Joe Dillard - 01 - An Innocent Client

by Scott Pratt

  I took a couple of steps backwards as the bailiffs began to slowly converge. They were tentative, apparently frightened. Tester’s eyes were as blue as robin’s eggs and fiercely intense.

  ”And you, scribe!” he continued, turning his attention to me. He voice boomed off the walls, and I could see veins popping out of his neck. He stepped through the bar towards me and bumped me with his pot belly. He was so close I could smell his breath. ”How dare you blaspheme my father! I swear you’ll pay for it!”

  I shoved him hard in the chest. He stumbled backwards as I heard Judge Green’s voice cut through the chaos: ”Bailiffs! Arrest that man!”

  ”She killed my father!” he screamed as he struggled against the bailiffs. ”Jezebel killed my father!”

  Angel, crying hysterically, was quickly ushered into a jury room just down the hall from the courtroom. I caught up with her and gently took hold of her shoulders.

  ”I didn’t kill him!” Her shoulders were heaving.

  ”Please tell that man I didn’t kill his father.”

  ”I’ll tell him,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t be going anywhere near him. ”Don’t worry about this. It happens. People get upset. You just try to calm down.

  I’ll come to the jail to see you in a couple of days.”

  The bailiffs took her away, and I walked back into the courtroom. The man was now in handcuffs, standing at the podium in front of Judge Green, look

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  ing down at his shoes. The judge had apparently just finished reading him the riot act.

  ”I understand the emotional turmoil you’re going through,” Green said, ”but you, being a chaplain and a deputy sheriff, should know we cannot tolerate that kind of behavior in court. Now go, but sin no more in my courtroom. Court’s in recess.”

  Tester’s son a chaplain and a deputy? Any hopes I had of the district attorney’s office acting reasonably were out the window.

  As Green disappeared into his chambers, I scanned the courtroom. Erlene Barlowe was in the back row.

  I motioned for her to meet me in the hallway. She was wearing a black pantsuit and had toned down the makeup for court. If I didn’t know better, I might have mistaken her for a lawyer.

  ”Now that we’ve done the arraignment, I can get some discovery,” I said. ”Why don’t you come down to the office around four and we’ll take a look at what they’ve got.”

  ”I’ll be there, sugar.”

  As we stood together, I looked down the hall and saw Tester’s son leaning against the wall, staring in my direction. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. It was pure hatred.

  April 30

  4:00 p.m.

  Erlene Barlowe’s granny trained her to be punctual way before everyone in Erlene’s family disowned her because she ran off with Gus. Granny said tardiness was nothing but bad manners, and that people with bad manners lacked character. Erlene didn’t want Mr. Dillard to think she lacked character, so she arrived at his office ten minutes early.

  Joe Dillard was a big, strong, good-looking man, just like Erlene’s Gus. If Erlene had been a younger woman and hadn’t been so devoted to Gus, she might have thought seriously about trying to seduce Mr. Dillard. He dressed in dark suits and colored shirts, solid-colored ties, nice shoes. His hair was jet black and wavy, just flecked here and there with gray, and he had green eyes and the cutest dimples Erlene had ever seen. He was well-spoken, too—

  obviously an intelligent man. Erlene thought he was a little high on the fee he charged to represent Angel, but if he got her off, it’d be worth every dime. Besides, it wasn’t like the fee was going to put Erlene in the poorhouse. If Mr. Dillard had known what she AN INNOCENT CLIENT

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  was worth, he’d have asked for twice as much. Gus made a lot of money buying and selling different things on top of what they made at the strip clubs, and he had a fortune in life insurance. When he passed, the lawyer told Erlene she was worth as much as Jed Clampett.

  Mr. Dillard showed her to a seat. He had papers spread out all over the table.

  ”Have you talked to Angel?” he said.

  ”She called me a little while ago. Poor baby is scared to death. That little outburst at the courthouse didn’t help any.”

