Injustice for all jd-3

by Scott Pratt

  “You married, young lady?”

  “No, sir. Never been married.”

  “Lesbo?”

  Anita stood. Enough was enough. She reached out and picked the warrant application up from Glass’s desk.

  “Thank you for your time, Judge,” she said.

  “Wait just a goddamned minute,” Glass said. He reached out and snatched the papers from Anita’s hand. “I’ll sign your warrant. What’re you getting so goddamned touchy about?”

  23

  Late in the afternoon, I receive a telephone call from Roscoe Stinnett. He’s the lawyer defending Rafael Ramirez, the drug dealer and murderer Mooney wants me to set free. Stinnett is from Knoxville, and he and Mooney are close friends. Both of them are Texans. They did their undergraduate work at Texas A amp;M together, and both of them were heavily involved in the ROTC program. Mooney wound up going to law school in Texas and then enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he served as a JAG officer, while Stinnett migrated to the University of Tennessee and stayed in Knoxville. He carves out most of his living defending crack cocaine dealers in federal court, but Ramirez has hired him on the murder case. During each of the few discussions we’ve had, he’s made sure to tell me how close he is to my boss.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Stinnett?”

  “My client has some important information for you. He wants a face-to-face meeting with you at the jail. I think he wants to make some kind of deal.”

  “You think he wants to make a deal? You mean you don’t know?”

  “He won’t tell me anything. I don’t think he trusts me.”

  “Imagine that. A client not trusting his lawyer. What kind of information does he have?”

  “He won’t tell me.”

  “So when do you want to set up this meeting?”

  “Now.”

  “Now? Where are you?”

  “At the jail. Waiting for you.”

  There doesn’t seem to be anything that demands my immediate attention going on with the investigation into Judge Green’s murder, so I make the short journey to the Washington County Detention Center. On the way over, I ponder how strange it is that Stinnett would call and want to make a deal after Mooney has told me to dismiss the charge against his client. I have no intention of dismissing the charge, however. I’ve decided that if Mooney wants it done, he can go into court and do it himself.

  After I walk through the maze of gray hallways and sliding steel doors, I find myself sitting across a table from Stinnett and his client, fifty-three-year-old Rafael Ramirez, known on the streets as “Loco.” Ramirez’s skin is olive colored and leathery. His hair is graying and no more than an eighth of an inch long, his eyes as black as a moonless night, and he has a jagged scar running from his hairline to the tip of his left eyebrow.

  Ramirez looks defiant, his eyes hardened with anger and resentment. He smells of perspiration and cigarette smoke. Stinnett is leaning over, whispering forcefully in Ramirez’s ear. The longer I’m away from criminal defense law, the more horrified I become that I once did the same thing Stinnett is doing now. Ramirez is handcuffed, waist chained, and shackled. He shrugs his shoulders violently and pulls away from Stinnett. The scar in his forehead becomes ridged as his forehead crinkles in anger.

  “No, motherfucker!” Ramirez snaps. “I walk out of here. Now. I don’t want to spend another minute in this jail. That’s the deal.”

  “If he thinks he’s walking out of here, you’re wasting my time, Roscoe,” I say to Stinnett.

  “He says he has some information he thinks is worth it.”

  “He could tell me who killed JonBenet Ramsey and he wouldn’t walk.”

  “This is better,” Ramirez says with a smirk. “I got something you might care about personally.”

  “Really? And what might that be?”

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That you’ll dismiss your bullshit murder charge against me if I tell you what I know.”

  “Not a chance.”

  Ramirez smirks at me. “She might still be alive,” he says.

  I’m temporarily stunned. Could he be talking about Hannah Mills?

  “You’ve figured out by now she’s gone, right?” Ramirez says. “Been gone, what, forty-eight hours or so? Ticktock.”

  I fight to keep my composure. I want to rip his throat out.

  “Exactly what are you talking about, Mr. Ramirez?”

  “I’m talking about a little punta who may work in your office, you know? Something bad may have happened to her, and I might know something about it.”

