by Scott Pratt
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Didn’t waste any time, did he?”
“He said you threatened him.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“I knew there would be some resentment when I hired you, but I thought you were confident enough to overlook it.”
“There’s a difference between resentment and sabotage,” I said. “That article could have a tremendous effect on my case.”
He held up his hand. “I know. I know it could affect your case. Do you have any proof that it was Alexander who leaked it?”
“No, but there were only four people who knew what was going on: me, you, Beaumont, and Alexander. Beaumont had no reason to leak information to the press, I didn’t do it, and I don’t think you did. That leaves Alexander.”
“There are dozens of ways it could have gotten out. One of the guards at the jail might have overheard Boyer and Beaumont talking. One of Beaumont’s partners, one of his secretaries, a paralegal, anybody. He might have discussed it with Dunbar. Someone in our office might have overheard you talking on the phone. There’s just no way to be sure it was Alexander. Now, I want the two of you to cease fire, and I want you to make an effort to control your temper.”
As I sat there listening to him, I began to remember a few of the other reasons—besides money—that I never quite made it down to apply at the district attorney’s office. Interoffice politics. Nepotism. Lectures from the boss. It all seemed so silly, so ridiculous.
“I don’t think I have much of a temper,” I said.
“Really?” His brows rose and he began fingering his mustache. The habit was starting to annoy me.
“It takes a lot to set me off, Lee.”
“So what set you off last Wednesday?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. I got a call from the district attorney in Crossville.”
“Yeah, Alexander mentioned something about that.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
I looked down at my hands, suddenly ashamed. I felt like a schoolboy in a principal’s office.
“There’s this guy, Robert Godsey, used to be a probation officer here. He and my sister started dating. It got pretty serious, and then Godsey decided to transfer down to Crossville, where he grew up. So my sister follows him down there. And then Wednesday night I get a phone call and this woman tells me that Godsey has beaten my sister up. So I go. And when I saw her … I don’t know, Lee … I just snapped. Her eye was swollen shut and her lip was split and she had marks on her throat where he’d choked her. I went over to his house. I tried to convince myself just to talk to him, maybe scare him a little, but when I saw him standing in the door all I could think about was Sarah and how she looked, and I guess I sort of went off on him.”
“Sort of? You broke his nose and a couple of ribs.”
I shook my head. There wasn’t much I could say.
“The DA didn’t mention anything about him beating up your sister,” Mooney said. “I guess that’s why he’s not going to pursue it in court.”
“I’m sorry, Lee. I didn’t mean to cause you any problems.”
“He said someone else was with you. Who was it?”
“Just a friend. I’d rather not say. I called him and asked him to go. He was doing me a favor.”
He leaned forward on his elbows and rested his chin on his fists. “I like to keep a low profile, Joe. I like for my employees to do the same. This isn’t defense work, where you have to get yourself in the newspapers and on television to be noticed. The cases come to us whether we get publicity or not. You’ve handled yourself pretty well up to this point, but lately I see you making some questionable decisions. That little show in the courtroom the other day with Natasha, while amusing to some, was embarrassing to me. You had no business approaching her in the courtroom. And now you’ve gone to another district and assaulted a man, and I get a telephone call from an outraged district attorney who wants to know what the hell kind of people I’m hiring. This job is hard enough without having to deal with that kind of bullshit.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I apologize.”
“I knew Godsey when he was here, and I thought he was a jerk. And I know Alexander’s a snit, but my wife loves him and I’m stuck with him. Now, I don’t want to give you an ultimatum, Joe, but I don’t want to see any more of this kind of behavior. Do I make myself clear?”
I was so embarrassed I couldn’t look at him. I nodded.
“Good. Leave the door open on your way out.”
Thursday, November 6
Two days later, I found myself standing with my hands against a gray block wall while a uniformed guard ran his hands up and down my arms, my back, stomach, chest, and legs. He clipped my driver’s license and my bar card to a visitors’ log and took my photograph. When he’d met all of his security requirements, he led me silently down a dim hallway, through a door made of steel bars, and into a poorly lit room with a round steel table in the center. There were four plastic chairs at the table, and I sat down. I’d been in hundreds of similar rooms, rooms painted in neutral colors and stained by nicotine and mildew. The musty air smelled of a mixture of floor wax and hot dogs. I could hear trustees rolling lunch carts down the hallway towards the cell block.
I sat nervously picking at my fingernails until I heard the unmistakable sound of shackles tinkling as the inmate shuffled towards the room. There was the sound of a muffled voice, then the metallic clang of the key turning in the lock. The door opened and a short-haired, fierce-looking female guard stepped through. She raised her nose as if to sniff me, then moved her head to the side, signaling her ward that it was okay to walk in. Without saying a word, the guard stepped back out and locked the door.
