Injustice for all

58

On Monday morning, I’m sitting at my new desk at seven o’clock sharp. I’m alone. The rest of the crew won’t arrive for another hour.

I’ve removed everything from the office that reminds me of Lee Mooney: the desk, the furniture, the photos on the wall. I’ve boxed up all of his personal property and mailed it to him. The United States and Tennessee flags that framed his desk have been moved to the reception area. The large photograph of George W. Bush has been replaced by a framed copy of the preamble to the United States Constitution. I’ve painted the walls myself. Caroline told me that Hannah Mills’s favorite color was gold and helped me pick out a shade that isn’t too bright. I’ve brought a few small framed photos of my family into the office, but outside of that, I’ve chosen to keep it sparse.

There’s a large sealed envelope on the desk in front of me. To my right is a thick file I’ve retrieved from a storage room in my house.

Last week, I made two important phone calls. One was to Brian Gant’s appellate attorney, and the other was to the director of the Tennessee Department of Correction. I was amazed at how easy it was to get the director on the phone. Being a district attorney general certainly has its advantages. Brian’s lawyer faxed me a copy of the DNA profile of evidence from the scene where Brian’s mother- in-law was murdered and his niece was raped, and the director readily agreed to run the profile through their database. All he needed was a case number, he said, and he’d see to it that it was taken care of. In less than forty-eight hours, I received a telephone call from a Department of Correction DNA specialist. She had a match to the profile I faxed her, she said. The DNA belonged to a man named Earl Gaines. He’d been convicted twice of aggravated rape and was currently serving a thirty-year sentence. I asked her whether she could send me a copy of the DOC’s records on Gaines, and she said she’d get it in the mail right away.

The package in front of me is Gaines’s records. The file to my right is Brian Gant’s. I open the package, remove the thick sheaf of papers, and begin to read them carefully. Gaines was born in 1966. He was first convicted of aggravated rape at the age of nineteen. He served ten years, and was paroled in February 1995, just two months before Brian Gant’s mother-in-law was murdered.

I find the section that contains Gaines’s parole records. They show that in February 1995, he moved in with a woman named Clara Stoots. As I look at Clara Stoots’s address, an alarm bell goes off inside my head. I grab Brian Gant’s file and quickly locate a copy of the original police report of the murder. I’m looking for the mother-in-law’s address. When I find it, I begin to slowly shake my head.

“No,” I say out loud. “No.”

Clara Stoots’s address in April 1995 was 136 Old Oak Road, Jonesborough, Tennessee. Shirley La-Guardia, Brian Gant’s mother-in-law, lived at 134 Old Oak Road, Jonesborough, Tennessee. At the time of her murder, Earl Gaines was living right next door.

I dig back through Gaines’s file, curious about one thing. Toward the bottom of the stack are several booking photos of Gaines. I fold my arms on the desk in front of me, drop my head onto them, and start slamming my fist onto the desk in anger and frustration.

As little Natalie first told the police, Gaines looked very much like Uncle Brian.