by Scott Pratt
“I need to know if a couple of your patrol officers are working,” I said when Bob answered his cell.
“Well, hello, Darren,” he said. “I’m good. You?”
“Their names are Olivia Denton and Terrance Casey. They’re partners. They made a stop two nights ago on Delaware Avenue and arrested the driver.”
“What’s wrong?” Bob said.
“I’ll explain in a minute. Are they working?”
“Hold on.” I could hear him tapping keys on a computer. “They’re off,” he said when he came back. “Came off shift this morning at seven and won’t be back for four days.”
“Where can I find them?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“It’s important, Bob. Give me addresses, cell phone numbers, whatever you have. Please. Sean’s life could be in danger.”
“Hold on, now,” Bob said. “You sound a little uptight there, buddy. What’s this about Sean?”
I took a deep breath and filled Bob in—what little I could ethically tell him—on my encounter with Jalen Jordan. When I was finished, he reluctantly provided me with the cell phone numbers of the two officers.
“I’d try Olivia first if I were you,” Bob said. “Terrance won’t care much for you.”
“He doesn’t like lawyers?”
“He doesn’t like anybody.”
I dialed Olivia Denton’s cell number, and to my relief, she answered after the third ring.
“Officer Denton, my name is Darren Street and I’m a lawyer here in Knoxville. I need to speak with you about something you found during a stop you and your partner made two nights ago.”
“How did you get my cell number?” she said in a cold, distant voice.
“That isn’t important. What is extremely important is that I speak with you immediately. Today. Within the hour if possible.”
“We gave the bag to the feds,” she said. “Talk to them.”
The cell phone went silent. I called her back, but the phone went to voice mail. I called again. Same result, so I left her a message: “Officer Denton, this is Darren Street again. I have a six-year-old son who has been threatened, and it relates to the bag you found in that van the other night. I’m sure you know there have been two young boys murdered in the past year. Please, please call me back.”
My phone rang in less than two minutes.
“Do you know the botanical gardens by the veterinary college on the UT campus?” Officer Denton said.
“Yeah, I’ve been there a couple of times.”
“Meet me in fifteen minutes.”
CHAPTER THREE
Officer Olivia Denton had short, shiny, brown hair and a frame that was a bit on the rotund side. She looked to be a couple of years younger than me; she also looked exhausted. Her face was puffy and her brown eyes had dark circles beneath them. She was wearing a white University of Tennessee hoodie and blue jeans. It was early April and the temperature was near sixty. Billowy white clouds moved briskly across a high, blue sky. The only people in the gardens besides us were two agricultural students who were spreading mulch.
“Thank you for meeting me,” I said. I reached out to shake her hand and felt a small sense of relief when she took it. “I hope I didn’t wake you. I know you just came off graveyard this morning.”
“Haven’t been to bed yet,” she said. “I’ll stay up until around nine tonight and then pass out, try to get on a regular schedule tomorrow for a few days until I have to go back. I’ve heard of you, you know. You actually have a decent reputation in the police department.”
“Good to hear.”
“But they say nobody wants to be cross-examined by you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“So what’s this about your son?”
“Let me ask you a question first, if you don’t mind,” I said. “Is there a video of the stop you made on Jalen Jordan Sunday night?”
Her eyebrows raised slightly as if I’d surprised her; then she crossed her arms, looked down, and pawed the ground with her right foot.
“I think the camera was malfunctioning,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a video.”
“Shit,” I said. “He was telling the truth.”
“Who?”
“Jordan. He came to see me and wanted to hire me. Said you guys stopped him without a valid reason and then your partner broke his taillight out. I was hoping he was lying and that it was a good stop.”
She shrugged. “I’m not quite sure how to respond to that.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “The look on your face tells me pretty much what I need to know.”
“He’s a good guy most of the time,” Officer Denton said. “He just goes a little crazy every once in a while.”
“I assume you’re talking about your partner, Officer Casey?”
She nodded. “We were on the fourth straight night of twelve-hour shifts, seven p.m. to seven a.m., so we were both pretty tired and maybe a little stressed out. There had been a bunch of burglaries in the area around Delaware Avenue over the past few weeks, and we were watching it pretty close. We passed this van that just screamed ‘I’m a burglar,’ so Terrance drove back around the block and parked in a cul-de-sac. We saw the guy pass again in about ten minutes and then maybe five minutes later we saw him again. It was really strange because he kept circling Sam Hill Park. So Terrance decided to stop him. I told him he should follow the guy until he committed some kind of traffic violation, but Terrance gets impatient when he thinks his gut is telling him something. So we stopped him and the rest, I suppose, will be hotly contested in court.”
“You thought he might be a burglar?” I said.
“That was the original suspicion,” she said.
“Who found the bag with the underwear in it?”
