by Scott Pratt
“It sounds to me like this confession was coerced,” I snap.
The tone of my voice surprises her, and she folds her arms defensively.
“Maybe,” she says.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“What do you mean? What can I do about it? I’m sure Harmon has contacted every media outlet within a hundred miles by now to let them know we’ve made an arrest and have obtained a signed confession. The bosses in Nashville will know as soon as they show up for work. What’s done is done.”
“What’s done is done? That’s all you can say? You should have done something to stop it.”
“Like what? Harmon didn’t beat him. He didn’t threaten him. He didn’t deprive him of food or water.”
“What about sleep? You said you guys picked him up at six in the morning and were still interrogating him at three the next morning. That’s twenty-one hours straight. It’s over the line.”
“Harmon took breaks. He could have slept during the breaks.”
“You said Harmon lied to Tommy. That’s coercion.”
“No, it isn’t, and you know it. Courts have held time and again that the police can lie to a suspect during interrogation.”
“And I suppose none of this is on videotape.” The TBI doesn’t use video or audio tape during interrogations. Neither does the FBI. It gives the agents more leeway during questioning. It also allows them to deny that they’ve stepped across lines. If a suspect claims coercion, it’s his word against the police.
“Harmon is a pro,” Anita says. “He did what he’s trained to do.”
“Really? When did the TBI start training agents to sweat confessions out of innocent boys?”
“Maybe he did it and really doesn’t remember. His alibi didn’t check out. Norcross went to the convenience store on Oakland where he said he woke up that morning. Nobody there remembers him.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Norcross wouldn’t lie.”
“What did Tommy say about his clothing?”
“He said he must have spilled gasoline on himself when he was pumping gas. He said he gave the clothes to your wife so she could wash them.”
“Which means Caroline will wind up getting a subpoena if Tommy goes to trial. She’ll be a witness against him.”
Anita nods her head slowly. I suddenly find her unattractive, almost nauseating. She’s given me the distinct impression that she doesn’t believe sincerely that Tommy is guilty; yet she stood by and did nothing while her boss browbeat him into a confession. Tommy is in a nearly impossible position now. Nothing is harder to defend than a false confession, because jurors have a hard time believing that anyone would confess to a crime they didn’t commit, especially a murder. But jurors don’t understand the extreme psychological pressure the police can bring to bear during an interrogation. They don’t understand that a person’s psyche can be systematically broken down to the point where the accused begins to believe he must have committed the crime, even though he’s completely innocent.
“Where’s Tommy now?” I ask.
“Probably being booked into the jail.”
I lean forward and look into Anita’s eyes.
“Why did you call me and ask me to come down here, Anita? And don’t say you wanted me to hear the bad news from you instead of reading it in the paper or hearing it on the radio. Why did you really call me?”
She looks down at the table and starts running her finger around the top of the coffee cup. She doesn’t seem to have an answer.
“You don’t think Tommy did it, do you? You wanted to tell me because you want me to do something. You want me to help him.”
Her eyes remain on the table, and I stand.
“You should have spoken up,” I say. “He needed you in that interrogation room, and you should have helped him. But keeping your precious job means more to you than doing the right thing. I misjudged you, Anita. I thought you were one of the good guys.”
I turn and walk out of the restaurant. As I’m walking by the front of the building toward my truck, I look through the window. She’s still sitting at the table, her head in her hands. She appears to be crying.
Several hours later, I’m knocking on the cheap aluminum front door of a small trailer in Cash Hollow. I’ve already broken the bad news to Caroline and been to the jail to see Tommy. Caroline is with Toni Miller now. The TBI held Toni for more than twenty hours on a bogus obstruction of justice charge. As soon as Tommy confessed, they released her.
My conversation with Tommy at the jail confirmed my belief that he’d been coerced. At first I couldn’t believe he’d talked to Harmon, but I soon became convinced his decision was a mixture of fatigue and confusion caused by being on the run, coupled with a young man’s naive belief that if he told the officers the truth, everything would turn out okay.
Anita had told me that Harmon lied to Tommy about witnesses seeing him near the crime scene, but she failed to mention that Harmon broke Tommy when he told him that Toni said she believed Tommy committed the crime. After visiting with Tommy and offering whatever comfort I could, I drove straight to the convenience store on Oakland and was directed to this trailer. I feel certain that Norcross has been here earlier, but Tommy was so adamant about waking up in his car at the convenience store, I feel obligated to be here.
An overweight young woman holding a baby answers the door. She wears the hopeless, defeated look of the impoverished. I introduce myself and ask to speak to Ellis Holmes.
“The police have already been here,” she says hatefully.
“I’m not the police, ma’am, and I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s extremely important.”
She turns away from the door. “Ellis! Get your ass out here!”
A young man, mid-twenties, appears in the doorway a few seconds later. He’s short, less than five and a half feet, and extremely thin. He’s wearing orange shorts, a white tank top, and flip-flops. His hair is thinning, stringy, and dirty blond. He looks like an orphan, an emaciated, unkempt child of the streets.
