JD05 - Conflict of Interest

by Scott Pratt

  “Where is she? Where is Lindsay Monroe?”

  He stumbled forward a step and I grabbed his throat again. I slammed the back of his head into the wall.

  “Lindsay Monroe! The little girl you took! Tell me where she is, right now, or I swear you’ll be begging me to kill you in five minutes.”

  “I don’t… I don’t…”

  I backhanded him this time, felt my knuckles smash his upper lip against his teeth. Blood began to seep from his mouth. He dropped his chin to his chest and started to cry.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  Botts tapped me on the shoulder. When I turned, he jerked his head, signaling me to step aside. I backed off and he moved forward. He had a photograph of Lindsay in his hand. He shoved it in front of Morelock’s eyes and illuminated it with the flashlight.

  “We’re looking for this little girl,” Botts said. “She was kidnapped from her home. We think you took her.”

  Morelock began to shake his head furiously.

  “I didn’t! I didn’t!”

  “But you know who she is,” Botts said. His tone was calm and measured. “You know who she is, don’t you?”

  “Everybody knows who she is,” Morelock said, raising his head to look at Botts. The pronunciation was thick and slow. His lip was already swollen from the backhand. There was a lump the size of a grape at the corner of his mouth.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Botts said, “but everybody doesn’t have your… oh, how should I put this? Your proclivities. You’ve been convicted of sexual assault twice, haven’t you? Once as a juvenile and once as an adult?”

  Botts hadn’t shared that information with me before we left the hotel. It was probably a good thing. Morelock looked back at the floor and remained silent.

  “We don’t seem to be making much progress,” Botts said. “Maybe I should turn you back over to my friend here.”

  I was seething after hearing about the sexual assaults. Morelock looked at me and must have seen something that frightened him.

  “I pinched a girl’s tit in high school and then my ex-girlfriend lied to the police when I was twenty,” he blurted. “She said I raped her. It wasn’t true, but they offered to drop it to a misdemeanor and my lawyer said I should take the deal. So I took it.”

  “And now you’re a registered sex offender.”

  “It was better than taking a chance on spending twenty years in prison.”

  “Where is Lindsay, Mr. Morelock?” Botts said. “If you’ve already killed her, just say so and I give you my word no harm will come to you. Lead us to her and we’ll make sure that you’re treated fairly and with respect.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone!” Morelock cried.

  “Then you’re still holding her somewhere. My men are searching your home now. We’ll search the property next, your mother’s home, the barns, the outbuildings. We’ll find her, and when we do, if you haven’t helped us, we’re going to shoot you in the head, puncture your lungs, weigh you down with chains, and dump your body in that river over there. By the time you come up – if you come up – you’ll be nothing but a skeleton.”

  “I don’t have her,” Morelock said. “I didn’t take her. I don’t know anything about it!”

  “You bought a bunch of clothes at Little Princess in Kingsport!” I shouted. “For a first grader! That’s what you told the clerk. The clothes were for a first grader!”

  Morelock looked at me, then at Botts. I could see the realization come over his face. We had him, and he knew it.

  “My niece,” he said in a mournful voice. “I bought clothes for my niece.”

  “Stop lying!” I yelled.

  Botts raised a hand to silence me. “Explain,” he said to Morelock.

  “My sister, her name is Brenda Stites. You can call her. I’ll take you over there right now and you can see for yourselves. She has a daughter, Amanda. Brenda’s going through a divorce and she’s struggling. School was about to start back and she told me she didn’t have money to buy decent clothes for Amanda. I finished a job over in Kingsport and I went and bought the clothes. I took them and gave them to her, I swear it. I was just trying to do something nice. She’s my sister…” He broke into tears again and slid down the wall onto the floor. “I didn’t kidnap that little girl. I swear it on my father’s grave. I would never hurt a child.”

  Botts took a step back. “Stay with him,” he said to me. “I’ll be right back.”

  He was gone for less than thirty seconds. When he returned, one of his men was with him. He told the man to stay with Morelock.

  “Let’s go outside,” he said to me.

  We walked back through the trailer, out the front door and down the steps into the yard. Botts spun on me suddenly and stuck his finger in my chest.

  “I told Charles this was too good to be true,” he said in a loud whisper. “I told him to keep you at arm’s length, that you’re nothing but a hayseed, a glory-seeker who acts on half-baked notions and is driven by some desperate need for recognition or validation. That stupid slob in there didn’t have any more to do with Lindsay’s kidnapping than I did, but you played on Charles’s emotion and now look at us. We’ve invaded his home and assaulted him and what do we have to show for it? Nothing! Not a damned thing!”

  “He could be lying,” I said without conviction. “He fits the profile.”

  “Are you deaf and blind? Did you hear and see the same thing I saw and heard in there? I don’t care what the profile is. He’s not the guy that snuck into a house in and stole a child. He’s not the guy that manipulated all of us and took three million dollars of Charles Russell’s money.”

