Joe Dillard - 02 - In Good Faith (21 page)

“Judge, we can do the scheduling without them,” I said.

“I know that!” he snapped. “Don’t you think I know that, Mr. Dillard? Do you think you’re the only person in this room who knows what’s what?”

“I didn’t mean any disrespect. Just trying to move things along.”

The judge looked out over the crowd. “You folks came to see the show,” he said. “I guess you got your money’s worth.” He turned to his clerk. “Give me a trial date. Six months.”

As the clerk looked through her calendar, I glanced over my shoulder. Natasha was still there, and she was staring at me. I didn’t hold the gaze, but over the next several minutes, as Judge Glass set the trial date, motion deadlines, expert deadlines, and plea deadlines, I periodically looked back at her. Each time, she was looking directly at me, seemingly sneering. I felt she was trying to intimidate me, and by the time we were finished and the courtroom began to clear, I was angry. I stood motionless at the table as first the judge, then the lawyers and the crowd moved out. The reporters and camera-men were packing up their gear. I continued to look in her direction. She didn’t move.

“What are you doing?” Fraley said from over my shoulder.

“Natasha’s here.” He followed my stare.

“That’s un-fucking-believable,” he said.

“She’s been staring at me since they made their scene.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but do me a favor. Shoot her if she tries to kill me.”

I started to walk towards her as the last of the crowd moved through the double doors. As I pushed through the low swinging door that separated the lawyers from the spectators, she remained perfectly still, as if she were glued to the wall, her eyes boring into me. When I was five feet away, I stopped.

“I know what you did,” I said to her. “We’ll be coming for you soon.”

Her face tightened and she moved off the wall. Her eyes were mesmerizing; I couldn’t break her stare for a full thirty seconds. She started speaking, but I couldn’t understand a word. It sounded like gibberish, but the words were being delivered with purpose, the volume steadily growing. She moved towards me. I felt a droplet of spit hit my cheek as she continued. The veins in her neck and forehead began to swell.

A strong hand closed around my bicep and pulled me in the opposite direction. I turned and realized it was Fraley. Behind him was a television camera sitting on the shoulder of a man, pointed directly at me. When I looked back, Natasha was gone.

“What did you say to her?” Fraley said as soon as I gathered my briefcase and we got out of sight of the reporters.

“I think I was trying to tell her I’m not afraid of her,” I said.

“I hate to tell you this,” Fraley said, “but it looks to me like
she’s
the one who’s not afraid.”

PART III

Wednesday, October 29

I made the news on the local CBS affiliate at six o’clock that night. Luckily, the cameraman hadn’t gotten there in time to record what I said to her. Caroline taped one of the newscasts, and we sat that night watching it over and over, trying to figure out what Natasha was saying. She spoke in what seemed to be a strange, guttural language, something I’d never heard.

The phone rang around seven. The caller ID was blocked, but I picked it up anyway. An unfamiliar woman’s voice on the other end asked to speak to Mr. Dillard.

“Who’s calling?” I said.

“I don’t want to tell you my name,” she said in a heavy Southern accent, “but I work with your sister at Godsey’s Insurance Agency. You need to go see her.”

“Beg your pardon? Did you say I need to go see her?”

“Yes. Right away. Tonight, if possible. And it would be best if you didn’t tell her you were coming.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Please, Mr. Dillard. Please go to Sarah. She needs you.”

“Crossville’s over two hours away,” I said. “I don’t think I’d be inclined to jump in the car and go down there on the basis of an anonymous phone call.”

There was a pause at the other end. I heard her draw in a deep breath.

“She’s been injured,” she said.

“Injured? Is she all right? Has she been in an accident?”

“No, I … I … You have to promise me you won’t tell her it was someone from work who called you. She’ll know it was me.”

“What’s going on?” I said. “If she’s hurt, I want to know what happened.”

“It was Robert,” she whispered. “He beat her. He beat her up.”

Her words stung me like a swarm of bees. I knew he was wrong for her. I knew he was a hothead. I was afraid something like this might happen, but I hadn’t had the guts to come out and say it to Sarah.

“Where is she?” I said, trying to remain calm.

“She’s at home. I just left there. It’s bad, especially her beautiful face.”

“Did she go to the hospital? Did she call the police?”

“She won’t do either one. She begged me not to call the police.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I’ve known Robert since he was a little boy, Mr. Dillard. I’ve been working for his daddy, and his granddaddy before that, for thirty-five years. Robert’s a bad seed. He’ll do it again.”

“No, he won’t,” I said. “I can promise you that.”

I talked to her for a couple more minutes and then thanked her for calling.

“Mr. Dillard?” she said before she hung up. “I just want to tell you that Sarah is so proud of you. She brags on you all the time.”

I hung up the phone and tried to control my anger.
Think, dumb-ass. Think. What should you do?

Caroline, who had started the chemotherapy treatments a couple of weeks earlier and had recovered well from the initial effects, wandered into the kitchen.

“Who was that?” she said.

“A friend of Sarah’s down in Crossville. She says Sarah’s boyfriend beat her up. She says I need to come down there tonight. Apparently it’s bad.”

“I’ve seen that look on your face before,” Caroline said. “What are you thinking about doing?”

“I was just asking myself that same question.”

“Why don’t you call the Crossville police?”

“Because they’ll go pick him up and take him to jail for twelve hours. They’ll charge him with a misdemeanor and let him out in the morning. He’ll go to court and swear he’ll never do it again, and they’ll slap him on the wrist and send him home.”

“Don’t you think he should go to jail?”

“I think he should suffer. I think he should feel the same pain he inflicted on Sarah. And I intend to make sure it happens.”

Caroline walked over and took my face in her hands. “I won’t try to stop you,” she said. “If you want to know the truth, I feel the same way you do. But you’re not going alone.”

