A Crime of Passion

by Scott Pratt

“Where were you? If I have to ask you again, you’ll be on your knees, and you’ll be in a lot of pain.”

  He looked me dead in the eye and said, “I didn’t kill Kasey. I was in Nashville that night, but I swear I didn’t kill her.”

  “What were you doing in Nashville?”

  “She asked me to go to the show, the one where she performed,” Ricky said. “It was a big deal to her. She got me tickets, and I invited a couple of my friends and went. It was awful, man. Sitting through two hours of that twangy crap made me want to throw up, but I did it for her.”

  “I thought you two had broken up.”

  “We had, but we were still friends.”

  “Have you talked to the police?”

  “Haven’t heard a word from them.”

  “Who went with you? I need names. When did you get to Nashville? Where did you stay? What did you do before and after the show? Run me through it.”

  He took a long drag off the cigarette and squinted at me through the smoke.

  “Cody Taylor and Leslie Stewart went with me. Kasey and I used to double date with them once in a while. We checked into a Motel Six off I-40 around four o’clock, took a nap, and then went to a convenience store, and Cody bought a six-pack of beer. We drank it in the room and smoked a joint just before we left for the show. We got there just as it was starting, around seven thirty, and we hung out there until about nine thirty. Kasey had done her song, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. We went downtown and hit a couple bars, hung out until around one in the morning, and then we went back to the room. We got up at eight the next morning and drove back home. Simple. End of story.”

  “Did you see Kasey or talk to her at the show?”

  “She texted me a couple of times, but she was busy.”

  “What about after the show?”

  “She texted me once and said she was going to some after-party, but she didn’t invite me. She knew I wouldn’t be comfortable around those country music types. That was the last time I heard from her. Who are you a lawyer for, anyway? Why are you asking all these questions? You planning on suing someone?”

  “I’m representing the man accused of killing her.”

  He took another drag and choked on it. “Milius?” he said, coughing. “He’s a piece of work, man. That’s probably who killed her.”

  “Why? What makes you say that?”

  “Because he was horny, man. He ran Kasey like a buck running a doe. All he wanted was to do her. He texted herall the time. She used to laugh about it, thought it was funny. But I’ll bet you he killed her. He went up to her room and tried to do her, she told him to go jerk off in the corner, and he strangled her. That’s what happened. No doubt in my mind.”

  “I’m going to check out every detail of your story,” I said, “and if I find out you lied to me about anything, anything at all, I’ll subpoena you to the trial and disembowel you in front of the jury.”

  He flicked the cigarette into the parking lot. “Do what you gotta do, lawyer man, but I didn’t kill Kasey. She was one of my favorite people on the planet. Your client killed her.”

  I stood and watched him walk back into the club, disappointed that I’d learned even more about my client’s sexual proclivities and that I hadn’t developed an alternate suspect. I walked to my truck, started it, and was pulling out of the parking lot when I found myself humming the melody of one of the songs Ricky and his band had been playing earlier. The music really wasn’t all that bad.

  CHAPTER 21

  I’d never been one to develop stringent routines, but one of the few things I’d done on a regular basis over the years was jog along a trail that started near the back corner of my property and ran along a bluff above Boone Lake on a large piece of property adjacent to mine that was owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority. I always went in the mornings at sunrise or just a little while after, and on the Saturday morning after I talked to Ricky Church, I got up before daylight, drank a couple cups of coffee, read the newspaper (yes, I still read a document made out of paper that allegedly contained “news”), bundled up because it was thirty degrees outside, and called for Rio, my German shepherd, who came scrambling out of the bedroom through the house, his tail wagging like a helicopter blade. Rio loved going on the jogs, but he also loved the warmth and comfort of his pad in the bedroom, and he always waited until the last second before he rolled out of the sack.

