by Scott Pratt
A moment later, I felt the right front tire drop off the embankment. I’d been turned almost a hundred and eighty degrees. I looked and at last caught a flash of the truck that was pushing me. It was a silver Dodge. Then the right rear dropped, and my truck was rolling. My head slammed into the steering wheel and I saw a flash of bright light. I felt a brief sense of dizziness as images flashed. I thought I heard a splash, then an explosion, then I thought I was being smothered.
And then it was silent and still. I felt fingers gently rubbing across my forehead.
“Joe,” a voice said. “Joe, honey, it’s time to wake up. C’mon, baby, you have to wake up.” It was Caroline’s voice.
I awoke to the sound of a rushing waterfall. It was dark, and my wife was nowhere to be found. I looked around. I was leaning hard to my right and being restrained by something. I reached down and realized it was a seat belt. Something was pushing against my face. An air bag. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I remembered that the Dodge had pushed me over the embankment. I was in the lake, and the sound I heard wasn’t a waterfall, it was the lake rushing in through the open passenger window. As I struggled with the seat belt, the truck began to level off and more water started pouring in through the driver’s side.
“I am not going to drown!” I said out loud. “I am not going to drown in this freaking lake!”
I got the belt off, scooted out from beneath the air bag, and crouched in the middle of the seat. Water was pouring in so fast on either side of me that there was no way I could get out. I knew I’d have to wait until the truck was submerged. I looked around frantically. The headlights were still on. I could see bubbles rising as the truck sank in the water. I pulled my shoes off. The water continued to pour and roar.
And then it was black. The water began to cover me. It was so cold I could barely breathe at first. My face was nearly against the roof as the cab finally filled. I took a deep breath and pushed myself through the passenger side window. The truck had started to roll in the water, and for a second, I had no idea which direction to swim.
I thought about the bubbles in the headlights. Bubbles rise, Joe. Follow the bubbles. I let out some air and felt the bubbles rise across my face. I kicked for my life, and a few seconds later, I broke the surface. It was eerily quiet, but the moon gave off enough light that I could make out the features of the landscape around me. I was only about twenty feet from the steep, rocky bank where I’d gone over. I looked up to see whether whoever tried to kill me — and I knew it had to be Junior Tester — was still there. I couldn’t see or hear anyone.
Boone is a mountain lake, and the water was bone-chilling. My teeth started chattering and my hands and feet were already beginning to tingle. I knew I had to get out fast. I swam for the bank, got hold of some overhanging brush, and pulled myself up onto the rocks. I sat there for a couple of minutes, caught my breath, and tried to compose myself.
I took inventory of my body first. I didn’t seem to be hurt too badly. My ribs and chest were sore, but I didn’t think I had any broken bones. All of my joints seemed to be in working order and I didn’t have any trouble making a fist with either hand. I noticed something warm running down my face and touched it. I was bleeding from a cut above my left eye. It was tender and beginning to swell, but I didn’t think it was too serious. I looked up the bank and realized how far the truck had fallen. I was lucky to be alive.
It took me at least ten minutes to crawl up the rocky slope to the road. I crouched in some brush for several minutes. A couple of cars went by, but I was afraid to stand up and wave for fear that Junior might come back. I finally mustered the courage to get up and start walking down the asphalt road. I knew there were houses about a mile away. After about a quarter-mile, I found myself wishing I hadn’t shed my shoes.
As I walked down the road with my socks squishing and the warm blood running down the side of my face, I wondered if Junior thought he’d succeeded in killing me. What about Caroline and Lilly? Would he be crazy enough to go after one of them? I felt my heart quicken, and I began to jog.
A short time later, I made my way to a farmhouse set about a hundred yards off the road. Nearly every light in the house was on. As I climbed the steps, I looked down and noticed the front of my shirt was soaked with blood. I wondered what kind of reception I’d get when whoever answered the door saw a blood-soaked stranger wearing a tie and no shoes standing on the porch.
I knocked. A small dog immediately started yapping, and a woman who looked to be around seventy appeared at the door. She pulled the curtain aside and peered up at me through oval-shaped glasses. Her gray hair was pulled into a tight bun. A look of horror immediately came over her face — I must have looked even worse than I felt.
“What do ye want?” she yelled through the door.
“I’ve been in an accident,” I said. “I need to use your phone.”
“Air ye drunk?”
“No ma’am.”
She looked me up and down. “Soaking wet and ye ain’t got no shoes. Where’s yer shoes?”
“In the lake,” I said. “My car went into the lake. I had to swim out.”
“Ye drove yer car into the lake? What’d ye do a fool thing like that fer?”
“I didn’t mean to, ma’am. It was an accident. Please, if you could just hand the phone out the door, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Yer bleeding like a stuck hog.”
“I know. I hit my head.”
“Got a name?”
“Dillard. My name is Joe Dillard.”
“Dillard? Any kin to Hobie and Rena Dillard out Sulphur Springs?”
“I don’t think so. Please, ma’am, do you have a phone I can use?”
