JD04 - Reasonable Fear

by Scott Pratt

  “What’s wrong, big boy?”

  I looked ahead, and could make out two dark shapes at the top of the driveway, side by side, ten or fifteen feet from the road. They weren’t moving. Rio continued to growl – a deep, throaty, threatening sound. I reached down to calm him and noticed that his teeth were bared, something he did rarely. I’d stuck the flashlight into the pocket of the hooded sweatshirt I was wearing, so I reached in and retrieved it. I pushed the button and cast the beam at the shapes. They were still about fifty feet away, eerily still and silent. I couldn’t tell what they were.

  “Hello? Who’s there?”

  No answer.

  I reached down with my right hand and grabbed Rio’s harness. He resisted, apparently not wanting to go any closer to the objects. I let go of the harness and started walking, very slowly, to the road. The shapes in the driveway gradually came into focus. My first thought was to turn and run back to the house, but I couldn’t. I had to see if they were real. I moved closer still.

  Ten feet away, I stopped.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured. “Please, please, no.”

  The breeze shifted slightly and the smell of blood filled my nostrils. I turned my back to the bodies and began to vomit.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  As the last bit of bile erupted from my stomach, a frightening realization gripped me. I was up against something I’d never encountered – a terrorist. The bodies in my driveway were placed there for one reason, to strike terror into my heart.

  Rio had moved over to my side but was still growling. I stood unsteadily, my thighs like molded gel, and turned back toward them. Both had been duct-taped into chairs and were sitting side by side, their torsos covered in dark blood, their faces luminescent in the pale light. Their chins weren’t resting on their chests as they should have been. Instead they were sitting up straight, eyes open, their death stares seemingly tracking me like the eyes in a portrait. I pulled Rio back down the driveway and walked through the kitchen into the bedroom.

  “Caroline,” I whispered. Her eyes opened and she smiled.

  “What time is it?”

  “A little after six. You need to get up, baby. Things are about to get a little crazy around here.”

  “Crazy? What do you mean?”

  “Just get up and get dressed. I’ll explain in a few minutes.”

  I kissed her on the forehead and went back into the kitchen. Rio paced nervously back and forth between the front door and the kitchen door. I dialed Bates’s cell number.

  “There are two bodies in my driveway,” I said when he answered. My voice was quivering involuntarily. “You need to get over here with your crime scene people and a couple of ambulances, but I don’t want you to do it through the normal channels. Use your cell phone. I don’t want the media crawling all over my place, and I don’t want them crawling all over this crime scene.”

  “Do you know them?” he asked.

  “Yeah. So do you. Come as quick as you can. I’m going back outside.”

  Caroline walked into the kitchen wearing a robe. I watched her fix herself a cup of coffee and sit down at the table.

  “What’s going on, Joe?”

  “Something bad has happened. Two people have been murdered. They’re in our driveway.”

  She set her coffee cup down and looked at me like I had suddenly started speaking a foreign language.

  “In our driveway? What are you. . . what?”

  “I’m not sure what’s going on yet.”

  “Are you sure they’re. . . how could this. . . are you sure they’re dead?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “How? I mean. . . who? Who are they?”

  “Witnesses. Against John Lipscomb.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “Bates is on his way. Stay inside, and try to keep Rio from going nuts when they show up.”

  I turned away from her and walked to the door. I wasn’t looking forward to going back outside, but I felt like I needed to. I didn’t think they should be alone, and at some level, I felt responsible for their deaths.

  I closed the door behind me and walked back up the driveway. It was lighter now, but the sun still hadn’t cleared the eastern horizon. All of the stars except Venus had faded into the grayness. I walked slowly, consciously taking deep breaths in an attempt to quell the fear and anxiety coursing through me. I briefly entertained the thought that perhaps I’d experienced some kind of mental spasm, that a group of neurons in my brain had misfired and created an illusion, complete with the smell of blood. I actually hoped I’d gone temporarily insane, and when I went back outside, the bodies wouldn’t be there.

  But they were. Frozen, like bloody mannequins, continuing to stare silently at me in death. I still had the flashlight, and as I got to within five feet, I shined it onto the body to my right. It was Zack Woods. I circled him, careful not to get too close. Duct tape – a lot of it – had been wrapped around his forehead, shoulders, thighs, and calves. A piece of two-by-four had been shoved between his back and the back of the chair, obviously before the tape was applied. His head had been fastened to the board with the tape. That’s why he was sitting up straight.

  The other body was Hector Mejia, Lipscomb’s caretaker, whom I’d met only briefly at the Washington County Jail. He’d also been duct-taped to a chair and braced with a two-by-four.

  I looked around at the surrounding hills. I wondered whether the killer was hiding in the woods, watching me survey the scene he’d so carefully crafted, enjoying my shock and horror. Maybe he was looking at me through a rifle scope. I shook off the thought and turned my attention back to Zack and Hector.

