by Scott Pratt
“Jack, listen to me. You don’t know what you’re up against. A man has been killed, and not just any man. A judge. I don’t care what you thought of him or what I thought of him or what anyone else thought of him. The position he held is as symbolic as it is powerful. He wore a robe, Jack. Think about that. A black robe. Do you think the people around here are just going to sit by and let someone kill one of their most powerful symbols and get away with it? Somebody’s going to burn for this. If Tommy did it, they’re going to catch him, and they’ll probably kill him. If you get in the way, you’ll go down with him.”
“What are you talking about?” he yells. “I didn’t do anything. I went to bed last night, and I woke up this morning. That’s it.”
“He was here when you woke up. That’s all it takes.”
Jack tenses. The muscles in his neck, shoulders, and chest ripple beneath his skin like waves on a pond.
“All it takes? For what? For the government to invade my life, my privacy? For them to drag me down to the police station and force me to betray my best friend, even though I have no idea what he did last night and I don’t believe he committed a crime?”
“If they ask you if you saw him, you have to tell them the truth. And believe me, they’ll ask you.”
“I don’t have to talk to them! Listen to yourself! You sound like a freaking Nazi! Don’t forget, Dad—I grew up in this house with you. I’ve heard you say it a thousand times. ‘People don’t have to talk to the police.’ How many times have I heard you say, ‘If he’d just kept his mouth shut, he would’ve never been caught’?”
“This is different.”
“How?” His tone is now defiant. “How is it different? If the police come knocking on my door, I can tell them to piss up a rope, right? I can tell them to go to hell. As a matter of fact, I don’t have to tell them anything.”
He’s right, to a degree. A private citizen doesn’t have to speak to the police if he doesn’t want to. But unless he’s the target of a criminal investigation, he can be subpoenaed to testify in front of a grand jury. If he refuses to answer questions, the presiding judge can throw him in jail until he changes his mind or until the grand jury’s term ends. It’s a practice used regularly by the federal government. They convene investigative grand juries all the time. I’ve seen the feds use them to the point of extortion.
On the other hand, the locals have never used the grand jury as an investigative tool; not once, to my knowledge. Local grand juries are nothing more than rubber stamps for cops and prosecutors, largely because the only people who ever appear before them are cops and prosecutors. The prosecutors ask all the questions and the cops provide all the answers, meaning they can choreograph the proceedings to suit their needs. Sadly, the old saying that a local prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich is true.
“They can force you to answer questions if they want to,” I say. “If you refuse, they can throw you in jail.”
“What about my right to remain silent?”
“The fact that you grew up in a house with a lawyer doesn’t make you a lawyer. There are a lot of things about the law you don’t know.”
“Enlighten me.”
I throw up my hands in frustration.
“What do you want me to do, Jack? I’m an assistant district attorney. Before I leave for work this morning, I find Tommy Miller asleep in my house. After I leave for work, I find out that Judge Green has been murdered and Tommy is a suspect. I come home to try to figure out what’s going on, and my wife decides to jump into the middle of it and my son tells me he’s going to hide behind his constitutional rights. Put yourself in my place.”
“Hide?” Jack says, his voice rising again. “You think choosing to exercise my right to stay out of this is hiding? You’ve really changed, haven’t you? Whatever happened to the dad who always told me, ‘Don’t ever let the government in your life, son. You can’t trust them’? Whatever happened to the dad who always told me that real friends should be treasured and that loyalty is important? What happened to that guy?”
“You need to calm down.”
He rises from the chair, his fingertips pushing against the table. His face, so pale earlier, is now flushed with anger. I’ve never seen him like this.
“Do you know what I need, Dad?” he says through tight lips. “Right now, this very minute, do you know what I really need?”
“Tell me.”
“What I need is a lawyer! A good one! One who’s on my side! Now, are you going to help me or not?”
16
“What do you think? Have I broken through the glass ceiling? Tell me the truth.”
