by Scott Pratt
PART 2
13
I hate to admit it even to myself, but as I stand watching the paramedics untie the rope and slowly lower what’s left of Judge Leonard Green to the ground, I feel no sympathy for him. I’ve practiced law as both a defense lawyer and a prosecutor in front of Green for fifteen years. I’ve seen him at the gym almost every weekday morning—where he has invariably ignored me—for at least eight years. I should feel something, especially considering the horrible death he’s experienced, but I don’t. His destruction of Ray Miller’s life and career was simply the latest in a long line of cruel acts I’ve seen him commit from his perch of power, and I’m almost relieved to know he won’t be doing it again.
Lee Mooney has been scurrying around the crime scene like an ant. I can sense that he’s angry as he approaches me. His cheeks are flushed with pink, and there are small beads of sweat on his forehead. He stands next to me as the coroner begins to look at the body.
“I’ve been screwed,” Mooney says.
“How so?”
“They assigned it to her.” Mooney jerks his head to his right and shoots a glance toward a black woman wearing a black baseball cap and a navy blue jacket, both with “TBI” emblazoned across the front. Her name is Anita White.
“So? She’s smart. She’s tough. She’s experienced. Seems like a pretty good choice to me.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Why?”
“Look around, Dillard. What do you see? Swinging dicks, that’s what. White swinging dicks. I’ve got a dead judge in my district, and the TBI assigns a black woman to lead the investigation.”
“It’s a new age, boss.”
“New age, my ass. I don’t give a damn if a black man got himself elected president, a murder investigation requires cooperation between agencies, especially when the TBI is involved. How many cops around here do you think are going to cooperate with a black woman?”
“I think you’d be surprised.”
Mooney looks at me in disgust and stomps away. I’ve seen glimpses of racism in his behavior before, but this is the first time he’s been blatant about it. As I watch him walk away, I wonder whether the reason he’s been able to hide it so well is because he rarely, if ever, interacts with people of different races. The county where I live has a very small number of African Americans, less than 3 percent of the population. There are no black lawyers, no black office holders, only a couple of black police officers in Johnson City, and no black person works for the sheriff’s department. The world in which we both work is staffed by whites.
Anita White is in her late thirties. She was transferred to the Johnson City field office about a year ago. She’s medium height and slim, her smooth skin is the color of cocoa powder, her ebony hair is touched with red highlights, and her eyes are a clear green. She has an easy, dimpled smile with a barely noticeable gap between her front teeth and a small mole on her left cheek. She’s truly stunning, almost to the point of being intimidating.
I’ve worked only one case with her so far, a prison murder in Mountain City shortly after she arrived. It was a particularly gory stabbing and all of the witnesses were cons, but working with Anita was a pleasure. I found her to be extremely intelligent. I learned that she loves to read and once dreamed of being a concert pianist. She has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a law degree from what used to be Memphis State University, now the University of Memphis.
As the coroner continues to gingerly look over Judge Green’s body, Anita walks up. I, too, step toward the gurney.
“Morning, Counselor,” Anita says.
“Agent White.”
“Unpleasant way to go out, huh?”
“I can give you a time of death.”
“Really?”
“He got to the gym every morning at five. He worked out until six, took a shower, and was out the door by six fifteen. I saw him in the locker room almost every day.”
“Were you there this morning?” Anita says.
“Sure was.”
“I take it you didn’t see him.”
“Nope.”
“Which gym?”
“The one on State of Franklin Road.”
“Which is about ten minutes from here, give or take a few?”
I nod.
“So he leaves here around ten minutes to five, and that should be pretty close to the time of death?”
“Should be.”
“I’d like to hear your thoughts on who might have done this,” Anita says. “You’ve known the judge a lot longer than I have.”
Something pops to the front of my mind, but I push it back quickly. Could it be possible? No. No way.
“Who found him?” I ask.
“A man he hired to trim some shrubbery. He showed up about eight this morning.”
I take a moment and think back on the judge’s career on the bench. When it came to making enemies, he was truly an artist.
“Your list of suspects is probably pretty long,” I say.
“Green sent thousands of people to prison over the past thirty years. His decisions were emotional more often than they were rational, and he couldn’t restrain himself from sticking a knife into anyone who gave him an opening. Add the fact that I think he was a sexual deviant, and the list gets even longer.”
“What makes you think he was a sexual deviant?”
“Things he’s said over the years, things he’s done, the way he acted. He was always talking about staying up until three or four in the morning reading legal opinions on the Internet. Used it as an excuse for being grouchy. But since he didn’t know very much about the law, he was either lying or just plain stupid. Plus, he’s always been soft on sentencing sexual offenders. He let a pedophile walk last week on a legal technicality.”
“I heard about that,” Anita says. “Didn’t some witness come all the way from Canada?”
“Yeah, Vancouver, and Green made him look like a fool. I guess he just couldn’t help it. But as far as suspects go, maybe Green molested someone and the victim decided to get even. Maybe someone was trying to blackmail him and he resisted. This is personal. Beaten, hanged, burned. Whoever did this was extremely pissed off.”