  The first sight of them had been so shocking that I was unable to concentrate, unable to look closely, to examine the scene with any kind of analytical thought. But I’d managed to calm myself, and I looked closely at Zack’s face. It was a horrible sight. His mouth was open, his lips were black, and blood had poured down his chest. His throat had been cut, a gaping wound three inches wide surrounded by a black crust of dried blood. I looked at the wound and noticed something unusual, something protruding from his throat a couple of inches beneath his chin. I moved a step closer, then recoiled, nearly vomiting again.

  It was Zack’s tongue. Whoever did this wasn’t just a killer. He was a psychopath.

  Bates came rolling down the road in his BMW about five minutes later, followed by two marked cruisers, two unmarked cruisers, a crime-scene van and two ambulances. None of them were flashing their emergency lights. I walked to the top of the driveway and watched while they parked along the curb, got out, and followed along behind Bates to where I was standing. Bates stopped next to me and peered down the driveway at the backs of Zack and Hector. The others – eight men and two women, all in uniform – stood silent and stone-faced, each one preparing in his or her own way to deal, once again, with man’s inhumanity to man.

  I was grateful we didn’t have neighbors close by. When I bought the property, one of the things that appealed to me the most was the isolation. The land that abutted to the east was TVA land and would probably not be developed, at least not in my lifetime. The land to the east was owned by a young farmer named Graves. He was the closest neighbor, and his house was almost a mile away.

  “Who are they?” Bates said quietly.

  “Zack Woods and Hector Mejia.”

  “Shit.” Bates rarely used profanity.

  “Look at their throats,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Bates glanced over his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said, and the group moved forward.

  I walked alongside Bates until we were standing where I had stood earlier, just a few feet in front of Zack and Hector. He looked at them for several seconds, then bent forward and rested his hands just above his knees. I thought for a moment that his reaction was going to be the same as mine, that he was going to vomit, but his eyes were fixed intently on Zack’s throat.

  “This ain’t good, bro
ther Dillard. This ain’t good at all. Do you know what this is?”

  I didn’t understand the question. Of course I knew what it was. Two dead people with their throats cut in a manner I’d never seen placed in my driveway. I waited for him to continue.

  “It’s called a Colombian neck tie. It’s usually something that happens in the drug trade. I’ve been to seminars and I’ve seen photos, but this is the first time I’ve seen it around here. Look at this.”

  Bates pulled on a pair of latex gloves and moved close to Zack. He squatted.

  “See here?”

  He pointed with his pinky finger and moved it diagonally a couple of inches from the center of the wound to beneath Zack’s jaw line on both sides.

  “After they cut the throat, they make a deeper incision here and here. They cut the cartilage away from the larynx, reach through with their fingers, and pull the tongue down through the wound. Looks like a little tie, see?”

  “It’s sick,” I said.

  “It’s a message, delivered directly to you. A pretty simple message.”

  He came out of the squat and took a step back, removing the gloves and stuffing them into his back pocket. Then he took his cowboy hat off with his left hand, turned it over, and started running the index finger of his right hand around the inside of the brim.

  “Same message as with Sarah,” I said. “Back off.”

  “This one’s a little louder. It means stop doing what you’re doing or we’ll do the same thing to you.”

  “Joe?”

  I heard a familiar voice behind me. I turned to see Caroline, who had dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie, walking cautiously toward me. I didn’t like the look on her face.

  “I wish you hadn’t come out here,” I said.

  “Who are they?”

  Caroline moved next to me and I put my arm around her shoulders. She stared at Zack and Hector.

  “One of them is takes care of John Lipscomb’s property at the lake. He told us he saw Lipscomb and a man named Andres Pinzon get on the boat with the girls the night they were killed. The other is Zack Woods. He said he saw Lipscomb dumping one of the girls off the back of the boat that morning.”

  “But why? Why are they here?”

  “We’re not sure yet. Please go back inside.”

  “I don’t want to go back inside. I want you to tell me why these people are here. This is my home too, you know.”

  The tone of her voice was agitated, bordering on frantic.

  “We think the men we’ve arrested for the murders are responsible for this, Mrs. Dillard,” Bates said. “But don’t let it worry you. We’ll take care of it.”

  “Don’t worry? You’ll take care of it?” I could see the veins in Caroline’s neck pulsing. “They kill two people and bring them to our house for the whole world to see and you’re telling me not to worry? Are you serious?”

  “They’re trying to scare us,” I said.

  “Well, it’s working! If they can do something like this, what’s to keep them from killing us, too?”

  “I’m the district attorney, Caroline. They’re not going to kill a district attorney.”

  “Really? They’ll kill his witnesses and dump them at his doorstep but they won’t kill him? Why? Because they’re so terrified of him?”

  “We have work to do here, Caroline. We have to take care of these people—“

  “They’re not people any more! Look at them!”

  I’d never seen her so hysterical, but I certainly couldn’t blame her. Telling her about it inside the house was one thing, but this was something else, something she could see and smell. I took her by the arm and began leading her to the house. She jerked away from me but kept walking. When we got to the door that led into the kitchen, I opened it for her and she walked through. I closed it and went back outside. One of the crime scene techs was beginning to pull the tape from Hector.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said to Bates.

