In good faith

PART I

Eight men and four women. A dozen citizens filing slowly past the defense and prosecution tables beneath the stern scrutiny of a white-haired judge. All wore the dazed look of people who’ve been forced to sit for days in a place they’d never been, listen to the words of men and women they’d never seen, and pass judgment on a fellow human being.

The gallery was sadly bereft of spectators. Misty Bell, a young female newspaper reporter with short chestnut hair and curious hazel eyes, sat dutifully holding her notebook on the front row to my left. Two seats to her right sat the victim’s son, an overweight, sad-looking man in his sixties with sagging jowls and receding gray hair that curled around his ears like smoke from a smoldering cotton ball. Aside from those two and me-I was sitting in the center of the back row-the gallery was empty.

The defendant, a wiry man named Billy Dockery, stood next to his lawyer at the defense table as the jury filed past. Dockery was gangly and in his mid-thirties. His dark hair snaked past his shoulders, framing a flat face that had maintained a perpetual smirk throughout the two-day trial. He wore civilized clothing-a dark gray suit, white shirt, and navy blue tie-but I knew he was anything but civilized. Beneath the veneer was a cruel and dangerous sociopath.

His lawyer was James T. Beaumont III, a longtime practitioner of criminal defense whom I’d known casually for many years. Beaumont was in his late fifties and was somewhat of a celebrity in northeast Tennessee. He favored fringed buckskin jackets and string ties and wore a beige cowboy hat outside the courtroom. A long, light brown mustache and goatee, heavily specked with gray, covered his upper lip and chin. With his longish hair, clear blue eyes, and deep drawl, he reminded me very much of Wild Bill Hickok-at least the way they portrayed him in the movies.

“Call your witness,” sixty-year-old Judge Leonard Green said.

Beaumont nodded and stood. “The defense calls Billy Dockery.”

Dockery got up, ambled to the witness stand, and took the oath, the smirk still on his face. I’d seen the proof in the case and knew Dockery should exercise his Fifth Amendment right to keep his mouth shut. He’d be a terrible witness. But I also knew that Dockery enjoyed the spotlight almost as much as he enjoyed thumbing his nose at the prosecution and torturing defenseless, elderly women.

After a few preliminary questions, Beaumont got to the point.

“Mr. Dockery, I’ll ask you this question on the front end. Did you kill Cora Wilson in the early-morning hours of November seventeenth?”

Dockery leaned closer to the microphone.

“No, sir, I did not. I did not have anything to do with her death. I was not nowhere near her place that night. I ain’t never hurt nobody and I ain’t never going to.”

The sound of his voice made me cringe. Five years earlier, Dockery had been charged with murdering another elderly woman during a break-in at her home. His mother hired me to represent him, and after a trial, the jury found him not guilty and set him free. The next day, Dockery walked into my office and drunkenly confessed to me that he’d murdered the woman. He offered me a five-thousand-dollar cash bonus, money he said he’d stolen during the break-in. I threw him out of the office, along with the money, but since double jeopardy prevented them from trying him again, and since the rules of professional responsibility forbade me from telling anyone, I couldn’t do a thing about it. When I read in the newspaper that he was about to go on trial for killing another woman, I wanted to be there to see his face when they sent him to the penitentiary for the rest of his life.

“Did you know the victim?” Jim Beaumont said from the podium in front of the witness stand.

“Yes, sir. I done yard work for her sometimes, and I painted her house last year.”

“Ever have any problems with her?”

“No, sir. Not nary a one. Me and her got along like two peas in a pod.”

“Where were you that night, Mr. Dockery?”

“I was a-campin’ on the Nolichucky River more’n two miles from her house.”

“In November?”

“Yes, sir. My mama’s got a cabin down there. It’s got a fireplace and all. I go there a lot.”

“Anyone with you?”

“No, sir. I was all by my lonesome.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dockery. Please answer the prosecutor’s questions.”

It was the shortest direct examination of a criminal defendant I’d ever seen, and it was smart. Up to that point, the prosecution had been able to establish only that Billy Dockery had done landscaping work for eighty-six-year-old Cora Wilson. They established that Dockery had camped along the Nolichucky River about two miles from Ms. Wilson’s home the night she was beaten and tortured to death, a fact the defense did not dispute. They established that a length of nylon rope found around Ms. Wilson’s neck was the same kind of rope found in the back of Billy Dockery’s truck. The prosecutor’s expert witness could not go so far as to say the rope was an exact match, only that it was made of the same material, of the same weave and circumference, and manufactured by the same company. Unfortunately for the prosecution, the defense subpoenaed an executive from the company that made the rope, and he testified that more than fifty thousand feet of that very same rope had been sold within a twenty-five-mile radius of the courthouse in the past five years.

The prosecution’s star witness in the case, a seventeen-year-old named Tommy Treadway, had initially confessed to breaking into the house with Dockery that night but refused to sign a statement. Treadway told the police that he left when Dockery began to torture Ms. Wilson. But Treadway was released on bond after he agreed to testify against Dockery and wound up driving his car off the side of a mountain in Carter County a month before the trial. His death was ruled an accident.

The state’s only other witness-besides the routine information given by the cops and the medical examiner- was a degenerate drunkard named Timmons who said he’d overheard Billy Dockery say that Cora Wilson kept cash in her house and that he “might go get it some night.” Beaumont had already destroyed the witness on cross-examination, forcing him to admit that his two primary activities as an adult had been drinking whiskey and stealing other people’s identities so he could afford to drink more whiskey.

Now the assistant district attorney had his shot at the defendant. It was usually a prosecutor’s dream, but Assistant District Attorney Alexander Dunn had been aloof and distracted. His case was so weak he should have dismissed it and waited to see whether any more evidence could be developed, but his ego had apparently driven him to trial.

Dunn, in his early thirties, was wearing a tailored brown suit over a beige shirt. A kerchief rose from the pocket of his jacket, and expensive Italian loafers covered his feet. He stood before Dockery and straightened his silk tie.

