An Innocent Client

PART III

July 24

6:15 a.m.

Agent Landers woke up in a foul mood, knowing he had to spend the next few days in a courtroom on a case he might lose, even with Dillard’s sister’s testimony. Just as he was starting to get in the shower, his cell phone rang. Who calls at six-fifteen in the morning? The caller ID said the number was blocked. What was the point in a caller ID if the person on the other end could block it? Cell phone company morons.

“Landers.”

“I have some information for you.” It was a female. Landers could barely hear her.

“Who is this?”

“I used to work for Erlene Barlowe.”

“How’d you get my cell phone number?”

“Julie Hayes gave it to me. I was going to call you sooner, but when she got killed, it scared me.”

“So why aren’t you scared now?”

“Because I’m gone.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Can’t do it. You’re making a mistake. Angel didn’t kill anybody.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was there that night. I know what happened.”

“Are you saying Erlene killed him?”

“I don’t think you even have to ask me that question.”

“If you know something, we can protect you. You need to come back and sign a statement and testify.”

“You didn’t protect Julie.”

“You’re not helping me if you won’t come in.”

“I can help you find something you’ve been looking for.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ll give you a hint. It’s red and has four wheels.”

“The Corvette?”

“I knew you were smart.”

“Where is it?”

“In a barn.”

“Stop playing games with me. Where’s the car?”

“Do you have a pen and a piece of paper? You’re going to need to write this down.”

Landers called Frankie Martin and told him he wouldn’t be around for jury selection in the morning, but he didn’t tell him why. Landers could tell from the tone of Martin’s voice that he was angry, but Landers wasn’t about to tell Frankie or anyone else where he was going. He’d been jerked around enough on the Angel Christian case. If the girl on the phone was sending him on a wild goose chase, he was going to be the only one who knew about it.

Landers made the drive down I-181 from Johnson City to Unicoi County in thirty minutes. It was already 78 degrees and there was a thick mist hanging over everything. It was going to be hot and humid. He took the Temple Hill exit and turned onto Spivey Mountain Road.

Two miles up the mountain, Landers came to an unmarked gravel road, right where the anonymous caller said it would be. He turned right and followed the gravel road through a gulley and along a tree-covered ridge. After a mile, he came to a cattle gate that was secured by a padlock. He climbed the gate and followed the trail on foot through a stand of white pine for another quarter-mile. As he broke into a clearing, Landers spotted the barn a hundred yards to his right. So far, it looked like the caller was telling the truth.

Landers pulled his gun and walked slowly up to the barn. He saw something move in the woods to his left and froze. Must have been a deer. He peeked through the wooden slats until his eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness inside. Sure enough, there it was. A vehicle covered by a tarp. The barn door was padlocked, so Landers crawled in through an open window, walked over to the car, and lifted the tarp. A Corvette. A beautiful, red Corvette. And he could make out dark stains on the passenger seat. The mother lode. Finally.

Landers pulled a notepad from his pocket and wrote down the vehicle identification number, climbed back through the window, and jogged all the way back to his car. Sweat was pouring off of him. As soon as he got to a spot where he had a cell phone signal, he called his boss and told him what he’d found. Bill Wright said he’d arrange for two agents to secure the property. No one would go in or out until Landers did what needed to be done. Wright also said he’d call the forensics team. They’d be on the way soon.

Landers drove back down the mountain and straight to the tax assessor’s office at the Unicoi County courthouse. They’d just opened and there was no one there besides Landers. The woman who worked there helped him find the property he’d just left on one of the tax maps. From that, learned that the taxes on the property were paid by a corporation called Busty Gals, Inc.

Landers got back into his car and drove to the TBI office in Johnson City. On the way, he called the Tennessee secretary of state’s office in Nashville and asked them to fax him a copy of Busty Gals, Inc.’s corporate charter. The incorporator was HighRide, Inc., a Delaware corporation not registered to do business in Tennessee. A phone call to the Delaware secretary of state’s office confirmed what Landers suspected. Erlene Barlowe owned HighRide, Inc., which meant she also owned Busty Gals, Inc. Landers faxed the Corvette’s VIN number to the National Auto Theft Bureau, an arm of the insurance industry that tracked nearly every car in the country. The Corvette was also registered to HighRide, Inc. That explained why Landers hadn’t been able to get a hit from the Tennessee Department of Motor Vehicles.

Landers used all of the information he’d gathered to draft an affidavit for a search warrant for the barn. He didn’t mention the fact that he’d trespassed onto the property on Spivey Mountain. The way he drafted the warrant made it look as though he’d done some excellent police work, which he figured he had. He found Judge Glass in his office at eleven-thirty, and the judge signed the warrant

Landers was scheduled to testify in the Angel Christian case in the afternoon, but depending on what forensics found in the barn, he knew his testimony might have to change. He kept up with the radio traffic, so he knew the forensics team hit the barn a little before 1:00 p.m. He headed down to Jonesborough to talk to Deacon Baker.

July 24

9:00 a.m.

I found out Sarah was going to testify against Angel less than a week before the trial, when the district attorney faxed me an amended witness list and a copy of my sister’s statement. I didn’t believe a word of what I read. The statement had been taken by Phil Landers.

I was confident as I sat in the courtroom on the second floor in Jonesborough, but as always, I was a little nervous. The bailiff announced the entrance of Judge Leonard Green. The case of the State of Tennessee versus Angel Christian was about to go to trial.

Seventy-seven citizens from Washington County had been summoned. From that group, we’d choose the jury that would determine Angel’s fate. I’d spend a great deal of time talking to them about being open-minded and neutral and the importance of a fair trial, but I knew the goal of jury selection was to try to make sure the trial was anything but fair. I needed to select people who were more likely to be sympathetic to Angel than to the state. The key was to talk to them as much as I could, accurately gauge their answers and reactions, and then make sound decisions.

I’d never before represented a woman accused of murder, let alone a woman who looked like Angel. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse, and presented me with a fascinating dilemma when it came to picking a jury. I knew Angel would be attractive to the prospective male jurors, especially if I chose them carefully, and I hoped the attraction would cause them to be sympathetic toward her and want to help her. At the same time, there would be evidence presented during the trial of the kind of mutilation any man would fear. If the male jurors perceived at any time during the trial that Angel might be capable of such an act, she’d be doomed.

The image Angel presented to the prospective female jurors was an even trickier issue. The average female in Washington County, Tennessee, was a God-fearing conservative. From the mouth of Agent Landers, those conservative women would hear testimony that Angel was a runaway and that she had worked, if only for a short time, in a strip club. They’d hear that Angel Christian probably wasn’t her real name, and that Landers had been unable to find background information on her. That alone could be enough to cause many women to vote to convict her, but my bigger concern was jealousy. If the female jurors perceived that Angel regarded herself as beautiful, or that she was somehow attempting to take advantage of her beauty to gain favor with the men, we wouldn’t have a chance.

Caroline had chosen Angel’s wardrobe and makeup, and when I saw my client walk into the courtroom early that morning, I was grateful for my wife’s skill. The black pantsuit and cream-colored blouse were conservative but classy, loose enough to hide the curves but not frumpy. Angel’s shoes were black with low heels, and her hair had been neatly tied back. Just a touch of eyeliner set off her fantastic brown eyes. There was no lip gloss, no shading around the eyes, no blush, and no jewelry. She looked like a scared, beautiful college student. It was perfect.

I nodded and smiled at the group of prospective jurors when Judge Green introduced me. I immediately scanned the room for Junior Tester, but he wasn’t there. I introduced Angel and placed my hand on her shoulder. I wanted the jury to know I wasn’t ashamed to touch her, that I felt close to her, and that I believed in her. Angel nodded her head and smiled, just as I’d told her to do.

I sat back down as Judge Green began the jury selection process. He reached into a stack of slips and randomly pulled out a name.

“Lucille Benton,” he said.

A lady wearing a denim pantsuit rose from the middle of the crowded audience.

“Here,” she said, raising her hand.

“Come on down.” Judge Green sounded like a game show host. “Where are you from?”

“Limestone,” the woman said, walking to the jury box.

“Ah, Limestone, wonderful little community. And how are things in Limestone this morning, Ms. Benton?”

I cringed. I was sitting next to a woman who was on trial for murder, and Judge Green was politicking as usual, pandering shamelessly to the jurors. I scribbled notes while he instructed the first thirteen to sit in the jury box and the next seven to sit on the front row of the audience, just behind the bar. Finally, after a half-hour of worthless banter from the judge, I heard the words I’d been waiting for.

“Mr. Martin, you may voir dire the jury.”

Frankie Martin rose, straightened his tie, and moved to the podium. He was about to address a jury in a murder case for the first time in his life, having spent the past four years handling misdemeanor cases in general sessions court. But he was a handsome, articulate young man and carried himself with confidence. He was also fighting for his very survival in the prosecutor’s office. The fact that Deacon Baker was not in the courtroom could mean only one thing: he thought the case was a loser. Martin was Baker’s sacrificial lamb. If Martin lost this trial, he’d be hustling divorce cases next week.

I whispered into Angel’s ear: “I need you to watch the jurors very carefully. If anyone on the jury makes you uncomfortable for any reason, I want to know about it.”

She nodded. Caroline had obviously given her some perfume. She smelled like a lilac bush.

Martin spent an hour on his initial voir dire. He was smooth and courteous, and he failed to make some of the mistakes that rookie lawyers tend to make at their first big trial. Judge Green didn’t get a single opportunity to embarrass him.

When Martin finally sat down, I got into character. While he was speaking, I’d used the time to memorize the jurors’ names. I smiled and was meticulously polite to each of them. I thanked them for performing such a valuable public service and told them if I asked a question that made them the least bit uncomfortable, they could ask the judge to allow them to answer the question in private. I encouraged them to speak openly and honestly regarding their feelings on a wide range of topics, and as they spoke, I watched them closely, looking for any sign of discontent.

Despite Tom Short’s warning, a large part of my trial strategy was to deflect attention away from Angel and to put Reverend Tester on trial. If it was to succeed I needed jurors, preferably female jurors, who held sincere religious beliefs and would be deeply offended by the fact that the pastor had used donations from a church to fund a night at a strip club. It was known in legal circles as the “sumbitch-deserved-it” strategy, and under the right circumstances, it was highly effective.