  “Is she alive?”

  “Could be. Can’t really say.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “Maybe.”

  My mind starts racing through the possibilities. He obviously knows something about Hannah, but how? He’s been in jail. Has she been kidnapped? Maybe to get back at us for charging Ramirez with murder? Maybe some of his people are holding her for ransom. We let him go; he lets her go. That’s it. It has to be.

  “I’m not going to let your client extort me,” I say to Stinnett. “If he knows something, he needs to tell me now. If the information pans out, I’ll ask the judge to take his assistance into consideration when he’s sentenced for the murder.”

  “The deal is I tell you what I know about the girl and you dismiss the murder charge,” Ramirez says. “No negotiation.”

  I stand up.

  “Not interested. Can I talk to you outside for a minute, Roscoe?”

  I push the button on the wall to let the guards know I want to leave. As I’m waiting for them to release the air lock on the door, Ramirez gives me his parting shot.

  “Somebody wants her dead real bad,” he says, “and I might know who that somebody is.”

  The lock releases, and Stinnett follows me back through the maze, through the lobby, and out into the parking lot. I don’t say a word until we’re clear of everyone else, and then I turn on him.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Stinnett looks as if he’s seen Satan himself. Sweat is running down the side of his face, and he’s gone pale.

  “I swear I didn’t know what he was going to say,” Stinnett says. “He called my cell yesterday and said he wanted me to come up today. Said it was urgent. Given the fee he paid, I drove up. When he said he wanted to meet with you, I advised against it, but he insisted. I didn’t know what kind of information he had. I still don’t.”

  “Do you remember Hannah Mills? She worked in the Knoxville DA’s office for a while. Victim-witness coordinator.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember her.” Roscoe is distracted, almost panicked.

  “She’s missing. We just found out about it a few hours ago, and your boy is already offering information. I’m sure that’s what he’s talking about. Nobody’s seen her since Friday.”

  “Sorry. Like I said, I had no idea.”

  “I want you to go back in there and give him a message. You tell him if we find her dead, and if he’s withholding information that could have saved her, he won’t have to worry about a murder trial. I’ll put the word out that he’s snitching on everyone he’s ever known. He won’t live a week.”

  Roscoe Stinnett hurried back into the jail and through the steel doors and bland hallways. Rafael Ramirez was still sitting at the table. Stinnett walked in and banged his fist down on the table dramatically.

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy or something? I told you I had this taken care of.”

  Ramirez stared at him coldly. Despite Ramirez’s being cuffed and shackled, Stinnett feared him. He was more intimidating than any defendant Stinnett had ever represented, and Stinnett had represented more than his share of sociopaths and psychopaths.

  “All you have to do is be patient,” Stinnett said. “It will happen.”

  “Sit your ass down, Counselor,” Ramirez said, “and don’t ever raise your voice to me again.”

  Stinnett lowered hi
mself weakly into the chair, making sure he was out of Ramirez’s reach.

  “That wasn’t smart, Rafael. You could have jeopardized the whole thing.”

  “You came to me with a job,” Ramirez said. “You said you needed it done quick and clean. I put you in touch with the right man. The job is done, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t ask you to be patient, did I? I didn’t try to put you off. I didn’t refuse your request. I just did what you wanted me to do, and now it’s your turn to do what you promised. I want out of this place, and I want out now.”

  “It’s a delicate matter. It has to be done a certain way. It has to at least appear to be legitimate. It will just take a little time.”

  “I don’t have time to sit around in here,” Ramirez said. “I have work to do.”

  “Just a little while longer.”

  “I’ll give you a week. If I’m not out of here in a week, the next contract will be on you.”

  24

  Katie Dean laid her walking stick aside, took off her pack, and sat down on a fallen log to eat. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday in June 1998. The sun was shining, the temperature in the mid-sixties, the mountain air clear and crisp as the breeze rustled through the canopy above. Taking out a Baggie filled with a trail mix of peanuts, raisins, dried bananas, and chocolate, she began to munch.

