JD05 - Conflict of Interest

by Scott Pratt

  “He said his wife wouldn’t pay any attention to him, that all she cared about was their daughter. He said he’s lonely, so yeah, we had sex sometimes. Not every time we were together, but sometimes.”

  “Have you seen him since Lindsay was taken?”

  “No. I haven’t heard anything from him and I haven’t tried to get in touch with him.”

  “Why? Don’t you need your money?”

  “I just thought… I just… I don’t know. I mean, he was in the newspaper and on television and all this stuff was going on and I didn’t think it would be such a good idea.”

  Up until that point, I believed everything she said, but when I asked her why she hadn’t tried to get in touch with Richard, the tone of her voice changed and her right foot started to rock up and down. There was a small kitchen with a breakfast nook about ten feet from where I was standing, and I walked over and picked up a chair. I carried it back to where she was sitting, turned it around backward, and plopped myself down right in front of her. I put my elbows on the back of the chair and leaned forward.

  “When was the last time you had sex with Richard?” I said.

  “That night. That Friday. He came over after he got off work and stayed for a couple of hours.”

  “How long had it been before that?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of weeks maybe. It wasn’t like he was obsessed with me or anything.”

  “Did Richard use a condom?”

  “I’m on the pill. He doesn’t need to.”

  “Did he climax that night?”

  “What? What’s wrong with you? Why would you ask me—”

  “Answer the question! Did he ejaculate?”

  “Probably, I mean, he always did.”

  “So what happened that night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After Richard left. What happened? He left pretty early, right? What’d you do the rest of the night?”

  “I don’t know. I probably just watched a movie or something.”

  “Did you go out?”

  “No.”

  “Did anybody come over? Did you talk to anybody?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What did you do with his sperm, Kayla? Did you take a shower and wash it down the drain? Flush it down the toilet? Maybe put some in a little cup or a vial or a syringe and give it to somebody?”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Did you go down to Richard’s and steal his little girl? Maybe take some of the sperm he left behind and plant it on her clothes? What’d you do with her?”

  “I didn’t. I swear to God I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “But you know who did, don’t you?”

  “No! I don’t… I mean… I didn’t…”

  She sniffled, a tear slipped down her right cheek, and I knew I was close.

  “You didn’t what?”

  “I didn’t know what he was going to do with it, okay? He paid me five thousand dollars for it, but I didn’t know what he was going to do!”

  “Who? You didn’t know what who was going to do?”

  “I don’t know his name, okay? He said he was some kind of investigator.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. About as tall as you, I guess, but younger. Real sharp nose, like a bird. You can’t say anything to him. The last thing he said to me before he left was that he’d kill me if I ever told anyone, and I believed him.”

  Sharp nose. Like a raptor. Paying for silence and then threatening to kill her if she talked. It was too familiar.

  It had to be Botts.

  CHAPTER 42

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” I said when I climbed into Leon Bates’ Hummer. I’d called him as soon as I left Kayla Robbins’ apartment. He was in Johnson City, he said, and suggested we meet in a crowded parking lot on the East Tennessee State University campus. I told him about my conversation with Kayla and her revelations about her “arrangement” with Richard and her sale of a sample of Richard’s sperm to Botts while the rain pelted against the windshield.

  “So if this little filly is telling the truth,” Bates said, “it changes things a bunch. I reckon that explains why your former client passed the polygraph.”

  “He’s still my client, Leon. Maybe not in the courtroom, but I have unfinished business.”

  Leon shook his head slowly.

  “So what are you gonna do now?” he said. “Go after Botts, find that little girl, bring her home, and make the feds look like fools?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do, and you’re going to help me.”

  “Hold on now, brother. I ain’t on your side any more, remember? I’m the lawman and you’re the defense lawyer. We already got an indictment, made an arrest. We’re getting ready for trial.”

  “They got an indictment and made an arrest. The feds. They’re getting ready for trial. I’ll bet they won’t even call you as a witness. They came into your county, took the case from you, and they got it wrong.”

  “I ain’t so sure they got it wrong, but I’m tickled to death they came in and took it,” Bates said. “This case has stunk to high heaven from the get go. We’ve had a little girl missing, the media all over us, you running around delivering ransom money, the girl’s daddy lying about this and that, and her momma so messed up on drugs now we can’t even interview her. We’ve had the granddaddy and that Botts feller second-guessing every move we’ve made, and now here you come telling me that you think Botts is behind the whole thing.”

  “That about sums it up. How closely have you looked at Botts?”

  “We didn’t look at him. Had no reason to. Botts didn’t even show up until after the girl was taken, and everything we found led us straight to Richard Monroe. Tell me something, brother Dillard. What about motive? If Botts is involved in this, why would he go to all this trouble? Why would he set all this up, take the girl, steal the money, and frame the father?”

  “I was hoping you’d ask him when you arrest him.”

  “You realize you ain’t got a smidgen of proof, don’t you? All you’ve got is the word of a trollop.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We find Lindsay, it’s game over.”

  “And how do you propose we find her?”

  “We find Botts and follow him until he leads us to her.”

  “You got any idea where he is?”

