by Scott Pratt
“Both sets of parents are in Chicago, which is where Beck and his wife were from. Mr. Beck has—or had—a brother who’s flying in from Panama City, Florida, this afternoon to make a positive ID on the bodies.”
“Jesus,” Dillard said, “I can’t imagine having to do something like that.”
The phone rang just as Fraley stuffed another bite of bun into his mouth.
“Fraley. Yeah? Already? Where? Ten minutes.”
He looked at Dillard, trying to decide whether he wanted to tell him. He didn’t seem like such a bad guy. Besides, maybe Fraley could get him to spring for lunch later. Fraley stood up.
“C’mon, Boy Scout,” he said. “They found the van.”
Monday, September 15
A patrol officer noticed the van about five blocks from the downtown area, where a music festival had been held over the weekend. They cordoned off the streets and set up stages all over a blighted five-block area downtown, which had fallen victim to the convenience of mall shopping and the circular development of cities. There were a few junk shops, a couple of bars where the college kids from East Tennessee State University hung out, a couple of hobby shops, and a few lawyer’s offices. If it hadn’t been for a courthouse being located on Main Street, most of the buildings would have been boarded up.
Caroline and I had gone to the festival a few years earlier, because both of us love live music—it doesn’t really matter what kind—and the festival offered a little for everyone: bluegrass, country, rock, gospel, and blues. The city had billed it as a family event, and it was supposed to benefit the merchants downtown, but they’d made the mistake of allowing the bars to give away beer, and they let people drink on the streets. After a couple of years it turned into a two-day drunk. People walked around in a daze, pissing in the alleys, and the more they drank, the more belligerent they became. There’d been several fights two years ago, and last year Caroline and I didn’t even bother to attend. As I gazed at the van, I wondered whether our murderers shot a family of four and then went to the festival to guzzle a few free beers.
There was nothing for me to do at the scene. Men and women with skills far superior to mine in the area of forensic evidence gathering spent their time stooping and examining and picking and poking and photographing. I watched and stayed out of their way, hoping they’d find something that would help identify the killers.
I hung around until they hauled the van off to Knoxville on a flatbed truck; then I went back down to Jonesborough so I could start getting set up in my new office, which was nothing fancier than a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot Sheetrock box. It was after three when I got there, and the place was nearly deserted. As I walked past the secretary, a forty-year-old, blue-eyed, redheaded bombshell named Rita Jones, she batted her eyes at me and handed me a stack of messages.
“You haven’t even been here a day and you’ve already got more messages than most of us get in a week,” she said.
I’d known Rita for several years. She’d been a legal secretary for close to a dozen lawyers, had broken up more than one marriage, and had hit on me so many times that it got to be a sort of joke between us. My most vivid memory of her was at a Christmas party hosted by the bar association five or six years earlier. She wore red spiked heels, shiny red pants, a Santa hat, and a red knit halter top that barely contained the bounty within. Sometime around nine, after everyone was good and soused, I was leaning against a wall talking to Bob Brown, a lawyer legendary for his ability to ingest huge amounts of liquor and his insatiable sexual appetite. I was listening to one of Brown’s stories when Rita and her bounty happened by. She stopped to say hello, and Brown, without uttering a word, hooked his finger in the front of the halter and pulled it down, revealing her breasts. Rita didn’t bat an eye. Nor did she attempt to cover herself. She looked directly at me, smiled coyly, and said, “All that, and brains, too.” I awkwardly excused myself and walked away, but I hadn’t forgotten those breasts. They were magnificent.
“What’s this?” I said, looking at the stack of messages. “Nobody even knows I’m working here.”
“All media. All about the murders,” she said. She took the stack from my hand and began to go through it. “Associated Press, CNN, Court TV, MSNBC. The list goes on and on. Looks like you’re going to be a celebrity.”
She offered the stack to me again with a wry smile, but I refused to take it.
“Tell them ‘no comment,’ ” I said. “If I have anything to say, I’ll call a press conference and talk to all of them at the same time.”
“I can’t do that, cutie, much as I’d like to,” she said. “You see, it isn’t my job to tell them ‘no comment.’ That’d be your job.”
“Then just tell them I’m not here. I don’t want my phone ringing every five minutes.”
“You mean you want me to lie? Imagine that, a lawyer asking a secretary to lie.”
“Don’t act like you haven’t done it before.”
“But that was back when I was working for those awful private lawyers. Now I’m at the district attorney’s office. Everybody here is honorable, honey. We’re not supposed to lie. We’re not supposed to do anything that would cast aspersions on the office.”
“C’mon, Rita. You’ll make an exception for me, won’t you? I’m not used to being honorable. Maybe it’ll grow on me.”
“I’ll tell you what. You make sure you wear some nice tight pants at least twice a week and I’ll see what I can do.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were sexually harassing me.”
“And when can I expect you to do the same?”
“Sorry, Rita,” I said, holding up my ring finger for her to see. “Still married. Still happily married.”
“Well,” she said with a wink, “we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?”