  “You want some?” she said to Maggie, the border collie who had become her constant outdoor companion over the past five years.

  The time had passed like a single night for Katie. Her life on the small farm outside of Gatlinburg was simple. The days were long and the work was hard, but Katie had grown to love the animals, the land, and, most of all, the people who surrounded her. She kept her mother and brothers and sister close to her heart always, but she’d come to accept that Aunt Mary, Luke, and Lottie were her family now.

  The awful memory of that faraway Sunday crept up on her occasionally. A couple of weeks after she moved in, Lottie had fixed fried chicken for dinner on a Friday evening. The smell sent Katie running out of the house and through the pasture, screaming. Aunt Mary had caught up with her in the old pickup truck, and after she calmed down, Katie had tearfully told Aunt Mary what she remembered about the day her family was slaughtered. She never smelled fried chicken in the house again.

  There were other things that triggered nightmares sometimes; little things, such as the sound of church bells, a glimpse of someone who reminded her of one of her siblings, or the sound of shotguns firing in the fall when the hunters took to the nearby cornfields in pursuit of doves. But the reminder Katie saw most often was in the mirror, because in the place where her right breast should have been was an ugly, pink, concave scar. She’d learned to cover herself with a towel or a robe before she looked in the mirror after showering, but it was impossible not to be self-conscious. Katie had dealt with the deformity through high school by wearing a prosthetic-a “falsie,” she called it. She’d stayed away from boys and had avoided discussing it with girls until her closest friend, a townie named Amy, told her one day that nearly everyone in school had heard about what happened to her. It was a small town, Amy said. It was hard to keep secrets.

  Despite the missing breast and the memories, Katie had willed herself to overcome. She forced herself to concentrate on what was good in her life, and there was plenty. Luke was her closest friend. She spent hours reading to him, watching television with him, and caring for him. Katie had learned to feed him, bathe him, and change his diapers. He quivered with excitement every time she walked in the door from school or from doing her chores around the farm. She read him stories and watched cartoons with him on Saturday mornings. Lottie had been right. He was a smart young gentleman. He communicated by different sounds from his throat and by the expressions in his eyes. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and Katie thought he was the sweetest, gentlest creature on earth.

  Because Aunt Mary had collected a substantial amount of money when her husband was killed in the logging accident, Katie was on her way to college. Aunt Mary had never said how much, only that it was more than enough to take care of her and Luke and Lottie and Katie for the rest of their lives. Katie was already enrolled at the University of Tennessee. She would start classes late in August. She was a year older than most of her classmates because she took a year off after her family was killed, but no one seemed to notice. Inspired by the beauty that surrounded her in the mountains, she was planning to major in horticulture and perhaps work for the forest service one day.

  Aunt Mary had also given Katie another gift, the best she’d ever received. For Katie’s seventeenth birthday, Aunt Mary had accompanied her to Knoxville to a cosmetic surgeon. The surgeon had first placed a tissue expander beneath the skin where her breast should have been. Over the next few months, he pumped increasing amounts of water into the expander, stretching the skin and making room for a breast implant. When he did the surgery to install the implant, he’d also fashioned a nipple out of a small amount of skin he took from Katie’s rump, and he’d tattooed the nipple and surrounding skin pink to match the other breast. Then he’d injected a pigment to lighten the skin that covered the implant. It still wasn’t perfect-it was a bit darker than her other breast, and the skin was still numb-but for the first time in years Katie had begun to feel normal.

  She swallowed another bite of trail mix and resumed her hike. Each year, Katie had ventured farther away from Roaring Fork and deeper into the park. She’d scaled Mount LeConte, visited the cabins and farms of the early settlers, and marveled at the beauty of Grotto Falls, Rainbow Falls, and the hundreds of species of plants and wildlife.

