by Scott Pratt
I see a glint of understanding. He knows what I mean.
“That’s right. Deadly force. I can use deadly force defending myself against someone who invades my home.”
I stand and back up a few steps, my mind whirling. If they look closely, they’ll see the amount of blood on the floor and know he bled for a while before he was shot the second time. They’ll analyze the angle of the trajectory of the bullet and know I was standing over him when I shot him. They’ll accuse me of murdering him.
He’s garbage. He raped Hannah and then had her murdered, and he’s going to get away with it. He shot my dog. He needs to be dead.
I pull back the hammer on the pistol and take a deep breath.
A hand wraps around the gun barrel and pushes it down gently. I come out of the trance and recognize the voice.
“Don’t,” Caroline says. “You’re not like him.”
I lower the gun to my side and nod my head. A thought pops into my mind, something Bates told me about Ramirez. I step back up next to Mooney, raise my heel off the ground, and stomp on his wounded knee with all the force I can muster. He screams in agony. I dial 911 on my cell phone and tell them there’s been a shooting. The cavalry is on the way.
“Take care of Rio, will you?” I say to Caroline.
I walk to a drawer next to the sink, pull out a clean dish towel, and walk back over to Mooney.
“Here,” I say as I toss it onto his forehead. “You’re going to jail. Try not to bleed to death before you get there.”
57
The following week is a blur. My first order of business is to reassure the employees in the office that I won’t be making any dramatic changes, that everyone will keep their jobs. I tell them as much as I can about Mooney’s resignation and my appointment. I don’t see any point in keeping anything from them. After all, I want them to trust me. They’re all shocked at the news of Hannah’s violent death, especially Tanner Jarrett. When he hears that she was pregnant with Mooney’s child, that Mooney paid to have her killed, and that we can’t prosecute Mooney because all the witnesses are dead, he excuses himself from the room and doesn’t come back.
The pressure from the media becomes so intense on the first day that I agree to a press conference in one of the courtrooms at one o’clock. News about Hannah has leaked, probably from Bates, and the conference is brutal. They ask about Hannah. How was she killed? Who killed her? When was she killed? When was she found? Is it true she was pregnant? I refer all those questions to the sheriff. They ask about Mooney, question after question after question. I refuse to tell them anything other than to confirm that he resigned last night and that the governor has appointed me to replace him until the end of the term. I refer all of the questions about the break-in at my house and the shooting to the sheriff. One of the reporters even asks whether it’s true that my dog was shot. I swallow hard and tell him to talk to the sheriff.
Late that afternoon, I’m sworn into office by the judge the governor has appointed to replace Leonard Green. Sixty-year-old Terry Breck made a fortune in medical malpractice law. He’s retired now, but the governor has apparently seduced him into taking the job. He has a reputation as an even-tempered, scholarly man. I hope that turns out to be true. It’ll be such a pleasant change from what I’m used to dealing with.
On Wednesday, Leon Bates appears before the grand jury with Tanner Jarrett. He comes out with indictments against seventeen members of Satan’s Soldiers for charges ranging from possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, to murder. Bates and his SWAT team conduct a raid early the next morning, and thus far, six of the seventeen have been taken into custody. None of the indictments contain the name “Roy” or the alias “Mountain,” and I wonder what Sarah’s boyfriend’s real name is and whether he’s on the run.
Late Thursday afternoon, Tanner Jarrett, Caroline, and I get on a plane to Knoxville. There we meet a black woman, Lottie Antoine, who looks to be in her mid-sixties. After Hannah’s death was made public, I was contacted by a lawyer from Gatlinburg and told that Hannah Mills had a will, and that Lottie was the executor of her estate.
After a short, emotional introductory meeting, the four of us board a plane to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Lottie is silent during the flight. She carries herself with a sense of quiet dignity, but I can see in her dark eyes that she, too, has endured more than her share of sorrow. We rent a van and drive to South Haven the next morning. We hold a brief service for Hannah and bury her alongside her mother and brothers and sister in McDowell Cemetery near Casco Township. Lottie speaks of Hannah’s gentle nature and kindness, her love of family and the outdoors, her relationship with Luke Clinton, and her almost superhuman ability to carry on through unspeakable tragedy. Her words move all of us to tears, and I find myself thinking, once again, about how unjust life can be. We board another plane that same afternoon and fly home. On the way, Lottie tells me that Hannah’s will set up a trust that would benefit her beloved Smoky Mountains National Park.
On Sunday evening, Caroline invites a group of people, around twenty or so, over to the house to celebrate my appointment as district attorney. I have mixed feelings about it. I’m looking forward to what I know will be a challenge, but at the same time, the circumstances under which I inherited the job give me no cause for celebration. Rio is limping around in a cast. The shot shattered the upper part of his right leg, but Dr. Kruk repaired the damage and says he’ll be fine in a couple of months.