I turned and walked back to my office with a strange tingling sensation in my stomach. I was flattered by the attention—it had been a long time since a woman had flirted with me so openly—but I knew Rita’s reputation. She was a conqueror, a woman who chewed up men and spit them out like Juicy Fruit. Besides, after twenty years of marriage, I was still madly in love with my wife.
The office was equipped with a desk, a computer, and a couple of chairs. The walls were antique white and bare. I’d left a box of personal items on the desk early in the morning, before I left to go to Fraley’s office, and I started taking things out of the box and arranging them. I’d just set a photograph of my daughter doing an arabesque on the desk when the door opened and Alexander Dunn walked in. Dunn was a trust-funder, the beneficiary of a grandfather who struck it rich in the coal mines in southwest Virginia. He was vertically challenged, maybe five-foot-eight, and his brown hair was medium length, heavily moussed, and combed straight back from his wide forehead. He had thin, nearly indiscernible lips and dull, yellowish teeth. He was wearing a navy blue suit that looked like it was tailor-made, just like the suit he wore during Billy Dockery’s trial. His Italian loafers were black instead of brown, but a white kerchief was still rising out of the breast pocket. He strode straight up to my desk and stood there looking at me.
“The legend returns,” he said. The tone was sarcastic, and he wasn’t smiling.
I knew Alexander was a fairly recent hire in the DA’s office. Prior to his becoming an assistant district attorney, he’d been an ambulance chaser and divorce attorney. He’d been with the DA’s office for less than a year, and from what I’d read in the newspapers, he was trying mightily to make a name for himself by pressing for the maximum punishment on every case he handled. He wasn’t having much success, though, and after watching him try Dockery’s case, I knew why.
“Hello, Alexander,” I said, looking back down at my box of goodies.
“Run out of money?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Did you run out of money? Is that why you’re working here?”
“Not exactly.”
“Planning on running for office?”
“No.”
“What then? Why are you here?”
“Thought it might be entertaining.” I pulled another photograph out of the box, this one of my son, Jack, swinging a baseball bat.
“Entertaining?” Dunn said. “Well, just so you know, your pleasure is my pain. You’re hurting my career.”
“Really? How?”
“This new murder should be my case,” he blurted. “I’ve been here longer than you.” His tone had changed from sarcastic to whiny.
“Sorry. Just doing what the boss tells me to do.”
“What makes you think you can just waltz in here and take over? People aren’t happy about this, you know. People in the office. People in law enforcement. I’ve heard lots of bad things about you. Don’t expect any help from anyone.”
“Don’t worry, Alexander. I wouldn’t think of asking you for help.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I won’t ask you for help. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m kind of busy here.”
I looked up from the box and noticed that his lower lip had started quivering slightly, but he remained standing in front of my desk. He seemed to be having some kind of debate with himself about whether he should say what was on his mind. Finally, he spit it out.
“How’s that sister of yours? Still a drug addict and a thief?”
It was true. Sarah had been a drug addict and a thief in the past, but she’d been clean for more than a year. She’d replaced her drug addiction with religious fervor, but given a choice between the two extremes, I’d take good old Southern Baptist fanaticism every time.
I forced myself to smile at him, but my blood pressure was steadily rising.
“I’m tired, Alexander,” I said through clenched teeth. “It’s been an extremely difficult first day on the job, and I think you should leave now.”
“It’s a shame,” he said, “having an assistant district attorney whose sister is a career criminal. It doesn’t look good for the office.”
“Maybe you should take it up with the boss.”
“Maybe I will.” He sounded like a fifth grader.
“Let me help you with the door,” I said, and I moved quickly around the desk towards him. I was a good five inches taller than him and at least forty pounds heavier. He started backing towards the door as though he were afraid I’d pull a gun and shoot him if he took his eyes off of me. He opened his mouth to say something else, but I raised an index finger to my lips.
“Shhh. I’m not sure what might happen if you start talking again.”
His eyes opened even wider. A trembling hand found the doorknob behind him. The door squeaked as it opened, and he turned and slithered out.
I stood there staring at the door for almost a full minute with the insult about Sarah ringing in my ears. I was consciously trying to slow my heart rate when I saw the doorknob turn. I couldn’t believe it. The little fool was coming back, probably to get one last shot in. I made it to the door in two steps and jerked it open.
Rita, pulled off balance by the force of the opening door, stumbled into my arms.
“Oh, my God, Rita!” I said, horrified. She backed up a step and smoothed her dress, the excess of her breasts escaping from her D-cups like wild horses from a corral. “I thought you were … I thought—”
“Don’t you pay any attention to him,” she said. “He’s just jealous is all.”
“You were listening?”
“I knew he’d do something like that. He’s been upset ever since he found out you were coming to work here.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“Of the greatest magnitude, honey,” Rita said. “But you still need to be careful how you handle him. Lee protects him.”
“Why? Why is that incompetent little jerk even working here?”
“Because the boss’s wife just happens to be Alexander’s daddy’s sister, and he’s her favorite nephew. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that blood’s thicker than water. Especially around here.”
I knew exactly what she meant. Nepotism was alive and well in northeast Tennessee. The county clerk’s office, the tax assessor’s office, the county highway department, the sheriff’s department, and the school system were all staffed by the sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, and cousins of county commissioners and their spouses. In the past, I’d always found the practice to be somewhat amusing—the hicks perpetuating their own myth—but this was different.
