by Scott Pratt
“Of course I’ve thought it through.” I sat down in one of the chairs at the table and started lacing my boots. “I’ve thought about it all day, and to be honest, I have no clue what’s going to happen when I get down there. Maybe nothing will happen.”
“I’m too young to be a widow.”
“And I’m too young to make you one.”
I got up and grabbed a lighter out of a drawer in the kitchen and a bottle of water from the refrigerator. I opened the bottle, poured the water into the sink, screwed the cap back on, and headed for the garage. Leaning against the wall was an old hickory walking stick I’d bought during a trip to Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina, a few years ago. It was four feet long and hard as steel. I picked it up and looked at it. Caroline was standing in the doorway, eyeing me.
“I need your cell phone,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because mine’s at the bottom of Boone Lake. Just get it. Please?”
She disappeared for a second, came back to the doorway and tossed me her phone.
“You’re taking a walking stick to a gunfight?” she said.
“If things go right, he won’t get a chance to shoot at me.”
“Sometimes things don’t go the way you plan them. And speaking of plans, do you have one?”
“Sort of.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes I do.”
“Trust me, you don’t.”
I walked over to the five-gallon container that held gasoline for the lawn mowers and filled the water bottle with gas.
“Are you going to throw a Molotov cocktail at him?” Caroline said.
“Not exactly.”
“Then what’s the bottle of gas for?”
“Diversion, if I need it. Or maybe bait.”
The last thing I picked up was a small flashlight off the shelf in the garage. Rio was following me every step of the way, whimpering. He knew I was going somewhere and didn’t want to miss out on the fun. I tossed the stick, the plastic bottle of gas, and the flashlight into the passenger side of Caroline’s Honda and shut the door.
“Keep Rio close while I’m gone,” I said. Caroline was still standing in the doorway with her arms folded. “The shotgun’s locked and loaded behind the door in the bedroom. You know how to use it.”
She started chewing on her fist. I could see tears welling in her eyes. “I want to go,” she said. “I can’t stand the thought of sitting here waiting. By the time you get back, I’ll be insane.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Try not to worry.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I have to do this.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I can handle myself, Caroline.” I walked up to the door and took her in my arms. “I’ll call you on the house phone when it’s done. Don’t call me, please. I don’t want to worry about the cell phone ringing.”
“You be back here by four,” she said, “and you better be in one piece.”
“You sound like my mother.” I kissed her and got in the car.
Junior’s place was almost seventy miles away. As I drove down Interstate 81 toward Newport, I ran through the possibilities. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Caroline was right. I was doing something crazy and dangerous. I had a vague plan in mind, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to get close to him, if he was home. It was after midnight, so I couldn’t just waltz up to the front door and knock. Junior would have to be paranoid after what he’d done to me. If I went to the door after midnight, he’d be sure to answer it with a gun in his hand. And to make matters worse, I didn’t know anything about his house, his neighborhood, whether he had a dog… I didn’t know a thing. When I was a Ranger, I went on several recon missions. During the missions, my job was to make accurate assessments of enemy strengths and positions so the commanders would know what they were up against. It would have been nice to have had the same luxury before I went to Junior’s, but I was going in blind.
The miles passed quickly, but not quietly. A debate was raging inside my head, as though a tiny Caroline was perched on one shoulder and a tiny Joe was perched on the other.
Turn around and go home. You might get yourself killed.
He tried to kill you. He was stalking your wife. Your kids might be next. The police won’t do a thing.
I kept driving.
I made it to Newport in just over an hour. It’s a small town, so it took me only a few minutes to find Junior’s place, which was about a half-mile outside the city limits. I was relieved to see that it was relatively isolated, the nearest neighbor more than a hundred yards away. I drove by slowly the first time. There was a black mailbox on a post at the end of the driveway with “Tester” stenciled on it in slightly crooked white letters. The house was a small brick ranch that sat on a rectangular lot bordered by scruffy pines. There were no security lights, and I didn’t see any lights on in the house. One of two small outbuildings looked like a garage. After I made the first pass, I drove about a mile down the road, turned around, and made another pass. I thought about Junior driving by my house and stalking Caroline. Now it was my turn.
I found an apartment complex about a half-mile from his house, parked the car in a corner of the lot, grabbed the hickory stick, the bottle of gas, and the flashlight, and started walking. The streets were deserted. It was around fifty degrees, and the moon was low in the west. Some cloud cover would have been nice, but the Rangers had trained me to use the shadows. They’d trained me to make myself invisible in all kinds of terrain and conditions. They’d also taught me the value of surprise in an ambush and they’d taught me plenty about hand-to-hand combat. If I could surprise him and get my hands on him, I knew I could handle Junior Tester.