  I walked down to the trail while Rio ran around and peed on everything in sight, and I was grateful that the sun was peeking over the ridge to the east and that the wind wasn’t blowing too hard. At forty-five, I was still in good shape, but in the winter when the wind got up and the temperature went down, the old joints sometimes let me know that I’d been hard on them for a long time. I started out at a brisk walk, and then after a quarter mile, broke into a jog. The leaves had fallen off the trees, but the forest on both sides of the trail was so thick it was still like running through a jungle. After I’d gone about a mile and was working up a pretty good sweat, I saw an unusual sight about fifty yards in front of me. A man was on one knee, apparently tying his shoe. Despite the fact that the land next to mine was owned by the TVA and was open to public use, I rarely saw anyone else on the trail. I slowed down to a walk and called Rio over. He always wore a harness, and I wrapped my right hand around it. Rio wasn’t usually aggressive toward people unless they arrived at our house unannounced, but I didn’t want to take a chance on him scaring or biting someone. As I got closer, the man switched knees and started tying and retying his other shoe. His back was to me.

  “Coming up on your right,” I said as I got close to him. “I have a big dog. Don’t want to—”

  At that second, the man made a quick move. I realized he was pointing something at my chest, but then my muscles stiffened and I was on my back, completely unable to move. I heard Rio squeal in pain beside me, but I couldn’t turn my head to look in his direction. Then I was aware of men—several of them—rolling me onto my stomach. They were speaking in short bursts—Spanish, I believed. A knee pressed heavily on my neck as my arms, wrists, legs, and ankles were restrained. I heard Rio growl, and then I heard the sound of an engine coming to life, and then the world went black as someone pulled a bag of some type of light material over my head and secured it with a string around my neck. I was hoisted into the trunk of a vehicle and heard the lid slam shut. And then I was alone.

  They tased me again as soon as they stopped the vehicle and opened the trunk. It had been less than thirty minutes since I was attacked on the trail. I was dragged out of the trunk and across what I thought was asphalt about fifty feet. I could hear another engine roaring before I was pulled up a short flight of stairs and into what I believed to be the passenger compartment of an airplane. They dumped me on the floor, where I lay struggling against the restraints and cursing under my breath until I heard the engine roar louder and felt the plane taxiing to the runway. Within minutes, I felt my stomach tighten as the plane—it had to be a jet—lift ed off the ground and into the sky.

  Once the plane was in the air, I was lifted to my feet, and two of the restraints were removed. I was still restrained at the wrists and ankles, but at least I was no longer trussed like a pig about to be barbecued. I was pushed a few feet and helped into a seat, and finally, the bag was removed from my head. I looked around me and saw eight men, all of them olive-skinned, dark-haired and dark-eyed, all of them wearing similar, paramilitary clothing. They were a stark contrast to the interior of the jet, which was almost as luxurious as the interior of Paul Milius’s home.

  “I’ll kill every one of you sons of bitches if you hurt my dog,” was the first thing that came out of my mouth.

  “Your dog is unharmed, Mr. Dillard,” said the man sitting closest to me. His English was accented, not heavily, but noticeably. His seat was facing mine, and he was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “We had to tase the dog and restrain him, yes, but we called your wife before we left the ground, and I’m sure
she has attended to him by now.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Names are unimportant,” the man said. “We are taking you to someone who wants very badly to speak with you. If you cooperate, you’ll be back home by tomorrow morning.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere far away. About thirty minutes before we land, which will be in about five hours, I’m going to have to ask you to allow us to replace the bag. It’s for your own protection. In the meantime, I’ll remove your restraints if you give me your word you won’t attempt to do anything stupid. There are eight of us and only one of you. All the weapons have been stowed and locked away, and we’ll be cruising at thirty thousand feet. There really is nothing you can do.”

  “What did you tell my wife?”

  “The same as I told you. That you’ll be back tomorrow, unharmed.”

  I looked around the cabin again. The men were all solid-looking, between the ages of thirty and forty. Every one of them was watching us and listening.

  “All right,” I said.

  “All right what?”

  “I give you my word I won’t attempt to take over the airplane or jump out the window or kill anyone. How’s that?”

