by Scott Pratt
ALSO BY SCOTT PRATT
THE JOE DILLARD SERIES
An Innocent Client
In Good Faith
Injustice for All
Reasonable Fear
Conflict of Interest
Blood Money
A Crime of Passion
STAND-ALONE NOVELS
River on Fire
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 by Scott Pratt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503950542
ISBN-10: 1503950549
Cover design by Brian Zimmerman
This book, along with every book I’ve written and every book I’ll write, is dedicated to my darling Kristy, to her unconquerable spirit and to her inspirational courage. I loved her before I was born, and I’ll love her after I’m long gone.
CONTENTS
START READING
PROLOGUE
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PART II
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
PART III
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Justice is like an abandoned child in a dark forest. She meanders slowly, in search of the light. One must hope she will eventually find her way.
PROLOGUE
I felt a surge of anger as my uncle Tommy, who would be dead in fewer than six months, shuffled in and sat down next to me in the crowded courtroom. He looked frail and pale, a shadow of the man I knew when I was very young. He’d been diagnosed with colon cancer eighteen months earlier, and the disease, along with the treatment, had taken its toll. His brown hair was thin, fine, and now liberally sprinkled with gray. The fact that he was handcuffed, shackled, and wearing a gray-and-white-striped jailhouse jumpsuit was simply one final insult from the district attorney, the man who had been so instrumental in falsely convicting and imprisoning him for the past nineteen years. Ben Clancy, the district attorney, and Joe DuBose, the sheriff of Knox County, Tennessee, had accused Tommy Royston of murdering his wife—my aunt Linda—and had conned a jury into agreeing with them. Tommy had then been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
I looked up as Judge Clinton Waycaster began to speak. Waycaster was in his midforties, relatively young for a criminal court judge. His hair was dark brown and thinning, and a pair of reading glasses was perched on the end of his nose. He had recently replaced Judge Billy Ray Jaworski, the man who had overseen Tommy’s sham of a murder trial nearly two decades earlier. Jaworski, who had made the appellate process as difficult as possible by ruling against our legal team and for the prosecution dozens of times, had fallen ill and had retired, and Waycaster had been appointed by the governor of Tennessee to finish out his term. Waycaster was an unusual choice in the sense that he’d never served as a prosecutor. Nearly every judge I’d ever known had put in at least a couple of years at the district attorney’s office, but Waycaster had spent his career handling complex civil litigation and high-profile criminal defense cases. He knew the law and he applied it equally. He showed no favoritism to the district attorney’s office, which was also unusual, at least in my limited experience.
“I’ve never read anything quite like this from an appellate court,” Judge Waycaster said as he held up a copy of the fifty-page opinion. “It is a truly extraordinary document, and one that troubles me deeply.”
Ben Clancy, the prosecutor who had put Tommy in jail and had done everything in his power to keep him there, was sitting at the prosecution table to my right, along with two of his assistants. Clancy was in his early fifties, redheaded and chubby. I loathed him. Just being in the same room with him made me nauseous. He cleared his throat and stood.
“Your Honor, if I may,” Clancy said.
“You may not,” the judge said. “Take your seat.”
“But Your Honor, I—”
“Utter another syllable without being asked to do so and I’ll have you arrested for contempt,” Judge Waycaster said.
Clancy melted back into his seat as I suppressed a smile. I’d waited for this moment for a long, long time, and even though my senses were telling me it was happening, I was having some difficulty believing it.
“Mr. Street,” Judge Waycaster said, and I stood. I was surprised when my thighs began to twitch slightly.
“Yes, Your Honor?”
“As you know, I’ve only been on this bench for two months,” he said, “but I’ve spent a good deal of those two months going back over this case. You’ve done some extraordinary work here.”
“Thank you, Judge,” I said.
“How many hours would you estimate you’ve put in since Mr. King first alerted you to the problems with this case?”
The “Mr. King” he was referring to was the late Ralph King, a bourbon-guzzling assistant district attorney who had died of liver disease. Just before he died, however, he’d summoned me to his bedside and made a conscience-clearing confession about how Ben Clancy had railroaded my uncle Tommy. King knew everything about the case because he’d helped Clancy put Tommy away. I was twenty-six years old at the time, only a year out of law school, so I had convinced a veteran lawyer named Richie Fels—one of the most respected criminal defense attorney
s in the state—to help me with the appeal.