  “What?” he said.

  “For setting her off like that.”

  “I ain’t too good with women.”

  “That’s obvious. How could they have known about Zack and Hector? The witnesses weren’t listed on the warrants.”

  “You’re guess is as good as mine, brother. Maybe a leak in the grand jury.”

  “How much longer before you’re done here?”

  “Couple of hours. You in some kind of hurry?”

  “Lipscomb and Pinzon should be at the jail by noon, right? I plan to be waiting for them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I gave my statement to Rudy Lane about finding the bodies in the driveway, after which I hung around for another half-hour or so and watched as Bates and his people finished their forensic examination of the crime scene. I went back inside before the EMTs loaded Zack and Hector into the ambulances and took them off to the medical examiner’s office.

  Caroline was waiting for me in the kitchen. She was leaning back with the heels of her hands resting on the corner of the counter. She didn’t look as though she’d cooled off.

  “I want to know exactly what’s going on,” she said as soon as I closed the door. “I want to know why those two people were killed. I want to know who killed them. I want to know why they were put in our driveway. And the most important thing I want to know is what you’re planning to do about it.”

  “I’m not going to talk to you if you can’t keep your voice down.”

  “I’m upset! What do you expect?”

  “Where are Sarah and Gracie?”

  “Upstairs. Why?”

  “I don’t want them to hear this.”

  “Never mind about them. Explain it to me!”

  “We told you, they were both witnesses against John Lipscomb. That’s why they’re dead. As far as who killed them goes, I don’t know. Lipscomb or Pinzon or both probably hired someone to do it, but there’s no way of proving it, at least not yet. They put them in the driveway as a message to me. They want me to back off, to let them go. As far as what I’m going to do about it goes, I just don’t know yet.”

  I walked over to her and put my hands on her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry, Caroline. I guess I should have done things differently.”

  “Stop it. Don’t patronize me. You said one of those men saw Lipscomb get on the boat and the other one saw him drop a body into the lake, which means they were extremely important, if not indispensable, to your case, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So now they’re dead. Do you even have a case?”

  “Not much of one. But we—”

  “Then why don’t you back off? You can put a stop to this right now. Just back off.”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “What kind of message would that send? Kill a couple of witnesses and the state will give up?”

  She started pacing around the kitchen.

  “I don’t care about messages,” she said. “I’ve had all the messages I can handle. What I care about is you not winding up like those men in the driveway.”

  “You’re overreacting.”

  “And you’ve got your head in the sand. What will it take, Joe? Don’t you see these people are different? They’re not going to let you win.”

  “This isn’t about winning and losing. It’s about right and wrong.”

  “Spare me the sanctimony. This is about your ego. This is about you showing the bad guys they can’t mess with Joe Dillard.”

  “Maybe it is,” I said, “but if you think I’m going to let some scumbag drop a couple of dead bodies on my doorstep and then tuck my tail between my legs and run, you don’t know me like I thought you did.”

  I turned my back on her and walked off toward the bathroom to take a shower. She gave me a parting shot as I cleared the door.

  “You’re going to wind up dead in a gutter somewhere. And where will that leave us?”

  I was seething when the transport van that contained John Lipscomb and Andres Pinzon showed up at the jail at ten minu
tes before noon. Caroline’s words rang in my ears, and the look of terror on her face as she stood gazing at Zack Woods and Hector Mejia sitting in my driveway with their throats cut was branded into my brain.

  Bates and I were standing in the booking area waiting for Lipscomb and Pinzon to walk in. A large gathering of media was in the parking lot. Bates was talking about Nelson Lipscomb, who had apparently left town.

  “With his brother’s money and contacts, he could be anywhere,” Bates said. I barely heard him. “I reckon not picking him up right off the bat wasn’t such a good idea.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “You okay, brother Dillard?”

  I nodded.

  “They’ll make bond,” Bates said. “If any one of them is determined to run, there isn’t much we can do about it. But we’ll find Nelson. Don’t you worry, we’ll find him.”

  The steel door buzzed, and Lipscomb and Pinzon walked through. Both of them were wearing uniforms issued by the Davidson County jail, and both were handcuffed and shackled. Pinzon looked like a mannequin, but Lipscomb had a narrow-eyed look of defiance on his fat face.

  “I want to talk to Lipscomb alone,” I said to Bates.

  “Bad idea. You seem a little upset.”

  “I want to talk to Lipscomb. Alone. Now. Put him someplace where there aren’t any cameras and where nobody can see or hear us.”

  “You’re about to do something you’ll regret,” Bates said.

  “Take his cuffs and shackles off.”

  Bates walked over and whispered something to Rudy Lane, who took Lipscomb by the elbow and led him to a cell in the far corner of the booking area. I followed closely behind. I’d dressed in a pair of dark-gray dress slacks and a white, button-down shirt for the arraignment, which was scheduled to start at one o’clock. I’d left my tie and my jacket in Bates’ office.