JD04 - Reasonable Fear

by Scott Pratt

  I didn’t really mind that Randy and Lilly would be living with us. The house had seemed too empty and too quiet since the kids went off to college. I didn’t mind the fact that they were getting married, either, because from everything I’d observed over the past three years, they genuinely loved each other. And the more I’d thought about it, the more the idea of having a grandchild appealed to me.

  I glanced at the clock around 9:45 and suddenly realized that I’d forgotten about Sarah. I got up from the table, picked my cell up off the counter, and punched in her number. She didn’t answer. I hit re-dial. Same result.

  “She’s not answering,” I said to Caroline, who had started to clear the table.

  “She said she’d be back by ten. Give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Why won’t she answer her phone?”

  “Maybe she turned it off or left it in the car. Maybe the battery’s dead. Relax. She’ll be here soon.”

  I put the phone down and helped Caroline, Lilly and Randy clear the table, load the dish washer, and clean up the kitchen. By the time we were finished, it was a little after ten. I dialed Sarah’s number again. No answer.

  “I guess I’d better go over there and see what’s going on,” I said.

  Lilly and Randy were driving back to Knoxville, so I kissed Lilly goodbye and punched Randy in the shoulder. Caroline stayed home with Gracie, and I drove her car through Johnson City to the house on Barton Street where I was raised. Sarah’s Mustang was in the driveway, along with my truck. I walked up to the front door and opened it, fully expecting to find her sitting at the kitchen table or in the den, drunk and belligerent, but as soon as I stepped inside, I knew something was wrong. The house was filled with the powerful odor of gasoline.

  “Sarah?”

  I walked down the hallway off the kitchen toward the bathroom and bedrooms, the smell getting stronger with each step.

  “Sarah!”

  I wondered whether she might have gone over the edge, whether she had decided to kill herself rather than go through rehab and burn Ma’s house down in the process. The bathroom door was closed, but there was light shining beneath it. I opened the door and looked inside, but there was no sign of her. I heard a moan. It was coming from Ma’s old bedroom, just down the hall. I walked quickly to the room and flipped on the light.

  Sarah was lying face up on the bed, wearing only a bra and panties. Her eyes and her mouth had been covered in silver duct tape and her arms and legs were both spread. Her wrists and ankles had been fastened to the bed posts with barbed wire. The bedding beneath her was soaked in gasoline.

  I hurried to the side of the bed. “It’s me,” I said. “It’s Joe.” I reached down and removed the tape from her mouth as gently as I could.

  “Get it off my eyes,” she said. “Get it off my eyes.”

  She yelped as I pulled the sticky tape from her eyelids.

  “What happened?” I said. “Who did this?”

  “Get me out of here.”

  I went to work on the barbed wire next. It had been cut into lengths of about eighteen inches and wrapped like bread ties around her wrists and ankles. I got the wire off of her right wrist and right ankle first. She had a few puncture wounds, but they didn’t look too serious. As I moved around the bed to free her left wrist and ankle, I saw a gas can sitting on the floor. There was a cigarette lighter on top of it.

  “Hurry up,” she said.

  I freed her and took my phone out. I was punching in 9-1-1 when she grabbed my wrist.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Let’s just go.”

  “You need to go to the hospital,” I said, “and I need to call the police.”

  “Please, not now. Hand me a blanket from the closet. You can call the police after you get me out of here.”

  She stood while I got her a blanket. I wrapped it around her and started leading her to the front door.

  “Who was it?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Two of them, I think.”

  “They were waiting for you when you got here?”

  “No. They must have followed me. They came in just a few seconds after I got here. It happened so fast. One second I was walking down the hall and the next I was on my back in the bedroom with tape over my mouth and eyes. They cut my clothes off. The knife was so cold, Joe.”

  “Did they. . . did they—”

  “They didn’t rape me. They didn’t say a word until after they poured gas all over me. I thought they were going to burn me alive. Then one of them – he had a Spanish accent – put his lips next to my ear and said, ‘Tell your brother to back off. Next time we won’t be so gentle.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sarah’s physical wounds required only first-aid. The psychological damage was impossible to assess.

  Tell your brother to back off.

  The message had to have come from Lipscomb or Pinzon or both. The more I thought about it, the more I seethed. The murder case was getting out of control. At first, the suspects had done what normal suspects do – they’d gotten rid of as much evidence as possible and run off to Nashville. But then, unlike normal suspects, they started applying heavy political pressure. Since that hadn’t worked, it appeared they were willing to resort to terrorism.

  After I got Sarah home and settled in, I called the police and went back to her house. I also called Bates and filled him in, but the attack had occurred inside Johnson City so the city police would handle the investigation. The crime scene unit didn’t find anything, which didn’t surprise me. When they were finished and everyone had left, I locked the place up and drove back home. It was four in the morning.

  The next morning, we decided against taking Sarah to Ashville to rehab. After what she’d been through, we decided that being around family would be best for her. She said she wanted to stay with us for awhile, and that was fine with me.

