JD04 - Reasonable Fear

by Scott Pratt

  “Ain’t much of a housekeeper, are you, Nelson?” Bates said as they reappeared. Lipscomb was now wearing a pair of basketball shorts, a LeBron James jersey, and a cap that he’d plopped sideways onto his head. He looked ridiculous. “Have a seat on the couch and stay there.”

  Lipscomb sat down, crossed his arms, and stared at the floor. Bates told his guys to go ahead and start the search. He and I stayed in the den with Lipscomb.

  “Mind telling me where you were Saturday night?” Bates said, standing over Lipscomb with his hands on his hips.

  Lipscomb remained mute.

  “It’s a simple question,” Bates said. “Any chance you were out on the lake Saturday night? In a big house boat maybe? With three girls you picked up at the Mouse’s Tail?”

  “Man, I ain’t gotta tell you nothing,” Lipscomb said.

  Bates took a couple of steps closer to Lipscomb. He put his hands behind his back and leaned forward from the waist.

  “That’s right, smart guy, you don’t have to tell me anything. But if you don’t, then I’m gonna think you committed three murders. You see, those girls you picked up at the strip club Saturday wound up floating in the lake, deader than John Dillinger. So I’m afraid I’m gonna need an explanation from you. Otherwise, you’re in up to your eyeballs.”

  “Get off me, man,” Lipscomb said. He looked Bates in the eye briefly, trying to act brave, but his lower lip was quivering. “You can’t be comin’ up in my crib and gettin’ all up in my grill and talkin’ some kinda nonsense. I know my rights. So just take your flunkies and get outta here. You want to talk to me, call my lawyer.”

  Bates shook his head, but didn’t give any ground.

  “That’s the wrong way to play this, Nelson, or should I call you Mr. Smith? I’m trying to help you out here. We already know you were on the boat with the girls. People saw you. You know why they saw you? Because you like to be flashy. Limos, strippers, great big ol’ boats. You see, in the law enforcement business we have these things called witnesses, and these witnesses say you paid twelve grand for the three girls, you picked them up at the strip club around nine, you rode in a limo over to the marina, you and the girls got on the boat and you didn’t come back that night. The problem, Mr. Smith, is that the girls are dead and you’re still kicking. And now the boat is gone, jerked out of the water the very next day.

  “I checked your record before we came over here. You’re pretty much of a scumbag, but I don’t figure you for a killer. Something bad happened on that boat, Nelson. I got three dead girls on my hands, and somebody’s going to pay for it. You can help yourself out by telling us what happened, or you can keep walking down this road you seem to be choosing. But if you do that, you might just wind up eating the whole enchilada. Three murders. Heinous crime. Strangled and dumped naked into the water like so many bags of trash.”

  Bates nodded toward me.

  “You see this gentleman here? His name’s Mr. Dillard. He’s the district attorney general. He’s the man who’s gonna decide whether this is a death penalty case. What do you think, Mr. Dillard? Is ol’ Nelson here looking at a needle in his arm?”

  The truth was that it was a borderline death penalty case. Recent rulings from both the Tennessee and United States Supreme Courts required a killing to be particularly heinous, atrocious or cruel in order to qualify, and depending upon what really happened that night, this case probably didn’t meet the criteria. But Bates expected me to play along, and I had no intention of disappointing him.

  “It’s like the sheriff says. Triple homicide, death by strangulation, bodies dumped naked into the lake. No question about it. Death penalty.”

  “Look at this.” The voice came from behind me and I turned. It was one of Bates’s investigators, Rudy Lane, a skinny guy who looked like a middle-aged Peter Sellers. He’d walked in from Lipscomb’s bedroom and was dangling a baggie from his fingertips.

  “Oh my,” Bates said dramatically. “Say it ain’t so, Nelson. Is that cocaine? It sure looks like cocaine. Tell me that ain’t cocaine.”

  The baggie contained a white powder. It appeared to be at least a half-an-ounce.

  Bates took the baggie and held it gingerly in front of Lipscomb’s face.

  “That’s resale weight, brother,” he said. “Class B felony. Eight-year minimum sentence. What do you think, brother Dillard? Do you think you can convince a judge to send him away for eight years?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, “maybe longer.”