  Katie had become an expert at orienteering and camping. It had taken her nearly a year to convince Aunt Mary that she was capable of staying out overnight in the park. Now she’d made at least a dozen overnight trips. She’d encountered bears and snakes and even the occasional wild boar, but she felt safe in the woods, especially with Maggie along.

  Her plan for the weekend was to head east along the Grapeyard Ridge trail to Greenbriar Cove and then travel south, cross-country and off-trail, toward Laurel Top on the Appalachian Trail. She’d made good time to Greenbriar and was relieved to be off the beaten path used by an increasing number of tourists each year. Katie topped a ridge and checked her map. She’d make the trail by nightfall, no problem, and then hike back home tomorrow.

  As she descended the other side of the ridge into a cove, Katie stopped suddenly. Something wasn’t quite right ahead. She peered through the branches of a rhododendron and could see that the forest had been cleared in the cove below and replaced by a vast field of… what was it? Whatever it was, it was a fluorescent green, almost glowing. She crept toward the break in the trees and reached into her pack for her binoculars.

  The marijuana patch was vast, close to five acres, Katie guessed. The plants were at least four feet high and waved gently back and forth in the breeze. As Katie scanned with her binoculars, she saw two all-terrain vehicles at one end of the patch. At the other end, about a hundred yards to her right, she saw three men sitting on lawn chairs. They were eating. All three of them appeared to be Latino, probably Mexican.

  Maggie must have caught their scent, because she started to growl.

  “Hush, Maggie,” Katie whispered. She knelt down next to the dog and reached out for her collar with her left hand. Maggie’s ears were standing up straight, as was the hair on the back of her neck. She let out a weak bark.

  “No, Maggie, no.” Katie took another look through the binoculars. One of the men was standing now, pointing in her direction. He’d seen her.

  “Let’s go, Maggie.” Katie turned and started running as fast as she could back up the ridge. Maggie followed her but continued to bark.

  When Katie reached the top of the ridge, she heard the sound of engines. They were coming after her. She veered left through a large area of Fraser fir deadfall, scrambling over tree trunks and branches, crawling beneath rhododendron. Even if they saw
her in the deadfall, they wouldn’t be able to follow on the four-wheelers, and Katie felt confident she could outrun or outhike anyone in these mountains.

  When she heard the engines top the ridge behind her, maybe three or four hundred yards back, she crouched behind a huge tree trunk, wrapped her hand around Maggie’s snout, and waited. About twenty seconds passed before she saw two men on four-wheelers tearing through the trees, heading in the direction she’d been going before she broke for the deadfall. They stopped at the edge of the deadfall, turned off the engines, and listened.

  “Shhh,” Katie whispered as she clutched Maggie close to her. “Shhh.”

  After an agonizing minute, the engines started, and the four-wheelers tore off up the ridge. As soon as they were out of sight, Katie started running due west. The sound of the engines faded with every step she took.

  Katie kept telling herself she was safe now.

  She was safe.

  25

  Katie arrived home after dark on Sunday. The route she took back after her run-in with the men at the marijuana patch had taken longer than she expected. The terrain was as difficult as any she’d encountered in the park. As soon as she walked through the back porch and into the kitchen, Aunt Mary appeared.

  “Oh, Katie, are you all right?” Aunt Mary asked. She immediately embraced Katie.

  “I’m fine.”

  Aunt Mary stepped back and took stock of her.

  “Look at you. You’re scratched all to pieces.”

  Katie had debated much of the way home about whether she should tell Aunt Mary what she’d seen. Aunt Mary despised the “druggers,” as she called them. Every year in the fall, they hauled their harvest out of the mountains past the farm, led by a sheriff’s department vehicle. A couple of years after Katie moved in, Aunt Mary finally told her what the annual parade of trucks contained.

  “They hide deep in the mountains where no one can see them, they do their business, and they pay off the sheriff,” Aunt Mary had explained. “Everyone’s afraid of them. It’s best to just let them be, but I swear it goes against my grain. They’re making millions of dollars illegally, and nobody’ll do anything about it.”