JD05 - Conflict of Interest

by Scott Pratt

  “We’re on him,” I said. “It’s working.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon in our cars, driving aimlessly within a half-mile radius of Russell Risk Management. The laptop with the precious GPS signal stayed open on the passenger seat beside me. Leon and I wanted to stay mobile in case Botts left the building and we wanted to stay close. I put over a hundred miles on the rental car that afternoon doing between twenty and thirty miles an hour. I called Caroline twice. I called Jack and Lilly. I ate the first Big Mac I’d eaten in years and it was delicious. I parked the car in random lots and got out and walked around the block a couple of times, carrying the laptop with me. There were many anxious moments wondering whether Botts would walk out and catch a cab to the airport, whether he’d leave with a friend or with another employee or with a woman, but at 6:21 p.m., the signal started flashing.

  Botts was on the move.

  Instead of driving west toward Nashville and Belle Meade, however, he drove to Interstate 40 and headed west all the way to Highway 109. Bates and I, still in separate cars, stayed a mile behind him. The cold rain of the morning and evening had given way to full-out thunderstorms, and the rain pounded against the windshield as I drove along. When he got off the interstate, Botts turned north toward Lebanon and wound up pulling into the parking lot of a place called Cherokee Steakhouse on Old Hickory Lake. He was there for an hour, and then stopped at a grocery store in Lebanon before going back across the lake and turning onto a narrow road called Potter’s Lane that led to the lake. Bates and I pulled into a convenience store parking lot and I got into Leon’s car.

  “He’s here,” Leon said, pointing at a satellite image from Google Maps of an isolated house that sat less than fifty feet from the shoreline of Old Hickory Lake. We talked for a few minutes about the best way to get a look inside the house without being detected and decided to go back across the South Water Street bridge and see if we could get a look from the other side of the narrow channel. There was a road that led to a water treatment plant directly across from the house where Botts had parked. It took us about fifteen minutes to get to the plant and another ten to find a spot that provided both cover and a clear view of the house. Bates and I settled in beneath a huge beech tree and trained our optics on the house.

  Darkness had fallen, the wind was howling, and the rain was falling diagonally. Both of us were wearing ponchos that Leon had brought with him, and as I looked through the scope, I was grateful for Leon’s foresight and for his toys. The scope was incredibly powerful. The images I was seeing were illuminated and crisp even in the driving rainstorm.

  “There’s a woman,” Bates said over the wind. “Do you see her?”

  The side of the house that faced the water was almost all windows. The lot surrounding the house was covered in trees, but the yard between the house and the water had been cleared, and I could easily make out the image of a dark-haired woman moving around in the kitchen. She appeared to be cooking supper. I knew Botts was there somewhere, but I couldn’t see him. Less than ten minutes later, I saw movement coming down a set a stairs to the woman’s left. An image came into focus that nearly took my breath away. It was a little girl.

  “Leon?” I said.

  “Is it her?”

  She looked to be the right age. Shoulder-length, dark hair. I waited until she walked into the kitchen where the light was better. I turned a button on the scope I was holding and zoomed in on her face. I’d looked at her photograph a hundred times. There was no doubt in my mind.

  “It’s her, Leon,” I said. “It’s Lindsay Monroe.”

  CHAPTER 45

  “Did I ever tell you how much I hate it when you’re right?” Leon said as he gazed through the binoculars. The wind had picked up even more and he had to yell in order for me to hear him.

  “What now?” I yelled back.

  “I ain’t exactly sure. I’m playing this by ear.”

  “I know one thing that isn’t going to happen,” I said. “I’m not letting that child out of my sight until I have my hands on her.”

  “What are you gonna do? Swim across this channel?”

  “If I have to. I’m not going to give Botts a chance of disappearing with her again.”

  “He ain’t going anywhere, brother Dillard. Let’s call the good guys, get the cars, drive back around there and go in from the other side.”