“Mr. Holmes?” I say.
“Yeah. What do you want?” His voice is nasal and unpleasant, and I find myself feeling sympathy for him. Life can be cruel in so many ways, and in the few seconds that I’ve known Ellis Holmes, it appears that there isn’t a single attractive thing about him.
I’m holding a photograph of Tommy Miller in my hand, and I show it to him.
“Have you ever seen this young man?” I say.
“Another cop already asked me that.”
“I’m not a cop. I know they’ve already been by here. But I want you to take a closer look and think. Did the officer who came by yesterday tell you why he was asking about this?”
“Nah. He just wanted to know if I’d ever seen him before. Said something about him maybe being outside the store where I work a few weeks ago.”
“Do you keep up with the news, Mr. Holmes?”
“Not really. Don’t care for it much.”
“Did you hear anything about a judge being murdered a little while back? He was hanged and burned in his front yard.”
“Oh yeah, yeah, I heard about that.”
“This young man right here-his name is Tommy Miller-has been arrested and charged with murdering the judge. I’ve know Tommy for most of his life, and I don’t think he could kill anybody. Tommy’s father committed suicide about a week before this happened. He buried his father the day before it happened. He says he got drunk that night and wound up parked outside the store where you were working. He doesn’t remember driving there. He says he spilled gasoline all over himself, but he doesn’t remember that, either. If he was there, it means he’s telling the truth and could go a long way toward proving that he’s innocent. So take a close look at this photo, and I’ll ask you one more time. Did you see Tommy Miller that night?”
Holmes looks nervously over his shoulder into the trailer.
“Let’s talk out in the yard,” he says, and he c
loses the door and starts down the steps. We walk over to my truck, about thirty feet away.
“I might have seen him,” Holmes says, “but I can’t be getting involved in no murder.”
“Please. His life could depend on it.”
“I could lose my job.”
“Why would you lose your job for telling the truth?”
“I need my job, man. It don’t pay shit, but it’s all I got, and I have to take care of that baby in there.”
“I’m a lawyer, Mr. Holmes, and I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help you keep your job. If you get fired because of this, I’ll give you a job. You can work out at my place. I have ten acres, and there’s always something that needs to be done. And I’ll pay you more than you’re making at the convenience store.”
He looks at me suspiciously. “No joke? You swear on your life?”
“I give you my word.”
“Okay,” he says. “I don’t want to see nobody get hung for a murder if he didn’t do it. Your boy showed up at the store about eleven o’clock that night. Business was slow as hell, so I was taking a bag of trash out to the Dumpster. I’m walking back around the building, and I see this little white Civic pull in, but it stops about three, four feet from the pump. I’m wondering whether the hose will even reach that far. Then your boy gets out, and he’s wobbling all over the damned place. I see plenty of drunks during my shift, but this dude was really shit-faced. I walk on back into the store and turn the pump on, and I’m telling myself that he ain’t gonna be able to pump no gas. So I’m standing there watching him, laughing, you know? He gets the nozzle off the pump, but it takes him a while to figure out which grade he wants. He finally pushes the button and staggers over to the car. He opens the lid where the gas cap is, but then he loses his balance and starts backing up like a crab. He runs into the pump and gets his balance back. About this time, I decide I’d better go on out there and help him. So I’m coming out the door, when I see him start pumping gas. But he forgot to take the damned gas cap off, so gas goes flying all over the place. By the time I get to him, he’s freaking soaked. I’m afraid he’s gonna blow the whole damned place up. I get the nozzle away from him and lean him up against the side of the car. He’s so drunk he can barely talk. I ask him if he has any money, and he can’t even answer me. So I pull his wallet out of his back pocket. He’s got about fifty dollars, so I fill his car up. Twenty-five dollars’ worth. I take the money out of his wallet and stick it back in his pocket. By this time, he’s leaned over the hood and passed out. So I open the back door and wrestle him into the backseat, and I’ll tell you something-it wasn’t no easy task. He’s a pretty big dude. Then I park his car next to the building, take his keys, and leave him out there to sleep it off. I check on him every hour or so to make sure he ain’t choking in his own puke or something. Along about four in the morning, I see him stirring in the backseat. I figure he’s sober enough to drive by that time, so I take the keys out and put them in the ignition.”
“So he left around four?”
“Nah, he didn’t leave until after five. My relief, this dude named Oscar, came in at five. I shot the shit with Oscar for ten, fifteen minutes before I left. I saw your boy pull out of the parking lot as I was walking out to my piece-of-crap car.”
“You’re sure it was after five when he left?”
“Yeah. Positive.”
I want to pick him up in a bear hug and kiss him. Tommy has been telling the truth all along, and this proves it. But I know better than to get too excited. The TBI isn’t going to let Tommy go based on the word of a convenience store attendant. They have a signed confession in hand.
“Why didn’t you tell this to the TBI agent when he came out here?” I say.
“He didn’t say nothing about the boy facing no murder charge,” Holmes says, “and I didn’t want him coming back to the store and snooping around.”
“Why not?”
