An Innocent Client

I turned on the flashlight, grabbed up some rags and several pieces of wood, turned the flashlight off, and walked back outside. I piled the wood and rags up about ten feet from the shed, where Junior could see it if he looked out the back door. Then I took Caroline’s cell phone out of my pocket, turned it on, set the block function, and dialed the number I’d memorized earlier in the day. In less than ten seconds, I heard a phone ringing in the house. Once. Twice.

Three times. Four.

A light came on at the back corner of the house. I quickly doused the pile of rags and wood with the gasoline from the bottle, trailed some gasoline to a safe distance, and lit it with the lighter. The pile ignited with a whoosh. Eight rings. Nine.

I ran back towards the house and crouched down by the back stoop. Answer the phone! Answer the goddamned phone! Ten rings.

The cell phone clicked in my ear.

”Hello?”

”Junior,” I said. ”It looks like your shed’s on fire.”

”What? Who is this?”

”It looks like your shed’s on fire. I’m calling the fire department.”

I hung up, stuffed the phone back into my pocket, and waited. I could hear quick, heavy steps coming towards the back door. I stood and flattened my back against the side of the house.

Come outside. Please, come outside.

I heard the doorknob turn, and the door opened.

A form appeared on the stoop within three feet of me. It was him.

”What the …?” I heard him say.

He started down the steps. Just as he got to the bottom, I gripped the walking stick with both hands and came off the wall. I dropped to one knee and swung the stick with everything I had. There was a loud crack as the stick caught him across the shin.

He howled and fell to his knees.

I dropped the stick and threw myself at him. I managed to get my forearm beneath his chin and climbed onto his back. I got him into a strong choke hold and squeezed as hard as I could. I felt him kicking as I wrapped my legs around his torso and pulled him backwards on top of me.

He tried to reach back to claw my face, but the more he struggled, the tighter I squeezed. After fifteen seconds or so, his strength began to wane.

”Good thing I can swim,” I said quietly into his ear.

At the sound of my voice, he stiffened.

”You see how easy this was?” I said, letting up just a little. ”If you ever come near me or anyone in my family again, I swear to God I’ll kill you. They’ll never find your body.”

I tightened my grip on him again, and he passed out in less than thirty seconds. As soon as I felt him go limp, I let go and started patting him down. The front of his pajamas was soaked, and I smelled urine.

To my relief and surprise, my little ruse had worked better than I’d hoped. He didn’t even have a gun. I moved over to where I’d dropped my stick, picked it up, and then crawled back on top of him.

He opened his eyes about a minute later to find me straddling him. I’d pinned his shoulders to the ground with my knees and had the hickory stick pressed firmly against his throat. He stared at me with the same intense hatred I’d seen at the courthouse.

”Consider me your living, breathing restraining order,” I said. ”Don’t ever come near me or my family again. Do you understand?”

He began to breathe heavily and his blue eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his head.

He was like a volcano, about to explode with fury.

”You took my daddy from me!” he yelled.

What? Took your daddy? The strange comment surprised me.

”Bullshit,” I said. ”I didn’t do a damned thing to your daddy.”

”You told people he went to that terrible place!

You told people he was drowning in sin! I heard you in the courtroom.”

”I told people the truth. Your father took money from a revival and spent it at a strip club.”

”Liar! Blasphemer!” He tried to rise but I shoved down hard on the stick, cutting off his breath. He froze again, and a sudden realization came to me.

The look on his face, the outlandish comment, the pain in his voice, told me I’d shattered a powerful image, the image of a father held by a son. What was it Diane had said? ” He idolized his daddy. ” The words I’d spoken in court had apparently opened a gaping wound in his soul, and the wound was festering.

I kept the pressure on with the stick and leaned closer to him.

”Your daddy wasn’t the man you thought he was,” I said. ”That’s not my fault. I didn’t take him away from you-he did that all by himself. You remember what I said. If you come anywhere near me again, you’ll be joining your daddy. I’ll shoot you on sight.”

His eyes narrowed and bored into me. ”Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” he said, ”I shall fear no evil-”

”Shut your fucking mouth!” The words came out of me with such force that I sprayed him with spit.

I grabbed his chin with my left hand, rolled his head to the side, and pressed the stick down hard on his carotid artery. Fifteen seconds later, he was unconscious again. For a moment, I envisioned myself smashing his head to a pulp with the stick. If you kill him, you won’t have to worry about him anymore. But I couldn’t do it. I stood up, turned around, and took off running.

A half hour later, driving along in the dark silence, the anger and bravado I’d felt earlier started to subside. In my mind, I envisioned Junior’s head exploding as I beat him with the stick and relived the fleeting feeling of satisfaction the fantasy had given me. I smelled the urine and felt his labored breath on my face. I began to shake, and before long I was trembling so badly I had to pull to the side of the road.

What the hell had I just done? I’d gone to a man’s home in the middle of the night, attacked him, threatened him, and even fantasized about killing him.

But he tried to kill you.

That doesn’t matter and you know it. You’re not a goddamned vigilante. How many people have you defended who did something stupid and violent because they thought it was right? You’re rationalizing.

I thought about the look in his eyes while I was straddling him. My intention had been to scare him so badly that he’d leave me and my family alone, but that look-that angry, pained, insane look-told me I’d failed. He wasn’t afraid of me. He either hated me too much to be afraid or he was just too crazy to care. As I tried to control the trembling, I looked at myself in the rearview mirror.

”Caroline was right,” I said aloud. ”You’re as crazy as he is.”

June 23

9:20 a.m.

Agent Landers’s head was pounding, his back and shoulders aching. The little college cheerleader he’d laid hold of last night must have been more athletic than he thought. Not that he remembered much about her. He drank almost a fifth of Jim Beam.

Landers was sitting at his desk going through a box of physical evidence from the Angel Christian case. He had to meet with Joe Dillard later. Dillard had a right to inspect the physical evidence. Landers wouldn’t go to Dillard’s office and Dillard wouldn’t come to his, so they were going to meet in a conference room at the courthouse in the afternoon.

Landers was worried about the case. Deacon Baker had indicted the Christian girl without much evidence, hoping she’d either confess or roll on Erlene Barlowe. She hadn’t done either one, and now Dillard was representing her. Dillard was a prick, but he knew how to try a case. Landers knew there was a good possibility that they might lose, and to make things even worse, Judge Green had scheduled the trial a couple of weeks before the August election. If Deacon lost this case, he could very well find his ass on the outside looking in the day after the