Joe Dillard - 02 - In Good Faith (36 page)

“Leave him alone, Natasha. Let him go.”

“Or what? Are you going to shoot me?” Natasha started walking slowly towards her sister as she spoke. “You, the good daughter, the gentle soul, the Wiccan princess? You’ve never hurt anything in your life. You don’t have the strength.”

“Stop, Natasha, or I’ll pull the trigger.”

“Go ahead!” Natasha yelled. “You can’t hurt me anyway. Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know that I’m the daughter of
Satan
?”

She began to speak in the same language I’d heard at the courthouse, continuing to move towards Alisha. As she spoke, she quickened her step. Suddenly, she raised the ice pick and lunged at Alisha.

The shotgun belched fire and smoke and thunder, and Natasha was lifted off the ground. I heard a thud as she landed, and I strained to see if she was moving. Alisha dropped the shotgun and began working on the ropes holding my arms. As soon as they were free, I tried to help her loosen the ropes on my ankles, but my fingers wouldn’t work. Blood was pouring out of the wounds in my forearms, and when I tried to stand, pain and dizziness forced me back to my knees. I looked over at Natasha—she was faceup a few feet away. Her shirt was stained with dark blood.

She bleeds. I guess she’s human after all.

I crawled over to the shotgun and picked it up. The dog had suddenly grown quiet. I didn’t want to kill it, but if it broke free and came after us, I knew I wouldn’t have a choice. Alisha hooked her hand beneath my arm and helped me get to my feet. I noticed headlights coming down the road towards the driveway. I turned back and stood looking down at Natasha. My forearms felt like they were on fire, and my head felt as if it were about to explode with every beat of my heart. With Alisha still holding my arm for support, and using the shotgun as a crutch, I knelt back down next to Natasha and felt for a pulse.

Nothing.

At last, the wicked witch was dead.

“Help me get to the side of the house,” I said to Alisha as she pulled me up from my knees. “I think someone’s coming.”

The storm had lost some of its ferocity, but rain continued to fall. We got to the corner of the house just as the car pulled into the driveway. As it moved closer, I recognized the Crown Victoria. It was Leon Bates.

I turned to Alisha and gently touched her cheek. Her long hair was plastered to the sides of her face, rainwater dripping from her chin.

“You have to go now,” I said. “You have to get out of here. I don’t want him to see you.”

“What? What do you mean?” she said. She seemed to be in a state of semi-shock.

“Go in the back door, get those wet clothes off, and stay inside until they come to question you. Tell them you don’t know what happened. Tell them you were too scared to look outside.”

“But why?” she said. “I … I …”

I was thinking about Lee Mooney and Freeley Sells and their desire to see someone suffer publicly for crimes that had been committed in their district. I was thinking about political agendas and scapegoats. I was thinking about how corrupt the system could be.

“Please, Alisha, I know how things work. I’m afraid of what they might do to you. They might arrest you. They might charge you with murder. I’m not going to let it happen.”

The interior light in Bates’s car came on, and I heard the door slam.

“Go!” I said. “Please, just go inside and don’t ever say a word to anyone.”

She looked at me desperately, her face a mosaic of fear, confusion, and sadness. I saw her make the decision, and she disappeared around the corner of the house. I heard the door to the back porch creak, and I knew she was safe.

Without Alisha, I was unable to stand for more than a few seconds, and I dropped once again to my knees. The beam of a flashlight was making its way towards me slowly.

“Here!” I yelled, immediately regretting it because of the pain. The beam was on me instantly, and then Leon Bates was over me, water pouring off of the plastic cover of his cowboy hat.

“Damn, brother, are you all right?” Bates said.

“No.”

“What the hell happened here? Where is she?”

I pointed over my shoulder with my thumb. “Over there. She’s dead. Watch out for the dog.”

Bates walked immediately to the spot where Natasha lay. I watched as he surveyed the scene: the body, the tent stakes and the ropes, the shotgun, the ice pick. The Doberman didn’t make a sound. I saw Bates pick up a shovel and examine it closely with the flashlight. He looked towards the back of the house and disappeared from sight for a minute. When he returned, he stood over me again.

