Injustice for all jd-3

by Scott Pratt

  The last time I’m conscious of the clock, it’s three in the morning. I slip into sleep, and find myself running through a maze of mirrored walls, floors, and ceilings. Someone is chasing me. I come to a dead end and look at myself. I’m emaciated, nearly unrecognizable. Something has drained my body, perhaps even my soul. My skin is cracked, pale, and drawn so tightly against my bones that I resemble a skeleton. I shrink away from the image in horror and turn to run back in the direction from which I’ve come.

  I take one step and see them. Anita White and Mike Norcross, guns up, come around the corner. I turn back and look into the mirror. I smash it with my fist.

  On the other side of the mirror is a dark tunnel. I can see a dim light in the distance. I run toward it, but after only a few strides I feel myself falling, falling, falling through the darkness and down what I believe is a bottomless pit. Suddenly a parachute pops open above me. I land awkwardly and tumble, rolling onto my side as the parachute falls softly around me. I extricate myself from the chute and stand. I’m in complete darkness now, but I feel a weight on my shoulders. I run my hands up my abdomen, across my chest, and realize I’m wearing web gear now. I’m wearing boots and a Kevlar helmet. I have an M16 assault rifle strapped across my shoulders. A flashlight is attached to the strap on my web gear, and I flip it on. I’m in a cave. I hear a faint voice and cast the beam of the flashlight toward the sound.

  “Fahhhhhh-eeee.”

  I see an elongated mound. I bring the weapon around, pull the charging handle, and aim it toward the mound. I creep forward slowly. The floor of the cave begins to tremble beneath my feet. I shoulder the weapon. The sound grows louder.

  “Faaaahhhh-eeeeee.”

  It’s the voice of a female. I suddenly realize I recognize it.

  The mound begins to erode as the tremors intensify. Suddenly, the clay that covers it splits, and I can make out what I believe is a face. It’s a body, slimy, in the early stages of decomposition. The lips are moving.

  “Faaaahhhiiiinnnddd-mmmeeeee.”

  The tremors stop; the body bends at the waist and sits up. The head turns toward me, and I find myself looking directly at what’s left of Hannah Mills’s sweet face.

  “Find me,” she whispers. “Find me.”

  31

  Anita White’s plan was to execute the search warrants simultaneously, early in the morning, in Tennessee and North Carolina. Detective Rama from Durham had taken the documents Anita faxed him and drafted his own application. The primary difference in the two applications was that Rama had received information (from Anita, a fellow law enforcement officer) that Tommy Miller had returned to Durham because he was a student at Duke University, and that the vehicle was now in North Carolina. He’d called Anita late the previous afternoon and told her that the judge had issued the warrants for both Tommy’s car and his apartment, that he’d obtained an address for Tommy, and that he was personally staking out Tommy’s place at the Belmont complex near the Duke campus. Rama had called again around eleven at night to tell Anita that Tommy was in the apartment, but the car wasn’t in the lot. Anita told him that even if he couldn’t find the car in the morning, she wanted Tommy held for questioning.

  Anita hung up her phone at seven a.m.

  “Rama’s in place,” she said to Norcross. “He’s going in now.”

  Anita pulled into Toni Miller’s driveway. Norcross was in the passenger seat, and two more agents were in a separate car right behind them. She threw the car into park, killed the engine, and got out. The other two agents went around to the back as Toni and Norcross strode to the front porch. Anita rapped sharply on the front door.

  “Police! Search warrant!” she yelled. She banged on the door again.

  A couple of minutes later, Anita heard a voice from the other side of the door. It was Toni Miller.

  “What do you want?”

  “Police, Mrs. Miller! We have a search warrant. Open the door.”

  “Get the hell out of here!” The voice sounded tortured, as though Toni Miller had been horrifically wounded.

  “Open the door, Mrs. Miller, or we’ll break it down!”

  “There’s nothing you want here! Go away! Please! Go away!”

  “Last chance, Mrs. Miller! Open the door!”