At thirty-eight years old and after twelve years of busting her backside as a special agent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Anita White was finally the lead investigator on a high-profile murder case. She looked over at Mike Norcross, the super-hero look-alike who sat in the passenger seat as they drove through the rain.
“I don’t know,” Norcross said. “Depends on why the suits gave it to you. I mean, the boss was one of the first people on the crime scene. He knows how tough it’s going to be. I’m glad he didn’t drop it on me.”
Anita pondered for a minute. She and Norcross had become friends over the past year, and she knew he’d give her an honest opinion, one unaffected by racism, chauvinism, or jealousy. She liked Norcross. His massive physical presence belied the personality beneath. Anita’s experiences with Norcross both in the office and in the field told her he was a smart man, honest and hardworking, gentle at his core, who somehow managed to balance the strenuous demands of the job with the needs of a family.
“So you think I’m a sacrificial lamb?” Anita said.
“I think you’re in for a rough road. It’s a tough crime scene. We won’t get squat as far as physical evidence goes. So unless somebody talks or we get lucky, we might be screwed.”
Norcross was right. The crime scene was difficult. To start with, it was outdoors, and now it had been drenched by a thunderstorm. The judge had apparently been killed outside his vehicle, which meant the inside of his Mercedes would probably yield nothing of value. The killer had stayed primarily in the grass, except when he dragged the judge across the asphalt driveway, which meant there were no usable footprints. The Mercedes had been loaded onto a covered truck before it rained and hauled away for forensic examination, but Anita doubted they’d find any fingerprints that would help identify a suspect.
The judge had apparently been ambushed when he attempted to move the tree from the driveway. There was blood on the tree trunk, and a few samples had been taken from the grass near the driveway and along the path where the judge had been dragged, but Anita expected the blood to turn out to be Judge Green’s. They’d collected some cuttings of grass and some soil that smelled like kerosene. They’d collected the rope the killer used to hang the judge. They’d collected portions of the trunk of the Bradford pear tree that had been lying across the driveway in hopes they might be able to determine exactly what kind of saw had been used to cut it down. Finally, they’d collected two cigarette butts, Marlboro Lights, from the grass beside the driveway. That was it. Anita also believed the judge had been beaten with a blunt object of some sort, but no weapon was found.
So, based on the evidence at the crime scene, they were looking for a man strong enough to drag the judge and string him up in the tree and who might smoke Marlboro Lights, a saw of some sort, and a container that held the kerosene. Not much to go on. Not much at all.
Anita had also learned that two witnesses reported seeing a white compact car in the vicinity of the crime scene around the time the murder was committed. Four blocks away, a neighbor of the judge’s, a retired air force colonel named Robbins, had been unable to sleep and had gone for a walk sometime between 5:15 and 5:20 a.m. He’d seen the car driving out of the neighborhood. It wasn’t speeding, but Robbins said it might have been swerving. He didn’t pay attention to the tag number, and he didn’t get a look at the driver. All he
knew was the car was small and white. He thought the car also had a taillight out, but he didn’t remember which one.
Another witness, named Deakins, had called 911 at 5:26 a.m. to report that a white compact car had swerved across the center line on Highway 36 near Boones Creek and nearly hit her head-on. The witness said the car was traveling south, toward Boones Creek. It disappeared before a sheriff’s deputy could respond to the call.
It had taken Anita less than fifteen minutes to determine that one of her primary suspects in the case, Thomas Raymond Miller, age twenty, son of dead lawyer Ray Miller, owned a white 1995 Honda Civic.
Anita pulled the Crown Victoria into the driveway at 1411 Park Drive, the address she’d been provided for Tommy Miller. The large house, stained a deep red, had a cedar shake roof. She felt awkward about showing up less than twenty-four hours after Ray Miller was buried, but this was a murder investigation, and time was important. The fact that Norcross was with her was comforting. The big man was more than a good agent; he was intimidating without having to try. Witnesses tended to talk when Norcross was around. Sometimes he didn’t have to say a word.
Anita stopped the car and looked at her watch. Ten thirty; probably about five and a half hours since the murder. If Tommy Miller killed the judge, he’d certainly be surprised to see them so soon.
