by Scott Pratt
Then again, if I don’t tell her, am I committing a crime? Am I somehow obstructing justice? Tampering? Failing to disclose a material fact in a criminal investigation? I run the possibilities through my mind quickly and decide that though I might have some ethical obligation to tell Anita that Tommy was at my house this morning, I’m not breaking any laws by keeping it to myself. The kid’s been through enough, and even though I know she’ll do everything in her power to question him, I also know that he has a right to remain silent. He doesn’t have to tell her a damned thing.
“He’s twenty, and I think you’re wrong if you suspect Tommy Miller of doing this,” I say. “I’ve known him since he was a little kid. He’s spent the night at my house at least a hundred times over the past ten or twelve years. He’s eaten with us, gone to movies and ball games with us, spent holidays with us. We’ve even taken him with us on vacation a couple of times. He’s my son’s best friend, and my wife and I would adopt him in a heartbeat. He’s a fantastic kid. There’s no way he could have done this.”
I hear the distinctive sound of a zipper as the paramedics close the body bag. Anita and I watch as they begin to roll the charred remains of Judge Green toward the ambulance.
“That’s quite an endorsement coming from an assistant district attorney,” Anita says.
“I know him, and I know he didn’t do this.”
“So if I arrest him for murder, I guess somebody else will be prosecuting.”
I hear a clap of thunder in the distance as she turns her back to me and walks away. I hurry off toward my pickup. I need to talk to Tommy.
14
Instead of going to the office, I head straight back to the house. By the time I get there, the thunderstorm is beginning to unleash its fury. As I pull into the driveway, I can see whitecaps on the channel below, and the young birch trees at the edge of the woods are bending with the howling wind. Small raindrops are whizzing by the windshield horizontally, and the thick cloud cover has transformed morning into dusk.
The Honda Civic that I assume belongs to Tommy Miller is gone. I open the door from the garage into the kitchen and Rio almost knocks me down. He’s excited to see me, unaccustomed to my coming home so early in the day.
Caroline is standing at the stove, while Jack sits at the kitchen table. There’s a stack of pancakes in front of him, and the smell of bacon fills my nostrils. Both of them look at me in surprise.
“What are you doing here?” Caroline says.
I ignore her and walk straight to the table. “Where’s Tommy?” I say to Jack.
“What?”
“You heard me. Where’s Tommy? I saw him sleeping downstairs before I left.”
“I guess he went home.”
“Did you talk to him? What did he say?”
The questions I’m firing at Jack are quick, and the tone of my voice is intense. It’s not the kind of treatment he’s used to getting from me. Caroline walks over from the stove and sets a plate of scrambled eggs down on the table.
“What time did Tommy show up?”
“I don’t know,” Jack says. “Why are you so pissed off?”
“I asked you a question, and I want a straight answer. Now, what time did Tommy show up? ”
“Don’t yell at him,” Caroline says evenly.
“Stay out of this.”
Jack is looking at me with wide eyes. We haven’t exchanged a cross word since his first year in college when he got a little too deep into the Nashville party scene. Caroline doesn’t reply. She knows how I feel about Jack, and she knows I wouldn’t be acting this way without a good reason.
“I don’t know what time he got here,” Jack says, looking back down at his plate. “I woke up this morning and he was here. He was already awake.”
“Did you talk to him before he left?”
“Yeah, a little bit. He said he got hammered last night.”
“What time did he leave?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
“What else did he say?”
“Not much. He was pretty quiet. I don’t think he felt good.”
“How did he look?”
“What do you mean, ‘How did he look?’ He looked like someone who buried his father yesterday and tried to drown the memory in a liquor bottle.”
“Did he look like he’d been in a fight?”
“I didn’t notice anything.”
“No cuts? No blood? No bruises?”
“Not that I saw. What’s going on, Dad?”
“What about his clothes? Did you see anything on his clothes?”
“Not really. I mean, he was wearing some of my clothes.”
“What the hell happened to his clothes?”
“I don’t know.”
I take a deep breath and sit down across from him. Caroline returns the pan to the stove and walks back to the table.
“You’d better sit down,” I say to her.
For the next few minutes, I describe to them the crime scene, how someone apparently planned the murder, lay in wait, then brutally assaulted, hanged, and burned a man. When I’m finished, I stare straight at Jack.
“They haven’t positively identified the body yet. But there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind who it is.”
“Who?” Caroline asks.
“It’s Judge Green.” I’m still staring at Jack. “And Tommy Miller is at the top of their list of suspects. The TBI is going to be crawling all over this.”
Jack’s face slowly turns pale, as though a valve has been opened and has drained every bit of blood from above his shoulders. Suddenly he stands.
“I’m going to be sick,” he says, and he sprints for the bathroom.
15
Caroline and I sit in silence for a few minutes, listening to the retching from the bathroom echo off the walls down the hall.
“You don’t really think Tommy did it,” Caroline says.
“It’s possible.”
“But you knew Ray. You know Tommy. You’re his friend, Joe.”
