Injustice for all jd-3

by Scott Pratt

  “Let’s hope not.”

  He turns back to Bates.

  “You’ve spoken to the outgoing district attorney?”

  “Just came from his house, Governor,” Bates says.

  “Any problems?”

  “He was too drunk to give us any guff. I have his resignation right here.”

  Bates hands the paper across the desk, and the governor reads it out loud.

  “ ‘ I hereby tender my resignation as Attorney General of the First Judicial District, effective immediately. ’ Short and sweet, signed and dated. I wonder what he’ll tell his wife.”

  “That’s the least of his problems,” Bates says. “By the time I get through with him, he’s gonna have to leave the state.”

  “Republicans,” the governor says. “Just can’t seem to keep their peckers in their pants, huh?”

  I want to say something-something about Hannah and what a beautiful human being she was, something to remind him of what this is really about. It isn’t about sexual misconduct. It isn’t about Republicans and Democrats. It’s about a public official being responsible for a murder, and I don’t appreciate his cavalier attitude. But this is Bates’s show. I keep my mouth shut.

  “I don’t think the inability to keep the pecker in the pants is an affliction that’s unique to Republicans,” Bates says. “Ever heard of Bill Clinton? Eliot Spitzer? Gary Hart?”

  “Ah, touche, my friend, touche.”

  The governor turns to me.

  “So, Joe, I understand you’re not particularly interested in politics.”

  “My plate’s always been full just trying to make a living and raising my family,” I say. “I’m not really interested in trying to run things.”

  “Well, you’re going to be running something now. The district attorney’s office. Do you have any plans to rehabilitate the image of the office after the public learns of Mooney’s demise?”

  “I really haven’t had a chance to think about any plans, Governor. The sheriff just dropped all of this on me about a half hour ago. But I don’t think it’s rocket science. People commit crimes, the police arrest them, and the district attorney prosecutes them under the law.”

  “So you’re a black-and-white kind of guy.”

  “I guess I am, but the older I get, the more gray I seem to see.”

  Governor Donner opens a desk drawer and pulls out a legal-sized piece of paper. He holds it up in front of him and stands.

  “This is a copy of the appointment that will be filed with the Supreme Court in the morning. It makes you the new district attorney general. I’ve already signed it. Thought you might want to frame it. Congratulations.”

  He extends his hand again. Bates and I stand, and I grasp it.

  “Thank you, Governor. Thank you.”

  “Thank Leon,” he says. “I have a file on you, but I really don’t know you from Adam.”

  Bates and I turn to leave. Just as I’m about to clear the door, I hear the governor clear his throat.

  “Mr. Dillard,” he says.”

  I turn to face him. “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t make me regret this.”

  56

  A sound awakens me. I open my eyes in the darkened bedroom and look at the digital clock on the dresser. Almost three in the morning.

  I hear it again, a low growl coming from the foot of the bed. It’s Rio. Something has startled him.

  “Shhhh, Rio. Go to sleep.” I lay my head back on the pillow and close my eyes. I can hear Caroline breathing rhythmically next to me. I start to drift off, but Rio growls again, this time louder. I sit up and slide my legs over the side of the bed. I’ve heard him growl thousands of times. This one is different.

  I flip on the lamp beside the bed and stand up. Rio has also gotten to his feet and is standing near the closed bedroom door. His ears are laid back flat against his head, and he’s quivering. I walk over to him and pat him on the shoulder in an attempt to calm him, but he ignores me. Something is wrong; definitely wrong. I take hold of his harness and look over toward Caroline. She’s sitting up now, rubbing her eyes. I put a finger to my mouth and open the bedroom door.

  “Go get ’em!” I whisper, and I let go of the harness. The dog launches himself into the darkness beyond the door as though he’s been shot from a cannon.

  I hear a deafening gunshot about three seconds later, followed by a pitiful wail. Caroline screams. The first thing that enters my mind is that someone from Brian Gant’s family has come for a little revenge. I dive across the bed and turn the lamp back off. I can hear the dog whining somewhere in the house. I grab Caroline by the arm.