“I did. After the guy punched Terrance in the mouth—he got him pretty good, split his lip—we subdued him and secured him, and then I called for backup. Scotty Slagle and Jeremy Deakins rolled up a couple of minutes later, and they ended up hauling Mr. Jordan to jail for us. I got the first aid kit out of our cruiser and managed to get Terrance’s lip to stop bleeding, and then we searched the van. I thought for sure we’d find drugs after I got a look at Mr. Jordan, but we didn’t find a thing besides that brown paper bag in the glove compartment. When I first took them out of the bag I thought it was gross, you know? This guy carrying his underwear around in his glove compartment, but then I looked a little closer and they were both just so small. One pair was blue and the other had Toy Story characters on it, and I said to Terrance, ‘Why do you think he’s got kids’ underwear in his glove compartment?’ And I thought about those two little boys that had been found murdered and I thought, ‘No way.’ But I bagged it up anyway and I called my supervisor and told him what we’d found. He told me to call the FBI office since the murders were committed on federal land and it’s their case. I called, but it was after midnight and there wasn’t anybody there. I left them a message and got a call back the next afternoon, but by that time your man Jordan had bonded out so they didn’t talk to him. An agent named Freeman came by late yesterday evening and picked up the bag. It was right before I went in to work, so I met him at the evidence locker. He said he was going to send the underwear off to Quantico for DNA testing, but it would be a minimum of six weeks before they got anything back.”
“Who has the van?”
“Freeman said they’d pick it up and have their forensics guys go through it. They probably have it by now.”
“Was he planning to talk to Jordan?” I asked.
“Didn’t say. I mean, you’d think he would, right? But he didn’t say.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Even if Jordan confesses, which he won’t, they’re not going to be able to do anything to him. At least not until he kills another kid.”
&nbs
p; “Why do you say that?” she said.
“I think you know why. Any good lawyer will destroy you and your partner on that stop. Anything you found in the van will be suppressed.”
“Maybe not,” she said.
“You’re going to go into court and commit perjury?”
“If it means catching a child killer, you’re damn right I will, but you didn’t hear me say that. You haven’t told me about your son. Did Jordan threaten him?”
“As a matter of fact, he did,” I said. “And because of you and your partner, it looks like I’m going to have to find a way to deal with him outside the system.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Ben Clancy had lost an election, but he was still in the same line of work. Within a month of being beaten, Clancy was hired by an old friend and fraternity brother, Stephen Blackburn, who happened to be the United States Attorney for East Tennessee. Clancy had been deeply wounded by the election defeat, but he was glad to have been presented with so prestigious an opportunity so quickly. Blackburn assigned him to violent felonies and serious drug cases, which meant he was in the thick of it.
At that moment, Clancy was meeting with Special Agent in Charge Dan Reid of the FBI along with Special Agent Paul Freeman. All three men were in a conference room across the hall from Clancy’s office in downtown Knoxville.
“I think this is the break we’ve been hoping for,” Freeman said.
Freeman, a forty-year-old, ten-year veteran of the bureau, along with dozens of other law enforcers, had been working the case of the two murdered six-year-olds for nearly a year, but thus far, the killer had eluded them. The boys had been kidnapped from public playgrounds in low-income neighborhoods, and their naked bodies had been found in the Little River near sheer rock cliffs in a desolate part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park known as The Sinks. Not a trace of physical evidence had been left behind. The only information the FBI had developed was a rough sketch of the kidnapper drawn from a description provided by a nine-year-old girl who might have seen the first victim being led away from a public park in Maryville and two reports that the kidnapper may have been driving a white van.
“Have you talked to the boys’ parents?” Clancy said.
Adrenaline had surged through Clancy when he’d received the news about the photographs. A case like this could go a long way toward restoring his reputation—not to mention his self-esteem—after his bitter defeat at the polls. He needed something to help him refocus, to help him regain his sharpness.
Freeman slid four photographs he’d taken of the underwear that was found in Jalen Jordan’s van across the circular table to Clancy.
“I talked to all four parents, and I showed them these,” Freeman said. “Timothy Grigsby was wearing Hanes underwear with a Toy Story design, and Ronald Baines was wearing light-blue Fruit of the Looms. The sizes match, too.”
“You’ve already sent them to the lab?” Clancy said as he stared down at the photos.
“Went out this morning,” Freeman said.
“What do we know about this Jalen Jordan?” Clancy said.
“Not a lot, but I’m working on it. I have booking photos from old arrests and the booking photo from the other night. He has one arrest and conviction for indecent exposure four years ago in Knox County. Probation and behavioral therapy. He had a misdemeanor drug arrest last year in Knox County, possession of less than a half ounce of marijuana. Diverted to drug court. I’ve reached out to his probation officers and have asked for his files.”
“What about the van?” Clancy said.
