by Scott Pratt
As soon as I finished wiping down the stove top, I looked at down at the dogs and said, “Alright, give ‘em up.”
Rio dropped the ball next to my feet and Chico did the same with his frog. I bent over, picked them up, and walked out to the deck. Rio whined in anticipation, and I threw the tennis ball into the darkness. He bolted for the steps that led to the back yard, stopped for a second to listen for the ball landing, and disappeared. Chico looked like he was riding a pogo stick, jumping up and down and nipping at my knee. I tossed the rubber frog across the deck and he scrambled furiously after it.
I heard the phone ring inside the house and hoped Caroline would ignore it. I’d worked more than fifteen hours that day, and as far as I was concerned, that was enough. But less than a minute later, I saw her walking through the kitchen toward me. She motioned for me to come inside.
“I think you want to take this,” she said, covering the receiver with her hand.
“Who is it?”
“Trust me. You want to take it.”
I took the phone from Caroline and looked at the number on the caller ID display. I didn’t recognize it, although I did recognize the area code: Nashville. Caroline sat down at the kitchen table, and I took a seat across from her.
“Joe Dillard,” I said into the phone.
“Please hold for the governor,” a female voice replied.
The governor? There was no doubt in my mind what the topic of conversation would be.
“Joe! Linc Donner here.”
James Lincoln Donner III was the man who had appointed me to the district attorney general’s job at the behest of Leon Bates. He was a wealthy Democrat, a silver-spooner who had inherited his family’s vast real estate development fortune and had risen steadily through ranks of the state Democratic party. I remembered being surprised by his stature when I met him aboard his private jet, in which he’d flown to Johnson City to deliver the news of my appointment in person. In his television ads, he appeared to be tall and substantial. But Donner was a small, thin, hollow-cheeked man. He had politician-length chestnut-brown hair and gray eyes. His voice was a peculiar, throaty bass that reminded me of a bullfrog.
“This is quite a surprise,” I said into the phone.
“Do you remember when I flew up there and signed your appointment? You were just about to leave the plane and I stopped you and said something to you. Do you remember what it was?”
“I think you said, ‘don’t make me regret this,’ or something to that effect.”
“Exactly. Don’t make me regret this. I’m afraid you’re beginning to make me question my decision.”
“And why is that?”
“I was made aware of some information today that genuinely shocked me. It is true that John Lipscomb is the target of a murder investigation?”
I cursed Ralph Harmon under my breath. The leak had to have come from him.
“With all due respect, governor, I don’t think that’s an appropriate question for you to ask me.”
“With all due respect to you, sir, I’m the governor and the head of the executive branch. And frankly, I’m not interested in what you think. John Lipscomb is a close friend of mine and one of the leading citizens of this state. He’s poured more money into your community than any man living or dead. The very idea that he would somehow be involved in a murder is preposterous. Do you really think he would associate with strippers and whores?”
“Strippers and whores to you, governor. Citizens of the district to me. Besides, I don’t know Mr. Lipscomb. I don’t know who he might associate with.”
“If news that you’re even considering him as a suspect gets out, it could do irreparable damage to his reputation. Now I asked you a simple question, but since you didn’t seem to understand the first time, I’ll ask you again. Yes or no, is John Lipscomb the target of a murder investigation in your jurisdiction?”
The tone of his voice was accusatory, almost threatening, and I felt anger beginning to boil inside me. Caroline must have noticed, because she immediately reached across the table and took my free hand.
“There is more than one ongoing murder investigation in my jurisdiction,” I said. “The key word being ongoing. As such, I’m not at liberty to discuss any of them with you.”
“Dammit, man, I’m not a reporter. I’m the governor.”
“Yeah, I think you mentioned that.”
“How dare you take that insolent tone with me! If you want to keep your job, you’ll treat me with the respect I deserve.”
“Respect is something that’s earned, governor. It seems to me that you’re calling and trying to intervene in a murder investigation on behalf of one of your rich friends. That doesn’t earn you much respect in my book. And as far as my job goes, unless I break a law or fall over dead, you’re stuck with me for at least another three years. And as long as I’m here, I’ll do the job the way I think it should be done. Discussing ongoing investigations with politicians isn’t my idea of the way things should be done. But it’s good to talk to you, governor. Feel free to call anytime.”
I pushed the button on the receiver and set the phone down on the table in front of me. Caroline was staring at me wide-eyed.
“Did you just do what I think you did?” she asked, a smile beginning to form at the edges of her lips. “Did you just hang up on the governor of Tennessee?”
“I think maybe I did.”
“You’re insane, do you know that? You’re certifiable.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“You were also right, for what it’s worth.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you think they’ll be any repercussions?”
