Scott Pratt - Injustice for all

It takes only a few minutes to go through the house. Besides the kitchen, there’s a small dining area and a den, a bedroom that has been converted into an office, another bedroom, and a bathroom. Given the way the day has gone so far, I expect to find something horrible around each corner. I step into the bedroom and see that the bed is made. A small leather purse is sitting on the pink comforter along with a red Windbreaker. There’s an empty glass in the sink in the kitchen, but aside from that and the feces and urine the puppy has deposited on a mat near the back door, the house is spotless.

I open a door off the kitchen that leads to a basement and peer down into the darkness.

“Hannah? Hannah? Are you there?”

No one answers, so I flip on the light and walk down the steps. The floor is concrete, and the walls are unpainted concrete block. There’s a washing machine and a dryer in one corner and some gardening tools in another, but otherwise the basement is empty. I go back to the kitchen and open the refrigerator. A disgusting odor makes me gag. I look around in the refrigerator and quickly find the source-an unopened package of chicken breasts that has spoiled.

I walk back through the house again, this time looking for some telltale sign of disturbance, some small clue as to what has become of the occupant. I pick up the telephone and go back through the caller ID. She’s missed five calls over the weekend. I don’t recognize any of the numbers. I see there are messages but can’t bring myself to listen to them. I already feel like I’m invading her privacy.

Nothing seems to be out of place, but something is wrong. The abandoned puppy, the foul smell in the air, the purse on the bed, the rotten chicken, the car in the driveway. I put the puppy down, hoping it might lead me to something or someone, wishing it could talk, but all it does is put its front paws up on my knees and whimper.

I pick the dog back up, walk outside, and call the sheriff’s cell phone.

Sheriff Leon Bates shows up in less than twenty minutes. Bates is immensely popular with the voters in Washington County. He’s in the final year of his first four-year term, but there is no political opposition on the horizon that will keep him from being elected again. He’s so popular that when visiting politicians come around, they make a beeline for him. They all want to kiss up to him, to have their photograph taken with him. They want to gain his favor in the hope that he’ll endorse them come election time. He has a vast network of political connections, and even includes the governor of Tennessee among his closest friends. His political aspirations go far beyond the office of county sheriff, but for now, he’s content to stay put and wait for the right opportunity to come along.

Bates is the hardest- working law enforcement officer I’ve ever known. He sleeps at the office, a habit that cost him a wife, but even she still likes him. He knows every newspaper and television reporter around, gains their confidence by being honest and straightforward, and then is smart enough to gently persuade them to do stories that cast both him and his department in a positive light. He teaches a criminal justice class at East Tennessee State University for free, and speaks at churches, civic clubs, schools, pancake breakfasts, fish fries, and spaghetti suppers. I’ve never seen it, but I feel certain he helps little old ladies cross the street. Bates is a savvy Andy Taylor, a throwback to the days when sheriffs were admired in their small communities. But he’s also a man confronted on a regular basis by real crime in a county that continues to grow and develop. I was suspect of him when we first met-a natural inclination of mine-but in the past few years I’ve come to respect him as a man and admire him as a law enforcement officer.

“Now what has my old buddy Dillard gone and got himself into today?” Bates says as he unfolds from a year-old black BMW and sets his cowboy hat atop his head at a slight angle.

“Nice ride,” I say as he walks around to the trunk and retrieves a pair of latex gloves. “When did you start driving that?”

“Last week. Took it off a meth dealer out toward Sulphur Springs.” Bates smiles, admiring the vehicle. “You’d think them drug dealers would have enough sense to lease. But this old boy paid cash, and what was once his now belongs to the Washington County Sheriff’s Department.” He chuckles under his breath. “I love taking their stuff.”

“Where’s the guy you took it from?”

“I turned him over to the federal government, which means he’ll most likely be resting and relaxing at the medium security penitentiary in Beckley, West Virginia, for the next thirty years or so. I understand the inmates up there got a nice view of the mountains. That your pup?”

“It must belong to Hannah.”

I follow Bates back toward the house. He’s mid-forties, perhaps an inch taller than I, and has the sturdy build of a farmer. His hair is medium length and light brown beneath the tan cowboy hat. He’s wearing his ever-present khaki uniform with the brown epaulets and cowboy boots. I’ve already filled Bates in on the details over the phone. He said he’s talked to Hannah Mills a few times and found her to be a “sweet little ol’ gal.”

Bates stops just short of the back door. “Say you’ve already been through the house?”

“Yeah.”

“Touch anything?”

I think for a second. Did I?

“Just the handle on the refrigerator door. Oh, and the knob on the back door… and the knob on the door leading to the basement and a light switch. And the phone.”

Bates shakes his head.

“Don’t touch anything else,” he says, and walks in. “Lord, what’s that smell?”

“Spoiled chicken.”

“Make you think twice about eating such a foul animal,” he says, smiling at his lame pun.

I follow silently as he retraces my earlier route through the house, including the basement. He grunts occasionally, but other than that, he offers no comment. When he’s finished with the house, we walk the edge of the property, finding nothing. Finally, Bates attempts to open the driver’s-side door on the Camry. It’s locked, so he walks back inside the house, reappearing a moment later with a set of keys.

“Got these out of her purse,” he says, dangling them gingerly from his latex-covered fingers.

Bates opens the door and looks through the interior of the car, then opens the trunk.

“This ain’t good,” he says.

“What?” I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

“Take a look at this.”

I walk around to where he’s standing and follow his pointing finger to a dark spot on the carpet in the trunk. The circumference of the spot is about the same as a coffee cup.

“Blood,” he says. “Bet my badge on it.”

“That could be anything,” I say.

“It ain’t anything. It’s blood.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“C’mon back here and take a peek at this.”

We walk around the car, and he points to the driver’s seat. I look at him stupidly. I have no idea what he’s trying to tell me.

“Good thing you’re a lawyer instead of a cop,” he says. “The unsolved-crime rate would skyrocket.”

“So you think there’s been a crime?”

“I think we’re gonna have some problems finding this gal,” Bates says. “And when we do find her, I’ll bet you a poke full of cash to a pig’s ear she’s gonna be dead.”

I leave Leon Bates to what he believes is his crime scene shortly thereafter. There isn’t anything I can do. He’s already put in a call to forensics, a department he’s also funded with money seized from drug dealers. He’s hired and trained specialists so he doesn’t have to go begging to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation every time he finds himself with a serious crime on his hands. His department even has a mobile minilab. It won’t surprise me if Bates winds up funding his own full- fledged lab sometime in the not-too-distant future. He’s become so proficient at arresting drug dealers that I find it hard to believe there are any left in the county. But I guess they’re like rats, multiplying in the darkness while the world around them pretends they’re under control. I take the puppy to a woman in Jonesborough who boards dogs, then drive back to the office.