JD05 - Conflict of Interest

by Scott Pratt

  “Not a chance,” Zeller said. “Juries are the lie detectors in a courtroom. You start introducing stuff like this during trials and you wind up transferring the most important function of a jury to a machine.”

  “That’s an unusual attitude for a fed,” I said. “You guys use polygraphs all the time. You use them to make decisions on probable cause, you use them to make decisions on whether to prosecute, you use them to eliminate suspects and to zero in on suspects. Hell, everybody in this room outside of Leon and Mitchell had to pass a polygraph before the FBI or the TBI or the U.S. Attorney’s office would give you a job.”

  “And your point would be?” Zeller said.

  “My point is you’re a hypocrite. If a polygraph result fits your purpose, you say it’s indisputable and stand behind it a hundred and ten percent, but if it doesn’t, you call it voodoo science.”

  Zeller slid the report back across the table and stood. The FBI agents stood at the same time, obeying his silent command. None of them picked up Trumble’s report.

  “The next time you ask for a meeting, it had better be something worth my time,” Zeller said as he started for the door, followed dutifully by his minions. “We already have enough to bury your client, and I promise you by the time the trial comes around, we’ll have a lot more.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The envelope was taped to the door. “Joseph Dillard” was handwritten across the front.

  I’d made good on my invitation, and my father had come out to the house for Sunday dinner. He showed up a little before one o’clock in the afternoon. Caroline and I, Jack, Lilly and Randy and their baby boy, Joey, Sarah and her daughter, Grace, were all there waiting for him. Caroline and I had stuffed and roasted a couple of chickens, whipped up a bunch of veggies, and made a couple of apple pies. Sarah brought biscuits and rolls, Lilly brought a gallon of tea, and Jack brought his usual hearty appetite. The weather was warm and sunny, so Jack and I set up card tables end to end and we were able to eat on the deck overlooking the lake. Nobody was quite sure what to call him, but he took care of that quickly by announcing we should all call him J.D., and that worked just fine. He stayed for three hours. Caroline, true to her nature, made him feel as though he was a member of the family and the kids regaled him with stories of their upbringing. Even Sarah seemed to enjoy him. She was witty and funny and, as usual, occasionally profane. He smiled a lot, didn’t talk too much, and seemed to enjoy the afternoon.

  When it was time for him to leave, I walked him to the rental car he’d parked in the driveway.

  “I set it up,” he said. “The trip to Wisconsin to talk to Lucas Venable’s parents. We leave Wednesday morning at 7:00 a.m. from the Tri-Cities airport and we’ll be back at 10:30 the same night. You’ll go with me, won’t you, Joseph? I already paid for your ticket.”

  “I’d rather have every tooth in my head pulled out with a pair of pliers and no anesthesia,” I said.

  “So would I, but like you said, it needs to be done. I know it was presumptuous of me to make you a reservation and I apologize, but I can’t do it alone. I just can’t. Please, Joseph. If you go with me, I swear I’ll never ask another thing of you.”

  I had agreed, albeit reluctantly, and was at the hotel to pick him up at 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning. I reached out and pulled the envelope off the door and tore it open. There was one sheet of typing paper, which I unfolded. A short note written in the same hand as the name on the outside of the envelope said:

  Dear Joseph,

  I have decided I cannot face going to Wisconsin. In fact, I have decided that coming here was a terrible and selfish decision. I am going back to Malaysia where I belong. I have lived my life there and I should die there. Once again, I hope you can forgive me.

  Jack Dillard

  P.S. You have a beautiful family. Cherish them.

  Once a coward, always a coward.

  I balled the paper up, dropped it on the floor, and walked back out to my truck.

  I hadn’t laid eyes on Mary Monroe since the day the ransom was delivered, but I wanted to speak to her, to see whether I could get some sense of what had changed with her, of why she had turned on Richard so quickly. If she had turned on him because of the arrest, because of the purported DNA evidence, I wanted her to know that Richard had passed the polygraph test, that there was at least a possibility that he could be falsely accused. I’d called her cell phone more than a dozen times, but it always went straight to voice mail.

  I knew that before Richard’s arrest, he and Mary were staying at the home of an elderly married couple in the Lake Meadow subdivision near Boones Creek. The couple, whom Richard and Mary knew from church, migrated to Arizona the first week of September each year and didn’t return until late spring. Richard and Mary had used the house to hide out from the growing horde of reporters that had descended on Jonesborough during the early stages of the investigation. Now that Richard had been arrested, the majority of the reporters had moved on to the next sensational story. They would return for the trial, but in the meantime, the ever-present gaggle of newshounds that had milled around outside Richard and Mary’s home in Jonesborough had disappeared. I wondered whether Mary had gone back.

  It was six in the morning and I was still fuming after finding the note that Jack Dillard had taped to the door of his motel room. I wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news to everyone in the family that their long lost father, father-in-law, and grandfather had run away again, and I was angry for allowing myself to think that maybe, just maybe, I could have formed some kind of meaningful relationship with him. I was also upset because I knew that eventually my conscience would drive me to Wisconsin where I would have to face the parents of the young man named Lucas Venable who was lying in a grave marked with my father’s name. Their son had been killed on the battlefield in Vietnam and they deserved to know that. They would probably want to move his remains home to Wisconsin. I knew I wouldn’t be able to just let it be.

