Joe Dillard - 03 - Injustice for All

by Scott Pratt

  Ramirez controls a group of around twenty fanatical followers who help him with the crops each year and help him maintain his wholesale network. He’s also dabbling in contract killing, according to the drug task force’s informants, none of whom are willing to say anything on the record or testify. I can’t blame them. Ramirez’s record regarding betrayal is straightforward and consistent. If anyone within the organization gets out of line, they wind up dead. If anyone outside the organization tries to screw Ramirez, they wind up tortured and dead.

  About four months earlier, Ramirez made the first big mistake of his illustrious career. Based on information the task force had gathered from informants, we knew that Ramirez’s young nephew, Ramon, had come up last year from Guadalajara to learn the marijuana production and wholesale business at the elbow of Uncle Rafael. Maybe Rafael was growing tired and thinking of retirement, or maybe his business enterprise had grown so much that he needed a family member he could trust to help him run it. Either way, Ramon was chosen.

  During the winter months, when business was slow, nephew Ramon had taken up residence at an apartment complex in Johnson City and had decided to take advantage of the local party scene. At a college bar called Plato’s, Ramon ran into a cocaine dealer named Roberto Sanchez. Sanchez was flashy—he drove a Porsche, tossed cash around like candy, and had a small stable of women who followed him everywhere he went. The more Ramon drank, the more jealous of Sanchez he became. When Sanchez went to the bathroom late that night, Ramon followed him and ambushed him with a pool cue.

  As soon as Sanchez was released from the hospital, he set up a little ambush of his own. He waited outside Ramon’s apartment building until three in the morning, and when Ramon showed up after another night at the bar, Sanchez shot him twice. The first bullet went through Ramon’s jaw. The second one hit him as he tried to run away. It went in under his scapula and out beneath his right arm. Ramon didn’t go the hospital. Instead, he called his uncle Rafael.

  It took Rafael two months to set Sanchez up. He summoned another family member from Mexico, who started hitting the bars and convinced Sanchez he was a high-level cocaine dealer. He offered Sanchez two kilos for the bargain-basement price of seventeen thousand dollars. When Sanchez went to a rural road in Washington County to buy his coke, the fake dealer was waiting for him, along with Rafael and Ramon Ramirez. Their plan was simple. They intended to kill Sanchez and take his seventeen thousand dollars. They didn’t need the money. It was the principle of the thing. Sanchez had shown great disrespect to Ramon when he shot him in the back.

  But Sanchez didn’t go down without a fight. He managed to squeeze off close to thirty rounds from a Mac-9 machine pistol before he was hit twice in the head. Three of those rounds hit Rafael Ramirez: one in the neck, another in the left thigh, and a third lodged against a kidney. The fake drug dealer, who remains unidentified, was shot through the heart and died at the scene. Young Ramon was also hit, although we don’t know how many times. He left a blood trail from the passenger side of the car, where he was firing from near the front fender, to the driver’s side, where he got into the vehicle and fled. He must have been in a panic, because he left his uncle behind, along with the seventeen thousand dollars.

  Uncle Rafael survived his wounds. A benevolent God and a skilled surgeon made it possible for him to continue to share his talents and his bountiful spirit with the rest of us. After convalescing in the hospital at state expense for two weeks, he was transported to the Washington County Detention Center. I’d convinced a grand jury to indict him for felony murder based on the evidence the police found at the scene.

  “We’ve got enough to convict him,” I finally say to Mooney. “We’ve got a ballistics match from the slugs in Sanchez’s head to the gun that was lying next to Ramirez when the police found him. We’ve got Ramirez’s fingerprints all over the gun, and he had gunshot residue all over him. We’ve got the money from the trunk of Sanchez’s car. Some of it’s circumstantial, but it’s enough.”

  “I disagree,” Mooney says, but he’s interrupted once again by his intercom. He talks for a minute and then looks up at me.

  “It isn’t like her.”

  “What?”

  “Hannah,” he says. “It isn’t like her.”

  “Hannah Mills?”

  “She didn’t show up for work this morning, and she hasn’t called. How about going out to her house and checking on her?”

  As if I don’t have anything else to do. Mooney is strangely dependent on me sometimes, but this seems a little over-the-top, even for him.

  “Why me?” I say. “Am I a trial lawyer or an errand boy? If you think something might be wrong, why don’t you call the sheriff’s department and ask them to send a deputy?”

  “Just go by and take a look around, will you? Maybe she just overslept.”

  “Until one in the afternoon?”

  “Just go. I’ve got enough on my mind right now.”

  I sigh and start to walk out the door.

  “What’s the address?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?” Mooney snaps. “I’ve never been to her house. Get it from Rita. And dismiss on Ramirez!”

  19

  Hannah Mills is the victim/witness coordinator for the district attorney’s office. As the title suggests, she deals with victims of crime and their families, offering comfort and reassurance, helping them through the difficult experience of dealing with the criminal justice system. She keeps them up-to-date on the prosecution, lets them know when they need to show up for court, helps them file paperwork for the victim’s relief fund if they’re eligible, and sits with them in the courtroom.

