by Scott Pratt
Chapter Thirteen
Rudy Lane, the Peter Sellers look-a-like who’d led Nelson Lipscomb out to the cruiser during the search of Nelson’s condo, found the caretaker. Rudy was one of Bates’ best investigators, partly because, like Bates, he was able to pull off the disarming country boy charm routine while possessing the instincts of a bloodhound. He was also determined and tenacious, and when he was given an assignment, its successful completion became a matter of personal pride.
At five in the morning – two hours before I received the telephone call from Ralph Harmon telling me the TBI was blowing us off – Rudy saw headlights, and a pickup truck rolled up to a gated mansion on Boone Lake. It was also Rudy who’d checked the county tax assessor’s office to see whether John J. Lipscomb owned any property in Washington County.
“Five-hour energy drinks and diet Pepsi,” Rudy would later tell me when I asked how he’d managed to stay awake all night. I knew he’d barely slept since the girls were found nearly seventy-two hours earlier.
A security light came on and Rudy saw a man hold a card in front of an electronic eye. The black, wrought iron gate began to swing open. Rudy turned on his emergency lights and pulled in behind the pickup. He got out of his unmarked cruiser and walked up to the driver’s side window. He shined his flashlight over the interior of the cab, then directly into the driver’s face.
“Morning,” Rudy said. “Can I see your license and registration, please? And some proof of insurance?”
“Have I done something wrong?”
The man inside the cab appeared to be Latino. His face was chubby and pocked-marked, his eyes dark, and black hair curled from beneath a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. A black goatee encircled his mouth.
“What are you doing out here at this time of the morning?” Rudy said.
“I could ask you the same thing,” the man said. He produced a driver’s license. “I have to open the glove compartment to get the registration and the insurance card. Don’t shoot me.”
“Do it slow,” Rudy said, taking a step back and placing his right hand on the butt of his nine-millimeter. “Keep your left hand on the steering wheel.”
The man did as instructed, and handed the documentation out the window.
“Step out of the car, please.”
“What have I done?”
“Listen, friend,” Rudy said, “it’s dark out here. I’m alone. I don’t know you and I don’t know what you might have in the truck. Don’t make this difficult. Get out, put your hands on the front fender there, and spread your feet.”
Rudy pulled the door open and stepped back.
“I’m not a criminal,” the man said as he climbed out and assumed the position.
“Good. Then you and me will get along just fine.”
Rudy patted him down thoroughly. He wasn’t carrying any contraband or weapons. Rudy reached behind his back for his handcuffs. “I’m going to cuff you now, for your safety and mine. Then I’m going to ask you to sit on the ground right here next to the truck. If everything checks out, I’ll take the cuffs off in a few minutes. Do you mind if I look around inside the vehicle?”
“This is harassment,” the man said.
“So sue me. Do I have your permission to look through the vehicle?”
“Go ahead. I’m not hiding anything.”
The name on both the driver’s license and the registration was Hector Arturo Mejia. A check with dispatch revealed no wants or warrants, and the cab of the truck was clean.
“Sorry, Mr. Mejia,” Rudy said as he helped the man up and unlocked the handcuffs. He smiled and patted Mejia on the back. “It’s a dangerous world. We’ve had a couple of reports of prowlers in this area, so we’re staking it out. I’m assuming there are some valuable goods in a place like this. Now, back to the original question. What are you doing here at five in the morning?”
“I work for Mr. Lipscomb,” Mejia said, rubbing his wrists. “I take care of the place.”
“Which Mr. Lipscomb do you work for? John or Nelson?”
Mejia shook his head in disgust. “I don’t work for Nelson. The only time Nelson comes around is when he wants to act like a big shot. But I guess he doesn’t have many people he wants to impress, because he isn’t here much.”
“What are you taking care of at five in the morning?”
“The pool. Mr. Lipscomb is very fussy about the pool. He wants it clean at all times. I come out here and clean it in the morning before I go to work. It’s cool and it’s quiet. I like it here early in the morning. Then I come back in the evening and do whatever else needs to be done. I take care of the gardens, mow the lawn, maintain the place.”
