by Scott Pratt
I knock a few times and immediately hear a puppy whining. I cup my hands around my face and peer through the windows in the door and, sure enough, a small puppy-it looks like a floppy-eared cocker spaniel-is scratching at the bottom of the door from the inside. Hannah’s mentioned that she picked up a puppy at the animal shelter, but I can’t remember whether she told me what she named it. I knock several more times and then try the door. It’s locked.
I walk around the house, calling Hannah’s name, looking in and knocking on the windows. There’s no movement inside, save for the puppy, which follows the sound of my voice and continues to whimper. The back door is unlocked, and I debate for a second whether I should go inside. I decide she could be sick or injured, and I open the door. An odor of urine and feces greets me along with the puppy. I pick up the puppy, and it wriggles excitedly. I look down and see two small bowls, both empty. The dog apparently hasn’t been fed or watered. I scratch its ears as I walk slowly through the kitchen and continue to call Hannah’s name.
It takes only a few minutes to go through the house. Besides the kitchen, there’s a small dining area and a den, a bedroom that has been converted into an office, another bedroom, and a bathroom. Given the way the day has gone so far, I expect to find something horrible around each corner. I step into the bedroom and see that the bed is made. A small leather purse is sitting on the pink comforter along with a red Windbreaker. There’s an empty glass in the sink in the kitchen, but aside from that and the feces and urine the puppy has deposited on a mat near the back door, the house is spotless.
I open a door off the kitchen that leads to a basement and peer down into the darkness.
“Hannah? Hannah? Are you there?”
No one answers, so I flip on the light and walk down the steps. The floor is concrete, and the walls are unpainted concrete block. There’s a washing machine and a dryer in one corner and some gardening tools in another, but otherwise the basement is empty. I go back to the kitchen and open the refrigerator. A disgusting odor makes me gag. I look around in the refrigerator and quickly find the source-an unopened package of chicken breasts that has spoiled.
I walk back through the house again, this time looking for some telltale sign of disturbance, some small clue as to what has become of the occupant. I pick up the telephone and go back through the caller ID. She’s missed five calls over the weekend. I don’t recognize any of the numbers. I see there are messages but can’t bring myself to listen to them. I already feel like I’m invading her privacy.
Nothing seems to be out of place, but something is wrong. The abandoned puppy, the foul smell in the air, the purse on the bed, the rotten chicken, the car in the driveway. I put the puppy down, hoping it might lead me to something or someone, wishing it could talk, but all it does is put its front paws up on my knees and whimper.
I pick the dog back up, walk outside, and call the sheriff’s cell phone.
20
Sheriff Leon Bates shows up in less than twenty minutes. Bates is immensely popular with the voters in Washington County. He’s in the final year of his first four-year term, but there is no political opposition on the horizon that will keep him from being elected again. He’s so popular that when visiting politicians come around, they make a beeline for him. They all want to kiss up to him, to have their photograph taken with him. They want to gain his favor in the hope that he’ll endorse them come election time. He has a vast network of political connections, and even includes the governor of Tennessee among his closest friends. His political aspirations go far beyond the office of county sheriff, but for now, he’s content to stay put and wait for the right opportunity to come along.
Bates is the hardest- working law enforcement officer I’ve ever known. He sleeps at the office, a habit that cost him a wife, but even she still likes him. He knows every newspaper and television reporter around, gains their confidence by being honest and straightforward, and then is smart enough to gently persuade them to do stories that cast both him and his department in a positive light. He teaches a criminal justice class at East Tennessee State University for free, and speaks at churches, civic clubs, schools, pancake breakfasts, fish fries, and spaghetti suppers. I’ve never seen it, but I feel certain he helps little old ladies cross the street. Bates is a savvy Andy Taylor, a throwback to the days when sheriffs were admired in their small communities. But he’s also a man confronted on a regular basis by real crime in a county that continues to grow and develop. I was suspect of him when we first met-a natural inclination of mine-but in the past few years I’ve come to respect him as a man and admire him as a law enforcement officer.
“Now what has my old buddy Dillard gone and got himself into today?” Bates says as he unfolds from a year-old black BMW and sets his cowboy hat atop his head at a slight angle.
“Nice ride,” I say as he walks around to the trunk and retrieves a pair of latex gloves. “When did you start driving that?”
“Last week. Took it off a meth dealer out toward Sulphur Springs.” Bates smiles, admiring the vehicle. “You’d think them drug dealers would have enough sense to lease. But this old boy paid cash, and what was once his now belongs to the Washington County Sheriff’s Department.” He chuckles under his breath. “I love taking their stuff.”
“Where’s the guy you took it from?”
“I turned him over to the federal government, which means he’ll most likely be resting and relaxing at the medium security penitentiary in Beckley, West Virginia, for the next thirty years or so. I understand the inmates up there got a nice view of the mountains. That your pup?”
“It must belong to Hannah.”