I looked at the forlorn figure before me and reached for her. Sarah, cuffed and shackled, fell into my arms and wept. I stroked her hair and listened to her desperate sobs. All I could say was, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
When the tears finally subsided, we sat across from each other at the table. The jail uniform was green-and-white striped. It looked like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie. Her face was badly bruised again, her nose swollen and purple. There was a bandage over her right eyebrow and deep scratches just beneath her throat. Her boyfriend, Robert Godsey, was lying in a hospital bed only a few blocks away with a fractured skull. His condition had been upgraded from critical to serious, and from what I’d been able to learn from the nurse on the hospital ward, it appeared that he would be okay.
“How did you get in here?” Sarah said quietly. I noticed she was clutching a wadded-up piece of tissue in her hand. “They don’t let the inmates have visitors for a week when they first come in.”
“I told them I was your lawyer,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “They don’t know me here.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Joe. You have to believe that.”
“I do. I believe you. But you’re going to have to tell me exactly what happened so I can figure out the best way to handle it.”
She took a deep breath, and I saw tears gathering in her eyes. She started to speak, then stopped and cleared her throat. She wiped her eyes and nose with the tissue.
“We both came home from work yesterday a little after five. I fixed him some supper, but he wouldn’t eat. He was pacing around the house and kept disappearing into the bathroom. When he came out the last time, I saw a tiny white flake in his nose, and I knew. I knew he was using cocaine. I’ve used enough in my day to recognize it. No appetite, can’t sit still, irritable—he had all the symptoms.
“So I tried to talk to him about it. I asked him if there was anything he needed to tell me, if he was having problems at work, if he felt like things weren’t going to work out between us. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I mentioned the flake in his nose. He went berserk on me.”
“That’s obvious,” I said. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“They took me to the emergency room before they brought me here,” she said. “My nose is broken, and they had to stitch the cut over my eye where he hit me with the fireplace poker.”
The thought of my sister being beaten with a fireplace poker by an oversize brute enraged me, but I kept my mouth shut. The last thing Sarah needed was for me to start yelling or preaching or saying, “I told you so.”
“How many times did he hit you?” I said.
“I don’t know. A lot. When he hit me with the poker it knocked me backwards and I fell across a coffee table onto the hearth. There was one of those little shovels that you use to clean out the ashes in the fireplace, and I picked it up and swung it at him. It hit him in the side of the head and he fell. His head hit the stone, and he just lay there. I tried to help him, but he wouldn’t wake up, so I called nine-one-one.”
She dropped her head into her hands and began to weep again. I stood up and rubbed her neck, but it was obvious that the kind of pain she was experiencing was beyond anything I could hope to assuage.
“Sarah, did you tell all of this to the police?” I said.
What she had described was clearly a case of self-defense. The force she’d used in defending herself was reasonable under the circumstances, especially considering the history of the relationship and the fact that she was being attacked with a fireplace poker. The facts wouldn’t even support aggravated assault, let alone the attempted second-degree murder charge that had been filed against her.
She nodded. “I told them exactly what I told you.”
I moved back around the table and sat down.
“Listen to me,” I said. “It happened. You can’t change it now. What you can do is fight with all of your strength to make sure this doesn’t ruin the rest of your life. They’ve charged you with attempted second-degree murder, which tells me that something isn’t right. It’s a class B felony; maximum sentence is thirty years. Your bond is three hundred thousand, cash only, which is ridiculous under these circumstances. It’s also more than I can raise right now, so you’re going to be stuck here for a while. But I’m going to hire you a lawyer, a damned good one, and we’ll make sure this turns out the way it should. In the meantime, I’m going to go talk to the district attorney and find out what the hell’s going on.”
“I know what’s going on,” Sarah said. “It’s Robert’s father. He has a lot of money and he has a lot of influence around here. He’s a close friend of the district attorney’s. He brags about it all the time.”
“Great. Small-time politics and criminal justice. My favorite combination.”
Her face was battered and bruised, her green eyes glistening with tears, and my heart ached for her.
“I’m scared, Joe,” she said. “I’m really scared.”
I reached for her hands. “I know you’re scared. But have faith. I’ll make sure you get out of here. I promise.”
Less than an hour later, I walked into the reception area of the district attorney’s office in Crossville carrying the photos Fraley took the first night Godsey attacked Sarah. I also had more photos stored in my camera’s memory, photos I’d taken just before I left the jail. I’d never met District Attorney General Freeley Sells and knew nothing about him. I’d called from the car and told his secretary I needed to see him and that I’d be there in just a few minutes. As I rounded a corner, I saw a plump woman wearing a high-necked green dress who looked to be in her mid-fifties. She eyed me warily as I stood in front of her desk.
“I’m Joe Dillard,” I said. “I called earlier.”
“Mr. Sells is busy.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“He’s going to be busy all day.”
“Then I guess you and I will get to know each other pretty well, because I’m not leaving until I talk to him.”
There was a door with Sells’s name on it directly behind her desk, and I could hear someone talking. I walked around the secretary’s desk, knocked twice on the door, and opened it. I could hear her babbling behind me, but I didn’t care.