“Where do you work besides here?”
“I work for Stengard. I’m a shift foreman.”
Stengard was a manufacturer in Johnson City that built water heaters, a plant that was infamous for low wages and hot, difficult, dangerous working conditions.
“Are you a U.S. citizen, Mr. Mejia?”
“All my life. I was born in Telford and graduated from Crockett high school.”
“Who pays you for keeping the pool clean and keeping the place up?” Rudy said.
“Equicorp. Mr. Lipscomb’s company. I email my hours to his secretary and they send me a check every other week.”
“How long have you been working for him?”
“About eight years. My father worked here before me. Can I go now? I need to get started so I’m not late for my other job.”
Rudy ignored Mejia and kept talking in his polite, southern drawl. “So I reckon you know Mr. Lipscomb pretty well, do you?”
“Why are you so interested in Mr. Lipscomb?”
“Hells bells, Mr. Mejia, he’s a celebrity around here. You might as well be working for Elvis. I mean, I’ve heard he’s got more money than the Almighty and that the inside of this place looks like the Taj Mahal or something. It must be pretty neat working for somebody so rich and famous. Now me, I haven’t even ever seen Mr. Lipscomb. Never laid eyes on the man except for pictures in the newspaper. Does he ever come around?”
“Yeah,” Mejia said, “but only once a year.”
“Really? When does he come? Maybe I’ll drop by and say howdy. I could introduce myself, maybe tell him if he ever needs any private security work done, I’m the man for the job.”
“You’ll have to wait a year. He was here over the weekend, but he’s already gone. But you won’t get to see him even then. He doesn’t see visitors when he’s here.”
Rudy felt his heart accelerate slightly. “Well, that’s just my luck. Say he was here this past weekend? Maybe that’s why we’ve been getting calls. Maybe somebody drove by and thought he was the prowler.”
“I doubt it,” Mejia said. “You can’t see the house from the road.”
“Does he come the same time every year?”
“Labor Day weekend. Him and his lawyer, just the two of them. They come up Saturday afternoon and leave Sunday afternoon.”
“His lawyer? Do you know his name?”
“Pinzon. Andres Pinzon. He’s a nice guy, which is more than I can say for Mr. Lipscomb.”
“Why you reckon they come up on Labor Day?”
“I’ve heard them bragging about it. The Friday before Labor Day is the anniversary of Mr. Lipscomb taking over some insurance company. He says it made him richer than he ever dreamed.”
“Tell me something,” Rudy said, lowering his voice and taking on a conspiratorial tone. “How does a guy like that travel? I mean I doubt he gets in his car and drives up here from Nashville, right? And I doubt he wants to fly into Tri-Cities airport with the common folks. Does he have a private jet or something?”
“Helicopter,” Mejia said, now relishing his role as the local authority on John J. Lipscomb. “There’s a helipad next to the house. He just flies in and flies out. He’s a pilot.”
“Must be nice to be rich. I’ll bet he’s got a garage full of nice cars, too.”
“Nah, just a Lexus
. But he never drives it. I take it out once a month or so, just a few miles, to make sure it’s running okay.”
“Do you drive him around when he’s here?”
“He never goes out. I spend the night in the guest house out back every year in case they need anything. They just stay in the house and drink and tell each other how great they are. If they want food, I go get it and bring it back to them. I don’t think anybody else even knows he’s here except for Nelson, because Nelson takes them out in the boat on Saturday night every year. They stay out all night. I clean up the mess.”
“I’ve heard rumors about those boat trips,” Rudy said. He winked slyly at Mejia. “I hear they like the ladies.”
Rudy shook his head and spat on the ground. “I’ve warned them. I’ve told them you can’t keep secrets in this town, especially with someone like Nelson running around.”
“Did you see them? The girls?”
“Yeah, I saw them, just for a second when Mr. Lipscomb and Mr. Pinzon were getting on the boat.”
