A Crime of Passion

by Scott Pratt

  “I don’t really know. Juries like to hear defendants deny committing the crime, especially if the denial is convincing or sincere or emotional. But they also expect defendants to deny committing the crime, so to be honest, I don’t know how important it really is for you to get up there and say, ‘No, I didn’t kill her.’ It will give Frye another chance to stand there and say, ‘Okay, you admit you were having an argument with her but you didn’t kill her. You admit you went to her room but you didn’t kill her. You admit you slapped her but you didn’t kill her. How convenient for you. And oh, by the way, what did she say that made you slap her?’”

  “And I’ll have to answer?”

  “Probably not. It isn’t a dying declaration and I can’t think of any other exception to the hearsay rule, so it’s hearsay and I can object and the judge will probably tell you not to answer. But every single member of the jury is going to want to know the answer to the same question, and if you get up on the stand and weasel out of having to answer it, they’re not going to like you very much. Have you decided what you’re going to say if you end up having to answer that question under oath?”

  “She insulted my mother.”

  “Kasey? Kasey insulted your mother? That’s why you slapped her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll talk about it some more in the morning,” I said, “but for now, let’s just go with the idea that you’re not going to testify.”

  Paul and I stayed at the restaurant for about an hour, and after that, I drove out to Charlie’s house and had a couple beers with her and Jack. It was nice. We sat on her front porch and smelled country smells and listened to music and drank the beers and forgot about Paul and Lana Milius for almost three hours. I drove back to the house on Belle Meade around ten o’clock, watched television for about an hour, and fell fast asleep in the recliner in the den. About three in the morning, I must have heard something unusual because my eyes flew wide open and I sat straight up in the chair.

  Sitting on the couch, right across the room, was a man. He was pointing a pistol at my chest. I cursed myself underneath my breath for not taking Tilly’s warning more seriously and slowly leaned back in the recliner.

  “Are you Lana’s guy?” I said as calmly as I could.

  “I guess you could say that,” he said.

  “You here to kill me?”

  “Depends. I thought we might talk a little first.”

  CHAPTER 42

  “Would you state your name, please?” I said as I opened my defense of Paul Milius with the one and only witness I would call.

  “John Smith.”

  “Where do you live, Mr. Smith?”

  “Right now I’m living here in Nashville, on Second Avenue, but I’ll be leaving soon.”

  The man on the witness stand was the same man who had been sitting in the den of my rented home the previous night pointing a pistol at my chest. He was handsome and leathery, mid-thirties, probably five feet, ten inches tall and a hundred and seventy pounds. His hair was short and chestnut brown, his face covered with a thick mat of short stubble. He’d come to court wearing navy blue pans and a white, button-down shirt with a striped tie. No jacket.

  “Mr. Smith, we might as well get right to the point. Do you have direct knowledge of who killed Kasey Cartwright on the morning of December eleventh last year?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell us what you know, please.”

  “I killed her.”

  Judge Graves’s gavel slammed so hard I thought he’d broken it as the crowd behind me erupted again.

  “Get up here, right now,” he demanded, and Pennington Frye and I walked to the bench.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing, Mr. Dillard?” the judge said.

  “Putting on my defense. It’s going to be a pretty good one.”

  “This is just like yesterday,” the judge said. “You can’t just…you can’t just come in here and do whatever you like!”

  “I’m not doing anything wrong, Judge. Nothing improper. This man came to the house I was staying in at three in the morning. Just last night. If you’ll let him testify, I think you’ll be interested in what he has to say, although I’ll tell you right now his testimony directly refutes everything Lana Raines-Milius said yesterday.”

  “I kicked her out of the courtroom.”

  “And you can kick this guy out, too, if you think he’s lying or if it gets too strange, but you can’t pick and choose the witnesses, Judge. This case is what it is. You let Lana up there. You have to let Mr. Smith testify. Fair is fair. Give Mr. Frye the same amount of room you gave me on cross-examination. Let him try to tear the guy apart. I won’t say a word.”

  “This whole thing stinks to high heaven,” the judge said. “Step back.”

  I walked back to the lectern and started right back in.

  “You said your name is John Smith, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you said a minute ago that you killed Kasey Cartwright?”

  “I did.”

  “Where did you kill her?”

  “In room 3100 at the Plaza Hotel here in Nashville.”

  “When did you kill her?”

  “It was back in December. The night of the tenth and eleventh.”

  “What time did you kill her?”

  “Around two thirty in the morning.”

  “How did you kill her?”

  “I strangled her with my hands.”

  “And finally, why did you kill her?”

  “I was paid to kill her and Mr. Milius, but Mr. Milius left the room before I could get to him.”

  “Who paid you?”

  “Lana Raines-Milius.”

  “She paid you directly?”

  “She wired the money to an offshore account that I control.”

  “How much did she pay you?”

  “The contract price was $5 million for both of them, but I only received half of that amount on the front end. There’s a bit of a disagreement going on right now between us over whether I should be paid the rest of the money.”

  “Can you describe in detail for the jury how you came to be hired and how you went about killing Miss Cartwright?”