“You’re bleeding like a stuck hog, Dillard,” he said. “We’d best get an ambulance out here, pronto.”

He hoisted me to my feet and we made our way to his car. As he opened the back door on the passenger side, he told me to wait for a minute.

“I’ve got some plastic in the trunk,” he said. “Let me cover the seat. I don’t want you bleeding all over my damned vehicle.”

Once I was in the backseat, Bates got on the radio. I felt myself sliding towards unconsciousness. Time passed, I don’t know how much, and Bates was leaning over me again, checking my wounds.

“You gotta stay awake now,” he said. “Don’t go slipping into no coma on me.”

I was conscious of him kneeling next to me, dabbing the wounds on my arms with something. I opened my eyes and saw a first-aid kit sitting on the ground.

“Talk to me, Dillard,” he said.

I opened my eyes and tried to focus, but I felt as though the life were ebbing out of me like an ocean tide.

“Who killed her?” Bates said.

“I did,” I whispered.

“I don’t reckon that’s true, brother. Don’t take no genius to figure out what happened over there. Somebody got staked out on the ground, and judging by the blood on the ice pick and the shovel and the wounds to your head and your arms, I’m guessing it was you. I don’t reckon you was in much shape to defend yourself after she whacked you in the head with that shovel and tied you up, so somebody had to help you, and I reckon that somebody is the person who left those wet footprints on the back porch when she went in the house.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head as much as I could without passing out from the pain. “No, Leon, please don’t. Please!”

“Why?” Bates said. “Why are you doing this?”

“She saved my life,” I whispered. “She had to kill her own sister. She’s already paid enough. Please don’t throw her to the wolves. Just let her be.”

He stared at me for a long moment, his mouth slightly agape. Even in the state I was in, I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he pondered his next move. His eyes suddenly flew open wide, as though he’d experienced some kind of revelation.

“You with me? You with me, Dillard?” he said as he shook my shoulder. “You understand what I’m saying?”

I nodded as best as I could.

“All right, here’s the deal. You found Fraley’s body; you knew it had to be Natasha that killed him, so you came over here to check it out and you called me on your way. Once you got here, she ambushed you in the backyard. She staked you out and drove that ice pick through your arms. Just when she was about to finish you off, I showed up. I tried to get her to back off, but she came at me and I killed her. That makes a hell of a lot more sense, and it makes me a goddamned hero.”

“It was Fraley’s shotgun,” I whispered.

“Hell, son, I got one, too. I’ll just run up there and get Fraley’s, wipe it down real good, and put it back in his car. Where was it?”

“Trunk.”

“Okay. Now, do we have the story straight? They’ll be here any minute.”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

“No need to thank me. You owe me now, Dillard.” He popped a cold pack and set it on the back of my head.

“Yes, sir, you owe me. And believe me, one day I’ll collect.”

Six months later … Friday, May 15

I’m sitting in the vacant jury room just down the hallway from the courtroom in Jonesborough. Jim Beaumont, his blue eyes gleaming like a South Pacific island lagoon, is brushing a tear from his cheek as he recounts the story.

“You should have seen the look on his face when I plopped those photographs down on his desk.” Beaumont chortles. “He thought I was there to beg for mercy or to try to make some kind of deal. I made a deal, all right! The deal of the century!”

His laughter is infectious, and my diaphragm begins to cramp slightly as I pound the table. I’ve heard the story at least a half dozen times, but each time he tells it he enhances it a little, and I can’t get enough.

“The one with his thumb up that girl’s ass was my favorite. I nearly pissed myself when I saw it! Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!”

Prostitutes, and the younger the better.

That was the secret his retired FBI guys unearthed in Cumberland County. It took them just over two weeks to find out what was beneath Freeley Sells’s skirt, another three days to set him up and get their video and photographs. The girl cost me five thousand dollars, but I considered it money well spent.

“He wilted like an orchid in a blizzard!” Beaumont says. “I thought he was gonna run over to the jail and let Sarah out himself!”

“I surrender,” I say, holding up my hands and trying to catch my breath. “You’re killing me.”

