Scott Pratt - Injustice for all

About four months earlier, Ramirez made the first big mistake of his illustrious career. Based on information the task force had gathered from informants, we knew that Ramirez’s young nephew, Ramon, had come up last year from Guadalajara to learn the marijuana production and wholesale business at the elbow of Uncle Rafael. Maybe Rafael was growing tired and thinking of retirement, or maybe his business enterprise had grown so much that he needed a family member he could trust to help him run it. Either way, Ramon was chosen.

During the winter months, when business was slow, nephew Ramon had taken up residence at an apartment complex in Johnson City and had decided to take advantage of the local party scene. At a college bar called Plato’s, Ramon ran into a cocaine dealer named Roberto Sanchez. Sanchez was flashy-he drove a Porsche, tossed cash around like candy, and had a small stable of women who followed him everywhere he went. The more Ramon drank, the more jealous of Sanchez he became. When Sanchez went to the bathroom late that night, Ramon followed him and ambushed him with a pool cue.

As soon as Sanchez was released from the hospital, he set up a little ambush of his own. He waited outside Ramon’s apartment building until three in the morning, and when Ramon showed up after another night at the bar, Sanchez shot him twice. The first bullet went through Ramon’s jaw. The second one hit him as he tried to run away. It went in under his scapula and out beneath his right arm. Ramon didn’t go the hospital. Instead, he called his uncle Rafael.

It took Rafael two months to set Sanchez up. He summoned another family member from Mexico, who started hitting the bars and convinced Sanchez he was a high-level cocaine dealer. He offered Sanchez two kilos for the bargain-basement price of seventeen thousand dollars. When Sanchez went to a rural road in Washington County to buy his coke, the fake dealer was waiting for him, along with Rafael and Ramon Ramirez. Their plan was simple. They intended to kill Sanchez and take his seventeen thousand dollars. They didn’t need the money. It was the principle of the thing. Sanchez had shown great disrespect to Ramon when he shot him in the back.

But Sanchez didn’t go down without a fight. He managed to squeeze off close to thirty rounds from a Mac-9 machine pistol before he was hit twice in the head. Three of those rounds hit Rafael Ramirez: one in the neck, another in the left thigh, and a third lodged against a kidney. The fake drug dealer, who remains unidentified, was shot through the heart and died at the scene. Young Ramon was also hit, although we don’t know how many times. He left a blood trail from the passenger side of the car, where he was firing from near the front fender, to the driver’s side, where he got into the vehicle and fled. He must have been in a panic, because he left his uncle behind, along with the seventeen thousand dollars.

Uncle Rafael survived his wounds. A benevolent God and a skilled surgeon made it possible for him to continue to share his talents and his bountiful spirit with the rest of us. After convalescing in the hospital at state expense for two weeks, he was transported to the Washington County Detention Center. I’d convinced a grand jury to indict him for felony murder based on the evidence the police found at the scene.

“We’ve got enough to convict him,” I finally say to Mooney. “We’ve got a ballistics match from the slugs in Sanchez’s head to the gun that was lying next to Ramirez when the police found him. We’ve got Ramirez’s fingerprints all over the gun, and he had gunshot residue all over him. We’ve got the money from the trunk of Sanchez’s car. Some of it’s circumstantial, but it’s enough.”

“I disagree,” Mooney says, but he’s interrupted once again by his intercom. He talks for a minute and then looks up at me.

“It isn’t like her.”

“What?”

“Hannah,” he says. “It isn’t like her.”

“Hannah Mills?”

“She didn’t show up for work this morning, and she hasn’t called. How about going out to her house and checking on her?”

As if I don’t have anything else to do. Mooney is strangely dependent on me sometimes, but this seems a little over-the-top, even for him.

“Why me?” I say. “Am I a trial lawyer or an errand boy? If you think something might be wrong, why don’t you call the sheriff’s department and ask them to send a deputy?”

“Just go by and take a look around, will you? Maybe she just overslept.”

“Until one in the afternoon?”

“Just go. I’ve got enough on my mind right now.”

I sigh and start to walk out the door.

“What’s the address?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Mooney snaps. “I’ve never been to her house. Get it from Rita. And dismiss on Ramirez!”

Hannah Mills is the victim/witness coordinator for the district attorney’s office. As the title suggests, she deals with victims of crime and their families, offering comfort and reassurance, helping them through the difficult experience of dealing with the criminal justice system. She keeps them up-to-date on the prosecution, lets them know when they need to show up for court, helps them file paperwork for the victim’s relief fund if they’re eligible, and sits with them in the courtroom.

Hannah has been with us only a few months. Mooney hired her away from a similar job in the Knoxville district attorney’s office after he met her at a conference in Nashville. She’s thirty-one years old, holds a master’s degree in sociology, and is compassionate and dedicated. She’s also drop-dead gorgeous, with stunning blue eyes, a trim, athletic body, and a head of long, wavy sandy blond hair that seems to have a mind of its own.

When I first met Hannah, I sensed we had something in common. She was friendly and outgoing, but there was pain behind her blue eyes, the same kind of pain I’ve seen in the mirror. She must have sensed the same thing, because we hit it off immediately. A week after I met her, I invited her out to the house to meet Caroline. The two of them have become shopping buddies. One thing Caroline and I have both noticed about Hannah is that she never speaks of her childhood. Life for her seems to have begun after college.

The address the receptionist gives me is off Bugaboo Springs Road, a couple of miles outside of Jonesborough. It’s a small brick house surrounded by poplar trees, set about a hundred feet back from the road. The yard is neatly trimmed, and the gravel driveway is lined with red and yellow tulips. It’s an idyllic setting, especially since the storm has cleared out and the sun is shining brightly. I park my truck behind the blue Toyota Camry that belongs to Hannah and walk to the front door.

I knock a few times and immediately hear a puppy whining. I cup my hands around my face and peer through the windows in the door and, sure enough, a small puppy-it looks like a floppy-eared cocker spaniel-is scratching at the bottom of the door from the inside. Hannah’s mentioned that she picked up a puppy at the animal shelter, but I can’t remember whether she told me what she named it. I knock several more times and then try the door. It’s locked.

I walk around the house, calling Hannah’s name, looking in and knocking on the windows. There’s no movement inside, save for the puppy, which follows the sound of my voice and continues to whimper. The back door is unlocked, and I debate for a second whether I should go inside. I decide she could be sick or injured, and I open the door. An odor of urine and feces greets me along with the puppy. I pick up the puppy, and it wriggles excitedly. I look down and see two small bowls, both empty. The dog apparently hasn’t been fed or watered. I scratch its ears as I walk slowly through the kitchen and continue to call Hannah’s name.