  “Unless, of course, he wants to tell us what happened on that boat Saturday night,” Bates said.

  Lipscomb responded by burying his face in his hands. He began to rock back and forth on the couch. Bates turned and looked at Rudy Lane.

  “Detective Lane, would you kindly cuff Mr. Smith and take him out to Deputy Barnes’s cruiser? He can wait out there while we finish our business.”

  Lane started to cuff Lipscomb’s hands behind his back.

  “No need for that,” Bates said. “You can cuff him in front.”

  Lane did as Bates asked and led Lipscomb out the door.

  “Deputy Barnes!” Bates called.

  A young deputy hurried in from the bedroom. “Yes, sir.”

  “Are we good to go outside?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good man. Keep searching.”

  “I can’t wait to see who he calls,” Bates said after the deputy had left the room. A sly grin crossed his face.

  “From the cruiser?” I said.

  “Yeah, he picked his cell phone up off the dresser and stuck it in his pocket when we were in the bedroom. He thought I wasn’t looking, and I didn’t say a word. I was hoping we’d find a reason to send him outside so he could have a little privacy.”

  I shook my head. Behind the good ol’ boy front, Bates was as wily as a raccoon after midnight.

  “C’mon and sit down,” Bates said as he pulled a laptop from the briefcase he’d carried in. “Let’s see if ol’ Nelson will take the rope I gave him and hang himself.”

  Chapter Eight

  The laptop booted up, and in less than a minute, we were watching Nelson Lipscomb in real time in the back seat of the cruiser. He’d slid down in the seat and his knees were pulled up close to his chest. It was obvious he was trying to retrieve his cell phone from his pocket.

  “Hot damn,” Bates said, “I love this new-fangled, techno-spy stuff.”

  After a few desperate moments, Lipscomb finally dug the phone out. He slid back up in the seat and held the iPhone in his trembling fingers. The temperature outside had cooled off quite a bit since earlier in the day, but sweat had formed on Lipscomb’s forehead and was dripping from the end of his nose. He pushed the buttons feverishly and waited.

  “Hey Rudy!” Bates called. “Pretty rude of you to leave that boy out there with the windows rolled up.”

  “Answer the phone!” Lipscomb yelled. He disconnected and pushed the button again, apparently re-dialing the same number.

  “Yo, it’s me,” Lipscomb said. “The poh-lice are up in my crib with a warrant. They searching the whole place. They already found some blow that don’t belong to me, but they gonna try to hang it on me. You need to hit me back like now, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “He’s leaving a message,” Bates said. “I’m guessing it’s for big brother.”

  Lipscomb immediately dialed another number.

  “Yo, yo, yo, thank God, Momma. Listen, Momma, I’m in a lot of trouble. No, no, nothing like that. I was just chillin’ at my crib and these poh-lice came in on me. Yeah, they just barged in like a bunch of Nazis. One of my boys left some stuff in a drawer in my bedroom and they found it. Nah, nah, Momma, I swear it ain’t mine. I swear on my babies’ lives. It must have been some kind of set up. Yeah, you know me, you know me. I wouldn’t swear it if it ain’t true. You got to help me, Momma. They talkin’ about eight years in prison. Eight years, and I didn’t do nothin’. Can you bail me out and get me that lawyer? Nah, Momma, you do
n’t even need to say nothin’ to Pops about it. Yo, yo, wait just one second. I’m gettin’ a beep. I gotta take this, Momma. They’ll take me to the Jonesborough jail. Call a bondsman and get me out as soon as you can.”

  Lipscomb disconnected from his mother and answered the second call.

  “‘Bout time you calling me back.”

  There was silence while Nelson listened to the voice on the other end. Suddenly, his forehead wrinkled and his eyes tightened.

  “I ain’t in no mood to be putting up with none of your bullshit. I got poh-lice so far up my ass they tickling the back of my throat and you sitting down there in your fancy office drinking champagne and chasing booty.”