I’m standing on the deck around eight o’clock. The sun has just dropped behind the hills to the west, and the evening air has taken on a bit of a chill. I’m talking to Jim Beaumont, a well-respected local defense attorney and close friend, when I catch a glimpse of my sister, Sarah, through the window in the kitchen. Caroline must have invited her. She looks like a tick about to pop. Towering above her is Roy, the biker boyfriend.
“Oh shit,” I say to Beaumont. “Excuse me for a minute.”
I hurry through the door into the kitchen, catch Sarah by the elbow, and lead her into the same hallway where Rio was shot.
“Are you crazy?” I say. “Don’t you know the sheriff is here? Your boyfriend’s about to go to jail.”
Sarah gives me a curious look. “Why?”
“Why? Don’t you read the papers? Listen to the news? Bates indicted a whole slew of his gang this week. He’s bound to be one of them.”
“You think so?” she says. A hint of a smile is beginning to form on her face.
“Damned right, I think so. Now get him out of here before Bates spots him and a gun battle breaks out.”
“Too late,” she says, and nods back toward the kitchen. I turn to see Bates walk up to Sarah’s boyfriend and give him a big slap on the back. I’m dumbfounded. I walk into the kitchen and stare. Bates notices me and grins.
“Come on over here, Brother Dillard,” Bates says. “Let me introduce you to Roy Walker, the best undercover agent I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.”
I stand there looking at him stupidly, and Walker winks and sticks out his massive hand.
“Howdy again,” he says. “They call me Mountain.”
58
On Monday morning, I’m sitting at my new desk at seven o’clock sharp. I’m alone. The rest of the crew won’t arrive for another hour.
I’ve removed everything from the office that reminds me of Lee Mooney: the desk, the furniture, the photos on the wall. I’ve boxed up all of his personal property and mailed it to him. The United States and Tennessee flags that framed his desk have been moved to the reception area. The large photograph of George W. Bush has been replaced by a framed copy of the preamble to the United States Constitution. I’ve painted the walls myself. Caroline told me that Hannah Mills’s favorite color was gold and helped me pick out a shade that isn’t too bright. I’ve brought a few small framed photos of my family into the office, but outside of that, I’ve chosen to keep it sparse.
There’s a large sealed envelope on the desk in front of me. To
my right is a thick file I’ve retrieved from a storage room in my house.
Last week, I made two important phone calls. One was to Brian Gant’s appellate attorney, and the other was to the director of the Tennessee Department of Correction. I was amazed at how easy it was to get the director on the phone. Being a district attorney general certainly has its advantages. Brian’s lawyer faxed me a copy of the DNA profile of evidence from the scene where Brian’s mother- in-law was murdered and his niece was raped, and the director readily agreed to run the profile through their database. All he needed was a case number, he said, and he’d see to it that it was taken care of. In less than forty-eight hours, I received a telephone call from a Department of Correction DNA specialist. She had a match to the profile I faxed her, she said. The DNA belonged to a man named Earl Gaines. He’d been convicted twice of aggravated rape and was currently serving a thirty-year sentence. I asked her whether she could send me a copy of the DOC’s records on Gaines, and she said she’d get it in the mail right away.
The package in front of me is Gaines’s records. The file to my right is Brian Gant’s. I open the package, remove the thick sheaf of papers, and begin to read them carefully. Gaines was born in 1966. He was first convicted of aggravated rape at the age of nineteen. He served ten years, and was paroled in February 1995, just two months before Brian Gant’s mother-in-law was murdered.
I find the section that contains Gaines’s parole records. They show that in February 1995, he moved in with a woman named Clara Stoots. As I look at Clara Stoots’s address, an alarm bell goes off inside my head. I grab Brian Gant’s file and quickly locate a copy of the original police report of the murder. I’m looking for the mother-in-law’s address. When I find it, I begin to slowly shake my head.
“No,” I say out loud. “No.”
Clara Stoots’s address in April 1995 was 136 Old Oak Road, Jonesborough, Tennessee. Shirley La-Guardia, Brian Gant’s mother-in-law, lived at 134 Old Oak Road, Jonesborough, Tennessee. At the time of her murder, Earl Gaines was living right next door.
I dig back through Gaines’s file, curious about one thing. Toward the bottom of the stack are several booking photos of Gaines. I fold my arms on the desk in front of me, drop my head onto them, and start slamming my fist onto the desk in anger and frustration.
As little Natalie first told the police, Gaines looked very much like Uncle Brian.
59
Anita White walks unannounced into my office an hour and a half later wearing a smart- looking navy blue pantsuit but seeming a bit frazzled. She sits down across the desk from me without saying a word. I’ve called her a couple of times since our conversation at Perkins the morning they arrested Tommy Miller, but she hasn’t answered and hasn’t returned the calls. I wonder whether she’s looking for another apology from me.
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” I say.
“I’ve been out of the country.”
“Vacation?”