  Within seconds, I was free of the restraints.

  “I suggest you try to relax and get some rest, Mr. Dillard,” the man said. “When we get where we’re going, you’re going to be in the bed of a truck. We’ve tried to make it somewhat comfortable, but it’s still going to be a long, rough ride.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The mystery man was true to his word. Thirty minutes before the plane landed, he replaced the black bag over my head and the restraints on my wrists, although he allowed my hands to remain in front of me. When the plane rolled to a stop, I was ushered quickly out the door, down the steps, and across a tarmac where I was helped into the bed of a truck. There was a sheet of padded foam in the bed of the truck, and I was instructed to lie on my back and not sit up. I listened while some type of tarp was pulled tightly across the top of the bed. It smelled like canvas.

  And then the ride began.

  For the next ninety minutes, the truck went straight up. It was like being on a roller coaster that never went downhill. There were curves, dozens of them—hundreds of them—and switchbacks and huge potholes in the road that sent me bouncing like a pinball off the sides of the truck, the wheel wells, and the tailgate. I was grateful for the padding—they’d padded the bed of the truck like a cell in a mental institution—but I knew I’d be so sore I’d have trouble walking the next day. I’d taken the bag off my head early on, but the canvas over the truck bed had been pulled tight, and with the exception of a few small holes that let in tiny streaks of light, I was in complete darkness.

  Finally, the truck came to a stop. I lay there quietly, waiting for what was to come next, when I heard the mystery man’s voice.

  “Mr. Dillard, have you removed the bag?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please replace it. You cannot be allowed to see your surroundings. You’ll understand soon.”

  Reluctantly, I pulled the bag back down over my face and secured the string.

  “Are you ready?” he said.

  “Ready.”

  “The bag is in place?”

  “Yes, dammit! Let me out of here!”

  A few minutes later, I was helped into yet another chair, and the bag was removed. I looked around and realized I was sitting in a garage, a residential garage that had room for four cars. There were the usual garage accoutrements around—tools, plastic bottles of oil, string-trimmer line—but there were no cars. All eight of the men who were on the plane were now in the garage with me. Directly in front of me was an empty folding chair. To my left was a door that led into a house, and within thirty seconds of the bag being removed, a young man walked through into the garage. He was average height and slim. His hair was short, jet black and wavy, his eyes liquid brown, his skin olive-colored like the rest of the men but not quite as dark. He sat down in the chair and looked me directly in the eye.

  “Mr. Dillard,” he said, “I apologize for all of this. My name is Alex Pappas, and the reason you’re here is because I know Paul Milius didn’t kill Kasey Cartwright.”

  “Will you take these off?” I said, holding up my hands.

  “Certainly.” Alex nodded, and the mystery man used a knife to cut through the plastic restraints.

  “How do you know Paul didn’t kill her?” I said.

  “Because Lana forced me to set up a contract killing,” he said. “She was supposed to pay $5 million, and the contractor was supposed to kill Kasey and Paul. Lana found out what hotel and what room Kasey was staying in, and she thought they would be in bed together. I don’t know what happened in the room. All I know is that Paul was supposed to be dead on the night of the CMT show, and he’s still alive.”

  “Tell me about the contract,” I said. “How did it work?”

  “It was real trade-craft stuff, straight out of a spy novel,” Alex said. “Lana came to me first and told me if I didn’t do what she wanted, she would make it appear as though I’d stolen $200,000 from Paul using an exclusive credit card he sometimes asked me to use on his behalf. She gave me a cell phone that she said had been encrypted and told me I’d be getting a text message in exactly two hours. When I got the text, it told me to drive immediately to the east side of the Percy Priest dam outside Nashville, take Stewart’s Ferry Road to the parking lot, get out of my car, walk down toward the Stones River and wait.