As the agents walked toward the front door, Anita saw there was no Honda in the driveway. She peered into the garage through the windows as she passed. A midsized black Toyota sedan was parked inside. Anita followed a concrete sidewalk to the front door, rang the bell, and waited.
After a minute, a red-haired woman opened the door, wearing a pair of pink sweatpants and a white T-shirt. The woman was pretty, but she looked disheveled. Her hair was unbrushed, she wasn’t wearing makeup, and the skin around her blue eyes was puffy. She looked as though she’d been crying.
“Mrs. Miller?” Anita said. She and Norcross displayed their identification. “I’m Special Agent White, and this is Special Agent Norcross. We’re with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. May we come in, ma’am?”
“What do you want?” Her demeanor was not one of compliance and cooperation.
“We’d just like to ask you a few questions,” Anita said.
“About what?”
“Please, Mrs. Miller, it shouldn’t take long.”
“Don’t you know I just buried my husband? Can’t this wait?”
“I’m sorry to have come at such a difficult time, but it’s extremely important.”
“Tell me what you want.” It was obvious she wasn’t going to let them in, so Anita decided to forge ahead.
“Actually, we were hoping to speak to your son, ma’am.”
“Why?”
“We’d prefer to discuss that with him. Is he here?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“It’s a yes or no question, Mrs. Miller. Is your son here or not?”
“I prefer not to answer the question.”
Anita noticed a tremble in Toni Miller’s voice. Her face was stern and emotionless, but she was obviously frightened. She’d moved behind the open door so that only her head was visible. Perhaps she’d heard about the judge’s death and drawn her own conclusions.
“Is there any particular reason why you’re being so difficult?” Anita said. Norcross stepped back off the porch and began to wander away toward the back of the house.
“Me? I’m being difficult? You come to my home unannounced less than a day after my husband’s funeral, you try to barge in, you’re asking me questions about my son, and you won’t even tell me why you’re here.” She pointed toward Norcross. “And now he is trespassing on my property!”
“We can come back with a warrant,” Anita said.
“For what? Are you going to arrest me for something? Have you forgotten what my husband did for a living, Agent … what was your name?”
“White.”
“He was a lawyer. I know my rights.”
“All right, Mrs. Miller. I’ll tell you why we’re here. We’re investigating a crime, and we think your son may have some information that could help us.”
“My son doesn’t know anything about any crime.”
“We’d like to hear that from him.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Toni Miller said, and she slammed the door in Anita’s face.
17
Anita White knew she was being stonewalled, but she wasn’t the kind to sit on her hands and wait for something to happen. With the sound of the slamming door reverberating in her ears, she walked to the neighbors on the east side of the Millers’ home and sent Norcross to the neighbors on the west side. Both agents worked their way down and across the street. An hour later they were back in the car.
“There’s always somebody in a neighborhood like this who can’t keep their nose in their own business,” Anita said as she pulled back out onto the rain-soaked street and headed for the TBI offices on Boone Street. “It never fails. This one is priceless. She lives right across the street, but she still uses binoculars. Her name’s Goodin. Trudy Goodin.”
“And what did Trudy Goodin have to say?” Norcross asked.
“Tommy didn’t come home last night. Showed up here about a half hour before we did and left about fifteen minutes later. We didn’t miss him by much.”
“Would this nosy neighbor have any idea where he might be?”
“She said he was in a hurry. Made a couple of trips in and out of the house, threw a bunch of stuff into his car, and took off. She thinks he probably went back to school.”
“And where’s school?”
“Durham, North Carolina. He goes to Duke.”
“So let’s lay this out,” Norcross said. “Our suspect’s father commits suicide in Judge Green’s courtroom less than a week ago after publicly blaming the judge for his legal and financial problems. They bury the father yesterday. Our suspect doesn’t stay at home and mourn like a normal person. He doesn’t stay home to comfort his mother or look out for her in her time of grief. He spends the night out. The judge is killed sometime during the night or early this morning. We go to our suspect’s home, and his mother is totally uncooperative, almost confrontational. She even shuts the door on us. So we canvass, and we find out from a neighbor that our suspect has arrived home this morning not long before we arrived, hurriedly thrown his belongings into his car, and left. What do you think? Enough for a warrant?”
