free Online Page B

hallway, pulling out the ones from Carla. When she returned to her desk, she called Carla. This task always took some time, but Sabre wanted it out of the way. It was a daily routine, not one she particularly enjoyed, but it had to be done even if every call was the same. Sabre would call; Carla would scream for a little while making no sense. After she rambled for five minutes or so, Carla would take a breath and Sabre would start talking to her about butterflies and green pastures. It always soothed her. Sabre couldn’t remember when she had discovered how to do it, and although uncertain if it was the words or the way she had learned to deliver them, it calmed Carla down.
    Today’s call was no different. Sabre called her, and while Carla yelled, Sabre turned the volume down on her headset and started thumbing through her mail. Sabre hated that some tree had to die for all the junk mail. She separated the mail into stacks of bills, checks, correspondence needing to be filed, personal items, and the junk. Even though Elaine opened all the mail, Sabre still wanted to view everything coming in so she could decide what to keep and what to throw away.
    She tossed the junk mail into the recycle trash bin, put the bills in a basket on her credenza, clipped together the checks and correspondence and placed them in a box for Elaine, and set her personal items in another basket on the corner of her desk to take home and look through later.
    She heard Carla take a breath. Sabre turned up her volume and started to speak. She had to be quick or she would miss her opening. “Butterflies, green pastures, and butterflies,” she began. “Carla, imagine yourself walking through the field and a beautiful purple and blue butterfly lights on your arm. You look around and you see little dots of color–pink, blue, red, and yellow–the tall, green grass moving ever so slightly in the light breeze, and a rainbow of multi-colored butterflies dancing across the pale blue sky. There’s no one else in your world, just you and your butterflies wandering through your green pasture.” Sabre went on until she heard Carla breathing comfortably and then she said, as she always did, “Don’t worry, Carla. I’ll take care of everything.”
    She hung up the phone and turned to the police report, anxious to see what it said. She read through the report twice, first to see if it contained anything significantly affecting the case, the second time, more slowly, looking for details she might have missed the first time. After the second reading, she called Marla.
    “Marla, it’s Sabre, your favorite attorney.”
    “True, but that’s not saying a whole lot,” she responded. “Whatcha got?”
    “Did you get the report from Atlanta on the Murdock case?”
    “It’s somewhere on my desk here, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Anything exciting in it?”
    “Well, Peggy does have a drug history. It looks like she’s had a problem for some time. She’s been arrested a couple of times for possession, once for pot and most recently for meth . . . a little over a year ago, about the same time she hooked up with Murdock. Do you happen to know how they met?”
    “No, but I’ll see what I can find out.”
    “By the way, I have an illegible page – page eight. It looks like it might be Peggy’s family history sheet. Will you look at yours and see if you can read it?”
    “Sure. I know it’s here somewhere.” Marla said. “Is there any bad news in there on Murdock?”
    “No. He has no convictions, not even a traffic violation. He comes from a well-respected family in the area. The Murdocks own a good portion of the city and have been in local politics for generations. Gaylord Murdock has lived there most of his life. He left twice, once to go to college – to Harvard, no less – but returned right after graduation. It appears he may have left about five or six years ago and returned after about a year. I don’t know for certain exactly