by Scott Pratt
“You’ve lost weight,” Mom finally said. “Are you eating?”
“A little more now than I was,” I said. “We get one hot meal every three days and that’s either hot dogs and tater tots or fish sticks and tater tots. The rest of the time it’s cold bologna sandwiches. The place is so overcrowded they don’t have room in the budget for decent food.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“You can put some money in my commissary account. I need underwear and socks and stamps and pencils and paper, and I can buy a snack every now and then if I want.”
“Will they let you have a television?”
“No.”
“Books?”
“If you send them to me.”
“How long can you keep your office open without taking new cases?” Mom said.
“A few months. I hate to close the doors, but the lawyer police will probably force me to shut it down pretty soon.”
“Lawyer police?”
“The Board of Professional Responsibility.”
“What do they have to do with this?”
“Since a federal judge has declared me a danger to the community, I guarantee you they’ll do the same thing. They’ll shut my practice down, and Rachel will be on the street.”
“Darren,” Mom said, almost in a whisper. “The FBI has come by to talk to me a couple of times. They’re coming to my shop in the middle of the day. They’re scaring my help and my customers.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“They’re threatening me, Darren. They’re threatening to arrest me as a coconspirator or as an accessory. They’re saying they’ll subpoena me to a grand jury if I don’t talk to them.”
“They probably will,” I said, “but they’ve already indicted me. Dragging you in front of a grand jury won’t do them much good.”
“What do you want me to do if I get a subpoena?”
“Tell them the truth, Mom. Just tell them the truth.”
I knew the sheriff’s department listened in and occasionally recorded conversations in the visiting booths, and I figured I was probably a top priority candidate.
“So you want me to tell them about—”
I held up my hand.
“The truth,” I said. “I’m going to have to tell the jury what happened when we go to trial. You do the same thing. Okay?”
She nodded and put her hand on the glass. I covered it with my own.
“Okay,” she said. “Then you believe the truth will set you free?”
“It has to, Mom. I don’t think I can deal with the alternative.”
“I love you, Darren. Stay strong.”
“I love you, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
As the days and nights dragged endlessly by, I found myself becoming more and more feral. I was locked up in my sixty-three-square-foot concrete box twenty-three hours a day, sometimes twenty-four. When they let me out for “recreation,” I was simply moved to a ten-foot by ten-foot, steel-mesh cage just outside the cellblock that had a phone on the wall. There was another cage next to it, and every once in a while they’d bring another inmate in, but I ignored them. To me, they were enemies, placed in the cage by Clancy or the sheriff for the sole purpose of engaging me in conversation so they could later appear in court and testify that I had confessed.
All of the simple pleasures of life that I’d taken for granted—going to work, sleeping in a comfortable bed, taking long, hot showers, eating decent food, feeling the sun on my face, marveling at the beauty of the moon, having a beer with colleagues, playing with Sean, talking—were gone. I was living an existence so different from what I’d known—so utterly deprived of normal stimulation—I sometimes feared for my sanity. At first I tried to console myself with the thought that I’d be out soon, but thinking about being out made being in even worse, so I stopped. I thought about Sean often, but that, too, was painful, and before too long, I found it difficult to remember what he looked like.
The guards left me pretty much alone after those first few weeks, especially after the story about Jalen Jordan being a child killer broke. I had a cell to myself, so I stopped calling them names and challenging them every two or three days. The only exception was the Joe DuBose hire that I’d head-butted my first day on the block. His name was Belcher—it was stitched into his black uniform right above the pocket on the left side of his chest—and he seemed to derive a great deal of pleasure from calling me faggot: “Rec time, faggot.” “Here’s your supper, faggot.” “Why don’t you ever say anything anymore, faggot?” “Please, faggot, give me a reason to come in there and whip your ass.” I ignored the taunts, which I suspect made him hate me even more, but given the circumstances, there really wasn’t much more he could do to me.
After about a month in isolation, I quit shaving. I hadn’t had a haircut in a while and saw no reason to make arrangements. (There was a civilian barber who would come to the block and cut hair every two weeks.) I became used to the rats and the roaches—I even spoke to them on occasion—and I became used to the mold on the walls and the foul-tasting water. I became used to feeling unclean, to taking only one shower a week, and to eating food barely fit for human consumption. I became used to the extreme changes in temperature inside the cellblock. I became used to the constant din of men in close confinement who are scared and uncertain and who express their fear either by yelling or singing or moaning or fighting or simply by banging their fists against the metal in the cells. I took refuge occasionally in the books my mother sent me, but I found it difficult to concentrate. I became terrified of fire breaking out in the cellblock. I did push-ups and crunches and pull-ups. I shadow boxed for hours at a time. It wasn’t conscious, but I seemed to be preparing myself for something both mentally and physically. War, perhaps?
