Scott Pratt - An Innocent Client

Erlene held up her hand.

“I haven’t heard anything on the radio,” she said, “but I want all of you to forget about that man last night. He wasn’t here. I want every one of you to look at me, right now, and listen real careful to what I’m saying. He wasn’t here. When the TBI man comes back here or if he comes to your place and starts asking you questions, he’s going to show you a picture. And you’re going to tell him that the man in the picture was not here. Do all of you understand that?”

Everybody but Julie nodded. Julie looked at Erlene and said, “So you’re telling us to lie to a cop about a murder? Isn’t that illegal or something?”

Julie had become a problem again. A gorgeous, green-eyed redhead with a perfect body was great for business, but she was back on the cocaine and she was getting worse by the day. She was always late, always distracted, and she did outrageous, vulgar things sometimes when she danced.

Julie had also had a huge crush on Gus, even though he was old enough to be her granddaddy, and she was jealous of Erlene. Erlene finally had to fire her last year after she caught her snorting cocaine in one of the storage rooms. Julie made a huge, ugly scene and was hollering at the top of her lungs when she stormed out of the club. Erlene didn’t hear a word from her for eight months, and then maybe two months ago she called Erlene up, all sweet and apologetic. Julie told Erlene how sorry she was about Gus and said she was clean as a whistle and wanted to come back to work. She was in Texas at the time, and Erlene’s head told her to let Julie stay in Texas, but her heart said Julie was just a lost young girl who needed a job. The fact that she was good for business didn’t hurt, either.

“Nothing will happen if we stick together,” Erlene said, continuing her speech. “Do you girls have any idea what getting caught up in a big murder would do to this business? People would stay away from this place in droves. We’d all wind up on the street, including you, Miss Julie. All that money you’ve been making? Gone. Besides, I’m sure nobody in this room killed that gentleman, and I doubt very seriously if any of you has any information that would help the police. The man was a drunken fool. Every one of you saw the way he acted. He probably went somewhere else after he left here and ran into somebody who wasn’t as tolerant of his behavior as we were. So why do we need to get involved in it? If the detective asks you, just tell him the man wasn’t here and let him move on to people who might be able to help.”

“Where’s Angel?” Julie said. “She’s the one who waited on him.”

“Angel’s at home. She and I have decided that she’s not really cut out for this business. Don’t worry about Angel. She won’t say a word.” Erlene paused for a minute and looked at all of them again. “Girls, are we all on the same page?” She knew Ronnie was on the same page. She didn’t even look at him.

They all sat quietly, but they were nodding. Erlene knew mentioning the money they were making would get their attention, and besides, she treated them good. She expected a little loyalty in return.

“Julie?”

Julie popped her gum and shrugged her shoulders.

“All right, then, let’s get ready to go to work.”

April 12

6:00 p.m.

After I left the nursing home, I spent the next hour driving to Mountain City to stand next to a client who was entering a guilty plea to a reduced charge of negligent homicide in what had originally been a second-degree murder case. My client, a thirty-year-old man named Lester Hancock, had come home unexpectedly one evening to discover his best friend in bed with his wife. Lester had initially handled the dispute admirably. He simply told his buddy to get the hell out of his house and never come back. His friend left, but returned fifteen minutes later and began yelling insults at Lester from the road in front of Lester’s house. Lester yelled back. His friend grabbed a baseball bat from the bed of his pickup truck and started toward the house. Lester stepped out on the front porch and blew a hole in him with a black powder rifle. He wouldn’t have been charged had he not dragged the man inside his house and then lied to the police about the way things really happened.

The drive was spectacular in April. The angle of the sun caused the mountain peaks to reflect off of the shimmering water of Watauga Lake, and the mountains themselves were coming to life. Redbud and Bradford pear blossoms dotted the slopes with pink and white. As I wound slowly through the beautiful countryside, I thought about the question Ma had asked me earlier: “What did Raymond ever do to you?”

Almost immediately following the rape, I started overreacting to anyone who I perceived was trying to bully me. Over the next year, I got myself thrown out of school three times for fighting, and I was only in the third grade. I was afraid of being left alone and had nightmares regularly. The nightmares eased after a while, but then, when I was in the eighth grade and just starting to hit puberty, I threw my helmet at a football coach who grabbed my face mask and screamed at me when I made a mistake on a play during practice. The helmet hit him in the head. They threw me off the team and out of school for a month.

My freshman year in high school, during the time when the hormones were flowing and I felt like I wasn’t in control of anything, including my own body, I went days without sleep and fell into deep depressions. It was the first time I remember having the dream of floating down the turbulent river toward the waterfall.

And then, during my sophomore year, I met Caroline. She was beautiful, smart, funny and optimistic, and at first, I had a lot of trouble believing she wanted to have anything to do with me. But she did. She saw something in me that I didn’t see, and while I didn’t understand, I was grateful. She’d flash a smile at me or give me a sideways glance and wink and my heart would melt. Gradually, the nightmares stopped and over the next few years, I learned what it was like to enjoy life.

Caroline and I were inseparable all through high school. We both worked hard. I was an athlete, she was a dancer, and we were both good students. We both had part-time jobs. I worked on the weekends stocking groceries at a supermarket and she taught dance to kids at the studio where she took lessons. Caroline’s father was a long-haul truck driver who was hardly ever home and her mother was almost as emotionless as mine, but she never complained about either one of them. We had each other, and that was enough.

The only serious problem we had was around graduation time. Caroline wanted to get married — and so did I — but I had something else I wanted to do first. I had trouble explaining it to her, but I wanted to join the army and become a Ranger. Caroline said I was crazy, that I was somehow trying to forge a bond with my dead father. She was probably right, but it didn’t matter. I’d made up my mind. I enlisted a month after I graduated from high school and left for boot camp the same week Caroline entered college at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She said she’d wait for me, and she did. I wrote to her almost every day and I came home to see her every time I went on leave, but it was the longest three years of my life.

By the time I got out of the army, Caroline had earned an undergraduate degree in liberal arts. We were married at the Methodist church her mother attended in Johnson City the same weekend I got back, and I enrolled in school at the University of Tennessee in the fall. Caroline went to work at a dance studio owned by a former Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. She taught jazz and tap and acrobatics and choreographed routines for the dance recitals. I majored in political science and knew what I wanted to be. I was going to law school and I was going to become a prosecutor. I wanted to put people like my Uncle Raymond in jail.