by Scott Pratt
“Follow his example,” the preacher says. “Fill your basket.”
He drones on about how we shouldn’t judge Ray for taking his own life, that God never gives us more than we can handle, and that the bullet that ended Ray’s life was somehow an instrument of God’s love. It’s sophistry of the worst kind, worthy of an appellate court, and I find myself wanting to tell the preacher to shut up and let us bury Ray with some dignity.
But I stand there quietly, grieving for my friend but grateful I’m still alive, still with the people I love, and once again I think about how fleeting life is, how fragile, how dangerously unstable. One minute Ray Miller was a fine specimen of a man, a strong and brave spirit standing defiantly in front of those who sought to persecute him, and the next he was a mass of dead matter, lying in a heap on the ground, his spirit gone to some mysterious place.
I lean over and kiss Caroline gently on the cheek. She’s been battling breast cancer, along with the sickness and mutilation that comes with the treatment, for a year and a half. I love her so much it almost hurts, and I can’t imagine how I’d go on if she were the one being lowered into the ground.
“Oh death, where is thy sting?” the preacher says. “Oh grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
I look around at the men and women who work in my profession, men and women who make judgments each day about the lives of others, who decide what is right and what is wrong and what punishment is to be doled out for violations of our laws, and I’m reminded of how futile the endeavor is. A man like Ray commits a minor transgression, at worst, and ultimately pays with his life, while so many others who do so much more harm walk away unscathed. How do I reconcile that? Why do I want to continue on this path?
At last, the preacher delivers his final prayer and dismisses the crowd. I hook my arm in Caroline’s as Jack drapes his arm around Lilly, and we walk up the hill away from the grave, leaving Toni and Tommy to grieve in private.
11
That evening, I walk up the stairs toward the kitchen after spending a couple of hours in my study. Rio, my German shepherd, tries to slip past me and nearly sends me sprawling. It’s close to ten o’clock, and the emotion of the last few days has drained me. I hear voices talking as I approach, but as I round the corner and enter the room, they fall silent. Jack, Lilly, and Caroline are sitting at the table.
“Okay, I’m paranoid,” I say. “What were you talking about?”
“We were talking about Ray,” Caroline says.
She’d lost her beautiful auburn hair during chemotherapy but it has grown back now and is shimmering beneath the light above the table. The glow is back, too, that aura that surrounds her like a halo. She still has a long way to go with her treatment, but she no longer looks like a dead woman walking.
“Mom said you were in the courtroom when he killed himself,” Jack says.
I nod my head, not wanting to relive those awful moments.
“So you saw it? You were looking at him when he pulled the trigger?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
I sit down at the table and look at the three of them. “He was talking to Judge Green about Green’s ruining his life, and then Green said he was in contempt, and the next thing I knew, he pulled the pistol out and took a couple of shots at the judge.”
“Too bad he missed,” Lilly says.
“Lilly!” It’s Caroline, but the tone is more of surprise and amusement than anger.
“I mean it,” Lilly says. “What Judge Green did was cruel. He had no right.”
I’m grateful for the interruption. I didn’t want to tell them I was the last person on this earth Ray spoke to. I didn’t want to tell them about his good-bye.
“Ray would be in jail if he hadn’t shot himself,” I say. “As much as I hate to say it, he’s probably better off.” I look at Jack. “Have you talked to Tommy?”
“I’ve called him five or six times, sent a few text messages, but I haven’t heard anything back. I thought about going over there, but if he doesn’t want to talk to me on the phone, he probably doesn’t want to talk to me in person.”
“When are you going back to school?”
“Day after tomorrow. I have to leave early.”
“Try to get him on the phone tomorrow and if he doesn’t answer, go over there. I’m sure he could use a friend right now.”
We talk for a while and I lose myself in the conversation, happy to be able to speak to my children face-to-face. They were such an intimate part of my life for so long, and now I’m lucky to see them thirty days a year. I marvel at their intelligence, their outlook, their honesty and maturity, and I’m humbled to think I played a part in creating them.
Around eleven, Lilly stretches her slender arms toward the ceiling and lets out a yawn.
“I’m tired,” she says. “I hear my bed calling.” She gets up, kisses me on the cheek, and wanders out of the room. Jack follows her lead, and a couple of minutes later Caroline and I find ourselves alone.
“Something’s bothering you,” Caroline says.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I know you.”
So much for the mystery in our relationship. When I was younger, there were things I didn’t tell her. I’d rationalize by telling myself she didn’t need to know, probably didn’t want to know; that she was somehow better off staying clear of the deepest recesses of my mind. But she’d broken through a few years earlier, and now, at only forty-three years old, I feel almost naked in her presence, as though she can see everything. I believe she only makes inquiries to test my honesty.
“It keeps running through my mind,” I say.
“What? Ray?”
“It was surreal. It happened so fast. I keep thinking I should have gotten to him quicker, but after he fired the first shot, I froze for a split second.”
“There you go again,” Caroline says, “blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have changed.”
“I keep seeing the back of his head explode.”