“Isn’t it true, Mr. Dockery, that you and another individual broke into the victim’s home around two a.m. on the morning of November seventeenth?”

“No.”

It was an inauspicious beginning, to say the least, and I sank deeper into my seat. Dunn had been ordered by the judge not to mention the dead witness, and the jury was sure to wonder why, if there was a codefendant, he wasn’t on trial at the same time or testifying for the state.

“And isn’t it true, Mr. Dockery, that you beat and tortured the victim in an effort to force her to tell you where her cash was hidden?”

“No, it ain’t true, and you ain’t got no fingerprints, no blood, no hair, no witnesses, no nothin’ to prove I was there.”

“But you did tell Mr. Timmons that the victim kept cash in her home and that you intended to steal it, didn’t you?”

“I never said no such thing. Timmons ain’t nothing but a drunk and a liar. He was probably just looking for some reward money so he could buy whiskey.”

“And you’re a model citizen, aren’t you, Mr. Dockery? I’ll bet you don’t even drink.”

Dockery’s eyes flashed with righteous indignation. He leaned forward and put his hands on the rail in front of him.

“Yeah, I may drink a little, but I’ll tell you what I don’t do. I don’t parade around in a fancy suit and put people on trial for murder when I ain’t got a smidgen of proof.”

“I object, Your Honor,” Dunn said. “The witness is being argumentative.”

“You walked right into it, Mr. Dunn,” Judge Green said. “Move along.”

“Isn’t it true, Mr. Dockery, that you took thousands of dollars in cash from the victim’s home the night you murdered her?”

“If I did, then where is it? Y’all tore my mama’s place, her cabin, our barn, and every vehicle we own apart looking for money and didn’t find a thing. And you know why you didn’t find nothing? ’Cause I didn’t do nothing.”

Alexander Dunn’s cross-examination was a monumental disaster. It ended shortly thereafter. Jim Beaumont rested his case, and Judge Green read the instructions to the jury.

The judge was long rumored in the legal community to be a closet homosexual, and he lorded it over his courtroom like an English nobleman. Before I stopped practicing law, I’d appeared before Green hundreds of times, and although I hadn’t laid eyes on him in a year, each grandiose gesture he made, each perfectly formed syllable he spoke, reminded me of what a pompous ass he was. During lulls in the trial, I found myself imagining him prancing around the room in a white periwig, pink tutu, and tights, leaping through the air like a fabulously gay ballet dancer.

As soon as Green finished, the jury retired to deliberate. I thought I’d be in for a long wait, but in less than thirty minutes, I saw the bailiffs and clerks bustling around, a sure sign the jurors had made their decision.

Five minutes later, they filed back into the courtroom. Green turned his palm upward and raised his right hand as though he were a symphony conductor coaxing a crescendo from the woodwinds. The foreman rose, an uncertain look on his weathered face.

“I understand you’ve reached a verdict,” the judge said.

“We have, Your Honor.”

“Pass it to the bailiff.”

A uniformed deputy crossed the courtroom to the jury box, took the folded piece of paper from the foreman’s hand, and delivered it to Judge Green. The judge dramatically unfolded the paper, looked at it with raised brows, refolded it, and handed it to the bailiff. The bailiff then walked the form back across the room to the foreman.

“Mr. Foreman,” the judge said, “on the first count of the indictment, premeditated first-degree murder, how does the jury find?”

“We find the defendant not guilty.”

“On the second count of the indictment, especially aggravated kidnapping, how does the jury find?”

“We find the defendant not guilty.”

“On the third count of the indictment, aggravated burglary, how does the jury find?”

“We find the defendant not guilty.”

I watched Dockery pat his lawyer on the back and walk out the door arm in arm with his mother.

The son of a bitch had gotten away with it again.

I fumed all the way home, muttering to myself about what an idiot Alexander Dunn had been. When I pulled into the driveway, the garage door was open. My wife must have forgotten to close it again. She always does. I parked my truck in the driveway and walked inside. As soon as I opened the door, I heard the sound of hard nails skidding across the wood floor. Rio, my German shepherd, came barreling around the kitchen counter, headed straight for me. I was carrying a bottle of water in my hand, and when he jumped up to greet me, his snout sent the bottle flying across the kitchen floor.

“Shit, Rio,” I said as I walked towards the counter. “Why are you always so damned excited to see me? We’re together all day every day.”

The tone of my voice frightened him, and he lowered his head and slinked away. As I turned to reach for a paper towel so I could wipe up the spilled water, I scraped my shin on the open door of the dishwasher. I cursed again and reached down and slammed it closed.

“Where have you been?”

Caroline walked into the kitchen with her perpetual smile on her face. We’d been high school sweethearts, and twenty years of marriage hadn’t dimmed our passion. I always looked forward to getting home to my leggy, tanned, athletic wife. I loved her soft brown eyes and her thick auburn hair. But at that moment I wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries.

“Caroline, why do you leave this goddamned dishwasher door open all the time?” I snapped as I knelt down and started wiping up the spilled water. “I just cracked my shin on it again. I’ve asked you at least a hundred times to close the fucking dishwasher. ”

I looked up. She’d stopped in her tracks and was glaring.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re stepping?” she said sarcastically. “Are you fucking blind?”

When the word fuck came out of either of our mouths, it was a signal to the other that an immediate choice had to be made. Caroline could walk away and leave me alone until I calmed down. She usually did. Or she could stand and fight. This time, the battle was on.

“And why can’t you close the fucking garage door?” I said, still wiping. “Were you born in a barn? All you have to do is push a button and it closes itself.”

“What difference does it make whether the garage door is closed?” she snarled.