  “Charles Russell’s company is based out of Nashville. Charles and Botts live in Nashville. Charles is still here, taking care of Mary, but I haven’t seen Botts since Richard was arrested. I assume he went back to Nashville.”

  “I can’t go snooping around Nashville without notifying the sheriff and the chief of police, and with everything that’s gone on up here with this case, neither one of them will be happy to see me coming.”

  “Don’t tell them, Leon. Look, you check out Botts and gather up a few of your high-tech toys. We go to Nashville, we follow Botts for a few days, maybe a week. If we don’t find anything, we turn around and come home and nobody’s hurt. But if we find her, if Botts has her hidden somewhere, then you can call the cavalry and get us some help getting her back.”

  “I don’t know,” Bates said. “Sounds like a wild goose chase to me.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve chased a goose or two before.”

  “We have, haven’t we? Cooked a few of ‘em, too.”

  “I’m going, Leon. With you or without you, I’m going to Nashville. I’d rather it be with you.”

  “Dad gum it, brother Dillard, you beat all I’ve ever seen. You know that? You beat all I’ve ever seen.”

  CHAPTER 43

  It was difficult to leave Caroline, but Jack and Lilly were there to look after her and she wanted me to go. Bates and I left for Nashville at three o’clock that afternoon on a jet Leon somehow chartered on short notice. When I asked him how he did it, all he said was, “I do favors for people sometimes, brother Dillard. And sometimes people do favors for
me.” Because Nashville was in the central time zone and the Tri-Cities was in the eastern time zone, we were on the ground and in our rental cars by 3:30 p.m. We rented two innocuous looking sedans in the event we had to follow Botts, but as Leon explained to me on the flight, he had other things in mind.

  Leon had spent the late morning and early afternoon checking out Earl Botts, and while he didn’t learn anything that would explain a motive for Botts to kidnap Lindsay Monroe, he learned enough to realize that we were dealing with a potentially dangerous man. Botts, who was raised by Charles Russell and his wife after Botts’s mother was killed, had followed in Charles Russell’s footsteps and joined the Marine Corps right out of high school. He’d volunteered for their elite Force Reconnaissance unit and had wound up in the thick of the action in Iraq. He’d been captured when his recon team crossed into Syria while attempting to ambush Iraqi leaders who were fleeing the country. The Syrians held him for three weeks – and tortured him in the process – before releasing him and two British SAS soldiers in a deal brokered by the British government. He was discharged from the Marines after serving five years and three tours in the Middle East, and he immediately went to work for Charles Russell’s “risk management” firm. There wasn’t much information available on Russell’s firm, but I knew from my conversations with Charles Russell that they specialized in executive and diplomatic protection, primarily in Central and South America. With the combination of his Marine Corps training and his security work, we knew that Botts would be an expert in such things as weapons, communications, surveillance, counter-intelligence and hand-to-hand combat, and we knew that if it came to violence, we could have our hands full no matter how many cops we brought to the party.

  Bates said the public records showed Botts’s permanent address as a condominium in a gated community in Belle Meade, but Leon didn’t want to go anywhere near the place. He wanted to get a GPS tracker on Botts’s vehicle so we could follow his movements from a distance and remove the risk of being spotted. The Tennessee Department of Motor Vehicles showed that Botts owned a car and an SUV, but we had no way of knowing whether he’d be driving a personal vehicle or a company vehicle. In order to get the tracker in place, we had to get our eyes on him at Russell Risk Management.

  We checked into adjoining rooms in a hotel off Briley Parkway, just a few miles from the airport, and left the hotel in Leon’s rental. We rode north on Briley and then east on Lebanon Pike for several miles until we came to an isolated compound near the Stones River. The two-story, block building was painted white and surrounded by an eight-foot high chain line fence. An awning over the front entrance identified the place as Russell Risk Management, Inc. There was a guardhouse at the only entrance to the parking lot manned by two uniformed guards. Bates rolled past without slowing.

  “Looks like Russell’s company is pretty serious about security,” I said.

  “Yep. Nothing we can’t handle, though,” Bates said.

  He continued driving for another hour, making wider and wider circles around the neighborhood where Russell Risk Management was located.

  “High ground?” I said.

  “You got it,” Bates said. He pointed to his right. “That spot over there looks pretty promising.” He was pointing to a tree-covered hill. “Let’s go check it out.”

  We arrived back at the hotel just as darkness was beginning to fall. I unpacked some the things Leon had suggested I bring – things like boots and warm, dark-colored clothing and gloves – before I knocked on the door that adjoined the rooms. Leon opened it and I walked in. He was wearing blue jeans and a green shirt with a button-down collar.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you without your uniform and your cowboy hat,” I said.

  He winked and smiled. “I generally only take that uniform and hat off for one thing,” he said.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Sleep, brother Dillard. Get your mind out of the gutter. Lookie here. I got something to show you.”

  He unzipped a large bag that was sitting on his bed.

  “You mentioned high-tech toys,” Leon said. “I got high-tech toys.”