  “In order to get the police to go in quiet, we’ll have to find the sheriff or the chief of police or the TBI or whoever and tell them what’s going on. It’ll take all night for them to gather everybody up, make a plan and execute it. If we just call 9-1-1, they’ll come fast but they’ll come loud. He’ll hear them and he’ll either take off or worse. He might kill her if he thinks he’s about to go down.”

  Bates was silent for a long while. Finally, he said, “Stay here and keep her in sight. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find something that floats. I’ve got my phone. Call if anything happens.”

  Leon disappeared, and I was left alone in the dark a thousand feet from the house that contained little Lindsay Monroe. I could see her sitting at a small table in the kitchen and watched as the dark-haired woman served her supper. She didn’t appear to be injured or in any kind of distress, and I wondered what Botts had told her about why she was there or what had happened to her parents.

  I kept panning the house looking for a sign of Botts but saw nothing. After nearly half an hour, I heard the words, “Brother Dillard,” come across the wind and I looked to my left. Leon was paddling along the shoreline in a canoe.

  I came out from under the tree and climbed into the canoe. The submachine gun was hanging from a strap across Leon’s right shoulder. I’d done as he requested – the weapon he’d given me was hanging from a strap across my shoulder as well. Leon handed me a paddle, and we started toward the house.

  We beached the canoe about fifty yards from the small house and clamored up a steep, muddy bank. Botts’s SUV was parked in the gravel driveway. It appeared to be an old fishing cabin that someone had added an upper story to. It was constructed primarily of concrete block and painted gray. We made our way slowly all the way around it, using the trees for cover. There were only two doors, one at each end of the house. The lot was severe, covered with exposed rock and steep. There were no dogs in sight and we hadn’t noticed any pets in the house.

  The woman and Lindsay Monroe had moved to a couch where Lindsay appeared to be reading a book. Leon and I made our way back to the spot where we’d first climbed the bank and we each took a knee.

  “What do you think?” Leon said.

  “You take this door, I’ll take the one on the other side,” I said. “Botts must be upstairs. Let’s go in quiet and try to get them out before he knows what’s happened.”

  “I’m thinking it would be a good idea to call 9-1-1 about now,” Leon said.

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you inside.”

  I broke off from Leon and headed to the far side of the house as he pulled his phone from beneath his poncho. There was a set of steps leading to a stone patio, and I climbed the steps and looked through the door. I could see all the way through the house to the other door. Lindsay and the woman were still on the couch. As soon as I saw Leon’s shadow looming through the window of the door on the far side, I reached down and turned the doorknob. It was unlocked, but the door squealed when I opened it and both Lindsay and the woman looked up immediately. I put a finger to my lips and waved my left hand. The MP5 was hanging loosely, pointing downward, because I didn’t want to terrify them. Bates came through the door and flashed a badge at the woman. He motioned for her and Lindsay to walk toward me. Just as the woman stood, there was a loud roar that came from the top of the steps and Leon went flying backward through the doorway. The woman and the girl both screamed and dived to the floor as I brought the MP5 up to my shoulder. There was a huge, stone fireplace just inside the door, about ten feet from me,
and I took cover beside it. I couldn’t see who was at the top of the steps and I had no idea whether he’d seen me. I assumed it was Botts, but there was a sheetrock wall between us. What I could see was the soles of Leon’s boots. He’d gone over on his back and his feet were pointing straight up. I needed to get to him quickly.

  The thought of Botts ambushing Leon infuriated me, and my field of vision began to narrow. There was an innocent little girl lying on the floor not twenty feet away and a psychopath with a shotgun either coming down the stairs or hiding at the top. The only sound in the room was the whistling of the wind and a muffled whimper coming from Lindsay. I’d told myself after the gunfight with the Colombians a year earlier that I would never again take up arms in anger, but at that moment, my promise to myself was the farthest thing from my mind. I flicked the selector switch on the MP5 to full auto and came off the wall.

