Joe Dillard - 02 - In Good Faith (7 page)

“Run out of money?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Did you run out of money? Is that why you’re working here?”

“Not exactly.”

“Planning on running for office?”

“No.”

“What then? Why are you here?”

“Thought it might be entertaining.” I pulled another photograph out of the box, this one of my son, Jack, swinging a baseball bat.

“Entertaining?” Dunn said. “Well, just so you know, your pleasure is my pain. You’re hurting my career.”

“Really? How?”

“This new murder should be my case,” he blurted. “I’ve been here longer than you.” His tone had changed from sarcastic to whiny.

“Sorry. Just doing what the boss tells me to do.”

“What makes you think you can just waltz in here and take over? People aren’t happy about this, you know. People in the office. People in law enforcement. I’ve heard lots of bad things about you. Don’t expect any help from anyone.”

“Don’t worry, Alexander. I wouldn’t think of asking you for help.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I won’t ask you for help. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m kind of busy here.”

I looked up from the box and noticed that his lower lip had started quivering slightly, but he remained standing in front of my desk. He seemed to be having some kind of debate with himself about whether he should say what was on his mind. Finally, he spit it out.

“How’s that sister of yours? Still a drug addict and a thief?”

It was true. Sarah had been a drug addict and a thief in the past, but she’d been clean for more than a year. She’d replaced her drug addiction with religious fervor, but given a choice between the two extremes, I’d take good old Southern Baptist fanaticism every time.

I forced myself to smile at him, but my blood pressure was steadily rising.

“I’m tired, Alexander,” I said through clenched teeth. “It’s been an extremely difficult first day on the job, and I think you should leave now.”

“It’s a shame,” he said, “having an assistant district attorney whose sister is a career criminal. It doesn’t look good for the office.”

“Maybe you should take it up with the boss.”

“Maybe I will.” He sounded like a fifth grader.

“Let me help you with the door,” I said, and I moved quickly around the desk towards him. I was a good five inches taller than him and at least forty pounds heavier. He started backing towards the door as though he were afraid I’d pull a gun and shoot him if he took his eyes off of me. He opened his mouth to say something else, but I raised an index finger to my lips.

“Shhh. I’m not sure what might happen if you start talking again.”

His eyes opened even wider. A trembling hand found the doorknob behind him. The door squeaked as it opened, and he turned and slithered out.

I stood there staring at the door for almost a full minute with the insult about Sarah ringing in my ears. I was consciously trying to slow my heart rate when I saw the doorknob turn. I couldn’t believe it. The little fool was coming back, probably to get one last shot in. I made it to the door in two steps and jerked it open.

Rita, pulled off balance by the force of the opening door, stumbled into my arms.

“Oh, my God, Rita!” I said, horrified. She backed up a step and smoothed her dress, the excess of her breasts escaping from her D-cups like wild horses from a corral. “I thought you were … I thought—”

“Don’t you pay any attention to him,” she said. “He’s just jealous is all.”

“You were listening?”

“I knew he’d do something like that. He’s been upset ever since he found out you were coming to work here.”

“He’s an asshole.”

“Of the greatest magnitude, honey,” Rita said. “But you still need to be careful how you handle him. Lee protects him.”

“Why? Why is that incompetent little jerk even working here?”

“Because the boss’s wife just happens to be Alexander’s daddy’s sister, and he’s her favorite nephew. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that blood’s thicker than water. Especially around here.”

I knew exactly what she meant. Nepotism was alive and well in northeast Tennessee. The county clerk’s office, the tax assessor’s office, the county highway department, the sheriff’s department, and the school system were all staffed by the sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, and cousins of county commissioners and their spouses. In the past, I’d always found the practice to be somewhat amusing—the hicks perpetuating their own myth—but this was different.

“So I’m stuck with him,” I said, “no matter what he does.”

“You step lightly around him,” Rita said. “He’s not very smart, but he’s mean as a striped snake.”

Monday, September 15

I held my first press conference as an assistant district attorney late that afternoon on the courthouse steps. Lee Mooney asked me to bail him out, so I did, albeit reluctantly. I kept the details to a minimum and got out of there as quickly as I could.