His mood changes suddenly as something catches his eye. It takes only a second before I realize what it is. I’d taken my jacket off when we entered the room and hung it on the back of my chair. I’m wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and Beaumont is looking at the scars on my forearms.

“They’re fading,” he says.

I put my arms on the table, embarrassed. “Yeah. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“You’ve been through a lot, you and your wife.”

“We’re still standing.”

“I admire both of you.”

I passed out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital the night Natasha met her demise, and when I woke up almost twenty-four hours later, Caroline, Lilly, and Jack were all standing over me. Caroline’s white cell count had risen during the early-morning hours as quickly as it had fallen a couple of days before, and although the doctors attributed her miraculous recovery to their regimen of antibiotics, I wondered whether the true explanation was something far beyond their—and my—understanding.

Caroline has since endured a breast reconstruction and another round of chemotherapy. She still faces six weeks of radiation, but her hair is starting to come back in, and during the entire ordeal, she’s missed less than two weeks of work. I’ve loved and respected Caroline since I was a teenager, but as I watch her deal so bravely with the calamity of cancer, my respect for her grows exponentially with each passing day.

Hank Fraley’s daughter took him to Nashville to be buried less than a week after he was killed. I was still a little woozy from the blow to my head, but the family and I made it to the funeral. I was amazed at how much Fraley’s daughter, whose name is Jessica, resembled the photograph of Fraley’s wife that he’d shown me in his office. Jessica was a beautiful young woman, very gracious. I cried when they put him in the ground. He’d become a good friend, and I miss him.

Sarah was released the same day Jim Beaumont had his meeting with Freeley Sells. She’s stopped going to church. I drop by to see her at least three times a week, but she’s withdrawn and sullen. She says she hasn’t heard from Robert Godsey. I suspect she might be drinking again.

Leon Bates convinced every law enforcement agency in the region—and the media—that he killed Natasha in self-defense. A Johnson City detective came and questioned me in the hospital, but the questions were cursory and he didn’t stay long. I lied to him, but I don’t regret it. What’s right isn’t always what’s legal. Bates has since become a folk hero. He’s appeared on a half dozen national talk shows and has let the news leak that he’s thinking about running for state senator when his term as sheriff expires. He told me a couple of weeks ago he might even consider a run for the United States Senate.

I agreed to a plea deal with Alexander Dunn’s attorney. Alexander pleaded guilty to one count of accepting a bribe as a public official and agreed to serve six months in jail and another two years on probation. Despite the fact that Leon Bates told me Lee Mooney wasn’t involved in the extortion scheme, Alexander’s attorney convinced me otherwise. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to drop the hammer on Alexander, and I find it difficult to look Mooney in the eye every day.

I haven’t seen or heard from Alisha, but my experience with her and Natasha has changed me in a fundamental way. Although I still don’t believe I know the answers to questions of eternity, I’ve become much more reverent, and instead of just gazing at the rising sun each morning, which has long been my habit, I take a little time to pray.

A bailiff sticks his head through the door.

“The judge is ready for you,” he says.

I stand and put on my jacket as Beaumont does the same.

“This is certainly unusual, isn’t it?” he says.

“I guess it is.”

We walk out to the courtroom, and I take my seat at the prosecution table. Beaumont goes straight to the podium as his client steps through the bar and walks up to be arraigned.

The elderly woman Billy Dockery has attacked and robbed is in a coma, but this time he cut his hand breaking into her house and left his blood at the scene. Dockery is charged with attempted first-degree murder, burglary, and theft of over five thousand dollars.

He’s looking at forty years in prison.

I intend to make sure he gets what he deserves.

Acknowledgments

I want to sincerely thank all of the lawyers who remained my friends when it wasn’t in their best interest to do so: Jim Bowman, Bob Green, Mike LaGuardia, Jim and Debbie Lonon, Gene Scott, and especially Collins Landstreet, the guy who actually had the nerve to take up the fight. And thanks to my lifelong friend Mark Greenwell, who had the courage to sit in front of a judge and tell him the truth.

Heartfelt thanks to my mother-in-law, Ann Hodge, who propped us up when the advance money was thin but the future looked bright.