Injustice for all jd-3

by Scott Pratt

  “He’s wanted for questioning.”

  “You’ve just said he’s a suspect in a murder. He doesn’t have to answer any questions, remember?”

  “Stop fencing with me,” Mooney says. “Do what I say and the grand jury will indict him. We’ll put out a nationwide alert. We’ll have him in custody in a couple of days, tops.”

  “And then what? You know as well as I do that you won’t be able to present any of this garbage to a trial jury. None of it’s admissible. If he keeps his mouth shut, you’ll all end up looking like fools.”

  “He’s a kid, for God’s sake,” Mooney says. “These agents are pros. He’ll cave during interrogation.”

  “No way. I don’t want any part of this.”

  I stand up and start to walk toward the door, muttering under my breath. I’ve seen Mooney do some idiotic things over the past few years, but this tops them all.

  “Now you wait just one damned minute,” I hear Mooney say behind me. The tone of his voice is threatening, and I stop and turn to face him full on. I can sense where this is going, but I don’t care.

  “It isn’t a request,” he says. “You’re going to take this case to the grand jury. You’re going to present the evidence through Agent White, and you’re going to come back with an indictment.”

  “No, I’m not. If you’re absolutely bent on doing this, do it yourself.” I stare him directly in the eye, knowing what has to come next.

  “I’m your superior,” Mooney says. “You work for me. You’re refusing a direct order in front of two witnesses. This is gross insubordination.”

  “I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what your title is. This isn’t what I signed up for. I’m not going to be a part of a railroad job.”

  “Then you leave me no choice. Pack up your things. You’re fired.”

  I turn toward the door to leave, but I can’t resist saying one last thing to him. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling I had yesterday when he mentioned Hannah in the past tense. I turn back around.

  “By the way,” I say, “Rafael Ramirez says somebody wanted Hannah Mills dead, and he says he knows who.” It’s a small lie. My mother would have called it a little white lie.

  “He’ll tell you who it is if you let him out of jail.”

  PART 3

  36

  Hannah Mills, the former Katie Dean, looked up at the waterfall and wondered what she was doing. It was the first time in years she’d been hiking, and sitting at the base of Red Fork Falls in Unicoi County, she remembered why. The memories were inevitable: the long days in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the beauty of the dozens of cascades and falls she’d visited, the stands of old-growth timber. But those memories triggered others, others she’d tried to keep at bay.

  Pretending Aunt Mary and Luke never existed was the easiest way to get by. She’d learned to put them, along with Lottie, the farm, the animals, all of it, out of her mind. It was as though everything had turned into clouds and drifted slowly away on the breeze.

  After the fire-which Hannah couldn’t remember at all-her life had spun out of control for a while. She found herself with a new name, living in Salt Lake City in a downtown apartment, a few blocks from the giant Mormon Tabernacle. The agents in Knoxville had told her it was the only way they could ensure her safety, and at the time, she hadn’t the will to resist. An FBI agent named Fritz became her new best friend in Utah, but Hannah quickly grew homesick for the purple-shrouded mountains she loved so much. She packed what few things she had one day, got on a bus, and never looked back.

  She wound up in Knoxville, alone and confused. The only person she had any regular contact with was Agent Rider, who, upon her return to Knoxville, had given her enough money to get a small apartment and survive until she could get on her feet. Then, a couple of weeks after she returned, Agent Rider was contacted by a lawyer from Gatlinburg who wanted to meet with Hannah. Agent Rider arranged the meeting, and it was there that Hannah learned that Aunt Mary had made her not only the executor of her estate, but a beneficiary of her will. Hannah and Lottie were each to receive one half of Aunt Mary’s money-just over three hundred thousand dollars each that had been invested in U.S. Treasury bills. Hannah also inherited the farm, but the lawyer told her that Mr. Torbett, the neighbor, had made an offer to buy it. The lawyer suggested Hannah accept the offer, and she did. She had no desire to return.

