Excerpt: 'Above The Law'

June 29, 2009— -- Dallas lawyer Casey Jordan takes on illegal immigrants and abuse of power in this legal thriller written by Tim Green.

It begins when a U.S. senator from Texas shoots an undocumented worker and fakes the death as a hunting accident. Casey, who practices law from an abandoned gas station, takes the widow's case.

Read an excerpt from "Above the Law" below and head to the "GMA" Library to find more good reads.

Chapter 1

HEADLIGHTS CREPT UP THE WALL BEFORE JETTING ACROSSthe ceiling and blinking out. Elijandro stiffened at the familiarpurr of the engine and clatter of rocks off the undercarriageas the white Range Rover descended the hillside lane. He left thesagging bed and the warmth of his young wife's body, skirted pastthe crib, and eased open the front door, letting himself out into thedark of predawn.

Elijandro clutched himself and stepped gingerly across the dirtyard until he stood shivering beside the Range Rover. The hillsand the thick clouds above glowed in the orange flare from somedistant lightning. Damp ozone floated on the small breeze. Thenew leaves on the lone willow tree shifted restlessly and the windowhummed down, muffled now by the rumble of the approachingfront. White teeth shone out at Elijandro, but the spade-cutsmile and the familiar face of not the wife, but her husband and hisboss, staggered him.

"You come good to the call," his boss said, grinning like a mask.

"The call?" Elijandro said.

"Like a tom turkey," the boss said, grinning, then clucking likea hen with a puck, puck, puck. "The sound of this Range Rover.The sound of my wife."

Elijandro stuttered until the boss interrupted.

"Screw her. Get your camo on, Ellie," he said. "Kurt said youput a flock to bed in the oaks out on Jessup's Knob and there was abig bird in with them. That right?"

Elijandro nodded eagerly and could see now that the boss worecamouflage from the neck down.

"Then let's go get his ass," the boss said. From the passengerseat he raised a bottle of Jack Daniel's and took a good slug beforesmacking the cork home with the palm of his hand.

Elijandro peered at the western sky. "Rain coming."

"So we'll get wet," the boss said. "Bird'll come to the call rainor shine. Lightning gets 'em excited. Go on."

Elijandro turned for the tenant house, scratching the stubbleon his head, hopping barefoot through the stones, picking his wayuntil he reached the porch.

The house had been built along with two dozen other shacks formigrant workers some sixty years ago. Like them, it sagged wearilyunder its rumpled tin roof, propped up off the dirt and more or lessleveled on four cinder-block stacks. Being drenched in weather andheat for all those years had rendered each of the houses gray andhad shrunken the slat-board siding like an old man's bones. Unlikethe others, theirs squatted in the lowland by the Trinity River,where cattle inevitably got bogged down in the muck and hadfrom time to time to be roped and dragged free with a mule. Theboss's father was the one who had this shack sledged away fromthe company of its brethren by a team back in '67. By tradition, theplace went to the top Mexican, a worker trusted enough to quicklyshepherd the livestock free from the muck as soon as they began tobray and before they could do harm to themselves.

With a trembling hand, Ellie scrawled a note to his wife sayinghe'd be back from the hunt by breakfast. Quickly, he removed hiscamo gear from its nail, slipping it on before he scooped up hisshotgun and grabbed the turkey vest, which clattered to the fl oor,lumpy and awkward from pockets filled by turkey calls and shotgunshells. He bent for it, and when he rose up he saw comets oflight in the corners of his vision. His heart hadn't stopped poundingsince he saw the boss's face.

Ellie jogged out to the Range Rover, climbing into the passengerseat and smelling the familiar scent of its fi ne leather and somewherethe hint of her favorite perfume. His boss reversed the SUVout to the main track and headed up the hill, then ran the ridgebefore dipping down into the river's wash, across a steel bridge, andup the other bank, talking all the while about his wife being a dirtyslut who didn't deserve a Range Rover and slurring his words untilthe SUV came to rest at the bottom of a field plowed for corn.His boss killed the engine and the two of them sat listening toit tick down to nothing while the boss turned a shotgun shell endover end with his manicured fingers.

Ellie watched and waited until he could stand it no more. Hepointed up the fi eld toward the wooded ridge and said, "Thembirds are up on top."

His boss smiled funny at him and got out. They eased the RangeRover's doors closed. Elijandro let the silence of predawn settle onthem for a moment before he cleared his throat, cupped a hand tohis mouth, and let fly the low sonorous call of a barred owl. Nothingcame back at them but the echo of his call as it bounced awaybetween the low hills.

Elijandro eyed the eastern sky. A line, pale yellow and fl ushwith the horizon, had begun to melt away the ink of night to anavy blue promising day. The storm would come from the otherside of the knob, where the flicker of lightning continued to illuminatethe oncoming clouds.

Elijandro cleared his throat, then tried again.

