The McRae Series 01 - Twelve Days Sam and Rachel

he didn't think his attorney did much in the way of criminal law.
    He knew a lot of the deputies in Baxter, some of them from all the way back when he was a two-bit hood who got hassled by the law regularly and often without even having done anything. Of course, he'd known some of them for years now as an adult, as a businessman, and as Rachel's husband. They were all civil to him now and a few even friendly on occasion.
    Sam frowned. He didn't like it, but he had to trust someone. Deputy Joe Mitchell came to mind. They'd built a playground together at the community center last year with about a dozen other volunteers, and despite the fact that Joe had picked Sam up for questioning more than once when Sam was a teenager, he liked Joe and thought he was a fair man.
    Sam called Joe, asking to meet him at the cafe in Shepherdsville, and spent the rest of the drive there worrying about whether he'd done the right thing. When they sat down at the cafe, Sam decided the best thing to do would be to put the whole thing to Joe as a hypothetical situation.
    "You know about the kids found abandoned at the Drifter last week?"
    "Of course. I hope everything works out there, Sam. I know you and Rachel have wanted kids for a long time."
    "Let's say, just for the sake of conversation, that I thought I knew what happened to their mother and that maybe I knew where their father was, too."
    "If I knew that, I'd have an obligation to do something about it, Sam."
    "I know. But, just for the sake of more conversation, let's say those kids are scared to death of their father. That he hit their mother and they're afraid if they tell who their father is, they'll get sent back to him."
    "Without any proof of abuse, they probably would," Joe said. "I'm sorry. That's the law. He's their father. If he has legal custody, they go back to him."
    "I don't know who has legal custody."
    "The mother took them away from him? She ran away?"
    "Let's say she did."
    "Sam—"
    "There's more. Let's say that I think their mother went back to the town where they all lived. But she was scared of what he might do and didn't want to risk him seeing the kids, so she left them forty-five minutes away in a motel room, thinking they'd be safer there than anywhere near their so-called father."
    "Okay. The oldest girl's eleven?"
    Sam nodded.
    "Someone might be able to argue that's not abandonment. A judge might believe it."
    "It's not the real issue, I'm afraid. Let's say she found her husband or he found her and beat her half to death. I can't be sure, but that's what I'm afraid happened. There's a woman who was found in a ditch on the side of a road here the day after the kids' mother left them in the motel. A woman beaten so badly, it's hard to even know what she looked like before. One with no ID who hasn't regained consciousness. No one knows who she is."
    "Damn," Joe said.
    Sam nodded. "What do I do? If I start asking questions, it's going to come out that I've got those kids. If there's nothing to link what happened to that woman to her husband, the kids might go back to him, and I'm not going to let that happen."
    "That's a problem. If the woman can't tell us anything..."
    "She may never be able to. They don't know if she's ever going to wake up."
    "You don't think the daughter could identify her?"
    "I'd hate to ask her to, given the shape the woman's in."
    "You know where the husband is these days?" Joe asked.
    "I don't even know his name. I made Emma, the oldest girl, promise not to tell me. I figured if I didn't know, I couldn't tell anybody. But now... I have to do something."
    "Well, if the mother had trouble with the husband in the past—if the sheriff had been called to the house or the woman treated at the hospital before and someone had suspected abuse... That ought to be enough to point the finger in the direction of the husband, but—"
    "Not good enough," Sam said. "I promised those kids they'd be safe. I'm not turning them back over to a father who abused their mother."
    "I know the sheriff over here. We've worked together on a couple of cases over the years that straddled boundary lines. I guess I could have a hypothetical discussion with him, a lot like the one you just had with me."
    "I don't know, Joe."
    "He's a good guy. He's got kids the same age as mine. He's not looking to let anybody else's kids get hurt. But I guess I don't have to tell him anything about the kids, although if I show up asking questions, from a town where three abandoned