Joe Dillard - 03 - Injustice for All

by Scott Pratt

  “You were right,” I say. “It’s a good thing I’m not a cop.”

  “The key to her car had been wiped clean—not a print on it, not even hers. The inside of the car had been wiped down, too, but we lifted a partial from the exterior of the door. There was quite a bit of clay on the floor around the gas pedal, along with something else. My guys say they’re not sure yet, but they think it might be lime. Same stuff in the carpet on the passenger side. We lifted some hair and fiber from the car, and we’re still going through the house. There might be something in there, too.”

  “Damn, Leon, you don’t mess around, do you?”

  “Trail gets cold in a hurry. I’m gonna stay on this one until I find out what happened to her or we fall flat. The sheriff’s department doesn’t get that many murders, you know. It’s kinda fun.”

  Fun. Alternate flashes of Hannah run through my mind. Flashes of her beautiful smile. The pain behind her eyes. The way her hair flipped when she turned her head. Her battered body dumped somewhere, slowly decomposing, covered by insects. I let out a long sigh.

  “Sorry, brother,” Bates says. “You knew her better than I did. I guess this ain’t exactly your idea of fun, is it?”

  “Not exactly. So what do you think about Ramirez? Should I make some kind of deal with him?”

  “That’d be between you and your boss, wouldn’t it?”

  “My boss tried to get me to dismiss the murder case against him this morning.”

  Bates is silent for several seconds. He begins scratching his head, which I know is his way of manifesting confusion.

  “Why would he want you to do that?”

  “He said it’s a weak case, and he doesn’t want the office to be embarrassed if I lose at trial.”

  “How strong is your case?”

  “It’s not the strongest I’ve ever had, but I think it’s enough.”

  Bates shoots me a sideways glance and raises his eyebrows. “Anything else you need to tell me?”

  “Nah, it’s probably just a coincidence. There’s just something about Mooney that bothers me. Something isn’t right with him.”

  “You just now figuring that out? He sure does like the ladies. You think he was chasing Hannah?”

  “Nah. Hannah doesn’t seem to be too interested in men. So what about Ramirez?”

  “Give me a little more time. Let me find Hannah’s family and friends, talk to them, see if I can find out who might have wanted to hurt her. If we don’t come up with something in forty-eight hours or so, maybe you should pay Ramirez another visit.”

  Bates’s cell phone begins to chirp the melody of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” He looks down at the phone, then back at me.

  “One of my forensics boys,” he says. “Better take it.”

  Bates speaks quietly on the phone for a few minutes. Finally, he says, “Well, I’ll be,” and closes the phone.

  “You say you know this gal pretty well?” he says.

  “Yeah. We’re friends.”

  “My boys went through her garbage and found something interesting. Did she mention anything to you about being pregnant?”

  27

  I call Caroline and ask her to meet me at the Peerless in Johnson City for dinner. The restaurant is known primarily for great steaks and Greek salads, but I’m more interested in taking advantage of one of the private rooms they offer. Caroline doesn’t mention anything about Hannah’s disappearance over the phone, so I assume she doesn’t know. The news will upset her terribly, so I decide to tell her later at home. I have something else I want to talk about at the restaurant.

  I’m greeted at the door by the owner, an elderly Greek gentleman named Stenopoulos who’s owned the restaurant for forty years and still goes to work every day. He leads me down a hallway to a small, private dining room. I order two beers. Caroline shows up less than five minutes later. She’s wearing a red jacket over a black turtleneck and a short black skirt that shows off her incredible legs. She sits down across the table from me without saying hello and takes a long pull off the beer. No glass for Caroline when she’s drinking a beer; I’ve always liked that.

  A waitress walks in and we order dinner. I’m not hungry—my stomach has been in knots all day—but I order a steak anyway. If I don’t eat it, I’ll take it to Rio.

  “You’re angry,” I say as soon as the waitress leaves the room. No point in fencing. We might as well get down to it.

  “I’m not angry. I’m scared for Tommy,” she replies.

  “What did you say to Toni?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  “I changed my mind. What did you say to her?”

  Caroline takes another drink from the beer bottle and reaches for a basket of crackers. She’s avoiding eye contact, a sure sign she’s upset.

  “I told her that TBI agents were probably coming,” Caroline says. “I told her to get Tommy out of there.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes. He’s gone back to school.”

  “Did they show up?”

  “Two of them. A black woman and a huge white guy.”

  White and Norcross.

  “What did she tell them?”

  “Nothing. She told them to go away. She was married to a lawyer, too, you know. I didn’t have to tell her what to do.”

  “Did they ask about Tommy?”

  “Of course they asked about Tommy.”

  Her tone is edgy, impatient. I find myself wishing we were simply having a pleasant dinner, a civil conversation. But the events of the past twenty-four hours have swept us up. All I can do now is hope no one else gets hurt.

  “Caroline, I need to ask you a few questions, and I’d appreciate it if you’d be honest with me.”

  “I’m always honest with you.”