“Anyone in particular come to mind?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Like I said, long list. I guess you could start by finding out if anyone he sent to the penitentiary has been paroled lately.”
“We’re already working on that. What about this Ray Miller? How well did you know him?”
“He’s dead. I don’t think he killed the judge from beyond the grave.”
“Quite a coincidence, though, don’t you think? Green suspends Miller. Then Miller commits suicide in his courtroom after taking a couple of shots at Green. Miller is buried yesterday, and the judge is found this morning.”
“Ray Miller’s gone, Anita. That story is over.”
“So how well did you say you knew him?”
I look directly at her and her eyes narrow slightly. She’s testing me.
“Forgive me, but I’m really not in the mood to be jerked around right now.”
“Really? It was an innocuous question. I just thought you might be able to help.”
I smile inwardly for a brief second. She may be the first cop I’ve ever heard use the word innocuous.
“Sorry,” I say. “Mooney’s had his foot up my butt for the past hour and a half. I guess I’m a little touchy. I knew Ray well. His son and mine played baseball together for years. We were friends.”
Anita looks toward the sky. “Storm’s coming,” she says. “We’d better button this up.”
I follow her gaze toward a thunderhead over Buffalo Mountain. It’s moving steadily toward us. The newly sprouting leaves on the trees that cover the mountain are a dull gold against the blackening sky. The breeze stiffens, and I shove my hands into my pockets.
“How old is Miller’s son?” Anita asks.
“Another innocuous question?”
“Feel fre
e to regard it any way you’d like.”
I look down and start digging at the grass with my shoe. I realize Tommy has to be a suspect, but I just can’t wrap my mind around the idea that he’d be capable of killing anyone, even the judge. I could tell Anita about finding him sound asleep on the couch earlier, but I know the drill. If I tell her, I drag myself and my son smack into the middle of a murder investigation. They’ll probably even want to talk to Caroline and Lilly. The TBI agents will separate us and interrogate us. Anyone who refuses to talk to them will be deemed to be hiding something. If there’s any small discrepancy in any of our stories, they’ll all think we’re lying.
Then again, if I don’t tell her, am I committing a crime? Am I somehow obstructing justice? Tampering? Failing to disclose a material fact in a criminal investigation? I run the possibilities through my mind quickly and decide that though I might have some ethical obligation to tell Anita that Tommy was at my house this morning, I’m not breaking any laws by keeping it to myself. The kid’s been through enough, and even though I know she’ll do everything in her power to question him, I also know that he has a right to remain silent. He doesn’t have to tell her a damned thing.
“He’s twenty, and I think you’re wrong if you suspect Tommy Miller of doing this,” I say. “I’ve known him since he was a little kid. He’s spent the night at my house at least a hundred times over the past ten or twelve years. He’s eaten with us, gone to movies and ball games with us, spent holidays with us. We’ve even taken him with us on vacation a couple of times. He’s my son’s best friend, and my wife and I would adopt him in a heartbeat. He’s a fantastic kid. There’s no way he could have done this.”
I hear the distinctive sound of a zipper as the paramedics close the body bag. Anita and I watch as they begin to roll the charred remains of Judge Green toward the ambulance.
“That’s quite an endorsement coming from an assistant district attorney,” Anita says.
“I know him, and I know he didn’t do this.”
“So if I arrest him for murder, I guess somebody else will be prosecuting.”
I hear a clap of thunder in the distance as she turns her back to me and walks away. I hurry off toward my pickup. I need to talk to Tommy.
14
Instead of going to the office, I head straight back to the house. By the time I get there, the thunderstorm is beginning to unleash its fury. As I pull into the driveway, I can see whitecaps on the channel below, and the young birch trees at the edge of the woods are bending with the howling wind. Small raindrops are whizzing by the windshield horizontally, and the thick cloud cover has transformed morning into dusk.
The Honda Civic that I assume belongs to Tommy Miller is gone. I open the door from the garage into the kitchen and Rio almost knocks me down. He’s excited to see me, unaccustomed to my coming home so early in the day.
Caroline is standing at the stove, while Jack sits at the kitchen table. There’s a stack of pancakes in front of him, and the smell of bacon fills my nostrils. Both of them look at me in surprise.
“What are you doing here?” Caroline says.
I ignore her and walk straight to the table. “Where’s Tommy?” I say to Jack.
“What?”
“You heard me. Where’s Tommy? I saw him sleeping downstairs before I left.”
“I guess he went home.”
“Did you talk to him? What did he say?”
The questions I’m firing at Jack are quick, and the tone of my voice is intense. It’s not the kind of treatment he’s used to getting from me. Caroline walks over from the stove and sets a plate of scrambled eggs down on the table.
“What time did Tommy show up?”
“I don’t know,” Jack says. “Why are you so pissed off?”
“I asked you a question, and I want a straight answer. Now, what time did Tommy show up?”
“Don’t yell at him,” Caroline says evenly.
“Stay out of this.”
Jack is looking at me with wide eyes. We haven’t exchanged a cross word since his first year in college when he got a little too deep into the Nashville party scene. Caroline doesn’t reply. She knows how I feel about Jack, and she knows I wouldn’t be acting this way without a good reason.