The image of Ray’s suicide has now been added to the long list of digital clips in my subconscious mind. I’ve rerun the scene a hundred times in the past few days.
Caroline stands and walks around the table. She puts her arms around me and pulls me close.
“I thought about you today at the funeral,” I whisper. “About the cancer, about what it would have been like if you hadn’t—”
“Shhh,” Caroline says, putting a finger to my lips. “I told you when I was diagnosed that I wasn’t going to leave you. I meant it.”
The touch of her finger is soothing, and I close my eyes and kiss her hand.
“We need to clean it,” she says.
“Okay.”
A few minutes later, I’m sitting on the edge of our bed. Caroline is on her back. She’s removed her shirt to reveal the mangled mess that was once a breast. The surgeon who attempted to reconstruct the breast originally transplanted a flap of skin and fat from Caroline’s abdomen. She was in surgery for twelve hours. It seemed to work, but as soon as she began her radiation treatments, the flap began to develop large, open wounds. They leaked constantly and gradually enlarged. Then the flap began to shrink.
The surgeon explained that the radiation was destroying the tissue in the flap. Fat necrosis, he called it. Three months later, he took her back into surgery, this time removing a large portion of muscle from her back and moving it to the breast site. The result of that surgery was a staph infection that nearly killed her. When she finally recovered from the staph, a large blister began to rise on the edge of the new flap. It, too, developed into a large, open wound.
The responsibility for cleaning the wound has fallen to me. Caroline lies back and closes her eyes while I pull on a pair of latex gloves. I remov
e the bandage and reach into the wound carefully—it’s about the circumference of a quarter on the surface—and begin to pull out a long, thin strip of medicated gauze tape that I’d packed into the wound earlier in the day. The tape is slimy, covered with a mixture of blood and dead fat that smells like rotten eggs. I place it in a small trash bag that I’ll carry outside when we’re finished.
Each time we do this I ask her whether she’s okay, and each time her answer is running down her cheeks. I reach over and pull a tissue out of a box on the mini- trauma center I’ve set up next to the bed and wipe the tears away.
“Just a few more minutes, baby.”
I irrigate the wound with sterile sodium chloride and then unwrap a long, cotton-tipped applicator and dip it into a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water. I insert the applicator into the wound and begin to swab. The applicator reaches a full four inches beneath the skin.
“It’s getting smaller, Caroline. It really is.”
At its worst, the hole beneath the skin was as large as my fist. It’s healing now, but the progress is painfully slow. I finish swabbing, pack it with fresh gauze tape, and fashion a new bandage out of gauze pads. I tape the bandage in place and rub Caroline’s forehead.
“Are you ready?”
She nods, and I begin the difficult task of massaging the reconstructed breast, or at least what’s left of it, with my fingertips. The tissue around the scars left by the incisions is as hard as packed clay. The massage is necessary, the doctor says, to try to soften the tissue and improve the range of motion of Caroline’s left arm, which she can no longer lift above her head. She winces several times but doesn’t complain. This is the worst part of it for me, knowing that I’m inflicting pain on her, but the doctor says it has to be done and she refuses to do it herself.
After several minutes of massage, I stop and put away the supplies.
“All done. Can I get you anything?”
Caroline gets up and heads toward the bathroom. I remove my clothes, hang them in the closet, put on a pair of pajama bottoms, and crawl into bed. Caroline comes in a few minutes later and turns out the light. I retreat into the comfort of my wife’s arms and stay there deep into the night.
12
I’m out of bed early the next morning. It’s Monday, and I want to get to the gym by six and get in a decent workout before I go back to the grind. It always makes me feel sharper and fresher, helps me to better cope with the insanity I deal with on a daily basis.
As I back out of the garage, I see an unfamiliar car parked in the yard off the driveway. It’s a white Honda Civic, an old one that’s beginning to be consumed by rust. I get out of my pickup and look inside the car, but there’s nothing that tells me who the owner might be.
I walk around the house and see nothing out of place. I walk back into the house and go upstairs. Lilly’s sound asleep, and I don’t see any of her friends crashed on the floor or anywhere else. I head downstairs to Jack’s room and as soon as I get to the bottom step, I know who owns the car. Tommy Miller is on the couch, fast asleep. The car outside is symbolic of the family’s financial collapse. The last time I saw Tommy, he was driving a new Jeep. I creep back up the stairs and head off to the gym.
A couple of hours later, I’m standing in the doorway of my boss’s office. Lee Mooney has just returned from yet another of his frequent weeklong vacations, one he decided to take immediately after the conference he attended in Charleston. Between the vacations and the time he spends at conferences and seminars, he’s out of the office at least two and a half months a year.
I find it difficult to look Mooney in the eye these days because I’ve come to know he isn’t what he seems to be. Not long ago, I sent his nephew—a fellow prosecutor named Alexander Dunn—to prison for extorting money from gamblers. Alexander said Mooney was involved. I believed him, but I couldn’t prove it.
