by Scott Pratt
Anita took a breath. She’d stopped short of saying what was really on her mind. Why don’t you tell them you can all blame it on the woman? The black woman! She refused to toss that card on the table. It was a card her daddy had warned her never to play. “You make your way on hard work and dedication,” he’d said. “You outwork and outthink the bigots, even though you know they hate you and would do anything to destroy you. You stay true to yourself and your principles. You adapt and you overcome. That’s how you do it.”
Harmon’s face flushed. His laced fingers became pink as he squeezed them tightly together.
“Are you accusing me of sexual discrimination and racism, Agent White? Are you suggesting that my decision to assign this case to you was motivated by your gender or the color of your skin?”
Anita knew she was on thin ice. She didn’t want to back down, but she loved the job and wanted to keep it. She chose her words carefully.
“What I’m saying is that you’ve treated me like an outcast since the first day I walked through this door. I find it hard to believe that you’ve suddenly decided I’m some kind of wonder woman.”
Harmon leaned back in his chair and began rocking back and forth. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples for a full thirty seconds before he spoke.
“I hope you understand that we’re both in a world of shit here,” he said. “I thought that since this judge had the reputation of being a first-class son of a bitch, nobody would pay much attention. I underestimated the political fallout. And you’re right. I assigned this murder investigation to you because I knew it was a shit case and I don’t like you. You’re cold, Agent White, and you think your shit doesn’t stink. But we’re stuck with each other. We’re grown-ups. We can agree to disagree.”
“Is that all? Can I go now?”
“You can go as soon as you tell me how you plan to nail the bastard who did this.”
“Honestly? Right now I have no idea. Perhaps you have some suggestions.”
“As a matter of fact, I do have a suggestion—one that might allow both of us to keep our jobs.”
35
I spend another half hour talking to Rider about Hannah Mills/Katie Dean, her background, and her tenuous connection to Ramirez. After an extra ten minutes of arguing, I finally talk him into sharing what he knows with Sheriff Bates. As I drive back to Jonesborough, I try several times to get ahold of Bates to let him know what I’ve found out and that he needs to talk to Rider, but he’s still not answering his cell. I stop and eat a quick lunch at a little diner called the Mountain View and get back to the office around twelve thirty. Rita’s out to lunch, along with everyone else, it seems, but as I walk past her desk and down the hall, I hear voices coming from Mooney’s office. One of them sounds like Anita White, so I decide to walk back and see what’s going on.
“Joe, come in, come in,” Mooney says when I appear in the doorway. He’s smiling broadly, which immediately makes me think he’s going to ask me for a favor. Anita is sitting across the desk from Mooney to his right, and Mike Norcross is across the desk and to his left. “We’re just having a little strategy session.”
“Making any progress on the judge?” I say to Anita.
“Doing what we can.”
“Any solid leads?”
“That’s what we were talking about,” Mooney interrupts. “We’d like to present some evidence to the grand jury, and you’re just the man to do it.”
“Really?” I’m immediately skeptical. He’s talking in his politician voice, a sure sign that reason is being thrown out the window. “What kind of evidence?”
“Evidence of interstate flight to avoid prosecution, evidence of obstruction of justice, evidence of murder.”
“I take it you have a suspect.” I wonder what Anita’s found out since yesterday, and I silently curse myself for not being more diligent about getting in touch with her.
Mooney motions to a chair in the corner. “Pull that chair around here. Let me bring you up to speed.”
I grab the chair, turn it around, and lean on the backrest. Mooney talks for ten or fifteen minutes, occasionally assisted by Anita. He gives me a detailed description of everything that’s been done in the investigation and the conclusions he’s drawn. By the time he’s finished, I’m quite certain he’s either making a sick joke or he’s gone completely insane.
“I want you to present all this to the grand jury and then persuade them to issue an indictment for first-degree murder,” Mooney says.
“You can’t be serious.”
Mooney seems stunned, as though he would never imagine I might question him.
“I’m completely serious,” he says, “and I don’t think I appreciate your tone.”
I look at Anita, then at Norcross.
“You guys are supportive of this?”
“We are,” Anita says.
“Let me tell you a little story,” I say to Anita. “There was a guy in this office a few years back, before you moved up here. His name was Deacon Baker, and he used to do things similar to this. He’d indict people for murder without sufficient evidence, overcharge people, and he filed a death penalty notice on nearly every murder case, intending to use it as leverage. And do you know what I used to do? I used to practice criminal defense, and I made a pretty handsome living taking the tactics he used and shoving them up his stupid, fat ass.”
Mooney clears his throat.
“I hope you’re not insinuating that I’m stupid,” he says.
“What you’re proposing is completely irrational. If I understand your summary of the evidence, you have exactly nothing. Zero. You have a young man who you suspect may be the killer. Your theory of motive is that he killed Judge Green to avenge his father’s suicide. One witness saw a white car in the neighborhood; another saw a white car a mile or two from the neighborhood, but we don’t even know whether it’s the same car. Your suspect owns a white car. So what? Can either of your witnesses identify the car? Did they get a look at the driver? You have no weapon, no blood, no prints, no hair, no fiber, no witness to the crime, and no incriminating statements from anyone. Like I said, you have nothing.”
