”I’m going to hyperventilate. I’m going to pee my pants. Tell me how this happened.”
”There isn’t that much to tell. The woman came in and I talked to her for a while, and then I went down to the jail and talked to the girl for a while. I actually said the words, Caroline. I actually said, ‘A quarter of a million dollars, cash, up front,’ and she didn’t flinch.
I called her after I went to the jail and she paid me.”
”I want to kiss your whole face right now,” Caroline said. ”I want to gobble you up. I want to have your babies.”
”We’ve got enough babies.”
”Oh, Joe, this is unbelievable. This takes so much pressure off of us.”
”It’s a double-edged sword. You know that.”
She was on me before I got the last syllable out of my mouth. She kissed my forehead, my lips, my eyebrows, my ears.
”I have to tell someone,” she said when she stopped kissing my whole face. ”Where’s the phone?
I have to tell my mother.”
”Don’t do that. You’ll be on the phone for an hour.
Drink your champagne and let’s just enjoy it for a minute. I have a feeling I’m going to earn every dime of it.”
I watched her as she sat grinning in the flickering light of the lamps. She peeked into the bag again.
”Can I touch it?”
”Knock yourself out. It’s your money now.”
She was as pleased as I’d ever seen her, and nothing could have given me more satisfaction.
”My God, Joe, what a relief. Now … what are we going to buy?”
”What are you talking about? You’re supposed to be the miser. We’re not buying anything. We have everything we need.”
”Let’s splurge just a little. We have to buy something.”
”No, we don’t.”
”Yes, we do.” Her eyes were bright with mischief.
”Then we have to go somewhere.”
”No.”
”We have to go to the Caymans or something when the trial’s over. You’ve always wanted to go there. Stop being such a killjoy.”
”Why don’t we worry about what we’re going to do with it tonight?”
”I know exactly what we’re going to do with it.
We’re sleeping with it. It doesn’t leave my sight until I get it in the safety deposit box tomorrow morning.
Then I’ll figure out what to do from there. Tell me about the girl. What’s she like?”
”She’s … sweet,” I said. ”She seems like a really sweet kid.”
”Is she as pretty as me?”
”Not even close.”
”Good answer.”
She held out her empty champagne glass, and I refilled it. She raised the glass.
”Here’s to pretty girls with rich friends.”
”Cheers.” I took a big swallow of the champagne.
”When’s the arraignment?”
”Monday. Nine o’clock in Jonesborough. Let’s talk about something else. It’s a beautiful evening. I’m sitting on a candlelit deck overlooking the water with a beautiful, slightly intoxicated woman. I’ve just made more money in one day than most people make in five years. Law and disorder and murder do not seem to be appropriate topics of conversation.”
”You’re right.” Caroline rose from the table and reached for my hand. ”Come with me.”
She led me inside to the bedroom.
”This is heavy,” she said, nodding toward the bag in her hand. ”Delightfully heavy.”
She tossed the bag of money into a corner, pushed me onto the bed, and began to slowly unbutton her blouse. Caroline is the only woman I’ve ever slept with. We’ve been together for so long that when it comes to making love, she knows exactly which buttons to push.
And for the next hour, she pushed every one of them.
April 27
6:00 p.m.
Agent Landers ran three miles a day, at least five days a week. It kept his body tight and helped with the hangovers. The day after he arrested the girl, he was running along Watauga Avenue in Johnson City, thinking he would’ve much rather fucked that kid than arrested her. Damn, she was hot.
She was also smart enough not to talk. Landers spent an hour in the interrogation room with her after he arrested her. All she’d say was that she wanted to talk to a lawyer.
Deacon Baker, the district attorney, had called Landers down to his office a couple of days before the arrest. Baker was nothing but a fat, stupid little prude, but he’d somehow managed to get himself elected, so he was calling the shots. Deacon told Landers he was getting a lot of pressure to make an arrest. The victim’s son was a chaplain and deputy sheriff in another county and he’d been calling three times a day. The victim also had a cousin who lived in Carter County and was active in the Republican women’s group over there, and she’d been calling.
Big fucking deal, Landers told Deacon. Let them call.
Landers didn’t have much evidence. The night they raided the Mouse’s Tail, they’d interviewed forty people. Nine of them were employees; the rest were customers. Only one person said she recognized Tester, a stripper named Julie Hayes. She said Tester came in around nine, stayed until almost midnight, and got shit-faced in between. She said he was quoting Scripture one minute and getting lap dances the next, and that he took a special interest in a waitress named Angel Christian. Hayes said the preacher and Erlene Barlowe had about a five-minute conversation around eleven thirty. As soon as they were done talking, she said the preacher went out the front door and Barlowe and Angel went out the back. Neither of them came back to the club that night. She also said that up until the day the preacher was murdered, Barlowe drove a red Corvette. The next day, she was driving the black BMW.
Nobody else in the place gave them anything they could use, which made Landers wonder whether Julie Hayes was telling the truth. Maybe she had some kind of grudge against Barlowe, or the girl, or both. But Landers wrote out her statement and she signed it. She said she was willing to testify.
The forensics team found some hair on Tester’s shirt, so Landers took the Hayes girl’s statement and parlayed it into a search warrant for Erlene Barlowe’s house the next day. He also persuaded the judge to sign an order saying that both Erlene Barlowe and Angel Christian had to give him hair samples. They hadn’t found a goddamned thing in Barlowe’s house, not even so much as a porn video. Landers took a photograph of the girl, though. She had a nasty bruise on her face.
There was no sign of a red Corvette. Landers ran Erlene Barlowe’s name through every database the TBI had. No Corvette registered to her anywhere.
He got a call from the lab a few days later. Two hairs that were found on Tester’s shirt matched the girl. That was the best evidence they had, and as far as Landers was concerned, it wasn’t much. The lab also said the preacher had a date rape drug in his system-GHB, otherwise known as Georgia Home Boy. Whoever killed him drugged him. Everybody knows you can get drugs at a strip bar, but Landers couldn’t prove the drug in the preacher’s body came from the Mouse’s Tail.
So when he went down to the DA’s office, Landers laid the case out for Deacon Baker. Two witnesses: the stripper who might have a grudge, and a clerk from the motel who saw a Corvette pull in behind Tester around midnight and
Landers was sure about that-and the others were probably lying. He had a DNA match from the Christian girl,
