by Scott Pratt
“I appreciate it,” she said, “but I’m not even licensed to practice law in the state of Tennessee. I haven’t taken the bar.”
“That’s an easy enough fix.”
“I will admit to you that I’ve looked through some materials,” she said. “I don’t think I’d have any problem passing.”
I looked at her and winked. “I knew you wanted to stay,” I said. “I knew you couldn’t resist me.”
“How did your meeting go?” she said.
“I don’t know how much I should tell you, so I guess I’ll just tell you everything.” I recounted the day for her, including the clandestine meeting with Hanes Howell III.
“Will they arrest anybody for murder?” she said when I was finished.
“I think that depends on how strong the bond is between Sheriff Corker and his uncle, Roby Penn. If they turn them against each other, they’ll have a shot.”
“And what will you be doing?”
“Working my butt off. You’ve seen the mess at the office. It’s going to take me a while just to get things running smoothly.”
“I have no doubt you’ll get it done,” she said.
She surprised me like that sometimes. She would be difficult and stubborn, and then she would turn right around and say something kind that genuinely boosted my confidence, because I knew she wouldn’t say it if she didn’t think it was true.
“I couldn’t have done any of this without you, Claire,” I said. “Thank you. Before you came into my life, I was lost again, terribly angry, and had no real focus. I feel like I’m back on the right track now, and a lot of it is because of you. If you hadn’t come along, I may very well have . . . Well, let’s just leave it at I’m grateful for you.”
Claire slid across the couch until her thigh was touching mine. She looked into my eyes and said, “I think we’ll see each other again. I’ve never met anyone quite like you. You have this strength and resilience in you that anyone who gets to know you can see and comes to admire. You’re like a strong tree in a hurricane, Darren, a tree that will bend and bend and bend and maybe lose some branches, but it refuses to break. I’m happy for you, and I’m glad I was able to help you achieve what you wanted to achieve here.”
She kissed me gently on the cheek and lingered. I felt her warm breath on my face, smelled the faint odor of the wine mixed with her perfume. Just as I was about to reach for her, she stood.
“I’d better go,” she said.
“Go? You just got here.”
“I’m afraid this might get out of hand.”
I stood in front of her and held her hands. “You’re right. Thank you, again, Claire. Anytime you need a break from the swamp, you know where to find me.”
“I hope you get what you want, Darren,” she said. “I hope you find some peace.”
She picked up her purse, and I watched her walk out the door. I felt the urge to run after her into the parking lot, to beg her to stay, but I resisted. Instead, I picked up the half-empty bottle of wine off the table and drained it.
CHAPTER 37
Sheriff Corker pulled his Dodge pickup into the corner of the parking-lot complex and parked next to the white Lexus. He got out and squeezed himself into the front seat of the Lexus next to the lawyer, who was beefy and wearing a tan suit and too much cologne. The lawyer pulled the shiny, expensive vehicle onto the highway and began to cruise north.
Today, the sheriff wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat or his uniform or his Pythons. He wore bib overalls and a simple cap on his head. He could have been any farmer or auto-parts-store worker from any area of Tennessee. The lawyer called him “Sheriff.” They’d met several years ago, when Corker had been appointed by the Knox County Commission to take over as sheriff after the previous one had fallen from a roof and died. Their early meetings had sometimes been strained, and Corker had occasionally been belligerent. But he eventually gave in, and the operation he’d become involved in had gone relatively smoothly for years. The recent developments had obviously changed some things, and the sheriff had been summoned.
Corker had done some research and learned that the lawyer was a solo practitioner by the name of Gates Turner. His website said he specialized in wills, estate planning, and trusts. Corker knew he also specialized in being a sleaze.
“Nice to see you, Sheriff,” Turner said. “I hope you’re doing well.”
“Things are a little rough right now,” Corker said. “I’m sure you know that.”
“Yes, I’ve heard, and as much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, they’re about to get rougher.”
“I don’t see how they could,” the sheriff said. “And what am I doing down here, anyway? It isn’t time for our regular meeting. What does your client want?”
The sheriff had been instructed long ago to never refer to the lawyer’s client by anything other than “your client.” No name was ever uttered, nor was a title. Corker had been told to never inquire, and he never had. He hadn’t really cared until he’d started—or at least thought he’d started—working with the FBI, but he hadn’t been able to break though Turner’s hard shell. Turner was smart and incredibly cautious. Sheriff Corker had absolutely no idea who Turner’s client was, but he knew the client had to be powerful. Ben Clancy would never have agreed to give him a cut back in the beginning had the person not been in a position of great power.
“You’re here because some information has come to light that has to do with you assisting the two men who murdered Stephen Morris and his wife. We have no doubt that you also had a hand in murdering Jim Harrison and Stephen Morris’s girlfriend, Leslie Saban.”
The sheriff nearly choked involuntarily. “Why would you think I’d get caught up in anything so stupid?”
His voice remained calm, but he was suddenly frantic. How could they know? How could they possibly know? He couldn’t explain, though. He couldn’t tell this lawyer he was a federal informant, or at least he’d thought he’d been a federal informant.
