Scott Pratt - An Innocent Client

“And you, scribe!” he continued, turning his attention to me. He voice boomed off the walls, and I could see veins popping out of his neck. He stepped through the bar toward me and bumped me with his pot belly. He was so close I could smell his breath. “How dare you blaspheme my father! I swear you’ll pay for it!”

I shoved him hard in the chest. He stumbled backwards as I heard Judge Green’s voice cut through the chaos: “Bailiffs! Arrest that man!”

“She killed my father!” he screamed as he struggled against the bailiffs. “Jezebel killed my father!”

Angel, crying hysterically, was quickly ushered into a jury room just down the hall from the courtroom. I caught up with her and gently took hold of her shoulders.

“I didn’t kill him.” Her shoulders were heaving. “Please tell that man I didn’t kill his father.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t be going anywhere near him. “Don’t worry about this. It happens. People get upset. You just try to calm down. I’ll come to the jail to see you in a couple of days.”

The bailiffs took her away, and I walked back into the courtroom. The man was now in handcuffs, standing at the podium in front of Judge Green, looking down at his shoes. The judge had apparently just finished reading him the riot act.

“I understand the emotional turmoil you’re going through,” Green said, “but you, being a chaplain and a deputy sheriff, should know we cannot tolerate that kind of behavior in court. Now go, but sin no more in my courtroom. Court’s in recess.”

Tester’s son a chaplain and a deputy? Any hopes I had of the district attorney’s office acting reasonably were out the window.

As Green disappeared into his chambers, I scanned the courtroom. Erlene Barlowe was on the back row. I motioned for her to meet me in the hallway. She was wearing a black pantsuit and had toned down the makeup for court. If I didn’t know better, I might have mistaken her for a lawyer.

“Now that we’ve done the arraignment, I can get some discovery,” I said. “Why don’t you come down to the office around four and we’ll take a look at what they’ve got.”

“I’ll be there, sugar.”

As we stood together, I looked down the hall and saw Tester’s son leaning against the wall, staring in my direction. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. It was pure hatred.

April 30

4:00 p.m.

Erlene Barlowe’s granny trained her to be punctual way before everyone in Erlene’s family disowned her because she ran off with Gus. Granny said tardiness was nothing but bad manners, and that people with bad manners lacked character. Erlene didn’t want Mr. Dillard to think she lacked character, so she arrived at his office ten minutes early.

Joe Dillard was a big, strong, good-looking man, just like Erlene’s Gus. If Erlene had been a younger woman and hadn’t been so devoted to Gus, she might have thought seriously about trying to seduce Mr. Dillard. He dressed in dark suits and colored shirts, solid-colored ties, nice shoes. His hair was jet black and wavy, just flecked here and there with gray, and he had green eyes and the cutest dimples Erlene had ever seen. He was well-spoken, too, obviously an intelligent man. Erlene thought he was a little high on the fee he charged to represent Angel, but if he got her off, it’d be worth every dime. Besides, it wasn’t like the fee was going to put Erlene in the poorhouse. If Mr. Dillard had known what she was worth, he’d have asked for twice as much. Gus made a lot of money buying and selling different things on top of what they made at the strip clubs, and he had a fortune in life insurance. When he passed, the lawyer told Erlene she was worth as much as Jed Clampett.

Mr. Dillard showed her to a seat. He had papers spread out all over the table.

“Have you talked to Angel?” he said.

“She called me a little while ago. Poor baby is scared to death. That little outburst at the courthouse didn’t help any.”

“Junior Tester’s a scary guy. Did you see him staring at me in the hallway? He looked like he wanted to cut my throat. That’s why we took the back stairs.”

He may have been scary to Mr. Dillard, but he didn’t scare Erlene. She wasn’t afraid of any man. If she’d learned anything in the adult entertainment business over the past thirty years, it was how to deal with men. She knew how to make them feel good, and she knew how to make them miserable.

Erlene knew how to deal with preachers, too. When she and Gus first came to northeast Tennessee, the preachers had all ganged up and wouldn’t let them go into business. They put pressure on county commissioners, organized rallies, talked on the news. They did whatever they could to make Erlene and Gus look bad, but the couple had been through it before. They hired good lawyers. It cost them nearly thirty thousand dollars in legal fees plus another twenty in bribes and took over a year, but they finally got their business license and all their permits. Then danged if somebody didn’t burn down their building as soon as they got it up. Erlene and Gus built another one, only to see it too go up in flames. The second time, though, Gus had hidden video surveillance cameras all around the building. Turned out the man who was burning the buildings was a preacher named Hastings. He went to jail. They left Erlene and Gus alone after that, but it didn’t change her opinion of preachers. Bunch of danged hypocrites was all they were.

“Erlene,” Mr. Dillard said, “I’ve spent the afternoon going through this discovery material. I know pretty much everything they have now, and there are a couple of things I need to talk to you about. Do you own a red Corvette?”

Dang it! Why did he have to be so direct?

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you own a red Corvette?”

“Why no, honey, I sure don’t.”

“Let me rephrase the question. On the day Tester was killed, did you own a red Corvette?”

Erlene had a feeling that before this was over, she and Mr. Dillard were going to get along like two peas in a pod, but right then she thought it best to keep a few things to herself.

“Why?” she said.

“Because the police have a witness who told them you owned a red Corvette and that it disappeared the day after Tester was murdered. That same witness also told them you and Angel left the club right after Tester left that night and neither of you came back. And they have another witness who saw a woman get out of a Corvette around midnight at Tester’s motel.”

“Well, I swan, honey pot. Who would say a thing like that?” She knew exactly who it had to be. Little Miss Julie.

“Is there any truth to it?”

“Is this conversation just between the two of us, sugar?”

“You’re not my client, Erlene. The privilege doesn’t apply, so be careful what you say.” Erlene sat back and took a deep breath, like she was nervous. “Can you tell me who the witnesses are?” she said.

“One is a night clerk at the motel named Sheila Hunt. She says she saw a Corvette pull in behind Tester around midnight and saw a woman get out of the passenger side and go up the steps with him. It was raining pretty hard and the woman was apparently wearing some kind of hooded poncho or cape, so she didn’t get a good look at her. And she didn’t see her leave. She didn’t get a tag number and couldn’t tell the cops anything about the driver.”

“That doesn’t sound like much to me.”

“It isn’t, unless the Corvette shows up somewhere down the road. Will it?”

“Who told them I owned a Corvette?” Erlene said.

“One of your employees. The night they raided your place. She said you’d been driving a red Corvette prior to Tester’s murder and that it disappeared the day after he was killed.”