  There was a long silence before Anita heard a loud click as Toni Miller slid the dead bolt. Anita pushed the door open and walked into the foyer. The ceiling in the foyer was nearly twenty feet high; the floor was marble. A large chandelier hung above Anita’s head.

  Toni had backed up near a decorative rail that spiraled upward along a staircase. Anita gasped when she saw her. She was naked-her robe lay in a pile at her feet-and she was crying hysterically. She spread her arms wide and screamed, “Go ahead! Search me! I have nothing to hide!”

  “Walk through and let the others in,” Anita said to Norcross, who had turned his back to Toni. Anita stepped toward Toni, reached down, and picked up the robe and nightgown off the floor. She wrapped the robe around Toni’s shoulders and led her silently into a den off the foyer. Toni was now sobbing quietly. Anita felt deep sympathy for this tortured woman, a woman who had probably done nothing wrong, a woman whose husband-and now her son-had put her through far more than Anita suspected she deserved.

  Anita helped Toni sit on a couch and knelt in front of her.

  “I’m sorry to have to put you through this, Mrs. Miller, but I have a job to do. We have a warrant that allows us to search the property, inside and out. We’ll do it as quickly and quietly as we can. And when we’re finished, I’d still like to ask you a few questions.”

  Anita looked into Toni’s eyes. They’d taken on a faraway look, as though she’d transported herself mentally to some other place, some other time.

  “Just do what you have to do and get out,” Toni whispered.

  The search lasted four hours and encompassed three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, den, dining area, laundry room, game room, basement, and garage. The agents found nothing whatsoever that could be called evidence. When Anita examined Toni’s cell phone, she found that Toni hadn’t made a single call to Tommy in the past twenty four hours. There were several calls to and from someone named Caroline, however. Wasn’t that Dillard’s wife?

  Anita had called Rama every half hour during the search to see how things were going with Tommy Miller, but Rama wasn’t answering his cell. Anita figured he was either searching the car or sweating Tommy.

  She told the other agents to wait outside and walked back into the den where Toni Miller had been sitting during the entire search. She hadn’t said a word.

  “We’re finished, Mrs. Miller,” Anita said. Toni didn’t respond.

  “I’d like to talk to you for a minute, if you feel up to it,” Anita said.

  “Get out of my house,” came the reply. The voice was cold, full of contempt.

  Anita turned and walked out the front door. As she walked toward the car, her cell phone buzzed. It was Rama.

  “Talk to me,” Anita said.

  “Bad news,” Rama said. “He spotted us first thing when we pulled into the complex this morning. I don’t know what the hell he was doing out that early, but he ran like a rabbit. We’ve spent the whole morning looking for him. No luck so far.”

  “The car?” Anita said.

  “No sign of it yet. We’ll stay on it.”

  Anita closed the phone. Her only viable suspect, a kid, was staying a step ahead of her. Now both he and his vehicle had disappeared. Anita had nothing solid to tie Tommy Miller to the judge’s murder. But if he had nothing to hide, why would he run?

  As Anita got into the car, her cell phone rang. She looked at the number and turned to Norcross.

  “It’s the boss.”

  “Like I told you before,” Norcross said, “I’m glad he didn’t dump this case on me.”

  32

  Judge Green’s murder dominates the radio broadcasts as I drive through Boones Creek toward Jonesborough the next morning. Hannah’s d
isappearance merits a brief mention. I’ve left home later than usual because I’m too tired to work out. I decide to take a detour and stop by my sister’s house. It’s several miles out of the way, but I haven’t seen or heard from her since Christmas, when she suddenly announced to everyone that she was four months’ pregnant. Since she’s forty-four years old, unmarried, and hasn’t been exactly a model citizen, the news came as quite a surprise. We had a short discussion that resulted in her storming out of the house, and I haven’t spoken to her since.

  Sarah lives in the house that belonged to my mother before she died of Alzheimer’s a few years back. She’s a year older than I, a beautiful, green-eyed, dark-haired woman who has never been able to get past my uncle raping her when she was a child. She’s spent most of her adult life addicted to booze, drugs, and rotten men. She’s been in jail a half dozen times.