“We’ve been fighting them for four years to get to this point,” I said, “but I have no idea how many hours I’ve put into it. I knew I wasn’t going to get paid, so I didn’t keep track.”
“What’s your best guess?” the judge said.
“Probably between twenty-five hundred and three thousand hours,” I said.
Judge Waycaster shook his head and looked over at Ben Clancy.
“Three thousand hours, just on Mr. Street’s part,” he said. “Then there’s all the time Mr. Fels put in, plus his investigators, plus all the time you, Mr. Clancy, and your assistants and investigators have put in, plus the time spent by judges and clerks and everyone else who’s been involved. And all of it for what? To falsely accuse and imprison this man for a crime he obviously did not commit. This is one of the most expensive and most egregious miscarriages of justice I’ve ever seen. As a matter of fact, I’m of the opinion that this case crosses the line from prosecutorial misconduct to criminal behavior. The record is replete with examples of incompetence, malfeasance, mishandling of evidence, obstruction of justice, and even perjury.”
“That’s enough!” Clancy bellowed from fifteen feet to my right.
I saw him spring to his feet, walk around the prosecution table, and stop ten feet in front of the judge. He stuck his chin out like a fighter at a weigh-in.
“You want to put me in jail?” he continued. “Go ahead, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and listen to a man who has been on the bench for a grand total of sixty days impugn my reputation and the reputations of those in my office who serve the people of Tennessee. I’m the district attorney general. I’ve been elected by the people of this district twice and fully expect to be elected again next year. You’re a temporary appointment with limited experience who obviously has some sort of political agenda. I’ve been personally involved in this case since the beginning. I knew the evidence. I tried the case in front of a jury. I secured a conviction and a life sentence and have been fighting these never-ending appeals because it is my duty to do so.”
“You secured a conviction because you withheld from the defense blood evidence that was found at the scene,” the judge said. “You withheld fingerprint evidence and footprint evidence. You withheld witness statements. Nothing you did in this case showed an ounce of integrity, and because of your actions, not only did this man serve nineteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit but the real killer committed two more murders before he was finally arrested and put behind bars.”
“I don’t know that I care to have my integrity questioned by a man who was, until very recently, a glorified ambulance chaser,” Clancy said.
Judge Waycaster had handled a lot of medical malpractice cases prior to being appointed to the bench, and Clancy was calling him an ambulance chaser. I looked over at Richie Fels and rolled my eyes. “Unbelievable,” I whispered.
“I can’t help but wonder how many other cases you’ve handled in a similar fashion,” Judge Waycaster said. “But for now, since you’ve chosen to confront the court in such a disrespectful manner, you’ve earned yourself a contempt charge. Bailiffs, take Mr. Clancy to a holding cell until I can find the time to formally charge him and set his bail.”
I watched in disbelief as two bailiffs approached Clancy and took him by the elbows.
“Cuff him,” the judge said. “I think he should know what it feels like.”
“You’ll pay for this,” Clancy said as the cuffs snapped shut on him and they led him out of the courtroom. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”
I suppressed a strong urge to applaud the judge after the door closed behind Clancy. I looked around the crowded courtroom, and it was as though everyone was in shock. Judge Waycaster picked up his gavel and made a motion like he was going to pound the table with it, but he quickly realized that nobody in the room was making a sound and gingerly set it back down. He had to have been as shocked as everyone else by what had happened.
“Mr. Royston, will you please rise?” Judge Waycaster said.
Tommy stood next to Richie and me.
“It being the judgment of the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals that you have been wrongly convicted and are, in fact, innocent of the charges filed against you, this court hereby honors the judgment and declares you not guilty of murder. For my part, I offer my apologies on behalf of the state of Tennessee and wish you the best in the future. Bailiff, remove Mr. Royston’s handcuffs and shackles. Mr. Royston, you are free to go. You can pick up any personal belongings you have remaining at the jail at your convenience.”
The judge disappeared immediately. I looked over at the prosecution table. The two young assistants who had been sitting with Clancy were hurrying through a side door. A uniformed bailiff removed Tommy’s restraints and quickly walked out of the room. Suddenly, the place turned into a small carnival. Our legal team was slapping each other on the back. My mother, who had been sitting right behind us throughout the proceeding, was crying. Tommy was trying to thank me, but I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. Reporters were pointing cameras and shouting questions.