I called my mother on Thursdays when they let me out of the cell if the phones were working, but as time went by, we had less and less to say to each other. Katie was fighting her hard over being able to see Sean. She’d spent thousands of dollars on a lawyer—supposedly a friend of mine—and still hadn’t even been granted a court date. As for the divorce, I’d filed a handwritten answer to the petition for divorce and had managed to get a judge to agree to postpone the proceedings until after my trial. I knew if I was convicted, I’d probably never see Sean again.
Grace came to see me once a week and would give me updates on the case. It wasn’t going well, she said. James Tipton had refused to talk to her investigator, and when the investigator pressed the issue, Tipton threatened to shoot him. We had no idea what his testimony would be, but we figured it had to be something about me trying to hire him to kill Jordan.
Grace’s investigator had also found the witness named Hobart Godsey. As it turned out, his nickname was Hillbilly and he’d been in the cell with me at Blount County. Both Grace and I knew what that meant. Ben Clancy would call him at trial to say I admitted to shooting Jalen Jordan. Hillbilly, the hypocritical bastard, was going to be their jailhouse snitch.
Grace also told me that Clancy had expert witnesses lined up to testify. One was a ballistics expert who was going to testify that the bullet that killed Jalen Jordan came from a rifle that FBI agents found near the crime scene. The other was a fingerprint expert who apparently was going to testify that my fingerprints had been found on some money that had been turned over to the feds by James Tipton. I didn’t understand why that mattered if they were trying to prove that I’d committed the murder, and Clancy wasn’t telling Grace any more than he absolutely had to.
We went to court a couple of times for motions, and I sat there listening as the lawyers fought over the rules by which we would conduct the trial for my life. The most important motion was the one Ben Clancy filed asking the court to order that no mention would be made of the fact that the underwear found in Jalen Jordan’s van had, indeed, contained DNA that matched t
he two murdered boys. Judge Geer granted the motion, and as much as I hated to admit it, he was probably right. Our defense wasn’t that I killed Jalen Jordan because he was a killer of children and had threatened my child. Our defense was that I hadn’t killed him at all. Still, allowing the jury to hear that Jalen was a budding serial killer of children would most likely have prejudiced the jury and may have caused them to let me go because they thought he needed killing, no matter who had done it.
The week before the trial started, Grace came to see me on a Wednesday. The clean, fresh smell of her was almost overwhelming. I smiled at her and tried not to stare. Sometimes when she came to the cell, I had to force myself not to look at her because I knew there was hunger in my eyes and I didn’t want her to see it. She was leaning against the sink while I sat on the edge of the bed frame.
“I’m sending a barber in here on Friday,” she said. “You need to go back to your lawyer look. Clean-shaven, short hair. I want you looking good in court. And I’ve arranged through the sheriff to let you shower on Monday morning. Use soap, Darren. Your mother is bringing clothes. They’ll let you change in the holding cell before we start jury selection.”
The words came at me in a frenzy. As I spent more and more time in isolation, I found it took a bit of time for my brain to be able to absorb and decipher spoken information.
“Are you all right?” Grace said.
“I’m fine. It just takes me a minute to get used to someone talking to me. I’ll get the haircut. I’ll shave. I’ll use soap. I’ll come in there looking like a million bucks.”
She smiled, which was something I’d grown to love. A simple pleasure.
“Are you ready?” she said.
“Are you?”
She nodded. “I think so. I know so, actually. I’m as ready for this trial as I’ve ever been. I want to ask you about Sean one last time. He’s your alibi, but I know how you feel about putting him on a witness stand. I just want to make sure.”
We’d been through this before. I’d taken Sean fishing on the Tennessee River bank the Thursday Jalen Jordan was killed. We’d been out there for about four hours, and I hadn’t bought gas or been anyplace that would have captured my presence on tape. We’d checked into whether cell phone tower evidence would be gathered and introduced, but I hadn’t made any calls and the towers could only put me within a twenty-mile radius. Jordan had been killed less than twenty miles from where I was fishing.
“I’m not putting him through that. He’s six. Clancy will chew him up.”
“I have to be honest, Darren. I’m concerned. I still don’t know exactly how they’re going to tie you to it other than some of the things you said. I don’t know what James Tipton’s testimony will be. He’s refused to talk to my investigator. He actually threatened to shoot him the last time he went to Tipton’s house. I think Tipton might come in there and lie.”
“Why would he do that? Not only did I save his ass on the aggravated assault, I gave him fifty thousand dollars for nothing. He doesn’t have a reason to lie about me.”