I follow Bates back toward the house. He’s mid-forties, perhaps an inch taller than I, and has the sturdy build of a farmer. His hair is medium length and light brown beneath the tan cowboy hat. He’s wearing his ever-present khaki uniform with the brown epaulets and cowboy boots. I’ve already filled Bates in on the details over the phone. He said he’s talked to Hannah Mills a few times and found her to be a “sweet little ol’ gal.”
Bates stops just short of the back door. “Say you’ve already been through the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Touch anything?”
I think for a second. Did I?
“Just the handle on the refrigerator door. Oh, and the knob on the back door… and the knob on the door leading to the basement and a light switch. And the phone.”
Bates shakes his head.
“Don’t touch anything else,” he says, and walks in. “Lord, what’s that smell?”
“Spoiled chicken.”
“Make you think twice about eating such a foul animal,” he says, smiling at his lame pun.
I follow silently as he retraces my earlier route through the house, including the basement. He grunts occasionally, but other than that, he offers no comment. When he’s finished with the house, we walk the edge of the property, finding nothing. Finally, Bates attempts to open the driver’s-side door on the Camry. It’s locked, so he walks back inside the house, reappearing a moment later with a set of keys.
“Got these out of her purse,” he says, dangling them gingerly from his latex-covered fingers.
Bates opens the door and looks through the interior of the car, then opens the trunk.
“This ain’t good,” he says.
“What?” I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.
“Take a look at this.”
I walk around to where he’s standing and follow his pointing finger to a dark spot on the carpet in the trunk. The circumference of the spot is about the same as a coffee cup.
“Blood,” he says. “Bet my badge on it.”
“That could be anything,” I say.
“It ain’t anything. It’s blood.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“C’mon back here and take a peek at this.”
We walk around the car, and he points to the driver’s seat. I look at him stupidly. I have no idea wh
at he’s trying to tell me.
“Good thing you’re a lawyer instead of a cop,” he says. “The unsolved-crime rate would skyrocket.”
“So you think there’s been a crime?”
“I think we’re gonna have some problems finding this gal,” Bates says. “And when we do find her, I’ll bet you a poke full of cash to a pig’s ear she’s gonna be dead.”
21
I leave Leon Bates to what he believes is his crime scene shortly thereafter. There isn’t anything I can do. He’s already put in a call to forensics, a department he’s also funded with money seized from drug dealers. He’s hired and trained specialists so he doesn’t have to go begging to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation every time he finds himself with a serious crime on his hands. His department even has a mobile minilab. It won’t surprise me if Bates winds up funding his own full- fledged lab sometime in the not-too-distant future. He’s become so proficient at arresting drug dealers that I find it hard to believe there are any left in the county. But I guess they’re like rats, multiplying in the darkness while the world around them pretends they’re under control. I take the puppy to a woman in Jonesborough who boards dogs, then drive back to the office.
I find Mooney in his office, sipping coffee, fiddling with his mustache, and reading the Johnson City newspaper. He must read every word, including the obituaries and the classified ads, because he pores over it for hours every day.
“No luck,” I say as I peck on the door frame.
“No luck? What do you mean?”
“Her car’s there, her purse is on the bed along with a jacket, but she’s nowhere to be found.”
“You looked all over?”
“Twice.”
Mooney leans back in his chair and rubs his chin. “Christ, I guess we ought to start checking around to see whether anybody’s heard from her.”
“Don’t bother,” I say. “Bates is on it.”
“ Bates? What do you mean, Bates?”
“I called him.”
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“Because there’s a puppy in the house that’s obviously been alone for a while. Because there’s meat spoiled in the refrigerator. Because her house is outside the city limits, so it’s his turf. Something’s wrong, Lee. Bates thinks there’s blood in the trunk of her car.”
“Bates is a redneck.”
“Bates is a good cop.”
Mooney leans forward and puts his face in his hands.
“My God,” he says, “she’s such a sweet kid. I’ll never forgive myself if something’s happened to her. And with what’s happened to Judge Green… what will people think?”
What will people think? We have a murdered judge and a young woman missing, and he’s calculating political fallout. My distaste for him is growing faster than a garden weed.
“There has to be some reasonable explanation,” I say.
“I’m the one who talked her into coming here, you know.” Mooney’s voice takes on a dreamy sort of monotone. “She gave a seminar in Nashville about the importance of compassion for victims in the district attorney’s office. She was so convincing, so persuasive. Bright, funny, attractive. When she finished, I felt like I’d been saved at a revival. I saw her in the hotel lobby a little while later and introduced myself and asked her if she’d like to have a cup of coffee. We ended up talking for a couple of hours, and I convinced her she’d love northeast Tennessee and she’d enjoy working here.”
“No offense, but what you’re saying sounds like a little more than professional interest.”
“No!” Mooney says, slamming his palm onto the desktop. His eyes open wide, and he glares at me. “Why is everybody’s mind always in the gutter? It wasn’t anything like that. I just thought she might bring some fresh air into this place. Besides, I’m not a cradle robber. I’m old enough to be her father. That’s the way I felt about her. Fatherly. Protective, you know?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted you to know where it stands.”
