Stone Shadow by Rex Miller

you out? I'm curious for a reason."
    “Neither, actually. His brother called us from Houston. He's quite concerned about him, naturally, and Ukie had never so much as contacted him about all this. He read about it in the papers. Called the homicide squad here, got a lot of generalities that he thought were highly suspect considering that he gave them a reference in the Houston PD to check him out with. Anyway—to cut through—he was upset and his contact with the police worried him as much as the headlines had, and he called around and one of the firms in Houston put him in touch with us."
    “Ukie's brother have that kind of money he can afford you folks?” Eichord kept a smile in his voice.
    “As a matter of fact I don't think our fee is going to be a severe problem for Mr. Hackabee. He has a big, direct-mail firm. Far from indigent. Anything else?"
    “I guess we can assume there's a book and movie, after all,” Eichord said, hoping she wouldn't slam down the phone.
    “WHAT? Aren't you familiar with the Son of Sam law, Mr. Eichord?” She sounded exasperated at his ignorance.
    “Uh,” he stalled, “well—"
    “The legislature wrote it out East in response to the outraged public response to a killer making a profit off a work related to his or her commission of homicides. The Son of Sam law makes it impossible for a perpetrator to benefit financially from such a work. All proceeds must accrue to the relatives of the victims. Surely you must have heard of this?"
    He could feel himself sinking again. Glad he was on the telephone so she wouldn't see his crimson blush as she began taking him through the intricacies of the law and talking about what legislatures around the country had done and one thing and another. He forced himself to listen. He could hear the disdain in her voice. Noel of his dreams. She obviously wasn't too impressed with the fuzz to begin with but, if THIS was Dallas’ idea of a serial murder expert—he sunk further as he mentally lashed himself.
    “The one thing I still don't understand is why would someone of your fame be willing to take such a case? Mind commenting on that?"
    “Someone of my fame? What does that have to do with anything?"
    “Why would you wish to lend your well-known name and image to an individual who is a self-confessed mass slayer? Someone with a situation as cut-and-dried as this one is."
    “First off, I'd disagree that it's all that cut-and-dried. Second, I've been drawn to the case since I first saw a story about it on the evening newscast. I'm fascinated and repelled naturally at the same time. Fascinated by certain legal aspects."
    “But Ukie has given us dozens of bodies. What sort of a defense is even worth considering? I mean, I'm not asking you if you're going to plead him insane but—"
    “Now we're getting back to that adversarial position,” she said.
    “And certainly that has to be respected but in a GENERAL way."
    “In a general way I say there is an outside chance he's not guilty. Did you ever th—"
    “Oh, come on, Miss Collier, gimme a break. How can you even say he might not be the killer?"
    “Not to try the case over the phone,” she sighed and didn't try to cover it, “but how much have you really investigated all the possibilities of accomplices?"
    “We're looking into that all the time."
    “You may be looking into it all the time but how MUCH time or manpower can you people devote to those avenues? There are only so many pieces in a pie. My point is, you have—oh, for example—this incontrovertible evidence. So circumstantial it's pathetic. A witness whom I could DESTROY on the stand—just to give you random examples. You've got a crime profile we can have a field day with in any court in the land.
    “The bodies of victims. That's what you have and they are irrefutable, sure, and no question he knew WHERE they were but who says he put them there? Who's to say he's the one who killed them? What if—"
    “All that's well and good but