  “I was initially approached by an associate who is located in London. He had been contacted by someone else who had been contacted by someone else who had been contacted by someone else. I don’t even know all the contacts myself or exactly how the job originated. I don’t want to know. It’s an extremely secretive, complicated process. But eventually, the offer made its way to me and I accepted it. I gathered a small team and we came to Nashville. One of my men contacted Mrs. Milius initially and provided her with a specially programmed cellular phone. She gave the phone to Mr. Milius’s personal assistant, a man named Alex Pappas. Mr. Pappas then provided us with information on the targets, the date, where the job was supposed to take place, all of those things. He also used money he received from Mrs. Milius to wire half the contract price to an offshore account. We started the reconnaissance process, figured out how best to get myself into the hotel room, and procured some equipment. Then on the night the job was supposed to be completed, I entered the hotel through the service entrance dressed as an employee, went to the thirty-first floor, and used a microcontroller to read the key code and unlock the door. The room was a suite, and I waited in the bedroom closet for the targets to come in. My plan was to wait until they were in bed and then shoot both of them in the head, but I started to think something had gone wrong when the girl came in alone.”

  “What time did she come in?” I asked.

  “It was around one forty-five. She just sat down on the couch out in the den of the suite and started watching television. I stayed in the closet and waited. Around two twenty or so, I heard a knock on the door, the television went off, and then I heard a man talking to her. Their voices got louder—they were arguing—and then all of a sudden I heard a smack. The girl ran through the bedroom into the bathroom and slammed
the door. The man came in and was saying, “Kasey, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Open the door.” I couldn’t go after him while she was in the bathroom because I didn’t know whether she’d taken her phone in there with her and might be calling the police. She screamed at him to get out and the next thing I knew he said, “Okay, I’m going,” and he was out the door and gone. She came out just a couple minutes later, and I immediately did what I’d come there to do. I didn’t shoot her, though. She was so small I just grabbed her by the throat and it was over in just a minute.”

  “So you only completed half the job.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you finish it later?”

  “I intended to, but in the immediate aftermath of the girl being found, there was a lot of attention being focused on Mr. Milius, so I decided to back off and wait. I left Nashville and then just a couple weeks later one of my associates received word that Mr. Milius had been arrested for the murder and that they no longer wanted us to complete the job.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that by coming here and offering this testimony you’ll be arrested for murder, Mr. Smith?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t matter if they arrest me. They won’t be able to keep me.”

  “You’ll escape?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’d be willing to kill anyone who got in your way?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Would you mind telling the jury a bit about your background?”

  “I was a United States Navy Seal assigned to the Joint Special Operations Command for almost ten years. I killed seventy-eight people during that time using a sniper rifle and participated in dozens of raids against suspected terrorist targets. Four years ago, I was seriously wounded during an operation in Yemen. It took me a year to recover. When I was ready to come back, I was told I was no longer welcome. Too old, they said. Unreliable because of the time I had to take off. Behind on the training and the tactics and the missions. They pretty much tossed me aside. I wasn’t ready to quit, so I made myself available to an organization that had been doing contract killings all over the world for decades. I did several jobs for them and then decided to just go it alone.”

  “So killing is your business.”

  “Killing is my business.”

  “And Kasey Cartwright was just a target to you?”

  “That’s all any of the people I’ve killed have been. Just targets.”

  “Why are you here, Mr. Smith? Why are you risking arrest and incarceration and possibly the death penalty to testify in this case?”

  “I may be a killer,” he said, “but Lana Milius is far worse than me. I just wanted everyone to know that.”

  “So why don’t you just kill her?” I asked. “Why don’t you use your resources and stalk her and gather your intelligence and plan it out and kill her and get away with it?”

  He smiled and leaned forward into the microphone.

  “Believe me, I’ve thought about it,” he said. “But this is a lot more fun.”

  CHAPTER 43

  I had to hand it to Pennington Frye.

  I’d done the same thing to him that he’d done to me the previous day. I’d surprised him with a witness and delivered an incredibly strong blow to his case. But rather than give up and ask meaningless questions or stand in front of the witness and just repeat his testimony—which so many bad lawyers do—Frye tried to turn it.

  He hadn’t said a word during my direct examination of John Smith—not one, single objection. When I was done, after Smith had delivered what I thought had to be the death knell: “Believe me, I’ve thought about it. But this is a lot more fun,” Frye stood up, walked to the lectern, leaned back a little, and took a long, slow deep breath. He raised his chin, squared his shoulders, and clapped.

  “That was some performance,” Frye said.

  “Thank you,” Smith said with a smirk. I wished immediately he hadn’t said it.

  “May I see some identification?” Frye said.

  Smith said, “Sure, no problem,” reached into his back pocket, and produced a driver’s license that was eventually passed to me. It identified him as John Smith, address 5617 Second Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee 37208. It looked legitimate to me, and Frye didn’t say anything to the judge or anyone else about it. He just asked the bailiff to hand it back to Smith.

  “Is John Smith your real name?” Frye said.