  There was another long silence.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Nelson yelled. “The problem is that they say they got witnesses that saw me with them three shorties that wound up dead Saturday night. They say their witnesses saw me pick them up and then get on a boat with them. The problem is they come up in my crib with a search warrant and found some blow and now they saying I’m looking at eight years for the blow plus they talking about pinning three murders on me and giving me the death penalty. That’s the problem. Now what you gonna do about it? Damn straight you’ll take care of it. This is your fault anyway. You need to start throwing some cash my way. A lot of it.”

  The voice on the other end must have asked Lipscomb where he was.

  “I’m in the back of a poh-lice car. Nah, man, they don’t know I got my phone. Nah, they ain’t nobody around. I done told you they all up in my crib tearing the place apart. . . What? What did you call me?”

  A look of confusion came over Lipscomb’s face. He held the phone out in front of him, and his expression changed to one of pure hatred.

  “Nah, you didn’t just hang up on me. Ah-ight, we’ll see who’s the idiot. I ain’t the one killed three shorties.”

  Lipscomb stared at the phone for a few seconds longer, then shoved it back into his pocket.

  “Gotcha,” Bates said, and he closed the laptop with an exaggerated flourish.

  Chapter Nine

  We finished the search less than three hours later. Bates’s people found another quarter-ounce of cocaine, nearly an ounce of marijuana, fifty-four Xanax tablets, thirty-five-hundred dollars in cash and an unregistered .357-magnum pistol. Everything was tagged, bagged and the inventory written out. We then drove back down to Bates’s office, which was connected to the jail in Jonesborough. Bates opened his lap top and took notes while the two of us watched and listened to Lipscomb’s conversations again. We couldn’t hear the people on the other end, but one was obviously his mother and the other was probably his brother. We’d know for certain as soon as we got a subpoena for his phone records.

  “How long you reckon he’s been practicing his gangster routine?” Bates said, a look of amusement on his face.

  “Too long,” I said.

  “Why do these white boys want to sound black? Are they ashamed that they’re white?”

  “They think if they sound like a gangster and act like a gangster, it makes them tough.”

  “I think it makes them stupid. Let’s go talk to Nelson.”

  We made our way through the maze of gray-walled hallways and gray, steel doors to the booking room. Supper had already been served at the jail, and the place smelled like hot dogs and corn. Nelson Lipscomb was in one of the holding cells that lined the wall across from the booking counter. He was lying on his back on the concrete platform that served as a bunk. His right arm was across his eyes. He didn’t move when we walked in.

  “Still got your cell phone?” Bates said. “I reckon not. These boys down here are pretty strict about that stuff. So who’d you call from the back seat of the cruiser besides your momma, Nelson?”

  Lipscomb’s knee jerked involuntarily. He had to be wondering how Bates knew who he’d called, or maybe he realized that he’d been duped.

  “You said, ‘This is your fault anyway.’ Whose fault is it, Nelson? And you said, ‘I ain’t the one that killed three shorties.’ Who is the one that killed three shorties?”

  Nelson slowly removed his arm from his face and turned his head toward Bates.

  “I want a lawyer,” he said, and he put his arm back over his face.

  Just then, the cell door opened and a man in a suit walked in. I assumed immediately that he was an attorney, but I’d never laid eyes on him. He was about six feet tall and looked like he belonged on the cover of the American Bar Association Journal. Silver-gray hair, perfectly groomed, sky-blue eyes, tanned and fit. Angular jaw, dimpled chin, perfect nose. The quintessential Aryan WASP. He was wearing a navy blue suit, a white, button-down shirt and a navy blue and yellow striped tie. He stopped just inside the door and eyed Bates and me like we were peasants.

  “Niles D. Brubaker,” he said in a syrupy southern drawl. “I represent Mr. Lipscomb and I demand that all questioning cease this instant.”

  His tone angered me immediately.

  “You don’t have to demand,” I said. “Asking will suffice.”

  “Leave us alone. I’d like to confer with my client.”

  “Do you have some identification?”

  He looked shocked. “You don’t know who I am?”

  “Sure don’t.”

  “I’m the president of the Tennessee Bar Association.”

  “Good for you. I don’t associate with the Tennessee Bar Association. Do you have some identification?”