“His mother was totally uncooperative,” Mooney says. “He’s left the state, and he ran from the police in Durham this morning. This is all circumstantial evidence of guilt.”
“No, it isn’t,” I say curtly. I’m frustrated and beginning to grow angry. I look at Anita and Norcross, both of whom have suddenly taken an intense interest in the floor. “It’s diddly-squat. First of all, he had every right to leave the state. From what you’ve told me, no one has even talked to him. How’s he even supposed to know he’s a suspect?”
“His mother must have warned him,” Mooney says. “The neighbor saw him come and go in a hurry.”
“And you think that’s evidence of guilt in a murder? Come on, Lee. You’re not that obtuse. And didn’t you just tell me the police executed a search warrant on the mother’s home this morning and the kid’s apartment in Durham and didn’t find a damned thing? You’ll be lucky if they don’t sue you.”
“This is what we do,” Mooney says. “You convene the grand jury. You bring Agent White in, and you have her lay everything out: the feud between Judge Green and Ray Miller, the suicide, finding the judge’s body the morning after the funeral, the fact that Tommy Miller didn’t come home that night. She tells them about the mother’s slamming the door in her face, how she won’t give them any information at all. She tells them about the neighbor who saw Tommy come home early that morning and then leave quickly. She tells them about Tommy running from the police in Durham, how his car seems to have disappeared into thin air, and how he’s now a fugitive.”
He obviously hasn’t listened to a word I’ve said.
“A fugitive? How can he be a fugitive if you don’t have an arrest warrant?”
“He’s wanted for questioning.”
“You’ve just said he’s a suspect in a murder. He doesn’t have to answer any questio
ns, remember?”
“Stop fencing with me,” Mooney says. “Do what I say and the grand jury will indict him. We’ll put out a nationwide alert. We’ll have him in custody in a couple of days, tops.”
“And then what? You know as well as I do that you won’t be able to present any of this garbage to a trial jury. None of it’s admissible. If he keeps his mouth shut, you’ll all end up looking like fools.”
“He’s a kid, for God’s sake,” Mooney says. “These agents are pros. He’ll cave during interrogation.”
“No way. I don’t want any part of this.”
I stand up and start to walk toward the door, muttering under my breath. I’ve seen Mooney do some idiotic things over the past few years, but this tops them all.
“Now you wait just one damned minute,” I hear Mooney say behind me. The tone of his voice is threatening, and I stop and turn to face him full on. I can sense where this is going, but I don’t care.
“It isn’t a request,” he says. “You’re going to take this case to the grand jury. You’re going to present the evidence through Agent White, and you’re going to come back with an indictment.”
“No, I’m not. If you’re absolutely bent on doing this, do it yourself.” I stare him directly in the eye, knowing what has to come next.
“I’m your superior,” Mooney says. “You work for me. You’re refusing a direct order in front of two witnesses. This is gross insubordination.”
“I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what your title is. This isn’t what I signed up for. I’m not going to be a part of a railroad job.”
“Then you leave me no choice. Pack up your things. You’re fired.”
I turn toward the door to leave, but I can’t resist saying one last thing to him. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling I had yesterday when he mentioned Hannah in the past tense. I turn back around.
“By the way,” I say, “Rafael Ramirez says somebody wanted Hannah Mills dead, and he says he knows who.” It’s a small lie. My mother would have called it a little white lie.
“He’ll tell you who it is if you let him out of jail.”
PART 3
36
Hannah Mills, the former Katie Dean, looked up at the waterfall and wondered what she was doing. It was the first time in years she’d been hiking, and sitting at the base of Red Fork Falls in Unicoi County, she remembered why. The memories were inevitable: the long days in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the beauty of the dozens of cascades and falls she’d visited, the stands of old-growth timber. But those memories triggered others, others she’d tried to keep at bay.
Pretending Aunt Mary and Luke never existed was the easiest way to get by. She’d learned to put them, along with Lottie, the farm, the animals, all of it, out of her mind. It was as though everything had turned into clouds and drifted slowly away on the breeze.
After the fire—which Hannah couldn’t remember at all—her life had spun out of control for a while. She found herself with a new name, living in Salt Lake City in a downtown apartment, a few blocks from the giant Mormon Tabernacle. The agents in Knoxville had told her it was the only way they could ensure her safety, and at the time, she hadn’t the will to resist. An FBI agent named Fritz became her new best friend in Utah, but Hannah quickly grew homesick for the purple-shrouded mountains she loved so much. She packed what few things she had one day, got on a bus, and never looked back.
She wound up in Knoxville, alone and confused. The only person she had any regular contact with was Agent Rider, who, upon her return to Knoxville, had given her enough money to get a small apartment and survive until she could get on her feet. Then, a couple of weeks after she returned, Agent Rider was contacted by a lawyer from Gatlinburg who wanted to meet with Hannah. Agent Rider arranged the meeting, and it was there that Hannah learned that Aunt Mary had made her not only the executor of her estate, but a beneficiary of her will. Hannah and Lottie were each to receive one half of Aunt Mary’s money—just over three hundred thousand dollars each that had been invested in U.S. Treasury bills. Hannah also inherited the farm, but the lawyer told her that Mr. Torbett, the neighbor, had made an offer to buy it. The lawyer suggested Hannah accept the offer, and she did. She had no desire to return.
