Justice Lost

by Scott Pratt

  “Rest in peace, Felina,” he said.

  “Felina? You named your cruiser Felina?”

  “After that Marty Robbins song ‘El Paso.’”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that. Good song.”

  The car was shot to hell. All the tires were flat, all the windows shot out, and it was leaking fluids.

  “I don’t think she’s fixable,” the sheriff said.

  “It doesn’t look that way.”

  “Maybe I’ll get something a little more practical.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. So now that Roby’s dead, what do we do with him?”

  “I know what we ought to do with him. We ought to bury him where he buried that marine.”

  “You know where Gary Brewer is?”

  Corker nodded. “I hate to admit it, but I do. He’s buried in a barrel underneath a garbage dump that’s just over that knob.”

  “I was just in that garbage dump,” I said. “It helped saved my life, along with you and my other friend.”

  I knew I was lucky to be alive. I was lucky the dump happened to be there and provided me with enough cover to keep Roby from tearing me to shreds with the machine gun, I was lucky the sheriff had grown a backbone and wounded his uncle, and I was lucky Eugene had shown up. But the thought of Brewer in a barrel so nearby dampened my spirits. Life was so fickle. I could have very easily wound up in a barrel next to him.

  “So what’s our story going to be?” the sheriff said.

  “I think the story should be that you and I came out here to question Roby as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Gary Brewer and the murder of Stephen Morris. We don’t have to say much more than that, just that an informant had told us that Brewer was buried on this property and that Roby had bragged to someone about killing Morris. When we got here, he opened fire on us with automatic weapons. We returned fire, split up, and when he went after me, you went into his house and grabbed a hunting rifle. Just as he was about to kill me, you took a shot from about two hundred yards and put a bullet in his head.”

  “That’s what we’re going to tell the TBI? They investigate officer-involved shootings.”

  “Not unless I tell them to. And I’m not going to tell them to. I’m the district attorney and you’re the sheriff. This is our case. Screw those guys. Let’s see if we can find the bullet that killed Roby. If we can come up with it, we’ll get rid of it so we don’t have to worry about ballistics.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” the sheriff said.

  We searched for twenty minutes in the brown grass before the sheriff found the flattened, bloody piece of metal that had torn through Roby’s skull. It was about thirty feet from the body on a patch of bare dirt. I took it to the edge of a cluster of trees fifty yards to the right and buried it.

  “You got a cell phone?” I said.

  “It got broken during the fight.”

  I unzipped one of my coat pockets, pulled out my phone, and tossed it to him.

  “Guess you better call in some folks. Keep it as low-key as possible. Nothing in the press. You have people you can trust, right?”

  “Plenty of them.”

  “There’s a lot of mess to clean up here, and we need to find Brewer’s body,” I said. “Did Roby tell you exactly where it is?”

  “Pretty close. He used a front-end loader and his tractor. I don’t think it’ll take all that long to find him.”

  “His family will be grateful to you,” I said.

  “And to you, Counselor.”

  It was the first time the sheriff had ever called me “Counselor.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Make the call.”

  CHAPTER 43

  I called Claire the first chance I got, which was after one of Sheriff Corker’s deputies gave me a ride to my apartment around noon. Roby Penn had been hauled off to the morgue, the sheriff’s car had been hauled off to the junkyard, and Gary Brewer’s body had been located and removed from a fifty-five-gallon drum that was buried very close to where the sheriff said it would be. What was left of his body was placed in a body bag and taken to the morgue.

  There were other barrels in the dump, too. A deputy opened one to make sure there wasn’t a body in it and found it stuffed with bundles of shrink-wrapped cash. They hadn’t counted it all when I left, but there had to be more than a half million dollars, and they were just getting started.

  The sheriff’s deputies also hauled fifty different weapons out of Roby’s trailer along with thousands of rounds of ammunition. They would be seized and eventually wind up in the sheriff department’s arsenal.

  “Oh my God, Darren,” Claire said when she answered her phone. “I’ve been so worried. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “Roby Penn got killed this morning. The official story is that the sheriff took him out, but I think you and I both know better. Thank you for making that call.”

  “I didn’t think you could rely on the sheriff.”

  “Well, thank you. You saved my life. And don’t be too hard on Sheriff Corker. He’s had a sudden attack of conscience. I think he and I are going to get along pretty well.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “A few scrapes and bruises. I came out of it far better than I should have.”

  “You know, I had the strangest feeling earlier,” she said. “I woke up around 5:15 a.m., and I thought I very distinctly heard you say goodbye to me.”

  “I did say goodbye to you. At 5:30 a.m., I was lying behind a mound of dirt in a garbage pit with a crazy man walking up on me, firing an M60 machine gun. I thought I was dead, so I said goodbye. What you heard was obviously an illusion, but it’s funny how those illusions can be so close to reality sometimes.”

  She was silent for a few seconds. Then she said, “He had a machine gun?”

  “You should see the sheriff’s car. It looks like it’s been in a junkyard for twenty years and people have used it for target practice. No glass, no tires. It’s a mess.”

  “That car was his pride and joy, from everything I’ve heard. He must be devastated.”

