JD04 - Reasonable Fear

by Scott Pratt

  Lipscomb hesitated at the cell door, but Rudy shoved him inside. The door was steel, painted gray like everything else around me, with a small window at eye level. I stood outside the cell while Rudy removed Lipscomb’s cuffs and shackles. My peripheral vision began to close in, and within seconds, I could only see what was directly in front of me. As soon as Rudy was finished, I walked in.

  “Close the door behind you,” I said to Rudy without taking my eyes off of Lipscomb, who was standing in the middle of the cell three or four feet in front of me.

  “You sure about this?” Rudy asked.

  I didn’t answer. Rudy eased by me, the door clanged shut, and I stepped to within a foot of Lipscomb.

  “Is this where I get the rubber hose treatment?” he said.

  I backhanded him across the mouth with my right hand. A loud thwap echoed off of the concrete block walls as Lipscomb stumbled backward.

  “That’s for what you said about my wife.”

  I moved close to him again. The backs of his legs were against the concrete bunk. A small stream of blood was already trickling from the corner of his lip to his chin.

  “Your wife is a slut,” he mumbled, and I slapped him so hard with my open right hand that my palm and fingers immediately went numb. He fell back onto the slab and his head thumped into the wall.

  “That’s for what you had your hired thugs do to my sister. Who told you about Zack Woods and Hector Mejia?” He didn’t respond, so I leaned down close to him. “I know what you are, and one way or another, I’m going to prove it and put you away for good. If you think killing a couple of witnesses and planting them in my driveway is going to keep me from making you pay, you’ve underestimated me. If you or any of your murdering friends come anywhere near me or my family again, I’ll hunt you down and do the same thing to you that they did to Zack and Hector.”

  Lipscomb folded his hands in his lap and rested the back of his head against the wall. The laughter started slowly and quietly, like a train pulling out of a station, but it soon gained momentum and volume, a frightening, high-pitched cackle that sounded like it was emanating from the labyrinths of hell. I stood over him, panting like a wild animal. I wanted to beat him to a bloody pulp, a feeling that intensified as the laughter assaulted my eardrums. I reached down and grabbed the front of his jumpsuit and was pulling him to his feet when he spit a stream of mucous and blood directly into my face. I drew my fist back, ready to break his jaw.

  “Dillard!” The voice was Rudy Lane. I froze.

  The warm, sticky fluid on my face began to sicken me, and I let Lipscomb go and backed away. I hurried out the door past Rudy and turned left down the hallway that led from the booking area. Behind me, I heard Lipscomb’s voice.

  “You’re a dead man, Dillard! Do you hear me? A dead man!”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I walked straight out the front door of the jail and to my truck, forgetting completely about the tie and jacket I’d left in Bates’ office. I felt disoriented, disconnected from the world around me, and I started to drive aimlessly. A short while later, about ten miles west of Jonesborough, I drifted off the road on US 11-E and sideswiped the railing of a bridge that crossed a creek near in the Telford community. The noise of metal grinding jolted me back to awareness, and I slowed the truck down and pulled to the side of the highway. I shut the engine off, gripped the top of the steering wheel with both hands and rested my forehead on them. I didn’t want to move or think. I just wanted to melt away.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually, I became aware of a tap, tap, tapping. When I realized someone was knocking on the window, I pulled myself together at least enough to look to my left. A bearded face came into focus.

  “You all right in there, partner?” I didn’t recognize him. He was wearing denim bib overalls and a green and yellow John Deere cap. I sat back and nodded my head, unwilling to roll the window down.

  He stood there looking at me intently for a few seconds.

  “The world ain’t such a bad place, you know. All you gotta do is look for the good. It’s all around you.”

  He turned and walked away to his vehicle, and I looked at the clock on the dashboard. I was due in court in half an hour for Lipscomb and Pinzon’s arraignment. I turned the rear-view mirror toward me and looked at my face. There was dried blood around my mouth and smeared on my cheeks where Lipscomb had spit on me. I looked down at my shirt and it, too, was speckled with small blood stains.

  I pulled back onto the highway, made a U-turn, and headed back to Jonesborough. It was lunch time, so with any luck the office would be empty. I parked in the back lot at the justice center and used my key card to go in through a door that led directly to our offices. I made it to the closet in my office where I kept an extra set of clothes without seeing anyone. I grabbed the suit and was about ten steps from the bathroom when Rita Jones walked around the corner. She stopped in mid-stride and gasped.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  I kept walking and ducked into the bathroom, leaving her standing in the hallway. I went straight to the sink, took off my shirt, and started washing the blood from my face. I should have locked the door behind me, because a few seconds later, Rita walked in.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said.

  “It isn’t mine. This is the men’s room, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “There’s a lot of talk going on about you around here.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “They’re saying you’ve gone off the deep end. They’re saying the governor is going to have you removed from office.”

  “Doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re the one who runs this place.”

  “I’m serious, Joe. I know you’ve been through a lot lately with Sarah and Caroline and everything that’s going on here at work. Are you okay? I mean really okay?”