“I certainly agree that what you did was stupid, and so does my client,” the lawyer said. “Why you did it remains a bit of a mystery, but we expect Morris was about to go to the feds and your uncle didn’t take the news well.”
“Why would Morris go to the feds?” the sheriff said. “He was in everything up to his eyeballs.”
“We all know how it goes,” Turner said. “First one to the courthouse gets the best deal.”
“Nah, he was a district attorney. The judge would have put that whole violation-of-the-public-trust guilt trip on him. He would have done a bunch of time.”
“Depends on how much he had to offer,” Turner said. “Maybe he had a tape or two or a dozen. You didn’t ever threaten him, did you, Sheriff? Because I had occasion to speak to Jim Harrison a couple of times, and Harrison intimated that the district attorney and his family may have been threatened.”
“He didn’t need to be threatened. He was in from day one, and he didn’t want out. Darren Street is what changed things.”
“What about Uncle Roby? Did he threaten Morris?”
“Roby stayed away from him. Didn’t like him. And like I said, Morris was in. He was solid. He didn’t need threatening.”
“Then why did you kill him?” Turner said.
“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“You’re lying. Why did you kill him?”
“I’m not lying. How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t kill the man. I didn’t kill his wife. I didn’t kill his girlfriend, and I didn’t kill his bagman.”
“Who did?”
“Don’t know.”
“If you continue to deny you were involved and don’t give me the names of everyone who was, I’ve been instructed to tell you that we will bring down a firestorm of destruction on you that will make you wish you’d never been born. You’ll find yourself in a federal penitentiary in less than a year, if you live that long. We’ll kill your father, your sister, and that brother you don’t give a
damn about. We know you were driving the boat, Sheriff. Somebody saw you. You were wearing a mask, but you had to wear those damned Pythons strapped to your legs, didn’t you?”
“Who told you that nonsense?”
“It doesn’t matter. We believe him. He saw you, and now you have to answer for your stupidity. You basically have two options. You can do nothing and wait for the hammer to drop, or you can kill and get rid of the two men who helped you that night so we can get back to business as usual and not have to worry about further violence.”
Tree turned his large head and stared at the lawyer.
“You realize you’re asking me to kill my own kin, don’t you? Roby Penn is crazy and he’d probably just as soon kill me as look at me, but he’s been good to y’all. Your client and several others have made a fortune off him. I expect you’ve earned a little yourself.”
“His decision to kill a sitting district attorney general—even one who was about to be beaten in an election—along with his decision to kill the man’s wife, one of his coworkers, and his girlfriend shows us his judgment is failing.”
“I’m in charge of the investigation. It isn’t going to go anywhere. If y’all will just cool your jets for a while, everything will be fine.”
The sheriff could feel his thighs trembling involuntarily. He knew his only hope was the FBI, but after what had transpired with that agency, he didn’t have a lot of confidence in them.
“We don’t believe the new district attorney general will be a problem. We have him neutralized. But we don’t want more violence, especially this kind of high-profile violence.”
“Neutralized? How do you have him neutralized?”
“We told him what he wanted to hear.”
“You talked to him?”
“My client talked to him. He lied. Do you think Street will be a problem in the future?”
“I haven’t talked to him much, but I don’t think he cares about money. I’m not sure about other things. I don’t know how aggressive he’ll be.”
“If he starts making noise,” Turner said, “we’ll employ other methods to settle him down.”
“Why don’t you just kill him?”
“If we think we need that done, we’ll be in touch.”
“I’m not killing him,” the sheriff said.
“Of course you will if we need you to. And you’ll kill Roby.”
“You’re out of your damned mind.”
“And the other person who was with you. Who was it?”
“You don’t know him.”
“Answer the question.”
“A guy named Harley Shaker. I’m sure you know about the marine that went missing. Harley killed him in a bare-knuckle fight. My uncle took care of the body, so he called in the marker when he decided to do something about Morris and his wife.”
“Make them both go away, and do it soon,” Turner said. “If we need you for Street later, I’ll contact you.”
The sheriff felt himself being squeezed against the passenger door as the car made a quick turnaround, and they cruised back to the apartment complex in silence.
CHAPTER 38
The trailer where Tree Corker grew up sat halfway up a hill, its base carved out of the red clay and rock beneath the surface. It was late afternoon by the time he returned from Cookeville, and the shadows were long beneath the quickly fading sun. A rusted, faded-green pickup sat in the gravel driveway, old but still operational. The place was marked by the signs of poverty, but Tree knew his daddy worked hard to keep the place looking respectable. He fixed leaks, caulked windows, painted when he could afford paint. He kept the wood-burning stove in perfect condition and spent hours cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood. Tree’s daddy had always been distant, but the sheriff badly needed someone to talk to. Tree knew his daddy was honest, and he needed counsel from an honest man.