“I don’t know what time he got here,” Jack says, looking back down at his plate. “I woke up this morning and he was here. He was already awake.”
“Did you talk to him before he left?”
“Yeah, a little bit. He said he got hammered last night.”
“What time did he leave?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
“What else did he say?”
“Not much. He was pretty quiet. I don’t think he felt good.”
“How did he look?”
“What do you mean, ‘How did he look?’ He looked like someone who buried his father yesterday and tried to drown the memory in a liquor bottle.”
“Did he look like he’d been in a fight?”
“I didn’t notice anything.”
“No cuts? No blood? No bruises?”
“Not that I saw. What’s going on, Dad?”
“What about his clothes? Did you see anything on his clothes?”
“Not really. I mean, he was wearing some of my clothes.”
“What the hell happened to his clothes?”
“I don’t know.”
I take a deep breath and sit down across from him. Caroline returns the pan to the stove and walks back to the table.
“You’d better sit down,” I say to her.
For the next few minutes, I describe to them the crime scene, how someone apparently planned the murder, lay in wait, then brutally assaulted, hanged, and burned a man. When I’m finished, I stare straight at Jack.
“They haven’t positively identified the body yet. But there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind who it is.”
“Who?” Caroline asks.
“It’s Judge Green.” I’m still staring at Jack. “And Tommy Miller is at the top of their list of suspects. The TBI is going to be crawling all over this.”
Jack’s face slowly turns pale, as though a valve has been opened and has drained every bit of blood from above his shoulders. Suddenly he stands.
“I’m going to be sick,” he says, and he sprints for the bathroom.
15
Caroline and I sit in silence for a few minutes, listening to the retching from the bathroom echo off the walls down the hall.
“You don’t really think Tommy did it,” Caroline says.
“It’s possible.”
“But you knew Ray. You know Tommy. You’re his friend, Joe.”
“Not if he committed a murder and brought it to my doorstep. That’s not my idea of friendship.”
“Tommy didn’t kill anyone, and you know it. They’re just going after Tommy because of what happened with Ray.”
“Oh, they’re going after him, all right. You can count on that. My guess is Special Agent Anita White will be knocking on his door within the hour.”
Caroline stands and starts walking toward the counter. She picks up the telephone.
“Then I’m calling Toni,” Caroline says. “I have to warn her.”
I get up and walk toward her, holding out my hand.
“No way, Caroline. One of the first things they’ll do is get a subpoena for their phone records. If you call, you’ll probably get a visit. Now give me the phone.”
“She just buried her husband. I can call to check on her if I want.”
“But you can’t call to warn her that the cops are coming to question her son about a murder.”
“Why not?” She turns her back on me and begins to dial.
“Because you could wind up getting charged with obstruction of justice, that’s why. Caroline, don’t be reckless. Stay out of this.”
“That’s twice you’ve said that to me in the past twenty minutes. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not one of your underlings at the office. I don’t take ord
ers from you.”
“Please.”
“If it were me, I’d expect her to do the same.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and turn her toward me.
“What do I have to do to make you understand this isn’t a game? You’re about to commit a crime, and you’re forcing me to be a witness.”
“Calling my friend is not a crime. And you don’t have to listen.”
The look in her eyes tells me she’s made up her mind. She walks toward the bedroom, the phone to her ear. I turn, frustrated, and catch a glimpse of Jack coming down the hall, wiping his mouth with a washcloth. The aura of self-assuredness that usually surrounds him has vanished. He trudges through the kitchen on heavy legs and plops back into his seat at the table.
I begin to rub my fingers through my hair and notice that they’re trembling. I feel anger—anger that Judge Green set all of this into motion, anger that I’m helpless to do anything about it, anger that my wife is acting like a stubborn fool—but I also feel fear. I know what the system is capable of. I know what it can do to the guilty, and I know what it can do to the innocent. My mind conjures up an image of Tommy strapped to a gurney, an IV hooked to his arm. I fear for Tommy, but I also fear for my son.
“I can’t believe this,” Jack says quietly. He stares down at the table, as though in a trance.
“Think,” I say. “Think about everything he said and did.”
“Why? Even if I remember something that might help the police, do you think I’m going to tell them? We’re talking about my best friend here. We’re talking about someone whose life was ripped apart for no good reason, someone who didn’t deserve it. Even if he did kill the judge—and I don’t believe for a second that he did—I’ll be damned if I’m going to help them pin it on him.”
His words shock me to the point of incredulity. I bore in on him, my voice much louder than I intend it to be.
“What the hell is going on here? Has everyone in this house suddenly gone insane?”
He doesn’t respond, and I look away in silence, not wanting to comprehend what I’m hearing. Jack has worked hard all his life. He’s been an excellent student, a great athlete, a great kid. He has a promising future. He’s going to earn a degree from one of the finest universities in the country. He has a chance to achieve his lifelong dream of playing professional baseball. And now he sits in front of me telling me he’s willing to take a chance on throwing it all away over a sense of misguided loyalty. I turn back to him.