“So I’m stuck with him,” I said, “no matter what he does.”
“You step lightly around him,” Rita said. “He’s not very smart, but he’s mean as a striped snake.”
Monday, September 15
I held my first press conference as an assistant district attorney late that afternoon on the courthouse steps. Lee Mooney asked me to bail him out, so I did, albeit reluctantly. I kept the details to a minimum and got out of there as quickly as I could.
I moved slowly the rest of the day, exhausted. After leaving the scene where the Beck family had been murdered shortly after eleven the night before, I’d taken the long way home and sneaked into the house so I wouldn’t wake Caroline. I didn’t want to describe to her what I’d seen, to try to put the horror into words. I went into the den and mindlessly watched television until after midnight, then lay on the couch and tried to sleep. I tossed and turned until an hour before dawn, the grotesque image of the broken legs running back and forth across my mind like an ember glowing in the night wind.
I finally finished setting up my office a little after five. Besides Alexander, there were four other young lawyers in the office, and not one of them said a word to me all day. Before I left, I called Fraley to see if there was anything new to report. The only thing the canvass had provided was a witness at a house nearby who said she saw two people in black clothes and white makeup get out of the Becks’ van sometime just after dark. I headed home.
We lived on ten acres on a bluff overlooking Boone Lake in a house built primarily of cedar, stone, and glass. I loved the house and the property, and I loved the woman and the dog I shared it with. The back was almost all glass and faced north towards the lake. The views, especially when the leaves turned in October and November, were spectacular. Rio greeted me with his usual enthusiasm, and once I calmed him down, I found Caroline in the bathroom, topless. She was standing in front of the mirror prodding her left breast near the nipple with her index finger. The sight made me more than a little anxious.
“It’s bigger,” she said, referring to a small lump just beneath the areola. “And it’s hard. It’s spreading out like a spiderweb.”
“Have you called the doctor?” I said, keeping my distance. She was so sexy without the top that I knew I’d have trouble keeping my hands to myself, but it obviously wasn’t the time.
“Not yet.”
“Don’t you think you should?”
“Probably, but I think it’s just some kind of cyst. I’m too young to have breast cancer. And besides, there’s no history of it in my family. I asked my mother about it. No history at all.”
Caroline was so vital that it was difficult for me to even comprehend the notion that she might have cancer. She’d been dancing and teaching all her life: ballet, jazz, tap, and acrobatics, so she was in great shape. She’d noticed the lump, which had started out like a bee sting, almost three months earlier. I’d noticed it too, during moments when a lump in her breast was the last thing I wanted to think about. But it was there, and it was growing.
“Caroline, you need to go to the doctor,” I said. “Wait, let me rephrase that. Caroline, you’re going to the doctor. Tomorrow, or as soon as she can see you. If you won’t call and set it up, I’ll do it myself.”
“I’ll do it,” she said, turning away from the mirror and towards me. “I’ll call her tomorrow. I just dread it.”
Still topless, she reached up to hug me. “Are you okay? The murders have been all over the news. It’s terrible, Joe. Who could kill a child?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as we find out.”
“Do you have any idea?”
“None. The agents are working around the clock, but we just don’t know yet. Maybe we’ll get a break soon.” She smelled inviting.
“They said the police found the van.”
“Yeah. They’re processing it now.”
“Great way to start the new job, huh?”
“Just my luck.”
I could feel the warmth of her skin through my shirt. I pulled her closer.
“Sorry, big boy,” she said. “Sarah’s coming over.”
“Sarah? Why?”
“She’s leaving tomorrow, remember? I’ve got steak in the refrigerator.”
“Damn, I forgot all about it.”
My sister, the object of Alexander Dunn’s earlier insult, was a year older than me. She was a black-haired, green-eyed, hard-bodied beauty who leaned towards extremism in all things and had spent most of her adult life addicted to alcohol and cocaine. We’d been close as children until one summer evening when she was nine years old. That night, my uncle Raymond, who was sixteen at the time, raped her while he was supposed to be looking after the two of us at my grandmother’s house. My grandparents and mother had gone out shopping, and I’d drifted off to sleep while watching a baseball game on television. I heard Sarah’s cries, the pain in her voice, and I went into my grandparents’ bedroom and tried to stop him, but Raymond picked me up and threw me out of the room, nearly knocking me unconscious in the process. When it was over, he threatened to kill both of us if we ever told anyone.
Sarah and I went in different directions after that. I became an overachiever, subconsciously trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t a coward, while she became a suspicious, defiant, self-destructive rebel. She’d been convicted of theft and drug possession half a dozen times, and had spent a fair amount of time in jail. But last year, not long after our mother died, she and I had finally talked about the rape and its effect on our lives. Our relationship improved dramatically after that, and so did Sarah’s life, or at least that was how it appeared. After she was released from jail a year ago, she’d moved into my mother’s house, started going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and, to my knowledge, had been clean and sober ever since. She’d met a man at her NA meetings named Robert Godsey whom she said she loved. She was moving to Crossville, Tennessee, the next day to be near him.
