by Scott Pratt
“Who’s going to get this money, Erlene?”
“The lawyer I hired out of Nashville will get forty percent, the greedy pig. Sheila will get seventy percent of what’s left, and then I plan to take a cut.”
“So Sheila made up the story about being gang raped, and the cop turned it into a black on white thing?”
“Sheila says he’s a full-blown racist, but she doesn’t have any love for black men either. She was assaulted by two black boys in high school and when she retaliated, she was the one who wound up getting sent off to juvy.”
“Yeah, I heard that story,” I said. “She took a butcher knife to a fellow student. That’ll get you sent off every time.”
“They were harassing her, feeling her up,” Erlene said. “Don’t take their side.”
“I’m not. So the big question for me is, what is Mike Armstrong’s angle in all this? How have you gotten him to continue with this prosecution? He doesn’t have diddly as far as evidence goes.”
“Everybody has their skeletons,” Erlene said. “I’m good at finding them. I put a private investigator on him as soon as he was appointed to the district attorney’s office. Just in case. You never know when some good, old-fashioned dirt might come in handy. I do the same thing with judges and assistant DAs, the chief of police, and even the sheriff. Anybody that might be a potential threat to me and my being able to make a living, I have a file on them. I started doing DAs after that terrible man Deacon Baker charged my Angel with murder and then turned around and charged me when you got Angel off.”
“You said the sheriff. Do you have a file on Leon?”
“Of course. I have some wonderful movies of him and me together doing some things I’m sure he’d rather not become public knowledge.”
“You might be the most devious person I’ve ever met,” I said.
She winked and smiled at me. “I’ll take that as a compliment, sugar.”
“So you’re blackmailing Armstrong?”
“That sounds a bit harsh, sweetie, but yes, I suppose I am. I’m also paying him. If this goes as planned—which means if you don’t ruin it—I’m going to pay him two hundred thousand dollars.”
“What kind of dirt do you have on him?”
“Something he doesn’t want anyone to know. It’s like I said, everyone has secrets. I’ll bet even you have a few, although I confess I don’t know what they are and wouldn’t for the life of me ever use them against you even if I did.”
“What doesn’t he want anyone to know, Erlene?”
“Do you know what the seven deadly sins are, baby doll?”
I thought for a moment. Seven deadly sins. Originated with the Catholics, I thought.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Pride, maybe? Envy? Gluttony? I don’t remember all of them off-hand.”
“You got three right. They’re pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. Everybody’s guilty at one time or another. That’s why we shouldn’t be so quick to judge each other, but we are. People are quick to judge, and the juicier the sin, the harsher the judgment.”
“Armstrong,” I said.
‘Lust. He’s having an affair. With a man. He’s very sneaky about it, but my investigator caught him with his pants down, so to speak. I have photos, videos, recordings, everything I need to destroy him if he doesn’t do what I want.”
“And remind me what it is exactly that you want?”
“For him to keep this prosecution going long enough for me to get a big check out of the university. I want to take a bite out of them so big they’ll feel it for a long time to come, and I’m right on the verge of getting it done. Please don’t ruin it for me. I’ve waited and planned for so long. Just give me a couple more weeks.”
“I’m going to have to think this over,” I said as I stood to leave.
“We’ve been friends for a long time, sugar,” Erlene said. “Please don’t let me down.”
I went out to my bullet-riddled truck and left. I felt a pang of guilt as I drove away.
I had a small camera in my tie clasp along with a microphone.
I’d taped every bit of the conversation.
PART THREE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 14
Charlie, Jack and I had gathered the forensic toxicology report from Dr. Kershaw that showed how much GHB was in Sheila Self’s system the night they drew blood from her at the hospital, the results from the DNA testing done by the TBI lab in Knoxville, the audio/video recording of Investigator Riddle and Sheila Self doing the bogus lineup, the audio recording of the phone conversation between Erlene and Armstrong, the video/audio I had of Erlene, and had spent the weekend drafting a motion to dismiss the indictments against the players for violations of the defendants’ fourteenth amendment right to due process under the law. The motion also alleged bad faith on the part of the prosecution. I shared it with Patrick Lonon, the public defender who was representing Devante Wright, and with Jim Beaumont, who was representing Evan Belle, and asked whether they wanted to sign on. Both of them did.
My biggest problem was that there was no way I’d get the conversation between Mike Armstrong and Erlene Barlowe into court. It was illegal in Tennessee to record a telephone conversation without the consent of at least one party. I could record someone calling me because I consented to the recording, but I couldn’t intercept and record a conversation between two individuals without the consent of at least one of them or without a court order or a warrant. I had neither of those things.
The question of what I would do with the knowledge of Mike Armstrong’s affair was delicate. I didn’t want to out him in public. It was beneath me, but he had to know that I knew why he was continuing this farce of a case. I figured we’d handle that matter in the judge’s chambers if I could get the judge to agree.