“Well, I reckon,” she said after a thoughtful moment. “You don’t look like a hoodlum.”
She opened the door and I stumbled in. It must have been the tie.
June 16
11:00 p.m.
I’d called Caroline from the mountain woman’s house, and she and Lilly had come to pick me up. Lilly started crying when she saw me. After I got into the car and things settled down a little, I told Caroline what happened and who I thought had pushed me into the lake.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I’m not sure. Guess I’ll start by calling the police.”
I used Caroline’s cell phone to call 9-1-1 from the car. Mine was at the bottom of Boone Lake in the console of my truck. I told the dispatcher what had happened and that I was headed to the emergency room. She said they’d send someone up.
Since the attack had occurred in the county, jurisdiction for my attempted murder fell to the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. An investigator showed up and stood beside the gurney while a doctor stitched up my eye.
The damage amounted to a bruised sternum, a few bruised ribs, and a two-inch gash above the orbital bone that surrounded my left eye. The doctor covered the eye while he stitched, so I could only see the investigator who’d been dispatched to talk to me out of my right eye. His name was Sam Wiseman. Sam was almost seven feet tall and had to weigh in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds. He was a surly man, and he had no compunction about letting me know that he didn’t like me. His feelings stemmed from a case I’d defended a couple of years earlier. A group of teenagers had vandalized a Baptist church in the county. They broke every pane of glass in the place and threw paint and mustard and anything else they could find all over the sanctuary. By the time they were finished, they’d done more than fifty thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Sam caught the case, and unfortunately for my client, a 15-year-old girl named Delores McKinney, the church they vandalized happened to be the church that Sam attended every Sunday with his mother.
Sam insisted that every one of the juveniles go off to detention for at least a year, a demand I considered unreasonable since my client was a good student, had no record whatsoever, admitted what she’d done after she sobered up, and her parents were more than willing to reimburse th
e church for her share of the damages. She pleaded guilty to vandalism, and I hired a psychologist for the sentencing hearing. When the juvenile court judge heard how much the kids had to drink, heard that they stole the booze and the pills they took from their own parents, and heard the shrink testify about peer pressure and gang mentality, she put them all on probation. Sam blamed it on me.
As I lay on the gurney, I ran back through the night’s events for Sam and told him about Tester’s son and what had happened in the courtroom at Angel’s arraignment. The problem was that I hadn’t actually seen the person driving the truck either time. I didn’t even have a tag number.
“I can’t get a warrant based on what you’ve told me,” Sam said.
“I know.”
“I can find out where he lives and see if the sheriff will let me go down and talk to him tomorrow.”
“I doubt he’ll admit to anything.”
“There might be some damage on his truck, but you have to understand it’ll be hard to prove. If you’re going to accuse a sheriff’s deputy of doing something this crazy, you’re going to need more than suspicion.”
“I understand.”
Sam finished taking his notes and gruffly told me he’d make sure my insurance company got a copy of his report. The doctor finished stitching me up, and Caroline, Lilly, and I walked out the door. We started home in silence.
“What are you going to do?” Caroline asked again about ten minutes later.
“I’m not sure, but you and Lilly have to be extra careful now, do you understand? Maybe you should go away for a couple of weeks.”
“I’m not about to let some lunatic run me out of my home,” Caroline said.
“He’s a dangerous lunatic, Caroline. Aren’t you just a little afraid?”
“A little, but if he comes anywhere near the house Rio will tear his leg off, and if he gets past Rio, I have a big strong Ranger to take care of me.”
“He almost got the best of your big strong Ranger tonight.”
“But he didn’t, did he? My Ranger lives to fight another day.”
It was past midnight when we got home, and I was sore and tired. Lilly was still upset, so I told her to sleep in our bed. After we were sure she was asleep, I double-checked to make sure all the doors and windows were locked. Caroline had taken a seat on the couch in the den, and I went in and lay down with my head in her lap.
“You saved my life tonight,” I said as she stroked my forehead.
“Really? How?”
“When I went over the bank, I hit my head on the steering wheel. It knocked me out, but this voice kept telling me to wake up. It was your voice. You woke me up before I drowned.”
She leaned over and kissed me softly.
“I’ll always be there when you need me, babe,” she said. “Always.”
I closed my eyes with the taste of her mouth lingering, and somehow managed to drift off to sleep.
Scott Pratt
Joe Dillard — 01 — An Innocent Client
June 17
Midnight
I was so sore the next morning I could barely get off the couch, so I spent the day at home, looking out the window, worrying and wondering. I got hold of Jack a little before noon, but I didn’t tell him anything about Junior Tester. He’d been invited to play baseball for Martinsville in the Coastal Plains League over the summer and was having the time of his life. He said he was still hitting the ball great and had talked to several big league scouts. I promised him I’d make it up there to see him play sometime soon.
Sam Wiseman called at two-thirty in the afternoon and told me he’d called the Cocke County Sheriff’s Department and learned that Tester had taken a week’s vacation.
“I called his house, but nobody answered,” Sam said.
“Are you planning to go down there?”