I also wanted at least four males on the jury, preferably fathers. Angel had a way of engendering sympathy in men. I wanted them to feel an instinct to protect her. I wanted them to hope, perhaps to believe, that they could seek her out after the trial was over and let her know it was their vote, or their influence, that had set her free.

After three hours of questions and answers, challenges and arguments, Judge Green announced that a jury had been chosen. There were five men and seven women. I hadn’t been able to get every person I wanted on the jury, because Frankie kept using his challenges to kick them off, but I felt good about the group sitting in the box. The jurors were given buttons with their names on them, and the judge swore them in. He instructed them on how they should conduct themselves during the case, then looked up at the clock on the back wall.

“It’s noon. I’m hungry. We’ll adjourn until one-thirty for lunch.”

After the jury was out of sight, the bailiffs escorted Angel back to the holding cell. Caroline had packed me a sandwich and some chips, and I spent the lunch hour going over my opening statement. At precisely 1:30, Judge Green walked back into the courtroom and ordered the bailiffs to bring the jury in.

I stood as the jury filed in and took their seats. I smiled and tried to catch the eye of each person passing the defense table.

“I trust you had a good lunch,” the judge said. “Is the state ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is the defense ready?”

“Yes, judge.”

“Read the indictment, Mr. Martin.”

Martin stood and read the indictment that charged Angel Christian with knowingly, intentionally, and with premeditation taking the life of John Paul Tester. Count Two charged her with abusing the corpse by mutilation.

“Opening statements,” the judge said.

Frankie Martin stood up.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence in this case will show you that the defendant, Angel Christian, brutally stabbed and mutilated John Paul Tester in the early morning on April twelve of this year. Mr. Tester visited a club where the defendant worked on that same evening. The defendant flirted with Mr. Tester, she served him many drinks, and at approximately 11:30 p.m., Mr. Tester withdrew two hundred dollars from an ATM machine in the club lobby. The defendant left the establishment shortly after Mr. Tester left. A witness will testify that she saw a woman accompany Mr. Tester to his room around midnight. Mr. Tester was found at approximately 1:00 p.m. that afternoon in his hotel room. He had been drugged and stabbed nearly thirty times. His penis had been sliced off and removed from the room. His wallet was gone. His severed penis was found near Picken’s Bridge that same morning.”

Martin was calling Tester “Mister” instead of “Reverend.” I’d take care of that soon enough.

“Among the evidence gathered during a forensic examination of Mr. Tester’s hotel room were two hairs that were found on his clothing. Both hairs were tested for DNA. A hair sample was later obtained from the defendant. The DNA profile of the hairs found on Mr. Tester’s body matches exactly the DNA profile of the hair sample obtained from the defendant. The chances of those hairs belonging to someone else are more than one hundred billion to one. You’ll also see a photograph of the defendant taken by the police two days after the murder. The photo shows a bruise on the defendant’s face, and our contention is that she received the bruise during some kind of altercation with Mr. Tester.

“But more importantly, we have a witness who will testify that the defendant confessed to this brutal crime. Our witness is an inmate at the Washington County Detention Center. Her name is Sarah Dillard. Ironically, she’s Mr. Dillard’s sister. She will testify that the defendant confessed during a conversation they had at the jail. The defendant told Miss Dillard that on the night of the murder, the defendant followed Mr. Tester back to his motel room with the intention of robbing him. She’ll testify that the defendant told her that she drugged Mr. Tester and killed him after he passed out on the bed.

“I wish I had a videotape to show you, or an eyewitness, but unfortunately, I don’t. What I do have is a web of circumstantial evidence so tightly woven that the defendant cannot possibly escape. Everything points to her. She was at the club. She spoke to Mr. Tester. She served him drinks. She flirted with him. She invited him to leave with her. She followed him to his room, and then she drugged him, murdered him, and robbed him.”

Martin turned and pointed at Angel.

“Don’t let yourselves be fooled by that young woman’s beauty or her youth. Don’t let yourselves be taken in by her attorney’s tricks or the smoke and mirrors that will no doubt be used to confuse you during the course of this trial. That young woman sitting over there committed a vicious murder, and we have the evidence to prove it. It will be your duty to render a verdict of guilty in this case, and to impose on her the only sentence that will give justice to John Paul Tester and his family, a sentence of death. This woman committed first-degree murder. My job is to prove it. Yours is to make her pay the price. I fully intend to hold up my end, and I hope that once you’ve heard all the evidence, you’ll do the same. Thank you.”

Martin sat down at the prosecutor’s table, and I stood. Martin’s argument had been passionate and persuasive, but parts of it were dishonest, and I intended to point that out immediately. I walked to the wooden lectern, picked it up, and set it down three feet to my right. I didn’t want any barriers between the jurors and me. I glanced at the jurors and then out over the courtroom. Junior Tester had come in and was sitting on the front row, directly to my left. I noticed that he’d put on at least twenty pounds since I’d visited him a couple of months ago. He hadn’t shaved in days and looked tired and haggard. He was also staring directly at me. It unnerved me, but only for a few seconds.

“Not much point in having a trial,” I said, “if you believe everything Mr. Martin just said.” I smiled at the jury. “If everything he said were true, I suppose we could just go ahead and ship Miss Christian off to death row right now and save everybody all of this trouble.”

I sought out eyes, looking for signs that Martin’s argument had closed their minds. They weren’t avoiding me. They were still receptive to what I had to say.

“But what Mr. Martin just told you isn’t the truth. It was his interpretation of the evidence, and as every one of you knows, there are two sides to every story. Now, first things first. This young lady’s name is not ‘the defendant.’”

I walked over to the defense table and stood directly behind Angel. I put my hands on her shoulders.

“Her name is Angel Christian, and she’s going to testify in this case. What she will tell you is this:

“On the night of April the eleventh of this year, Reverend John Paul Tester came into the club where she’d been a waitress for only a month. It’s a strip club, a gentleman’s club, whatever you want to call it. It’s a place where men go to watch young ladies dance and take their clothes off. It’s not the kind of place where you’d expect to find a man of God, especially if he’s paying for his night out with money given to him by worshippers at the Church of the Light of Jesus, where he’d preached a sermon on the evils of fornication less than an hour before he arrived at the club.”

Diane Frye had managed to get hold of a tape recording of the sermon Tester gave that night. I’d tried to get it introduced as evidence, but the judge shot me down. I wasn’t even supposed to mention it, but if Frankie didn’t object, I knew the judge wouldn’t say a word. If he did object, he’d simply be calling more attention to it. Mentioning the tape probably bordered on being unethical, but Angel was on trial for her life. Frankie kept his mouth shut.

“Miss Christian wasn’t a dancer, not a stripper, and she certainly wasn’t a prostitute. She was a waitress. She arrived here in February after leaving a viciously abusive situation back home in Oklahoma. She originally intended to go to Florida, but she met a young lady on a bus in Dallas who told her she’d help Miss Christian find work here.

“Miss Christian will tell you that on the night of April the eleventh, she served Reverend Tester the drinks he ordered — six doubles, straight scotch, the equivalent of twelve drinks, in two hours. She’ll tell you Reverend Tester became intoxicated and that he was aggressive, even a little abusive, toward her. She’ll tell you Reverend Tester used inappropriate language and that Reverend Tester touched her inappropriately. She reported Reverend Tester’s behavior to her employer, Ms. Erlene Barlowe, who will also testify in this case.

“Ms. Barlowe spoke to Reverend Tester, and eventually asked the reverend to leave. Miss Christian had never seen or heard of Reverend Tester prior to his coming to the club that night, and she never saw him again after he walked out the door.”

I moved back to the jury box and stood directly in front of them.

“Now, despite what Mr. Martin said earlier, you won’t hear a single witness tell you they saw Miss Christian anywhere near Reverend Tester’s room that night. You won’t hear a single witness tell you they saw Miss Christian leave the club at the same time Reverend Tester left. As a matter of fact, Miss Christian’s employer, Erlene Barlowe, will testify that Miss Christian finished out her shift and Ms. Barlowe drove her home.

“You’ll hear evidence that two hairs found on the victim’s body contained DNA that matches Miss Christian’s DNA. That is, by far, the most compelling piece of evidence the state will present in this case. I believe it’s safe to say that were it not for those two hairs, we wouldn’t be here today. But what I’ll be asking you to pay particular attention to is where those hairs were found. Both of them were lifted off of Reverend Tester’s shirt. Since there will be testimony that Miss Christian had contact with Mr. Tester at the club, that she leaned over and served him drinks and that he deliberately and obnoxiously rubbed himself against her, it’s not only possible but probable that the hairs were transferred from Miss Christian to Reverend Tester at the club.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is all they have, with the exception of a last-minute statement from a drug addict and thief they recruited at the jail. She’s my sister, yes, and she’s furious with me because I had her arrested when she stole from my family. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it.”

Martin stood to object. Judge Green waved him back down.

“Tone it down, Mr. Dillard,” the judge said.

“They have no murder weapon. They have no eyewitnesses. They have no fingerprints, no blood evidence, and no way to place Miss Christian at the scene of the crime. They say the motive is robbery, but they didn’t find any of Reverend Tester’s money on Miss Christian. They have no evidence to prove it.

“In this case, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Miss Christian, acting with premeditation, stabbed the victim to death and then mutilated his body. In order for you to convict Miss Christian, you must have virtually no doubt that she committed this terrible crime. And beyond that, the judge will instruct you that in a case based on circumstantial evidence such as this one, you can only find Miss Christian guilty if there is no other reasonable theory of guilt. There are dozens of other reasonable theories as to how Reverend Tester was killed.

“When all the evidence is in, you folks will have more than a reasonable doubt. As a matter of fact, you’ll probably be wondering why this young lady was arrested in the first place. Angel Christian has been living a nightmare since the day the state wrongfully accused her of murder. It’s a nightmare only you can end. She is not guilty. She did not do this terrible thing.”

I paused and looked at each of the jurors. I wanted the message to sink in.

“Everyone associated with this trial is doing their duty,” I said. “The judge, the lawyers, the witnesses, everyone. Your duty is to determine the truth, and after you’ve done that, to vote your conscience. In this case, the only verdict you’ll be able to return is not guilty. This is a death penalty case. A man has been killed, and someone should pay for killing him. But none of us wants an innocent person to pay, and that beautiful young woman sitting over there is innocent.”