  He showed me a high-powered spotter’s scope, a pair of thousand-dollar binoculars, a smart phone, two laptop computers, a palm-sized GPS tracking device attached to a set of three magnets that Leon said were so powerful they could only be removed with a pry bar, and a couple of pre-paid cell phones.

  “Wow,” I said. “This is real spook stuff.”

  “Them FBI boys got nothing on ol’ Leon,” he said

  The next things he pulled out of the bag were two MP-5 submachine guns.

  “If we wind up in a gunfight, we ain’t goin’ in with no pea shooters,” he said.

  I shook my head and said, “I’m not here to kill anybody, Leon. I had my fill of it last year.”

  “I figured as much,” Leon said, “but I can’t have you thinking about what happened last year, brother Dillard. This Botts is a bad hombre and you know it. If he has that little girl and we get onto him, I don’t think he’ll want to give her up without a fight. I know you know how to use that weapon. When we go out tomorrow morning, I want you to strap it on.”

  I shrugged and picked up the gun. It was very much like the weapons I’d used in the military, although it was more compact. The feel of it sent tingles through my hands.

  Leon opened the laptop and started banging keys. I knew from past experience that he loved technology and was highly proficient at using it. I smiled as his fingers whizzed across the keyboard. Leon Bates, redneck techie.

  “Pull that chair over here,” Leon said. “I need to show you a few things.”

  For the next hour, we discussed possibilities and plans and what might or might not happen while Bates clicked and panned and zoomed in and zoomed out. Finally he looked at his watch.

  “We need to be out the door at 3:00 a.m., rain or shine,” he said. “I reckon we ought to try to get a little shut eye. Tomorrow could be an awful long day.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Botts showed up at Russell Risk Management at 5:45 a.m., after Leon and I had sat beneath ponchos in the freezing rain for more than two hours. Despite the fact that we were more than a quarter-mile away and two hundred feet above him, the spotter’s scope I was looking through, combined with the lights in the parking lot, left no doubt that it was him. When he got out of his SUV, I was surprised to see him wearing what appeared to be a suit and tie beneath a long dress coat. Maybe he was running the company in Charles Russell’s absence and had to dress the part.

  We’d decided to wait out the morning and see if he left the building at lunch time. If not, we had an alternate plan, but our hope was that he’d leave the building and we’d be able to follow him in the heavy Nashville traffic and then get the tracking device onto his vehicle while he was inside a building eating lunch. I’d left my rental car in a parking lot a couple of blocks away, and as soon as we were sure Botts was in the building, Leon dropped me off at my car and both of us drove to spots we’d picked the night before. Both of us could see the Russell Risk Management parking lot and front gate clearly and both of us could easily get into traffic. We’d take turns keeping him in sight and stay in touch with each other on our cell phones.

  Botts walked out of the building in the company of two other men just before noon. All three of them got into his SUV and they pulled out of the front gate. Bates took the lead and I followed about a block behind. Lebanon Pike was crowded, and Botts stayed on it for twenty minutes, heading west, before he turned onto Hermitage Ave. and then onto Korean Veterans Boulevard. He made one more turn before he wound up turning into the parking lot of a garish orange, block building. The name “Arnold’s” was painted on the side of the building. People were standing in line outside beneath umbrellas. I didn’t know what they served in there, but I told myself that if people were willing to stand outside in the cold rain, I’d have to make it a point to bring Caroline to Nashville when this was over.
r />   My phone buzzed.

  “Wait for him to get inside the building,” Bates said, “and make the call.”

  I saw Bates turn left ahead of me. He was circling the block and getting himself into position to slap the magnetic GPS transmitter onto the undercarriage of Botts’s SUV. I turned right and circled from the other direction. There was a parking lot a block away that gave me a view of the front of Arnold’s, and I waited until I saw Botts and his companions get inside. I called Leon back.

  “You ready?” I said.

  “I’m ten feet from his vehicle but there are people standing outside and people coming and going. Is he inside?”

  “Just got in.”

  “Give it five minutes.”

  I Googled our exact location on my phone to double-check the address, waited five minutes, picked up the pre-paid cell Botts had given me, and dialed 9-1-1.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the dispatcher said.

  “I’m driving on South Eighth near Arnold’s Diner!” I yelled into the phone. “There’s a man with an assault rifle walking across the railroad tracks toward downtown. I don’t know what’s he’s going to do!”

  “Calm down, sir. Did you say there’s a man with an assault rifle?”

  “Send the police! He looks crazy! Hurry!”

  “Would you repeat the location?”

  I hung up. I knew it was enough. Bates and I had talked about what would make the biggest splash with the police, and in this day of mass shootings and rabid debate about gun control, we decided a report of a crazy-looking man carrying an assault rifle would do the trick. I’d just committed a crime, but we needed the diversion. It worked like a charm. Within two minutes, sirens were screaming and everyone at Arnold’s Diner was looking down the street away from the parking lot. Leon was able to get out of his car, slide beneath Botts’s SUV, slap the GPS device into place and drive off unnoticed.

  Botts left Arnold’s a half-hour after he walked in the door and started back toward Russell Risk Management. Leon called me as soon as Botts pulled out of the parking lot and said, “Have you looked at the app?”