  ”Tester Junior’s a scary guy. Did you see him staring at me in the hallway? He looked like he wanted to cut my throat. That’s why we took the back stairs.”

  He may have been scary to Mr. Dillard, but he didn’t scare Erlene. She wasn’t afraid of any man.

  If she’d learned anything in the adult entertainment business over the past thirty years, it was how to deal with men. She knew how to make them feel good, and she knew how to make them miserable.

  Erlene knew how to deal with preachers, too.

  When she and Gus first came to northeast Tennessee, the preachers had all ganged up and wouldn’t let them go into business. They put pressure on county commissioners, organized rallies, talked on the news.

  They did whatever they could to make Erlene and Gus look bad, but the couple had been through it before. They hired good lawyers. It cost them nearly thirty thousand dollars in legal fees plus another twenty in bribes and took over a year, but they finally got their business license and all their permits.

  Then danged if somebody didn’t burn down their 1 4

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  building as soon as they got it up. Erlene and Gus built another one, only to see it too go up in flames.

  The second time, though, Gus had hidden video surveillance cameras all around the building. Turned out the man who was burning the buildings was a preacher named Hastings. He went to jail. They left Erlene and Gus alone after that, but it didn’t change her opinion of preachers. Bunch of danged hypocrites was all they were.

  ”Erlene,” Mr. Dillard said, ”I’ve spent the afternoon going through this discovery material. I know pretty much everything they have now, and there are a couple of things I need to talk to you about. Do you own a red Corvette?”

  Shitdammit. Why did he have to be so direct?

  ”I beg your pardon?”

  ”Do you own a red Corvette?”

  ”Why, no, honey, I sure don’t.”

  ”Let me rephrase the question. On the day Tester was killed, did you own a red Corvette?”

  Erlene had a feeling that before this was over, she and Mr. Dillard were going to get along like two peas in a pod, but right then she thought it best to keep a few things to herself.

  ”Why?” she said.

  ”Because the police have a witness who told them you owned a red Corvette and that it disappeared the day after Tester was murdered. That same witness also told them you and Angel left the club right after Tester left that night and neither of you came back. And they have another witness who saw a woman get out of a Corvette around midnight at Tester’s motel.”

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  ”Well, I swan, honey pot. Who would say a thing like that?” She knew exactly who it had to be. Little Miss Julie.

  ”Is there any truth to it?”

  ”Is this conversation just between the two of us, sugar?”

  ”You’re not my client, Erlene. The privilege doesn’t apply, so be careful what you say.”

  Erlene sat back and took a deep breath, like she was nervous. ”Can you tell me who the witnesses are?” she said.

  ”One is a night clerk at the motel named Sheila Hunt. She says she saw a Corvette pull in behind Tester around midnight and saw a woman get out of the passenger side and go up the steps with him.

  It was raining pretty hard and the woman was apparently wearing some kind of hooded poncho or cape, so she didn’t get a good look at her. And she didn’t see her leave. She didn’t get a tag number and couldn’t tell the cops anything about the driver.”

  ”That doesn’t sound like much to me.”

  ”It isn’t, unless the Corvette shows up somewhere down the road. Will it?”

&nb
sp; ”Who told them I owned a Corvette?” Erlene said.

  ”One of your employees. The night they raided your place. She said you’d been driving a red Corvette prior to Tester’s murder and that it disappeared the day after he was killed.”

  ”It was Julie Hayes, wasn’t it?”

  Mr. Dillard nodded.

  ”Did anybody else at the club tell the police anything like that?” Erlene said.

  ”No, ma’am. She was the only one.”

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  ”What does that tell you, sugar?”

  ”It tells me that either she’s lying or everyone else is lying.”

  ”And what do you think?”

  ”I think I want to hear you tell me she’s lying.”

  Erlene smiled. Mr. Dillard was so handsome and she could just feel goodness oozing out of him.

  ”She’s the one who’s lying, baby doll.”