“It keeps some of the heat out, and when we keep some of the heat out, the air conditioner doesn’t have to work so hard. And when the air conditioner doesn’t work so hard, it saves us money! But you don’t ever think about that, do you? The money we have isn’t going to last forever, especially if you keep pissing it away doing stupid shit like leaving the garage door open.”

“So you’re saying I’m going to drive us into bankruptcy by leaving a garage door open? Sitting around the house for a year has driven you crazy, Joe.”

I straightened up, wadded the paper towel, and tossed it in the wastebasket under the sink.

“Screw you,” I said as I walked past her towards the bedroom. I grabbed a pair of shorts, some socks, and a T-shirt from the dresser and my running shoes from the closet and went back to the bathroom to change. Just as I finished tying my shoes, Caroline appeared.

“So do you want to tell me what’s going on with you?” she said.

“Nothing’s going on.”

“You haven’t been in the house five minutes and you’ve already terrified Rio, slammed the dishwasher, and sworn at me for leaving a garage door open. Something’s going on. Where have you been for the past two days?”

I looked up at her. The anger was gone from her face, and the tone of her voice told me she was genuinely concerned.

“I went to Jonesborough to watch Billy Dockery’s trial,” I said.

“I knew it,” she said. “I’ve been reading about it in the newspaper. I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away. Is it still going on?”

“No. They acquitted him again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prosecutor do a poorer job of trying a case.”

“Come on out to the kitchen table,” she said as she reached out and took my hand. “Let’s talk.”

I followed her and sat down. She went to the refrigerator, pulled out two beers, and came back to the table.

“You’re miserable,” she said. “You’re bored. I think you feel like you’re wasting your life, and it’s time to do something about it.”

She popped the top on a can of Budweiser and handed it to me.

“I’m not miserable,” I said. “I’m just a little upset. Seeing Dockery walk out the door today made me sick to my stomach.”

“So why don’t you do something about it?” she said.

“Do something? Like what?”

“Why don’t you go back to work? I remember when we were young you talked about going to work for the prosecutor’s office. Why don’t you give Lee Mooney a call and see if he can find a place for you?”

The suggestion took me by complete surprise. Even sitting there watching Alexander Dunn botch a trial, knowing I could do much better, going back to practicing law hadn’t entered my mind. I’d quit a year earlier after spending more than a decade as a criminal defense lawyer. I made a lot of money, gained a lot of notoriety, and was good at what I did, but the profession eventually burned me out mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Friends and acquaintances had always asked me, “How can you go into court and represent someone who you know is guilty?” My answer was always that my job was to make certain the government followed its own rules and to hold them to their burden of proof. It didn’t have anything to do with guilt or innocence. I convinced myself for years that I was doing something honorable, that I was an important cog in the machine that called itself the criminal justice system. But over time, and especially after I realized I’d helped Billy Dockery escape punishment for murdering a defenseless elderly woman, I began to regard myself as something much less than honorable. It had been a little more than a year since I’d helped two women walk away from a charge of murdering a preacher. The preacher’s son tried to kill me in the parking lot outside of the courthouse, and he nearly killed my wife in the process. That was enough.

I’d worked hard my entire life and had accumulated a fair amount of money, so I took a break, thinking I might eventually teach at a university. For the past year, I’d divided my time between watching my son play baseball for Vanderbilt University in Nashville and watching my daughter perform at football and basketball games as a member of the University of Tennessee’s dance team. When I was home, I piddled around the house, worked out at the gym, ran miles and miles along the trail by the lake, and played with the dog. I enjoyed myself most of the time, but Caroline was right: I was bored, and I missed the excitement of playing such a high-stakes game.

“I don’t know, Caroline,” I said. “It got pretty bad there towards the end. Do you really think I’m ready to go back?”

“If we were sitting here talking about going back into criminal defense, I’d say no. But I think you’d like prosecuting. You’ve always had a little bit of a hero complex. Putting bad guys behind bars might be right up your alley.”

“You’re ready to get me out of the house, aren’t you?” I said. “You’re tired of looking at me.”

“How could I be tired of looking at you? You’re gorgeous. You’re big and strong and you’ve got that dark hair and those beautiful green eyes. You’re eye candy, baby.”

“That kind of flattery will definitely get you laid.”

“Seriously,” she said, “I’m not tired of anything. I could live this simple little life we have now until they put me in the ground, but I know you, Joe, and you’re just not happy. You have too much drive to be a professional piddler.”

“So you think I should just call Mooney up and say, ‘Hey, how about giving me a job’?”

“Why not? The worst he can say is no, but I think he’d be glad to have you.”

I smiled at her. Caroline had a way of making me feel like I could conquer the world. She’d always had more confidence in me than I had in myself.

“Okay,” I said. “If you really think it might be right for me, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll call Mooney first thing in the morning.”

She stood and pursed her lips slightly. The next thing I knew she was pulling her shirt over her head. She slipped off her bra and turned towards the bedroom, dangling the bra from her fingertips as she looked at me over her shoulder.

“Now that’s what I call eye candy,” I said as I put down the beer and followed her. “Wait up. Let me help you take off the rest.”

Friday, August 29

I felt the welcome coolness of air-conditioning on my face as I opened the door and stepped out of the oppressive heat and humidity. It was a room the owner of the restaurant-a man named Tommy Hodges who fancied himself a local political insider-reserved for special customers, people he believed had power or privilege. It had its own entrance at the side of the one-story brick building. I was forty-one years old and had practiced law in the community for more than a decade, but I’d never set foot in the place.

The room was small and dimly lit, dominated by a single table, large and round with a scarred blue Formica top. All four walls surrounding the table were decorated with autographed photos of state and local politicians. Lee Mooney, the elected attorney general of the First Judicial District, was examining a photograph of himself as I stepped through the door.

Mooney was fifty years old, a lean, striking man with gray eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, and a handlebar mustache. I’d called him on Thursday morning and asked him whether he might consider hiring me, and he asked me to meet him at Tommy’s place the next day. He turned his head when he heard the door open and grinned.

