to a visitors’ log and took my photograph. When he’d met all of his security requirements, he led me silently down a dim hallway, through a door made of steel bars, and into a poorly lit room with a round steel table in the center. There were four plastic chairs at the table, and I sat down. I’d been in hundreds of similar rooms, rooms painted in neutral colors and stained by nicotine and mildew. The musty air smelled of a mixture of floor wax and hot dogs. I could hear trustees rolling lunch carts down the hallway towards the cell block.
I sat nervously picking at my fingernails until I heard the unmistakable sound of shackles tinkling as the inmate shuffled towards the room. There was the sound of a muffled voice, then the metallic clang of the key turning in the lock. The door opened and a short-haired, fierce-looking female guard stepped through. She raised her nose as if to sniff me, then moved her head to the side, signaling her ward that it was okay to walk in. Without saying a word, the guard stepped back out and locked the door.
I looked at the forlorn figure before me and reached for her. Sarah, cuffed and shackled, fell into my arms and wept. I stroked her hair and listened to her desperate sobs. All I could say was, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
When the tears finally subsided, we sat across from each other at the table. The jail uniform was green- and-white striped. It looked like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie. Her face was badly bruised again, her nose swollen and purple. There was a bandage over her right eyebrow and deep scratches just beneath her throat. Her boyfriend, Robert Godsey, was lying in a hospital bed only a few blocks away with a fractured skull. His condition had been upgraded from critical to serious, and from what I’d been able to learn from the nurse on the hospital ward, it appeared that he would be okay.
“How did you get in here?” Sarah said quietly. I noticed she was clutching a wadded-up piece of tissue in her hand. “They don’t let the inmates have visitors for a week when they first come in.”
“I told them I was your lawyer,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “They don’t know me here.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Joe. You have to believe that.”
“I do. I believe you. But you’re going to have to tell me exactly what happened so I can figure out the best way to handle it.”
She took a deep breath, and I saw tears gathering in her eyes. She started to speak, then stopped and cleared her throat. She wiped her eyes and nose with the tissue.
“We both came home from work yesterday a little after five. I fixed him some supper, but he wouldn’t eat. He was pacing around the house and kept disappearing into the bathroom. When he came out the last time, I saw a tiny white flake in his nose, and I knew. I knew he was using cocaine. I’ve used enough in my day to recognize it. No appetite, can’t sit still, irritable-he had all the symptoms.
“So I tried to talk to him about it. I asked him if there was anything he needed to tell me, if he was having problems at work, if he felt like things weren’t going to work out between us. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I mentioned the flake in his nose. He went berserk on me.”
“That’s obvious,” I said. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“They took me to the emergency room before they brought me here,” she said. “My nose is broken, and they had to stitch the cut over my eye where he hit me with the fireplace poker.”
The thought of my sister being beaten with a fireplace poker by an oversize brute enraged me, but I kept my mouth shut. The last thing Sarah needed was for me to start yelling or preaching or saying, “I told you so.”
“How many times did he hit you?” I said.
“I don’t know. A lot. When he hit me with the poker it knocked me backwards and I fell across a coffee table onto the hearth. There was one of those little shovels that you use to clean out the ashes in the fireplace, and I picked it up and swung it at him. It hit him in the side of the head and he fell. His head hit the stone, and he just lay there. I tried to help him, but he wouldn’t wake up, so I called nine-one-one.”
She dropped her head into her hands and began to weep again. I stood up and rubbed her neck, but it was obvious that the kind of pain she was experiencing was beyond anything I could hope to assuage.
“Sarah, did you tell all of this to the police?” I said.
What she had described was clearly a case of self-defense. The force she’d used in defending herself was reasonable under the circumstances, especially considering the history of the relationship and the fact that she was being attacked with a fireplace poker. The facts wouldn’t even support aggravated assault, let alone the attempted second-degree murder charge that had been filed against her.
She nodded. “I told them exactly what I told you.”
I moved back around the table and sat down.
“Listen to me,” I said. “It happened. You can’t change it now. What you can do is fight with all of your strength to make sure this doesn’t ruin the rest of your life. They’ve charged you with attempted second-degree murder, which tells me that something isn’t right. It’s a class B felony; maximum sentence is thirty years. Your bond is three hundred thousand, cash only, which is ridiculous under these circumstances. It’s also more than I can raise right now, so you’re going to be stuck here for a while. But I’m going to hire you a lawyer, a damned good one, and we’ll make sure this turns out the way it should. In the meantime, I’m going to go talk to the district attorney and find out what the hell’s going on.”
“I know what’s going on,” Sarah said. “It’s Robert’s father. He has a lot of money and he has a lot of influence around here. He’s a close friend of the district attorney’s. He brags about it all the time.”
“Great. Small-time politics and criminal justice. My favorite combination.”
Her face was battered and bruised, her green eyes glistening with tears, and my heart ached for her.
“I’m scared, Joe,” she said. “I’m really scared.”
I reached for her hands. “I know you’re scared. But have faith. I’ll make sure you get out of here. I promise.”
Less than an hour later, I walked into the reception area of the district attorney’s office in Crossville carrying the photos Fraley took the first night Godsey attacked Sarah. I also had more photos stored in my camera’s memory, photos I’d taken just before I left the jail. I’d never met District Attorney General Freeley Sells and knew nothing about him. I’d called from the car and told his secretary I needed to see him and that I’d be there in just a few minutes. As I rounded a corner, I saw a plump woman wearing a high-necked green dress who looked to be in her mid-fifties. She eyed me warily as I stood in front of her desk.
“I’m Joe Dillard,” I said. “I called earlier.”
“Mr. Sells is busy.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“He’s going to be busy all day.”
“Then I guess you and I will get to know each other pretty well, because I’m not leaving until I talk to him.”
There was a door with Sells’s name on it directly behind her desk, and I could hear someone talking. I walked around the secretary’s desk, knocked twice on the door, and opened it. I could hear her babbling behind me, but I didn’t care.
Freeley Sells was just hanging up the telephone when I walked through the door. His head was shaved and he had a bushy mustache. He reminded me of G. Gordon Liddy. He was wearing a gray suit with an American flag lapel pin just like the one Lee Mooney wore all the time. He stood as I approached.
“Who in the hell do you think you are, barging in here like this?” he said. He was short and wiry, and I could see a thick vein bulging in the middle of his forehead.
“My name is Joe Dillard.” I didn’t offer my hand. “I apologize for the intrusion, but I need to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“I know who you are, and I know what you want to talk about. I don’t have a damned thing to say to you.”
“Why are you holding my sister on a charge of attempted second-degree murder when any fool can see that she acted in self-defense?”
“Your sister nearly killed a resident of this district, a man who happens to be from a fine Christian family. Not to mention that she has a record longer than my leg.”
“My sister defended herself against a man twice her size who was using her for a punching bag. He hit her with a goddamned fireplace poker before she finally hit him back. And this wasn’t the first time he’s done it.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Are you referring to the other recent incident in which Mr. Godsey was badly beaten? He said you were the one who did it.”