  Drops of spit were flying from Botts’s mouth as he spoke and landing on my face. As much as it angered me, as much as I wanted to show some bravado and tell him to go screw himself, as much as I wanted to punch him square in his beak-like nose, I knew he was right. Morelock wasn’t sophisticated by any stretch of the imagination. He was pathetic, too pathetic to have engineered either the kidnapping or the theft of Charles Russell’s money. I pushed Botts’s hand away and backed up a few steps.

  “So what do you suggest we do now?” I said. “This will come back on us. He’ll call the police before we’re out of the driveway.”

  Botts was pacing in a tight circle.

  “No, he won’t.”

  “What are you going to do? Kill him?”

  “That will be up to him. I’ll offer him a reasonable amount to forget this ever happened. If he opens his mouth after he’s been paid, then I’ll kill him.”

  CHAPTER 27

  I didn’t know how much Botts – or Charles Russell – paid Morelock. I didn’t know when they paid him or how they paid him. I didn’t ask and I didn’t care. I felt doomed on the ride back to the hotel. I felt like a miserable failure, like everything I’d done, every decision I’d made since Richard and Mary Monroe hired me, had been dead wrong. I felt like I’d let a little girl down, and I had no idea what I was going to do next.

  I wanted to get away from Botts and Charles Russell and Botts’s men. I wanted to get away from the Lindsay Monroe kidnapping for a little while. I wanted to forget about everything that happened that night, to go home and feel the warmth of my wife, attempt to regain some measure of strength and confidence, and go back at it the next day.

  My spirits were lifted when I pulled into the driveway at two in the morning and saw my son Jack’s Jeep parked near the garage. Jack had been playing professional baseball for two years and had made it to Double A. He’d been drafted by the Detroit Tigers after his junior year at Vanderbilt. Without any prodding from me or his mother, he’d finished his undergraduate degree by taking online classes. His baseball season had ended a couple weeks earlier, but he’d taken a vacation in California with three of his teammates. I knew he was on his way home, but wasn’t expecting him until the next day. He was sitting at the kitchen table, shirtless, eating a sandwich when I walked in. He got up and gave me a
bear hug.

  “Man, it’s good to see you,” I said. “You look great.”

  Jack was the same height as me with thick, dark hair and his mother’s brown eyes. He’d been training hard for nearly a decade, and the muscles he’d built over that time rippled with every move he made.

  “You look like you’ve had a rough day,” he said.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Mom said you’re working a kidnapping case. What kept you out so late?”

  “Like I said, you don’t want to know. Speaking of your mom, where is she?”

  “In bed. She went down around midnight. Said her old bones were hurting. Is she okay?”

  It surprised me a bit that Caroline was asleep because she knew what I was doing and she knew we were going to Morelock’s that night. I expected her to be wide awake, full of worry and questions.

  “I think she’s fine,” I said. “I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that she’s been tired a lot, but I think it’s probably because the dance school has started back. Teaching those kids takes a lot out of her, especially when she has to spot acrobatics.”

  “She said her back’s been bothering her.”

  “Yeah, she’s mentioned it a couple of times, but you know how she is. She doesn’t like to complain. So how was California?”

  “Great. We started in San Diego and worked our way up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco. We played some golf and did some hiking, swam in the ocean a few times. Hit a lot of bars. You should take mom to Carmel and Monterey. They might be the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.”

  I went to the refrigerator and pulled out a couple of bottles of beer. I handed one to Jack and we sat back down at the table.

  “How long will you be home?” I said. “Do you have go play in a fall league somewhere this year?”

  He took a long pull off the beer and set it down slowly.

  “I’ve decided not to go back,” he said. “I’m going to retire and get on with my life. There are so many guys in the organization who are so good, I’ll never make it to the bigs.”

  I sat there with my mouth open for a couple of minutes, stunned.

  “Just like that?” I said. “Without any discussion? You’re going to quit?”

  His eyes tightened just a tick and he started running his finger around the top of the beer bottle.

  “You can call it that if you want,” he said, “but I don’t look at it that way. I look at it as accepting the inevitable. My arm is good but it isn’t great. I run okay but I’m not a speed burner. I can hit, but so can everybody else. They’ve moved me to first base, and first basemen are a dime a dozen. I hit twenty-one home runs this year. The first baseman in Triple-A hit thirty-five and the Prince Fielder is playing first in the majors. There just isn’t a spot for me.”

  “Maybe they’ll trade you and you’ll get a chance with another team,” I said.

  “The other teams are the same, dad. They all have these freaks of nature, guys who are six-foot-five, two hundred and thirty pounds who can run like deer, throw it through a wall, and hit it four hundred and fifty feet. I’m good, but I’m not great. I’m just not going to make it. I can hang around and make twelve hundred dollars a month for another few years if I want to, but I’d rather move on. I’ve been playing this game since I was a little kid. I’ve worked hard at it and it’s been good for me. It paid for my undergrad degree and it’ll pay for a graduate degree. So do me a favor, okay? Just tell me you’re proud of what I’ve accomplished and that you’re on my side no matter what.”

  I set my beer down on the table and looked him in the eye.

  “I’m proud of you, Jack,” I said. “I love you and I’m proud of everything you’ve accomplished. I’m on your side no matter what.”