“How many girls?”
“Three. I saw three.”
“Did all three of them have blonde hair?”
Mejia’s head jerked quickly around. He stared hard into Rudy’s face.
“Wait a minute,” Mejia said. “Is that what this is about? Those three girls that were found in the lake?”
“You tell me,” Rudy said. “Is it?”
“I don’t know anything about that. I think you should go now.”
“Can’t do it,” Rudy said. “You see, this little chat we’ve been having makes me believe that you’re either a material witness or you’re an accessory to a triple homicide. Either way, I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you.”
Rudy dangled his handcuffs in front of Mejia’s face.
“Sorry, Mr. Mejia,” he said, “but I reckon you’re gonna have to put these back on.”
Chapter Fourteen
Three hours later, after we’d talked to Hector Mejia at the jail and made some hasty arrangements, Bates and I were headed to Nashville. I’d asked Tanner Jarrett, a young assistant in the office whom I trusted, to help Rita keep things running smoothly while I was away. The trip was perhaps a bit premature, but the circumstances were such that Bates thought – and I agreed – we should attempt to confront Lipscomb and, at the very least, get him to commit to a story. After talking to Mejia, we knew that Lipscomb and Andres Pinzon had been at Lipscomb’s house on the lake over the weekend. Mejia actually saw Lipscomb and Pinzon board the Laura Mae on Saturday night, but rather than sleep in the next day and leave for Nashville in the early afternoon as they usually did, Mejia said the helicopter woke him up as it lifted off from the pad sometime after five the next morning. Lipscomb and Pinzon left no note and no explanation for the early departure, and when Mejia drove to the marina later in the day to clean the boat, it was gone. He called Nelson to ask where the boat was, and was told that the engine gave them problems on Saturday night so Mr. Lipscomb hired somebody to remove it from the water and was having it overhauled.
So as we drove west along I-40 in Bates’s black BMW, we felt confident that we were on the right track. Nelson had paid for the girls, picked them up, and escorted them to the boat the night they were killed. He was seen getting on the boat with them and driving the boat away from the marina. Mejia could put John Lipscomb and Pinzon on the boat the same night, and he said they left in a hurry. Mejia was still being held at the jail. I didn’t think he had anything to do with the murders, but I didn’t want him contacting John Lipscomb, either, so I told Rudy Lane to hold him for twenty-four hours and then cut him loose.
Bates parked the BMW in a garage just off the interstate about five miles east of downtown Nashville and we took the elevator to the ground floor. As we walked out of the garage, the Equicorp corporate headquarters building rose from the ground like the Tower of Babel against a darkening sky. The building was eight stories, constructed of steel and glass, and the interior lights shining through the tinted windows glowed eerily. The area surrounding the building was surprisingly desolate. Apart from the parking garage that obviously served only Equicorp, there was nothing but vacant lots within hundreds of yards on all sides of the building. I noticed a sharp, grinding sound and looked to the west. Beyond the vacant lots in that direction was a faded yellow sign with black letters: “A-1 Salvage.” It was a scrap yard, and the sound I heard was metal being crushed.
A north wind was howling as we approached the building, blowing so fiercely that Bates had to hold his cowboy hat down with his hand. I’d suggested that he wear something besides his uniform, but the idea had been dismissed outright. “The only time I take the uniform off is when I go to bed and when I go to church,” he’d said. “I’d feel naked without it.”
The foyer on the first floor was opulent. The walls and ceiling were covered in cedar and trimmed in brass, the floor was granite tile, and a crystal chandelier the size of a compact car shimmered twenty feet above our heads. A bank of elevators was directly in front of us, and on the wall a directory of the building. There were only two offices on the eighth floor – John J. Lipscomb, president and CEO, and Andres L. Pinzon, vice-president and general counsel. Bates and I got on the elevator and pushed the button.
“Not exactly what I’d call a secure facility,” Bates said as the elevator began to climb.