July 24

2:15 p.m.

“Call your first witness,” Judge Green said.

Martin called Dennis Hall, the manager of the Budget Inn, to the witness stand. Hall told the jury that Reverend Tester had checked in late in the afternoon, said he was in town to preach at a revival at a friend’s church, and asked him where he could get a good burger. An hour after checkout time the next day, one of his maids told him Tester’s “Do Not Disturb” sign was still on the door. Hall went to the room, opened the door, saw all of the blood, and called the police.

When Martin was finished with his direct examination, I stood and straightened my tie.

“Mr. Hall, did you see Reverend Tester return to the motel at any time after he left for the restaurant you recommended-the Purple Pig, I believe it was?”

“No, sir. I got off work at seven and went home.”

I touched Angel’s shoulder. “Have you ever seen this young lady before?”

“No. I would have remembered her.”

“Thank you.”

“You can step down,” Judge Green said. “Next witness.”

Martin called Sheila Hunt, the clerk who was working at the Budget Inn the night of the murder. She said she saw Tester’s truck pull into the parking lot around midnight, followed by a red Corvette. She said a woman got out of the Corvette and followed Tester up the stairs. Martin didn’t bother to ask her whether she could identify the woman.

“Ms. Hunt,” I said when it was my turn, “it was raining when you saw Reverend Tester return to the motel, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Raining pretty hard?”

“Yes.”

“And that made it difficult for you to see, didn’t it?”

“Yes. The rain, and I wasn’t paying that much attention, I was watching Jay Leno.”

“And didn’t you tell the police that the person you saw was wearing some kind of coat or cape?”

“It had a little hood. I remember thinking she looked like Little Red Riding Hood, except I don’t think it was red.”

“So you can’t identify the person, can you?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, ma’am. You can’t tell us whether this person was old or young, can you?”

“No.”

“Tall or short? Heavy or slim?”

“No.”

“Can’t tell us whether this person was black or white or brown or yellow or red?”

“I don’t think she was black,” she said. “But that’s about all I can say.”

“You can’t really even say with certainty that it was a woman, can you?”

“I think it was.”

“But you’re not certain, are you?”

“I don’t know. I think it was a woman.”

“You think it was a woman. A young lady is on trial for her life here, ma’am. You need to be certain. You’re not, are you?”

“It was dark and raining.”

“Thank you. Let’s talk about the car for a second. You weren’t able to get a tag number, were you?“

“I didn’t try.”

“Because there wasn’t anything that alarmed you, right?”

“That’s right. I wasn’t alarmed.”

“People come and go at the motel all the time, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t see the driver, did you?”

“No.”

“Don’t know if it was a man or a woman?”

“I didn’t see the driver at all.”

“Didn’t see where the car went after the passenger got out?”

“I just glanced over there for a second. Then I went back to watching my show.”

“Didn’t see the car leave or return?”

“I told you, I went back to my show.”

“Thank you.”

Martin looked as confident as ever, but he had to be at least a little worried. His case wasn’t exactly off to a flying start. His first witness had found a body and called the police. His second witness testified that she didn’t really see a thing.

I glanced over to my left and saw Deacon Baker and Phil Landers walking toward the prosecution table.

“Call your next witness,” Judge Green said.

“May I have a moment to confer with Mr. Martin?” Baker said.

“Make it snappy,” the judge said.

Baker leaned over and whispered something in Martin’s ear. Martin nodded and whispered back. The two of them turned toward the judge.

“May we approach, your honor?” Baker said.

Green motioned them forward, and I got up and joined them.

“We need to speak to you in chambers,” Baker said.

“We’re in the middle of a murder trial, in case you haven’t noticed,” Judge Green said.

“I apologize,” Baker said, “but something extremely important has come up. It has a direct bearing on this case.”

Judge Green agreed to a fifteen-minute recess, and the judge, Baker, Landers, Martin, and I walked into his chambers. He shut the door, hung his robe on a coat tree near the window, and sat down behind his desk.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“There’s been an important development in this case,” Baker said. “The TBI found a red Corvette in a barn up on Spivey Mountain this morning. The car belongs to Erlene Barlowe. Their forensics people are examining it now.”

“I fail to see what that has to do with this trial.”

“It may exculpate Mr. Dillard’s client,” Baker said. “Back when we made the arrest, we had a young lady who worked for Barlowe at the strip club who told us that Barlowe and Angel left the club at the same time as the victim in this case. She told us they left in Barlowe’s red Corvette, and they didn’t come back to the club that night.”

“I remember that,” the judge said. “That and the fact that Ms. Barlowe had been untruthful were the primary reasons I signed the search warrants to search her home and her club and to allow you to get hair samples from Barlowe and the girl.”

“That’s right,” Baker said. “We’ve also had another witness contact us since who said he saw a woman fitting Ms. Barlowe’s description standing beside a Corvette on Picken’s Bridge a little after midnight on the night of the murder. He said she was alone. We think Ms. Barlowe was dumping the murder weapon and the reverend’s penis. The problem we ran into was that the car disappeared. We couldn’t find it anywhere, and because we couldn’t find it, we believed it probably contained evidence regarding the murder. Now we’ve found it, and from what I understand, there are what appear to be bloodstains on the seat.”

“So now you think the Barlowe woman killed Reverend Tester?” Judge Green said.

“It makes sense, especially if we can eventually prove she killed the Hayes girl, which is what we suspect.”

“You people have made a mess of this entire case,” the judge said.

“Please, judge,” Baker said. “Not now.”

“So what do you want?” Green said.

“I want a little time. All we’re asking is that you recess the trial for a week. We should get our lab results back from Knoxville by then. If Tester’s blood is in Barlowe’s car or if we find a murder weapon, we’re going to dismiss the charges against Mr. Dillard’s client, provided she’ll cooperate with us, and arrest Barlowe for Tester’s murder.”

Fat chance of Angel cooperating. They didn’t have enough evidence to convict her in the first place, and I couldn’t think of a single reason why she’d want to help them.

The judge looked at me. “Any objection, Mr. Dillard?”

“Absolutely no objection. If there’s a chance they’ll dismiss against my client, I’m not opposed to giving them a week.”

“All right.” Judge Green pointed his finger at Baker. “I’ll give you some time. But if there’s still a charge pending next Monday, we’re finishing this trial.”

July 24

3:00 p.m.

The judge didn’t tell the jury or anyone in the courtroom why he was granting a week’s recess, he just told them to come back next Monday.

Angel wanted to know what had happened. I told her I’d be over to the jail to explain it to her as soon as I could. The jurors filed out and as the courtroom began to clear, Erlene Barlowe walked up to me. She’d been sitting outside in the hallway with the rest of the witnesses. Junior Tester hadn’t moved from his seat.

“What’s going on, sugar?” Erlene said.

“The police say they have some new information in Angel’s case. The district attorney asked the judge for a continuance so they could develop some evidence. He gave them until next Monday.”

Landers was walking out of the judge’s office, where he’d apparently been holding court with Baker. When he saw Erlene he made a beeline for us.

“Don’t leave town,” he said, pointing his finger at Erlene. “You’re mine now.” He turned and walked out the door.

“What was that all about?” Erlene said.

“They don’t tell me anything,” I said as I started to walk away. I wasn’t about to tell her she was more than likely going to be in custody sometime in the next week. With my luck, she’d disappear and I’d wind up with an obstruction charge. “I have to go over to the jail to see Angel and let her know what’s going on. I’ll talk to you later.”

Before I left the courthouse, I took the elevator upstairs to Deacon Baker’s office.

“Interesting dilemma,” he said when I walked in.

“For you,” I said. “I’m still in the same boat. Innocent client.”

“Let’s stop beating around the bush,” Baker said. “Bottom line, if there’s anything in that car that links it to Tester’s murder, we’re going to charge the redhead. I’ll dismiss against your client if she’ll agree to help us.”

“Erlene is her only friend in this world. I doubt she’ll be eager to rat her out.”

“She was with her, Dillard. She knows what went on in that room.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Will she want to take that chance? Barlowe may have something to say about her when she finds herself facing a first-degree murder charge.”

“All Erlene has ever said about Angel is that she’s innocent.”

“And if her lips are moving, she’s lying.”

“You’re stuck, Deacon. The jury’s been sworn in Angel’s case. If you dismiss, you can’t try her again. Double jeopardy. If you come back and resume the trial, you’re going to lose, even with my sister’s testimony. Do you know what I’m going to do to her on the witness stand?”

“I was planning to make it a point to be in the courtroom for her cross-examination,” Baker said with a smirk. “Wouldn’t want to miss it. At least run my proposal by your client. Go over there and tell her I’m offering to dismiss a first-degree murder.”

“I’ll talk to her, but don’t get your hopes up.”

When Angel came into the attorney’s room at the jail, I was surprised to see her still wearing her clothes from court.

“The guards are searching my cell block,” she said. “I’m still in holding. I guess they weren’t expecting me back so soon.”

“Strange day, huh?” I said.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s good and it’s bad. The TBI found a red Corvette in a barn out in Unicoi County this morning. The barn belongs to Erlene, and apparently so does the car.”

Angel gasped, and I watched her closely. Her face turned pink and her bottom lip was trembling. She sat there, shaking and saying nothing. I reached into my briefcase and brought out some tissue. I’d been carrying it ever since that first visit at the jail. I handed some to her just in case, reached across the table, and put my hand over hers.

“Angel,” I said, “the district attorney now thinks Erlene killed Reverend Tester. He wants to dismiss the case against you, but there’s a catch. He wants you to tell him what you know about Tester’s murder.”

A faraway look came into her eyes, as though she wasn’t really taking in what I was saying.

“Angel? Did you understand me? He wants to dismiss the case against you. They’re probably going to arrest Erlene for Reverend Tester’s murder.”

“They can’t do that!” she burst out, then laid her head on the table and started crying. I moved to the chair next to her and put my hand across her shoulders.

“Take it easy,” I said. The door was two inches of steel and the walls were concrete block, but her sobs were loud. I didn’t want the guards coming in and asking questions. “Talk to me,” I said. “It’s all right. Talk to me. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, you can tell me. I’m on your side no matter what.”