When I got back to his place, I cut in and moved along the pine trees to the back of the lot. I crept around the entire lot, staying in the shadows of the pines, looking for a light in the house or signs of movement. Nothing. From what Diane Frye had told me, I knew Junior didn’t have a wife or kids, but I wasn’t sure about a dog. I was relieved when nothing moved or barked. Once I was sure nobody was stirring, I walked out of the trees and up to the garage. It was only big enough for one vehicle, and it was empty. The other outbuilding was just a storage shed that contained a few tools and a pile of junk, but there was plenty of fuel for a small fire. I crept to the back of the house and stood there listening for several minutes. It was silent.
I moved slowly around the entire house, trying unsuccessfully to see something inside through the windows. No television, no radio, no bathroom light or night light, nothing. When I’d circled the house and was again near the back door, I moved quietly up the concrete steps and turned the doorknob. It was unlocked. I stood there for a second, debating whether I should step inside and add breaking and entering to what could soon be a long list of crimes I’d committed. I decided against it. If he was there, I needed to get him outside. It was time to put my “plan” into action.
I jogged back out to the shed and stepped inside. I turned on the flashlight, grabbed up some rags and several pieces of wood, turned the flashlight off, and walked back outside. I piled the wood and rags up about ten feet from the shed, where Junior could see it if he looked out the back door. Then I took Caroline’s cell phone out of my pocket, turned it on, set the block function, and dialed the number I’d memorized earlier in the day. In less than ten seconds, I heard a phone ringing in the house. Once. Twice. Three times. Four.
A light came on at the back corner of the house. I quickly doused the pile of rags and wood with the gasoline from the bottle, trailed some gasoline to a safe distance, and lit it with the lighter. The pile ignited with a whoosh. Eight rings. Nine.
I ran back toward the house and crouched down by the back stoop. Answer the phone! Answer the phone! Ten rings.
The cell phone clicked in my ear.
“Hello?”
“Junior,” I said. “It look
s like your shed’s on fire.”
“What? Who is this?”
“It looks like your shed’s on fire. I’m calling the fire department.”
I hung up, stuffed the phone back into my pocket, and waited. I could hear quick, heavy steps coming toward the back door. I stood and flattened my back against the side of the house.
Come outside. Please, come outside.
I heard the doorknob turn, and the door opened. A form appeared on the stoop within three feet of me. It was him.
“What the…?” I heard him say.
He started down the steps. Just as he got to the bottom, I gripped the walking stick with both hands and came off the wall. I dropped to one knee and swung the stick with everything I had. There was a loud crack as the stick caught him across the shin. He howled and fell to his knees.
I dropped the stick and threw myself at him. I managed to get my forearm beneath his chin and climbed onto his back. I got him into a strong chokehold and squeezed as hard as I could. I felt him kicking as I wrapped my legs around his torso and pulled him backward on top of me.
He tried to reach back to claw my face, but the more he struggled, the tighter I squeezed. After fifteen seconds or so, his strength began to wane.
“Good thing I can swim,” I said quietly into his ear.
At the sound of my voice, he stiffened.
“You see how easy this was?” I said, letting up just a little. “If you ever come near me or anyone in my family again, I swear I’ll kill you. They’ll never find your body.”
I tightened my grip on him again, and he passed out in less than thirty seconds. As soon as I felt him go limp, I let go and started patting him down. The front of his pajamas was soaked, and I smelled urine. To my relief and surprise, my little ruse had worked better than I’d hoped. He didn’t even have a gun. I moved over to where I’d dropped my stick, picked it up, then crawled back on top of him.
He opened his eyes about a minute later to find me straddling him. I’d pinned his shoulders to the ground with my knees and had the hickory stick pressed firmly against his throat. He stared at me with the same intense hatred I’d seen at the courthouse.
“Consider me your living, breathing restraining order,” I said. “Don’t ever come near me or my family again. Do you understand?”
He began to breathe heavily and his blue eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his head. He was like a volcano, about to explode with fury.
“You took my daddy from me!” he yelled.
What? Took your daddy? The strange comment surprised me.
“I didn’t do anything to your daddy.”
“You told people he went to that terrible place! You told people he was drowning in sin! I heard you in the courtroom.”
“I told people the truth. Your father took money from a revival and spent it at a strip club.”
“Liar! Blasphemer!” He tried to raise up but I shoved down hard on the stick, cutting off his breath. He froze again, and a sudden realization came to me. The look on his face, the outlandish comment, the pain in his voice, told me I’d shattered a powerful image, the image of a father held by a son. What was it Diane had said? “ He idolized his daddy. ” The words I’d spoken in court had apparently opened a gaping wound in his soul, and the wound was festering.
I kept the pressure on with the stick and leaned closer to him.
“Your daddy wasn’t the man you thought he was,” I said. “That’s not my fault. I didn’t take him away from you — he did that all by himself. You remember what I said. If you come anywhere near me again, you’ll be joining your daddy. I’ll shoot you on sight.”