I nodded my head. “Probably.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never crossed a governor before. I guess we just wait and see.”
Chapter Eleven
That night I dreamed of my mother. She was sitting at her sewing machine in the small house she shared with my sister and me, half-watching the black-and-white television that cast an eerie glow across the tiny den. Our den was always cloaked in darkness, as was the rest of the house, because my mother had put blinds on every window, and she kept all of them drawn. She didn’t want to see the world outside, and she didn’t want it to see her.
Her black hair was pulled tightly into a bun and her face, which could have been pretty, was tight and stern. She was wearing a full-length, long-sleeved, black dress with a wide, black belt around her waist. The dress was buttoned to her throat, and as I looked at her hands, I noticed her fingernails were painted black.
I was very young in the dream, and I was apprehensive. I rarely approached her because her mood was always dark and her comments often sarcastic, but on this particular afternoon my young mind, or perhaps my heart, was looking for some answers. The annual field day festivities had been held at school that day, and the parents of nearly all the children in my class had attended. I won several events, but my parents were absent, as always. I’d never asked her why she didn’t attend any of the functions that other parents attended, and I’d never asked her about my father. My grandparents had told me that he was in heaven with Jesus, but my mother had never offered any information, and I’d never broached the subject. I stood next to her chair, staring at my feet, waiting for to acknowledge me. She didn’t. Finally, I spoke.
“Momma, can I ask you a question?”
“Don’t you think you’re a little old to be calling me momma? It makes you sound like a little sissy boy,” she said without looking at me.
Her words surprised me, and I took a minute to gather my courage. She’d never hit me, so I wasn’t afraid of physical abuse, but up to that point, just a word from her, uttered in her razor-sharp tone, could reduce me to tears.
“What do you want me to call you?” I asked.
She looked up from her sewing and raised her pencil-thin eyebrows. Her eyes flashed with a familiar anger.
“Don’t get smar
t with me.”
“I’m not being smart. I’m just asking what you want me to call you. If you don’t want me to call you momma, then what? Mother?”
“Don’t call me mother. I don’t like it.”
“Ma?”
“Fine. I don’t’ care.”
“Can I ask you a question, ma?”
“Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“What happened to my dad?”
She stiffened, but her eyes stayed on the needle that pumped up and down, up and down, like a drill bit driving into the earth in search of oil.
“He’s dead,” she said matter-of-factly.
“How did he die?”
She hesitated slightly before saying, “He was murdered.”
“Who killed him?”
Her foot came off of the pedal and the sewing machine went silent. Her right hand slowly lifted away from the piece of material she’d been holding, her index finger extended, and she pointed at the television.
“They did,” she said. “Those men right there. They murdered your father.”
I turned and looked at the television. A row of men in suits were talking to a man sitting alone at a table.
“Who are they?”
“Politicians,” she said. “Worthless, gutless politicians. Do you know what they’re doing right now? They’re talking to man who works for the president of the United States. Do you know who the president of the United States is?”
“Nixon.”
“That’s right. Those men there are going to try to impeach Nixon for doing something every one of them does every day.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re going to impeach him for lying. But they all lie. They’re all hypocrites.”
“Is that how they killed my dad? By lying?”
“They lied to all of us. They made him go to a place he’d never heard of and fight in a war he had no business fighting. They wanted him to kill Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers.”
“Why did those men want him to fight?”
“Because it’s what they do. It’s what they’ve always done, and it’s what they’ll always do.”
“Will they make me fight, too?”
“I can’t believe I have to raise you and your sister in a world like this,” she said. “There’s murder and corruption everywhere. It’s hopeless.”
Looking back on that conversation with my mother, I believe now that my soul, as young as it was, began to form a callous. It was a conversation I’d dreamed about many times, but this night, the dream took an ominous turn.
My mother rose from her sewing and glided silently across the den, disappearing briefly into the back of the house. When she returned, she was carrying Sarah, who was fast asleep, in her arms. She laid Sarah on the couch and motioned for me to come and sit. When I was seated, she knelt in front of me.
“There is no God, you know,” she said. “There is no good in this world. There is only evil and deception and murder. The best thing I can do for you is spare you from it. You shouldn’t have to live in this world. No one should.”
She reached behind her back and pulled something from her belt. I looked into her face. It was blank, as devoid of emotion as a sand dune. Suddenly, I felt the cool steel of a gun barrel against my forehead.
“This is the best thing I can do for you and your sister,” she said, and I heard the hammer click.
Chapter Twelve
The phone on my desk rang at seven the next morning. I’d been in the office for more than an hour, having quit the idea of sleep following the nightmare. I looked at the phone curiously before I picked it up, wondering who would be calling so early.
“Joe Dillard.”