She suddenly sat up, wiped her eyes, and became very still. She looked at me pitifully.

“Can I trust you?” she said in a small voice.

“Of course you can. You know you can.”

“Can I really trust you?”

“I’ve been here for you all along. Whatever you tell me, I promise I won’t tell a soul. I’ve already explained attorney-client privilege to you.”

I could see her make the decision. And having made it, she sat up straight and squared her shoulders, as if a great burden had been lifted.

“I did it, Mr. Dillard. I killed him. I can’t let them blame Miss Erlene.”

I’d mildly suspected it since the day I talked to Tom Short, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it. Even now, even though the words had passed her lips, I didn’t want to believe it. I took her hand, knowing that if I continued, if I asked her about the details, everything about our relationship, and my entire strategy if the trial continued, would change.

“Think about what you’re saying,” I said. “We’re winning this trial. If you tell me you killed him, it changes a lot of things.”

“You want to know the truth, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure.”

I looked at her smooth young face and my heart went out to her. Something told me that if she’d killed Tester, the circumstances might justify it.

“I’m sorry, Angel. Yes, I want to know the truth. What happened?”

She bit her lip and shuddered.

“Can you tell me about it?

She nodded slowly.

“Okay, but I don’t want you to get hysterical. I don’t want anyone else to hear, so you have to keep control of yourself. Can you do that?”

“I think so.”

“Go ahead.”

She took a deep breath and squeezed my hand so hard that her fingernails dug into my skin.

“Everything I told you before was the truth except for the last part. Miss Erlene didn’t just ask him to leave when he got so drunk and was bothering me and making a fool of himself. She asked me if I’d help her with something. She said she wanted to teach the preacher a lesson. She said all I’d have to do is ride with her to the man’s hotel room and she’d take care of the rest. I told her I’d do it.”

“What happened next?”

“Miss Erlene went over to talk to him, and he went out into the lobby for a couple of minutes. When he came back, she told me to get my coat. Miss Erlene went back into her office for a couple of minutes, and then we went out and got in her car. We followed him out of the parking lot to the hotel. Along the way, she told me the man thought I was coming to his room to have sex with him. Then she handed me a small bottle of scotch. She told me when we got to the motel, I was supposed to go into his room and offer him a drink first thing. Miss Erlene said she put something in the scotch so when he drank it, it would knock him out. As soon as he was passed out, I was supposed to run back to the car and get her. I think she was planning to take his money.”

“Something obviously went wrong,” I said.

She put a fist to her mouth and whispered, “Yes.” Her eyes looked distant. It was the same expression I’d seen when she told me about the oatmeal incident.

“We got to the motel and I got out of the car and went up the steps with him. Miss Erlene waited in the parking lot. I walked into the room and he closed the door behind me. I took the bottle of scotch out of my purse and asked him if he’d like a drink. He took the bottle out of my hand, set it on a table, and when he turned back around he said he didn’t bring me there to drink. He had this awful look on his face, like he was possessed or something. Then, before I knew what was happening, he hit me in the face. He hit me so hard it knocked me onto the bed. It almost knocked me out.

“I remember him taking off all his clothes, then he pulled off my panties…” She paused and took a deep breath. “He rolled me over on my stomach and he put his thing in my, in my…” She pointed to her bottom.

“He sodomized you?” I said.

“What?” She didn’t know what the word meant.

“Never mind. Can you keep going?”

“It was like it was happening to someone else,” she said. “Like I floated to the ceiling, and I watched him do it from there. It was the same thing that used to happen when Father Thomas did things to me. I remember he was cursing and preaching at the same time, calling me names, and then he took his thing out of me and went over and grabbed the bottle of scotch and took a long drink. He started to stagger and he sat down on the bed. It was like he didn’t even know I was there any more.

“There was a knife on the table. I guess it was his. I remember watching myself walk over and pick it up. It was one of those folding knives. He was already snoring. I opened the knife and walked back to the bed and I just started stabbing him. I stabbed him until I couldn’t stab him any more, until I couldn’t lift the knife. And then I think I just walked out the door. I didn’t even put my panties on.”

“Do you remember what Erlene did?”

“I think so,” she said. “I remember she came running up to me on the stairs and she put her coat around me and took the knife out of my hand. She put me in the car and asked me what happened, and I tried to tell her. I saw her go back up to the room, but I don’t know what she did in there. She took me home and took me into the back yard and washed all of the blood off of me with a hose. She said she didn’t want any blood in her shower. Then she took me inside and said she had to leave for a little while. She was gone for a long time.”

“Did you and Erlene talk about it afterward?”

“Not much,” she said. “She just told me she was sorry about everything but at least he wouldn’t ever hurt another girl, and she told me never to mention what happened — any of it — to anybody. Then when the police started coming around, she told me not to talk to them. She told everyone that worked at the club not to talk to them. When they came to arrest me, she told me to tell them I wanted a lawyer.”

“You didn’t mention cutting off his penis, Angel. Do you remember doing that?”

“I didn’t do it,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“I didn’t do it. I’d tell you if I did.”

I believed her.

“Telling me what happened was the right thing to do,” I said.

“Am I going to have to stay in jail for the rest of my life?”

“I doubt it. This changes a few things, but it doesn’t change the fact that they don’t have much of a case against you.”

“What about your sister? I never even talked to her.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “You have to trust me. I’ll figure something out. I just need a little time to think.”

After the guards took her away, I sat at the table alone, unable to get up and walk out. The door buzzed twice, but I just sat there. I couldn’t move.

In my mind, I kept seeing a beautiful, fragile young girl, naively walking up the steps in the rain to a motel room. She’s accompanied by a man more than twice her size, twice her age. She closes the door and offers the man a drink from a bottle. He takes the bottle from her hand, sets it down, and punches her viciously in the side of the face. She sees a bright light and falls backwards onto the bed, dazed by the blow. The giant hovers over her, his drunken breathing foul and labored. He grabs the girl and rolls her like a rag doll. He’s muttering, alternately calling her a slut and praising God for the opportunity to exact some righteous vengeance on a lowly whore. He rips off her panties. He’s excited, but too drunk to maintain an erection. He tries to force himself inside her rectum, but she’s small. He spits on his hand to lubricate her and tries again. She’s struggling but he’s much too strong. He slaps the back of her head and tells her to hold still. He gets inside her and grunts with satisfaction. The girl goes limp. Beads of sweat drop from the giant’s nose onto the girl’s back. He isn’t performing the way he wants, and he notices the bottle of scotch she offered him earlier. He shoves the girl down flat against the mattress and steps over to the bottle. He takes a long drink while the girl whimpers on the bed.

I hear Sarah’s voice… “Get him off of me, Joey. He’s hurting me…

When I was finally able to move, I pushed the button, waited for the door to buzz, and made my way slowly down the maze of hallways and steel gates. What Angel had described to me was a voluntary manslaughter, at worst. A Class C felony, maximum sentence of six years. But I couldn’t bring myself to recommend to her that we go to the district attorney and tell him what had happened. I couldn’t see her spending time in prison for retaliating against a man who had violated her in the most shameful of ways.

As far as I was concerned, the hypocrite got what he deserved.

July 24

6:05 p.m.

I drove straight home from the jail with Sarah’s voice and Angel’s confession alternately ringing in my ears. As soon as I got out of my truck Rio peed on me, and instead of laughing or gently pushing him away like always, I drew my foot back to kick him. I caught myself, but barely. For some reason, the thought of the dog pissing on me right then made me mad enough to want to hurt him. I swore at him and stepped over him as he cowered in the driveway.

I walked into the kitchen. Caroline was standing over the stove. I could smell broccoli. I hate broccoli.

“Hi, honey,” she said. “I heard they continued the trial. What’s going on?”

“I’m going to wring that dog’s neck.”

“I guess it isn’t good.”

“I’m sick of him pissing all over me. I’m sick of everybody pissing all over me.”

“What’s going on, Joe?”

“Nothing.” I marched through the kitchen and into the bedroom to change my clothes. I could feel pressure, a lot of pressure, at each of my temples, and my field of vision was narrowing. I felt a hand on my shoulder, a touch that usually comforted me. It didn’t.

“What’s wrong, Joe? Talk to me.”

“It would probably be best if you’d just leave me alone right now.”

“Leave you alone? Why? What have I done?”

“Nothing,” I said. “That’s part of the problem.”

I’d spent part of the drive home working up a healthy anger toward Caroline. I had to provide for her, which meant I had to keep working. But I was sick of busting my butt for people who neither deserved it nor appreciated it, sick of people using me and lying to me, sick of worrying about whether what I was doing was right or wrong. I was sick of everything.

“I’m not the bad guy, baby. I love you, remember?” she said

“A lot of good it does.”

“You’ve been under a lot of strain. How about a hot bath?”

“I don’t want to take a bath. Now why don’t you do what I asked you to do and leave me alone?”

“How dare you talk to me like that!” Caroline said. “I know you hate your job. I know you hate yourself sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you get to take it out on me. I haven’t done a thing other than love you and try to help you through a difficult time, and I’m not going to stand here and listen to you degrade me. I’m not your whipping girl, Joe! ”

All I could feel was the pressure in my head. I was losing it. I pushed past her and walked back into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” She was right behind me. I headed for the door. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” I said. “I’m going out.”

And that’s what I did. I drove to a bar in Johnson City called Fritter’s. I sat alone at the bar and drank vodka for a while. Then I asked for a shot of Yagermeister. Then another. I was there for hours.

It was raining when I left the bar, but I didn’t care. I’d convinced myself that I had somewhere I needed to go. I drove across town, holding a hand over my right eye to keep from seeing double. I pulled through the gate at the Veterans Administration complex. I turned into the cemetery toward the long rows of white grave markers and made my way slowly, drunkenly, to the section where my father was buried. I got out of the car and stumbled through the rain until I found him.

Then I lay down on his grave and passed out.

I dreamed I was lying in a thicket, above a path in the Grenada jungle. I had somehow become separated from my squad. My face was covered in camouflage paint, and I was aiming a machine gun at the path. A group of six Cuban soldiers was moving toward me. I’d set out claymore mines in a ditch beside the path and concealed the wires carefully.