  After our mother died, Sarah pulled herself together for about a year, although she replaced her addiction to substances with a religious zeal worthy of the pope himself. During that time, she met a man named Robert Godsey and moved away with him to Crossville, Tennessee, which is about a hundred and fifty miles west of Johnson City. Godsey turned out to be a jerk and beat her terribly-twice. During the second beating, Sarah defended herself by hitting Godsey with a fireplace shovel and wound up being charged with attempted murder. The charge was eventually dropped and Sarah moved back, but I’ve seen very little of her since. She’s working at a deli in Johnson City, slinging sandwiches for the college lunch crowd.

  As I pull into the driveway off Barton Street, I see a large chopper parked outside the garage door in the shade of an old sugar maple. The first thing that pops into my mind is that Sarah’s taken up a new hobby. The Harley is painted a glossy black, with shiny chrome wheels and leather saddlebags. It can’t be Sarah’s. She’s strong, but she’s eight months’ pregnant now, and the bike has to weigh more than half a ton. There’s no way she could handle it.

  I walk to the front porch and ring the doorbell. It’s a little after eight. I know she has to be at work by nine, so I figure she should be up. She comes to the door wearing an oversized black T-shirt that says “Biker Bitch” in white letters across the front. Her face is full and pink, and her pregnant belly is pushing against the inside of the shirt.

  “What are you doing here?” Sarah says matter-of-factly.

  “Just thought I’d stop by and say hello. Haven’t seen much of you lately. Damn, you’re as big as a house.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “No, I didn’t mean it that way. It just surprised me. You look good. You really do. You look healthy. A little tired maybe, but healthy.”

  “Your powers of observation never cease to amaze.” Her tone is unfriendly and sarcastic.

  “Caroline misses you. So do I.”

  “I see Caroline once in a while.”

  “Really? She hasn’t mentioned it.”

  “I guess she doesn’t tell you everything, does she?”

  “Have I done something to piss you off?”

  “Not lately.”

  “Well, are you going to invite me in for a cup of coffee or leave me standing out here on the porch?”

  “I have company.”

  “So introduce me.”

  She shrugs her shoulders and opens the door. I follow her through the living room and into the kitchen. Standing next to the sink is one of the biggest men I’ve ever seen. He’s a good five inches taller than I and looks to weigh in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds. He has a huge belly, but other than that, he looks like a weight lifter. He’s wearing a white T-shirt under a black leather vest, blue jeans, and boots. He has a brown beard that reaches to his collarbone, and both of his thickly muscled arms are covered in tattoos. His brown hair is pulled into a ponytail that falls to the middle of his back.

  “This is my friend Roy,” Sarah says.

  He peers at me through expressionless blue eyes. Though I’m intimidated by his size, I step toward him and put out my hand.

  “Joe Dillard. Sarah’s brother.”

  His hand is rough, calloused, and as big as a ham. He squeezes tightly, as if to let me know he could crush me if he wanted to.

  “They call me Mountain,” he says in a raspy bass.

  “I can see why. That must be your bike out front. Nice.”

  He nods and drains the last of his coffee as I back away from him slowly. He looks at Sarah and says, “Gotta hit the road, babe.”

  Sarah walks over to him, and he bends down to kiss her. While he’s at it, he grabs two huge handfuls of her butt.

  “I’ll stop by sometime tonight,” he says, and then he lumbers past me and out the front door. As he’s walking away, I see a patch on the back of his leather vest. It’s a red skeleton with a wicked smile on its face and a long, pointed red tail. It’s wearing a beret and carrying a rifle. Beneath the skeleton are the words “Satan’s Soldiers.”

  Satan’s Soldiers is a notorious motorcycle gang. I know they’re heavy into the crystal methamphetamine business. They also deal in guns and explosives. I have to hand it to Sarah. She sure knows how to pick ’em.

  I walk over to the coffeemaker, pour myself a cup, and sit down at the table. Sarah walks down the hall toward the bedroom. I sip the coffee and hear the chopper roar to life in the driveway. A few minutes later, Sarah, wearing a yellow blouse and a pair of black jeans, walks back into the kitchen.