“You remember that twenty-five dollars I took out of his wallet to pay for the gas?”
“Yeah.”
“It didn’t exactly make it all the way to the cash register.”
49
The next night, I walk into the Chop House in Kings-port and look around. Her car is in the parking lot, but I don’t see her. I walk through the tables quickly. She isn’t there. When I get back to the lobby, I look into the bar. She’s sitting at a small table in a darkened area of the room. I walk in and sit down across from her. She smiles seductively.
“Damn, you look good in those jeans,” she says.
“Thanks. You look pretty hot yourself.”
She’s wearing a bloodred dress that matches her hair. The neckline dives so deeply that it reveals all but the bottom portion of her large breasts. She’s leaning forward on the table, which makes matters even worse. Or better, depending upon one’s point of view. She’s rubbed cream on her skin, and it shimmers in the candlelight. Her face looks as though it’s been made up by a professional. Her lips are full, her cheeks high, her jaw strong and angular.
Rita Jones, the receptionist at the DA’s office, is one of the sexiest women I’ve ever known. I’ve asked her to do me a favor-a huge favor-and she’s agreed, but with Rita, there’s always a price. Tonight, the price is dinner. She’ll do her best to seduce me, but both of us know it isn’t going to happen. She’s been trying to seduce me for fifteen years, since the very first time I met her. It’s become more of a joke these days than anything, but I’ve been around her long enough to know that if I drop my guard for a second, she’ll have me out of my clothes and into her bed before I’ve realized what’s happened.
“Did you tell your wife where you were going?” she says coyly.
“No. I value my marriage.”
“But isn’t that deceptive?”
“I’d rather think of it as prudent.”
“Are you going to get drunk with me?”
“Not likely.”
“Aren’t you at least going to have a drink?”
A waiter stops by the table and drops off two menus. I order a vodka martini, as much to quiet my nerves as anything else. I’m worried that someone will see me here with Rita and tell Caroline. I’m worried that someone from the office might walk in. I would have never picked this spot to meet, but she insisted.
“This is wonderful,” Rita says. “My favorite restaurant and my favorite man.”
“I’m glad you’re having a good time. Were you able to do what I asked?”
“Of course.”
“Where is it?”
“Not until we’re finished.”
I spend an hour eating and talking with Rita. She regales me with stories of her many conquests and bemoans the fact that she can’t stand the man she’s dating now, a personal injury lawyer named Steve Willis. When I ask her why she’s with him, she gives me an answer that’s pure Rita: “He’s loaded, and he’s hung like a horse.”
She’s funny, down-to-earth, and beautiful, but as she starts on her fourth glass of wine, her eyes begin to glaze over and her speech becomes slurred. The change is sudden, and it isn’t attractive.
“So whaddaya gonna do with this stuff?” she asks.
“What stuff do you mean?” I’m wondering whether there’s a sexual connotation to what she’s saying. There usually is.
“This stuff I brought you.”
“I’m sorry, Rita. I can’t tell you.”
“Well, I hope you nail his hide to the side of the barn with it. He’s a fucking pervert, you know.”
“No. I don’t know. And would you please keep your voice down?”
“Ooooohhh.” She giggles. “Ssshhhhhh!”
“Come on, Rita. Let’s get out of here.”
I pay the tab and manage to walk her out before anything too embarrassing happens. She begins to hiccup.
“You can’t drive,” I say.
“Sure I can.”
“No, you can’t. I’ll take you home. Can Steve bring you up here to pick up your car tomorrow?�
�
“The lazy bastard will probably pay somebody to pick it up,” she says. “He’s got more money than sense, you know.”
“Yeah, you told me.”
“But he’s got a fantastic schlong. Oops, wait just a second, sweetie. I almost forgot.”
She stumbles across the parking lot toward her car, a sharp little Chrysler Crossfire convertible that I’m sure she’s earned. I hear a beep, and the trunk pops open. She reaches in and pulls out a brown paper bag, then makes her way back toward me. I help her into my truck and pull out of the parking lot.
“I sealed every-” A hiccup catches Rita’s breath.
“I sealed everything in plastic Baggies and labeled it, just like you asked me to.”
“Thanks.”
I take the bag from her hand and put it in the glove compartment. She slides across the seat, cuddles up next to me, and puts her head on my shoulder.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she says. She hiccups again, and within thirty seconds, she’s fast asleep.
50
Bates is waiting for me at six the next morning at the Waffle House near Boones Creek. It’s still dark outside as I carry the paper bag into the restaurant and set it down on the table in front of him.
“How’d you do it?” Bates says as he opens the bag and peers inside.
“I took advantage of an old friend.”
“Everything’s labeled?”
“Just like the doctor ordered. How’d it go with Ramirez?”
“It was an excellent adventure, Brother Dillard, a truly excellent adventure. I got to ride in a helicopter and carry an assault rifle. Reminded me of the old days. And I gotta tell you, I have a whole new respect for them federal boys. They know what they’re doing.”
“So Ramirez was there?”
“He was there, all right. Got himself shot right off the bat.”