“Joe Dillard, in the flesh,” he said, extending his hand. “It’s been a long time.”

At six feet, five inches, Mooney was a couple of inches taller than me. As his fingers wrapped around my hand, his white teeth flashed and his eyes locked onto mine. He held both my gaze and my hand a bit too long.

I was suspicious of all politicians, but because I’d practiced criminal defense law for so long, I was especially suspicious of the ego-filled megalomaniacs who typically sought the office of district attorney. A Texas A amp;M grad, Mooney had gone from ROTC cadet to officer training to the judge advocate general’s office in the Marine Corps. He retired five years ago after the marines passed on the opportunity to promote him to full colonel. His wealthy wife had persuaded him to move to northeast Tennessee, which was her childhood home, and he immediately hired on as an assistant with the local DA’s office. Before I stopped practicing law, I tried half a dozen criminal cases against Mooney. I remembered him as a formidable adversary in the courtroom with an almost pathological fear of losing. I’d suspected him more than once of withholding evidence, but I wasn’t ever able to prove it.

Mooney quit the DA’s office two years ago when he smelled blood in the water. Word around the campfire was that his predecessor-a pathetic little man named Deacon Baker-had lost control of his own office and, Mooney must have sensed, lost the confidence of the voters. Mooney resigned and immediately announced he was running against his boss in the August election. When the last murder case I defended blew up in Deacon Baker’s face just before the election, Mooney buried him.

“So what have you been up to for the past year?” Mooney said as we sat down.

“As little as possible.”

“How’s your wife? Is it Caroline?”

“Right. She’s fine, thanks for asking.”

“I’ve read about your son in the newspaper. He’s some ballplayer.”

“He’s worked hard.”

“Have you missed it? Practicing law, I mean.”

“Some,” I said. There was a seductive element to defending people accused of committing crimes, especially when the stakes were at their highest. Having the fate of a man’s life depend on both the intensity of your commitment and the quality of your work was often alluring.

Tommy Hodges, the slight and balding owner of the restaurant, showed up carrying two glasses of water and a pad.

“Don’t I know you?” he said to me.

“I don’t think so.”

“Sure you do,” Mooney said. “This is Joe Dillard, the best trial lawyer who ever set foot in a courtroom around here.”

Hodges’s eyes lit up.

“Oh, yeah!” he said, pointing at me. “I remember you! That murder, the preacher, right? That was something. Big news.”

“Yeah,” I said, “big news.”

“I ain’t heard of you since. Where you been?”

“Sabbatical,” I said.

“What?”

“Tommy,” Mooney said, “how about a couple of club sandwiches and a couple of Cokes? Is that okay with you, Joe?”

“Sure.”

He kept fiddling with a saltshaker with his right hand. After Hodges left, Mooney regarded me with a puzzled look.

“I always wondered why you were on the other side,” he said as soon as Hodges left the room. “I thought you would have made a great prosecutor.”

“The reason isn’t exactly noble. It came down to money. When I graduated from law school, I wanted to work for the DA’s office. I even went for an interview. But the starting salary was less than twenty-five grand, and I already had a wife and two kids to support. I figured I could make double that practicing on my own, so I told myself I’d learn the law from the other side and then try to get on with the DA after I made some money.”

“And before you knew it your lifestyle grew into your income.”

“Exactly.”

“Why’d you quit?”

“A combination of things, I guess. It always bothered me that I knew my clients were lying to me, or at least most of them. And I was constantly at war with somebody-cops, prosecutors, judges, witnesses, guards at the jails, you name it. I got tired of it. But the bottom line, I think, was that I felt like I was doing something wrong.”

“Wrong? How so?”

“Some of the people I helped walk out the door were guilty. They knew it, and so did I.”

Mooney shifted in his chair a little and looked down at the saltshaker. “You defended Billy Dockery once, didn’t you?” he said.

“He was the beginning of the end of my career as a criminal defense lawyer,” I said.

“Alexander Dunn told me you were at his trial.”

“I was curious.”

“How’d Alexander do? It was his first big felony trial.”

“The odds were against him.”

There wasn’t any point in telling him that Alexander was terrible and that he constantly referred to Cora Wilson as “the victim in this case” instead of by name. Even when he did mention her name, he referred to her twice as “Ms. Williams” instead of “Ms. Wilson.”

“So what are you really looking for, Joe?”

“It’s pretty simple. I want to do something that keeps me interested, and I want to do something that doesn’t make me feel like puking every time I look in the mirror.”

Mooney sat back and smiled. “You looking to make amends?”

“Maybe. Something like that.”

“You have to understand that Baker didn’t leave me with much,” he said, speaking of his predecessor. “He was so paranoid that he ran off every competent lawyer in the office. All that’s left are a bunch of kids learning on the fly.”

“Do you have anything open?” I said. I knew the budget in the DA’s office was tight. State legislators tend to look at the criminal justice system as a bastard stepchild, a necessary evil, when it comes to funding.

“Not right now,” Mooney said, “but I’ll make room for you if you can wait a couple of weeks. I was planning to fire Jack Moseley as soon as I could find someone to replace him.”

“Jesus, Lee, I don’t want to cost anybody their job.”

“Moseley’s a drunk. Shows up late for work half the time, doesn’t cover his cases, pinches the secretaries on the ass. Last month he disappeared for three days. We found him holed up at the Foxx Motel with a gallon of vodka and an empty sack of cocaine.”

“I don’t remember reading about that in the paper,” I said.

Mooney winked. “Sometimes what the people don’t know won’t hurt them. I would’ve fired him months ago if I’d had another warm body. The job’s yours if you want it.”

“Exactly what would I be doing?”

“I’ve been thinking about that ever since you called. The best use for you would be to work the violent felonies, the worst ones. Murders, aggravated rapes, armed robberies. Dangerous offenders only.”

I let out a low whistle. “Some job description.”