  Erlene told him about Julie and her drug problem and her crush on Gus. She told him how Julie came back on a bus from Texas with Angel after they’d met in the bus station down there. Julie noticed that Angel didn’t have any luggage, not even a purse, so Julie knew right off that Angel was probably a runaway. Since Angel was so pretty, Julie asked her if she’d like to tag along and maybe work in the club.

  When Erlene picked Julie up at the station, Angel was with her.

  ”So you think Julie’s setting you and Angel up for a murder because she’s jealous?” Mr. Dillard said.

  ”I wouldn’t put anything past her. She’s a troubled girl. I’ve heard her talk about her arrest record. She bragged about it. She used to tell Gus she had a record as long as his terwilliger.”

  ”As long as his what?”

  ”Terwilliger. It’s what I call a man’s thingy. You know… .” Erlene pointed between her legs, and Mr.

  Dillard’s face turned red as her lipstick.

  ”What else do you know about Julie?”

  ”Just what she’s told me. She said her mother’s boyfriend tried to rape her when she was sixteen.

  When she told her mother about it, her mother accused her of lying and beat her up pretty bad. She AN INNOCENT CLIENT

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  took off and has been on the road ever since. I think her life has been pretty much nothing but drugs and prostitution. That’s one of the reasons she likes to work here. The money’s good enough that the girls don’t have to sell themselves. But Julie just can’t seem to stay away from the drugs. She has to know I’m about to fire her again.”

  ”Okay,” Mr. Dillard said. ”That helps. It looks like we can impeach Julie if she testifies. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

  ”What question is that?”

  ”Is a red Corvette going to jump up and bite us on the backside sometime between now and the trial?”

  ”I just don’t see how it could, sugar.”

  ”Good. I’ll put an investigator on Julie Hayes and gather all the background information we can on her.

  From what you’ve told me, we shouldn’t have much trouble helping her make herself look bad in front of a jury.”

  Mr. Dillard didn’t know it and Erlene wasn’t about to tell him, but Julie Hayes wouldn’t be going in front of any jury.

  ”We have another problem,” he said. ”Two hairs they found on Tester’s shirt match Angel’s DNA.”

  ”Is that bad, sugar?”

  ”It’s a problem, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable. I’m going to suggest a couple of Angel’s hairs could have passed to Tester while he was at the club.”

  ”Why, he was all over her,” Erlene said.

  ”That’s not what you told the TBI.”

  Shitdammit again. ”That TBI man scared me to death, honey. I didn’t know what to say to him.”

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  ”From now on, Erlene, I’d suggest you just stick to the truth. In this case, it looks like the truth may set Angel free.”

  He was so cute and noble. Erlene just wanted to pinch his cheeks.

  June 6

  5:45 a.m.

  I liked to watch the sun rise on Sunday mornings.

  The Sunday after they arraigned Angel Christian, I got up around five thirty, made a pot of coffee, and wandered up the driveway in the semidarkness in my bare feet and boxers to get the newspaper. As I got to the end of the driveway, I noticed a silver pickup truck, one of those macho Dodges with tinted windows, backed into the dirt road that led into the woods across the street from the mailbox. It was the same place where I’d counted Erlene’s money. The lights weren’t on and I couldn’t hear the engine running.

  The property where the truck was sitting belonged to me. It wasn’t hunting season, and no one had asked me about camping, so I decided to check it out.

  I got the paper out of the box and started walking towards the truck. Just as I got to within ten feet, the engine roared to life and the lights came on. I thought it was probably one of Jack’s friends, so I started to wave and say hello, but the thing started coming right for me. I jumped out of the way before it hit me, but it couldn’t have missed by more than a couple of feet. When I landed, my foot caught on a small bush and I ended up flat on my back. The truck came off of the dirt road and squealed off into the dawn. I didn’t get a look at the driver over the headlights, and my clumsy leap kept me from seeing the license plate.

