snitching on Angel.
”I thought of that a month ago,” Landers said. ”I already took a run at her. She turned me down, but I was planning to go back. Her attitude might be different now that Judge Glass threw the book at her.”
”Great minds think alike,” Baker said. ”I thought of approaching Dillard’s sister as soon as I heard about the six-year sentence. Have they shipped her off to the penitentiary yet?”
”Nah. It’s so damned crowded they don’t have a bed for her yet. She’s on a waiting list. The jail administrator told me she’d probably be around another month or so.”
”I don’t like using jailhouse snitches, but in this case, it looks like we don’t have much choice,” Baker said. ”All the polls my people have taken say the election is going to be close. I can’t afford to lose this trial.”
”What if she won’t go for it?”
”She’ll go for it. We’ll offer to let her out as soon as the trial’s over.”
”What about Judge Green? He’ll never agree.”
”Screw him. I’ll get Judge Glass to sign the agreement. He’s the one who put her in jail, and he hates Dillard. He’d love the idea of Dillard’s sister getting on the stand and frying one of Dillard’s clients. He’ll probably come to court and watch.”
Landers smiled. ”Not bad,” he said.
”I didn’t get elected to this position by being stupid.”
Landers thought of a couple of wiseass responses to the comment but chose to keep his mouth shut.
He rose to leave.
”Wait just a second, Phil,” Baker said. ”There’s one more thing we need to discuss.”
Baker didn’t come right out and say it, but over the next few minutes, he made it clear to Landers that he didn’t give a shit whether Dillard’s sister told the truth in court or not. He said he needed ”direct testimony that Angel Christian confessed to Sarah Dillard that Angel killed John Paul Tester.” Landers was authorized to offer Sarah a get-out-of-jail-free card in return for her ”truthful” testimony.
The more Landers thought about the idea of Dillard’s sister as the star witness against Dillard’s client, the more he liked it. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Dillard’s face when his sister stepped up on the witness stand and helped the state convict Angel Christian of murder. And Dillard would have to go after sis hard on cross- examination. What a fucking show
Since Baker gave Landers the impression he wasn’t going to be too particular about the truth, Landers figured he’d make the process a little easier. Before they brought Dillard’s sister into the interview room at the jail, he sat down and wrote out a statement, wording it in the way Landers thought would help the most. If Sarah Dillard signed the statement, Landers would leave her a copy and she could use her time in the cell to memorize it. Then, when she took the witness stand at the trial, all she’d have to do was repeat what she’d memorized. It would be perfect.
Landers looked up and smiled when the guard brought Sarah in. She nodded in return, a good sign.
She looked pretty damned hot.
”I thought it might be you,” she said.
”I hear you’re about to be shipped off to the pen.
Bet you’re looking forward to that.”
”About as much as I’m looking forward to my next enema.”
”I heard what your brother did to you. It’s a damned shame. I don’t see how anybody could send their own flesh and blood to a place like the women’s prison in Nashville. Doesn’t he know how bad it is down there?”
”He doesn’t seem to care.”
”And how does that make you feel?”
”Pissed off.”
”Pissed off enough to help us?”
”What’s in it for me?”
”In exchange for your testimony, your sentence will be reduced to time served, plus you get to make your brother look bad.”
She sat back and thought about it, but it didn’t take her long. She took a deep breath and looked Landers in the eye.
”Tell me what you want me to do,” she said.
Landers slid the statement across the table, and she started to read.
July 16
9:20 a.m.
Maynard Bush’s arraignment on the new charges of killing Bonnie Tate and the Bowers twins in Mountain City had taken only fifteen minutes, but it was fifteen of the most intense minutes of my life. The courtroom was packed with relatives and friends of Darren and David Bowers. Judge Glass was at his most belligerent, Maynard at his most flippant. He wouldn’t stop smiling. I wanted to crawl under the defense table and hide until it was over.
The people of Johnson County didn’t understand that I’d been appointed to represent Maynard Bush by a heartless judge who dumped terrible cases on me for his private amusement. What they understood was that I was dressed in a suit, standing beside and speaking on behalf of a sociopath who’d killed two of their own. If they’d known that Maynard had manipulated me into helping him escape, they’d have strung me up right then and there.
I’d parked my truck a block from the courthouse in an alley. As soon as the arraignment was over, I grabbed my briefcase and headed straight for the back stairs. Once I got to the bottom, I jogged across the spot where David Bowers was shot, got to my truck as quickly as I could, and drove the hell out of Johnson County.
Judge Glass’s plan was to arraign Maynard in Mountain City in the morning and in Elizabethton-
for the murder of his mother in Carter County-in the afternoon. The two towns were forty-five minutes apart. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve enjoyed the drive. The road wound through the Cherokee National Forest and along Watauga Lake, which acted as a gigantic mirror for the surrounding mountains. The views were breathtaking. There were times in the past when I might have stopped along the way to take in the scenery, but today I didn’t even notice.
I drove all the way back home and went through the mail. There was an opinion from the Supreme Court on Randall Finch’s case. The opinion said Randall had a right to plead guilty at arraignment, and if the state hadn’t bothered to file their death notice in a timely manner, too bad. I couldn’t believe it. I’d won. For once, they put the sophistry aside and used a little common sense. I was pleased until I thought about what I’d really done-helped a baby killer escape the death penalty.
I returned a few phone calls and drove over to Elizabethton. I tried to eat lunch at a coffee shop on Main Street, but I only picked at the food. Ever since Maynard had killed the Bowers twins, I’d lost my appetite. Food made me nauseous. And I was having trouble making myself work out. Exercise had always been an important part of my daily life. Exercise produced endorphins, and endorphins made me feel good. But I didn’t seem to care about feeling good.
I was having more trouble sleeping than ever, and when I looked at myself in the mirror in the mornings, I noticed circles under my eyes that seemed to be getting darker with each passing day.
After I paid the check at the coffee shop, I headed for the Carter County Courthouse, a truly unique structure. I don’t know who the architect was, but the taxpayers should have taken him out and shot him the day he decided it would be a good idea to build the jail directly above the courthouse. It may have seemed like a grand idea at the time, but the reality soon set in. The inmates quickly realized that they could flood the jail by stuffing rolls of toilet paper into the commodes. They also realized that the raw sewage overflowing and spilling onto the floors soon seeped into the courtrooms and clerks’ offices below. I could imagine some inmate having just been sentenced to ten years heading back to his cell and dropping a little shit of his own onto the judge below. It happened often enough that the place smelled like an outhouse.
When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw an ambulance with its lights flashing near the sally port at the jail. There were also several patrol cars, all with their lights flashing. Somehow, I knew what had happened. Instead of heading inside to the smelly courtroom, I parked and walked directly towards the ambulance.
They were bringing someone out on a gurney just as I turned up the sidewalk towards the sally port.
Several police officers were milling around the door that led to the jail. A short, burly female paramedic with