  Hannah spent months in a fog, staring at the walls of her small apartment, lying in bed for days at a time, unwilling and unable to start over. She cursed God, or fate, or destiny, or whatever force it was that had selected her to bear the burden of so much pain and so much shame. She didn’t care about the money. It had no real value or meaning to her, especially considering how she’d come to acquire it.

  It was Agent Rider who’d finally helped Hannah crawl out of the depths of her despair. He came by her apartment regularly and finally talked her into seeing a psychiatrist, a woman named Mattie Rhea. Dr. Rhea had prescribed medication-something called a serotonin reuptake inhibitor-and gradually, the fog began to lift. Hannah enrolled at the University of Tennessee in January of that year. She made few friends because she kept largely to herself, but the routine of campus life, along with the medication, helped her to gradually put the tragedies of the past behind her. Six years after she enrolled, she earned a master’s degree in sociology and got a job as the victim /witness coordinator at the Knoxville district attorney general’s office. Then, after spending another six years in quiet anonymity, helping people like her, people who had been the victims of crimes, she’d met Lee Mooney at a conference in Nashville and been persuaded to make a change.

  Now, as she stood gazing up at the narrow, hundred-foot falls, a hand touched Hannah on the shoulder from behind.

  “Maybe we should head back,” Tanner Jarrett said.

  “You’re right,” Hannah said. “I smell a storm coming.”

  Later that evening, several people from the office gathered at Rowdy’s, a sports bar in Johnson City, to celebrate Tanner’s twenty-seventh birthday. Hannah and Tanner had become friends, but Hannah was always careful not to give Tanner the idea that she might be looking for anything more. The hike earlier in the day was the first time the two of them had been without company. They went to lunch together sometimes, but always with someone else from the office along.

  Today was Tanner’s birthday, and when he’d asked Hannah to hike to the falls with him and then accompany him to Rowdy’s later, she couldn’t say no. It would have been much easier to keep her distance if Tanner wasn’t so likable. He was handsome and funny and charming, and he had a way of making Hannah feel wonderful whenever she was around him. But she couldn’t get too close. She just couldn’t. Not yet.

  The gathering consisted of Hannah and Tanner, Joe and Caroline Dillard, Lee Mooney, Rita Jones and her boyfriend-a lawyer Hannah didn’t know-and two other young prosecutors from the office and their dates. Hannah was enjoying herself. Joe and Caroline Dillard had become close friends of Hannah’s. More than once, she’d found herself wondering whether she might ever be as close to a man as Caroline seemed to be to Joe. They were virtually inseparable outside the office, and they treated each other with a gentle kindness and respect that Hannah imagined could only come from a bond that had been carefully nurtured for many years.

  Hannah ate lightly while Tanner laughed and joked with Joe about a DUI case Tanner was prosecuting.

  “You should have seen it,” Tanner said through a mouthful of chicken. “I put the police officer’s videotape in the machine, and it shows this woman getting out of her car. It takes a second to see that she’s stark naked from the waist down. She starts grinding on this officer and singing, ‘Hey, big spender.’ I thought her lawyer was going to lose his lunch right there in front of the judge.”

  The laughter was contagious, the conversation light and easy, and Katie decided to do something she’d never done. She decided to have a drink. Tanner was driving. Why not? She tur
ned to Lee Mooney, who was sitting on her right, and whispered, “Please don’t tell anyone, but I’ve never had a drink before. What should I order?”

  Mooney smiled at her and bent close to her ear.

  “Try a Vodka Collins,” he said.

  The drink arrived a few minutes later, and Hannah took a sip. Slightly bitter, a little lemony. Cold going in and warm going down.

  “How is it?” Mooney said.

  “Good.”

  As the drink disappeared, Hannah found herself becoming more and more animated. She’d never realized how funny and entertaining she could be. By the time the first drink was gone, Mooney had ordered her a replacement. After Hannah downed the second drink and just as the waitress set down a third, Mooney announced to the crowd that she was taking her maiden voyage into drunkenness.

