by Scott Pratt
Last week, I made two important phone calls. One was to Brian Gant’s appellate attorney, and the other was to the director of the Tennessee Department of Correction. I was amazed at how easy it was to get the director on the phone. Being a district attorney general certainly has its advantages. Brian’s lawyer faxed me a copy of the DNA profile of evidence from the scene where Brian’s mother- in-law was murdered and his niece was raped, and the director readily agreed to run the profile through their database. All he needed was a case number, he said, and he’d see to it that it was taken care of. In less than forty-eight hours, I received a telephone call from a Department of Correction DNA specialist. She had a match to the profile I faxed her, she said. The DNA belonged to a man named Earl Gaines. He’d been convicted twice of aggravated rape and was currently serving a thirty-year sentence. I asked her whether she could send me a copy of the DOC’s records on Gaines, and she said she’d get it in the mail right away.
The package in front of me is Gaines’s records. The file to my right is Brian Gant’s. I open the package, remove the thick sheaf of papers, and begin to read them carefully. Gaines was born in 1966. He was first convicted of aggravated rape at the age of nineteen. He served ten years, and was paroled in February 1995, just two months before Brian Gant’s mother-in-law was murdered.
I find the section that contains Gaines’s parole records. They show that in February 1995, he moved in with a woman named Clara Stoots. As I look at Clara Stoots’s address, an alarm bell goes off inside my head. I grab Brian Gant’s file and quickly locate a copy of the original police report of the murder. I’m looking for the mother-in-law’s address. When I find it, I begin to slowly shake my head.
“No,” I say out loud. “No.”
Clara Stoots’s address in April 1995 was 136 Old Oak Road, Jonesborough, Tennessee. Shirley La-Guardia, Brian Gant’s mother-in-law, lived at 134 Old Oak Road, Jonesborough, Tennessee. At the time of her murder, Earl Gaines was living right next door.
I dig back through Gaines’s file, curious about one thing. Toward the bottom of the stack are several booking photos of Gaines. I fold my arms on the desk in front of me, drop my head onto them, and start slamming my fist onto the desk in anger and frustration.
As little Natalie first told the police, Gaines looked very much like Uncle Brian.
59
Anita White walks unannounced into my office an hour and a half later wearing a smart- looking navy blue pantsuit but seeming a bit frazzled. She sits down across the desk from me without saying a word. I’ve called her a couple of times since our conversation at Perkins the morning they arrested Tommy Miller, but she hasn’t answered and hasn’t returned the calls. I wonder whether she’s looking for another apology from me.
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” I say.
“I’ve been out of the country.”
“Vacation?”
“I took a few personal days, but I worked the entire time I was gone.”
“Really? On what?”
“It started with the forensic analysis of Judge Green’s computer. Our analyst found out that someone had hacked into the judge’s computer not long before he was killed. He investigated, like all good TBI agents do, and found that the computer the hacker used was located in another country.”
“And what country was that?”
“Canada.”
The look on her face is almost, but not quite, smug. There’s a gleam in her eye that tells me she knows something that I don’t. I can tell she’s dying to spit it out, but first she wants to enjoy her little game.
“Canada’s a big country,” I say.
“Yes, and Vancouver’s a big city.”
The thought germinates in my mind and begins to grow quickly. Vancouver. Canada. Judge Green. Computer hacker. What do they have in common? It dawns on me suddenly, but I’m afraid to be too optimistic. What has she learned? How far has she taken it?
“Talk to me,” I say.
“When I saw the Vancouver address, I remembered the case against the pedophile that Judge Green threw out on a technicality, so I got online and looked it up. David Dillinger was the witness the judge held in contempt that day, so I started doing my job. I checked with the airlines at Tri-Cities Airport and found out that David Dillinger flew back here three days before Judge Green was murdered. He took a plane home the morning the judge was discovered. I checked with the rental agency at the airport. Guess what model car David Dillinger rented? A white Subaru Legacy. I checked the hotels and found out he stayed at the Doubletree, the same hotel the state put him in when he came down to testify at the hearing. The Doubletree has security cameras at all of the entrances and in all of the hallways. When I went through the tapes, I learned that Dillinger had a tendency to sleep all day and stay out all night. On the morning of the murder, he showed up at the hotel at exactly 5:12 a.m. Shall I keep going?”
“By all means,” I say. “So far I’ve heard a fairly good circumstantial case, but I’m not sure there’s enough for a conviction.”
“Did I tell you about the part where I got his credit card bill and found that he’d charged some items at Wal- Mart in Johnson City the night before the murder? Let’s see, what was it? Oh yes, a bow saw, a length of rope, and a five-gallon plastic gasoline container. Wal- Mart had a tape, too. Dillinger is easily recognizable.”
The excitement is building. I’m picturing the look on Tommy Miller’s face when I walk into court and ask the judge to dismiss the charges against him.
“So you went to Canada to arrest him?”
“First I called the Vancouver police, and based on the information I provided, they arrested him and got a DNA sample. It matched two cigarette butts we found at the crime scene. So I flew up there and interviewed him. As soon as I showed him the DNA match, he knew he was dead in the water. He said when he got back to Vancouver, he hacked into Green’s computer. It was full of child pornography, along with a lot of other obscene material. Dillinger was so enraged that he started planning the murder that very minute. He confessed to everything, and I have it on video. He’s in the Washington County jail as we speak. I brought him back with me.”
She’s grinning broadly now. I get up from behind the desk, walk around in front of her, and reach out my arms.
“Give me a hug, Agent White.”
She stands and wraps her arms around my neck.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Would you like to know what the best part of all this is?” she says. “Harmon doesn’t know anything about it. He thinks I’m on vacation.”
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