  On Monday morning, I was back in the office early. The grand jury was scheduled to meet at nine. Proceedings conducted by grand juries, at both the federal and state level, are supposed to be secret. Grand jurors, clerks, police officers, judges and prosecutors are forbidden by law from disclosing anything that occurs while the grand jury is meeting. Each county in Tennessee has its own grand jury – twelve people, plus a foreman, randomly selected by drawing names of registered voters from a box. The grand jury’s purpose is to issue indictments, official pieces of paper that formally charge a person with a criminal offense. They serve for one year – the foreman serves two years in Tennessee – and they meet at the beginning of each term of criminal court. They can also be called into session under special circumstances, and that’s what I’d done.

  Typically, only the police officer who is handling the case appears before the grand jury. He or she lays out the case, and the grand jurors have the opportunity to ask questions. If the grand jurors wish, the district attorney can provide them with legal advice or even question the witness. The officer then leaves and the grand jury votes on whether to return an indictment.

  In this case, however, with so much at stake, I decided to call all of our witnesses in. The father of the boy who originally spotted Lisa testified, as did the other two people who reported finding the other two girls. Hobie Stanton, the medical examiner, Erlene Barlowe and her bouncer, Turtle Yates, Hector Mejia, Zack Woods, the limo driver and the fisherman who saw the Laura Mae being removed from the lake all testified. Bates brought his laptop and showed the grand jurors the phone calls Nelson Lipscomb made from the back of the cruiser, and by that time, we had his phone records and knew the calls were to his mother and his brother, John. It took the grand jurors less than half an hour to vote yes to indicting all three men, and the court clerk issued warrants for their arrest. I handed the warrants to Bates.

  “Don’t pick Nelson up until the other two are arrested and brought back here,” I said. “Put them in the same holding cell, and make sure you have it wired.”

  “Done,” Bates said. “How long you reckon it’ll
take to get them out of Nashville?”

  “Depends. To be honest, I’d just as soon have you and a couple of your guys drive down there and pick them up, but we better go through the normal channels. Call the Davidson County sheriff and see how he wants to handle it.”

  “I’ll call him from the office,” Bates said. “I reckon I’ll record it, too.”

  “Why? You think there’s going to be a problem?”

  “It’s Nashville, brother Dillard.”

  Bates left. He called me forty minutes later.

  “The Davidson County sheriff says he isn’t going to arrest John Lipscomb and Andres Pinzon unless he’s instructed to do so by either the district attorney or the governor,” Bates said. “These boys must have a bunch of clout.”

  “Try the Nashville Police Department.”

  “Already did. Same problem.”

  “I’ll call the Davidson County DA.”

  The Davidson County District Attorney’s name was Clayton Williams. It took the rest of the afternoon to get him on the phone, and when I did, his attitude one of detached ambivalence.

  “The possibility that you might be seeking our assistance has been previously brought to my attention,” he said after I introduced myself and told him why I was calling.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The governor and the attorney general have already contacted me. They both say that an obscure prosecutor in a far corner of the state is seeking to further his own career by undertaking a dangerous miscarriage of justice at the expense of two prominent businessmen from Nashville. It has been strongly suggested that if you call, we should refuse to cooperate with you in any respect and notify them immediately. So that’s what I’m going to do, Mr. Dillard. I have no intention of intervening on your behalf, and as soon as I hang up, I intend to call both of them back.”

  I held the phone away from my ear, stupefied by the arrogance of the political elite.

  “Are you telling me you’re refusing to honor a lawful warrant? You’re refusing to arrest two men who have been indicted for murder?”

  “We’ll arrest them at the direction of either the governor or the state attorney general.”

  “So that’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?”

  “No, I’d also like to tell you to have a wonderful day,” he said, and he hung up on me. I called Bates back immediately.

  “Meet me out at my house,” I said. “We need to take a little walk through the woods.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next morning, Bates and I went public. I had Rita Jones call every print, television and radio reporter within a fifty-mile radius. I called the Associated Press reporter in Knoxville personally and invited her to come up for a press conference. I worried, briefly, about my obligation to keep the results of grand jury proceedings secret, but the warrants had been faxed to another law enforcement agency, and politicians all over Tennessee knew about them. As far as I was concerned, they were no longer secret, and even if there was a legal argument that they were, the secrecy was only serving to impede the judicial process.

  At the press conference, which I held in one of the courtrooms because of the number of reporters present, I told them that the grand jury had indicted two wealthy men from Nashville for the murders of the three young women, and that the Nashville authorities were refusing to cooperate. I also told them that the highest levels of government in the state of Tennessee were also attempting to interfere in the process, and I said, flat out, that the governor himself was involved. I mentioned the state attorney general, and I made sure I took a well-deserved swipe at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for refusing my request to help with the investigation. I respectfully declined to give them the names of the men who had been indicted, but Bates may have given the names to them. Or maybe one or two of his investigators leaked the names. I preferred not to know.

  The result was exactly what I’d hoped. The reporters attacked the story like sharks after a dead marlin. The headlines the next morning were along the lines of: “Multi-millionaires Enjoy Protection of Pols.” The stories named Lipscomb, his brother and Pinzon. They outlined the evidence we had, and because of the uproar, the governor’s office, the state attorney general’s office and the TBI director’s office were all deluged with calls.