  “How long have you been dating Roy?”

  “About a year, I guess.”

  “Classy guy. I especially enjoyed the ass grab. Where’d you meet him?”

  “Tonto’s.”

  Tonto’s is a biker bar on the outskirts of Johnson City. I’ve never been in the place, but I’ve driven by it plenty of times at night on the weekends. Dozens of motorcycles-maybe up to a hundred-are always in the parking lot.

  “Didn’t know you ever hung out at Tonto’s,” I say.

  “Lots of things you don’t know. Did you stop by to pass judgment?”

  “Nah, I just stopped by to say hello. Didn’t exactly expect to find a gangbanger in Ma’s house, though.”

  “It’s my house now. And I’ll invite anyone I please.”

  “Does he know I’m an assistant district attorney?”

  “Yeah. I told him.”

  “Do you know what they do, Sarah? That gang? They manufacture and sell crystal-”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she barks. “Mind your own business. And you’d better get used to the idea of having him around. He’s the father of the baby I’m about to have.”

  I stare at her in silence. She stands abruptly.

  “I have to go to work now.”

  She hovers over me until I reluctantly get up. I want to try to talk some sense into her, but I know from years of experience that I might as well beat my head against the refrigerator. I put my cup in the sink and turn around to face her, but she’s already walking away down the hallway again.

  “You know the way out,” she calls over her shoulder, and I head out to my truck.

  33

  I have an appointment with the assistant United States attorney in Greeneville at ten a.m. I’m taking him my case file on Buddy Carver, the child porn aficionado. He’s agreed to present the case to a federal grand jury. I’m sure they’ll indict Carver, and I’m sure Carver’s lawyer won’t have the same success with the federal district judge that he had with Judge Green. Carver will soon be spending his days and nights in a minimum security federal prison, probably in Kentucky or West Virginia.

  I stop in at the office for a few minutes to pick up Carver’s file and check for phone messages, but first I dial Anita White’s cell phone number, hoping she’ll give me an update on the investigation into Judge Green’s murder. I need to try to stay a step ahead of her if I can. Anita doesn’t answer the call. I leave her a message and dial Sheriff Bates’s cell number to get the latest on Hannah Mills, but he doesn’t answer, either.

  I check my
voice mail. There’s a message from Tom Pickering, the AUSA I’m supposed to meet in less than an hour. He wants me to call him before I come down. I dial the number.

  “I got a call from a DEA agent in Knoxville this morning,” Pickering says after he comes on the line. “He wants to drive up and meet with you while you’re here.”

  “DEA agent?” I say. “Any idea what he wants?”

  “It has something to do with the girl who worked in your office who’s gone missing.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Rider. Maurice Rider. Everybody calls him Mo. Good guy. He’s been around for a long time.”

  “Do you know what he wants?”

  “Not really. He called early. Mentioned that he’d read about the girl in the newspaper this morning. He said he had some information for whoever was looking into it, but he wanted to talk to someone he could trust. He asked if I knew anyone. I told him the sheriff seems to be a pretty solid guy, but he said he doesn’t trust sheriffs. So I mentioned you. When I told him you were coming down this morning, he asked if I thought it’d be okay if he drove up from Knoxville to meet you.”

  “Sure,” I say. “If he knows something that might help, I’d be more than willing to talk to him. Right now we’re lost in the dark.”

  I manage to avoid Lee Mooney and leave the office around nine fifteen. So many thoughts are floating through my mind that before I realize it, I’ve made the thirty- minute drive to Greeneville. I park my truck in front of the federal courthouse on Depot Street and walk past the concrete pillars designed to keep anyone from parking a vehicle within a hundred feet of the building. The pillars always remind me of that sick bastard Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing that killed dozens of innocent people.

  Tom Pickering’s office is on the third floor, and I climb the wide marble steps in the courthouse foyer after making small talk with the U.S. Marshals at the security station just inside the front door. I lay out the Carver case for Pickering, a soft-spoken, studious man in his mid-thirties. Just as we’re finishing up, his secretary buzzes him over the intercom.