  “Thanks, dad,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. You said something about baseball paying for a graduate degree. Is that your plan?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “I’m not sure how you’ll feel about this, either,” he said, “but I’ve already been accepted to law school at Vanderbilt. I start next August.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You’ve been busy. Why haven’t you mentioned any of this to me or your mom?”

  He smiled and shrugged his massive shoulders.

  “Mom knows about it. We haven’t said anything to you because we thought you might freak out. You’ve always had this weird love-hate relationship with the law and being a lawyer, but I’ve watched you all my life and I’ve learned from you and I don’t think it will be that way for me.”

  I gulped down the rest of the beer and went to the refrigerator for another. He was right, of course, about my tenuous relationship with the law, but I was unaccustomed to members of my family withholding what I considered to be important information from me. I sat back down at the table and downed half of the second beer.

  “Freak out?” I said. “That’s an interesting term. What does it mean in this context? What did you and your mother think I’d do if you told me you were considering going into law? Did you think I’d fall on my face and pound my fists on the floor like a two-year-old? Fall on my sword? Hang myself in the garage? Or did you think I’d march into the dean’s office at the law school and tell him if they accepted you I’d go postal and start blowing people away? Maybe I’d set myself on fire on the front lawn in protest. Yeah, that’s it. Self-immolation, like a monk protesting a war. Or better yet, maybe I would have grabbed one of your baseball bats out of your travel bag and beaten you to death with it. Is that what you mean when you say you were afraid I might freak out? I mean, I suppose I can understand it since I’ve always been such an unreasonable, violent, unstable jerk. I’ve been unapproachable, especially when it comes to my wife and kids. I’m working on it, Jack, but I guess I’ll have to work harder. Thanks for reminding me.”

  “See?” he said. “See what I mean? What you’re doing right now is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re freaking out.”

  “What kind of law do you plan to practice?” I said. “Or have you and your mother decided that information might also be too sensitive for my fragile psyche?”

  “I’m not going to talk to you if you’re going to act this way,” he said. “I think I’ll just go on to bed.”

  “Okay. Go to bed. Get some sleep. Dream about your old man and what a jackass he’s been your entire life.”

  I sat there fuming while Jack got up from the table, put his beer bottle in the recycle bin, and started out of the room.

  “One more thing,” I said. “You know the grandfather we’ve told you about, the one who was killed in Vietnam? The hero?”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s apparently alive and well. Just thought you’d like to know.”

  CHAPTER 28

  “Where is Richard Monroe?”

  The gruff voice on the other end of the phone belonged to Special Agent Dedrick. It was 7:30 a.m. I was at Sarah’s diner eating breakfast after having managed to sleep for four hours following the disastrous raid on Dean Morelock’s home.

  “They’re staying with friends,” I said.

  “I have a warrant for his cell phone, signed by a federal magistrate,” he said. “I want it now.”

  “I’ll call you,” I said, and I hung up.

  Richard and Mary had told me they were staying at a home in the Lake Meadows community in Boones Creek. I tried to call Richard’s phone first, but I got nothing. No ring, no voice mail, nothing. I waited five minutes and tried again. Same result. Mary finally answered her phone the third time I called her.

  “The police have a warrant for Richard’s cell phone,” I said. “I can file a motion to try to quash the warrant, but for now, we don’t have any choice. He has to turn it over to them.”

  “Why do they want his phone?” Mary said in a thick, sleepy voice.

  “I don’t know. They must think there’s something on it that will help them find Lindsay.”

&n
bsp; “There isn’t,” Mary said. “There can’t be.”

  “Where is he? I’ve tried to call but his phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “He must have gone to the office,” she said. “I don’t really know for sure. I’ve been asleep.”

  “I’ll drive out there and talk to him.”

  At first, I thought it was odd that Richard would be at work, but as I drove toward the office complex in Gray where Richard’s business was headquartered, I decided he probably needed something to focus on in order to keep from going insane. Mary was apparently dealing with the situation by medicating herself. Richard was dealing with the incredible stress and anxiety in a different way.

  I was directed by a receptionist to his office and ushered in by a pretty young secretary. The room was mid-sized and tasteful. A bank of computers lined one wall. The second thing I noticed was a large photo of Richard, Mary and Lindsay that had been framed and mounted on the wall behind Richard’s desk. I sat down and looked at Richard’s haggard face. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and dark circles had formed beneath his eyes.

  “I got a call from Dedrick a little while ago,” I said. “He has a warrant for your phone.”

  He leaned back in his chair and sighed. He laced his fingers behind his head and said, “It’s gone.”

  “What? Your phone is gone?”

  “I lost it yesterday afternoon.”

  “Lost it? How? Where?”

  “I went out to Winged Deer Park and took a walk after I left your office. Mary called me just as I was getting back to the car. I noticed my shoe had come untied, and when I finished talking to Mary, I set the phone down on the roof of the car while I tied my shoe. When I straightened back up and got in the car, I forgot about the phone being on the roof. I drove away and was a couple of miles down the road before I realized what I’d done. I went back and looked for it, but I couldn’t find it. It must have slipped off the roof of the car. I called the cell phone company as soon as I got back to where Mary and I are staying and they tried to track it, but there’s no signal. Somebody probably ran over it.”