Freeley Sells was just hanging up the telephone when I walked through the door. His head was shaved and he had a bushy mustache. He reminded me of G. Gordon Liddy. He was wearing a gray suit with an American flag lapel pin just like the one Lee Mooney wore all the time. He stood as I approached.
“Who in the hell do you think you are, barging in here like this?” he said. He was short and wiry, and I could see a thick vein bulging in the middle of his forehead.
“My name is Joe Dillard.” I didn’t offer my hand. “I apologize for the intrusion, but I need to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“I know who you are, and I know what you want to talk about. I don’t have a damned thing to say to you.”
“Why are you holding my sister on a charge of attempted second-degree murder when any fool can see that she acted in self-defense?”
“Your sister nearly killed a resident of this district, a man who happens to be from a fine Christian family. Not to mention that she has a record longer than my leg.”
“My sister defended herself against a man twice her size who was using her for a punching bag. He hit her with a goddamned fireplace poker before she finally hit him back. And this wasn’t the first time he’s done it.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Are you referring to the other recent incident in which Mr. Godsey was badly beaten? He said you were the one who did it.”
“I don’t care what he said. He got what he deserved, both times.”
I held the photos of Sarah up so he could see them. He glanced at them, but quickly looked away.
“These are from the first time,” I said. “I just took some more. This one was even worse.”
“You can tell it to a jury, Mr. Dillard. A Cumberland County jury who won’t appreciate some drug-addled harlot coming into their county and attempting to kill one of their own.”
“I don’t give a damn where the jury’s from. There’s no way they’ll convict her. Did he tell you he was hopped up on cocaine?”
“The jury will convict her if I have anything to do with it,” Sells said. “I intend to try her, convict her, and send her to the penitentiary, where she belongs. Now, I’ve got work to do, Mr. Dillard. It’s time for you to leave.”
I stood there staring at him. “You have work to do? What kind of work? Is there someone else you need to railroad?”
“Get the hell out of here!” Sells roared.
I smiled at him. “You know something?” I said. “I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy showing people that you’re nothing more than a corrupt hick.”
I spun on my heel and walked out the door, hoping I could get out of the district before he thought up a reason to have me arrested. My heart was pounding as I jogged through the courthouse lobby and out the front door to my truck.
Once I cleared the county line, I started thinking about Sarah. I’d been around the legal system long enough to know that if a prosecutor was bent on convicting someone and he had a judge in his pocket who would let him bend the rules, the chances of beating him at trial were slim.
Sarah was in real trouble this time. If I lost this fight, she was likely to lose the rest of her life.
Friday, November 7
The next morning, my cell phone rang at six. I’d been up for a half hour, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and waiting for the sun to come up. The sky was just beginning to brighten, and as I looked out over the back deck I could begin to make out the silhouettes of the trees along the ridgeline to the east. I walked over to the counter where the phone was charging and looked at the caller ID. It was Leon Bates.
“We need to have a sit-down,” Bates said.
“When?”
“This morning. Right now, if you can. It’s pretty important.”
“Where?”
“Someplace private. I don’t want nobody seeing us or hearing what I have to say.”
“How about here? There’s nobody here but Caroli
ne and me, and she won’t be awake for a couple of hours.”
While I waited for Bates, I threw on some clothes, a jacket, and a pair of gloves. The temperature was in the low thirties, but the wind was calm. I thought it might be best if Bates and I took a walk around the property. That way Caroline wouldn’t be disturbed when Rio inevitably started barking.
I called the dog, walked outside, and stood at the head of the driveway. Bates showed up in his black Crown Victoria a few minutes later.
“You up for a walk?” I said.
“Damn straight. Just let me grab my gloves. Is that dog going to tear my leg off?”
“Not unless I tell him to.”
We walked down the driveway and behind the house, through the backyard, and onto a walking trail that I’d carved out of the woods several years earlier. Many of the trees had lost their foliage, and they covered the ground like a vast green carpet. Dampness from recent rains gave rise to a slightly musty odor, an odor that always reminded me of playing in the woods behind my grandparents’ home when I was a child. Rio ran ahead of us, lifting his leg next to tree trunks and chasing squirrels.
“Nice place,” Bates said. He was wearing his dark brown cowboy hat, an image he often liked to portray to the media.
“Thanks. You should come out sometime and bring the wife. We’ll drink a few beers and swap a few lies.”
“I might just do that. How’s the missus?”
“Doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances.”
“That cancer’s a demon. Both of my grannies died from it. My great-uncle, too. The more they learn about it, the more it seems to spread.”
I nodded my head in silence. Surely he didn’t come all the way out here to talk about cancer.
“I heard about your sister,” Bates said. “Sounds like a bum rap to me.”
“It’ll turn out okay. The DA down there is a jerk, but we’ll figure out a way to beat him.”
The woods were damp and cool, and I could see Bates’s breath as we walked slowly along the path. The sun was just clearing the hills to the east, and streaks of pale yellow light were filtering through the branches and the few remaining leaves on the trees.