  “I did what the text said, and after I stood out there in the cold for about ten minutes, all of a sudden this guy appears out of nowhere. He’s behind me, and he slides this package under my arm and tells me not to turn around. He says there’s a laptop and a flash drive in the package and that I’m to upload the information I need to upload onto the laptop and send it to the email address that’s provided. He said it was self-explanatory, and it turned out that it was. He also said that he was a professional and that the people he worked with were professionals and if I said a word to anyone about what was going on they would slit Tilly’s throat and leave her lying on the steps of the state capitol. I’m not a violent man, Mr. Dillard. I’m no action hero. I almost wet my pants when he said that.

  “So then he tells me that a bank account number and a bank routing number are also on the flash drive and that I’m to send the money to that account. I tell him I don’t have any money to send, and he says, ‘You will. Now go back to Franklin and do as Mrs. Milius tells you.’

  “I drive back to Xanadu, and Lana stops me in the driveway and climbs into my car. She tells me to drive to Jim Warren Park in Franklin and park in an isolated spot. We find a spot, and she plugs a portable scanner into the USB port in my car. Then she hands me a typewritten sheet of paper, and on that paper is a lot of personal information about Paul Milius and Kasey Cartwright and the address of the Plaza Hotel along with a room number, a time, and a date. She tells me to open the laptop, plug in the flash drive, and start typing. I do what she asks. Then she tells me to hook the scanner to the laptop and scan in the photos she hands me. They’re all of Paul and Kasey. I do it. She tells me to send the information and I send it. Then she gets out of the car, looks around for a few minutes until she’s satisfied nobody is around, and she puts the photographs and the piece of paper on the ground and burns them.

  “Once she’s satisfied that everything is burned beyond recognition, she gets back in the car and tells me to drive across town to Liberty Park. It’s mid-November and it’s cold, so there’s nobody there but us. Lana sits in the passenger seat, tells me to open the laptop again, and starts giving me a tutorial on opening a bank account in the Channel Islands. I don’t know exactly how she did it, but it seemed to me that everything was pretty much preordained. A lot of it was already set up. The main thing she wanted from me was to get my name, address, and Social Security number on the account. It only took about thirty minutes, and the last thing s
he did was fund the account with a $5.1 million-dollar wire transfer. As soon as she gets confirmation that the money has hit the account, she tells me to do another transfer—two and a half million—to the routing number and account number that were on the flash drive I got from the guy at the river. I did it.”

  “So within a very short time,” I said, “you went from innocent employee of Paul Milius to co-conspirator in a murder plot.”

  “And scapegoat if anything went wrong,” Alex said. “Let’s not leave out that important little detail.”

  “And now you’re also a kidnapper,” I said.

  He nodded slowly. “Like I said, I’m sorry about that. I couldn’t go back there. I was afraid to reach out to you any other way, and I’m lucky enough that my father has the resources to do something like this. I don’t know who the contractors were or where they were located, but they had some high-tech toys, and I know they’re probably looking for me. There’s a little matter of some missing money that you probably don’t know about.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “I’m a pretty smart guy, Mr. Dillard, but at first I just didn’t see a way out of this. I mean, Lana had set me up. I sent the information to the contractors, and I wire transferred the money that paid for the murder. I also knew exactly what I was doing, or at least I had a pretty good idea. I couldn’t claim ignorance—the information was right there in front of me. If I told the police, I was going to jail. So I had to figure out a way to get out of there safely, to get Tilly out of there safely, and to maybe stick it to Lana a little in the process. It took me a few days, but I pulled it off.”

  “What did you do?”

  “That laptop I told you about? Lana said I was to guard it with my life until after the job was done, and then she would instruct me on what to do with the rest of the money. After that, the rightful owners would reclaim the laptop. So I put it between my box spring and mattress. Then I discreetly reached out to my family and made some travel plans—on the same private jet that brought you here. It’s owned by my father’s company. Paul always gave me Thanksgiving off, and I usually went to New York to visit my parents, but Tilly and I told everyone we were going to just go spend a couple days at the Opryland Hotel, which didn’t seem to raise any suspicion on Lana’s part.