“I took a few personal days, but I worked the entire time I was gone.”
“Really? On what?”
“It started with the forensic analysis of Judge Green’s computer. Our analyst found out that someone had hacked into the judge’s computer not long before he was killed. He investigated, like all good TBI agents do, and found that the computer the hacker used was located in another country.”
“And what country was that?”
“Canada.”
The look on her face is almost, but not quite, smug. There’s a gleam in her eye that tells me she knows something that I don’t. I can tell she’s dying to spit it out, but first she wants to enjoy her little game.
“Canada’s a big country,” I say.
“Yes, and Vancouver’s a big city.”
The thought germinates in my mind and begins to grow quickly. Vancouver. Canada. Judge Green. Computer hacker. What do they have in common? It dawns on me suddenly, but I’m afraid to be too optimistic. What has she learned? How far has she taken it?
“Talk to me,” I say.
“When I saw the Vancouver address, I remembered the case against the pedophile that Judge Green threw out on a technicality, so I got online and looked it up. David Dillinger was the witness the judge held in contempt that day, so I started doing my job. I checked with the airlines at Tri-Cities Airport and found out that David Dillinger flew back here three days before Judge Green was murdered. He took a plane home the morning the judge was discovered. I checked with the rental agency at the airport. Guess what model car David Dillinger rented? A white Subaru Legacy. I checked the hotels and found out he stayed at the Doubletree, the same hotel the state put him in when he came down to testify at the hearing. The Doubletree has security cameras at all of the entrances and in all of the hallways. When I went through the tapes, I learned that Dillinger had a tendency to sleep all day and stay out all night. On the morning of the murder, he showed up at the hotel at exactly 5:12 a.m. Shall I keep going?”
“By all means,” I say. “So far I’ve heard a fairly good circumstantial case, but I’m not sure there’s enough for a conviction.”
“Did I tell you about the part where I got his credit card bill and found that he’d charged some items at Wal- Mart in Johnson City the night before the murder? Let’s see, what was it? Oh yes, a bow saw, a length of rope, and a five-gallon plastic gasoline container. Wal- Mart had a tape, too. Dillinger is easily recognizable.”
The excitement is building. I’m picturing the look on Tommy Miller’s face when I walk into court and ask the judge to dismiss the charges against him.
“So you went to Canada to arrest him?”
“First I called the Vancouver police, and based on the information I provided, they arrested him and got a DNA sample. It matched two cigarette butts we found at the crime scene. So I flew up there and interviewed him. As soon as I showed him the DNA match, he knew he was dead in the water. He said when he got back to Vancouver, he hacked into Green’s computer. It was full of child pornography, along with a lot of other obscene material. Dillinger was so enraged that he started planning the murder that very minute. He confessed to everything, and I have it on video. He’s in the Washington County jail as we speak. I brought him back with me.”
She’s grinning broadly now. I get up from behind the desk, walk around in front of her, and reach out my arms.
“Give me a hug, Agent White.”
She stands and wraps her arms around my neck.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Would you like to know what the best part of all this is?” she says. “Harmon doesn’t know anything about it. He thinks I’m on vacation.”
Also Available
from
Scott Pratt
AN INNOCENT CLIENT
A preacher is stabbed to death in a Tennessee
motel and the suspect is a waitress at a strip club.
Defense attorney Joe Dillard’s too burnt out to
defend anyone he knows in his heart is guilty.
Then he meets the vulnerable Angel—the accused,
incriminated by circumstantial evidence. Dillard’s
sure she’s not capable of killing anyone. What he
doesn’t count on are the others drawn into the
storm of the stunning crime—from the vindictive
detective to the victim’s avenging son to Dillard’s
own deeply troubled sister—all of whom will
help to erase the line between guilt and
innocence, and between an unthinkable lie and
the unbelievable truth.
“Artfully plotted, carefully nuanced, and
immensely readable.”
—New York Times bestselling author Sheldon Siegel
Available wherever books are sold or at
penguin.com
S0069
Also Available
from
Scott Pratt
IN GOOD FAITH
goth teens stand accused of the murders, and now
it’s up to prosecutor Joe Dillard to convict them. A
former defense attorney who spent way too much
time defending people he knew were guilty, Joe is
determined to win this case to atone for his past.
But a young woman named Natasha, who
apparently inspired the slayings, is walking around
free because the boys are afraid to implicate her.
Now, Joe must risk everything—including the
safety of his family and his own good faith—
to bring a guilty woman to justice.
“Pratt is a talent to watch.”
—Jeff Abbott, national bestselling author of Collision
Available wherever books are sold or at
penguin.com
S0070
The New York Times bestseller from
John Lescroart
BETRAYAL
Dismas Hardy agrees to take an appeal to overturn the murder
conviction of National Guard reservist Evan Scholler. Scholler had
plenty of reasons for revenge—but as Dismas delves into the case,
he begins to uncover a terrible truth that drops him right into the