  I’d known Rita for nearly twenty years. She was an excellent secretary and paralegal. She was also a beautiful redhead with a body and demeanor that reduced most men to driveling idiots. She’d wrecked more than her share of marriages, and in years past, had taken more than one shot at wrecking mine. I’d always managed to fend her off, and I liked her, but at that moment, I didn’t feel like talking. I was queasy, and had to put both hands on the sink for a minute as a wave of dizziness swept over me.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I had a rough morning, that’s all.”

  “Maybe you should see someone. A professional.”

  “A shrink?”

  “Someone who can help you work through some of the things that have happened to you.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Rita, but I’ll be fine. Now if you don’t mind, I need to change my pants.”

  “You look terrible,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it. You look like you haven’t slept in a month and you’re pale. You should see a doctor.”

  “Will you please get out of here so I can finish getting ready to go to court?”

  “Fine, but if you need to talk, you know where to find me. And Tanner is in his office. I’m going to tell him to go to court with you. You look like you could use some help.”

  I stayed in the bathroom splashing cold water on my face until a few minutes before one. The nausea wouldn’t go away, so just before I walked out the door to the courtroom, I went into one of the stalls and stuck my finger down my throat. I gagged several times, but nothing would come up. I hadn’t eaten that day.

  I took the back steps up to the main courtroom, which still smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. Court wasn’t yet in session, but Tanner Jarrett was already sitting at the prosecution table, six lawyers were sitting at the defense table, and the gallery was packed with reporters and camera crews. As soon as I walked through the door, a group of reporters surged toward me.

  “Mr. Dillard! Can you confirm there have been two more murders? Mr. Dillard! Is it true that the victims were left in your
driveway? Mr. Dillard! Mr. Dillard!” I looked past them and saw Erlene Barlowe leaning against the wall at the back of the courtroom.

  A bailiff stepped to the front and warned the crowd to turn off their cell phones and stay quiet. When he was finished, he walked over and knocked lightly on the door to the judge’s chambers. The door opened, and Judge Adams walked through with a flourish, chin held high, black robe flowing behind him.

  “All rise,” the bailiff called, “the Criminal Court of Washington County in now in session, the honorable John Adams presiding.”

  Adams, the newest judge in the district, was a blue-blood alcoholic. Judge Leonard Green, who’d been on the criminal court bench for decades, had been murdered a year earlier. The state Supreme Court promptly appointed a former medical malpractice attorney named Terry Breck to replace Green. Breck was bright and personable, and it appeared that at last, we finally had a decent judge. But Breck succumbed to a heart attack a couple of months later, and John Adams, a former ambulance chaser who just happened to be a member of the lucky sperm club – his father made a fortune in the textile business before the industry packed up its sweat shops and moved abroad – entered the picture.

  Adams was a young, bombastic buffoon. He claimed to be a direct descendent of President John Adams, and even had a brother named Quincy. He also claimed to have ancestors that traveled to America on the Mayflower and loved to regale anyone who would listen with stories of the hardships endured aboard the ship, as though he’d experienced them first hand. He wore lots of tweed and cardigan sweaters beneath his black robe and smoked a curved pipe. But he knew nothing about the law. He didn’t know the rules of criminal procedure, didn’t know the rules of evidence, and interpreted written opinions and case law with the logic of a third grader. He’d had more rulings reversed on appeal during his first year in office than most judges accumulated in a decade, yet he seemed unfazed, blissfully unaware of his own incompetence, bathed in the power of the mystical black robe.

  “You okay?” Tanner whispered.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Rita was right. You look awful.”

  Judge Adams took his seat and surveyed the crowd. He had judge-length strawberry-blond hair that he parted in the middle, a small nose between small, hazel eyes, a narrow face and cheeks flushed by the legendary amounts of Scotch he consumed each evening.

  The bailiff called the case and I looked over at the six lawyers. Collins Brubaker, the president of the Tennessee Bar Association who I’d insulted when we arrested Nelson Lipscomb, was the only one I recognized.

  “Feeling a little outnumbered, Mr. Dillard?” the judge said. Tanner and I were the only people at the prosecution table.

  “Outnumbered, maybe, but not outgunned,” I said.

  Brubaker stood.

  “Collins Brubaker, appearing on behalf of Nelson Lipscomb, your Honor. The defendants are waiving their right to appear at arraignment. They also waive their right to a formal reading of the indictment. We have an agreement on bail, which the court has already signed.”

  “The state moves to revoke bail,” I said without standing. “We’d like them held in jail pending trial.”

  “But Mr. Dillard signed the bail agreements,” Brubaker said. “Unless there has been some material change in circumstance—“

  “I signed the agreement before Nelson Lipscomb disappeared and two of our witnesses were murdered,” I said. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  I heard scrambling behind me as the reporters jockeyed for position.

  “Order!” Judge Adams said, banging his gavel dramatically. “What are you talking about, Mr. Dillard?”

  “Two people who testified before the grand jury and who would have testified against these defendants were murdered last night. Their throats were cut and they were placed in the driveway outside of my home. We tried to serve an arrest warrant on Nelson Lipscomb this morning, but the sheriff’s department can’t find him.”