“Uh, Dillard? Ralph Harmon here.” The SAIC of the local TBI office was supposed to have gotten back to me the day before. “I didn’t expect anyone to be in the office so early.”
“So why did you call? Planning to leave a message?”
“Actually, I was,” Harmon said, sounding flustered.
“A message for me or for someone else?”
“Ah, listen, Dillard, about the homicide investigation. I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to help out on this one.”
I nearly dropped the phone. I’d never heard of the TBI refusing a district attorney’s request for assistance. “It’s a little early in the morning to be jerking my chain, Ralph.”
“I’m serious. We’re going to pass.”
“Since when do you have that option?”
“Since my boss talked to his boss, who went straight to the director. The director called the state attorney general for an opinion. The attorney general looked at the statute and says we don’t have to get involved if we don’t want to. The statute says you can make a request. It doesn’t say we have to honor it. Oh, and by the way, I don’t think I have to tell you who the state attorney general answers to.”
“The governor.”
“That’s right, the governor. The man you hung up on last night.”
“I appreciate you leaking information about our murder investigation, Ralph. You’re a real peach.”
“Listen, Dillard, this isn’t my call. The governor thinks you’re trying to make a name for yourself at the expense of one of his friends. He thinks you’re off on some kind of witch hunt, and you didn’t help matters any by blowing him off the way you did. Bottom line, it looks like you’re going to wind up on your own if you stay on this Lipscomb guy. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bates jumps ship on you next.”
“Bates isn’t going anywhere.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“We’ve got three dead girls at the morgue, Ralph. We need some help.”
“Three dead strippers. Good luck with your case.”
The line went dead and I sat there stunned, trying to comprehend the meaning of what had just occurred. The TBI refusing a request from a district attorney to join a multiple-homicide investigation? Unheard of. Unprecedented. Impossible. I pulled the Tennessee Code Annotated up on my computer screen and spent the next half hour tracking the law. When I was finished, I clicked the computer off in disgust. It appeared that the state attorney general was correct; the statute that outlines the powers of the district attorney general says he or she can “request” the assistance of the TBI. It doesn’t say anything about whether the TBI has to comply. The legislators obviously left them a loophole.
I pulled Bates’s number up on my cell phone and hit send. No answer. I left him a simple message. “Call me as soon as you get this.”
I walked down the hallway to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on my face, seething at the efficiency of this particular part of the political machine. They were attempting to stop the investigation before it got started, they were doing it from the top down, and they were doing so effectively. Governor Donner was manipulating people as though they were marionettes and he a skillful puppeteer. He was selling the idea that I was trying to make a name for myself at the expense of John Lipscomb, and I was certain his stooges and cronies were buying without questioning. What had I ever done for them, after all? How much money had I donated to their re-election campaigns or PAC funds? What kind of beneficial influence could I – a hick prosecutor from the hills who’d never even been through an election – bring on their behalf if the need ever arose?
I finished wiping my face and walked out of the bathroom to my office. Bates was leaning back in one of the chairs in front of my desk with his legs stretched out and his cowboy boots propped on the corner of the desk.
“How’s this for a quick call back?” he said without turning around.
“Do you know what’s going on? Do you know they’re trying to shut us down before we get started?”
“Didn’t your mama ever teach you anything about phone etiquette?” Bates asked. He was running the fingers of his right hand around the edge of the cowboy hat he held in his left.
“He was out of line,” I said as I walked around the desk and sat dow
n.
“He was out of line when he called me, too, but I didn’t spit in his face.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I told him yes, governor, sir, Mr. Lipscomb’s name has come up in connection with our murder investigation but no, governor, sir, we don’t have any evidence that places him at the scene and it doesn’t appear that we’ll be taking the investigation any farther in that direction. And yes, governor, sir, you can rest assured that no one from my department or Mr. Dillard’s office will mention Mr. Lipscomb’s name in the same breath as this nasty affair and by all means, governor, sir, I will keep you abreast of anything that may develop in the future that involves Mr. Lipscomb.”
“So are you folding the tent or did you lie to him?”
“I told him what he wanted to hear. That’s the way this game is played. And no, I’m not planning on folding the tent just yet.”
“Which means you lied to him.”
“I have no doubt that under similar circumstances, he’d do the same.”
“The TBI’s out, you know. I just got a call from Harmon. He says the governor thinks I’m trying to make a name for myself. They’re refusing my request for assistance. That’s never happened, at least not to my knowledge.”
“Don’t worry about it. The TBI guys are a bunch of prima donnas anyway.”
“What’s next, Leon? Where do we go from here?”
Bates pulled his feet from the desk, leaned forward, put his hat back on his head, and took a deep breath.
“What say you and me take a little trip over to the jail? There’s somebody I want you to meet.”