“You really want to do something that makes you feel good? Here’s your chance. You can make sure dangerous people wind up in jail, where they belong. I’ll keep your caseload as light as I can so you can do it right.”

“I guess it’ll include death penalty cases,” I said. I’d spent a great deal of my legal career trying to ensure that the state didn’t kill people. If I took this job, I knew I’d soon be making some difficult choices.

“We haven’t had a death penalty case since Deacon left the office,” Mooney said. “What’s the point? The state’s only executed one person in forty years, and there’s nobody in Nashville raising hell about it. I guess the legislature wants to have the death penalty in Tennessee but not have to worry about enforcing it.”

“It’ll change soon,” I said. “We have a tendency to be bloodthirsty.”

“Look at it this way: You’ll be doing the same thing you did so well for all those years, practicing criminal law. The difference will be that you’ll be working with the good guys, and you’ll have the manpower and resources of the great state of Tennessee behind you. The pay is good, there’s no overhead, and you get four weeks of vacation, state health and retirement benefits, the whole ball of wax.”

I sat back and thought for a moment. The money didn’t matter that much. Both of my kids had earned scholarships that paid a significant amount of their college expenses. Our house was paid for and we had a fair amount stashed away. I’d already called both of the kids and discussed the possibility of going to work for the district attorney. Both were in favor, as was Caroline. All that was left was for me to take the plunge and see what happened.

“You make it sound like easy money,” I said.

Mooney nodded his head. “There you go. Easy money. Piece of cake. Come by and see me Monday and we’ll get the paperwork rolling. You start in sixteen days.”

Bjorn Beck glanced at the side-view mirror and watched briefly as the road stretched out behind him into the distant mountains. He looked forward, and then back again. He thought about the constant balance between what lay ahead and what lay behind. How poignant, he thought, this moment of pondering the future and the past. For Bjorn, ahead was his new life in the way of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Behind was the ignorance and intemperance of youth.

Bjorn’s life was now filled with church activities. He was required to attend five meetings each week: the public talk on Sunday, the Watchtower study, the theocratic ministry school, the service meeting, and the book study. During these meetings, the doctrine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was being ingrained into his open mind. Already he’d learned that he was no longer required to salute the flag of any nation. He wasn’t required to serve in the military or vote. His only allegiance was to Jehovah, the king of kings. He would no longer celebrate Christmas or New Year’s or the Fourth of July or Halloween. The only cause for special celebration would be the anniversary of Christ’s death during Passover. Bjorn found the break from traditional Christianity-and American life-liberating.

Bjorn, his wife, Anna, and their two children, six-year-old Else and seven-month-old Elias, had spent the day at a church-sponsored convention at a place called Freedom Hall in Knoxville, Tennessee. Bjorn had been a convert for only eight months. He’d listened closely to the speakers, eager to absorb the words and ideas that would make him a better pioneer, a better servant of the church, and a better person.

He turned and stole a quick glance into the rear of the family’s van. Else, blond and flawless, with soft, round features, was sound asleep, her chin resting on her chest. Elias, another blue-eyed blond, was cooing contentedly in his car seat. Anna, whose hair had darkened to a sandy blond over the seven years since they’d been married, had slipped off to sleep in the passenger seat. Bjorn smiled and silently congratulated himself on his decision to move his family to Johnson City from Chicago a year ago. His children were safer, he had a better job, and he’d found Jehovah, or, more accurately, Jehovah had found him.

Two well-dressed, polite young men had knocked on Bjorn’s front door on a cold, sunny day in January. Bjorn was impressed not only with their appearance, but also with their dedication. The young men were bundled up and traveling on bicycles, smiling and undaunted. They surprised him by asking whether Bjorn was satisfied with his relationship with God-he was not-and whether he might be open to alternative interpretations of the Bible-he was. They did not pressure him. He did not find them annoying. They left copies of two publications, The Watchtower and Awake, and asked Bjorn to read them. Then, if Bjorn didn’t mind, they would return in a week and discuss the ideas in the publication with him and answer any questions he might have.

Bjorn had grown tired of the dogmatic approach of the Catholics-the religion of his youth and his parents-along with the scandals that hounded the church, the aristocracy of the priesthood, the constant bickering over condoms and birth control, the role of women in the church, and whether homosexuality should be condemned. Bjorn considered those things insignificant and shallow. He longed for a deeper, more personal relationship with God.

Bjorn showed the publications to Anna, who shared his frustration with the church. The couple studied diligently. They learned of the Last Days, of the invisible return of Christ in 1914, of Armageddon, and of the millennium, when Christ would rule over the earth, the dead would be resurrected, mankind would attain perfection, and paradise would be restored. They learned that one hundred and forty-four thousand “true Christians” would rule the great crowd from heaven along with Jesus after Armageddon, until, ultimately, Jehovah, the all-powerful God, would rule again.

At last. A reasoned, intellectual approach to religion.

When the two young men returned as promised a week later, Bjorn and Anna had many questions. All of them were answered satisfactorily, and they accepted the young men’s invitation to attend a public talk at the Kingdom Hall in Johnson City the following Sunday. A month later, both were baptized into the Watchtower faith.

Bjorn had become a pioneer, which meant he was required to spend a minimum of ninety hours each month proselytizing. It was his responsibility to turn nonbelievers into believers, or, in the parlance of the church, to turn goats into sheep. He was required to keep meticulous records of his activities so the overseers and elders could keep tabs on his service. Bjorn didn’t mind the accountability. In fact, he welcomed it. And he was naturally outgoing, so approaching complete strangers and inquiring about their relationship with God did not present a problem for him. Last month, he had exceeded his evangelical requirement by thirteen hours.

A roadside sign informed Bjorn that a rest stop was a mile away. He’d been driving for only an hour, but the sun was going down and it was a beautiful September evening. The children could play for a little while, and he and Anna could stretch their legs. If God smiled upon him, he might even find a goat he could turn into a sheep.