  “Be quiet,” I whisper, and I pull her toward the walk-in closet between the bedroom and bathroom. There’s a semiautomatic Remington twelve gauge standing in the closet corner. I always keep it loaded. My fingers find it immediately, and I flip the safety off.

  I help Caroline down beneath the clothes and boxes and so that she’s facing the door. I hand her the gun.

  “Stay here. It’s ready to go. All you have to do is pull the trigger. When I come back, I’ll say something before I get to the door. Anybody else comes through, blow them away.”

  “Where are you going?” The whisper is almost desperate. She doesn’t want me to leave her.

  “I’m going to go kill the son of a bitch who broke into my house and shot my dog.”

  A quiet rage is building within me. This is my home. It’s the middle of the night. My wife is terrified. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let whoever has invaded us walk out alive. I creep back into the bedroom for the nine-millimeter Beretta I keep in the drawer with my socks. I ease the clip out, check it, and push it back in. The pistol is loaded and I’m ready, though my heart is thumping against my chest and my hands are trembling slightly. I take a few deep breaths and try to focus.

  Let them come to you. Whoever it is has come this far; they’ll come the rest of the way.

  I crouch on the floor next to the dresser for a couple of the longest minutes of my life and listen. I hear a thump, then mumbling. It’s coming from the kitchen. He’s run into the counter or the island.

  After another moment-an eternity in the dark-I hear what I think is a creak in the floor. Screw this. I can’t wait any longer. I go down, flat on my belly, and slide toward the sound. Once my head is around the corner I can just barely make out a pair of legs, two dark shadows on the far side of the kitchen table, but nothing else. If I stand, I’ll expose myself. I wait just a couple of seconds to make sure he’s alone. I ease my elbows out onto the floor in front of me and aim through the legs of a chair. He’s mumbling again. He’s maybe fifteen feet away.

  The muzzle flash is blinding, and the explosion rattles my eardrums. He screams and falls in a heap. I hear his gun clatter against the tile as it skids away from him. I leap to my feet and run toward the intruder. I reach out and flip on the kitchen light as I pass the switch. His gun is lying near my feet, and I kick it away. He’s on the floor on his side, groaning, his face away from me. Both of his hands are wrapped around his knee, and blood is running through his fingers. A strong urge grips me, an urge that tells me to stick the barrel of my gun next to his temple and pull the trigger. I take a couple of steps toward him. I raise my foot, plant it in his shoulder, and roll him onto his back.

  “You!”

  I turn my head toward the bedroom and yell, “Caroline, come out here!”

  She appears in a couple of seconds, carrying the shotgun, and walks tentatively toward me. She looks at the man on the floor and her mouth drops open.

  “Are you capable of shooting this piece of shit if he moves?”

  She nods her head. By the look in her eye, she means it.

  I turn and walk into the hallway near the stairs that lead down to Jack’s room. Rio is lying a couple of feet from the door. A small pool of blood has formed beneath his chest. I kneel down beside him. His breathing is slow, but his eyes are open. I stroke him between the ears, and he moans.

/>   “It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay.”

  I examine him quickly. The bullet looks to have entered at the shoulder and broken his leg. I need to stop the bleeding. I remove my T-shirt and wrap it tightly around the wound. The bleeding slows, but I still need to get him to a vet.

  I stand, and he whimpers.

  “I’ll be right back, big guy. You just stay with us.”

  I run back through the kitchen where Caroline is still holding the shotgun on the intruder. I pick up my cell phone off the bed and find Dr. James Kruk’s number. He’s been taking care of my animals for years, and he’s accustomed to being awakened. He answers after the fifth ring, and I tell him what’s happened. He says he’ll be right over.

  I walk quickly back to the kitchen. The man has rolled onto his side again, but now he’s facing toward me. His hands are still wrapped around his left knee. Caroline is standing over him with the shotgun pointed at his head.

  “I’m bleeding,” Lee Mooney says quietly. I can smell the strong odor of liquor in the air. He was trashed earlier. He must have kept drinking, the effects of which eventually led to the irrational decision that I needed to die.