  “It is.”

  “Don’t you think John Doe would have been more appropriate?”

  “My name isn’t John Doe.”

  “It isn’t John Smith, either, is it, Mister whatever your name is?”

  “I just showed you my identification,” Smith said.

  “What you just showed me is fake. When did you decide you needed to testify in this trial, Mr. Smith?” Frye asked.

  “Yesterday. As soon as I heard about Lana’s testimony. I flew in from Montana. Got here just after midnight and paid a visit to Mr. Dillard.”

  “So you, the self-described international assassin, the freelance James Bond, have been following this trial closely?”

  “I’ve been fascinated,” Smith said. “It’s been good theater. And besides, Mrs. Milius still owes me two and a half million dollars, so that’s kept me interested.”

  “You didn’t happen to bring along any documentation of this $2.5 million wire transfer you spoke of earlier, did you?”

  “I sure didn’t.”

  “Do you plan to collect while you’re here?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “And you don’t have any proof of your presence in Kasey Cartwright’s hotel room that night, do you?”

  “The proof of my presence is that she’s dead.”

  “How much did Mr. Milius pay you, Mr. Smith?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “How much did he pay you to take part in this charade? What’s it worth to risk arrest and trial for murder these days? Ten million? Twenty?”

  “He didn’t pay me—”

  “Are you a trained actor, Mr. Smith, or does lying just come to you naturally? Because this just doesn’t make any sense to me. There isn’t one bit of evidence that you were anywhere near Kasey Cartwright’s room that night. All we have is you coming in here right at the end of the trial and saying, ‘I did it.’ Did you really think you can fool a jury—a group of twelve intelligent people—with a stunt like this?”

  “I don’t really care what they believe,” Smith said, “but I’m telling the truth.”

  “If you don’t really care what they think, then why are you here? No, no, never mind, don’t answer that. You’re here to indulge your sense of justice and fair play, correct?”

  “Something like that.”

  “The international assassin, the man who says he’s killed almost a hundred terrorists, the military hero, the man who says killing is his business, has a strong sense of justice and fair play. Is that what you’re telling us?”

  “I’m telling you I killed the girl.”

  “Of course you did,” Frye said. “So I suppose we’ll just arrest you and let Mr. Milius go with our deepest apologies, and then we’ll put you on trial with absolutely no evidence except your last-minute confession—oh wait, we won’t put you on trial because you’re a trained international assassin and you’ll escape. So I suppose I should just ask the court to dismiss the charge against Mr. Milius and everyone should just go home?”

  “You could arrest Lana Milius if it would make you feel better, but I won’t be around to testify.”

  “Thank you, thank you for the sage advice, Mister whatever your name is. How much did you say Mr. Milius paid you to come in here and tell this tall tale? It really is Paul Bunyanesque.”

  “Mr. Milius didn’t pay me anything. His wife paid me.”

  “I’ve already grown tired of listening to your lies,” Frye said. “Your presence here disgusts me. Will you kill me for saying that?
”

  “Not unless somebody pays me.”

  “Maybe Mr. Milius will give you a little bonus. You’re excused.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Frye delivered his closing argument, I delivered mine, and the judge read the jury instructions before lunch. I’d left the courthouse immediately and spent the day with Jack and Charlie. I checked in with one of the bailiffs I’d befriended during the trial around two thirty and he told me he’d heard a lot of arguing and even some cursing going on in the jury room. At five fifteen, my cell phone rang. It was the judge’s clerk.

  “They have a verdict.”

  We got through the rush-hour traffic as quickly as we could and arrived at the courthouse just after five thirty. Everyone took their places in the courtroom, and the judge called the jury in. A man named Ted Hanson, fifty-two years old, had obviously been elected foreman because he was carrying the verdict form in his hand.

  Judge Graves waited until the jury was in the box and seated before saying to Paul, “Mr. Milius, please stand.” I stood with him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you elected a foreperson?” the judge said.

  Most of them nodded.

  “Will he or she please stand?”

  Ted Hanson stood.

  “Mr. Foreman,” the judge said, “has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?”

  “We have, Your Honor,” Hanson said.

  “In the case of State of Tennessee versus Paul Milius, how does the jury find?”

  “We find the defendant guilty.”

  CHAPTER 45

  I tossed my suitcase into the trunk of Caroline’s car and climbed into the passenger seat. I was so relieved to see her. I knew she’d been suffering because of the new medication. Her cheeks were hollow, she’d lost more weight, and she’d told me she was sleeping between twelve and fifteen hours a day. My sister, Sarah, had been spending a lot of time with her along with Lilly, but I was glad to be home. She was my wife. Taking care of her when she was sick was my job.

  It was just after nine o’clock on the day following Paul Milius’s conviction. Caroline was picking me up at the airport. I’d taken a commercial flight from Nashville because Paul Milius had fired me as soon as we walked out of the courtroom. I’d said, “I’m sorry, Paul,” and he’d responded with, “You’re damned right you are. You’re the sorriest lawyer I’ve ever run across in my life. You’re fired. I hope I never see your face again.”