  Hannah has been with us only a few months. Mooney hired her away from a similar job in the Knoxville district attorney’s office after he met her at a conference in Nashville. She’s thirty-one years old, holds a master’s degree in sociology, and is compassionate and dedicated. She’s also drop-dead gorgeous, with stunning blue eyes, a trim, athletic body, and a head of long, wavy sandy blond hair that seems to have a mind of its own.

  When I first met Hannah, I sensed we had something in common. She was friendly and outgoing, but there was pain behind her blue eyes, the same kind of pain I’ve seen in the mirror. She must have sensed the same thing, because we hit it off immediately. A week after I met her, I invited her out to the house to meet Caroline. The two of them have become shopping buddies. One thing Caroline and I have both noticed about Hannah is that she never speaks of her childhood. Life for her seems to have begun after college.

  The address the receptionist gives me is off Bugaboo Springs Road, a couple of miles outside of Jonesborough. It’s a small brick house surrounded by poplar trees, set about a hundred feet back from the road. The yard is neatly trimmed, and the gravel driveway is lined with red and yellow tulips. It’s an idyllic setting, especially since the storm has cleared out and the sun is shining brightly. I park my truck behind the blue Toyota Camry that belongs to Hannah and walk to the front door.

  I knock a few times and immediately hear a puppy whining. I cup my hands around my face and peer through the windows in the door and, sure enough, a small puppy—it looks like a floppy-eared cocker spaniel—is scratching at the bottom of the door from the inside. Hannah’s mentioned that she picked up a puppy at the animal shelter, but I can’t remember whether she told me what she named it. I knock several more times and then try the door. It’s locked.

  I walk around the house, calling Hannah’s name, looking in and knocking on the windows. There’s no movement inside, save for the puppy, which follows the sound of my voice and continues to whimper. The back door is unlocked, and I debate for a second whether I should go inside. I decide she could be sick or injured, and I open the door. An odor of urine and feces greets me along with the puppy. I pick up the puppy, and it wriggles excitedly. I look down and see two small bowls, both empty. The dog apparently hasn’t been fed or watered. I scratch its ears as I walk slowly through the kitchen and cont
inue to call Hannah’s name.

  It takes only a few minutes to go through the house. Besides the kitchen, there’s a small dining area and a den, a bedroom that has been converted into an office, another bedroom, and a bathroom. Given the way the day has gone so far, I expect to find something horrible around each corner. I step into the bedroom and see that the bed is made. A small leather purse is sitting on the pink comforter along with a red Windbreaker. There’s an empty glass in the sink in the kitchen, but aside from that and the feces and urine the puppy has deposited on a mat near the back door, the house is spotless.

  I open a door off the kitchen that leads to a basement and peer down into the darkness.

  “Hannah? Hannah? Are you there?”

  No one answers, so I flip on the light and walk down the steps. The floor is concrete, and the walls are unpainted concrete block. There’s a washing machine and a dryer in one corner and some gardening tools in another, but otherwise the basement is empty. I go back to the kitchen and open the refrigerator. A disgusting odor makes me gag. I look around in the refrigerator and quickly find the source—an unopened package of chicken breasts that has spoiled.

  I walk back through the house again, this time looking for some telltale sign of disturbance, some small clue as to what has become of the occupant. I pick up the telephone and go back through the caller ID. She’s missed five calls over the weekend. I don’t recognize any of the numbers. I see there are messages but can’t bring myself to listen to them. I already feel like I’m invading her privacy.

  Nothing seems to be out of place, but something is wrong. The abandoned puppy, the foul smell in the air, the purse on the bed, the rotten chicken, the car in the driveway. I put the puppy down, hoping it might lead me to something or someone, wishing it could talk, but all it does is put its front paws up on my knees and whimper.

  I pick the dog back up, walk outside, and call the sheriff’s cell phone.

  20

  Sheriff Leon Bates shows up in less than twenty minutes. Bates is immensely popular with the voters in Washington County. He’s in the final year of his first four-year term, but there is no political opposition on the horizon that will keep him from being elected again. He’s so popular that when visiting politicians come around, they make a beeline for him. They all want to kiss up to him, to have their photograph taken with him. They want to gain his favor in the hope that he’ll endorse them come election time. He has a vast network of political connections, and even includes the governor of Tennessee among his closest friends. His political aspirations go far beyond the office of county sheriff, but for now, he’s content to stay put and wait for the right opportunity to come along.