The point man moved into the kill zone. All that remained was for the rest of the group to get within range of the claymores. Once they were there, I’d open fire. When they hid in the ditch, I’d hit the clackers and detonate the mines. It would be a perfect massacre.

The last man moved in, and I started blasting away with the M-60. I sprayed them with short bursts. The Cubans melted into the ditch line. I detonated the mines, and the earth shuddered. The Cuban guns went silent, and I moved in to mop up.

I heard the sucking sound of a chest wound coming from the point man. He was lying on his stomach in the ditch; his left arm lay severed two feet away. I stuck my boot in his ribs and rolled him. He flopped onto his back, and I found myself staring into the bloodied face of a kid. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old, and he looked just like me.

I began to scream.

July 25

1:00 a.m.

Jerry Byrd found me out there in the rain. Jerry was a V.A. cop and army veteran I’d known for fifteen years. His wife had gone to my high school and his son had played ball with Jack. We had a good deal in common and we’d had some good times together over the years.

When Jerry woke me up, I had absolutely no idea where I was or how I got there. It was pouring rain and my teeth were chattering. He helped me to my feet and took me by the arm.

“Joe, what are you doing out here?”

“No clue.”

Jerry used his cell phone to call Caroline. He told her where I was and said we could pick up my truck the next day. Then he drove me home.

“What’s going on?” Caroline said after Jerry had left. I’d managed to down two cups of black coffee strong enough to make my tongue curl. I could tell she’d been crying, but I hoped she wouldn’t start up again. I felt bad enough as it was. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had a little meltdown.”

I’d always kept Caroline at least a stone’s throw from the worst of my work and my past. It was ugly and frightening, and Caroline was beautiful and gentle and kind. I was afraid I’d somehow contaminate her if I told her the truth, but more than that, I was afraid she might begin to think of me as weak or flawed.

“Talk to me,” she said. “Please.”

“You don’t want me to. Believe me, you’re better off if I keep it to myself.”

“Joe, do you really think anything you tell me would make me love you any less?”

There was a long silence. She poured more coffee. I sat there sipping it slowly, trying to decide whether I wanted to tell my wife that for all these years, despite all the macho bravado, she’d really been married to a scared little boy trying to prove to himself he wasn’t a coward.

“I don’t think I can tell you,” I said.

“Does it have anything to do with this case?”

“That’s part of it. It looks like they’re going to arrest Erlene Barlowe for Tester’s murder.” I was grateful for the opportunity to move the topic of conversation away from me.

“Do you think she killed Tester?”

“I know she didn’t kill Tester.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“How?”

I looked at her, dead pan. I couldn’t tell her, but Caroline was an intelligent woman. I saw the look come over her face. She got it.

“Angel told you she killed him?”

I nodded.

“And now you’re trying to decide what to do?”

“I’m just trying to survive right now. You know I’m going to have to go after Sarah on the witness stand if the trial starts back up. I can’t tell you how much I dread it.”

“Why is she doing this, Joe? What’s wrong with her?”

“Do you really want to know? It’s not something you’re going to enjoy hearing about.”

“Of course I want to know. I think I’ve earned the right.”

She had. She’d earned the right to hear about all of it. I looked at her and thought about Ma, about the regret I’d felt because she wouldn’t let me into her heart and about the emptiness I felt because I’d never let her into mine. I thought about the nightmares, the anxiety, the depression, the nagging feeling that I was pathetic coward. I looked at Caroline, saw the longing in her eyes and knew I couldn’t shut my wife out any longer. I couldn’t be like my mother. It was time. It was time to open up.

I told Caroline about what Tester had done to Angel and what Uncle Raymond had done to Sarah. When she heard what had happened to Sarah, Caroline scooted next to me and held me in her arms. As I felt her breath against my skin and smelled her familiar smell, I suddenly didn’t care whether she thought I was weak, because at that moment, I was. I needed to lean on the only person I’d ever really trusted. For the first time in my life, I gave myself completely. There were moments I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. I was ashamed and reluctant at first, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. After twenty years, I finally let Caroline all the way in.

I talked about the frustration of being raised without a father. I told her about the brutal things I’d done and seen in Grenada. I told her about Billy Dockery. I told her about Maynard Bush and Bonnie Tate and how I felt the day the Bowers twins died in the sunshine. I told her how I felt about my mother. I talked deep into the morning. I’d never experienced anything like it, but when it was over, I understood the power of confession.

“Do you know something?” Caroline said when I was finally too exhausted to talk any more. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “If I was on trial, if I was in the same situation as Angel, there’s nobody in this world I’d rather have on my side than you. Do you know why?”

“I’m sorry for the things I said when I came home earlier. I feel like a jackass and I’m sorry- ”

“Hush. Do you know why there’s nobody in this world I’d rather have on my side than you?”

“No. Why?”

“Because you’re a good man, Joe. It’s as simple as that. That’s why I married you and why I’ve loved you for all these years. That’s why your children adore you. It’s why you’ve stuck by Sarah all this time and why you went up there and sat with your mother. It’s why you’ve spent your life trying to help people. I hope you’re always just like you are now.”

Her words humbled me. I didn’t know what to say.

“When did Angel tell you what really happened?” she said.

“Not long before I came home.”

“That’s what I thought. That’s what set this off. It put you back in that house with your sister. When you add it to everything else that’s been going on with you lately, it isn’t surprising. I’m just glad you didn’t hurt yourself.”

So was I.

“You’re going to get through this,” Caroline said. “You’re a survivor. You’re the strongest man I’ve ever met.”

Caroline got up and walked over to the door that led to the garage. She opened it.

“And here’s someone else that loves you,” she said.

Rio trotted into the room, saw me, and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Come here, big boy,” I said. His ears perked and his tail began to wag. “Come over here and take a leak on my shoe.”

July 25

11:00 a.m.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, I slept well. There were no ambushes in the jungle to haunt me, no rapes or murders or flashes of dead children in the jungle, no raging rivers or deadly waterfalls.

I woke to the smell of coffee brewing and the sound of rain tapping steadily on the roof. I walked into the kitchen and looked outside. The sky was low and slate gray. A thin mist hung above the lake, and I knew it would be a long day of summer rain, the kind of rain that seems to cleanse the whole world.

Caroline was in the kitchen, wearing only a sports bra and a pair of biker shorts. When she hugged me, I lifted her off the floor and carried her to the bedroom. A half-hour later, we were lying in bed, pleasantly exhausted.

“What are you going to do today?” she said.

“Think,” I said. “I have to figure out what to do about Angel.”

“What are your options?”

“The first one would be to go to Deacon and tell him we’ve reconsidered and we want to make a deal. But as soon as I do that he’ll know she killed Tester and he’ll go hard-line on me. He’ll offer twenty years. The second option is to go back to trial on Monday and put Angel on the witness stand. If she tells the truth, I can argue self-defense or voluntary manslaughter because he sodomized her.”

“What’s the worst case if you go that way?”

“Worst case is they don’t believe her and find her guilty of first-degree murder. That means life. I don’t think there’s any way she gets the death penalty under these circumstances. They could find her guilty of second-degree murder. That would mean a minimum of fifteen years. If they go with voluntary manslaughter she’d be eligible for probation, but I doubt if Judge Green would grant it.

“The problem I have with putting her on the stand now is that I can’t get any medical testimony in. Tom Short would have helped us out if she’d told me about this on the front end, but there’s no way Judge Green will let me use medical testimony this late. The prosecution has the right to have her examined by their own shrink, and they’re entitled to all of Tom Short’s reports. I didn’t give them anything because I didn’t intend to use him.”

“What are the other options?”

“She might get on the stand and tell them she didn’t do it. If she does that, I have to decide whether to tank her. The rules say that if she gets on a witness stand and lies, and I know she’s lying, I can’t question her and can’t present a closing argument on her behalf. The jury will figure that out pretty quickly. If she lies and I don’t tank her, then I’m suborning perjury and I could wind up in jail.”

“You can’t do that,” Caroline said.

“I can’t and I won’t. But I swear I think I’d do it if I knew I’d get away with it. The guy sodomized her. Punched her in the head, almost knocked her out, then rolled her over and sodomized her. A man of God. I don’t feel the least bit of sympathy for him. None. She should walk on this, Caroline. She should walk right out the door.”

“I guess we both know where that comes from. Finally.”

“I should have told you about Sarah a long time ago,” I said. “I’m sorry. I was ashamed.”

“It’s out in the open now, and I don’t think any less of you.”

I kissed her on the forehead.

“This is so unfair,” I said. “The right thing would be for her to go home. Erlene set up the whole situation. She apparently intended to rob the preacher. It wasn’t Angel’s fault. She didn’t even have a weapon with her. She killed him with his own knife.”

“She didn’t have to kill him,” Caroline said.

“Yeah? What would you have done if a drunken redneck punched you and sodomized you?”

“I’d have killed him and cut his dick off.”

“Exactly. There’s really only one other thing I can do. I can try to fix things with Sarah. If I can get her to talk to me, I think I can make this turn out all right.”

“What would you say to her?”

“I’m not sure. Do you know that she and I never talked about it after it happened? I guess we were both so scared and humiliated we didn’t want to go near it. I really think it’s the reason she’s struggled all of her life.”

I sat up on the side of the bed and took a deep breath.

“I’m going,” I said. “I’m going down to the jail. They can’t keep me from talking to her. The worst thing that can happen is that things will stay the same.”

“Are you going to try to talk to her about the rape?”

“I have to. I have to tell her I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Joe.”

“I know that now, but I still feel like I should apologize to her. I’ve handled this almost as badly as she has, and I wasn’t the one who was raped.”

“Don’t expect too much,” Caroline said.

I got dressed and gulped down a cup of coffee.

“Joe?” Caroline said as I was about to walk out.

“Make sure you tell her you love her.”

July 25

Noon

Jail inmates hate a lot of things. They hate the guards, they hate the food, they hate the tedium. But there are two things they hate most of all. One is a child molester, and the other is a snitch.

The administration had moved Sarah to the jail’s protective custody unit in case the word got out that she was snitching on Angel. Protective custody is just like maximum security. The inmates held there are completely isolated. It’s an unrelenting, punitive, miserable existence.