  I circled the block around the Monroe home a couple of times to make sure there wasn’t anyone hanging around or watching. When I was satisfied, I pulled into the driveway, which led to a garage behind the house. I got out of my truck and looked up. The screen covering the window in Lindsay’s room hadn’t been replaced. I’d seen it once before when I looked around before I went to talk to Tom Short the first time, but looking at it again gave me an uneasy feeling. In spite of everything that had happened, the possibility remained that the child had been taken by a stranger. An image of a man climbing down a ladder in the darkness with a child draped over his shoulder flashed through my mind. Once again, I wondered whether Lindsay was still alive. I wanted her to be alive, but I couldn’t make myself believe it. The voodoo science, as Rudy Zeller had termed it, suggested to me that Richard didn’t kill her. But the evidence said otherwise, and there was no stronger evidence than DNA.

  I walked over to the garage and peered inside. The red Mercedes was there, along with a Lincoln Navigator. The morning was clear and quiet, the sun just beginning to peek over the mountains to the east. I followed a brick walkway to a door just off the back patio, climbed a couple of steps, and looked inside. Mary Monroe was sitting at a table in the kitchen with her back to me. As she lifted a cup to her lips, I knocked softly on the door. She froze for a few seconds before setting the cup slowly back down on the table. She rose from the chair and turned toward me. She was wearing a pink bath robe that appeared to be made of silk. The look on her face was calm, almost serene. A slight smile crossed her face and she moved in tiny steps – like a Japanese geisha girl – toward the door.

  “Can I help you?” she said when she opened the door a crack. There seemed to be a vague hint of recognition on her face, but the question took me by surprise.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Mrs. Monroe,” I said. “Can I come in?”

  She stepped back from the door and I looked closely at her. She was still a beautiful woman, but she was a mess. Her hair was matted and dirty, her ski
n tight and pale. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in days and she smelled like she hadn’t bathed for the same amount of time. I noticed that her eyes were twitching – tiny, rapid movements from side to side. It was though her eyes were vibrating involuntarily.

  “Mrs. Monroe?” I said. “Are you alright?”

  At that moment, I heard a door close and heavy footsteps descending a set of stairs. Charles Russell walked around the corner, already dressed for the day. He stopped short when he saw me.

  “How did you get in here?” he said.

  “She let me in.”

  He looked at Mary and his face softened.

  “What are you doing up, Mary?” he said as he walked over and took her elbow. “Come. Let me help you back to bed.”

  I stood there, unsure of what to do, as they disappeared. I listened as they climbed the steps slowly, their footfalls growing fainter. He hadn’t demanded that I leave, but I was more than a little uncomfortable standing in the Monroe kitchen listening to the steady tick, tick, tick of what must have been a grandfather clock near the base of the stairs. A few minutes passed before I heard Charles coming back down. I expected an angry exchange, but when he came back into the kitchen, he wore a look that conveyed resignation.

  “You might as well sit,” he said. “You don’t strike me as the type who is just going to go away.”

  I sat at the table while he surprised me even more by pouring two cups of coffee.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I said as he sat down across from me.

  “She’s sleeping. It’s the Ambien. She takes too much of it and she does things while she’s sleeping. She won’t even remember that you were here.”

  “So that’s how she’s dealing with everything? By drugging herself?”

  He nodded. “I’ve thought about doing the same. I mean, who can blame her? Her daughter is dead but nobody knows where her body is and her husband murdered her. Her entire world has exploded around her and the only way she can deal with it right now is to numb herself completely.”

  “I can understand it,” I said. “I have a sister who’s done the same kind of thing. She was raped when she was very young and she spent a lot of time medicating herself with drugs and alcohol. But this, what Mary is dealing with. I don’t know what I’d do.”

  I looked across the table at him, at a face etched by age and worry. His granddaughter was gone. Three million dollars of his money was gone. His daughter was, for all intents and purposes, gone. His son-in-law stood accused of one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Yet here he was, in his daughter’s home at six-fifteen in the morning, dressed as though he were going to work that day, still upright, still functioning at some level, still trying to manage whatever fragments that were left of his life. I felt a twinge of admiration for him, although the admiration was diluted by pity. I thought again about how cruel life can be for some, how fate can be so unfair and so utterly arbitrary. What had he done to deserve this? What had Mary done? And Lindsay? Had her body been defiled and buried in some shallow grave, thrown down some abandoned mine shaft in the nearby mountains, burned to ash and tossed to the wind? Why did such things happen?

  “What do you want, Mr. Dillard?” Charles said.

  “I’m not sure, to be honest. I think I just wanted to talk to Mary.”

  “Are you here in a professional capacity, as Richard’s defense lawyer?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “I thought maybe you’d quit and wanted to come over to our side.”

  “I don’t quit in the middle of a case because things turn bad, Mr. Russell. I’m not wired that way.”

  “Again then, what do you want?”

