Scott Pratt - Injustice for all

I find Mooney in his office, sipping coffee, fiddling with his mustache, and reading the Johnson City newspaper. He must read every word, including the obituaries and the classified ads, because he pores over it for hours every day.

“No luck,” I say as I peck on the door frame.

“No luck? What do you mean?”

“Her car’s there, her purse is on the bed along with a jacket, but she’s nowhere to be found.”

“You looked all over?”

“Twice.”

Mooney leans back in his chair and rubs his chin. “Christ, I guess we ought to start checking around to see whether anybody’s heard from her.”

“Don’t bother,” I say. “Bates is on it.”

“ Bates? What do you mean, Bates?”

“I called him.”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“Because there’s a puppy in the house that’s obviously been alone for a while. Because there’s meat spoiled in the refrigerator. Because her house is outside the city limits, so it’s his turf. Something’s wrong, Lee. Bates thinks there’s blood in the trunk of her car.”

“Bates is a redneck.”

“Bates is a good cop.”

Mooney leans forward and puts his face in his hands.

“My God,” he says, “she’s such a sweet kid. I’ll never forgive myself if something’s happened to her. And with what’s happened to Judge Green… what will people think?”

What will people think? We have a murdered judge and a young woman missing, and he’s calculating political fallout. My distaste for him is growing faster than a garden weed.

“There has to be some reasonable explanation,” I say.

“I’m the one who talked her into coming here, you know.” Mooney’s voice takes on a dreamy sort of monotone. “She gave a seminar in Nashville about the importance of compassion for victims in the district attorney’s office. She was so convincing, so persuasive. Bright, funny, attractive. When she finished, I felt like I’d been saved at a revival. I saw her in the hotel lobby a little while later and introduced myself and asked her if she’d like to have a cup of coffee. We ended up talking for a couple of hours, and I convinced her she’d love northeast Tennessee and she’d enjoy working here.”

“No offense, but what you’re saying sounds like a little more than professional interest.”

“No!” Mooney says, slamming his palm onto the desktop. His eyes open wide, and he glares at me. “Why is everybody’s mind always in the gutter? It wasn’t anything like that. I just thought she might bring some fresh air into this place. Besides, I’m not a cradle robber. I’m old enough to be her father. That’s the way I felt about her. Fatherly. Protective, you know?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted you to know where it stands.”

I leave him with his head in hands, surprised at the depth of his emotion and relieved that he didn’t mention Ramirez again. But there’s something that’s bothering me, something he said: “That’s the way I felt about her. Fatherly. Protective, you know?”

Felt about her. He’s referring to her in the past tense.

Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue.

Or maybe he knows something I don’t.

Anita White sat across the desk from Judge Ivan Glass while he read over her application for search warrants for Toni Miller’s home and Tommy Miller’s car. She’d drafted the affidavit carefully, laying out everything she knew about Ray Miller’s relationship with Judge Leonard Green, the suicide in the courtroom, the subsequent funeral, the judge’s murder, and her reasons for believing she had probable cause to search for evidence.

Anita had gone back to the Lake Harbor neighborhood and obtained a signed affidavit from Colonel Robbins, the neighbor who saw the white car. She’d gotten the nosy neighbor, Trudy Goodin, to sign an affidavit saying she’d seen Tommy Miller arrive early that morning in his white Honda. She’d also picked up a tape recording of the 911 call from the motorist who was nearly run off the road by the white car near the time of the murder and had it transcribed. She’d obtained copies of the vehicle registration from the Department of Motor Vehicles that said Tommy Miller was the owner of a white Honda Civic. She’d attached everything to her written application for the warrants. She’d done everything she could think of. Now it was up to the elderly judge to sign the warrants so she could proceed with this part of her investigation.

Anita had also followed Dillard’s suggestion and collected the judge’s computer. She’d sent it to Knoxville, but it would be at least a couple of weeks before the techs could sift through all of the information on the computer and report back to her. The investigation into people whom Green had sent to the penitentiary revealed that only two had been released in the last six months-a burglar named Wayne Timmons who’d moved to Jackson, and a nonviolent, drug-addicted check kiter named Melanie Buford. Anita didn’t think either of them a likely suspect.

She’d already contacted a detective in Durham, North Carolina, a veteran named Hakeem Ramakrishna-they called him “Rama”-and faxed him a copy of her application. Rama was doing the same thing in Durham that Anita was doing in Jonesborough. He was asking a North Carolina judge to issue a search warrant for Tommy Miller’s car and an order allowing the police to collect a DNA sample from him. Anita thought the logical place for Tommy to go would be back to Duke University.

Judge Glass finished reading, removed his tinted glasses, and began rubbing the bridge of his nose. This was the first time Anita had been in Glass’s office; the first time, in fact, she’d ever spoken to him. His reputation was that the pain medication he took for his plethora of health problems made him cranky and erratic, and that he suffered mightily from black-robe fever. But he was also known as an ally to law enforcement, a judge who would stretch the limits of probable cause.

Glass quit rubbing his nose and gave her a fierce look.

“This is pretty goddamned thin,” he said. “The core of this application is a white car. It doesn’t say what kind of car it is, what make or model; just that it’s white, that it might have been seen in the vicinity of the murder around the time it was committed, and that your suspect owns a white car. Very little specificity here.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Anita said.

She knew Glass had been around forever and had probably seen and heard every trick cops use when trying to get warrants. There was no point in trying to bullshit him.

“But when you add everything up,” Anita said, “and look at the totality of the circumstances, I think there’s enough probable cause to at least search.”

“Totality of the circumstances?” Glass said. “They teach you that at the academy?”

“I have a law degree, sir,” Anita said.

“I didn’t like the son of a bitch, you know,” Glass said.

“Beg your pardon?”

Glass leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. The folds in his neck looked like string cheese.

“Green. Didn’t like him worth a damn. You know he campaigned openly against me during my last two elections? He was jealous because I was the senior judge in the circuit. He wanted to be the big shot. But he was dumber than a coal bucket and had the personality of a goddamned salamander. And those teeth, Jesus. He could eat an ear of corn through a picket fence. I don’t know how he kept getting elected.”

Anita attempted to maintain her professionalism. She’d never heard a judge speak in such a manner. His reputation was well deserved, at least the part about being erratic and cranky.

“Whatever his shortcomings, Your Honor, I’m sure you agree he didn’t deserve the death he received.”