Injustice for all

17

Anita White knew she was being stonewalled, but she wasn’t the kind to sit on her hands and wait for something to happen. With the sound of the slamming door reverberating in her ears, she walked to the neighbors on the east side of the Millers’ home and sent Norcross to the neighbors on the west side. Both agents worked their way down and across the street. An hour later they were back in the car.

“There’s always somebody in a neighborhood like this who can’t keep their nose in their own business,” Anita said as she pulled back out onto the rain-soaked street and headed for the TBI offices on Boone Street. “It never fails. This one is priceless. She lives right across the street, but she still uses binoculars. Her name’s Goodin. Trudy Goodin.”

“And what did Trudy Goodin have to say?” Norcross asked.

“Tommy didn’t come home last night. Showed up here about a half hour before we did and left about fifteen minutes later. We didn’t miss him by much.”

“Would this nosy neighbor have any idea where he might be?”

“She said he was in a hurry. Made a couple of trips in and out of the house, threw a bunch of stuff into his car, and took off. She thinks he probably went back to school.”

“And where’s school?”

“Durham, North Carolina. He goes to Duke.”

“So let’s lay this out,” Norcross said. “Our suspect’s father commits suicide in Judge Green’s courtroom less than a week ago after publicly blaming the judge for his legal and financial problems. They bury the father yesterday. Our suspect doesn’t stay at home and mourn like a normal person. He doesn’t stay home to comfort his mother or look out for her in her time of grief. He spends the night out. The judge is killed sometime during the night or early this morning. We go to our suspect’s home, and his mother is totally uncooperative, almost confrontational. She even shuts the door on us. So we canvass, and we find out from a neighbor that our suspect has arrived home this morning not long before we arrived, hurriedly thrown his belongings into his car, and left. What do you think? Enough for a warrant?”

“Not an arrest warrant, but maybe a search warrant. Especially when you add the fact that we have two sightings of a white car in or near the vicinity of the murder, around the same time as the murder, our suspect owns a white car, and our victim is a judge.”

“So we search the mother’s house? The kid’s car?”

“The house for sure. But the car could be a problem. We’ll go ahead and list the car on our warrant here, but if he’s gone back to school, he’s out of state. We’ll have to hook up with the cops over there and get a judge in North Carolina to issue a warrant.”

Anita turned to Norcross.

“How well do you know Joe Dillard?”

“Not that well on a personal level, but I’ve worked with him. The Natasha Davis case, the one where Fraley got killed. Fraley loved him. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering what you think of him.”

“I think a lot of him. He’s always been straight with me. Good lawyer. Tough guy, honest. I hear he was a Ranger in the army.”

“Know anything about his son?”

“All-American boy. Almost too good to be true. I saw him play baseball a couple of times when he was a senior in high school. He can flat-out crush it. Why are you asking about Dillard?”

“I got a weird vibe from him this morning,” Anita said. “And the nosy neighbor said Tommy Miller was wearing a bright red T-shirt with ‘Tiger Baseball’ on the front and a name and the number thirty- five on the back. Guess what the name was.”

“No clue.”

“Dillard.”