Then there’s the progressive alcoholism. I’ve seen Mooney drink himself into stupors at two office functions in the past six months, and I smell the lingering odor of vodka on him often. There are persistent rumors that his marriage is failing. I’m certain he stands to lose a great deal if his wealthy wife divorces him, but his lechery has become legendary. He believes himself to be a gift that must be generously bestowed upon women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. He pursues women at office parties and bar association meetings with both a dogged determination and a complete lack of discretion. His behavior has become increasingly erratic, and his life seems to be spinning out of control; yet he seems totally oblivious.
Mooney is sitting behind his desk, bracketed by the American and Tennessee flags. There’s a large, framed photograph of former president George W. Bush behind him. He has handsome features, with a strong jaw that outlines a lean face, but large, dark bags have formed beneath his eyes, and there’s a hint of purple in his cheeks. He has salt-and-pepper hair and a handlebar mustache that he fiddles with constantly. He’s wearing a brown tweed jacket over a white shirt and beige tie. His gray eyes are angry.
“What the hell’s going on with you?” he barks disdainfully. “I go away for a little while, and you dismiss a case outright after you’ve gotten your ass kicked in a hearing. Have you no sense of the public’s perception of this office?”
He’s talking about my case against Buddy Carver, the pedophile Judge Green allowed to walk away. He’s Monday-morning quarterbacking, and I don’t appreciate it.
“I’m taking Carver to the feds,” I say. “The federal laws are tougher, the jail terms are longer, and they don’t have a judge down there who sympathizes with pedophiles.”
“We need to make sure the public knows it when the federal grand jury issues an indictment,” Mooney says. “I’ll put out a press release.”
“Do you remember Brian Gant?” I say, changing the subject. “He was convicted of killing his mother-in-law and his niece a long time ago. I guess it was before you moved here.”
“What about him?”
“He’s about to be executed, and I think he’s innocent. I was wondering whether you might be interested in taking a look at the case. Maybe we should get involved.”
Mooney starts to answer, but is interrupted by the buzz of his intercom. He speaks in muffled tones, then looks back up at me.
“Let’s go,” Mooney says.
“Where?”
“I said let’s go!”
I shrug my shoulders and walk out the door behind him. When we get to the parking lot, he tells me to follow him in my truck. He’s tense and upset, more so than usual. He leads me to a wooded lot in an exclusive subdivision called Lake Harbor near Boones Creek. The driveway is asphalt and winds nearly a quarter of a mile through a stand of sugar maple trees toward a massive colonial-style brick house. We round a curve and top a small hill, and as we descend into a shallow valley about halfway to the house, I see it—the unmistakable activity of a crime scene. Vehicles, flashing lights, yellow tape, uniformed men moving slowly about. Mooney pulls over into the grass about a hundred yards short of the tape, and I do the same. As soon as I get out of the truck the smell hits me—the unique, acrid smell of burned flesh, and I jog to catch up to Mooney as he hurries toward the group of officers and paramedics.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Mooney mutters, and I follow his gaze toward one of the trees.
A blackened body is hanging by its neck from a rope, which has been wrapped around a branch about eight feet from the ground and tied off around the maple’s trunk. The body appears to be a male, but beyond that, it’s virtually unrecognizable. Chunks of charred flesh cling to the limbs and torso. The lips and most of the face have been burned away, leaving only a garish snarl.
Ten feet to my right, a smaller tree—a Bradford pear—is lying across the driveway. A black Mercedes is parked perhaps five feet from the tree. A TBI agent is photographing the car. I recognize him and walk over.
“Agent Norcross,” I say. “Long time, no see.” I’d gotten to know Norcross when he worked a murder cas
e with me a little more than a year ago—the Natasha Davis case.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Norcross says. He straightens to his full height, around six feet seven, and reaches out to shake my hand. “Joe Dillard.”
“Good to see you again. What can you tell me?”
There’s a large lump in Norcross’s left cheek—chewing tobacco—and he steps off to the side and spits a stream of brown juice onto the ground.
“This your case?” Norcross asks.
“Will be as soon as you catch the killer.”
“Looks like somebody hid out in the tree line over there for a while.” Norcross motions to a spot where two other agents are walking a grid. “Not really sure how long he was here, but from the look of it, he moved around quite a bit before he decided where he was going to set his little trap.”
“Trap?”
“The tree. The perp cut it down—looks like he used a saw of some kind—and it falls across the driveway. He waits back in the trees. When the victim leaves, he has to stop right here. He lives alone, and he’s far enough away from everyone else that nobody sees or hears a thing—at least we haven’t found anybody yet. The victim walks around to the trunk of the tree, starts tugging on it, and he gets whacked. There’s some blood on the tree trunk and scuff marks where the body was dragged across the lawn to the other tree over there. Then the perp douses him with kerosene or gasoline, strings him up, and sets him on fire.”
“Who’s the victim?” I ask.
Norcross grins. “You don’t know?”
“No. Why should I?”
“You’re serious? Nobody’s told you yet? He’s almost as famous as you.”
I shrug my shoulders.
“His name’s Green,” Norcross says, and a chill immediately goes down my spine. “As in Leonard Green. Judge Leonard Green.”