I moved slowly the rest of the day, exhausted. After leaving the scene where the Beck family had been murdered shortly after eleven the night before, I’d taken the long way home and sneaked into the house so I wouldn’t wake Caroline. I didn’t want to describe to her what I’d seen, to try to put the horror into words. I went into the den and mindlessly watched television until after midnight, then lay on the couch and tried to sleep. I tossed and turned until an hour before dawn, the grotesque image of the broken legs running back and forth across my mind like an ember glowing in the night wind.

I finally finished setting up my office a little after five. Besides Alexander, there were four other young lawyers in the office, and not one of them said a word to me all day. Before I left, I called Fraley to see if there was anything new to report. The only thing the canvass had provided was a witness at a house nearby who said she saw two people in black clothes and white makeup get out of the Becks’ van sometime just after dark. I headed home.

We lived on ten acres on a bluff overlooking Boone Lake in a house built primarily of cedar, stone, and glass. I loved the house and the property, and I loved the woman and the dog I shared it with. The back was almost all glass and faced north towards the lake. The views, especially when the leaves turned in October and November, were spectacular. Rio greeted me with his usual enthusiasm, and once I calmed him down, I found Caroline in the bathroom, topless. She was standing in front of the mirror prodding her left breast near the nipple with her index finger. The sight made me more than a little anxious.

“It’s bigger,” she said, referring to a small lump just beneath the areola. “And it’s hard. It’s spreading out like a spiderweb.”

“Have you called the doctor?” I said, keeping my distance. She was so sexy without the top that I knew I’d have trouble keeping my hands to myself, but it obviously wasn’t the time.

“Not yet.”

“Don’t you think you should?”

“Probably, but I think it’s just some kind of cyst. I’m too young to have breast cancer. And besides, there’s no history of it in my family. I asked my mother about it. No history at all.”

Caroline was so vital that it was difficult for me to even comprehend the notion that she might have cancer. She’d been dancing and teaching all her life: ballet, jazz, tap, and acrobatics, so she was in great shape. She’d noticed the lump, which had started out like a bee sting, almost three months earlier. I’d noticed it too, during moments when a lump in her breast was the last thing I wanted to think about. But it was there, and it was growing.

“Caroline, you need to go to the doctor,” I said. “Wait, let me rephrase that. Caroline, you’re going to the doctor. Tomorrow, or as soon as she can see you. If you won’t call and set it up, I’ll do it myself.”

“I’ll do it,” she said, turning away from the mirror and towards me. “I’ll call her tomorrow. I just dread it.”

Still topless, she reached up to hug me. “Are you okay? The murders have been all over the news. It’s terrible, Joe. Who could kill a child?”

“I’ll let you know as soon as we find out.”

“Do you have any idea?”

“None. The agents are working around the clock, but we just don’t know yet. Maybe we’ll get a break soon.” She smelled inviting.

“They said the police found the van.”

“Yeah. They’re processing it now.”

“Great way to start the new job, huh?”

“Just my luck.”

I could feel the warmth of her skin through my shirt. I pulled her closer.

“Sorry, big boy,” she said. “Sarah’s coming over.”

“Sarah? Why?”

“She’s leaving tomorrow, remember? I’ve got steak in the refrigerator.”

“Damn, I forgot all about it.”

My sister, the object of Alexander Dunn’s earlier insult, was a year older than me. She was a black-haired, green-eyed, hard-bodied beauty who leaned towards extremism in all things and had spent most of her adult life addicted to alcohol and cocaine. We’d been close as children until one summer evening when she was nine years old. That night, my uncle Raymond, who was sixteen at the time, raped her while he was supposed to be looking after the two of us at my grandmother’s house. My grandparents and mother had gone out shopping, and I’d drifted off to sleep while watching a baseball game on television. I heard Sarah’s cries, the pain in her voice, and I went into my grandparents’ bedroom and tried to stop him, but Raymond picked me up and threw me out of the room, nearly knocking me unconscious in the process. When it was over, he threatened to kill both of us if we ever told anyone.

