JD05 - Conflict of Interest

by Scott Pratt

  “If they do, they aren’t sharing them with us,” Richard said.

  “Tell me more all about Lindsay.”

  Through sporadic tears, Mary told me that Lindsay was bright to the point of precociousness, vivacious and mischievous. She was in the first grade at a private school called Ashton Academy in Johnson City and had already tested in the top percentile in the nation in math and reading among her age group. She took violin lessons, voice lessons and dance lessons, and loved stories about princesses. Mary said that Lindsay idolized my wife and put on mini-dance-recitals in the living room of their home a couple of times a month. She loved to dress up in frilly gowns and wear a tiara, and she had a special affinity for strawberry ice cream and a dwarf hamster she called Belle.

  As she was describing her child, I heard the unmistakable chirp of a cell phone.

  “Excuse me,” Richard said, “I’d better look.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone.

  “The number’s blocked,” he said.

  Richard pushed a key and peered at the screen. His eyes widened and I saw his hands begin to tremble.

  “What is it?” I said.

  With both hands, he laid the phone on my desk and slid it across to me. I looked at the screen. It was a text message that said, “If you want her back, it’s time to pay.”

  CHAPTER 10

  What should we do? Think!

  I’d never been in a situation even remotely similar. Just a few minutes earlier, I’d agreed to become the Monroe’s lawyer, to take on their case, to provide counsel. And now, suddenly, an anonymous kidnapper who had already made a three-million-dollar ransom demand was trying to collect. I stared at the text message, wondering, first of all, how the kidnapper got Richard Monroe’s cell phone number. I decided to deal with that issue later.

  “We have to make some decisions,” I said. “What have the police told you to do if the kidnapper contacts you?”

  “Call them immediately,” Richard said.

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  Mary shook her head.

  “The ransom note said no police,” she said. “I’m afraid he’ll kill her if we notify them.”

  “They have experience with this kind of thing,” I said. “Especially the FBI. Besides, this could be dangerous. Think about it. We don’t know what he has in mind as far as delivering the money. We could wind up delivering ransom money to a psychopath in the middle of nowhere without any kind of protection.”

  “I’d deliver it to the devil at the gates of hell if it meant getting my daughter back,” Richard said.

  “Whoever sent the text will know you’re close to your phone hoping to hear from him,” I said. “You need to answer the text.”

  I slid the phone back across my desk.

  “What should I say?”

  “Just say, ‘We’re ready. We have the money.’”

  Richard typed the message and sent it.

  He stared at the phone in his hand as the tension in the room built with each passing second. I breathed deeply, trying to calm myself. I had to do this right. A little girl’s life hung in the balance. The phone beeped a few seconds later.

  “Delivery in one hour,” Richard said. “Instructions in thirty minutes.”

  “Tell him to prove Lindsay is alive.”

  Richard typed the message and the phone pinged in his hand thirty seconds later.

  “It’s a photo,” Richard said. He looked at the phone for a few seconds and cursed. Mary leaned toward him and looked down at the screen. She shrieked as Richard stood and handed the phone to me. The photo was of Lindsay. She was gagged with what looked like a bandana and was lying curled into a fetal position in a wooden box. Attached to the photo was another text: “Pay or she dies.”

  “We have to call the police,” I said.

  “We came to you for help,” Richard said. “Help us. We won’t risk Lindsay’s life by involving them.”

  “I don’t have any experience dealing with kidnappers and ransom money. I’d feel better if we had someone involved who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Do you think the police know what they’re doing?” Richard said. The words were clipped and there was intensity in his voice. “Do they really know what they’re doing? How many times have you heard of the police getting involved in a ransom situation and everything turning out fine?”

  I thought for a minute. I couldn’t think of a single instance that involved police, kidnappers, ransom money and a happy ending.

  “Call Mary’s father,” I said. “Tell him to have the money ready when we get there. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Charles Russell, Mary Monroe’s father, opened the door to a large suite and Mary made a quick introduction. He was lean and hard looking like an old soldier, probably early sixties, his receding gray hair shaved to within a quarter-inch of his scalp, his eyes the same sky blue as Mary’s. He was dressed semi-formally in a navy blue jacket and starched white shirt, no tie, slacks that matched the jacket and black shoes with a mirror shine. I noticed that Richard walked past him without looking at him or saying a word.

  I was in the middle of describing what had happened at my office when Richard’s phone rang. The number was blocked, but this time it wasn’t a text message. The kidnapper was calling.

  “Put it on speaker,” I said, and Richard answered the phone.

  “Have you followed my instructions?” The voice sounded like Darth Vader. It was obviously being run through some kind of alteration device.

  “Yes,” Richard said.

  “Are you ready to make delivery?”

  “I want to speak to my daughter! Right now!”

  “Your daughter is unharmed.”

  “Let me talk to her! Put her on the phone!”

  “Shut your mouth and listen. If you don’t do exactly as I say, I’ll cut her head off and leave it in your mailbox.”

  Mary was standing next to her father. The color suddenly went out of her face, her eyelids fluttered, her eyes rolled back and she dropped straight to the floor. Richard and Charles Russell went to her immediately and Richard tossed the phone to me.