“Not an arrest warrant, but maybe a search warrant. Especially when you add the fact that we have two sightings of a white car in or near the vicinity of the murder, around the same time as the murder, our suspect owns a white car, and our victim is a judge.”
“So we search the mother’s house? The kid’s car?”
“The house for sure. But the car could be a problem. We’ll go ahead and list the car on our warrant here, but if he’s gone back to school, he’s out of state. We’ll have to hook up with the cops over there and get a judge in North Carolina to issue a warrant.”
Anita turned to Norcross.
“How well do you know Joe Dillard?”
“Not that well on a personal level, but I’ve worked with him. The Natasha Davis case, the one where Fraley got killed. Fraley loved him. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering what you think of him.”
“I think a lot of him. He’s always been straight with me. Good lawyer. Tough guy, honest. I hear he was a Ranger in the army.”
“Know anything about his son?”
“All-American boy. Almost too good to be true. I saw him play baseball a couple of times when he was a senior in high school. He can flat-out crush it. Why are you asking about Dillard?”
“I got a weird vibe from him this morning,” Anita said. “And the nosy neighbor said Tommy Miller was wearing a bright red T-shirt with ‘Tiger Baseball’ on the front and a name and the number thirty- five on the back. Guess what the name was.”
“No clue.”
&
nbsp; “Dillard.”
18
I leave Jack some very simple instructions. I tell him to pack his bags immediately and go back to Nashville. I tell him to avoid the police at all costs. I tell him if they try to contact him, to get ahold of me immediately. I don’t know what Caroline said to Toni Miller. I don’t want to know.
I take my time going back to the office. I stop for lunch at Dixie Barbecue, one of my favorite spots, and spend a little time shooting the breeze with the owner, a genuinely pleasant man named Alan Wyatt. Afterward, I take the long way to Jonesborough. I’m not looking forward to listening to what I know I’ll hear from Mooney when I get there—a whiny diatribe about the terrible misfortune of having a judge whacked in his district. I sneak past Rita Jones, the receptionist, and I’m just about to immerse myself in work when Mooney buzzes me on the intercom.
“I need you to come in here,” he says.
I walk reluctantly back to his office and stand in the doorway, unwilling to go inside and subject myself to the inevitable.
“I think you should dismiss the charges against Rafael Ramirez,” he says.
“Beg your pardon?” I can’t believe he’s even thinking about Ramirez. “I seem to remember your busting my balls just a little while ago about the public’s perception of the office.”
“The case is weak. Stinnett is representing him. You’re going to wind up embarrassing us again, just like you did with Carver. We’ll put out a press release that says the evidence is insufficient to proceed to trial, but that we’ll continue the investigation. Maybe we’ll come up with something more.”
I shake my head in disbelief. Rafael Ramirez is a career criminal, and a dangerous one at that. He’s been on the regional drug task force’s radar for several years, but because he’s stayed on the move and has killed anyone he thought might be a snitch, the task force hasn’t been able to make a case on him. They’ve told me he’s a Mexican national who, in the country illegally, began his drug career working for a farmer outside of Pigeon Forge sometime in the early 1980s. According to the drug task force, the farmer, a man named Duncan who was found shot to death in his barn twenty years ago, taught Ramirez the intricacies of raising marijuana in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg. Once Ramirez learned to grow, conceal, harvest, and cure the crop, he realized he could wholesale the drug to his Mexican connections. They, in turn, distribute it all over the country. Ramirez is a multimillionaire who lives like a pauper, often sleeping for months in the woods near his vast patches. He’s apparently content to smuggle his cash back to his family in Mexico. The drug task force says the Ramirez family lives like royalty on a five-thousand-acre ranch outside Guadalajara, while Rafael lives primarily in the woods and does all the work.