  “I don’t care if you’re bleeding,” I say.

  “I needa… go… ta hospital.”

  “How about the morgue?”

  I kneel next to him and hold the barrel hard against his forehead. His head moves with the trembling of my hand. “You couldn’t just leave it alone, could you? All you had to do was crawl into a hole somewhere.”

  “You don’t unnerstand,” Mooney says in the whiny voice I’ve heard more times than I care to remember, now thick with drunkenness. His dilated pupils look like black holes.

  “You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” I say. I feel something I’ve never felt before, and I realize it’s indifference. I don’t care about him. I don’t care that he’s bleeding. “You broke into my house, you son of a bitch. You know the legal standard for defending yourself in your own home, don’t you?”

  I see a glint of understanding. He knows what I mean.

  “That’s right. Deadly force. I can use deadly force defending myself against someone who invades my home.”

  I stand and back up a few steps, my mind whirling. If they look closely, they’ll see the amount of blood on the floor and know he bled for a while before he was shot the second time. They’ll analyze the angle of the trajectory of the bullet and know I was standing over him when I shot him. They’ll accuse me of murdering him.

  He’s garbage. He raped Hannah and then had her murdered, and he’s going to get away with it. He shot my dog. He needs to be dead.

  I pull back the hammer on the pistol and take a deep breath.

  A hand wraps around the gun barrel and pushes it down gently. I come out of the trance and recognize the voice.

  “Don’t,” Caroline says. “You’re not like him.”

  I lower the gun to my side and nod my head. A thought pops into my mind, something Bates told me about Ramirez. I step back up next to Mooney, raise my heel off the ground, and stomp on his wounded knee with all the force I can muster. He screams in agony. I dial 911 on my cell phone and tell them there’s been a shooting. The cavalry is on the way.

  “Take care of Rio, will you?” I say to Caroline.

  I walk to a drawer next to the sink, pull out a clean dish towel, and walk back over to Mooney.

  “Here,” I say as I toss it onto his forehead. “You’re going to jail. Try not to bleed to death before you get there.”

  57

  The following week is a blur. My first order of business is to reassure the employees in the office that I won’t be making any dramatic changes, that everyone will keep their jobs. I tell them as much as I can about Mooney’s resignation and my appointment. I don’t see any point in keeping anything from them. After all, I want them to trust me. They’re all shocked at the news of Hannah’s violent death, especially Tanner Jarrett. When he hears that she was pregnant with Mooney’s child, that Mooney paid to have her killed, and that we can’t prosecute Mooney because all the witnesses are dead, he excuses himself from the room and doesn’t come back.

  The pressure from the media becomes so intense on the first day that I agree to a press conference in one of the courtrooms at one o’clock. News about Hannah has leaked, probably from Bates, and the conference is brutal. They ask about Hannah. How was she killed? Who killed her? When was she killed? When was she found? Is it true she was pregnant? I refer all those questions to the sheriff. They ask about Mooney, question after question after question. I refuse to tell them anything other than to confirm that he resigned last night and that the governor has appointed me to replace him until the end of the term. I refer all of the questions about the break-in at my house and the shooting to the sheriff. One of the reporters even asks whether it’s true that my dog was shot. I swallow hard and tell him to talk to the sheriff.

  Late that afternoon, I’m sworn into office by the judge the governor has appointed to replace Leonard Green. Sixty-year-old Terry Breck made a fortune in medical malpractice law. He’s retired now, but the governor has apparently seduced him into taking the job. He has a reputation as an even-tempered, scholarly man. I hope that turns out to be true. It’ll be such a pleasant change from what I’m used to dealing with.

  On Wednesday, Leon Bates appears before the grand jury with Tanner Jarrett. He comes out with indictments against seventeen members of Satan’s Soldiers for charges ranging from possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, to murder. Bates and his SWAT team conduct a raid early the next morning, and thus far, six of the seventeen have been taken into custody. None of the indictments contain the name “Roy” or the alias “Mountain,” and I wonder what Sarah’s boyfriend’s real name is and whether he’s on the run.