  “This is Joe Dillard,” I said. “If you want the money you’ll have to deal with me.”

  There was silence for about ten seconds before he said, “So you’re the bag man. Perfect job for a scumbag lawyer.”

  How did he know I was a lawyer? I looked over at Mary. Her eyes were open and Richard was whispering in her ear.

  “Just tell me what you want me to do and let’s get this finished,” I said. “All we want is Lindsay back safely.”

  “Take the money, take the phone, get in your vehicle and start driving north on the interstate. Alone. If anyone follows, I’ll know.”

  The line went dead just as a man walked through the door carrying a large, black suitcase. He was dressed almost identically to Russell – the only difference was that his suit was charcoal gray.

  “This is Earl Botts,” Charles Russell said.

  Mary had told me earlier that Botts was the same age as she. He had light blond hair, almost white, and his eyes were an unusual color, something like dark gold. He had a long, sharp nose and a sharper chin. The combination of the eyes and the nose gave him the look of an eagle or a hawk.

  “What’s going on?” Botts said.

  “The kidnapper just called,” Russell said. “Mr. Dillard is going to take the money and deliver it.”

  “This is unacceptable,” Botts said. He seemed as frustrated and angry as everyone else in the room. He carried the suitcase, which was obviously heavy, to where Mary was still lying on the floor and set it down. He stared at me like I was the enemy.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” I said.

  “I need some idea of where you’re going so we can… never mind. Give me the phone.”

  He reached out his hand and I looked at Richard and Charles Russell. Richard nodded, and I handed the phone to Botts. He disappeared
into what I assumed was a bedroom for a couple of minutes. When he returned, he gave Mary’s phone back to me and nodded toward the suitcase.

  “I installed a transmitter on the phone so we can monitor the calls and the texts,” Botts said. “The money’s in the case.”

  “Are you going to follow me?”

  “The less you know the better.”

  “And if he sees you? If he knows you’re following me he’ll kill her.”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “Go,” Charles Russell said to me. “Take the suitcase and go. Bring my granddaughter back.”

  I exchanged phone numbers with Charles, walked out of the room to the parking lot and got into my truck. I pulled onto Interstate 26 and headed north. A wave of anxiety came over me as I realized just how bizarre a turn the day had taken. Just a few hours earlier, I’d been an interested but uninvolved bystander in the Lindsay Monroe case, and now I was driving down the road with a suitcase filled with three million dollars in ransom money that I was delivering to a ruthless kidnapper who obviously knew what he was doing. The thought crossed my mind again that we should have involved the police. If anything went wrong and if the police found out about it, I knew there would be hell to pay.

  I forced myself to calm down. Just do what the man says. That’s all. Just do what he says. I looked in the rear-view mirror. The traffic behind me was thick. There was no way to tell whether anyone was following me.

  For the next forty minutes, I received periodic text messages telling me which exit to take, which road to take, which direction to turn. I didn’t know the destination until I pulled into the parking lot at Steele Creek Park in Bristol. There wasn’t a single vehicle in the lot besides mine. A text message told me to get out and walk to the Lakeside Trail. I grabbed the heavy suitcase – it had to weigh close to seventy-five pounds – and got out.

  It was one o’clock in the afternoon. The temperature was mid-fifties or so and falling. It was windy and a dark bank of thunderheads was rolling in from the northeast. The park was deserted. I walked along a trail that wound through thick woods beside a lake for about twenty minutes when Richard’s phone, which I was carrying in my left hand, rang.

  “Dillard.”

  “There is a trash can fifty yards ahead on your right,” the altered, alien-sounding voice said. “Remove the lid, empty the money from the case into the can, and take the case with you. Walk – don’t run – back to your vehicle and drive away. Don’t do anything to call attention to yourself. If I see your vehicle again after you leave the park or if I see anything even remotely suspicious, I’ll kill her.”

  I looked around at the tree-covered hills. He was watching me, and he was close. I could feel his eyes on me. I wondered about Botts and what he was doing, whether he had followed me, whether he had other people with him, or whether Richard and Mary had had a change of heart and had perhaps gotten in touch with FBI. I wondered whether there might be a rifle pointed at my head and whether I’d see my family again. I cursed myself for allowing things to spin out of control so quickly, for allowing myself to become so vulnerable. I wondered whether I’d suddenly hear the roar of helicopters as an FBI SWAT team descended on the park

  “Where is Lindsay?” I said into the phone. “When do I get her?”

  “After,” the voice said. The phone clicked in my ear, and he was gone.

  The trash can was sitting on a concrete pad next to a bench. It was made of galvanized steel. I removed the lid. The can was empty. It looked new and there was no trash bag or liner. I poured the bundles of cash into it – three hundred bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills, ten thousand dollars in each bundle. I’d never seen that much money. The wind was beginning to howl, the storm quickly approaching.

  I put the lid back on the trash can and walked back to my truck. The storm unleashed its fury just as I shut the door. I called Charles Russell as soon as I pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Any word from Botts?” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “He’s waiting for him to pick up the money. As soon as he does, Earl will take him down.”