What I was most looking forward to was getting Bo Riddle on the witness stand. I knew once I filed the motion it would become a part of the public record and the media would jump all over it. The motion hearing would be packed and probably be covered by at least some national media outlets. It would be a big stage, but I’d been on some pretty big stages before with a lot at stake. I was ready. Charlie had run the motion over to the courthouse early on Monday (Washington County hadn’t yet moved into the digital age which would have allowed us to file everything electronically) and I’d called the judge. The motion hearing was set for Thursday.
On Monday morning about ten-thirty, I was sitting at my desk going back over everything when Beverly Snyder’s voice came over the intercom on my desk.
“There’s a man here who is asking to see you, Mr. Dillard,” she said. “Actually, he’s demanding to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment.”
“Does he have a name?”
“He won’t give me his name. I think you should come out here.”
I recognized a strain in Beverly’s voice. She was frightened.
“Be right out,” I said.
Our renovation of the office had included some security measures. One of those measures was that Jack, Charlie and I all had weapons in our offices. I had a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistol taped under my desk that I could get to very easily. It was pointed at the chair that sat in front of my desk and if I had to, I could fire it through the desk without the person who was sitting there ever knowing what was coming. I didn’t look at it as radical. I looked at it as practical. A few years earlier, a deranged man who had become obsessed with Charlie had come into the office and tried to kill her. He shot Jack in the process. Besides that, we dealt with some pretty dangerous folks, and lawyers had been killed in their offices by victims of crimes, by family members of victims of crimes, and by their own clients. I didn’t intend to become just another dead lawyer, murdered by some nut in my office. Jack also had a nine-millimeter pistol in his office and Charlie had a sawed-off shotgun loaded with twelve-gauge slugs that would take someone’s head off. She knew how to use, it, too. Everyone had panic buttons on the floor beneath our desks that we could push wit
h our feet. If I pushed the button in my office, a red light began flashing in everyone else’s office. Panic button meant gun or knife or some other deadly weapon had been displayed. Our strategy was to shoot first if we had to. Our goal was to survive. We’d let the cops sort things out later.
The pistol beneath my desk was a semi-automatic. There was a round in the chamber. I reached down, cocked the hammer, and flipped the safety off before I went into the lobby. Once I got there, I saw a large black man towering over Beverly, who was sitting behind her desk.
“Can I help you?” I said.
He turned and looked at me with disdain. He was taller than me, maybe six-feet-four-inches, and muscular. He looked to be in his early, maybe mid-thirties and was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket over a black T-shirt. I looked down and noticed he was wearing combat boots.
“I want to talk to you,” he said.
“C’mon back,” I said, hoping to get him away from Beverly as quickly as possible. I turned my back to him and walked into my office. He followed and closed the door behind him.
I reached out my hand and said, “I’m Joe Dillard. How can I help you?”
He looked at my hand and snorted. I withdrew the hand and said, “Would you like to sit?”
I motioned to the chair that was right in front of my desk, the one the pistol was aimed at. I was growing more concerned by the second. This guy was obviously hostile, and he had tattoos running all the way up his neck. I recognized them immediately as prison tats. One of them depicted an open, bleeding wound across his throat, as though it had been cut. I also noticed the EWMN tattoo on his fingers, which I knew meant “evil, wicked, mean and nasty.” He had four gold front teeth.
He sat down in front of me, glaring, trying to intimidate me. His eyes were dark and intense, his hairline slightly receding.
“Listen,” I said. “You’re here in my office. You’re all tatted up and you’re trying to intimidate me, but you might as well know on the front end it isn’t working. I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be,” he said.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what a cracker like you is doing representing my oppressed brother. I want to know what you’re doing to get him out of this trumped up bullshit charge.”
“First off, if you call me cracker again I’m going to come across this desk and knock those gold teeth out of your mouth. We clear on that? Secondly, I was hired to represent him by his parents. There aren’t exactly a bunch of black lawyers around here in case you haven’t noticed. Now I don’t know who you are or who you think you are, but I don’t talk about my clients with strangers. You want to know what I’m doing? Read the paper, watch the news, come to court.”
“I represent an organization,” he said. “Let’s just say we’re tired of seeing the black man being beaten down by the white man and we’re ready to do something about it.”
“Good for you. I agree with you that blacks have been mistreated for centuries, that things haven’t changed nearly as much as they should have, and that something needs to be done about it. So we have some common ground. I also had the displeasure of having a cross burned in my yard not long ago and my house shot to hell. The people who belong to the organization that burned the cross are very similar to you. They’re filled with hate. I can tell by looking at you. You don’t want justice. You just want blood.”
“You and me ain’t got no common ground,” he said, “But you’re right about one thing. We’re ready for war.”
“Are you talking about a shooting war? Then you’re right, we don’t have any common ground. You start shooting and everybody will lose. You start shooting and you’re just plain stupid. And you know what? You can’t fix stupid, mister.”
He shook his head and glared at me. I was baiting him, but I wanted him to either make his move or get the hell out of my office.
“Did you just call me stupid?” he said, the tension growing thicker by the second.