  Late Thursday afternoon, Tanner Jarrett, Caroline, and I get on a plane to Knoxville. There we meet a black woman, Lottie Antoine, who looks to be in her mid-sixties. After Hannah’s death was made public, I was contacted by a lawyer from Gatlinburg and told that Hannah Mills had a will, and that Lottie was the executor of her estate.

  After a short, emotional introductory meeting, the four of us board a plane to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Lottie is silent during the flight. She carries herself with a sense of quiet dignity, but I can see in her dark eyes that she, too, has endured more than her share of sorrow. We rent a van and drive to South Haven the next morning. We hold a brief service for Hannah and bury her alongside her mother and brothers and sister in McDowell Cemetery near Casco Township. Lottie speaks of Hannah’s gentle nature and kindness, her love of family and the outdoors, her relationship with Luke Clinton, and her almost superhuman ability to carry on through unspeakable tragedy. Her words move all of us to tears, and I find myself thinking, once again, about how unjust life can be. We board another plane that same afternoon and fly home. On the way, Lottie tells me that Hannah’s will set up a trust that would benefit her beloved Smoky Mountains National Park.

  On Sunday evening, Caroline invites a group of people, around twenty or so, over to the house to celebrate my appointment as district attorney. I have mixed feelings about it. I’m looking forward to what I know will be a challenge, but at the same time, the circumstances under which I inherited the job give me no cause for celebration. Rio is limping around in a cast. The shot shattered the upper part of his right leg, but Dr. Kruk repaired the damage and says he’ll be fine in a couple of months.

  I’m standing on the deck around eight o’clock. The sun has just dropped behind the hills to the west, and the evening air has taken on a bit of a chill. I’m talking to Jim Beaumont, a well-respected local defense attorney and close friend, when I catch a glimpse of my sister, Sarah, through the window in the kitchen. Caroline must have invited her. She looks like a tick about to pop. Towering above her is Roy, the biker boyfriend.

  “Oh shit,” I say to Beaumont. “Excuse me for a minute.”

  I hurry through the door into the kitchen, cat
ch Sarah by the elbow, and lead her into the same hallway where Rio was shot.

  “Are you crazy?” I say. “Don’t you know the sheriff is here? Your boyfriend’s about to go to jail.”

  Sarah gives me a curious look. “Why?”

  “Why? Don’t you read the papers? Listen to the news? Bates indicted a whole slew of his gang this week. He’s bound to be one of them.”

  “You think so?” she says. A hint of a smile is beginning to form on her face.

  “Damned right, I think so. Now get him out of here before Bates spots him and a gun battle breaks out.”

  “Too late,” she says, and nods back toward the kitchen. I turn to see Bates walk up to Sarah’s boyfriend and give him a big slap on the back. I’m dumbfounded. I walk into the kitchen and stare. Bates notices me and grins.

  “Come on over here, Brother Dillard,” Bates says. “Let me introduce you to Roy Walker, the best undercover agent I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.”

  I stand there looking at him stupidly, and Walker winks and sticks out his massive hand.

  “Howdy again,” he says. “They call me Mountain.”

  58

  On Monday morning, I’m sitting at my new desk at seven o’clock sharp. I’m alone. The rest of the crew won’t arrive for another hour.

  I’ve removed everything from the office that reminds me of Lee Mooney: the desk, the furniture, the photos on the wall. I’ve boxed up all of his personal property and mailed it to him. The United States and Tennessee flags that framed his desk have been moved to the reception area. The large photograph of George W. Bush has been replaced by a framed copy of the preamble to the United States Constitution. I’ve painted the walls myself. Caroline told me that Hannah Mills’s favorite color was gold and helped me pick out a shade that isn’t too bright. I’ve brought a few small framed photos of my family into the office, but outside of that, I’ve chosen to keep it sparse.

  There’s a large sealed envelope on the desk in front of me. To my right is a thick file I’ve retrieved from a storage room in my house.