  She’s right. It was a stupid thing to say.

  “Did you see Tommy this morning?”

  She nods her head.

  “Talk to him?”

  “He said he needed to go home. I made him an egg sandwich.”

  “How did he look?”

  “You already went through this with Jack this morning, and I don’t appreciate your asking me to come out to dinner and trying to interrogate me. You said you didn’t want to know anything about my involvement. Why don’t we just keep it that way?”

  “Fine, then let’s try the old lawyer’s cat and mouse game. Let’s talk hypotheticals.”

  “Hypotheticals? What do you mean?”

  “I’ll make a supposition and then ask you a question. It’s sort of like make-believe.”

  “I know what a hypothetical is, Joe. I just don’t understand what you want from me.”

  “Let’s suppose Tommy went to somebody else’s house last night, okay? Another friend’s house. And let’s say that friend’s mother just happened to see Tommy this morning. And maybe she heard him say something about where he went last night, what he did, that kind of thing. Hypothetically speaking, what do you think he might have said to her?”

  I see the slightest upturn at the edge of her lips. She’s willing to play.

  “Hypothetically?” she says.

  I nod.

  “He might have said something to her about not remembering what he did last night. He may have been drinking heavily.”

  “So you don’t think Tommy would have made any admissions to her about being involved in a crime.”

  “No. I don’t think he would have.”

  “And do you think this woman, this friend’s mother, would have noticed any injuries of any kind on him?”

  “I don’t think she would have noticed anything like that, no.”

  “What about his clothing? Do you think she would have noticed anything unusual about his clothing?”

  The waitress walks into the room carrying a tray with two Greek salads and two more beers. Caroline remains silent until she leaves.

  “I think his clothing may have smelled bad. His shirt, his pants, his shoes.”

  I sit
back and let this sink in. We’re back in dangerous territory. I should change the subject, keep silent, break into song, anything but continue this line of questioning. But I have to keep going. If she’s done something she shouldn’t have done, I have to protect her, and I can’t protect her unless I know the truth. I’m reminded of the days I was practicing criminal defense. I push my salad away and lean forward on the table.

  “And what might his clothes have smelled like?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe gasoline?”

  Shit. My stomach churns. I can feel my mouth going dry. I gulp down a few swallows of the beer.

  “Okay, now let’s be sure to stay in the hypothetical. Far, far in the hypothetical, all right? So if Tommy goes to this other friend’s house and this other friend’s mother notices that his clothing smells like some kind of fuel, do you think she might have asked him why?”

  “She might have asked him what happened. He might have said he thought he must have stopped for gas somewhere when he was drunk and spilled some on his clothes, but he doesn’t remember.”

  “So what else do you think might have been said?”

  Caroline’s eyes lock on to mine. She seems to relax completely, as though she’s experienced some kind of spiritual awakening. Her voice is steady.

  “First of all, I think this woman might believe him. Then she might ask him to take the clothing off and borrow some from her son. She might just intend to clean the shirt and shoes for him, since he and his mother have so much grief in their lives right now. She might have just been trying to be nice. She might have just been trying to help.”

  “And what would she have done with his clothes?”

  Caroline lifts the beer bottle to her lips, then sets it back down without drinking.

  “She might have put everything in a garbage bag and taken it to the laundry room in the basement.”

  I relax a little. This isn’t as bad as I thought. Even if Tommy’s clothes are in our house, she would have taken them before she knew anything about Judge Green’s murder. That doesn’t make her guilty of any crime. The question is whether she now has a legal obligation to make the police aware that she has the clothing and turn it over to them. And now that she’s told me, even hypothetically, I’m wondering whether I, too, have a legal obligation to tell the police.

  “So this hypothetical clothing in this hypothetical laundry room,” I say. “Do you think it might still be there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, the woman might have put the clothing in the washing machine right after the boy left. Then maybe she started fixing breakfast for her son. Her husband shows up unexpectedly and starts making wild accusations about Tommy. So after her husband leaves, maybe she does something she knows she probably shouldn’t do, but maybe she loves this boy like a son and believes with all of her heart that he didn’t commit a crime. Maybe she wants to make sure that clothing can never be used against him in any way.”

  I hold up my hand to stop her. I can see it in her eyes. I know what she’s done.

  “Don’t say anything else,” I say.

  “After her husband leaves, maybe she makes a decision that she knows she might regret someday, but she relies on her heart. She doesn’t want to do anything to hurt her husband, but she knows, she absolutely knows, that this boy she loves so much simply couldn’t have done this terrible thing. So maybe she goes to the laundry room—”

  “Please, Caroline, stop right now.”

  “And she puts the clothes in the dryer. Later, she goes back to the laundry room, takes the clothes out to the burn barrel by the barn, and sets them on fire.”

  28

  Three days after Katie Dean visited the DEA agent, Aunt Mary called her into the den from the kitchen.

  “They just did a teaser for the news about a big drug bust,” Aunt Mary said. “I think this might be it.”