  “The car’s name was Felina, but I think he’s going to let her go and get something that isn’t quite so loud. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he quit wearing those pearl-handled pistols.”

  “Wow, it sounds like he’s making some real strides in the right direction.”

  “Speaking of strides in the right direction, how would you feel about me coming up to Washington for a couple of days? I’d like to meet with your grandfather about the director of the TBI here and tell him what I know. I’d also like to see whether he can get the FBI up there to make some things happen.”

  “You want to come to the swamp?”

  “I do. Can you recommend a good hotel?”

  “I have a fantastic place near the Capitol Building. You can stay with me.”

  I liked that idea. I felt like it was time to see whether there was a real physical attraction between us.

  “Tell your grandfather we found Captain Gary Brewer. It wasn’t pretty, but we have his remains.”

  “Thank you, Darren. He’ll be so grateful. When would you like to come to town?”

  “Things have been pretty intense here for quite a while,” I said. “Maybe this weekend?”

  “Perfect,” Claire said. “Book a flight and let me know when you’re arriving. I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Darren?” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want to deceive you. Ms. Tipton called me earlier. She said Eugene saw everything that happened. She said Eugene said you fought so bravely, that you stood in front of that maniac and didn’t back down an inch.”

  “I backed down plenty. I ran like a scared rabbit.”

  “You’re brave, Darren. That’s the point. I’m enamored with brave men.”

  For the first time in a long, long time, I felt butterflies in my stomac
h. “I’ll see you soon,” I said.

  “Can’t wait.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Six weeks later

  I stood at the lectern in Criminal Court Division II and looked up at the judge.

  “Darren Street for the prosecution,” I said.

  A convict with a long record of sexual offenses had been charged with raping, murdering, and burglarizing the apartment of a seventy-two-year-old woman not far from the University of Tennessee campus. It was a semi-high-profile case, but more important for me, it was the first case that I had been able to work into my schedule as a trial lawyer.

  “Are you here for show, Mr. Street, or are you actually going to try this case?” Judge Richard Bell said.

  “I intend to prosecute this case from arraignment to verdict to appeal, if there is one,” I said.

  “Well, this is certainly new. Mr. Morris, may he rest in peace, didn’t try a single case in my court during his entire tenure in the district attorney’s office.”

  “Things are being run a little differently,” I said.

  “They certainly are. I, for one, would like to commend you and the other prosecutors in your office for the way in which you’ve conducted yourselves since you took over. The dockets are already remarkably less clogged, and things seem to be running extremely efficiently.”

  “That has as much to do with you as it does with my office, Your Honor,” I said. “You run a tight ship in here.”

  Why not brownnose the judge a little? What could it hurt?

  “Thank you, Mr. Street,” Judge Bell said. “Will the clerk call the case number?”

  There had, indeed, been many changes in the past six weeks, and not just in the district attorney’s office. Pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, cockfighters, and dogfighters were no longer being extorted for money and protection. Instead, they were being arrested by the sheriff’s department. Sheriff Corker had implemented a zero-tolerance policy for crime in his county, and his deputies had fanned out like a swarm of locusts into the criminal underworld. The result was a lot more work for the lawyers in my office and a steep increase in arrests in the outlying areas of the county.

  The sheriff had, as I’d told Claire on the phone, stopped wearing his pistols. In fact, he didn’t wear a gun at all. I’d seen him a week earlier, and he looked like he’d dropped thirty pounds. He still wore the cowboy hat, but he drove an SUV with the same decals on it that every other vehicle in his department displayed.

  There remained only two discreet gambling clubs on the east and west ends of the county. They were owned and operated by the Tipton family. No alcohol was allowed, and patrons were searched with wands at the door to ensure they didn’t bring weapons into the clubs. I’d talked to Granny a week after they got the clubs up and running, and she seemed genuinely pleased with how things were going.

  We finished the arraignment of the defendant, and I walked up the stairs toward my office. My cell phone vibrated, and I looked at it. It was Claire’s number.

  “They picked him up five minutes ago,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Hanes Howell. You made quite an impression on my grandfather and the FBI when you came to Washington. The FBI arrested him. He’s on his way to jail in Nashville. I don’t think he’ll be getting out for a long, long time.”

  “What did they charge him with?”

  “You know, it seems that the FBI has some incredibly talented and imaginative investigators. I don’t want to say anything else over the phone. Just keep an eye on the Nashville news this afternoon, and watch for my grandfather’s call.”

  A couple of hours later, I found out what they’d done to him. Senator Roger Tate called me himself on a secure phone from his office in the Capitol Building and told me what happened.

  “Since Hanes Howell’s lawyer had apparently been incredibly proficient at hiding his money, the FBI couldn’t get to him that way. So they hacked into his work computer and downloaded more than a thousand images of child pornography from various sites on the Internet and from chat rooms. They made it appear as though Howell had done it. Then they copied the images and will use them against him at trial,” Tate said. “They did the same thing with a laptop Howell owns and a personal computer at Howell’s house, and they did it in such a way that nobody will ever know what happened.”