His eyes narrowed and bored into me. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” he said, “I shall fear no evil-”
“Shut your mouth!” The words came out of me with such force that I sprayed him with spit. I grabbed his chin with my left hand, rolled his head to the side, and pressed the stick down hard on his carotid artery. Fifteen seconds later, he was unconscious again. For a moment, I envisioned myself smashing his head to a pulp with the stick. If you kill him, you won’t have to worry about him any more. But I couldn’t do it. I stood up, turned around, and took off running.
A half-hour later, driving along in the dark silence, the anger and bravado I’d felt earlier, along with the adrenaline, started to subside. In my mind, I envisioned Junior’s head exploding as I beat him with the stick and re-lived the fleeting feeling of satisfaction the fantasy had given me. I smelled the urine and felt his labored breath on my face. I began to shake, and before long I was trembling so badly I had to pull to the side of the road.
What had I just done? I’d gone to a man’s home in the middle of the night, attacked him, threatened him, and even fantasized about killing him.
But he tried to kill you.
That doesn’t matter and you know it. You’re not a vigilante. How many people have you defended who did something stupid and violent because they thought it was right? You’re rationalizing.
I thought about the look in his eyes while I was straddling him. My intention had been to scare him so badly that he’d leave me and my family alone, but that look — that angry, pained, insane look — told me I’d failed. He wasn’t afraid of me. He either hated me too much to be afraid or he was just too crazy to care. As I tried to control the trembling, I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror.
“Caroline was right,” I said aloud. “You’re as crazy as he is.”
June 23
9:20 a.m.
Agent Landers’s head was pounding, his back and shoulders aching. The little college cheerleader he’d laid hold of last night must have been more athletic than he thought. Not that he remembered much about her. He drank almost a fifth of Jim Beam.
Landers was sitting at his desk going through a box of physical evidence from the Angel Christian case. He had to meet with Joe Dillard later. Dillard had a right to inspect the physical evidence. Landers wouldn’t go to Dillard’s office and Dillard wouldn’t come to his, so they were going to meet in a conference room at the courthouse in the afternoon.
Landers was worried about the case. Deacon Baker had indicted the Christian girl without much evidence hoping she’d either confess or roll on Erlene Barlowe. She hadn’t done either one, and now Dillard was representing her. Dillard was scum, but he knew how to try a case. Landers knew there was a good possibility that they might lose, and to make things even worse, Judge Green had scheduled the trial a couple of weeks before the August election. If Deacon lost this case, he could very well find his fat butt on the outside looking in the day after the election.
Landers didn’t care about Deacon, but he’d been around long enough to know that sewage flows downhill. If the case was lost, Deacon would immediately start looking around for someone to blame. Since Landers was the case agent, Deacon would look in his direction first. Deacon would tell anyone who’d listen that it was Landers’s fault, that Landers had been sloppy or that Landers had talked Deacon into indicting Angel without enough evidence for a conviction. If that happened, Landers knew he could kiss his chances at a promotion goodbye when his boss finally retired.
Landers had just picked up the photograph of Angel with the bruise on her face when the secretary buzzed.
“There’s a man on the phone says he has information about the Tester murder,” she said.
Landers punched the flashing button.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Virgil Watterson. I have some information you may be able to use.”
“What information is that?”
“My understanding is that a body part was found out near Picken’s Bridge?”
A crank call. Some pervert wanting to talk about the dead preacher’s dick.
“That’s right. What about it?”
“I crossed the bridge the night of the murder, around one in the morning. When I got onto the bridge, I noticed there was a car stopped right in the middle. As I g
ot closer, I saw a woman standing outside the car near the railing. She could have thrown something in the water.”
What was this? A witness? Where had this guy been?
“Did you get a look at her?”
“Sure did. Her car was facing me in the other lane and she was walking back toward it. Caught her full in my headlights. Middle-aged woman, wearing some kind of animal print jacket and the tightest pants I ever saw. Bright red hair.”
Erlene Barlowe. It had to be her. Landers started scratching notes on a pad. “Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”
“Probably.”
“What about the car? You get a look at it?”
“Yes, sir. The bridge is narrow so I had to slow way down to get past her. It was a Corvette. A nice one.”
“Get a plate number?”
“No. Sorry.”
“What about the color?”
“It was dark out there, but I’m pretty sure it was red.”
“Was anyone else with her on the bridge?”
“I didn’t see a soul.”
“Anyone else in the car?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Why’d you wait so long to call and tell us about this, Mr… did you say your name is Watterson?”
“Yes. Virgil Watterson. I’m afraid it’s a little embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing?”
“I wouldn’t want this to get out.”
“Wouldn’t want what to get out?”
The man’s voice got quieter, as though he was trying to keep someone nearby from hearing what he was saying.
“It’s my wife, you see. I’m a married man.”
“So?”
“I’d been on a business trip and came back a little early. I was on my way to someone’s house.”
“Who is this someone?”
“I’d rather not say.”
The light came on in Landers’s mind.
“So you came back early from your trip and were going to visit someone besides your wife?”
“That’s possible.”
“And you didn’t go home until the next day?”
“That’s right.”