“In the lobby,” I heard Richie say over the din. “We’ll take your questions in the lobby.”
As the herd of people slowly made its way out of the courtroom and spilled into the large lobby, Richie moved close to me.
“Watch what you say,” he said. “I know you’re angry and you have a right to be, but don’t let them bait you. Don’t say anything that will come back later and bite you on the ass.”
An impromptu press conference ensued with Richie taking the lead. There were somewhere in the neighborhood of two dozen reporters, eight or ten cameras. The story had gained a lot of traction within Tennessee and had gotten some regional recognition, but with ongoing problems in the Middle East and racial tensions flaring in the United States, Tommy’s release after nineteen years in prison hadn’t gained a lot of national attention.
Richie was restrained in his criticism of Clancy and the late Sheriff Joe DuBose, choosing instead to focus on Tommy and his future. Tommy answered a few questions, but he was reserved by nature and I could tell he didn’t feel well. As the questioning slowed and the enthusiasm waned, a reporter from the Knoxville News-Sentinel, an older guy named George Brighton who I’d seen around court a few times, said, “What about you, Mr. Street? You’re the one who got this process started. How do you feel about your uncle being released from prison after all these years, and more importantly, how do you feel about Ben Clancy?”
I felt Richie tense as he stepped back and I moved forward. “Easy,” he said under his breath. I looked at the crowd, then I looked at Tommy, and I noticed my vision had tunneled slightly.
“Ben Clancy is a criminal,” I said. “He should be held accountable for what he did to my uncle. He should be disbarred and he should be prosecuted. That’s my opinion, but I realize my opinion isn’t worth the breath I just used to express it. I also realize that we have absolutely no recourse when it comes to Mr. Clancy, no remedy at law.”
At that point I reached in my front pocket and pulled out a red bandana, one exactly like the stained red bandana that Ralph King had told me about on his deathbed. Clancy and Sheriff DuBose had hidden the bandana from Tommy’s trial lawyers. We found it in a box tucked away in a corner of the evidence room at the sheriff’s department, had it tested for blood and DNA, and it eventually led to Linda Royston’s real killer, a drifter named Henry Pulanski.
“But there is a remedy at the polls,” I said. “Ben Clancy is up for reelection in eleven months, and I guarantee you his arrogance will not allow him to step back voluntarily and let someone else take over the district attorney’s office. I also guarantee you that I, as insignificant as I may be, will do everything in my power to see to it that he is defeated next August.”
I held the red bandana above my
head and waved it at the crowd. “I’m going to encourage whoever opposes Mr. Clancy in the election—and I’m sure there will be opposition—to make this bandana a symbol of the kind of evil that results from the misuse of power in the district attorney’s office. I’m going to encourage them to hang one of these bandanas from every campaign sign they put on the street. Hell, maybe I’ll encourage them to hang one from every sign Clancy puts on the street. I will work my fingers to the bone; I will donate what little money I can; I will do anything, anything in my power to see to it that Ben Clancy never gets the opportunity to railroad another defendant.”
I stepped back as an awkward silence filled the space. It was broken by Richie’s gruff whisper.
“Beautiful,” he said. “Clancy and his assistants will step on every client you represent from this day forward.”
“Fuck Ben Clancy,” I said loud enough for everyone to hear. “He isn’t going to be around much longer,” and with that I turned and stalked out of the building.
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
TWO YEARS LATER
I’d never laid eyes on Jalen Jordan before he and his mother came into my office for an appointment. They called early that morning and told my secretary it was urgent that they see me. Jalen had been arrested two nights earlier and needed an attorney immediately. I was still a young lawyer, a thirty-two-year-old specialist in criminal defense, with an office in downtown Knoxville. I was in my seventh year of solo practice, and I’d worked hard to gain a reputation in the local legal community as someone who was smart and hard-nosed. I could spot a constitutional violation a mile away, and if I couldn’t find one, I’d try to create one. I was a tough negotiator in plea bargaining and an effective trial lawyer who could take even the worst set of facts and give the prosecution a run for their money in front of a jury. The other defense lawyers around town and some of the prosecutors had started calling me Brawler.