“I don’t want you to go, baby,” I said. “You’re sick, and besides, I don’t want you to see what I’m going to do to him. I don’t want you to see me that way.”

“You need to take someone,” she said. “I want somebody looking out for you.”

“I’ll call Fraley.”

Just before eleven, Fraley and I rolled off the I-40 exit into Crossville. Before I left home, I looked in my Rolodex for the telephone number of the man who had been Robert Godsey’s boss at the local probation department. I reached him at home, and yes, Godsey had left a forwarding address. It would just take him a minute to get on the office database on his computer. Yes, he’d be glad to give it to me. Was I going down to visit, or was I working on a case?

Fraley had been home watching television. He was up for a road trip, he said, and after I told him why I was going, he became even more enthusiastic. I picked him up at his house, just a couple of blocks from the hospital in Johnson City.

The ride down had been largely silent as the debate raged within me about whether I was doing the right thing. I finally decided I didn’t give a damn whether it was right. It was what I was going to do. As we turned onto Live Oak Road about a half mile from Sarah’s apartment, Fraley spoke up.

“ ‘It was self-defense, Your Honor,’ ” he said. “ ‘Mr. Dillard went to confront Mr. Godsey about assaulting his sister, and Mr. Godsey attacked him. Mr. Dillard merely defended himself. I swear it on a stack of Bibles.’ ”

I turned and looked at him. He had a smile on his face.

“I appreciate this,” I said. “I’ll make it up to you sometime.”

The house Sarah rented sat atop a small knoll about fifty yards off Live Oak Road. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw her car, the used red Mustang she bought with some of the money Ma left her. The house was on a good-size lot, maybe three-quarters of an acre, surrounded by a fifteen-foot-high hemlock hedge.

“No way the neighbors would have heard anything with that hedge,” Fraley said.

“Sometimes there’s such a thing as too much privacy,” I said.

“You want me to come in with you?” Fraley said.

“Yeah. I want someone besides me to see her.”

We walked down a brick path and up a set of concrete steps, and I knocked on Sarah’s door. A brisk wind was blowing; it cut through the light nylon jacket I was wearing and I felt myself shiver. I heard footsteps beyond the door, then a rubbing sound as she leaned up against the peephole inside. There was a long silence.

“Sarah,” I said, knocking again. “Open the door.”

“What are you doing here, Joe?” she said from the other side.

“Somebody called me. Are you all right?”

“Who’s that with you?”

“A friend. He’s a police officer.”

“I don’t want any police around.”

“He’s not here to arrest anyone. He just rode along to keep me company.”

“Go away, Joe. I don’t want to talk to you right now,” she said.

“I’m not leaving, Sarah. If you don’t open the door, I swear to God I’ll kick it in.”

We stood there for a couple more minutes, until finally I heard the dead bolt slide and the doorknob turn. The door opened slightly, and I pushed my way in. Sarah had already turned and started through the house. She walked into the kitchen and stood at the sink looking out the window with her back to me, wearing a white terry-cloth bathrobe with her shiny black hair hanging over the collar. I followed, stopping at a tiled counter. Fraley stayed a few steps back in the den.

“What happened?” I said softly.

“It was stupid,” she said. “We got into an argument. I don’t even remember what it was over. We both said some things we shouldn’t have said, and then …”

I noticed there was a buzzing sound to her words, a form of pronunciation I’d never heard from her, as though she wasn’t opening her mouth all the way.

“Turn around,” I said.

Her head fell forward and her shoulders slumped.

“What are you going to do, Joe?”

“Turn around. Please.”

She turned slowly, her chin on her chest.

“Look at me,” I said.

When she lifted her chin, it was all I could do to keep from grabbing Fraley’s gun and heading straight to Robert Godsey’s house. Her left eye was swollen completely shut, an angry purple bruise spreading out like the wake from a raindrop on a pond. Both of her lips were swollen; her bottom lip had been split wide open. It looked like a puffy pink grub worm that had been chopped in half. As I moved towards her, I could see bruises on her throat. She’d obviously been choked.

“Come here,” I said, and opened my arms. She leaned against my chest and I held her close.

“It was my fault,” she said, her voice breaking. “It was my fault. You know how I get sometimes. I just don’t know when to shut up.”

I waited for her to calm down and took a step back. I reached out and lightly touched her cheek.

“I’m so sorry this happened,” I said. Rage was slowly building in me, constricting arteries, causing me to tremble slightly and my field of vision to narrow. I could feel my heart beating inside my chest. “Are you all right? Don’t you think you should go get checked out by a doctor?”

She must have sensed my anger, because she looked directly into my eyes and said, “Don’t hurt him, Joe. It isn’t worth it. I’ll be fine.”

I put my hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to go talk to him. I can’t just let this go.”

“Promise you won’t hurt him. He has problems. He didn’t mean to do it.”

“I’ll be back in a little while. In the meantime, put some things in a suitcase. You’re coming home with me.”

“No. I don’t want—”

I squeezed her shoulders tightly.

“No discussion, Sarah. He
beat
you, and I don’t care what you said, you didn’t deserve it. I’m going to go talk to him, and then I’m going to come back here and pick you up. You need to think this through for a few days, and you don’t need him around while you’re doing it.”

She let out a sigh and nodded her head. I leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Get ready to go. I’ll be back.”

“One second,” Fraley said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a digital camera. He handed the camera to me. “Take some pictures of her,” he said. “You never know when it might come in handy.”

I’d seen Godsey use his size and his belligerent demeanor to intimidate his probationers dozens of times. I guess he thought he could do the same to me, because he opened the door immediately when I knocked. He was shirtless, barrel-chested and hairy. I could see the hair on his shoulders backlit by a lamp in the den behind him as he loomed in the doorway.