Calvin Corker greeted his son with a small wave of the hand as he was climbing down a ladder from the trailer’s roof. It was a standard greeting and as much physical affection as he showed Tree. Calvin was a tall man like his son, although time and gravity had reduced his height from six feet five inches to just over six feet three. Unlike his son, he was lean and quiet. He’d spent his life as a laborer at a sawmill three miles from his home, eventually becoming the supervisor before the sawmill shut down and forced his retirement at the age of sixty.
“You’re moving around pretty good for an old man,” Tree said as his daddy put the ladder in a lean-to shed behind the trailer.
“You can call me old when I get to seventy,” Calvin said. “Got two years of youth left in me. What brings you up this way? Got no criminals to catch?”
“I got a pretty serious problem, Daddy,” Tree said. “You got a few minutes to talk?”
The sheriff saw an unfamiliar look come over his father’s face. This was new ground for both of them.
“I was about to go in and fix me some supper,” Calvin said. “You hungry?”
“Am I breathing?”
The two men went inside, and Calvin headed for the kitchen. Tree went to the wall near the television where there was a photo of his mother when she was eighteen years old. To Tree, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She’d been a smoker all her life, though, and had died of complications due to emphysema and pneumonia five years earlier. Tree had yet to get over it, and he didn’t believe Calvin had, either.
“Looking at the picture of your momma again?” Calvin said from the kitchen.
“Yep. Pretty as ever.”
“Hard to believe she could produce something as ugly as you.”
“Hard to believe she’d marry something as ugly as you.”
“You know what they say: ‘Love is blind.’”
“It’s damned well true in this case.”
Tree knew the banter was his daddy’s way of showing affection, and he took no offense. They sniped whenever they were around each other and had since Tree could remember. Tree’s older brother, Charles, wasn’t close to the family. Charles had joined the air force right out of high school and was now living in Arlington, Texas. He’d come home once every four or five years prior to his mother’s death. They hadn’t heard from him since she’d died, though. Tree’s sister, Charlotte, two years younger, was a music teacher in the Campbell County school system. She and her family didn’t visit often, either, and Tree didn’t see much need in visiting people who didn’t seem to want to visit him. He believed his daddy felt pretty much the same way he did.
Tree could smell the food in the kitchen and walked in. His daddy was warming up a staple: leftover soup beans and corn bread.
“Smells good, Daddy,” Tree said.
“There just ain’t nothing better,” Calvin said. “I don’t care who you are or what you say, there ain’t nothing better than a pot of soup beans and a skillet of corn bread. I believe man was made to exist on those two things.”
“I don’t mind a steak every now and then,” Tree said.
“You can have your steak. I’ll eat my beans.”
Calvin plated the beans and buttered the corn bread. He put a pitcher of sweet tea on the table and sat down.
“Me or you?” he said.
“Your table,” Tree said.
“You always say that,” Calvin said, and he began to pray. When he was finished, he looked across the table and said, “So what do you want to chew on?”
“Big trouble brewing,” Tree said. “You hear about the election and the district attorney and his wife and a couple of other people getting shot?”
“I hear things,” Calvin said. “Don’t take the paper, but I watch the news, and Trisha comes by now and then. You know how she likes to gossip. Roby mixed up in all this?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Cause I know Roby. Known him all my life. He was in Vietnam when your momma and I got married. I was kinda glad, to tell you the truth. I figured he’d get liquored up at the reception and hurt somebody. You notice he didn’t ev
er come around here when you were a boy, didn’t you? He just ain’t right in the head, never was after Vietnam. Your momma knew it and I knew it, and we made him stay away. Does he have you in trouble?”
“Daddy, there’s a lot of things I haven’t told you over the years. When I took over for Joe DuBose, it was a huge surprise to me. I mean, who was I? Country bumpkin, raised out here in the hills. You wasn’t ever active in politics and neither was momma, as far as I could tell, so when they appointed me, I near fell over. Had no idea what I was doing. I’d only been on patrol for a couple of years after I finished working at the jail. Turned out Roby was the one who got me the job because he told this district attorney at the time, this man named Ben Clancy, that if he got me into the sheriff’s office I’d do whatever Roby told me to do. And that’s what I did for a while. I was a coward.”
“So they been using you,” Calvin said. “Roby and whoever he’s in with. Who is it? Politicians?”
“Mostly, but more than that. There’s a huge flow of money going. Roby and some other people do what they do, and we look the other way. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean the sheriff’s department, the district attorney’s office, maybe even the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the FBI.”
“And he pays you? Roby pays you and them others?”
“He does. He pays, but he ain’t the only one that pays, by any means. There’s a pretty good crowd of them that digs in their pocket every month. But Roby is one of the biggest. He makes so much money it boggles the mind. And then there’s the drug dealers and the pimps and the—”
“Drug dealers? You mean to tell me you let people sell drugs and then you take part of the money?”
“I’ve been working with the FBI for years hoping to put a stop to it, but they never would arrest anybody. Turns out their agent was a crook. He took all the money I’d been bringing him and left the country after I told him Roby was gonna kill those people. Nobody knows where he is. And now somebody powerful in Nashville wants me to kill Roby and another man. I ain’t ever killed anybody, Daddy. I just got in way over my head. I can’t do it. I can’t kill Roby.”