“I think maybe I did. I was pretty clear about it, actually. Now, if there’s nothing productive that is going to come of this, and I don’t see that there is, you can feel free to get up and walk out the door any time.”
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a revolver. It was a damned hand cannon. A Dirty Harry special, .44 Magnum. He pointed it at my face. It was as though I was looking directly down the barrel of a howitzer.
“You best start showing me some respect, boy, or you ain’t gonna walk out of this room alive. Now I need for you to tell me exactly what you’re doing for my brothers. I need to hear from you that they’re going to walk away from these charges. You’re supposed to be the man around here. You’ve got the reputation. I hear you have influence. Why haven’t you been able to make this go away? Or are you a part of the white man’s conspiracy to further smear the reputations of young black men? They’re all drug dealers and gang bangers and murderers and rapists, right?”
As soon as I saw the gun, I pushed the panic button. Just as he finished his little speech, Jack walked through the door, pistol up, and moved a few steps to the right. Charlie followed with the shotgun and moved to the left. We had him triangulated. He turned around to look at them and I pulled the Sig from under the desk and stood. I pointed it at his head.
“You said you wanted a shooting war,” I said. “Looks like you found one.”
He looked over both shoulders and back at me.
“You don’t have the nerve,” he said.
“I’ve killed Cubans and Colombians,” I said. “Your life won’t be the first I’ve taken. Jack over there is a crack shot with that pistol and he’d kill you in a heartbeat to save his dad. If you notice, his hand isn’t shaking. And Miss Charleston there? She’s been up against mobsters from Philadelphia. They’re dead. She’s standing over there pointing a twelve-gauge at the back of your head. You picked the wrong lawyers to terrorize. Now I think the best thing for you to do right now is to lower that pistol and lay it on the floor at your feet. I could have you arrested, but you’d be out on bail in a few hours, so I’m not going to bother. I could even kill you since you pulled that gun and pointed it at me. But I’m going to let you walk out of here alive. Your gun stays.”
He was staring at me, trying to figure out whether I’d really shoot him. Something, either in my eyes or in my voice, convinced him that I would. He put the gun on the floor.
“Stand up,” I said.
He stood.
“Turn around and walk toward the door. We’re going to accompany you to your vehicle to make sure you don’t have friends waiting outside.”
He started walking toward the door with the three of us behind him. No one was talking. The only sounds were feet slowly moving across the floor and measured breathing. It was one of the tensest moments of my life, and I’d been through some pretty tense times. For some reason, my fingers were tingling.
When he got to the door leading outside, he bolted. He ran right towards Sarah’s diner and then ducked to the right at the end of the building. Jack started after him, but I grabbed him by the arm.
“Let him go,” I said.
“This isn’t good, Dad,” Jack said. “You should have called the police and had him arrested.”
“And put an even bigger target on my chest? No, thanks. I don’t know what it is with these people. Black militants, white supremacists. Why does everybody want to kill the lawyer? Why do they want to kill each other?”
“It’s an inherent flaw of the male gender,” Charlie said. “They want power and control and are willing to use violence to obtain what they want. History is full of examples. Men killing men. Men killing women and children. Men devising more efficient means of killing. And for what? Power and control.”
“Thank you, Charlie, for making me feel better about being a man,” I said.
“I wasn’t talking about you specifically,” she said. “But history has proven men to be bloodthirsty, and we’re in a volatile situation, the kind of
situation that attracts bloodthirsty men. We haven’t seen the last of him.”
“Well, at least he knows there are consequences if he tries to come in here and intimidate us again,” Jack said.
“He won’t,” I said. “He, along with some of his friends, will bushwhack us instead.”
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15
At a convenience store in Hampton, Tennessee, the two men looked at each other from twenty feet apart. There was vague recognition on the part of Greg Murray. The man who was pumping gas into a large diesel pick-up looked familiar, but he hadn’t seen him in a long, long time. Who was he? He was a mountain of a man, broad shouldered with a long brown beard, wearing the clothing of a logger. The man kept glancing over at him. Murray thought the recognition must be mutual, but the connection just hadn’t quite been made.
Murray finished pumping gas into his own pick-up and was turning to get into the cab when he noticed the large man walking toward him.
“I know you,” the man said.
“I know you, too. I just can’t place you.”
“Mind if I ask your name?”
“Greg Murray.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” The big man stuck out his hand.
“Garrett Brown, Greg. Long time no see, my friend.”
“Yeah, it’s been awhile. How have you been, Garrett?”
Garrett Brown had been a legendary athlete at Cloudland High School in Roan Mountain. He was the biggest, strongest, fastest boy at the school, and he excelled at everything he tried, except for in the classroom. Murray had played on the football and basketball teams, too, but he wasn’t near the player Brown had been. They’d been friends throughout high school, close friends, in fact. They rode the mountain back roads together, drank beer and moonshine, smoked weed, chased girls, and listened to everything from Hank Williams to Lynard Skynard to Joe Cocker.