“I guess they don’t have any reason to be afraid,” I said.
“That’s about to change.”
The elevator opened onto yet another glimmering example of wealth and excess, nearly a carbon copy of the foyer downstairs. An attractive brunette dressed in a sharp, navy-blue business suit was walking across the floor to a circular desk in the center of the room. She was obviously the gate keeper, the first obstacle we would have to negotiate before we could get an audience with the king. She smiled sweetly as Bates and I approached. I noticed the nameplate on her desk: Monica Bell.
“My goodness, am I in trouble?” she said, looking at Bates. She had milk-chocolate colored eyes and a smile that shined like the chandelier above.
“Sheriff Leon Bates, ma’am,” he said, extending his hand. “Mighty pleased to make the acquaintance of such a lovely young lady. And this is Joe Dillard, attorney general of the First Judicial District of Tennessee. We’re both from the same neck of the woods as Mr. Lipscomb. Any chance we could visit with him for just a couple of minutes?”
“Are you a personal friend, sheriff?”
“I met Mr. Lipscomb at a political function a few years ago, but I’m sorry to say I can’t claim we’re friends. It’s an important matter, though. We drove over three hundred miles just to see him.”
She picked up the phone on her desk, but changed her mind and set it back down.
“Will you gentlemen excuse me for just a moment? Please wait here.”
Monica got up from her desk, walked across the tile floor, and disappeared behind a cedar door to our right.
“Watching her walk away was worth the trip down here,” Bates said.
“I don’t think he’s going to want to see us voluntarily,” I said.
“Me neither, let’s go.”
We headed for the same door Monica had gone through. Bates pulled it open and we walked into another office, this one occupied by an older, but no less attractive, woman. Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled into a bun, and with her reading glasses resting halfway up on her nose, she looked the model of corporate efficiency. She scowled at us over the glasses.
“You can’t come in here without an appointment,” she said.
I saw a broad door with a nameplate: John J. Lipscomb, President and CEO, and hurried toward it.
“This is an important police matter, ma’am,” I heard Bates say behind me.
Monica was standing in front of Lipscomb’s desk. The look she gave me when she heard the commotion and turned around was anything but attractive.
“I told you to wait outside!” Her nostrils flared, and her face suddenl
y took on the look of a viper. For a moment, I thought she might actually strike and sink her fangs into my neck.
Lipscomb, whom I recognized from photographs and television news stories, stood behind his desk.
“It’s alright, Monica,” he said calmly, “please ask Andres to come in.”
Lipscomb had the same dark features as his brother, Nelson, and was about the same height, but he had become, to put it mildly, obese. I’d seen newspaper photographs of him presenting checks to the beneficiaries of his philanthropic endeavors, but it had been years earlier. He was heavy even then, but he’d easily gained another fifty pounds. His head had taken on the shape of a jack-o-lantern, and the sheer volume of his girth made his arms and legs look disproportionately short. With his slightly upturned nose, he looked piggish. His hair was black and cut short; it looked like a shoe brush. He was wearing a maroon, silk shirt with an open collar, and he regarded me through dull brown eyes with a smirk. From the research Bates and I had done, I knew both Lipscomb and Pinzon were forty-five years old.
“I reckon you know who we are,” Bates said.
“Yes, I reckon I do,” Lipscomb said in a tone heavy with sarcasm. “You are the good ol’ boy county sheriff, Leon Bates, and your friend here is Joe Dillard, the incorruptible district attorney general.”
“We’d like to talk to you, Mr. Lipscomb,” I said.
“That’s obvious. The question, though, is whether I’d like to talk to you, isn’t it? And in light of the fact that you’ve barged into my office uninvited and unannounced, I don’t believe I’m inclined.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said, “because based on the telephone calls the sheriff and I have received from the governor, you know we’re conducting a murder investigation, and you know your name has come up. We thought the most discrete way to handle the situation was by coming directly to you.”
“How considerate of you. Do you plan to arrest me on some trumped up charge the way you did my brother?”