  Bates is the hardest- working law enforcement officer I’ve ever known. He sleeps at the office, a habit that cost him a wife, but even she still likes him. He knows every newspaper and television reporter around, gains their confidence by being honest and straightforward, and then is smart enough to gently persuade them to do stories that cast both him and his department in a positive light. He teaches a criminal justice class at East Tennessee State University for free, and speaks at churches, civic clubs, schools, pancake breakfasts, fish fries, and spaghetti suppers. I’ve never seen it, but I feel certain he helps little old ladies cross the street. Bates is a savvy Andy Taylor, a throwback to the days when sheriffs were admired in their small communities. But he’s also a man confronted on a regular basis by real crime in a county that continues to grow and develop. I was suspect of him when we first met—a natural inclination of mine—but in the past few years I’ve come to respect him as a man and admire him as a law enforcement officer.

  “Now what has my old buddy Dillard gone and got himself into today?” Bates says as he unfolds from a year-old black BMW and sets his cowboy hat atop his head at a slight angle.

  “Nice ride,” I say as he walks around to the trunk and retrieves a pair of latex gloves. “When did you start driving that?”

  “Last week. Took it off a meth dealer out toward Sulphur Springs.” Bates smiles, admiring the vehicle. “You’d think them drug dealers would have enough sense to lease. But this old boy paid cash, and what was once his now belongs to the Washington County Sheriff’s Department.” He chuckles under his breath. “I love taking their stuff.”

  “Where’s the guy you took it from?”

  “I turned him over to the federal government, which means he’ll most likely be resting and relaxing at the medium security penitentiary in Beckley, West Virginia, for the next thirty years or so. I understand the inmates up there got a nice view of the mountains. That your pup?”

  “It must belong to Hannah.”

  I follow Bates back toward the house. He’s mid-forties, perhaps an inch taller than I, and has the sturdy build of a farmer. His hair is medium length and light brown beneath the tan cowboy hat. He’s wearing his ever-present khaki uniform with the brown epaulets and cowboy boots. I’ve already filled Bates in on the details over the phone. He said he’s talked to Hannah Mills a few times and found her to be a “sweet little ol’ gal.”

  Bates stops just short of the back door. “Say you’ve already been through the house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Touch anything?”

  I think for a second. Did I?

  “Just the handle on the refrigerator door. Oh, and the knob on the back door … and the knob on the door leading to the basement and a light switch. And the phone.”

  Bates shakes his head.

  “Don’t touch anything else,” he says, and walks in. “Lord, what’s that smell?”

  “Spoiled chicken.”

  “Make you think twice about eating such a foul animal,” he says, smiling at his lame pun.

  I follow silently as he retraces my earlier route through the house, including the basement. He grunts occasionally, but other than that, he offers no comment. When he’s finished with the house, we walk the edge of the property, finding nothing. Finally, Bates attempts to open the driver’s-side door on the Camry. It’s locked, so he walks back inside the house, reappearing a moment later with a set of keys.

  “Got these out of her purse,” he says, dangling them gingerly from his latex-covered fingers.

  Bates opens the door and looks through the interior of the car, then opens the trunk.

  “This ain’t good,” he says.

  “What?” I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

  “Take a look at this.”

  I walk around to where he’s standing and follow his pointing finger to a dark spot on the carpet in the trunk. The circumference of the spot is about the same as a coffee cup.

  “Blood,” he says. “Bet my badge on it.”

  “That could be anything,” I say.

  “It ain’t anything. It’s blood.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “C’mon back here and take a peek at this.”

  We walk around the car, and he points to the driver’s seat. I look at him stupidly. I have no idea what he’s trying to tell me.

  “Good thing you’re a lawyer instead of a cop,” he says. “The unsolved-crime rate would skyrocket.”

  “So you think there’s been a crime?”

  “I think we’re gonna have some problems finding this gal,” Bates says. “And when we do find her, I’ll bet you a poke full of cash to a pig’s ear she’s gonna be dead.”

  21

  I leave Leon Bates to what he believes is his crime scene shortly thereafter. There isn’t anything I can do. He’s already put in a call to forensics, a department he’s also funded with money seized from drug dealers. He’s hired and trained specialists so he doesn’t have to go begging to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation every time he finds himself with a serious crime on his hands. His department even has a mobile minilab. It won’t surprise me if Bates winds up funding his own full- fledged lab sometime in the not-too-distant future. He’s become so proficient at arresting drug dealers that I find it hard to believe t
here are any left in the county. But I guess they’re like rats, multiplying in the darkness while the world around them pretends they’re under control. I take the puppy to a woman in Jonesborough who boards dogs, then drive back to the office.

  I find Mooney in his office, sipping coffee, fiddling with his mustache, and reading the Johnson City newspaper. He must read every word, including the obituaries and the classified ads, because he pores over it for hours every day.

  “No luck,” I say as I peck on the door frame.

  “No luck? What do you mean?”

  “Her car’s there, her purse is on the bed along with a jacket, but she’s nowhere to be found.”

  “You looked all over?”

  “Twice.”

  Mooney leans back in his chair and rubs his chin. “Christ, I guess we ought to start checking around to see whether anybody’s heard from her.”