  The news accounts made Howell look like the ultimate pervert, the worst of the worst. They said the director of the TBI had been charged with illegally downloading thousands of pornographic images of children—some of them as young as eight years old—off the Internet. He was facing thirty years in a federal penitentiary, and from experience, I knew how prisoners felt about child molesters, child abusers, and child pornography. Howell was in for a hard time.

  “Thank you, Senator,” I said, and I hung up.

  Washed-up old fool, I thought, remembering what Howell had said about Senator Tate. What do you think of him now, Hanes?

  CHAPTER 45

  Six months later . . .

  Tom Masoner, my number-two guy in the office, sat across from me. Tom had turned out to be exactly what I thought he would be—somebody I could trust. He was smart and he was tough, and he was as organized as any person I’d ever met. Number three in the office was sitting next to him. Her name was Felicia Delgado, a woman Tom had recruited from a criminal defense firm in Knoxville. She’d taken a sizable pay cut to come join the ranks of underpaid public servants, but she’d done so with a smile and a sense of purpose. Tom had transitioned from trying strictly violent felony cases to being in charge of organizing every court our office was responsible for, including the child-support division. Felicia had taken over Tom’s position as the lead violent-felony prosecutor, and she was damned good at it.

  “So I got a call this morning from a woman in Washington,” I said to the two of them. “She wants to take me on a date on her grandfather’s private jet.”

  “Her grandfather’s private jet?” Tom said. “And who is this mystery woman?”

  “Not a mystery woman. Remember my campaign manager, Claire Tate?”

  “Oh yeah,” Roger said. “Hottie, hottie, hottie.”

  “Yeah, she’s cute. And absolutely filthy rich, which I don’t care about, but I don’t mind, either.”

  “Where does she want to take you on this date?” Felicia said.

  “A couple of places. First, we’re going to Turks and Caicos. Then we’re going to check out South America.”

  “What part of South America? It’s a big continent.”

  “Brazil, maybe Paraguay.”

  “Fantastic. Have a great time.”

  “So you guys are cool with this? You can get along without me?”

  “We could do without you every day,” Tom said. “We don’t need you to run this place—do we, Felicia?”

  “Ah, I don’t know. He comes in handy once in a while.”

  “When are you leaving?” Tom said.

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, which is something I really like about Claire. She wants to leave Friday.”

  “Happy trails, my friend,” Tom said. “Have a great time.”

  I was looking forward to the time with Claire. I’d gotten to know her better during my visit to Washington, and we’d stayed in touch regularly. I thought we might be a good fit for the long term. But I wasn’t telling my coworkers the entire truth. The trip with Claire wouldn’t be to South America, and it wouldn’t be pleasure.

  Well, maybe a little pleasure.

  CHAPTER 46

  As things turned out, I had one more favor to do for Senator Roger Tate. The FBI agent, Ron Wilcox, had traveled to a country that had no extradition treaty with the United States. Nothing had ever been publicized about what Wilcox had done, but the FBI and the US marshals had searched day and night for him for months. They found him in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, living in a small apartment less than a mile from the Notre Dame Cathedral.

  I was not privy to how they found him, nor was
I privy to the discussions about what they wanted to do with him. Had they kidnapped him and brought him back to the United States, they apparently would have irritated the Vietnam government, and they would have had to put him on trial publicly, which meant all the sordid details about what he did to Sheriff Corker would come out. The other thing that would have come out would have been the FBI’s gross negligence due to its lack of oversight of one of its own. Had they had a government agent kill him, it would have been a serious violation of diplomatic protocol. But flying a private citizen into the country who appeared to be on a weeklong vacation, and letting him handle the job aided significantly by people who were not what they appeared to be? That seemed to be the answer.

  So Roger Tate requested—and I agreed after some intense negotiations—that I travel to Vietnam accompanied by his beautiful granddaughter, Claire, and take in the sights for a week. While I was there, I was discreetly contacted by only three people, one of whom was a man who provided me with what I needed to grant Senator Tate’s request.

  On the appointed night, our last night in town, I had a delicious dinner with Claire in the hotel restaurant and went back up to our room on the tenth floor of Saigon’s luxurious Park Hyatt Hotel.

  “Are you ready?” she said as I placed the gun beneath my shirt and looked in the mirror.

  I nodded.

  “Everything is packed. I’ll have a cab waiting when you get back, and we’ll head straight to the airport.”

  Claire knew everything, and I was comfortable with that. It brought us closer.

  I took a cab to the cathedral at eleven, got out, and walked the rest of the way to Wilcox’s apartment. I got there around eleven thirty. A man came out of the shadows and walked up to me. He looked Vietnamese but spoke perfect English.

  “He’s drunk and has already passed out,” the man said. “Follow me up to the room. I have a key.”

  I did as he said. Before he opened the door, I removed the Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver I’d been given, along with a silencer, from my pocket. I attached the silencer and nodded my head. When the man opened the door, I stepped inside to a foul-smelling, filthy mess. Wilcox may have been a millionaire, but he certainly wasn’t living like one. There were liquor bottles strewn all over the kitchen and den. A television was on, and the glow revealed a man slumped sideways on the couch. The voices coming from the TV were speaking Vietnamese.