As he eased the van off of the interstate onto the rest area ramp, he touched Anna gently on the arm.

“Anna, I’m going to stop for a little while. Do you mind?”

His wife’s eyes opened and she smiled.

“Where are we?”

“At a rest stop. We’re not far from home, but I thought we might take a walk and let the children play for a little while.”

“That’s fine. I don’t mind at all.”

Bjorn maneuvered the van into a parking spot right in front of the restrooms. The rest stop was deserted. He saw Anna reach back and gently squeeze Else’s knee.

“Else, honey, would you like to get out and play for a while?”

The child awoke slowly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“I’m hungry,” Else said in a tiny voice.

“Would you like a candy kiss?” Anna said. She reached for a bag of Hershey’s Kisses in the console.

Bjorn parked the van, and husband and wife got out. Anna opened the sliding door and lifted Elias from his car seat. She handed the smiling child to Bjorn.

“He’s wet,” she said. “They probably have a changing table in the bathroom. If they don’t, I can change him on one of the picnic tables.”

“I’ll do it,” Bjorn said. “Take Else to the bathroom. I’ll take care of him.”

Bjorn pulled a diaper and a baby wipe from the diaper bag between the seats and walked slowly up the sidewalk. There were several picnic tables scattered on the lawn behind the bathrooms. Bjorn headed for the nearest table, with Elias resting comfortably on his arm. Anna and Else strolled towards the women’s restroom.

Bjorn enjoyed changing his son’s diaper-even the smelly ones. It gave him an opportunity to provide comfort to the boy, to smile directly into his face and tell him he loved him.

Bjorn laid Elias on his back, smiled, and went into baby-speak as he gently and efficiently went about the task: “Are you Daddy’s good boy? Yes, you are. Daddy loves you. Can you say ‘Daddy’? Daaah-deee? You have to say Daddy before you say Mommy.”

Elias grinned.

“Yes! That’s my boy. You’ll be saying it soon enough.” Bjorn lifted the child into the air and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s go find Mommy.”

As he started back down the hill towards the restroom, he noticed that a green Chevy Cavalier had pulled into the parking spot beside his van.

Bjorn saw them when he rounded the corner near the restroom to check on Else and Anna. He stopped short. Two of them, both males, were dressed in black from head to toe. Their hair was black and they’d covered their faces in white pancake makeup. There was also a tall female, a redhead who was wearing a tight pink miniskirt, a white blouse, black fishnet hose, and shoes with spiked heels. She was speaking to Anna, who was holding Else in her arms, while the others lingered a few steps away. At first glance, the redhead was attractive, with sharp features and full lips. Bjorn noticed a small tattoo on the side of her neck. It appeared to be a cross, but it was upside down.

“What a beautiful child,” the girl said in a kind voice as Bjorn moved closer.

“Thank you,” Anna said.

“I’d like to have a beautiful child like her someday. What’s her name?”

Else buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. Anna smiled. “She’s shy. Her name is Else. Can you say hello to the nice lady, Else?”

Else turned towards the girl and lifted a tiny hand.

“What’s this?” the girl said.

“It’s a Hershey’s Kiss,” Anna said. “She’s offering you a Kiss.”

“Is everything all right?” Bjorn said as he cautiously approached. It was hard to tell with the makeup, but the two males appeared to be young, maybe twenty or so. One was tall and lanky, the other short and muscular. Both had small silver rings in their pierced eyebrows, ears, and lips. The redhead was wearing a black spiderweb necklace, and the boys wore T-shirts that sported goat heads and pentagrams and advertised Satan. Bjorn immediately assumed that this meeting was destiny-God had afforded him a perfect opportunity to attempt to spread his new faith.

“It’s a beautiful evening, isn’t it?” Bjorn said.

“Yes,” the redheaded girl said, “beautiful.”

When she looked at Bjorn, he noticed something unusual. Her eyes. Heavy black eyeliner set off eyes that were different colors. One was a brilliant blue, the other green. Bjorn had never seen anything like it.

“May I ask you a question?” Bjorn said.

She looked at Bjorn suspiciously, but nodded slightly.

“Are you satisfied with your relationship with God?”

The girl stiffened. Bjorn heard one of the boys gasp.

“And how could that possibly be any of your fucking business?” the girl snarled. She turned her head to the side and spit on the ground.

“I’m so sorry,” Bjorn said. The smile on his face remained fixed. “I’ve offended you.”

“You’re goddamned right you offended me,” the girl said. “Who do you think you are?”

Bjorn stuck out his hand. He glanced towards the still-empty parking lot, silently wishing that someone else would come along. It remained empty with the exception of his van and the Cavalier.

“My name is Bjorn,” he said. “And this is my wife-”

“I don’t give a fuck what your name is.”

Bjorn was surprised, and a bit frightened, by the girl’s anger. She ignored his outstretched hand, which he quickly retracted. Her eyes were locked onto him, and as he stood looking at her, he suddenly felt cold. He shifted Elias to his other shoulder.

“Please,” Bjorn said. “The last thing I wanted to do was upset you. Perhaps we could go up to a table over there and sit and talk for a little while.”

The girl seemed to relax a bit. She turned and smiled at her companions, then looked back at Bjorn.

“Talk?” she said. “You want to talk to me?”

“I’d love to,” Bjorn said. “We’ll just sit and talk. I’d love to share what I’ve learned about God’s love with you.”

She turned to the young man standing closest to her.

“God’s love,” she said. “He wants to share what he knows about God’s love. That’s nice.”

She stood for a moment, seemingly pondering Bjorn’s proposal. Finally, she said, “Okay, why not? Just let us use the restroom. Go on ahead. We’ll be there in a minute.”

The girl turned and walked into the building that housed the restrooms, followed by the males. Bjorn watched them go, then started back up the hill.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” Anna said. “They frighten me.”