  The scrambling turned to silence. I looked over at the group of lawyers at the defense table. Only Brubaker was standing. He’d apparently been elected to serve as the mouthpieces’ mouthpiece.

  “Your honor,” he said, “even if, in fact, two people have been murdered, as Mr. Dillard claims, it has no bearing on this proceeding unless he has proof that these defendants were somehow involved.”

  The nausea still lingered, and I found his voice irritating. I thought about walking over and smacking him across the face the same way I’d smacked Lipscomb.

  “Even if, in fact, two people have been murdered?” I said to him. “Are you calling me a liar? Do you think I’d walk in here and lie about something like this?”

  “You’ll direct your comments to the court, Mr. Dillard,” Adams said, “and you’ll stand up when you do so.”

  “Forgive me if this sounds insensitive, your honor,” Brubaker said, “but if Mr. Dillard’s witnesses are deceased, perhaps the question we should be asking him is whether the state still has enough evidence to sustain this outrageous prosecution.”

  Judge Adams looked down on me.

  “Well?” he said.

  I stood. “Well, what?”

  “Do you have enough evidence to sustain the indictment?”

  “I have no intention of revealing the evidence we’ve developed to you or anyone else this early in the proceeding,” I said. The law required me to provide discovery to the defense after arraignment, but I didn’t have to do it immediately. I had some time. Not much, but I had some time. “If you’re asking me whether I intend to ask you to dismiss the indictment, the answer is absolutely not.”

  As I spoke, I began to feel light-headed and felt and irresistible urge to leave the courtroom.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and I started around the table toward the door. I took a couple of steps, and the lights seemed to go out. I felt myself falling forward, and then I felt nothing at all.

  Chapter Thirty

  When I woke up, I heard a siren and realized I was in the back of an ambulance. An oxygen mask covered my face and there was an intravenous tube running from my arm to a bag on stand. A middle-aged man in a paramedic uniform was sitting next to me. Rita Jones was on the other side, holding my hand. Her eyes were red and her make-up smeared.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Thank God you’re awake,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re my promiscuous paralegal.”

  She smiled broadly. “Don’t talk,” she said, “just rest.”

  “Caroline?”

  “She’s meeting us at the hospital. We’re almost there. And don’t worry about court. Tanner is taking care of it.”

  I followed her advice and closed my eyes, feeling groggy and exhausted. I remembered the arraignment, remembered becoming angry at Brubaker, but beyond that, nothing. A couple of minutes later, the back door of the ambulance opened and the paramedic, along with another paramedic and either a nurse or an orderly from the hospital, unloaded me and wheeled me into one of the trauma rooms inside.

  I spent the afternoon with doctors and nurses prodding and poking and asking me questions. I managed to get at least enough information out of them to learn that they believed I’d had some kind of “cardiac episode,” which, in laymen’s terms, meant I’d had a stroke. I couldn’t believe it. Caroline showed up about fifteen minutes after I arrived at the emergency room. She didn’t cry, didn’t really give any outward sign of her concern, but the look in her eyes was that of a deer just before it’s hit by a car.

  I was angry at myself for worrying her. Her day had started off with the bodies in the driveway, Lilly was pregnant, she still hadn’t healed from her latest surgery, and now this. I asked her not to call the children until we knew exactly what was going on, and she agreed.

  They moved me to a private room in the cardiac wing late in the day. Around four o’clock, a short, young black man entered the room. He was wearing the signature white lab coat and carrying a file. He
walked up to my bedside and smiled.

  “Mr. Dillard, I’m Doctor McKinney. I’m a cardiologist, and I’m going to be taking care of you.”

  His voice was nasal, his diction perfect. He had no accent, very much like a radio announcer. He was slightly overweight with a double chin, and was wearing brown, corduroy pants, a yellow turtleneck shirt that was too tight for his build, and ugly, comfortable shoes. He was geek through and through, not a smidgen of cool in him. He looked like the type who had spent a great deal more time studying than partying, and that gave me some comfort.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “This is my wife, Caroline.” She was sitting in a recliner to my left. “What’s the verdict?”

  “We think you had a transient ischemic attack, what most people refer to as mini-stroke, most likely caused by a build up of plaque that’s blocking the carotid artery in your heart. We can’t be certain, though, unless we go into the artery and take a look around. The stress test didn’t show any abnormalities. I know you’ve been asked these questions before, but do you mind answering again for me?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You don’t smoke?”

  “Nope. Never have.”

  “How much do you drink? Please be honest.”

  “I get a little drunk on Christmas Eve and New Year’s. Well, maybe more than a little drunk. And sometimes on the Fourth of July. Maybe a little tipsy on Valentine’s Day. Other than that, I drink a few beers now and then, but I don’t really drink much at all.”

  “Do you exercise regularly?”

  “Almost every day. I ran four miles this morning. I still lift weights some, but not as much as I used to.”

  “Were you unusually winded after your run this morning? Unusually tired?”

  “Felt the same as always.”

  “How would you describe your diet?”

  “Normal, I guess.”

  “And it says here there’s no history of heart disease in your family.”