“I ran it by my supervisor. He said since you didn’t see the driver and don’t have a tag number, it’d be a waste of time.”
“What if the front end of his truck is banged up like you said at the hospital?” What if it has paint on it the same color as my truck?”
“You know how it is around here. We’ve only got five investigators to cover three shifts. There’s been a string of burglaries we’re working, and the boss wants me to keep concentrating on that. He said he can’t let me go chasing around Cocke County on a case I don’t have much chance of making.”
“That’s great, Sam. What about my family?”
“What about them?”
“Can’t you spare anyone to look out for them? At least for a few days.”
“We barely have enough road deputies to cover patrols. Besides, you haven’t exactly…” His voice trailed off without finishing the sentence, but the tone alarmed me.
“I haven’t exactly what, Sam?”
“You haven’t exactly made a bunch of friends around here over the years, you know. Not many people here are willing to go out of their way to help you.”
“So you’re telling me that the sheriff’s department won’t help me because I’m a defense lawyer?”
“I’m telling you we only have five investigators to cover three shifts, we don’t have enough patrol deputies to provide security for one family, we have a lot of other cases, and you’re accusing a law enforcement officer of a serious crime with no real evidence to back it up. I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Wait for him to come back?”
“Maybe you ought to buy a gun.”
“I already have guns. I was hoping you guys would do something so I wouldn’t have to use them.”
”Sorry. Like I said, we’re not going to be able to do anything right now.”
“Thanks, Sam. Thanks for nothing.”
I hung up the phone, walked into the den, and sat down at the computer, as angry as I’d ever been in my life. It didn’t take me long to find Junior’s address and phone number on the internet. Mapquest even gave me directions to his house. I printed the directions and memorized the phone number, something that had always come easy for me. Once the numbers were in my brain, they stayed there for years. I spent the rest of the day trying to think of the various situations I might run into if I actually did what I was thinking of doing.
At 11:30 p.m., after the evening routines were all finished and Lilly had gone to bed — in our room again — I asked Caroline to sit down at the kitchen table. I told her about my conversation with Sam Wiseman and that the police weren’t going to help. Finally, I took a deep breath.
“I’m going down there,” I said.
“Where?” Caroline said.
“To Newport. To find Junior.”
“When?”
“Tonight. Now.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes. I am.”
“No you’re not. No way.”
“I’m going, Caroline. You can’t stop me.”
“And just what do you propose to do when you find him?” Her voice took on some intensity, and she stood up. Neither was a good sign.
“I’m not sure, but I can’t just sit around here. The police aren’t going to do anything, so I have to take care of this myself. Sit back down and talk to me. Try to be rational.”
“Rational? Did I just hear you say rational? You’re talking about going out in the middle of the night to an insane man’s house to do God knows what and you’re telling me to be rational? You’re as crazy as he is!”
I stood up and started toward the bedroom with Caroline right on my heels.
“He’s a police officer, Joe,” she said. “He’s going to have a gun, you know.” The words were staccato and her voice was a tone I’d only heard a couple of times during all the years we’d been together.
“Keep your voice down. Lilly’s sleeping.”
“Don’t tell me to keep my voice down. Wake up, Lilly! Your dad’s about to do something insane! You better kiss him goodbye, because you might never see him again!”
Lilly stir
red and groaned, but she could sleep through a hurricane.
“Leave her out of this,” I said. I walked into my closet and grabbed up a pair of black jeans, a navy blue hooded sweatshirt, a pair of old combat boots, and a black stocking cap. Then I hurried back out to the kitchen and started to change clothes. Caroline was hovering like an attack helicopter.
“I have to do something to this guy,” I said as I pulled off my shirt. “If I don’t, we’re all going to spend our lives looking over our shoulders. Think, Caroline, think about what he did. He staked us out. He stalked you. He followed me and ran my truck into the lake. He tried to kill me. What do you want me to do? Sit back and give him another chance, because I guarantee you he’ll try again as soon as he finds out I’m still breathing. Or maybe he’ll try to kill you next time. Or Lilly. Or maybe he’ll wait until he gets a shot at all of us at the same time. Three for the price of one.”
“I don’t care, Joe. I-”
“Yes, you do. You care. You care about me and you care about Lilly and you care about living. And as much as you want to think we should be civilized right now, as much as you want to deal with this rationally, there comes a time, Caroline. There comes a time when meeting violence with violence is the best way, the only way.”
“So you’re going to hurt him?”
“I’m not planning to kill him, but I’m not going to give him a hug, either. I have to let him know if he comes after any of us, there’ll be consequences. I have to show him that I’m willing to cross the same line he crossed.”
“I’m going with you.”
“No. You have to stay here with Lilly. We can’t leave her here alone. I promise I’ll stay in touch. I’ll-”
“No, Joe. This is too weird.”
I looked her in the eye. “You know I love you, and you know I respect you, but-”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not patronizing you, but I’m telling you I’m going. You can yell and scream all you want. You can call the cops for all I care. I’ve made up my mind, Caroline. I’m going.”
She took a long, slow breath. “Have you thought this through?”