Lawyers who want to see inmates being held in protective custody have to go to them. The guards won’t bring the protective custody inmates out to the attorneys’ interview room, because it would mean exposing them to other inmates along the way. It took me almost an hour of wrangling to get in to see Sarah. The guards knew she was a witness against my client, and they didn’t want me talking to her. But as an attorney, I had as much right to interview witnesses as the police, even star witnesses, and I wasn’t going to let them keep me out. They tried to get Deacon Baker on the phone but were told he was “unavailable.” Frankie Martin had taken the day off and was fishing somewhere. Finally, after I threatened to haul every one of them in front of the nearest judge, they relented.

The guard who unlocked the door to Sarah’s cell walked in and announced that she didn’t have to speak to me if she didn’t want to. True to form, she told him to mind his own business.

He closed the door, and I heard him walk down the hall. The cell was tiny, only eight feet square, and solid gray. It contained a stainless steel platform covered by a thin mattress, a stainless steel sink, and a stainless steel toilet. That was it. There was no television, no radio, no writing or reading materials, absolutely nothing to distract or otherwise occupy the mind. Sarah, barefoot and clad in her wrinkled orange jumpsuit, was sitting on the floor in the corner beyond the sink with her knees drawn up to her chin.

“So this is the way they treat the most important witness in a murder case,” I said. “I wonder where they’d put you if they didn’t like you.”

She buried her face in her hands, and I moved toward her. I got down on my knees and put my hands on her forearms. To my surprise, she didn’t flinch or draw back.

“You don’t have to say a word if you don’t want to,” I said softly, “but I realized something last night and I want to talk to you. I want to tell you I’m sorry.”

I felt tears gathering in my eyes and fought for control. I didn’t know why, but even in my efforts to peel back the curtains and take an honest look at what had happened between us, I felt the need to maintain my stoic image.

“I’m sorry I let you down, Sarah. I’m sorry I didn’t stop him. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you. I should have killed him.”

As with Caroline the night before, getting it out brought down my defenses and tears began to run down my cheeks.

“Please, Sarah. I was so young. I didn’t know what to do. Please forgive me.”

She too began to cry, and I scooted closer to her and put my hands on her shoulders.

“If I could, I’d take you back there right now and get you out of that room, but we both know I can’t. All I can do is tell you I’m sorry and I love you. I’ve always loved you, Sarah. I always will.”

“You were too little, Joey,” she said in a choked voice. “We were both too little.”

She lifted her head and wrapped her arms around my neck. It was a surreal moment, a moment of desperation and honesty and, ultimately, what I hoped was love. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d hugged Sarah, and I found myself content to kneel on that concrete floor and feel her breathing against my neck. We said nothing for several minutes, both embarrassed by the rare show of affection.

Finally, she spoke again.

“You’re breaking my neck, Joey.”

“I’m sorry.” I sometimes forget about my size. I let go of her and scooted back. “I have to get up. This concrete is killing my knees.”

I sat on the edge of her bunk and she sat with me. We talked for an hour. The conversation was slow and stilted at first, but before long she was telling me how tormented she’d been, how the drugs seemed to be the only thing that gave her any relief, if only for a short time. We talked about growing up fatherless, and about Ma and how deeply troubled she was. We eventually got around to the future, the immediate future, and what it held for Sarah.

“So what’s your agreement with the district attorney’s office?” I said.

She looked at me warily. “Is that why you really came down here?”

“Please don’t say that. You know why I came down here. But it’s something we’re going to have to deal with.”

“I’ve agreed to testify truthfully in exchange for immediate release and probation on my sentence.”

“Do you have it in writing?”

“Of course I do.” She reached under the mattress and pulled out an envelope. Inside was an agreement signed by Sarah, Deacon Baker, and Judge Glass. Sarah was obligated to provide “truthful testimony” in court in the case of the State vs. Angel Christian, and upon her having provided that testimony, she was to be released immediately.

“What’s your truthful testimony going to be?” I said.

She gave me a mischievous grin I hadn’t seen in thirty years. “Will you make sure I get my deal?” she said.

I grinned back. “You can count on it.”

July 31

2:00 p.m.

The test results on the forensic evidence found in Erlene Barlowe’s car hadn’t been received from the TBI lab by 9:00 a.m. the following Monday, so Judge Green reconvened the trial. I’d spent a great deal of time explaining everything in detail to Angel during the week. She understood she couldn’t get up on the stand and lie. She understood I couldn’t use the doctor as a defense witness. She understood the risks. After listening intently to everything I had to say and no doubt with some input from Erlene, she decided to go for it.

Frankie Martin did his best, but ultimately he had no murder weapon, no clear motive, and no eyewitnesses. He put Landers on the stand to describe the crime scene and explain the investigation, but on cross-examination I was able to paint a picture of Tester first drinking beer at the Purple Pig, then spending the money he’d received from a church at a strip club. To top it off, I pointed out the fact that Tester was so out of control that he’d spent all the church’s money and had to withdraw even more from the ATM at midnight.

The medical examiner testified that Tester died from blood loss as a result of multiple stab wounds, but on cross she also had to admit that his blood-alcohol level was off the charts. She tried to help the prosecution by pointing out that he’d ingested a date rape drug, but she could offer no testimony as to how the drug entered his body.

An expert from the TBI lab told the jury about the hairs found on Tester’s shirt and explained the DNA identification process to them. On cross he had to admit it was possible that the hairs could have passed from Angel to Tester at the club.

An elderly woman named Ina Mae described for the jury how her cat found Tester’s penis and delivered it to her the morning after the murder. Her testimony provided a brief moment of levity in an otherwise deadly serious trial.

Frankie saved Sarah for last. He would have been better off hanging himself.

“Would you state your name for the record, ma’am?” Frankie began.

“My name is Sarah Dillard.” She was wearing the orange jumpsuit and was cuffed and shackled. She seemed nervous but determined.

“And where do you reside, Ms. Dillard?”

“At the Washington County Detention Center.”

“So you’re in jail?”

“Yes. I was convicted of theft.”

“Are you familiar with the defendant, Miss Dillard?”

Sarah looked at Angel and nodded. “She’s in my cell block.”

“And as a matter of fact, you’re her lawyer’s sister, are you not?”

“I am.”

“And did you contact the district attorney’s office and tell someone that you had information regarding the defendant that might be relevant to this case?”

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said no. I didn’t contact the district attorney’s office. They came to me.”

“Oh, I see. And who was it that came to see you?”

“That man over there.” She pointed to Landers, who was sitting at the prosecutor’s table.

“And as a result of your visit with Agent Landers, what did you do?”

“Nothing.” Uh-oh. Here we go.

“Nothing? You had a conversation with the defendant, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“This defendant confessed to you that she murdered Reverend Tester, didn’t she?”

“Objection,” I said. “He’s leading the witness, Judge.”

“Sustained. Move on, Mr. Martin. She answered your question.”

“Can I have a short recess, your honor?” Martin said.

“Why?” the judge said.

“I need some time to sort this out. This is a complete surprise to me.”

“That’s quite obvious, Mr. Martin, but I’m not accustomed to stopping murder trials because prosecuting attorneys are surprised. Do you have any more questions for the witness?”

“Permission to treat the witness as hostile, your honor.”

“She’s your witness, Mr. Martin.”

“I realize that, but her testimony is not what I was told it would be.”

“You mean you haven’t even interviewed her?”

“Agent Landers interviewed her. He told me what her testimony would be. She signed a statement. He showed it to me.”

“Use the statement, then,” the judge said.

“Permission to treat her as hostile, your honor,” Martin said.

Judge Green waved the back of his hand at Frankie, as though he was shooing him away. “Go ahead,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s going to make any difference.”

Martin straightened himself and turned back to Sarah. “Isn’t it true, Miss Dillard, that you entered into an agreement with the district attorney’s office to provide truthful testimony in this case?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, “and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“Isn’t it true that you told Agent Landers that Angel Christian, the defendant in this case, confessed that she killed Reverend Tester during a conversation you had with her at the jail?”

“No, that isn’t true.”

“Did you not sign a statement to that effect?” Landers held up a piece of paper I assumed was Sarah’s statement.

“I signed a statement Agent Landers wrote. He’d already written it before he came to see me. It was a lie. I’m sorry I signed it.”

“So you’re now saying you signed a false statement?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re accusing a police officer of drafting a completely false statement which you willingly signed?”

“He drafted the statement. I signed it. He never even asked me any questions. He told me if I signed the statement and testified in court he’d see to it that I got out of jail. I’ve never spoken to the defendant.”

Martin turned and glared at Landers. “May I have a moment, your honor?”

“Make it quick.”

Martin moved to the prosecutor’s table and began to whisper in Landers’s ear. Landers shook his head emphatically and whispered back. The exchange very quickly turned into a heated argument, with both men whispering forcefully back and forth. At one point I heard Landers curse. I hoped the jury heard it too.

Martin went back to the lectern.

“You’re lying, aren’t you, Ms. Dillard? You’re trying to help your brother.”

“No,” Sarah said. “You guys were the ones who were trying to get me to lie. The agent said it would give me a chance to get back at my brother.”

“Do you expect this jury to believe you, Ms. Dillard?” Martin said. “You’re a convicted thief and a drug addict, aren’t you?”

“I was a convicted thief and a drug addict when Agent Landers came to the jail. That didn’t seem to bother him when he was trying to get me to lie.”

“This is ridiculous,” Martin said. “I move to strike her testimony, your honor.”

“On what grounds, Mr. Martin? On the grounds that she didn’t testify the way you wanted her to? Your motion is denied. Do you have any more questions for her?”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” Martin said as he turned away from the lectern. He seemed to deflate like a torn balloon. “She’d just lie.”

He sat down. I debated for a minute whether I should ask Sarah anything. She’d already done plenty of damage, but I couldn’t resist twisting the knife a little, so I stepped to the lectern.

“The truth is that you and I haven’t always gotten along well, have we?” I began.

“Not always.”

“As a matter of fact, your most recent conviction was a direct result of my reporting you to the police, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“And you were angry with me for doing that, weren’t you?”

“Very angry.”

“How long is your sentence?”

“Six years.”

“And how much of that sentence would you have had to serve if you’d testified the way Mr. Martin expected you to testify?”

“I would have been released immediately.”

“Do you have a copy of the agreement?”

She produced her copy, and I asked the judge to enter it as an exhibit. Martin objected on the grounds of relevance, but the judge overruled him.