  “No kidding?” Tanner said to her. “You’ve never had a drink in your life?”

  “Never,” Hannah slurred. She was light-headed and giddy, already drunk. “Not a single one single time.”

  Mooney raised his glass.

  “To virgins,” he said. “God bless them every one.”

  The entire group laughed, but instead of joining them, Hannah began to sulk. As the alcohol clouded her judgment and dislodged her self-control, she began to grow angry. She wasn’t a prude, after all. She just couldn’t face the thought of a man discovering her reconstructed breast. He would ask questions and jostle rusty memories of death and sorrow. How dare Mr. Mooney make fun of her.

  Hannah drained the third glass of vodka and slammed her glass down on the table.

  “I am a virgin, you know!” she yelled drunkenly into Mooney’s ear. The rest of the group immediately went silent. “A real virgin! And I don’t appreciate you laughing at me!”

  37

  Jack Dillard hustled along West End Avenue toward his dorm room in the semidarkness. It was nearly eight p.m. in Nashville, and he felt a constant rush of wind as the traffic roared past. His backpack was weighted down with textbooks and a twenty-pound plate he’d stuck inside. The extra weight pushed him, made him leaner and stronger.

  Jack had been at Vanderbilt for three years now. When he arrived, he weighed two hundred thirty pounds and thought he was strong. Now, at two hundred fifteen pounds, he was stronger than ever, a walking piece of granite. Arkansas was coming in for a three-game series this weekend, and Jack briefly visualized smashing an inside fastball over the green monster in left field. He smiled to himself. He’d done it before. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he’d do it again.

  Jack’s mind drifted to the paper he had to write later that night-five pages on biological anthropology. He intended to write about the difference between the evolution of man and the evolution of apes. Many people thought men evolved from apes. They were wrong. As he pondered his thesis sentence, Jack wondered how many papers he’d written at Vanderbilt. At least a hundred, he decided. The professors were all about being able to express yourself in writing.

  Jack was sore and tired, but he was used to it. Vandy was a demanding place, and his baseball coach was a drill sergeant. His days were often twelve, fourteen hours. He was up early and off to class until noon. On game days, he’d be at the field right after lunch, hitting in the cages, throwing, shagging fly balls, lifting weights. After a two-hour warm-up, he’d play a three- or four-hour game, then do maintenance work on the field, take a shower, grab something to eat, and then study, study, study. Off days were just as strenuous, probably more so, because that’s when the team conditioned, and the sessions were brutal: weight lifting, plyometrics, sprint work, endurance work. It was a never-ending assault on the mind and body. Free time was for nonathletes. Free time was for pussies.

  Something ahead caught Jack’s eye. A man was leaning against a tree just inside the wrought-iron fence that separated the campus from the street. Jack wasn’t close enough to recognize him, but the man appeared to be watching him. As Jack approached, the figure slipped behind the tree and disappeared.

  Jack walked past the spot and looked closely at where the man had been standing. There was a hemlock hedge to the right of the tree, and it appeared he had walked behind it. Maybe the guy was a student and had just walked outside the dorm for a smoke. Jack kept walking. Because of his size and strength, mugging had never been a concern, at Vandy or anywhere else, but as he pushed on down the street, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, maybe even followed.

  Jack turned right onto the circle that surrounded the statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt. He looked over his shoulder. The lighting here was poor; if someone was going to attack him, this would be the best place. He lengthened his stride and veered off the circle onto the sidewalk that led toward the Hemingway Quad. As he passed a low wall of shrubbery, he caught a quick glimpse of someone moving quickly. He was suddenly knocked off balance as the figure jumped on his back and tried to get him in a choke hold.

  Jack quickly gathered himself and dropped to his left knee. He instinctively tugged the attacker’s right shoulder forward with his left hand and jerked his upper body hard, downward and to his left. It was a judo throw his father had shown him years ago. Every time he’d used it when wrestling with teammates or challengers from the dorm, it had worked, and this was no different. His attacker flew over his shoulder and landed with a thud on his back. Jack quickly straddled him and was just about to unload on him with his fist, when he heard a familiar laugh. He stopped and looked closely at the face.

