A young security guard led Tim and Bear down the shiny warehouse corridor. Storage racks, bolted to the concrete floor, stretched up to the forty-foot ceiling, assiduously labeled boxes and crates filling each shelf. Industrial rolling ladders with handrails were parked at intervals like well-tended vehicles. In the dirt yard outside, the spike-collared Doberman kept protesting the deputies' intrusion. Barks and growls reached through the high windows, echoing around the bare walls of the vast building. Even Bear, nicknamed the Dog Whisperer around the Arrest Response Team for his preternatural rapport with the explosive-detection canines, had failed to settle him as he and Tim had strode to the long-term-storage warehouse's entrance.
Tim checked the lettering on the storage containers looming overhead. MARCONE. MARDEL. And at last a raft of MARTINEZes. The common surname continued around the corner to the next aisle before Tim encountered a run of legal-width cardboard boxes stamped ESTEBAN MARTINEZ, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. The file boxes, organized roughly by date, carried stickers in hazard-warning orange-CONFIDENTIAL: LAWYER-CLIENT