“Not if he committed a murder and brought it to my doorstep. That’s not my idea of friendship.”
“Tommy didn’t kill anyone, and you know it. They’re just going after Tommy because of what happened with Ray.”
“Oh, they’re going after him, all right. You can count on that. My guess is Special Agent Anita White will be knocking on his door within the hour.”
Caroline stands and starts walking toward the counter. She picks up the telephone.
“Then I’m calling Toni,” Caroline says. “I have to warn her.”
I get up and walk toward her, holding out my hand.
“No way, Caroline. One of the first things they’ll do is get a subpoena for their phone records. If you call, you’ll probably get a visit. Now give me the phone.”
“She just buried her husband. I can call to check on her if I want.”
“But you can’t call to warn her that the cops are coming to question her son about a murder.”
“Why not?” She turns her back on me and begins to dial.
“Because you could wind up getting charged with obstruction of justice, that’s why. Caroline, don’t be reckless. Stay out of this.”
“That’s twice you’ve said that to me in the past twenty minutes. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not one of your underlings at the office. I don’t take orders from you.”
“Please.”
“If it were me, I’d expect her to do the same.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and turn her toward me.
“What do I have to do to make you understand this isn’t a game? You’re about to commit a crime, and you’re forcing me to be a witness.”
“Calling my friend is not a crime. And you don’t have to listen.”
The look in her eyes tells me she’s made up her mind. She walks toward the bedroom, the phone to her ear. I turn, frustrated, and catch a glimpse of Jack coming down the hall, wiping his mouth with a washcloth. The aura of self-assuredness that u
sually surrounds him has vanished. He trudges through the kitchen on heavy legs and plops back into his seat at the table.
I begin to rub my fingers through my hair and notice that they’re trembling. I feel anger-anger that Judge Green set all of this into motion, anger that I’m helpless to do anything about it, anger that my wife is acting like a stubborn fool-but I also feel fear. I know what the system is capable of. I know what it can do to the guilty, and I know what it can do to the innocent. My mind conjures up an image of Tommy strapped to a gurney, an IV hooked to his arm. I fear for Tommy, but I also fear for my son.
“I can’t believe this,” Jack says quietly. He stares down at the table, as though in a trance.
“Think,” I say. “Think about everything he said and did.”
“Why? Even if I remember something that might help the police, do you think I’m going to tell them? We’re talking about my best friend here. We’re talking about someone whose life was ripped apart for no good reason, someone who didn’t deserve it. Even if he did kill the judge-and I don’t believe for a second that he did-I’ll be damned if I’m going to help them pin it on him.”
His words shock me to the point of incredulity. I bore in on him, my voice much louder than I intend it to be.
“What the hell is going on here? Has everyone in this house suddenly gone insane?”
He doesn’t respond, and I look away in silence, not wanting to comprehend what I’m hearing. Jack has worked hard all his life. He’s been an excellent student, a great athlete, a great kid. He has a promising future. He’s going to earn a degree from one of the finest universities in the country. He has a chance to achieve his lifelong dream of playing professional baseball. And now he sits in front of me telling me he’s willing to take a chance on throwing it all away over a sense of misguided loyalty. I turn back to him.
“Jack, listen to me. You don’t know what you’re up against. A man has been killed, and not just any man. A judge. I don’t care what you thought of him or what I thought of him or what anyone else thought of him. The position he held is as symbolic as it is powerful. He wore a robe, Jack. Think about that. A black robe. Do you think the people around here are just going to sit by and let someone kill one of their most powerful symbols and get away with it? Somebody’s going to burn for this. If Tommy did it, they’re going to catch him, and they’ll probably kill him. If you get in the way, you’ll go down with him.”
“What are you talking about?” he yells. “I didn’t do anything. I went to bed last night, and I woke up this morning. That’s it.”
“He was here when you woke up. That’s all it takes.”
Jack tenses. The muscles in his neck, shoulders, and chest ripple beneath his skin like waves on a pond.
“All it takes? For what? For the government to invade my life, my privacy? For them to drag me down to the police station and force me to betray my best friend, even though I have no idea what he did last night and I don’t believe he committed a crime?”
“If they ask you if you saw him, you have to tell them the truth. And believe me, they’ll ask you.”
“I don’t have to talk to them! Listen to yourself! You sound like a freaking Nazi! Don’t forget, Dad-I grew up in this house with you. I’ve heard you say it a thousand times. ‘People don’t have to talk to the police.’ How many times have I heard you say, ‘If he’d just kept his mouth shut, he would’ve never been caught’?”
“This is different.”
“How?” His tone is now defiant. “How is it different? If the police come knocking on my door, I can tell them to piss up a rope, right? I can tell them to go to hell. As a matter of fact, I don’t have to tell them anything.”
He’s right, to a degree. A private citizen doesn’t have to speak to the police if he doesn’t want to. But unless he’s the target of a criminal investigation, he can be subpoenaed to testify in front of a grand jury. If he refuses to answer questions, the presiding judge can throw him in jail until he changes his mind or until the grand jury’s term ends. It’s a practice used regularly by the federal government. They convene investigative grand juries all the time. I’ve seen the feds use them to the point of extortion.
