by Scott Pratt
“You spoke to the police officers, didn’t you?”
“I talked to one of them.”
“The man or the woman?”
“The woman.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her anything. I just asked her about the stop.”
“And did she tell you the truth? Did she tell you they violated my rights?”
“It doesn’t matter!” I yelled. “Are you listening to me? It doesn’t matter! They’ll perjure themselves if it means bringing a child killer to justice. You’re going to prison!”
“That’s bad news for your little boy,” he said.
“You sick son of a bitch. I’ll cut your head off if you come anywhere near Sean.”
“You’re right about my mother being a bitch,” Jordan said in that smug accent. “I really can’t stand her. And did you see that hair? She looks like she’s wearing a dead fox on her head. Now . . . as far as your family . . . I really won’t get any pleasure out of killing your wife or your mother, so I’ll probably leave them alone. But the boy is another matter. I’ll get to him eventually. I’m sure I’ll have to get out of here for a little while, but I’ll cruise back through some day in the not-too-distant future and find a way to snatch little Sean up. He and I will get to know each other on an intimate basis, and then I’ll strangle him and throw him into a river like a piece of garbage.”
My heart was beating hard against my chest and my vision had tunneled. I started to yell another threat into the phone, but it had gone silent.
Jalen Jordan was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I climbed out of the car and walked quickly around the house and in through the back door. Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen. Sean, who had his mother’s sandy-brown hair and robin-egg-blue eyes, was standing right beside her.
“Hey, big guy,” I said as I walked across the kitchen and picked him up.
I was probably overly involved in Sean’s life, but I was unapologetic about it. After what I’d been through with my father, I suppose it was natural. I spent as much time with him as possible. I took him camping three or four times a year during the summer and fall. I took him to soccer or to basketball or to T-ball practices and games. I took him to movies and we went fishing and I played video games with him. I enjoyed cooking for him and sharing meals with him. I spent far more time with him than I did with my wife, and I enjoyed every second of it.
“What are we doing here, Dad?” Sean said. “Grandma says everything is okay but she never picks me up from school and Mom isn’t here and I was wondering why we came here in the middle of the day because we don’t ever come here except on Saturday or Sunday and today is Tuesday so I was wondering.”
Sean was a smart little guy, and he was a talker. He’d always been a talker. I’d take him to movies, and he’d ask questions and make commentary from preview to closing credits. He was so distracting in the car that I had removed the middle bench seat from our minivan so Sean would have to talk from the back. It hadn’t stopped him, though. It hadn’t even slowed him. He just talked louder.
“I thought we might take a trip to Pigeon Forge for a couple of days,” I said. “Stay in one of those chalets in the mountains. We’ll go to the aquarium and find some other fun stuff to do. How’s that sound to you?”
“What about school? You know they don’t like for us kids to miss school because they say we get behind and then we might not be able to catch up and—”
“It’s okay, Sean. I’ll talk to them. Don’t worry about it. A couple of days off from school never hurt anybody.”
“Is Grandma going to go with us?”
“Sure, why not?”
“What about Mom?”
“She’s working right now, but I told her to meet us tonight. Listen, why don’t you go in the den and play some Mario? Your grandma and I need to talk.”
“It was him,” I said as soon as Sean got settled on the couch and was lost in the video game. “I saw him. The same guy that was at the office. He followed you here.”
“I knew it,” Mom said. She was sturdy and still pretty at fifty-six. Her chestnut hair was long, thick, and starting to go gray, her green eyes filled with worry. “Is he insane?”
“I don’t think so, which makes him even more dangerous. We need to get out of here, find a good place to hide, and let me figure out what to do. Can your girls handle the shop for a couple of days?”
“Don’t worry about the shop. What about Katie?”
“I don’t think she’ll even bother to come,” I said. “I haven’t said much about it, but things aren’t all that great between us right now.”
“Things have never been great between you. I’m not blind or deaf.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“We’ll talk about Katie later,” I said. “For now, pack enough for a couple of days. You drive your car, and I’ll drive the van. You lead the way. Sean can ride with me since I have more experience dealing with all the questions that are going to come. Let’s drive down to Maryville and then back to Pigeon Forge. Make a lot of turns, pull into gas stations, double-back a lot. I’ll tell Sean we’re playing a game.”
“He’ll know you’re lying.”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you call the police?” Mom said.
“And tell them what? That Jordan threatened my son? There’s no real crime there, Mom. They can’t do anything about it. Besides, the boys who were killed are being handled by the FBI. It’s their case.”
“You could ask them to keep an eye on him.”
“You know as well as I do they’re not going to keep an eye on somebody just because some lawyer asks them to. They’d laugh me out of the place.”
“Tell them he’s the man who killed those boys.”
“I could lose my law license if I do that.”
“That’s crazy, Darren. That’s absolutely crazy. What do you plan to do when we get to Pigeon Forge?”