“Don’t forget who we’re dealing with.”
“You mean Clancy?”
“I’ve suspected him of coaching witnesses, of basically manufacturing testimony, in the past, but I haven’t been able to prove anything. He’s so good at it that I haven’t even been able to accuse him of any misconduct. But considering how much he hates you, nothing he does will surprise me.”
“He’s going to railroad me into prison for the rest of my life, isn’t he?” I said.
Pressure began to build in my chest, and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Grace noticed immediately and sat down beside me. She reached over and took my hand. Her touch was electric.
“Take it easy,” she said. “Everything is going to be all right.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “He’s done this before. He’s going to steamroll us.”
“You have to believe in the process.”
“Is that all you’ve got? Believe in the process? We’re talking about the rest of my life, and my lawyer is feeding me platitudes.”
“I know you’re hurting, Darren,” she said, “and I believe you when you say you didn’t kill him. I really do. I don’t know how Clancy is planning to prove you were on the trail that day or how you might have known Jalen Jordan was going to be there, but the fact remains that you certainly did some questionable things, and we’re going to have trouble explaining why that tree stand was in your garage if you’re going to testify that you know very little about hunting and shooting. Defending you is going to be quite a challenge.”
“And now you’re going to tell me that in spite of my stupidity, you’re going to do the best you can, right?”
“That’s right. I’ll do my absolute best for you.”
“And then you’ll go home. No matter how it turns out for me, you’ll get to go home.”
“If it turns out badly, we’ll keep fighting. I won’t quit, Darren. I won’t let them just throw you away forever.”
I turned toward her. Her face was only inches away, her hand still clutching mine.
“I’m afraid, Grace,” I said. “I hate to say that out loud. I hate to admit it to you, to myself, to anyone, but I’m really, really afraid.”
Her face moved toward mine and I closed my eyes, feeling ashamed that I’d admitted to being afraid. A few seconds later, I felt the pressure on my hand release and she stood, walked to the door, and pressed the button so a guard would come and let her out of the cell.
“I know you’re scared,” she said. “So am I. But remember what I said. I won’t desert you, Darren. No matter what happens next week, I won’t ever quit.”
The door clanked and opened, and suddenly, she was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Grace’s cell phone rang, and her eyes opened. She had drifted off to sleep on her bed, covered in notebooks and files and papers. Her laptop lay open next to her. She reached over and picked up the phone. The caller ID was blocked. It was 11:57 p.m. Darren’s trial would begin in nine hours.
“Hello?”
“Your client is innocent,” a male voice said. “There were fewer than half-a-dozen people who knew Jordan was heading for the trail that day, and your client wasn’t one of them.”
“Who is this?” Grace said.
“One of the people who knew.”
The voice was gravelly, and the words were slightly slurred. This was someone who was probably drinking. Maybe a whacko, but maybe someone who was having an attack of conscience.
“Tell me who you are,” Grace said.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. I’m not going to come forward and risk my career for you or for your client. Listen to me. After Jalen Jordan was stopped by the Knoxville police, and after those two pairs of underwear were found in his van and turned over to us, we put a surveillance net around him so tight he couldn’t have picked his nose without us knowing about it.”
“So you knew he was going hiking?”
“He wasn’t going hiking. He was running away. He was going to get onto the Appalachian Trail and head north into New York. He wanted to disappear.”
“And you just let him go? Or did one of you shoot him?”
“Nobody on our side shot him. I don’t care what you think or what you may have heard, the FBI doesn’t murder people. Clancy was the one who made the decision to let him go. He made the call. It had to go up the chain a little ways, but a decision had to be made quickly and they let him make it. We were going to get some people on the trail close to Jordan and make sure he didn’t get away and didn’t hurt anyone, but we didn’t even have a chance to do that, because between the time we knew he was going and he actually went out to the trail, somebody else was able to get out there, get into position, and pick him off. We’re only talking about an hour and a half here, total. Somebody had to know exactly wher
e he would be, and there’s just no way your client could have been that person. If he’d been doing close surveillance on Jordan, we would have known about it because we were all over Jordan.”
“So what’s the bottom line?” Grace said. “Why are you calling me?”
“Bottom line? Clancy is your man. He’s behind this. Figure out what he did, and your boy walks away.”
“But I can’t go off half-cocked and accuse an assistant United States attorney of being involved in a murder without some kind of solid proof. They’ll take my license, maybe put me in jail.”
“I know you can’t. But I thought it might help if you at least knew your client didn’t do it. Maybe Clancy will slip up, open a door for you.”
“Clancy doesn’t slip up.”
“Then all I can tell you is that after your boy is sent away for life, keep digging. Eventually, maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for.”