  Earl Botts must not have known we were coming. He must not even have suspected that we might come, otherwise he would have armed himself with something more substantial that a shotgun. A fully automatic weapon like the MP5 is capable of firing eight hundred rounds in a minute, more than thirteen in a second, and when I came off that wall I had no intention of giving Botts any quarter. I opened up with the weapon, firing short bursts, and rushed the stairs. With that many bullets flying around him, Botts immediately retreated. I saw him dive into a room and slam the door. I cut loose a burst into the door that tore it from the frame and emptied the rest of the clip through the walls. As I was replacing the empty clip with a fresh one, I heard him yell, “Stop! Please, God, stop! Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!” The shotgun clattered across the floor through the doorway.

  “Crawl out on your hands and knees!” I yelled. “Do it now!”

  “I’m wounded,” he cried.

  “Crawl out now or you’ll be dead!”

  I heard him before I saw him. He was whimpering like the child downstairs. He came through the door on his hands and knees. When he looked up, there was a trail of mucous hanging from his nose and blood was seeping from a wound on his forehead. I felt no compassion for him as I slapped the cuffs Leon had given me on his wrists and dragged him down the stairs. I shoved him onto the floor in the small kitchen and hurried over to where Leon lay. To my great relief, he was breathing and his eyes were open.

  “Leon?” I said. “Leon! Where are you hit?”

  He looked at me quizzically for a second, but then his eyes took on a glint of recognition and he smiled slightly. In the darkness just beyond the door, I heard, “Drop the weapon! Drop it now! Get on the ground!”

  I dropped the machine gun that had been my savior, raised my hands, and lowered myself onto my chest. The cavalry had arrived, albeit a bit late. I turned my head and looked at Leon.

  “God bless Kevlar,” he said, and he closed his eyes and drifted off again.

  CHAPTER 46

  The twelve-gauge slug that lifted Leon off his feet and sent him flying out the door failed to penetrate the Kevlar vest he was wearing, but his head landed on the concrete patio and he wound up with a concussion that had him talking in circles for an entire night. I stayed in Lebanon with him and between sessions of listening to him ask the same five or six questions over and over, I made the necessary telephone calls to get the process of releasing Richard Monroe from jail started.

  Lindsay was taken straight to the hospital. I didn’t get to say a word to her. She was given a clean bill of health by the doctors, interviewed by the FBI, and released to her mother and her grandfather, both of whom had hurried to Lebanon as soon as they heard the news. I was relieved that we’d found her and that she was all right, but I knew that Earl Botts had done a tremendous amount of damage to the Monroe family, and I didn’t know whether it could ever be repaired.

  The dark-haired woman turned out to be a Mexican who was in the country illegally. Botts had found her through his company contacts and had brought her to Tennessee for the sole purpose of caring for Lindsay. She didn’t speak a word of English, but through an interpreter she told the police that Botts hadn’t mistreated her in any way. He told her Lindsay was the daughter of a wealthy corporate executive who had been threatened by Mexican drug lords and that the executive’s wife had already been kidnapped and killed by the cartel. Lindsay, he said, was being hidden until some kind of deal could be struck. Botts kept them both in complete isolation. He delivered food and toys and books and music and whatever else they needed and spent most nights at the cabin, where there was no phone, no computer, no cable, and no television. Lindsay was allowed to play in the yard for one hour a day under the direct supervision of the woman, but contact with anyone was strictly forbidden.

  When the police searched the cabin, they found a safe in the basement. Inside the safe, they found three million dollars in cash. The serial numbers matched those recorded by Charles Russell’s bank when he took possession of the ransom money. Even if the testimony of Kayla Robbins – the trollop, as Bates called her – was suspect, there was no getting around the fact that Botts was holding Lindsay Monroe prisoner and he had the ransom money. He was dead in the water on kidnapping and theft, and he was going to prison for a long, long time.

  As soon as Leon recovered – it took two days before the doctors would release him – and we got back home, he went straight to the jail to interview Botts. That evening, he came out to my house, and over a couple of beers, he told Caroline and Jack and I what everyone had been wondering.