“Miss Dillard,” I said, “would you explain to the jury exactly how this agreement came about?”

“Agent Landers came to see me a couple of months ago and asked me if I’d help them by getting to know Miss Christian. He said he wanted me to talk to her and find out everything I could about her and then tell him everything she said. I told him I wasn’t interested, and he left. Then, a few weeks ago, after I’d been sentenced to six years, he came back. He said he could offer me two things: a sentence reduced to time served and a chance to get back at you. I asked him what he wanted me to do. He said he needed me to sign a statement saying that Angel Christian confessed to the murder of Reverend Tester. He already had the statement written up when he came to the jail. It said during a conversation in the cell block, Miss Christian told me she left the Mouse’s Tail strip club with Mr. Tester after she agreed to have sex with him. She went with him back to his hotel room. It said she went into his room and drugged him, then she killed him and took all of his money. It said she felt no remorse because the man she killed was a pig.”

“A pig? That’s a nice touch. Did Miss Christian say any of those things to you?”

“No. I’ve never even talked to her.” She pointed at Landers. “He made it all up.”

“Why did you sign it?”

“Because I hated being in jail. Because I was furious at you for having me arrested. I blamed you for everything. But I realize now I was wrong. It wasn’t your fault I was in jail. It was my fault.” She looked directly at the jury. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for a lot of things.”

“Thank you, Miss Dillard.”

I thought Judge Green might grant us a judgment of acquittal at the close of the state’s proof. He should have, but ultimately he didn’t have the courage to let a first-degree murder defendant walk out the door without sending the case to the jury.

He looked at me and said, “Call your first witness.”

I stood up. I had witnesses waiting in the hallway, including Virgil Watterson and Erlene Barlowe, but I didn’t think I needed them.

“The defense rests, your honor.”

Martin and I delivered our closing arguments, both of which were brief. The jury retired to deliberate. It took them less than an hour to come back with a verdict.

I knew Angel was guilty, but the jury didn’t. They set her free.

July 31

4:15 p.m.

As soon as the not-guilty verdict was announced, Frankie Martin and Landers got up and walked out without saying a word. Amid the hugs and the tears and the congratulations, I watched Junior Tester walk stiffly out of the courtroom. I was sure he hated me more than ever. I’d portrayed his dead father as a drunken hypocrite who might have been killed by anyone, and the jury’s verdict had given the portrayal at least some validation. As he disappeared through the doorway, I wondered how he’d feel, or what he might do, if he knew the truth about what happened in the motel room that night. I also wondered how long I’d have to keep looking over my shoulder. He hadn’t made a peep during the trial.

Erlene Barlowe was flitting around the courtroom like a socialite, hugging anyone who’d stand still long enough for her to get her arms around them. She even hugged one of the bailiffs. When she came up to me, she kissed me on the cheek and whispered a sincere thank you in my ear. I wanted to tell her what I knew about the Corvette and the blood, but at the time, it just didn’t seem like the thing to do.

Angel hugged me for at least a half a minute, then turned and walked out the door hand-in-hand with Erlene. My last image of her was of her smiling radiantly, but I knew the smile couldn’t last long. Life had already been unfair, even cruel, to her. I felt sure the events of the night Tester raped her, plus the knowledge that she’d gotten away with murder, would haunt her. I wondered where she’d go, and what would become of her.

Caroline had decided to come down to watch the trial after I told her what was going to happen with Sarah. She stood just beyond the bar while I slowly packed my files into my briefcase. Besides the two bailiffs, she and I were the only people in the courtroom. I took my time. I wanted to stay there long enough to allow everyone else to leave. The last thing I needed was a confrontation with Junior Tester or Landers.

When I was ready, I closed the briefcase and turned and winked at Caroline. She stepped through the bar and kissed me without saying a word, hooked her elbow around mine, and we walked out together through a side door. We took the back steps down to the ground floor.

“Man, it’s hot,” I said as we crossed a one-way street that ran parallel to the courthouse. It was almost a hundred degrees. As we walked toward the parking lot, I saw a figure step out from behind a small hedge at the corner of the building about thirty yards to my right. It was Junior Tester. He was holding his right arm tight against his side. There was something in his hand.

Tester was between us and the building. There was no way to go back inside where there were police officers and bailiffs with guns. I dropped my briefcase, grabbed Caroline’s hand and began to run.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Run, Caroline! Tester’s coming. I think he has a gun.”

I looked back over my shoulder and saw him. He was jogging and lifting his right arm.

The parking lot behind the courthouse was about an acre of asphalt. There was room for close to a hundred cars and it was always full. As Caroline and I approached the first line of cars, a gunshot shattered the peacefulness of the summer afternoon in Tennessee’s oldest town. I heard the bullet whiz past in front of me. It ricocheted off the fender of an old Buick and whistled away. Caroline screamed.

“He’s going to kill us, Joe!”

I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her between two rows of cars.

“Get down!” I yelled. “Stay low.” We ran another fifty feet and I looked back. Junior had stopped. His feet were spread and he was aiming the pistol with both hands. Another shot smashed into the passenger window of the car we were running past. I stopped and crouched beside the front fender. I had to figure out a way to get Caroline out of the line of fire.

“We can’t stay together,” I said. I was already sweating and breathing heavily. Caroline’s eyes were wild with fear. I took her face in my hands.

“Listen to me. I’m going to start running. He’ll follow me — I’m the one he’s after. When he does, you go in the opposite direction. They can probably hear the shots in the courthouse, but just in case, get on your phone and call the cavalry. Get me some help!”

“Joe! No…”

I didn’t wait for her to finish. I came up from behind the car and started sprinting toward the west end of the courthouse. I sprinted for maybe five seconds and looked back. Junior was jogging again, but he was lagging behind me. He raised the gun and fired. High. At least Caroline was safe. I kept running.

When I came to the end of the parking lot, I stopped and crouched beside a pick-up. I knew I couldn’t stay still for long, but I was trapped. The parking lot ended at a concrete retaining wall at least ten feet high. I would either have to run across an open space toward Main Street or go back in the direction from which I’d come. If I went back, I could try to stay behind the cars, but Tester would have a much closer shot at me and might be able to cut me off. And I wasn’t sure whether Caroline had made it out of the parking lot. If I went forward, I’d be exposed, but if I could make it to the corner of Main and get around the pharmacy…

I took off for the street.

I saw him in my peripheral vision as I cleared the truck. He was back in his shooting stance. The fourth shot buzzed past my ear and I started to zig-zag. A group of tourists was standing on the corner outside the courthouse, pointing and shouting. I thought I saw a flash of khaki. A deputy? Please be a deputy. Four shots. How many bullets did he have?

I was nearing the small pharmacy on the corner of Main. I thought about ducking inside, but I didn’t want to trap myself and I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger. If I could get around the building, put it between Junior and me, I might be able to find cover or duck into an alley and hide long enough for the police to show up. Just as I was starting to round the corner, the fifth shot ricocheted off of the brick beside me and tore into my left thigh. I didn’t feel any pain, but the impact of the bullet knocked me off balance and I went sprawling face first onto the brick sidewalk. I lay there dazed for a second and tried to get up. My left leg wouldn’t work. I started to crawl. The bricks were warm beneath my hands.

People were screaming and yelling across the street, and I knew he was getting close. I heard sirens. Please, God, make them hurry. There was a loose brick in the sidewalk. I pried it out with my fingers. I rolled onto my back just as Junior came around the corner, less than ten feet away. He was holding the gun at arm’s length. He saw me lying on the ground and slowed. Beads of sweat were glistening on his forehead. The corners of his lips curled slightly.

I threw the brick, but it missed him by inches. He took two more steps and was standing over me, just as I’d stood over him the night I went to his house. I looked at the gun. It was a revolver, six shots. I’d counted five. He had one left.

“Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers,” he said. “And I will execute judgment upon thee and the whole remnant of thee shall I scatter to the winds…”

I started crawling backward on my elbows, dragging my bleeding and useless left leg. I stared at Junior, waiting for the shot and the darkness. His eyes were wild and he was still talking, but the words had become nothing more than incoherent babble. He pulled the hammer back with his thumb. His hand was trembling. I froze.

The next few seconds seemed to run in slow motion. Junior jerked forward as though something had struck him from behind. A puzzled look came over his face, and the gun roared. The bullet screamed past my left ear so close I could feel the shock wave from the velocity. The gun clattered to the bricks by my feet. Suddenly a huge, liver-spotted hand come over the top of Junior’s head and covered his face. The fingers locked onto his chin and pulled straight up.

Junior went over onto his back. A man mounted him and started spraying something into his eyes, a gray-haired man in a uniform…

It was Sarge Hurley, the ancient courthouse security officer. I saw Sarge raise a massive fist and bring it downward toward Tester’s face and heard a loud thud as fist met jaw. More uniforms, some khaki, some blue. They descended on Junior like locusts.

And then, as quickly as it began, it was over. Sarge straightened and turned toward me. He stepped over and knelt beside me.

“You all right, Dillard?”

I looked into his eyes and for the first time, I noticed they were green, just like mine. I laid my head back on the bricks and smiled. Good old Sarge, my very own geriatric guardian angel. He wasn’t even sweating.

“What took you so long?” I said. “You let him shoot me.”

Sarge grunted. He leaned over and picked up Junior’s revolver and looked it over closely.

“I save your miserable life and all you can say is ‘what took you so long?’ I swear if he had another bullet, I might just finish the job.”

August 2

11:00 a.m.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation arrested Erlene Barlowe at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the day before Deacon Baker went up against a former prosecutor named Lee Mooney in the election. The lab results had apparently confirmed that the blood in her Corvette was Reverend Tester’s. She called as soon as they finished booking her. She wanted me to come down to the jail.

The bullet that hit me had gone into my left quadriceps, grazed my femur, and exited through my groin muscle. The wound was what they called a through-and-through. It missed my femoral artery by only a few centimeters. Had it severed the artery, I’d have bled to death on the sidewalk. Instead, they cleaned out the wound at the hospital, wrapped it, and let me go home the next day. It throbbed continuously, but considering the alternative, I wasn’t complaining. I took plenty of aspirin, used crutches to walk, and Caroline helped me keep the wound clean.