  I cursed and picked myself up off the ground and walked back down the driveway towards the house, wondering who in the hell could have been in the truck. I thought about the look Tester’s son had given me and made a mental note to call Diane Frye, a retired state trooper who was now a private investigator. I’d already talked to her about working the Angel Christian case for me, but now I needed to know whether Tester’s son had a silver Dodge truck registered in his name, and if he did, I needed to know anything and everything she could find out about him.

  That’s when I noticed Lilly’s car was gone. We had room for only two cars in the garage, so Lilly’s was always parked just outside, off to the side of the driveway. I knew it had been there the night before, because Lilly had driven it to Knoxville and hadn’t gotten home until midnight. I’d waited up for her.

  I went back into the house and upstairs to Lilly’s room. She wasn’t the kind of kid to sneak out, but I was hoping against hope that she had. I found her sleeping the dead-zone sleep of a teenager.

  As I walked towards Sarah’s room, I was hoping the car had been stolen by some stranger, knowing it hadn’t. Sarah’s bed was unmade and empty.

  She’d been doing relatively well under the circumstances. Caroline and Lilly had taken her to town to buy her some clothes a couple of days after she showed up, and I’d brought her a catalogue from Northeast State Community College. She’d talked about enrolling in the fall and studying computer graphics. She spent a lot of time wandering through the woods down by the lake and watching television, and she’d been attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings four days a week.

  But then I made a mistake. I took her up to see Ma on Saturday. Ma didn’t recognize either one of us and was unusually belligerent. She told us to get out of her room and never come back. She made such a fuss that one of the nurses suggested we leave and come back another time. The visit obviously upset Sarah, who was hoping to make some kind of peace before Ma died. Sarah hadn’t given any indication on Saturday night that she was about to do something stupid, but she was more quiet than usual and went to bed early.

  I walked back through the house to our bedroom and touched Caroline on the shoulder. She came out of sleep slowly.

  ”Mmm … what? Is something wrong?”

  ”Sarah’s gone,” I said. ”In Lilly’s car.”

  She didn’t seem to understand for a moment. Then she sat straight up. ”Oh, no,” she said. ”I dreamed last night that she ran away.”

  ”We better take a look around and make sure nothing’s missing.”

  ”What do you think she took besides the
car?”

  ”I don’t know, but you better make sure she didn’t steal anything out of your purse, and you should check your jewelry. Lilly’s, too. I’ll check the electronics and the guns.”

  It was hard to think of my sister as a thief, but that’s exactly what she’d been in the past. She’d stolen money from me, and Ma had been a favorite target. I wandered around the house for the next fifteen minutes, checking to make sure she hadn’t hauled off a computer or a television or a stereo system. When I was finished, I walked back into the kitchen. Caroline was sitting at the table drinking a bottle of water. She looked at me, and I knew the news was going to be bad.

  ”My diamond necklace is gone.” I’d given Caroline the necklace for Christmas five years ago. She’d never owned anything expensive, and seeing the look on her face when she opened the box had given me great pleasure. She kept it in a jewelry box in a drawer in the bedroom. If it was gone, Sarah must have snuck in there and stolen it during the night.

  ”Goddammit,” I said. ”God damm it! How could she do this?”

  ”I guess we were expecting too much,” Caroline said.

  ”I thought she might be ready to change. I thought I might be able to help her.”

  ”When she’s ready to change, if she’s ever ready to change, she’ll do it on her own. We can’t force it on her. What do you think we should do?”

  ”She’s taken a ten-thousand-dollar car and a five-thousand-dollar necklace. What do you think I should do?”

  Caroline sighed. ”I don’t know, babe. Maybe you should go out and try to find her.”

  ”I’ve been down that road before. You know she’s high by now. I guarantee she’s already sold the necklace for peanuts or traded it for coke. If I found her at some dealer’s house I’d end up defending myself in court after I killed the sonofabitch. I guess I’ll just call Johnson City’s finest and see if they can pick her up before she sells the car to some chop-shopper.”

  The phone rang. Maybe it was Sarah, ready to turn back before she crossed the line.

  ”Mr. Dillard?” a male voice said when I answered.