“Let’s do what I told Sean. Let’s check into a chalet. There’s a guy that lives in the mountains close to Gatlinburg I want to go see.”
“Who is he?”
“Former client. He might be just what the doctor ordered.”
CHAPTER NINE
James Tipton lived in a rundown trailer on the side of a mountain about six miles from the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum in Gatlinburg. I’d been to his place once before, back when he insisted that I come out and share a victory drink of his personal stash of homemade moonshine after I’d gotten him acquitted in a jury trial for slicing a man so badly that two hundred stitches had been required to close the knife wounds. The man had repeatedly run his truck into the back of James’s car while James was driving down the road with the man’s girlfriend in the passenger seat. James claimed he didn’t know the woman had a live-in boyfriend, and she was such a miserable witness that the jury believed James and bought my argument of self-defense. Not that they shouldn’t have bought it. It was self-defense. The guy bashed James’s car four or five times, and then, when James pulled over and got out, the guy tried to fight him. The prosecution thought the knife wounds were excessive for a case of self-defense, and maybe they were, but was it James’s fault that he was an excellent knife fighter and just happened to have a knife in the car with him? The jury was basically faced with making a choice between two pretty unsavory people, James and the victim. They chose James.
One of the things I was able to tell the jury about James was that he’d never been convicted of anything. As a matter of fact, he’d never even been arrested. But I’d heard from several people—cops, other lawyers, and clients—that James was a genuine bad ass. He came from a long line of criminals that began with moonshiners and bootleggers and had graduated to running drugs. James had apparently become territorial about it. A Sevier County detective told me that they suspe
cted James of committing two murders—a couple of brothers who had gotten into the oxycodone trade and reportedly crossed James—but they hadn’t been able to put together a solid case. The men were found in a barn on their parents’ property. They’d both been skinned after their throats were cut.
It was just after dark by the time I got Sean and Mom settled into a chalet and drove to James’s place. His trailer was brown and seemed to list to the right where the slope dropped off sharply and steeply. There was a black pit bull chained to a metal spike just to the left of the front stoop and the driveway had been “paved” with flattened beer cans, a little trick I’d seen a couple of times before and had always referred to as redneck asphalt. There were also hundreds of skulls around the place—cattle and deer skulls mostly with a few bear and cat skulls mixed in—along with dozens of sets of antlers. It gave the place a sort of gothic, medieval “venture forth at your own peril” vibe.
There was a dualie pickup in the driveway along with an old Dodge Charger, and I could see a Harley-Davidson motorcycle underneath a crumbling outbuilding. The dog went nuts when I pulled up, and within seconds, I saw James’s slim frame appear on the stoop. It was just before dark, but I noticed the outline of a large pistol in his right hand. I got out of the car and said, “James! It’s me, Darren Street.”
He stuck the hand cannon into the waist of the blue jeans he was wearing and hurried down the stoop. I could see him grinning widely as he approached my car. James was a few years older than me—midthirties—a few inches taller than me at six feet, and had short black hair that was receding just a little. He wore a pencil-thin mustache that must have required a great deal of attention. He also had beautiful teeth, something that seemed out of place in his surroundings. He was shirtless, well muscled, and covered in tattoos.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as he approached and stuck out his hand. “How the hell are ya, Counselor?”
I took the offered hand and smiled back at him.
“I’m good, James. You?”
“Shut up, Zeus!” he yelled at the dog. “I can’t complain,” he said as he turned back to me. “Come on in the house and take a load off.”
“Is anybody here besides you?”
“Granny’s inside,” he said, “but she was about to leave.”
Luanne “Granny” Tipton was probably in her early seventies. She had attended every meeting James and I had before his trial, and she had been in the courtroom during the trial and when the verdict was read. She was also at the after-party, drinking moonshine and dancing to bluegrass music right along with the rest of the Tipton clan. The Tiptons were a rough bunch, and I learned quickly that Granny was their undisputed matriarch. There were three boys: Ronnie, Eugene, and James, all of whom she claimed as her grandchildren, although I found out later that James really wasn’t a biological grandchild. Granny, Ronnie, and Eugene lived about a half mile farther up the mountain. Granny lived in a nice home and the boys lived in beautiful cabins on either side of her. James was a self-described black sheep, and the trailer and his skulls seemed to confirm the image.
“It’ll be nice to see her again,” I said. “How’s it been going?”
“Had me a live-in woman for a couple of weeks,” James said, “but I kept going out to the bars and bringing other women home with me. She had some problems putting up with it.”
“Imagine that,” I said.
“Hell, Counselor, it wasn’t like I was ignoring her. I always offered to let her join the party. She just wasn’t into threesomes.”
James was probably a sociopath, but he was a likeable sociopath. He had a loud, infectious laugh, and it rose over the barking of the dog and bounced off the surrounding slopes. We walked up the three stairs onto the stoop and stepped into the trailer, which was just as I’d remembered it—remarkably clean and well kept. He led me to the small kitchen where I sat down at a Formica-topped table. Granny walked in from the other end of the trailer.