  “I guess I’m just searching for the truth, just trying to get some sense of what’s going on. The last time I saw Mary, she was passed out on the floor of the hotel room the day we… the day the kidnapper called and I delivered the money. She and Richard seemed to be so strong together, so tight. They were in a horrific situation, but they were dealing with it together. And now everything has changed. She’s divorcing him from what you told me on the phone. She’s going to be a witness for the prosecution. I guess I just wanted to ask her what changed.”

  He pushed his coffee cup – which he hadn’t touched to that point – away from him with both hands. He laced his fingers together, leaned forward on his elbows, and looked directly into my eyes.

  “I know your history, Mr. Dillard,” he said. “When all of this happened, when Lindsay disappeared, I came to help look for her immediately, of course. But then Mary told me the police were accusing her and Richard of being involved, so I started reaching out to people I’ve known for years, people I trust. I asked them who they would call on for help if they were in a similar situation. These are people of means, people who have power, people who have education and contacts. We talked about lawyers in Nashville and Atlanta and Charlotte and even Miami. We talked about big firms, firms with political ties and money. We talked about mavericks, about lawyers that specialize in criminal defense, big names who have been able to get favorable results for their clients after the media had already tried and convicted them. One name kept popping up. They’d say, ‘Have you heard of this local guy named Joe Dillard? He’s done this and this and that and that.’

  “I have to confess I’d never heard of you. I’ve always been much too busy, too pre-occupied with what was going on in my own life to pay much attention to others. But after your name kept popping up, I asked Earl Botts to check you out. I know you and Earl haven’t been on the best of terms, but I trust him completely. He compiled a dossier on you. He actually recommended that we not hire you. He said he had concerns about some things, primarily what he called your ‘lack of respect for institutional logic.’ Earl is a great believer in institutions, legal and otherwise. He said you were a loose cannon, a man governed only by his own conscience. He said you weren’t above committing violent acts if it suited your—”

  “Where are you going with this?” I said.

  “I’m trying to tell you that in spite of what Earl Botts thinks, I respect you. I don’t envy you by any means, but I respect you. That’s why I didn’t toss you out on your ear when you showed up here uninvited. But there are things you don’t know about Richard, things I didn’t know until recently.”

  “What things? What are you talking about?”

  “Terrible things. Don’t ask me again what they are because I can’t tell you. I won’t tell you. They’ll come out at the trial.”

  “Do you really think Richard killed Lindsay?”

  “I have no doubt he killed her. Richard has secrets, Mr. Dillard, the kind of secrets that eat away at a man’s soul. They’ll come out at the trial, though, and when they do, the jury will see what kind of man he is. Richard is going to get what he deserves. He’s going to be convicted of murdering my granddaughter, he’s going to get the death penalty, and after the government kills him, he’s going to hell where he belongs.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Margaret Bain looked like a cross between a nose tackle and a porcupine. She was almost as tall as I was – over six feet – and she had to weigh in the neighborhood of two fifty. Her short, silver hair shot from her head like flame from a sparkler and she always seemed to wear the dour expression of a woman who hated everything and everyone around her. She’d just taken a seat behind her desk and her head was now framed by her law degree from Cal Berkeley, her law license, and a photo of a woman I didn’t recognize.

  “Who’s that?” I said, pointing at the picture.

  She turned and looked at it as though she didn’t know whose photo was framed on the wall behind her.

  “Susan B. Anthony,” she said.

  “Ah, women’s suffrage. I haven’t seen a picture of her since junior high.”

  “I’m a big fan,” Margaret said. “So what can I do for you?”

  “You can take your foot off of Richard Monroe’s throat.”

  Margaret Bain had been hired to repr
esent Mary Monroe in a divorce proceeding. True to form for most divorce lawyers, she’d gone straight for the jugular by getting an order from the Circuit Court judge tying up what was left of Richard’s assets. He couldn’t spend a penny. I wasn’t representing Richard in the divorce. I hadn’t taken a divorce case in twenty years and I wasn’t about to start with Richard. I’d made some calls on his behalf, though, trying to find someone who would take his case.

  “And why would I do that?” Margaret said.

  “He can’t even hire a lawyer,” I said. “Nobody will touch him without a big retainer and he can’t pay a big retainer because you’ve tied up his money. On top of that, he hasn’t paid me. I was planning to get him to sign a power of attorney so we could get access to some money to pay for his defense, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I had to pay a polygraph expert eleven thousand dollars out of my own pocket, and now you’ve tied everything up and I can’t get it back. He hasn’t even paid me to represent him at trial yet.”

  She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a box of tissue.

  “The poor thing,” she said. “Do you think I’ll need this? You already have me feeling so sorry for him I might cry.”

  “C’mon, Margaret,” I said. “He needs money to defend himself. He needs to hire experts to examine the evidence the government has in the criminal case. All I’m asking for is a couple of hundred grand. You got the judge to tie up what, a million and a half? Even if you fleece him in the divorce he’ll still be entitled to at least forty percent of that money. There’s plenty to go around.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” she said.

  “Be reasonable, will you? Please? The guy is going on trial for his life. He has a right to the best defense I can give him.”

  “Go ahead. I guess the key word in that sentence would be give.”