I leave him with his head in hands, surprised at the depth of his emotion and relieved that he didn’t mention Ramirez again. But there’s something that’s bothering me, something he said: “That’s the way I felt about her. Fatherly. Protective, you know?”
Felt about her. He’s referring to her in the past tense.
Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue.
Or maybe he knows something I don’t.
22
Anita White sat across the desk from Judge Ivan Glass while he read over her application for search warrants for Toni Miller’s home and Tommy Miller’s car. She’d drafted the affidavit carefully, laying out everything she knew about Ray Miller’s relationship with Judge Leonard Green, the suicide in the courtroom, the subsequent funeral, the judge’s murder, and her reasons for believing she had probable cause to search for evidence.
Anita had gone back to the Lake Harbor neighborhood and obtained a signed affidavit from Colonel Robbins, the neighbor who saw the white car. She’d gotten the nosy neighbor, Trudy Goodin, to sign an affidavit saying she’d seen Tommy Miller arrive early that morning in his white Honda. She’d also picked up a tape recording of the 911 call from the motorist who was nearly run off the road by the white car near the time of the murder and had it transcribed. She’d obtained copies of the vehicle registration from the Department of Motor Vehicles that said Tommy Miller was the owner of a white Honda Civic. She’d attached everything to her written application for the warrants. She’d done everything she could think of. Now it was up to the elderly judge to sign the warrants so she could proceed with this part of her investigation.
Anita had also followed Dillard’s suggestion and collected the judge’s computer. She’d sent it to Knoxville, but it would be at least a couple of weeks before the techs could sift through all of the information on the computer and report back to her. The investigation into people whom Green had sent to the penitentiary revealed that only two had been released in the last six months-a burglar named Wayne Timmons who’d moved to Jackson, and a nonviolent, drug-addicted check kiter named Melanie Buford. Anita didn’t think either of them a likely suspect.
She’d already contacted a detective in Durham, North Carolina, a veteran named Hakeem Ramakrishna-they called him “Rama”-and faxed him a copy of her application. Rama was doing the same thing in Durham that Anita was doing in Jonesborough. He was asking a North Carolina judge to issue a search warrant for Tommy Miller’s car and an order allowing the police to collect a DNA sample from him. Anita thought the logical place for Tommy to go would be back to Duke University.
Judge Glass finished reading, removed his tinted glasses, and began rubbing the bridge of his nose. This was the first time Anita had been in Glass’s office; the first time, in fact, she’d ever spoken to him. His reputation was that the pain medication he took for his plethora of health problems made him cranky and erratic, and that he suffered mightily from black-robe fever. But he was also known as an ally to law enforcement, a judge who would stretch the limits of probable cause.
Glass quit rubbing his nose and gave her a fierce look.
“This is pretty goddamned thin,” he said. “The core of this application is a white car. It doesn’t say what kind of car it is, what make or model; just that it’s white, that it might have been seen in the vicinity of the murder around the time it was committed, and that your suspect owns a white car. Very little specificity here.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Anita said.
She knew Glass had been around forever and had probably seen and heard every trick cops use when trying to get warrants. There was no point in trying to bullshit him.
“But when you add everything up,” Anita said, “and look at the totality of the circumstances, I think there’s enough probable cause to at least search.”
“Totality of the circumstances?” Glass said. “They teach you that at the academy?”
“I have a law degree, sir,” Anita said.
/> “I didn’t like the son of a bitch, you know,” Glass said.
“Beg your pardon?”
Glass leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. The folds in his neck looked like string cheese.
“Green. Didn’t like him worth a damn. You know he campaigned openly against me during my last two elections? He was jealous because I was the senior judge in the circuit. He wanted to be the big shot. But he was dumber than a coal bucket and had the personality of a goddamned salamander. And those teeth, Jesus. He could eat an ear of corn through a picket fence. I don’t know how he kept getting elected.”
Anita attempted to maintain her professionalism. She’d never heard a judge speak in such a manner. His reputation was well deserved, at least the part about being erratic and cranky.
“Whatever his shortcomings, Your Honor, I’m sure you agree he didn’t deserve the death he received.”
“I heard he was hanged and burned,” Glass said. “That right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s correct.”
“Been a few times when I would like to have hanged the bastard myself.”
Glass chuckled, obviously amused with himself.
“Yes, well, as far as the standard for probable cause for a warrant goes, I think the affidavit is sufficient,” Anita said. She wasn’t about to indulge Judge Glass in bashing a murder victim.
“He was a fag, too, you know,” Glass said. “Never saw him with a woman, not once. You’d think a man in his position would at least try to fake it. Not Green, though; he was so goddamned arrogant. But you know what? He probably couldn’t have faked it even if he wanted to. It was just too obvious.”
Anita wished she’d brought a tape recorder. Norcross and the rest of the agents in the office would have loved this.
“Is there anything else I can tell you?” Anita asked. “Any more information you’d like to have before you decide?”