  “Damn you, T-bone!” Jack yelled as he rose to his feet. “You scared the crap out of me!”

  “What’s up, Hammer?” The person on the ground slowly climbed to his feet, and Jack found himself staring into the tired- looking, smiling face of Tommy Miller. “I should have known you’d use that judo crap on me.”

  Jack hugged Tommy, and they shook hands. He loved Tommy like a brother. He was fun and easygoing, constantly joking. Jack had always found Tommy to be an honest and loyal friend. And he was a fierce competitor on the baseball field. Jack had faced him dozens of times in practice over the years. Tommy had a fastball in the low nineties, a wicked slider, and a changeup that had buckled Jack’s knees more than he cared to remember.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Jack said.

  “I’m in the wind, man. Let’s go get some coffee or something, and I’ll tell you about it.”

  Jack knew Tommy was “in the wind.” His dad had called the night before and told him he’d been fired because he refused to try to persuade the grand jury to indict Tommy for murder. He said Tommy had run from the police in Durham and that his car had disappeared. He said Tommy would probably be indicted soon.

  “The police are looking for you, T-bone.”

  “Yeah, now I know how the runaway slaves felt.”

  “Follow me.”

  Jack led Tommy to a group of four picnic tables beneath an elm tree near the library. The tables were all vacant. Jack tossed his backpack beside him and sat down at the one nearest the tree. Tommy sat across from him.

  “How’d you get here?”

  Tommy’s Red Sox baseball cap was pulled low on his forehead. Jack noticed that his eyes kept darting around, watching everything. “I hitched a ride.”

  “Why’d you run?”

  “I was scared out of my mind. Mom told me they think I killed that judge.”

  Jack tensed slightly. He didn’t want to ask the question, but he needed to.

  “Did you?”

  Tommy shook his head and let out a deep breath.

  “I don’t even know where the guy lived,” Tommy said. “I went to Dad’s grave that night with a gallon of bourbon. I don’t drink very often, but I think I must have drunk the whole damned gallon, because the last thing I remember is sitting on the ground, leaning on the headstone, crying. I woke up in the backseat of my car around five the next morning. It was parked next to this little convenience store on Oakland, and I had no idea how I got there. I was so hungover, man. My head was splitting,
and I felt like I was going to barf all over the place. Your house was a lot closer than mine, so I drove over there.”

  “So you don’t remember anything you did?” Jack said. “You don’t remember driving to the convenience store?”

  “No, and that’s the problem. That’s why I’m so scared of the cops. If they ask me what I was doing at such and such a time, I can’t tell them. Another thing that scares me is that Mom said whoever killed the judge burned him. I had freaking gasoline all over me when I woke up at the convenience store, and I don’t remember how it happened. I must have gotten gas somewhere, because my car was almost empty when I drove to the cemetery, and the next morning it was full.”

  “So maybe you filled up with gas at the convenience store and spilled gas all over you, and then you decided to get in the backseat and go to sleep.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You should go back there and see if somebody remembers you. You had to pay for the gas, and if you were that drunk, you were sure to make an impression.”

  “I’m afraid to go back there. I’m afraid to go anywhere near Johnson City.”

  “Where’s your car?” Jack said. “Dad said the police can’t find it.”

  “You’ll love this. I gave it to this black guy about fifty miles outside of Durham. He was working on this old piece of junk in his driveway when I drove by. He lived in this little shack. So I turned around and pulled into his place, got my suitcase and my backpack out of the car, took the tag off, and handed him the keys. You should have seen the look on his face. Then I hitched a ride the rest of the way to Durham.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Because I knew the cops would be looking for the car. I didn’t want to drive it into a lake or something like that, so I just figured I’d give it to somebody who needed it more than I did.”

  “Listen, T-bone, you need to go back and face this. Running makes you look guilty.”