Sarah and I went in different directions after that. I became an overachiever, subconsciously trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t a coward, while she became a suspicious, defiant, self-destructive rebel. She’d been convicted of theft and drug possession half a dozen times, and had spent a fair amount of time in jail. But last year, not long after our mother died, she and I had finally talked about the rape and its effect on our lives. Our relationship improved dramatically after that, and so did Sarah’s life, or at least that was how it appeared. After she was released from jail a year ago, she’d moved into my mother’s house, started going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and, to my knowledge, had been clean and sober ever since. She’d met a man at her NA meetings named Robert Godsey whom she said she loved. She was moving to Crossville, Tennessee, the next day to be near him.

Sarah told me her new boyfriend had been clean for five years, but I was concerned. Godsey had been a probation officer in Washington County for at least a decade, and I’d run across him several times in the past. My impression of him wasn’t good, although I hadn’t said a word about it to Sarah. I remembered Godsey as a belligerent hard-ass, always filing violation warrants against his probationers for the tiniest of infractions. He was also a sanctimonious zealot, a man who apparently thought he knew all the answers to questions involving faith and eternity. I’d heard him harangue people in the courthouse hallways about getting right with the Lord more times than I cared to remember. One time a few years ago, I’d seen him back a young woman against the wall with his chest and shove her face with the heel of his hand. I started to confront him, but by the time I broke away from my client he’d stormed out the door. Now he’d transferred to Crossville, and he was taking my sister with him.

Rio began to bark at the front door.

“She’s early,” Caroline said.

I walked through the house, quieted the dog, and opened the door. Sarah stepped inside, wearing black jeans and a pink, V-necked pullover top with short sleeves. I noticed she was wearing a silver fish on a chain around her neck. I’d never seen it before.

“Nice necklace,” I said. Sarah’s conversion to Christianity had been both recent and complete. Caroline and I had gone to her baptism back in mid-August. The ceremony was held on the bank of the Nolichucky River behind the tiny Calvary Baptist Church near Telford where Robert Godsey was a part-time pastor. Godsey himself had immersed her in the brackish water.

“Thanks, Robert gave it to me.”

“Come on in.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Let’s go sit out on the deck. I’ll get you a glass of sweet tea.”

A few minutes later, we were sitting on the deck beneath cirrus clouds that drifted high across the sky like giant kites. I looked beyond Sarah at the pale green lake below, the late-afternoon sun glistening off the ripples like thousands of tiny pieces of hammered gold. An easy breeze was blowing, so pleasant that I thought of falling asleep.

“You okay?” she said. “You look tired.”

“I’ll be fine as long as we don’t talk about the murders. I need to think about something else for a while.”

“No problem. The thought of them sickens me. Where’s Caroline?” Her lips turned upward when she mentioned Caroline. Sarah had a terrific smile, with deep dimples like miniature crescent moons.

“In the bathroom. She’ll be out in a few. I think she’s planning on grilling steak. You hungry?”

“Sounds great.”

“All packed and ready to go?”

“I guess so.”

“When do you start the new job?”

Robert Godsey’s father owned an insurance agency in Crossville. Sarah was going to work for him as a receptionist.

“I start next week.”

I took a deep breath and braced myself. I didn’t want to get into an argument with her on her last day in town, but there was something I wanted to get off my chest.

“Can I ask you a question without you getting all pissed off at me?” I said.

Her eyebrows arched.

“I’m serious. You know I love you and I only want the best for you.”

“You’re already hedging. What is it?”

“I guess I just want to ask you whether you’re sure about this. Really sure. You’ve only known this guy for a couple of months.”

“His name is Robert, and I’ve known him for close to a year.”

“But you’ve only been dating for a couple of months.”

“Three months, almost four,” she said.

“Exactly. So why do you feel the need to pack up and move almost two hundred miles away? Are you sure you don’t want to try the long-distance-relationship thing for a while and see how it goes? Get to know him a little better?”