“We have it,” Freeman said. “Our guys are going through it as we speak.”
“Where is Jordan now?” Clancy said.
“I’m not sure.”
“What?” Clancy said, his pale-blue eyes fixing on the FBI agent. “Why don’t you know where he is?”
“Because I just got some of this information. He bonded out of jail before I even knew he was in jail, before I learned any of what I’m telling you. We have a couple of guys watching the address he provided during the stop, but they haven’t seen him. When I plug the address into the Internet, his mother’s name comes up, too, so I’m not even sure if he’s living there. But it’s the address on the license he gave the cops and it’s the address he gave the booking guys at the jail. We’re in the early stages, right on the front end. We’re here because we think this is our killer, and we want to know how far we can go.”
“You can go as far as you need to,” Clancy said. “I want a black bag team in that house or apartment or whatever the hell it is, and I want bugs in there immediately. I want tracking devices on any vehicle he has access to. I want electronic and physical surveillance around the clock. I want his cell phone tapped. I want his mother’s cell phone tapped. I want their cell phone records.”
“We don’t have warrants for any of that, Ben,” Freeman said.
“I’ll take care of the warrants. You get everything else set up. Top priority. If the guy spits, I want you to know. Did you make a priority request to the lab at Quantico?”
“I did, but you know how it goes. They’re swamped.”
“I’ll call them myself, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll get the politicians on it. Are you talking to Jordan’s friends, acquaintances, relatives, all that?”
“We’re taking take care of it.”
“All right, get to it,” Clancy said. “By this time tomorrow, I want to know everything there is to know about Jalen Jordan, and I want him bottled up tight.”
“Right,” Freeman said, and the agents stood and began walking toward the door.
“Agent Freeman,” Clancy said as the men reached the door. Freeman and Reid stopped and turned. “And this goes for both of you. Keep me in the loop at all times. If this . . . this . . . thing kills another child in my district, you’ll answer for it. I may be from Knoxville, but don’t mistake me for a hick. I have plenty of friends in Washington, and if you guys screw this up, your careers will be over.”
CHAPTER FIVE
My next stop was at Richie Fels’s office downtown. Richie was a sixty-four-year-old, barrel-chested, thirty-seven-year veteran of the local criminal court scene who ran what was perhaps the most highly respected criminal defense firm in the state. He had taken an interest in me because I’d told him the first time we met that I wanted to be just like him—I wanted to practice criminal defense law exclusively and I didn’t give a damn if I went hungry while I was learning to do it. Once he saw that I was serious, he took me under his wing and had been an invaluable source of information and advice for me during the seven years I’d practiced. He’d even gone so far as to help me get my uncle released from prison, and he didn’t receive a dime for it. But Richie had become distant over the past two or three years. He was drinking a lot—I knew because I drank with him occasionally—and he seemed to be getting caught up in his own legend. I couldn’t ever get him on the phone, and when I managed to get an audience he would inevitably regale me with the same stories of glorious victories of which he’d been a part.
“I have a client in the waiting room,” Richie said as I walked into the disaster area he called an office. There were files piled everywhere and the place was dusty. The off-white walls were bare except for an old diploma and a law license hanging directly behind him.
“You always have a client waiting,” I said, “just like you always have a judge waiting on the phone and three prosecutors downtown cursing the day you were born.”
His cobalt-blue eyes—which reminded me of images I’d seen of Santa Claus—twinkled and his smile revealed slightly crooked, yellowing teeth. I’d peeled a hundred-dollar bill off one of the stacks in my briefcase before I walked into Richie’s office. I took it out of my pocket and laid it on the desk in front of him.
“Retainer?” Richie said.
“Call it whatever you think you have to call it,” I
said. “I need to talk some business.”
“What’s so important that you had to piss off my secretary?” he said.
“Let me give you a little background first,” I said, and I told him about my meeting with Jalen Jordan earlier, Jordan’s threat regarding my son, and my subsequent conversation with Officer Olivia Denton.
“Good God, Darren, this sounds like the criminal defense lawyer’s ultimate nightmare,” Richie said when I was finished. “Let’s see if I have this straight. First of all, you could tell the police what this Jordan fellow told you about his friend’s sexual fantasies and his friend kidnapping a couple of children, but if you do, you could be disbarred or suspended for a long time for violating the ethical rules regarding privilege. What’s worse is that if the police act upon the information you provide to them in violation of your ethical obligations, there’s a chance that a judge would rule any evidence they gathered inadmissible and this Mr. Jordan would walk away scot-free.
“But if you don’t tell the police and you live up to your ethical obligation to zealously represent your client, you could wind up being an unwilling facilitator—if not an outright accessory—to another child murder since Mr. Jordan has indicated to you that he’s just getting started. It seems to me the chances of him killing again are extremely high if you get him out of this.