  “You want to know why he did it?” Leon said. “Jealousy. Well, jealousy and resentment and revenge and rage. That’s a lot of r-words, ain’t it?”

  “I thought Charles Russell raised Botts,” I said.

  “He did. Charles’s wife was Botts’s third grade teacher, and along about Thanksgiving time that year, Botts and his momma were riding to school one day when they got T-boned. Botts’s momma didn’t it make and Botts himself wound up in the hospital for three months. Botts doesn’t even know who his daddy is and apparently nobody else in the family wanted him, so Mrs. Russell, Charles’s wife, got things arranged so he could live with them. They took him in. It was a selfless act, a beautiful thing to do, but ol’ Earl didn’t quite see it that way. As he got older, he felt like he didn’t belong, like nothing he did was good enough. He was madly in love with Mary – he said he went so far as to ask her to marry him – but she wasn’t interested. Said she thought of him as a brother, not a lover. When Charles’s wife killed herself, Charles resigned his commission in the Marine Corps and started his company in Nashville. He hired a nanny to help with Earl and Mary, but by that time they were both sixteen and pretty much looked after themselves.

  “When Earl graduated from high school, he went straight into the Marines. I reckon he was trying to get Charles to love him. He told me he thought Charles should have formally adopted him, but Charles said he never really gave it any consideration. Charles said he thought things were fine the way they were. Earl did good in the Marines except for that one incident when he got himself captured, and when he got out Charles put him to work for the company. Worked him hard, too. Sent him all over the world. Paid him real well, but Earl still thought he was getting the short end of the stick. After ten years of working there, he thought he’d paid his dues and that it was time for Charles to step aside and let him take over the company, but Charles had just turned sixty and he had no plans to retire.”

  “What about Richard?” I said. “How does Richard fit into all this?”

  “Richard was the catalyst,” Bates said, “the particle that split the atom and caused the whole explosion. You’re gonna love this, brother Dillard. Well, maybe you won’t love it, but you’ll sure find it interesting. When Richard started fooling around with that little ol’ Robbins girl, Mary got suspicious, but instead of just confronting him, she called her daddy and asked for advice. And what does daddy do? He sends his boy Earl Botts to investigate. Botts tails Richard for a little while, finds out what’s going on, and realizes tha
t he has a perfect opportunity to give all of them a great big what for. He loves Mary, but at the same time, he hates her because she rejected him. He hates Charles because he thinks Charles doesn’t love him and respect him enough, and he hates Richard because Richard is cheating on the woman he believes he should have had all along. So he cooks up this idea to take care of all of them at the same time. When he goes back to Nashville, he tells Charles that Richard isn’t fooling around with a woman, but that he might be fooling around with a man. He knows Charles is a bit on the homophobic side, and he knows Charles and Richard don’t get along all that well. Then he makes his deal with the trollop and sets his plan into action. He crushes Mary by taking her daughter, the thing she loves the most. He frames Richard for it and turns Charles and Mary against him. He destroys the entire family and steals three million dollars of the old man’s money to boot.”

  “What about Lindsay?” Caroline said. “What was he planning to do with her?”

  “The crazy son of a gun was so delusional that he thought he could hide Lindsay for six months or a year – long enough to make sure Richard was gone for good and that Mary got all his money – and then he was gonna tell Mary that he knew where Lindsay was and she could have her back on one condition. The condition was that Mary run away with him. He had the place picked out and everything. He actually believed Mary would go for it, that they’d live happily ever after on some isolated island in the South Pacific.”

  Caroline sighed deeply. “And now he’s going to spend the next thirty years in prison.”

  “And that’s right where he belongs, Miss Caroline,” Bates said, “because I’m telling you, that man is as cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss. There ain’t an ounce of remorse in him, and there’s no telling what he would have done if your husband hadn’t figured out what was going on and put a stop to it.”