  Niles D. Brubaker reached into an inside jacket pocket and produced a wallet. He removed his bar card and handed it to me.

  “Photo ID?” I asked. He was so pretentious I couldn’t help jerking him around a little.

  He took a deep breath and handed me his driver’s license. I scrutinized it for entirely too long.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Nashville.”

  “Nashville? How’d you get here so fast?”

  “Are you familiar with modern aviation?”

  I held his license out, but just before he took it, I dropped it on the floor.

  “Sorry about that,” I said as he bent over to pick it up. “Your client is going to be charged with felony drug possession and a weapons violation. We also suspect him in a triple homicide. Have a nice chat.”

  As Bates and I were walking out the door, Brubaker cleared his throat.

  “And who might you gentlemen be?” he said.

  I stopped and turned to face him.

  “This might be Sheriff Leon Bates,” I said, “and I might be Joe Dillard.”

  “Are you an investigator?”

  “No. I’m the district attorney. I’m the one who’ll be sending your client to death row.”

  I turned my back on Brubaker, and Bates and I walked out of the booking area toward his office.

  “I was hoping we’d have time to sweat him some more,” Bates said. “We don’t have near enough to charge him with murder.”

  “I know, but we can pressure him with the drug charges. The phone calls he made are circumstantial, but they’ll be useful somewhere down the line.”

  “What kind of person gets the president of the Tennessee Bar Association to drop what he’s doing and fly all the way up here on a moment’s notice this time of night?”

  “A rich one.”

  “He’ll make bond in an hour,” Bates said. “We need to find that boat, and we need to figure out who was on it Saturday night.”

  Bates’s cell phone rang as we walked down the hallway. He talked for a few minutes, hung up, and looked at me.

  “My boys have been working,” he said. “We’ve already run down the limo driver and taken a statement from him. He confirms that he picked up Nelson and three women from the club Saturday night and dropped them at the marina. He also says he was supposed to pick them up at six the next morning, but Nelson called him around five-thirty and canceled. The boat is registered to John Lipscomb’s corporation, and we’re in the process of contacting all the plac
es around here that normally store boats that size. One of my guys went down to the courthouse to look at the tax records, and he found out that Lipscomb owns a big house on the lake. He’s checking to see if there’s a gardener or caretaker or somebody who can tell us whether Lipscomb was around over the weekend. He’s also going to go out to the airport to see whether Lipscomb might have come in by private jet or helicopter.”

  “Not bad,” I said, “but even if we can put Lipscomb in the area that night, we still can’t put him on the boat, and even if we do put him on the boat, we can’t prove he had anything to do with the murders.”

  “Maybe not, but if he had something to do with it, one thing will happen just as sure as I’m standing here with my teeth in my mouth and my elbow halfway down my arm.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’ll lie, brother Dillard. He’ll lie like a politician. And when he does, we’ll know it.”

  Chapter Ten

  I didn’t get home until after ten that night. The moon was rising above the mountains to the west, casting a pale, yellow glow that framed the peaks like a halo. Caroline had fixed dinner and kept it warm, and after I changed into a pair of old sweat pants and a T-shirt, we ate silently by candlelight on the deck. I was sure Caroline was curious about the day’s events, but I was content just looking at her face in the soft glow, watching the flickering shadows play across her face. She looked up once to find me staring at her, but all she did was smile and wink, a simple gesture that conveyed what I already knew.

  When we were finished, I helped her gather the dishes and clean up the kitchen. Rio followed me every step of the way with his ragged tennis ball in his mouth. Chico, the mischievous little teacup poodle I’d bought for Caroline after her last surgery, was right beside him with a rubber frog hanging from his teeth. They were an unlikely pair – a hundred-pound German shepherd and a five-pound poodle – but they’d become inseparable. I was surprised at how gently Rio treated the puppy. Chico tormented him constantly, jumping up and biting at his face, chewing on his tail, running around him in circles and barking incessantly. If Rio made the mistake of lying on the floor, Chico immediately crawled up on his back and went to work on his ears. For the first several weeks Chico was around, Rio learned that he could escape by climbing onto a couch. But Chico was athletic; he could now jump onto the couch himself, and Rio’s refuge was no more.