Halfway through the call, the big tom erupted from the top ofthe knob with a gobble that sent a surge of blood through Elijandro'sheart. He grinned at his boss and in the dark saw his boss'steeth. His boss raised his shotgun in one hand as though victorywere already theirs, and together they pulled camo masks downover their faces.

"Let's go kill him," his boss said.

Elijandro set off into the woods, keeping just inside the treesand following the edge of the fi eld up toward the top. By the timethey were fifty yards from the far end of the field Elijandro couldhear his boss's labored breathing. He directed his boss to the baseof a big oak close enough to the edge of the woods for a good cleanshot and slipped out into the field, the newly turned dirt dampand sucking at his boots. He set the decoys, crouched, spun, anddarted across the soft ridges of dirt toward the spot where he'd lefthis boss. He found an old stump in a clump of bracken not twentyfeet from where his boss sat, but closer to the decoys so that his callwould better match their location. He settled in, resting the lowerpart of his back against the trunk, and glanced over his shoulder athis boss, who gave him a thumbs-up.

Elijandro popped the diaphragm call into his mouth and beganturning it over with his tongue to soften it, then settled into thesilence, absorbing it and the grand expanse of the brightening sky.He took deep breaths of the crisp air, his mind clearing itself of thepeople he worked for, his responsibilities on the ranch and to hisown little family. He loved to guide turkey hunts, not for the killbut in order to participate in the birth of a new day.

The horizon below glowed golden now and the smaller starsbegan to blink out. A breeze stirred and overhead the dark roilingclouds at the edge of the storm front crept toward the comingdawn as if racing the sun to its rise. Thunder rumbled. A songsparrow peeped nearby and fl uttered past Elijandro's head, findinga high spot on the stalk of bramble to clear its throat and offer upthe fi rst song of the morning. After that, the other birds woke, too.First slowly, like an orchestra tuning its instruments, but growingin number and volume until they produced a crescendo of chirpingand trilling and whistling that ignored the coming storm entirely.

The time had come. Elijandro cupped his hand to his mouthand uttered a sharp hen cluck, then a staccato of high-pitched clucksas he twisted his hip and slapped his hand in a flutter against hisrump: the sound of the first hen flying down from the roost. Heheard the answering cluck from a real hen awakening on the ridge,then he called to the tom, a raspy, longing sound that rose and fell.The gobble of the big bird was so immediate and so close that Elijandrostarted and grinned and couldn't help but glance back to seeif his boss was ready. The birds weren't on the top of the ridge, butmuch closer, immediately inside the woods at the end of the field.

His boss had been on enough hunts to know what it all meantand he fumbled with his shotgun, raising it and resting it across hisknees, ready to shoot. Elijandro called again, and again the dawnexploded with the vibrant gobble of the trophy bird. The cloudsbegan to spit fat drops of rain and the current of air became a steadybreeze. Thunder clapped and the turkey gobbled angrily back atthat. Two real hens fl apped, clucked, fl uttered, and then fl oateddown from the high oaks toward the decoys, gliding in and millingamong them, calling now themselves. The tom went crazy,gobbling at his hens and warning the storm clouds to stay away.Elijandro brimmed with glee and excitement. He bit his tongueto keep himself from bursting into laughter as the big bird barkedand pounded his wings against the air and drifted from the sky likea dirigible coming to land among his fl ock. Puffi ng out his feathersin full strut, clicking and drumming and fanning his tail, heappeared to be fi ve times the size of his mates. More hens poureddown from the trees like a pack of hussies.

The tom, an enormous ball of feathers no more than twentyyards from the edge of the field, slowly turned away and Elijandroknew his boss had the perfect chance to raise his gun andaim, then wait for the naked head and neck to reappear since thethick feathers of a turkey were better than a Kevlar vest. Thunderrumbled again and lightning flashed. As the tom rotated back andhis head came into view Elijandro held his breath, anticipating thegunshot.

It came, but in an odd way. Elijandro felt the roar of the gun.Something flew out and away from above him, a dark chunk ofbark, but then he realized there was no tree trunk above him andhe reached for the top of his head as he felt himself tilting sidewaysand spilling toward the ground. The spit of rain became a faucet,water spilling down his face as if he were directly under the spigot.It didn't hurt, but as his fingers came to rest on the spot above hisbrow, he realized the firm fruit he felt protruding from a jaggedcapsule was his own broken skull and brains.

The liquid streaming down his face was a torrent of blood.His body rested against the ground and it annoyed him thathe couldn't remove his hand from the mess that had been the topof his head. His eyes focused in and out, like a quick zoom, thenfixed on the flock of birds struggling up into the air, away fromthe danger, frantic for the safety of the woods. Elijandro saw thebig Tom among them, dragging his long beard as he disappearedinto the trees all in an instant. It was the same instant that the daywas born.

The sun appeared bright in Elijandro's eyes, blinding him andwashing over him until all was lost.