  On Wednesday morning, as soon as I walked into the office, Rita handed me a stack of messages. Lawyers representing all three men had called. The governor, the state attorney general, the director of the TBI, four congressmen, two senators, the Davidson County sheriff, and two dozen reporters all wanted me to call them back. I tossed all of the messages into the trash except the one from the Davidson County sheriff.

  “You’ve put a lot of people in an extremely difficult position,” Sheriff Lane Masters said when he picked up the phone.

  “It isn’t difficult,” I said. “Just do your job.”

  “Have you talked to Mr. Lipscomb’s lawyer?”

  “Pinzon?”

  “No, his criminal defense lawyer.”

  “Sure haven’t.”

  “Do you intend to?”

  “Sure don’t.”

  “It might be in your best interest to allow them to turn themselves in. Let them fly up there on their own plane, go through the booking process and post their bond.”

  The bond had been set at a million dollars apiece. I had no doubt they would be able to come up with the money. They’d be out of jail a couple of hours after they arrived in Washington County.

  “I might have agreed to that a couple of days ago,” I said, “but now I think it’d be best to treat them like everyone else. Take them to jail, and Sheriff Bates will send a couple of his deputies will be down to pick them up.”

  “You don’t care much about your political future, do you Mr. Dillard?”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  “Must be nice. So you really think you can convict them of murder?”

  “I wouldn’t have indicted them if I didn’t.”

  “You have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, do you?”

  “I’ve tried plenty of murder cases.”

  “Okay, partner. Leon Bates vouches for you, so you can have it your way. We’ll pick them up in a couple of hours and I’ll notify your sheriff. I expect you’ll be hearing from some mighty angry people in the near future. Good luck to you.”

  Less than thirty seconds after I hung up, Rita buzzed me.

  “It’s the governor. Do you want me to tell him you’re out?”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said, and I punched the flashing button.

  “I just want you to know that if John Lipscomb isn’t convicted of murder, I’m going to the legislature and I’m going to have you removed from office,” Governor Donner said. “There better not be any plea bargains, no reduced charges, nothing. He pleads guilty to second-degree murder or a jury convicts him. Otherwise, you’re gone, my friend.”

  “I’m not your friend.”

  Donner laughed. “That’s the first intelligent thing I’ve heard you say, Dillard. I’m going to take great pleasure in watching you go down in flames.”

  The line went dead.

  I knew I was in dangerous territory. Unfamiliar, dangerous territory. I’d never gone up against the kind of power – or the kind of people – I was facing. Lipscomb had plenty of money, he had high-dollar lawyers, he had political clout. That, in itself, wasn’t so dangerous, but I knew he was also willing to cross lines. The attack on Sarah proved it.

  The entire investigation had turned into a runaway train, and I was the engineer. I wasn’t about to jump off, though. I had to keep going. Whether it was for Erlene and her girls, for Sarah, or to serve my own foolish pride, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t back down. If I did, how could I ever look my wife, my children, my sister, or even myself, in the eye again? As I sat there with the governor’s threat echoing in my head, I felt a burgeoning sense of dread unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

  These p
eople weren’t just hoping to beat me in court.

  They wanted to destroy me.

  The Davidson County sheriff did what he said he’d do. Lipscomb and Pinzon were arrested in their posh Nashville office a couple of hours after the sheriff and I spoke on the phone. We let Nelson Lipscomb dangle, hoping he might come running to my office, beg to make a deal, and tell us what happened on the boat. I suspected that Bates was illegally tapping Nelson’s cell phone, but I didn’t mention it and if he was, nothing came of it.

  As soon as we heard Lipscomb and Pinzon had been arrested, Bates sent Rudy Lane and a patrol deputy to Nashville in a van to pick them up. They left late in the afternoon, were going to spend the night at a hotel near the jail, pick up the prisoners bright and early, and have them back in time for a one o’clock arraignment. There was a provision in the Rules of Criminal Procedure that allowed their lawyers to appear on their behalf, so I knew as soon as their they’d been booked at the jail and their bond had been posted, Lipscomb and Pinzon would be traveling straight to the airport to their private jet and would fly back to Nashville.

  I awoke early, as usual, the morning of the arraignment, fixed myself a cup of coffee, and drank it in the cool darkness on the deck. The crisp morning air felt good against my skin. The stars were beginning to fade, and I could hear the whine of a small outboard motor, no doubt a fisherman, rounding the bend in the channel below. There was a slight breeze blowing in off of the water, carrying with it an earthy, musty odor. I finished the coffee, went back inside, dressed in my running gear, grabbed a small flashlight, and Rio and I took off down the trail that bordered the bluff above the lake. Chico remained in the house, curled up between Caroline and Gracie on the bed.

  Forty minutes later, I was back at the house, drenched in sweat. I walked around to the front and started up the driveway to get the morning paper. I glanced toward the woods, which looked like an out-of-focus, black-and-white photograph in the faint, gray light of pre-dawn. Rio, who’d been investigating the base of a maple tree behind me, came loping up the driveway. I could hear his claws scraping against the asphalt and hear his breath, which always reminded me of a locomotive. Just as he passed me, he stopped and let out a low growl.