“She seems filled with rage,” Bjorn said. “Maybe I can help her.”

“Bjorn, what about the children? What if something goes wrong? I mean, did you see what they were wearing? Those symbols on their clothes, goat heads and Satan? And all the black. They’re hideous. And I could smell alcohol on the girl’s breath. I think we should go.”

Bjorn took his wife’s hand. “This is a test, Anna. I’m sure of it. It’s God’s way of testing my faith.” He gestured towards the tree line a hundred feet away. “If you don’t feel comfortable, take the children over there and I’ll talk to them alone.”

Bjorn took a seat at a picnic table beneath a maple tree. The sun was just slipping behind a mountain to the west, the shimmering orange light dancing through the poplar and oak leaves. What a magnificent sight, Bjorn thought; what a magnificent day. What a wonderful time to be alive and well in God’s kingdom. It was a pity there weren’t more people around to enjoy it.

Bjorn heard an engine come to life and looked back down towards the restrooms. He saw the green Cavalier back out of the spot near his van and pull away. Just then the two young Goths who had been with the redhead came walking over the hill. Puzzled, he stood and started towards them.

“Is your friend leaving?” he said.

The short, muscular Goth raised his T-shirt and produced a pistol.

“Yeah, she’s leaving,” he said, “and you’re coming with us.”

Sunday, September 14

The voice eased its way through my subconscious and gently brought me out of sleep. I’d been napping on the couch, using the excuse that I’d be starting a new job tomorrow and needed to rest up. When my eyes opened, my wife’s face was smiling down at me. She was offering me something-a telephone.

“It’s Lee Mooney,” Caroline said. “He says it’s urgent.”

Already it had started: the extreme importance of all matters legal, especially all matters criminal. I looked at my watch. Almost nine o’clock. I sat up and took the phone.

“Hey, Lee,” I said to the man who would become my boss in about twelve hours. I hadn’t had a boss in nearly twenty years.

“Sorry about the Sunday call,” Mooney said. “We’ve got a bad one. What would you think about starting a day early?”

“What do you mean?” I felt certain, even in my groggy state of mind, that the district attorney’s office and the courthouses were closed on Sunday.

“It looks like we’ve got an entire family slaughtered out in the county,” Mooney said. “They tell me there are a couple of small children involved. I want to go out there and make sure everything’s done right. Since it’ll be your case, I thought you might want to come with me.”

I processed the information slowly. My mind illuminated the high points-family… slaughtered… in the county… small children. I rubbed my face and tried to focus.

“An entire family?”

“I don’t have many details yet. Do you want me to stop by and pick you up or do you want to meet me out there?”

I didn’t want to be entirely at his mercy, so I told him I’d meet him. He gave me the location, a place with which I was vaguely familiar. I could be there in less than an hour.

I hung up and splashed cold water on my face. I pulled on my jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and an old pair of hiking boots. I pecked Caroline on the cheek and headed out the door. Rio started whining. He wanted to go. I dropped the tailgate on my pickup and he jumped in.

The place I was going was Marbleton Road, little more than a wide dirt path that intersected with Smalling Road near the mountains at the western edge of Washington County. The intersection was just north of Interstate 81 and just south of nowhere. You could stand at the intersection of Marbleton and Smalling roads and unleash an arrow from a bow in any direction without fear of hitting anything human. The closest house was more than a half mile away.

I got there around ten. As I rounded a curve on Smalling Road, still a quarter mile away, I could see red and blue lights, plenty of them, flashing eerily off of the trees surrounding the intersection. A young deputy stopped me about two hundred yards from Smalling Road and told me I was going to have to turn around. I showed him the brand-new badge identifying me as an assistant district attorney that Lee Mooney had given me a few days earlier, and he waved me through. I spotted Mooney’s SUV parked in a field to my left about a hundred yards south of the flashing lights, and I pulled over next to it and got out.

Rio’s ears were pointed straight up and his nostrils were flared. He was standing in the back of the truck, facing the intersection, and he was growling. The behavior was distinctly uncharacteristic. When I reached up to try to calm him, I noticed the hair on his back was at attention. I grabbed his harness and put him in the cab of the truck. I took a flashlight from the glove compartment, stuffed my hands inside the pocket on the front of my sweatshirt, and walked towards the lights. It suddenly seemed much colder than it was when I left home.

There were several unmarked cars and police cruisers, a crime scene van, and three ambulances, all parked within a couple hundred feet of Marbleton Road. Just past the intersection was another van, this one from a local television station, channel twelve. A bright light illuminated a reporter sticking a microphone into the face of a man I recognized to be the sheriff of Washington County, a shameless publicity hound named Leon Bates. The flashing lights from the emergency vehicles made me dizzy. When I stepped up to the intersection at Marbleton, yellow police tape had been pulled across the road, and yet another young deputy accosted me. I looked at him closely for few seconds as his complexion changed from light blue to light red to light blue to light red.

“Who are you?” he demanded. I knew nearly every cop in the county when I quit practicing law a year ago. I’d already run across two I’d never laid eyes on. The county commission wouldn’t pay them a competitive wage, so a lot of them became disillusioned and moved on.

“Joe Dillard,” I said, reaching for the identification badge again. He looked at me warily.

“This is a crime scene,” he said. “You can’t go stomping around in here.”

“Where’s Lee Mooney? He told me to come.”

The young officer turned and nodded towards the darkness. I could see beams from flashlights through the leaves on the low tree branches. They appeared to be about a hundred yards down the road. I also noticed brighter flashes of light. Someone was taking photographs.

“How bad is it?” I said.

“As bad as it gets. Walk through the trees to the left or the right. Don’t walk on the road. They’re making casts of foot- and tire prints.”

As I made my way through the trees, I noticed a full moon creeping up behind a hill to the northeast, almost as though it was afraid of what it would see when it cleared the ridge. When I got to within twenty yards of the flashlights, I could hear muffled voices. I yelled out, “Lee Mooney!”