  “Botts is here? At the park?”

  “He’s where he needs to be. Did you see anything?”

  “Nothing. But the kidnapper was watching me. He knew exactly where I was.”

  Botts must have been out there, too. Somewhere. What was he, some kind of spook? I thought about turning around and going back. There was a high-stakes cat and mouse game going on at the park, and a part of me wanted to be in the middle of it.

  “Isn’t there anything I can do?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you call the FBI?”

  “Earl and his people are on it. He’s a professional.”

  Earl and his people? Charles Russell hadn’t said anything about what Botts did, but if Charles had more confidence in Botts than he had in the FBI, Botts had to be a formidable man.

  “How’s Mary?”

  “Not well.”

  “So there’s nothing I can do?”

  “All we can do right now is wait,” Russell said. “Wait and pray.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I dropped Richard’s phone off at the Carnegie Hotel a little after 1:00 p.m. and talked to Charles Russell for just a few minutes. He said he’d called Mary’s doctor and obtained a mild sedative for her and that she was lying down. He was abrupt and irritable, so I left and drove back to my office in Jonesborough. On the way, I called Caroline and asked her to meet me at my sister’s diner. I’d been up since 5:00 a.m. and hadn’t eaten anything the entire day.

  I loved my sister, Sarah, but she’d been a pain in everybody’s butt for most of her life. She’d taken a traumatic childhood event – extremely traumatic, she’d been raped by our uncle when she was nine – and turned it into an anvil she’d been dragging around for almost forty years. She’d been a copious consumer of drugs and alcohol and she’d stolen from people, including me, when things were at their worst. She’d also done more than one stretch in the county jail, but she seemed to have finally put it behind her. She’d opened a cafeteria-style diner in Jonesborough just a few doors down from my office that she called “Granny’s” and was doing quite well clogging the arteries of the locals with fried chicken, roast beef, pork chops, ham and gravy. She served vegetables, but the cauliflower was covered in cheese sauce, the green beans were cooked in bacon fat and the mashed potatoes were stuffed with butter. Her food was a heart attack on a plate, but people loved it.

  It was close to two o’clock when Caroline showed up and the diner was winding down for the day. I always enjoyed going in there. The food was good, the atmosphere pleasant, and because Sarah and many of the courthouse employees were insufferable gossips, it was a great place to gather information. Sarah was in the kitchen when we went through the line and didn’t see us come in. We sat down at a table in the corner.

  “So?” Caroline said. She looked at me with those liquid, brown eyes that could soften my heart in an instant. At forty-five, even after everything she’d been through with the cancer treatments, even after bearing two children and putting up with me for twenty-five years, she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Her wavy, auburn hair still shined, her skin was soft and clear, and her figure hadn’t changed since high school.

  “It’s as bad as it could be,” I said quietly as I stirred mashed potatoes and peas together on the plate. “I just dropped three million dollars in ransom money off at a park in Bristol.”

  She stared at me for a minute, silent.

  “Say that again,” she said.

  I leaned forward and kept my voice down. “I met Mary and Richard at the office. We talked for awhile and I agreed to represent them. Then Richard got a text message from the kidnapper. Everything happened so fast I’m having trouble believing it myself. But I wound up in the middle of it and I just dropped three million dollars in ransom money off at a park in Bristol. We’re waiting now to see if he picks up the money and r
eleases Lindsay.”

  “But why you? Why didn’t the police send one of their own to drop the money off?”

  “Because we didn’t call the police and tell them it was happening. The kidnapper kept saying if the police were involved he’d kill Lindsay. I just kind of stumbled into the whole thing. Bad timing.”

  “Where did you leave the money?”

  “In a trash can by the lake at Steele Creek Park.”

  “So that’s it? You just took the money and left it and you’re trusting this person to give Lindsay back without notifying the police?”

  “It wasn’t my call. Mary’s father is involved. He put up the ransom money. I’m not sure what he does, but he had this other guy at the hotel with him, a young guy named Botts that Charles apparently took in and raised, who acted like he knew what he was doing. I think Botts and maybe some other people are in the woods waiting for the kidnapper to show up and pick up the money. When he comes, they’ll probably grab him.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, but I got the feeling that this Botts guy is – or was – some kind of spook. Maybe former FBI or CIA or special forces or something like that. You should see the guy. He looks like a blond-headed raptor.”

  “What happens if they don’t catch him? Or what if he spots them and doesn’t pick up the money?”

  “I’m trying to stay positive right now. If the kidnapper just wants money, maybe he’ll be smart enough to get his hands on it and he’ll give her back.”

  “Is that what you think will happen?”

  “That’s what I hope will happen, but I did a little research after Lindsay went missing. If she was taken by a stranger – and it looks pretty certain that she was – the odds of her still being alive aren’t good.”

  “She isn’t dead, Joe.”

  “And you’re basing that assertion on?”

  “Intuition, whatever you want to call it. I can feel it.”

  “Great. Can you feel exactly where she is so I can go and pick her up and put and end to this mess?”