  Katie sat on the edge of Luke’s bed. A male reporter appeared on the TV screen. He was wearing a camouflage uniform and holding a microphone. He was outdoors. Behind him was a wall of gray smoke.

  “Local law enforcement authorities are saying this marijuana field is the biggest ever discovered in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” the reporter said. “Agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department descended from helicopters into this five-acre field early this morning after receiving a tip from an anonymous informant. More than twenty- five hundred plants have been cut and burned. Police estimate the marijuana’s wholesale value at more than three and a half million dollars. The street value is estimated at close to ten million dollars. Sevier County Sheriff Hobart Brackens says the marijuana was most likely meant for out-of-state buyers.”

  A heavy man with jowls like a bulldog came onto the screen. He was wearing a cowboy hat with a silver star on it. Beneath his face were the words “Sheriff Hobart Brackens.”

  “An operation like this has to be a wholesaler,” the sheriff said. “We’ve had information in the past that marijuana growers were operating in these mountains, but until now, we’ve never been able to find any of the patches.”

  Aunt Mary turned off the television set.

  “There,” she said matter-of-factly. “What’s done is done. I don’t want anyone in this house to speak of it ever again.”

  The firebomb came through Katie’s bedroom window the next week. It was two in the morning on a Thursday. Katie had watched an Atlanta Braves baseball game with Luke before straggling off to bed around eleven. She was dreaming of swimming at the base of a massive waterfall in the bright sunshine, surrounded by brightly colored fish, when the sound of breaking glass and igniting fuel jolted her awake.

  It took several seconds for her to realize the bedroom was on fire. The Molotov cocktail had landed against the wall near the door and exploded. The flames were already raging by the time Katie ripped the covers back and jumped to her feet. She heard men shouting outside her window, then heard more windows crash downstairs. She screamed. The flames were racing up from the foot of the bed, gobbling the purple quilt Aunt Mary had made and given to her for Christmas three years earlier. Smoke was already causing her to choke, the heat searing her skin and throat.

  Luke. I have to get to Luke.

  She couldn’t go toward the door that led to the steps. It was too hot. The flames would consume her, but she had to get out. She unlatched the lock on the broken window and pushed it up. The roof above the front porch was less than ten feet below her. She crawled up into the window frame, cutting her left foot on a piece of broken glass in the process, and jumped. The steep pitch of the roof below sent her skidding toward the edge. Her elbows and knees hit the rough shingles, and she rolled onto her side, once, twice, three times … and then she was falling. She landed on her right side in the grass of the front yard. Her elbow jammed into her rib cage, and she heard the sickening sound of bones breaking. She tried to stand, but found she couldn’t even breathe.

  Katie looked up toward the front of the house. Dark smoke was billowing from beneath the soffit, and she could see flames climbing the curtains and reaching out like the devil’s fingers through the windows. Katie willed herself to her knees. The heat was so intense she felt her eyebrows beginning to singe. She lay down on her back and used her feet to push herself away from the inferno.

  29

  A tongue lapping across her face awakened Katie, and she opened her eyes. It was night, but the sky was full of light.

  “Maggie,” she whispered. “Good girl.”

  The sound that filled Katie’s ears was that of a locomotive, or maybe a tornado, close by. She tried to sit up, but the pain in her side was so excruciating, it took her breath again. She suddenly realized where she was. She turned her head and looked toward the house. Orange flames were shooting through the roof, reaching at least fifty feet into the air and throwing sparkling embers another thirty feet higher. Katie h
ad managed to push herself a good hundred feet from the house before she passed out, but the heat was so intense, she felt as though she were slowly roasting.

  Maggie bolted toward the side of the house and disappeared.

  She must be going to check on the others. They must have gotten out.

  Katie planted the soles of her feet firmly against the ground and began to push again, dragging herself farther away from the heat. She took shallow breaths in an effort to alleviate some of the pain. She wondered how many of her ribs had been broken in the fall, because every time she took a breath, no matter how shallow, and every time she moved her upper body in the least, it felt as if a butcher knife were being plunged into her side.

  She thought briefly of the cowards who did this. It had to be the druggers. Someone had told someone about her visit to the DEA office. She thought of the eyes that watched her as she was leaving, and she wondered whether one of those pairs of eyes was responsible for what was happening now.

  Aunt Mary. Lottie. Did they get out? Did they get Luke out? Are they hurt? Dead? No, please God, not dead. Not again.

  She shouldn’t have gone off the trail in the park. She shouldn’t have let the druggers see her. She shouldn’t have told Aunt Mary. At the very least, their house was burning because of her.

  Katie became aware of headlights coming down the driveway. They drew nearer. She heard a door slam, then heavy footsteps approaching. Someone was kneeling beside her. She looked at the face. It was Mr. Torbett, the nearest neighbor, a friendly, white-haired farmer with the longest fingers Katie had ever seen. Kneeling on the other side of Katie was Mr. Torbett’s wife, Rose.

  “Katie!” Mr. Torbett cried. “Dear God, Katie. Are you all right? What happened?”