“Over here,” a voice called in return.

“Can I walk on the road?”

“Stop where you are,” Mooney said. “I’ll come to you.”

I saw the beam of a flashlight making its way towards me. I assumed it was Mooney. I waved my light at him. He stopped about thirty feet away and said, “Walk straight to me.”

I nearly tripped in a small ditch and came up on the road. It was a little bit gritty and somewhat soft, made of a mixture of soil, sand, clay, and chat.

“Welcome to hell,” Mooney said. He was wearing an overcoat and gloves and he was shivering. When my flashlight hit his face, he looked as pale as the moon that was coming over the horizon.

“Do I want to go back there?” I knew perfectly well that I didn’t.

“Depends on the strength of your stomach. Worst I’ve ever seen.”

I’d seen dead bodies before, but it was long ago and far away. My experience defending murderers had sometimes required me to examine gruesome photographs, but I knew this would be different. I shrugged my shoulders.

“We’ve got four shot to pieces,” he said. “Man, woman, and two children. They’re all dead.” His voice had a higher pitch than normal. In the cold darkness, it sounded almost as though it were being piped in over a transistor radio.

“What can I do?” I said.

“Just come on back here with me and take a look around. Maybe you’ll spot something we’ve missed.”

Mooney told me to walk directly behind him. We rounded a slight bend and I could see a man kneeling and gingerly picking up objects from the ground and placing them in an evidence bag. As I got closer I could see that he was picking up shell casings. A lot of shell casings. Another officer with “CSU” on the back of his jacket was pouring liquid plaster into a footprint on the ground. Others were searching the surrounding area with flashlights. A photographer was kneeling over something a few feet away. A light flashed.

I suddenly noticed two pairs of legs protruding from the ditch onto the road beneath the photographer. One pair of legs was longer than the other and covered with what appeared to be slacks. There were brown shoes on the feet. The shorter pair of legs was bare. The right foot was wearing a black pump. The left foot, like the legs, was bare. I noticed something else: The bottom half of the legs were bent at a grotesque angle.

I stopped cold.

Lying across the legs at right angles were the blood-soaked children, both facedown. The smaller child was on top of the longer pair of legs, the larger child on top of the shorter pair. I stared at them, momentarily unable to think.

“Somebody placed them like that after they were shot,” Mooney was saying. “And there’s something else-you see how the bottoms of the legs are bent? The sonsabitches ran over them when they left. Shot them point-blank and they fell straight back into the ditch. Shot the kids and placed them facedown on top of the parents. Then they ran right over their legs. They’re broken to hell.”

“Sonsabitches?” I said. “There was more than one?”

“At least two. Maybe more.”

“How do you know?”

“There are footprints all over the place, but it’ll take a while before we can sort it all out. The crime scene guys tell me it looks like they came in one vehicle, a large one, van or truck maybe. They drove down the road a ways and turned around. There are footprints around the tire tracks where the vehicle stopped. They lined them up next to the ditch and executed them.”

“How’d we find out about it?”

“Somebody heard gunshots and called it in. Young deputy, only been on the job four weeks, came out here and found them. He’s sitting in a cruiser over there. I tried to talk to him, but he’s too upset right now. He’s just sitting there in a daze.”

I could smell blood in the air. There was a lot of blood on the children, but I couldn’t quite see the adults. The prurient in me urged me to move closer to the bodies, to take a look at their faces. I hesitated, and Mooney sensed what I was feeling.

“You don’t want to look,” he said. “The man and the woman were both shot at least six times. Both of them were shot in the right eye. So were the children. I wish I hadn’t seen that little boy…”

His voice trailed off. I remembered that Mooney and his wife adopted an infant a few years ago. A little boy. Must be three or four years old now.

“Do we know who they are?” I asked quietly.

“We know who the man is. His name is Beck, Bjorn Beck. Thirty years old, Johnson City address. They left his wallet in his pocket. It had thirteen dollars in it.”

“Nothing on the woman?”

“Not yet. I’m assuming she’s his wife until somebody tells me otherwise. We’ve got TBI agents in Johnson City checking out the address right now. We should know something soon.”

I began to rock back and forth and stamp my feet. Even though I couldn’t see my breath, the cold felt as though it had penetrated the marrow in my bones.

“Cold, isn’t it?” Mooney said. His voice was trembling slightly.

I didn’t say anything, but I looked at him. When he looked back, I could see fear in his eyes.

“It wasn’t this cold when I left the house,” he said. “Seems like the temperature dropped twenty degrees when I got here.”

“Yeah, I felt it, too.”

“You ever hear or read anything about evil?”

It was a strange question, one that I pondered briefly. Of course I’d heard of evil. Of course I’d read about evil.

“Ever read anything about Catholic priests performing exorcisms?” Mooney continued. “They say they experience a sensation of coldness, just like this.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“What happened here was evil. The cold-blooded execution of an entire family. They didn’t take his wallet, so it wasn’t a robbery. All of them shot in the right eye. Running over their legs after they were dead.”

I looked down at my boots for a moment. I’d noticed the drop in temperature. I’d noticed the reaction of my dog. I felt the presence of something I’d never felt before, but I didn’t want to admit it or discuss it. All I wanted was to get the hell out of there.

Mooney turned towards me again. His eyes were moist, his voice still shaky. “You have to promise me something,” he said. “You have to promise me that when we find the sick bastards who did this, you’ll see to it that every one of them gets the needle. No screwups. No deals. Whoever shot those two children needs to be removed from the gene pool.”

The words hit me like scalding water. I’d spent a good portion of my legal career trying to keep the government from executing people, and now there I stood, in the dark, cold woods, listening to a man tell me I must promise to use my newly acquired power to make sure someone died. I looked at Mooney again. He was nearly in tears.

“I’ll do what’s right, Lee,” I said, “as soon as I figure out what it is.”