Hannah spent months in a fog, staring at the walls of her small apartment, lying in bed for days at a time, unwilling and unable to start over. She cursed God, or fate, or destiny, or whatever force it was that had selected her to bear the burden of so much pain and so much shame. She didn’t care about the money. It had no real value or meaning to her, especially considering how she’d come to acquire it.
It was Agent Rider who’d finally helped Hannah crawl out of the depths of her despair. He came by her apartment regularly and finally talked her into seeing a psychiatrist, a woman named Mattie Rhea. Dr. Rhea had prescribed medication—something called a serotonin reuptake inhibitor—and gradually, the fog began to lift. Hannah enrolled at the University of Tennessee in January of that year. She made few friends because she kept largely to herself, but the routine of campus life, along with the medication, helped her to gradually put the tragedies of the past behind her. Six years after she enrolled, she earned a master’s degree in sociology and got a job as the victim /witness coordinator at the Knoxville district attorney general’s office. Then, after spending another six years in quiet anonymity, helping people like her, people who had been the victims of crimes, she’d met Lee Mooney at a conference in Nashville and been persuaded to make a change.
Now, as she stood gazing up at the narrow, hundred-foot falls, a hand touched Hannah on the shoulder from behind.
“Maybe we should head back,” Tanner Jarrett said.
“You’re right,” Hannah said. “I smell a storm coming.”
Later that evening, several people from the office gathered at Rowdy’s, a sports bar in Johnson City, to celebrate Tanner’s twenty-seventh birthday. Hannah and Tanner had become friends, but Hannah was always careful not to give Tanner the idea that she might be looking for anything more. The hike earlier in the day was the first time the two of them had been without company. They went to lunch together sometimes, but always with someone else from the office along.
Today was Tanner’s birthday, and when he’d asked Hannah to hike to the falls with him and then accompany him to Rowdy’s later, she couldn’t say no. It would have been much easier to keep her distance if Tanner wasn’t so likable. He was handsome and funny and charming, and he had a way of making Hannah feel wonderful whenever she was around him. But she couldn’t get too close. She just couldn’t. Not yet.
The gathering consisted of Hannah and Tanner, Joe and Caroline Dillard, Lee Mooney, Rita Jones and her boyfriend—a lawyer Hannah didn’t know—and two other young prosecutors from the office and their dates. Hannah was enjoying herself. Joe and Caroline Dillard had become close friends of Hannah’s. More than once, she’d found herself wondering whether she might ever be as close to a man as Caroline seemed to be to Joe. They were virtually inseparable outside the office, and they treated each other with a gentle kindness and respect that Hannah imagined could only come from a bond that had been carefully nurtured for many years.
Hannah ate lightly while Tanner laughed and joked with Joe about a DUI case Tanner was prosecuting.
“You should have seen it,” Tanner said through a mouthful of chicken. “I put the police officer’s videotape in the machine, and it shows this woman getting out of her car. It takes a second to see that she’s stark naked from the waist down. She starts grinding on this officer and singing, ‘Hey, big spender.’ I thought her lawyer was going to lose his lunch right there in front of the judge.”
The laughter was contagious, the conversation light and easy, and Katie decided to do something she’d never done. She decided to have a drink. Tanner was driving. Why not? She turned to Lee Mooney, who was sitting on her right, and whispered, “Please don’t tell anyone, but I’ve never had a drink before. What should I order?�
��
Mooney smiled at her and bent close to her ear.
“Try a Vodka Collins,” he said.
The drink arrived a few minutes later, and Hannah took a sip. Slightly bitter, a little lemony. Cold going in and warm going down.
“How is it?” Mooney said.
“Good.”
As the drink disappeared, Hannah found herself becoming more and more animated. She’d never realized how funny and entertaining she could be. By the time the first drink was gone, Mooney had ordered her a replacement. After Hannah downed the second drink and just as the waitress set down a third, Mooney announced to the crowd that she was taking her maiden voyage into drunkenness.
“No kidding?” Tanner said to her. “You’ve never had a drink in your life?”
“Never,” Hannah slurred. She was light-headed and giddy, already drunk. “Not a single one single time.”
Mooney raised his glass.
“To virgins,” he said. “God bless them every one.”
The entire group laughed, but instead of joining them, Hannah began to sulk. As the alcohol clouded her judgment and dislodged her self-control, she began to grow angry. She wasn’t a prude, after all. She just couldn’t face the thought of a man discovering her reconstructed breast. He would ask questions and jostle rusty memories of death and sorrow. How dare Mr. Mooney make fun of her.
Hannah drained the third glass of vodka and slammed her glass down on the table.
“I am a virgin, you know!” she yelled drunkenly into Mooney’s ear. The rest of the group immediately went silent. “A real virgin! And I don’t appreciate you laughing at me!”