Junior Tester was arrested and charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder. He’d already been shipped down to Lakeshore Mental Health Institute in Knoxville. I had mixed feelings about Junior. While it was true that he’d tried twice to kill me and had very nearly succeeded both times, I couldn’t help thinking that he’d been a victim himself, a victim of a volatile mixture of fundamentalist extremism and parental hypocrisy. When he learned the circumstances of his father’s murder, something deep inside him had obviously snapped. And then having to sit through the trial and listen to it all again… I doubted very seriously that he would be held criminally liable for his actions. Like Angel, he’d been so traumatized that he probably no longer recognized the line between right and wrong.

I hobbled through the maze on my crutches to the attorneys’ room at the jail. Erlene Barlowe was already seated at the table. She was getting the Maynard Bush treatment — handcuffs, shackles, a chain around her waist. She made the orange jumpsuit look pretty good despite the color clash with her hair.

When I walked in, she was sitting in the same chair Angel sat in during our many talks. To my surprise, she was her usual upbeat self. It didn’t look like I’d need any tissue.

“Mr. Dillard,” she said as I sat down, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you, sugar. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been shot.”

“I’m so sorry, baby doll. It must have been just awful. That man was even crazier than his daddy.”

“I’m sorry to see you here, Erlene.”

“You’ve got to get me out of this, sugar. I didn’t kill anybody.”

How many times had I heard that? This time, though, it was different.

“I know you didn’t.”

“Well, I swan. Did my sweet little Angel tell you?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t discuss that with you.”

She clutched her hands to her heart. “Well, bust my shiny buttons, honey. Angel told you and you got her out of it anyway. That’s why I hired you, you know. I knew you were the best.”

The best. Helping a guilty woman walk away from a murder made me the best at my profession. I wondered what I’d have to do to be the worst.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Angel had an opportunity to make an excellent deal a couple of weeks before the trial. She rejected it. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you?”

Her smile turned from genuine to coy.

“They gave her another chance after the trial started. The district attorney was willing to dismiss the murder charge against her. All she would have had to do was tell them you committed the murder. But she wouldn’t.”

“That’s my sweet girl.”

“Convenient for us that Julie Hayes died when she did, huh?”

“It was a terrible tragedy. I can’t tell you how many times I begged that child to stay away from drugs. Turned out to be her undoing.”

“You wouldn’t have had anything to do with her death?”

“Why, sugar, I can’t believe you’d even ask me such a thing. But I will tell you this one teeny little secret. I may have suggested to someone that Julie was a problem, and that someone may have misinterpreted what I meant. I certainly didn’t mean for anyone to get killed.”

I decided to leave it at that. I didn’t want to take a chance on ending up as a witness against Erlene. “How do you think the cops found out about your car?”

“You know, I gave that a lot of thought myself,” she said. “And I came to the conclusion that one of my girls must have called that nasty TBI agent. As a matter of fact, I’m certain of it. I believe I told her exactly what to say. I might even have been standing right next to her when she called him.”

“You what?”

She put her hands on the table, laced her fingers, and leaned forward.

“I probably should explain something to you, baby doll. When you run a business like mine, you meet all different kinds of people. I try to be good to every one of them, so when I need something, I usually get it. Well, this time, what I needed was some real good legal advice, but it wasn’t the kind of legal advice I could get from you. So I talked to this wonderful man. He’s a lawyer, but not exactly the kind of lawyer you are. He used to help my husband out with his finances. He helped me understand some things about the law. Let’s see, what all were they? Things like double jeopardy, I believe is what he called it, and what was that other thing? Oh, yes, the fourth amendment.”

“Who was it?”

“I couldn’t betray his confidence, sugar pie. Let’s just say he’s a sweet, sweet man who likes to indulge in a little harmless sin on occasion. He and my Gus were real close.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I suspected Erlene had somehow been involved in Julie’s death, but I didn’t have any proof of it and doubted anybody on the planet would ever come up with any. But this was something else, something fascinating.

“Why would you want Landers to find the car?” I said.

“I couldn’t let Angel spend the rest of her life in prison or get the death penalty, sugar. The whole thing with that preacher man was my fault. When he came out to the club acting a fool and pawing Angel the way he did, it just flew all over me. Do you know what he said when I asked him nicely to leave? He said, ‘I want to rent your whore for the night. Who do I talk to about that?’ Why, that made me mad as fire, and I just figured right then and there that I’d teach him a little lesson. All Angel was supposed to do was go into the room and give him a drink. I was going to take care of the rest all by myself.”

“Didn’t quite work out the way you planned, did it?”

“It was awful. I should’ve known better than to send that child up to the motel room alone. I’ve been around the block a few times, and I knew the preacher was rotten to the core, but I swan, I was so mad I just wasn’t thinking straight. I never dreamed he’d do what he did. And I never dreamed Angel would react the way she did. When she came down those steps I thought I was going to have a stroke. I went back into the room and there was all that blood. I nearly passed out. But I told myself to calm down, and I set about trying to make things right for Angel. I picked up the bottle of scotch and her purse and the knife and his wallet and then I went-”

“Hold on a minute, Erlene. Why’d you cut his, his…what did you call it? His twigger or something like that?”

“His terwilliger?”

“Yeah, that. Why’d you cut it off? Angel told me she didn’t do it. It must have been you.”

“I saw this TV show where a man got convicted of rape because he had the girl’s DNA on his terwilliger. I got to thinking that Angel’s DNA might be on his terwilliger, and — well, you know, if the police did come around and start asking questions — I didn’t want her to have to explain something like that. Besides, he didn’t need it any more.”

I knew when I met Erlene that there was more to her than big boobs and batting eyes, but I never expected anything like this.

“What else did you do?” I said.

“Well, let’s see. Not a whole lot. I just got sweet little Virgil to do me a favor.”

“You mean he didn’t see you on the bridge?”

“Nobody saw me on the bridge, honey. I can promise you that. And I thought there was no way anyone would find the terwilliger. That was just a stroke of bad luck.”

It was almost brilliant. She’d managed to dupe the police into thinking she’d committed the murder to get Angel off, but she’d done such a masterful job of it, she might well be convicted.

“You’ve got some serious problems, Erlene. For starters, what’s Virgil going to do when the state subpoenas him to testify against you? If he gets up on the stand and lies, they’ll charge him with perjury.”

“Don’t you worry your handsome face about that. I won’t be going to trial.”

“You won’t? Why not?”

“It’s that other legal thing I was telling you about. That fourth amendment. You see, this lawyer, the one that likes to sin every now and then, he came out to the club one night and I asked him how I could lead a police officer to a piece of evidence and then make sure he couldn’t use the evidence later. So he told me all about searches, and he made a wonderful suggestion. He said if I’d wait until the very, very last minute and then have someone make an anonymous call to that nasty old TBI agent and tell him where my car was, he’d bet anything the policeman would go tearing up there without a search warrant or anything. And you know what? He was right as rain. That TBI man climbed over a locked gate and ignored a locked door on my barn and crawled right in through a window. The car was under a tarp in the barn, sweetie. It’s private property.”

She’d graduated from almost brilliant to brilliant. Still, she didn’t know who she was dealing with.

“Landers will lie,” I said. “He’ll say the gate wasn’t locked, the barn door was open, he was acting on a reliable tip, and the car was in plain view.”

She smiled and hunched her shoulders. “Oh, this is the best part. I’ve got everything he did on video. The lawyer told me to send somebody up there in the woods with a camera. Ronnie filmed the whole thing. I’ll bet I’ve watched it ten times.”

I stared at her for a second, not quite believing what I’d just heard. I felt a chuckle making its way up through my chest. I tried to suppress it, but the more I tried, the harder it pushed. The first one made its way out of my mouth, and then another. Within a few seconds, I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe. I looked over at Erlene. She’d lost it too. It was one of the most visceral moments of my life, Erlene and I locked onto each other, laughing uncontrollably. It was almost as good as sex.

After a couple of minutes, I managed to get at least a little control of myself.

“You know what this means?” I said through a chuckle, “it means they won’t be able to use the car or anything they found in it! ”

Erlene looked like a bobblehead. “That was just what I was trying to do, sweetie. Isn’t it wonderful?”

We started cracking up again.

“They’ll have less on you…than they had on Angel.”

“I know.”

Finally we calmed down and Erlene turned serious.

“You’ll represent me, won’t you? You’ll handle it for me?”

I wiped a tear from my eye with the back of my hand. “I can’t, Erlene. It’s a conflict of interest.”

“I don’t see why. They found Angel not guilty. Her case is over, isn’t it? They can’t try her again no matter what. She won’t be a witness against me. All you have to do is show them the videotape, and that should be the end of it. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. It won’t be that simple. Nothing’s ever that simple.”

“C’mon, Mr. Dillard. Be a sweetheart. This’ll be a piece of cake for you. You’re the best there is. Oh, and speaking of that, I meant to tell you the way you set them up with your sister was brilliant. When Angel told me about it, I thought I was going to wet my pants.”

“I didn’t exactly plan that. I’m not as smart as you are.”

“Don’t kid yourself. Now what do you say? Will you do the same for me as you did for Angel?”

I was thinking about the conflict. She was right about Angel. They couldn’t try her again, no matter what, and since the rules prohibited me from uttering a word about Angel’s confession, it wouldn’t be an issue. On top of that, if Erlene really had a videotape of Landers conducting an illegal search, the car and everything in it would be out, there’d be no trial, and no risk that I’d ever have to question Angel on a witness stand. And because Angel had told me what really happened, I knew Erlene hadn’t killed Tester.

If I agreed, Erlene would be my innocent client. Finally. It was almost unbelievable.

“You’re going to be locked up in here for a while,” I said. “You up to it?”

“I could post a million in cash for bond if I wanted to, but I’m afraid the nosy old IRS people would wonder where I got all that money. Don’t you worry about me, baby doll. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re in for a bad run of publicity.”

“Doesn’t matter. The Junior League isn’t ever going to ask me to join anyway.”

“They’ll try to paint you as an immoral madame who uses young girls and preys on horny men.”

“You can clean me up. You’re a sugar pie.”

The woman had an almost irresistible charm about her, not to mention a fat bank account. I shook my head and grinned.

“Okay,” I said. “You’ve got yourself a lawyer. But it’s going to cost you.”