Injustice for all

27

I call Caroline and ask her to meet me at the Peerless in Johnson City for dinner. The restaurant is known primarily for great steaks and Greek salads, but I’m more interested in taking advantage of one of the private rooms they offer. Caroline doesn’t mention anything about Hannah’s disappearance over the phone, so I assume she doesn’t know. The news will upset her terribly, so I decide to tell her later at home. I have something else I want to talk about at the restaurant.

I’m greeted at the door by the owner, an elderly Greek gentleman named Stenopoulos who’s owned the restaurant for forty years and still goes to work every day. He leads me down a hallway to a small, private dining room. I order two beers. Caroline shows up less than five minutes later. She’s wearing a red jacket over a black turtleneck and a short black skirt that shows off her incredible legs. She sits down across the table from me without saying hello and takes a long pull off the beer. No glass for Caroline when she’s drinking a beer; I’ve always liked that.

A waitress walks in and we order dinner. I’m not hungry-my stomach has been in knots all day-but I order a steak anyway. If I don’t eat it, I’ll take it to Rio.

“You’re angry,” I say as soon as the waitress leaves the room. No point in fencing. We might as well get down to it.

“I’m not angry. I’m scared for Tommy,” she replies.

“What did you say to Toni?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I changed my mind. What did you say to her?”

Caroline takes another drink from the beer bottle and reaches for a basket of crackers. She’s avoiding eye contact, a sure sign she’s upset.

“I told her that TBI agents were probably coming,” Caroline says. “I told her to get Tommy out of there.”

“Did she?”

“Yes. He’s gone back to school.”

“Did they show up?”

“Two of them. A black woman and a huge white guy.”

White and Norcross.

“What did she tell them?”

“Nothing. She told them to go away. She was married to a lawyer, too, you know. I didn’t have to tell her what to do.”

“Did they ask about Tommy?”

“Of course they asked about Tommy.”

Her tone is edgy, impatient. I find myself wishing we were simply having a pleasant dinner, a civil conversation. But the events of the past twenty-four hours have swept us up. All I can do now is hope no one else gets hurt.

“Caroline, I need to ask you a few questions, and I’d appreciate it if you’d be honest with me.”

“I’m always honest with you.”

She’s right. It was a stupid thing to say.

“Did you see Tommy this morning?”

She nods her head.

“Talk to him?”

“He said he needed to go home. I made him an egg sandwich.”

“How did he look?”

“You already went through this with Jack this morning, and I don’t appreciate your asking me to come out to dinner and trying to interrogate me. You said you didn’t want to know anything about my involvement. Why don’t we just keep it that way?”

“Fine, then let’s try the old lawyer’s cat and mouse game. Let’s talk hypotheticals.”

“Hypotheticals? What do you mean?”

“I’ll make a supposition and then ask you a question. It’s sort of like make-believe.”

“I know what a hypothetical is, Joe. I just don’t understand what you want from me.”

“Let’s suppose Tommy went to somebody else’s house last night, okay? Another friend’s house. And let’s say that friend’s mother just happened to see Tommy this morning. And maybe she heard him say something about where he went last night, what he did, that kind of thing. Hypothetically speaking, what do you think he might have said to her?”

I see the slightest upturn at the edge of her lips. She’s willing to play.

“Hypothetically?” she says.

I nod.

“He might have said something to her about not remembering what he did last night. He may have been drinking heavily.”

“So you don’t think Tommy would have made any admissions to her about being involved in a crime.”

“No. I don’t think he would have.”

“And do you think this woman, this friend’s mother, would have noticed any injuries of any kind on him?”

“I don’t think she would have noticed anything like that, no.”

“What about his clothing? Do you think she would have noticed anything unusual about his clothing?”

The waitress walks into the room carrying a tray with two Greek salads and two more beers. Caroline remains silent until she leaves.

“I think his clothing may have smelled bad. His shirt, his pants, his shoes.”

I sit back and let this sink in. We’re back in dangerous territory. I should change the subject, keep silent, break into song, anything but continue this line of questioning. But I have to keep going. If she’s done something she shouldn’t have done, I have to protect her, and I can’t protect her unless I know the truth. I’m reminded of the days I was practicing criminal defense. I push my salad away and lean forward on the table.

“And what might his clothes have smelled like?” I ask.

“I’m not sure. Maybe gasoline?”

Shit. My stomach churns. I can feel my mouth going dry. I gulp down a few swallows of the beer.

“Okay, now let’s be sure to stay in the hypothetical. Far, far in the hypothetical, all right? So if Tommy goes to this other friend’s house and this other friend’s mother notices that his clothing smells like some kind of fuel, do you think she might have asked him why?”

“She might have asked him what happened. He might have said he thought he must have stopped for gas somewhere when he was drunk and spilled some on his clothes, but he doesn’t remember.”

“So what else do you think might have been said?”

Caroline’s eyes lock on to mine. She seems to relax completely, as though she’s experienced some kind of spiritual awakening. Her voice is steady.

“First of all, I think this woman might believe him. Then she might ask him to take the clothing off and borrow some from her son. She might just intend to clean the shirt and shoes for him, since he and his mother have so much grief in their lives right now. She might have just been trying to be nice. She might have just been trying to help.”

“And what would she have done with his clothes?”

Caroline lifts the beer bottle to her lips, then sets it back down without drinking.

“She might have put everything in a garbage bag and taken it to the laundry room in the basement.”

I relax a little. This isn’t as bad as I thought. Even if Tommy’s clothes are in our house, she would have taken them before she knew anything about Judge Green’s murder. That doesn’t make her guilty of any crime. The question is whether she now has a legal obligation to make the police aware that she has the clothing and turn it over to them. And now that she’s told me, even hypothetically, I’m wondering whether I, too, have a legal obligation to tell the police.

“So this hypothetical clothing in this hypothetical laundry room,” I say. “Do you think it might still be there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the woman might have put the clothing in the washing machine right after the boy left. Then maybe she started fixing breakfast for her son. Her husband shows up unexpectedly and starts making wild accusations about Tommy. So after her husband leaves, maybe she does something she knows she probably shouldn’t do, but maybe she loves this boy like a son and believes with all of her heart that he didn’t commit a crime. Maybe she wants to make sure that clothing can never be used against him in any way.”

I hold up my hand to stop her. I can see it in her eyes. I know what she’s done.

“Don’t say anything else,” I say.

“After her husband leaves, maybe she makes a decision that she knows she might regret someday, but she relies on her heart. She doesn’t want to do anything to hurt her husband, but she knows, she absolutely knows, that this boy she loves so much simply couldn’t have done this terrible thing. So maybe she goes to the laundry room-”

“Please, Caroline, stop right now.”

“And she puts the clothes in the dryer. Later, she goes back to the laundry room, takes the clothes out to the burn barrel by the barn, and sets them on fire.”