On the other hand, the locals have never used the grand jury as an investigative tool; not once, to my knowledge. Local grand juries are nothing more than rubber stamps for cops and prosecutors, largely because the only people who ever appear before them are cops and prosecutors. The prosecutors ask all the questions and the cops provide all the answers, meaning they can choreograph the proceedings to suit their needs. Sadly, the old saying that a local prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich is true.
“They can force you to answer questions if they want to,” I say. “If you refuse, they can throw you in jail.”
“What about my right to remain silent?”
“The fact that you grew up in a house with a lawyer doesn’t make you a lawyer. There are a lot of things about the law you don’t know.”
“Enlighten me.”
I throw up my hands in frustration.
“What do you want me to do, Jack? I’m an assistant district attorney. Before I leave for work this morning, I find Tommy Miller asleep in my house. After I leave for work, I find out that Judge Green has been murdered and Tommy is a suspect. I come home to try to figure out what’s going on, and my wife decides to jump into the middle of it and my son tells me he’s going to hide behind his constitutional rights. Put yourself in my place.”
“Hide?” Jack says, his voice rising again. “You think choosing to exercise my right to stay out of this is hiding? You’ve really changed, haven’t you? Whatever happened to the dad who always told me, ‘Don’t ever let the government in your life, son. You can’t trust them’? Whatever happened to the dad who always told me that real friends should be treasured and that loyalty is important? What happened to that guy?”
“You need to calm down.”
He rises from the chair, his fingertips pushing against the table. His face, so pale earlier, is now flushed with anger. I’ve never seen him like this.
“Do you know what I need, Dad?” he says through tight lips. “Right now, this very minute, do you know what I really need?”
“Tell me.”
“What I need is a lawyer! A good one! One who’s on my side! Now, are you going to help me or not?”
16
“What do you think? Have I broken through the glass ceiling? Tell me the truth.”
At thirty-eight years old and after twelve years of busting her backside as a special agent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Anita White was finally the lead investigator on a high-profile murder case. She looked over at Mike Norcross, the super-hero look-alike who sat in the passenger seat as they drove through the rain.
“I don’t know,” Norcross said. “Depends on why the suits gave it to you. I mean, the boss was one of the first people on the crime scene. He knows how tough it’s going to be. I’m glad he didn’t drop it on me.”
Anita pondered for a minute. She and Norcross had become friends over the past year, and she knew he’d give her an honest opinion, one unaffected by racism, chauvinism, or jealousy. She liked Norcross. His massive physical presence belied the personality beneath. Anita’s experiences with Norcross both in the office and in the field told her he was a smart man, honest and hardworking, gentle at his core, who somehow managed to balance the strenuous demands of the job with the needs of a family.
“So you think I’m a sacrificial lamb?” Anita said.
“I think you’re in for a rough road. It’s a tough crime scene. We won’t get squat as far as physical evidence goes. So unless somebody talks or we get lucky, we might be screwed.”
Norcross was right. The crime scene was difficult. To start with, it was outdoors, and now it had been drenched by a thunderstorm. The judge had apparently been killed outside his vehicle, which meant the inside of his Mercedes would probably yield nothing of value. The killer had stayed primaril
y in the grass, except when he dragged the judge across the asphalt driveway, which meant there were no usable footprints. The Mercedes had been loaded onto a covered truck before it rained and hauled away for forensic examination, but Anita doubted they’d find any fingerprints that would help identify a suspect.
The judge had apparently been ambushed when he attempted to move the tree from the driveway. There was blood on the tree trunk, and a few samples had been taken from the grass near the driveway and along the path where the judge had been dragged, but Anita expected the blood to turn out to be Judge Green’s. They’d collected some cuttings of grass and some soil that smelled like kerosene. They’d collected the rope the killer used to hang the judge. They’d collected portions of the trunk of the Bradford pear tree that had been lying across the driveway in hopes they might be able to determine exactly what kind of saw had been used to cut it down. Finally, they’d collected two cigarette butts, Marlboro Lights, from the grass beside the driveway. That was it. Anita also believed the judge had been beaten with a blunt object of some sort, but no weapon was found.
So, based on the evidence at the crime scene, they were looking for a man strong enough to drag the judge and string him up in the tree and who might smoke Marlboro Lights, a saw of some sort, and a container that held the kerosene. Not much to go on. Not much at all.
Anita had also learned that two witnesses reported seeing a white compact car in the vicinity of the crime scene around the time the murder was committed. Four blocks away, a neighbor of the judge’s, a retired air force colonel named Robbins, had been unable to sleep and had gone for a walk sometime between 5:15 and 5:20 a.m. He’d seen the car driving out of the neighborhood. It wasn’t speeding, but Robbins said it might have been swerving. He didn’t pay attention to the tag number, and he didn’t get a look at the driver. All he knew was the car was small and white. He thought the car also had a taillight out, but he didn’t remember which one.