“Well, as I live and breathe,” she said as I stood to hug her. “Darren Street, in the flesh. What brings you up this way?”
“Hi, Granny,” I said. Back when I was representing James, she insisted that I call her Granny. “I had a little break at the office so I thought I’d bring my boy to Gatlinburg for a day or two. Just thought I’d drop in and say hello.”
“Well, it’s good to see you,” she said, “but I have to get going. It’s bingo night at the Moose Lodge and my friends will be expecting me.”
I said good-bye and James and I stood on the front porch as she walked out, climbed into the dualie pickup, and fired it up.
“Feisty as ever,” James said as she drove out of the driveway. “I’ll have to take you back up to her place one of these days, get you some of that ham and bacon she cures. She really likes you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“Let’s go on back inside,” James said. He stood over me after I sat down at the table and I noticed beads of sweat on his forehead. He was scratching his arms, too.
“Are you all right?” I said. “You sick?”
“What? Me? I’m fine, Counselor. Good as gold. Right as rain. What can I get you? I got beer, tequila, vodka, or I got some of that homemade corn whiskey that you liked in the freezer. Got some killer weed, too, if you’re interested, probably some other stuff if you want.”
“No drugs,” I said, “but a shot of that moonshine and a beer chaser would be great.”
“Coming right up,” he said, and in less than a minute, the whiskey was warming my esophagus and stomach. I took a long pull off the beer and took another drink out of the Mason jar James had set in front of me. I drained what was left of the beer and asked for another. I hit the whiskey one more time, chased it.
“Rough day?” James asked.
“You wouldn’t believe,” I said. I took another swallow of the beer, waited for about a minute, and looked across the table at him. “Do you remember what you said to me when we were standing in the courthouse parking lot after the jury acquitted you of cutting that guy up?”
“I probably said a lot of things,” he said, “mostly thank you, thank you, and thank you.”
“You said if I ever needed anything, anything at all, that I should come to you.”
James turned up the beer he was drinking, drained it, and slapped it down on the table.
“And by Gawd here you are,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm.
“Here I am.”
“What do you need?” he said. “What can ol’ James Tipton, Junior, do for Darren Street, attorney-at-law?”
I wrapped both hands around the beer in front of me and leaned forward on my elbows. My eyes locked onto his and I said, “I need a man killed, I need it done immediately, and I’m willing to pay you fifty thousand dollars in cash.”
CHAPTER TEN
When I got back to the chalet after leaving James Tipton’s, I was half-drunk and so confused and exhausted that I felt as though I was living in a thick fog. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion; I didn’t seem to be able to comprehend anything fully. I’d driven aimlessly through the mountains around Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge for more than an hour, ignoring the ringing of my cell phone, and when I finally pulled into the driveway at the chalet darkness had fallen. I walked in and smelled food cooking, but I couldn’t identify what kind of food. My mother spoke to me from the kitchen, but she sounded like she was under water. Finally, she walked up to me and took my face in her hands.
“Darren,” she said. “Darren! Are you drunk?”
“Maybe,” I said. “A little.”
“Damn it, Darren. What were you thinking? Where have you been?”
My mother’s faith in God had waned over the years and her language had turned a bit toward the salty side. She turned away from me and crossed the kitchen, returning with a steaming cup of coffee she’d po
ured from a pot on the counter.
“Sit,” she said, pointing to a stool at a breakfast bar adjacent to the kitchen. I took the coffee and started sipping as she moved back toward the stove. We sat in silence for five minutes while I got the coffee down.
“You cooked?” I finally said.
“Sean and I went to the store. It was something to do. Are you going to answer my question?”
“What question?”
“Where have you been? Did you find the old client you were talking about?”
She loaded a plate with baked chicken and mixed vegetables and sat it in front of me, but the thought of eating was repulsive. I pushed it away.
“I did.”
“Did you find him in a bar?”
“No,” I said. “At his house. He was home.”
“So you went over there and drank with him?”
“Lighten up,” I said. “I just needed to calm my nerves a little. He had some moonshine and maybe I drank a little too much. That stuff’s like liquid heroin. Sneaks up on you. Where’s Sean?”
“Fast asleep.”
“Did he say anything about . . . about what’s going on?”
“He just wanted to know why Katie isn’t here. Have you talked to her?”
I took my phone out of my pocket and looked at it. I’d received more than a dozen calls—from clients, other lawyers, and from my secretary—but Katie wasn’t among them.
“No. I tried her twice, but she didn’t answer and she hasn’t called.”
I folded my arms on the counter and laid my head down as a mild wave of nausea passed over me. Mom came around the counter and started rubbing my neck.
“It’s going to be all right, Darren,” she said. “We’ll figure it out.”