Scott Pratt - An Innocent Client

I thought about the bubbles in the headlights. Bubbles rise, Joe. Follow the bubbles. I let out some air and felt the bubbles rise across my face. I kicked for my life, and a few seconds later, I broke the surface. It was eerily quiet, but the moon gave off enough light that I could make out the features of the landscape around me. I was only about twenty feet from the steep, rocky bank where I’d gone over. I looked up to see whether whoever tried to kill me — and I knew it had to be Junior Tester — was still there. I couldn’t see or hear anyone.

Boone is a mountain lake, and the water was bone-chilling. My teeth started chattering and my hands and feet were already beginning to tingle. I knew I had to get out fast. I swam for the bank, got hold of some overhanging brush, and pulled myself up onto the rocks. I sat there for a couple of minutes, caught my breath, and tried to compose myself.

I took inventory of my body first. I didn’t seem to be hurt too badly. My ribs and chest were sore, but I didn’t think I had any broken bones. All of my joints seemed to be in working order and I didn’t have any trouble making a fist with either hand. I noticed something warm running down my face and touched it. I was bleeding from a cut above my left eye. It was tender and beginning to swell, but I didn’t think it was too serious. I looked up the bank and realized how far the truck had fallen. I was lucky to be alive.

It took me at least ten minutes to crawl up the rocky slope to the road. I crouched in some brush for several minutes. A couple of cars went by, but I was afraid to stand up and wave for fear that Junior might come back. I finally mustered the courage to get up and start walking down the asphalt road. I knew there were houses about a mile away. After about a quarter-mile, I found myself wishing I hadn’t shed my shoes.

As I walked down the road with my socks squishing and the warm blood running down the side of my face, I wondered if Junior thought he’d succeeded in killing me. What about Caroline and Lilly? Would he be crazy enough to go after one of them? I felt my heart quicken, and I began to jog.

A short time later, I made my way to a farmhouse set about a hundred yards off the road. Nearly every light in the house was on. As I climbed the steps, I looked down and noticed the front of my shirt was soaked with blood. I wondered what kind of reception I’d get when whoever answered the door saw a blood-soaked stranger wearing a tie and no shoes standing on the porch.

I knocked. A small dog immediately started yapping, and a woman who looked to be around seventy appeared at the door. She pulled the curtain aside and peered up at me through oval-shaped glasses. Her gray hair was pulled into a tight bun. A look of horror immediately came over her face — I must have looked even worse than I felt.

“What do ye want?” she yelled through the door.

“I’ve been in an accident,” I said. “I need to use your phone.”

“Air ye drunk?”

“No ma’am.”

She looked me up and down. “Soaking wet and ye ain’t got no shoes. Where’s yer shoes?”

“In the lake,” I said. “My car went into the lake. I had to swim out.”

“Ye drove yer car into the lake? What’d ye do a fool thing like that fer?”

“I didn’t mean to, ma’am. It was an accident. Please, if you could just hand the phone out the door, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Yer bleeding like a stuck hog.”

“I know. I hit my head.”

“Got a name?”

“Dillard. My name is Joe Dillard.”

“Dillard? Any kin to Hobie and Rena Dillard out Sulphur Springs?”

“I don’t think so. Please, ma’am, do you have a phone I can use?”

“Well, I reckon,” she said after a thoughtful moment. “You don’t look like a hoodlum.”

She opened the door and I stumbled in. It must have been the tie.

June 16

11:00 p.m.

I’d called Caroline from the mountain woman’s house, and she and Lilly had come to pick me up. Lilly started crying when she saw me. After I got into the car and things settled down a little, I told Caroline what happened and who I thought had pushed me into the lake.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“I’m not sure. Guess I’ll start by calling the police.”

I used Caroline’s cell phone to call 9-1-1 from the car. Mine was at the bottom of Boone Lake in the console of my truck. I told the dispatcher what had happened and that I was headed to the emergency room. She said they’d send someone up.

Since the attack had occurred in the county, jurisdiction for my attempted murder fell to the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. An investigator showed up and stood beside the gurney while a doctor stitched up my eye.

The damage amounted to a bruised sternum, a few bruised ribs, and a two-inch gash above the orbital bone that surrounded my left eye. The doctor covered the eye while he stitched, so I could only see the investigator who’d been dispatched to talk to me out of my right eye. His name was Sam Wiseman. Sam was almost seven feet tall and had to weigh in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds. He was a surly man, and he had no compunction about letting me know that he didn’t like me. His feelings stemmed from a case I’d defended a couple of years earlier. A group of teenagers had vandalized a Baptist church in the county. They broke every pane of glass in the place and threw paint and mustard and anything else they could find all over the sanctuary. By the time they were finished, they’d done more than fifty thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Sam caught the case, and unfortunately for my client, a 15-year-old girl named Delores McKinney, the church they vandalized happened to be the church that Sam attended every Sunday with his mother.

Sam insisted that every one of the juveniles go off to detention for at least a year, a demand I considered unreasonable since my client was a good student, had no record whatsoever, admitted what she’d done after she sobered up, and her parents were more than willing to reimburse the church for her share of the damages. She pleaded guilty to vandalism, and I hired a psychologist for the sentencing hearing. When the juvenile court judge heard how much the kids had to drink, heard that they stole the booze and the pills they took from their own parents, and heard the shrink testify about peer pressure and gang mentality, she put them all on probation. Sam blamed it on me.

As I lay on the gurney, I ran back through the night’s events for Sam and told him about Tester’s son and what had happened in the courtroom at Angel’s arraignment. The problem was that I hadn’t actually seen the person driving the truck either time. I didn’t even have a tag number.

“I can’t get a warrant based on what you’ve told me,” Sam said.

“I know.”

“I can find out where he lives and see if the sheriff will let me go down and talk to him tomorrow.”

“I doubt he’ll admit to anything.”

“There might be some damage on his truck, but you have to understand it’ll be hard to prove. If you’re going to accuse a sheriff’s deputy of doing something this crazy, you’re going to need more than suspicion.”

“I understand.”

Sam finished taking his notes and gruffly told me he’d make sure my insurance company got a copy of his report. The doctor finished stitching me up, and Caroline, Lilly, and I walked out the door. We started home in silence.

“What are you going to do?” Caroline asked again about ten minutes later.

“I’m not sure, but you and Lilly have to be extra careful now, do you understand? Maybe you should go away for a couple of weeks.”

“I’m not about to let some lunatic run me out of my home,” Caroline said.