Scott Pratt - Injustice for all

“Your aunt tells me you may have some in formation.”

“Before we get into that,” Aunt Mary said, “I want assurances that there is no way this will ever come back on us. I don’t know whether you know it or not, but the sheriff protects these people. He knows what’s going on. If you tell him where your information came from, he’ll tell them. I don’t know what they might do, but I don’t care to find out.”

“The sheriff doesn’t have anything to do with this operation,” the agent said. “We’re a federal agency. We have people from state and local agencies on our task force, but we share information on a need-to-know basis only. The sheriff certainly doesn’t need to know. We’ve been aware of his activities for quite some time now. We just haven’t been able to make a case against him yet. But I assure you, if we make any kind of move based on information you or your niece provides, we won’t be talking to the sheriff about it.”

“You’re positive,” Aunt Mary said.

“It takes a lot of courage for people to do what you’re doing right now, Ms. Clinton,” Agent Rider said. “We need people like you, and we take great care to protect our witnesses.”

“Witnesses? You’re not saying that Katie will have to testify in court, are you?”

“No, ma’am. You indicated over the phone that your niece has information regarding a large field of marijuana. The chance of our actually catching someone during the raid is minimal. What will most likely happen is that we’ll cut down the marijuana that’s there and burn it on-site. If it’s as big as you indicated, it’ll cost the grower hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. We’ll be hitting them where it really hurts. Right in the pocket.”

“Do you know who this grower is?” Aunt Mary asked.

“I have a pretty good idea, but the less you know, the better.”

“All right, Katie,” Aunt Mary said, “tell him what you saw.”

Katie spent the next half hour telling Agent Rider about her experience hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and how she happened to come upon the marijuana field. Then, using a map of the park she’d brought along with her, she showed him the exact location of the field.

“Five acres? Are you sure?” Agent Rider said when she’d finished.

“Pretty sure. Maybe a little smaller, maybe a little bigger,” Katie said.

“This is impressive. Looks like we’ll have to go in by helicopter because of the terrain, which means they’ll hear us coming, but this will be one of the largest marijuana seizures we’ve ever made around here.”

A few minutes later, Agent Rider led Katie and Aunt Mary back through the room full of desks and people and to the door. Katie could feel eyes on her, and as the agent thanked them one last time at the door and said good-bye, she couldn’t help but wonder who was looking at her, what they might find out about her, and what they might do.

I wanted to check on what was happening with my son and Tommy Miller, but after my meeting with Ramirez, my first phone call is to Sheriff Bates.

“We need to meet,” I say. “Someplace private.”

“Where are you?”

“Just leaving the jail.”

“You know Highland Church?”

“Yeah.”

“Parking lot. Ten minutes.”

He’s waiting when I pull in. I get out of my truck and climb into the BMW. I tell him about the meeting with Ramirez.

“He said it was a girl who works in our office,” I say. “He knew how long she’d been missing. Before I left, he said somebody wants her dead. He said he might know who it is.”

Bates considers the information silently for a minute.

“I reckon the first question we gotta ask ourselves is how,” he says. “How does Ramirez know? It ain’t like it’s been in the papers. Hell, we just found out about it a few hours ago. So since he knows she’s gone, and he says he knows where she is, he has to be involved somehow, right?”

“I’m thinking maybe he had some of his guys kidnap her and he’s holding her for ransom. We let him out; he lets her go. That’s the deal he wants.”

“Is that what he said? Did he say he’d let her go?”

“No. He said he’d tell me what he knows. But he did say, ‘Ticktock,’ which makes me think she’s still alive.”

“Wishful thinking, Brother Dillard.”

“Do you really think she’s dead? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.”

“It ain’t good.”

“How do you think Ramirez is getting his information? He’d have to get it either over the phone or through a visitor. I don’t think Ramirez would take a chance on them listening to his phone conversations at the jail, and it’d be risky to talk to a visitor about something like this.”

“For a smart hombre, you sure can be naive sometimes,” Bates says. “Open your eyes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Who’s the only person he can he talk to without having to worry about anybody listening?”

It hits me. Stinnett. His lawyer. Stinnett is his information courier. That’s why he was acting so strangely.

“Son of a bitch,” I say.

“Don’t act so surprised. You used to do the same thing.”

“If I did, I didn’t do it intentionally.”

We sit for a moment while I ponder this latest possibility. Stinnett probably took a phone call from someone and relayed a message to Ramirez. Maybe Stinnett didn’t even know what the message meant; at least that’s what I’d like to think. Then again…

I ask Bates what he’s learned thus far.

“A little,” he says. “Whoever drove her car last was a man or a damned tall woman. When I asked you to look at the driver’s seat, I was trying to get you to notice that it was pushed all the way back. Hannah’s a short gal. And I noticed something else. She got her oil changed Friday afternoon. It was on the little sticker in the windshield, along with the mileage. When I looked at the odometer, more than a hundred miles had been put on that car since the oil change, so either she took a quick trip before she disappeared or somebody hauled her away in her own car, dumped the body, and then brought the car back.”

“You were right,” I say. “It’s a good thing I’m not a cop.”

“The key to her car had been wiped clean-not a print on it, not even hers. The inside of the car had been wiped down, too, but we lifted a partial from the exterior of the door. There was quite a bit of clay on the floor around the gas pedal, along with something else. My guys say they’re not sure yet, but they think it might be lime. Same stuff in the carpet on the passenger side. We lifted some hair and fiber from the car, and we’re still going through the house. There might be something in there, too.”

“Damn, Leon, you don’t mess around, do you?”

“Trail gets cold in a hurry. I’m gonna stay on this one until I find out what happened to her or we fall flat. The sheriff’s department doesn’t get that many murders, you know. It’s kinda fun.”

Fun. Alternate flashes of Hannah run through my mind. Flashes of her beautiful smile. The pain behind her eyes. The way her hair flipped when she turned her head. Her battered body dumped somewhere, slowly decomposing, covered by insects. I let out a long sigh.

“Sorry, brother,” Bates says. “You knew her better than I did. I guess this ain’t exactly your idea of fun, is it?”

“Not exactly. So what do you think about Ramirez? Should I make some kind of deal with him?”

“That’d be between you and your boss, wouldn’t it?”

“My boss tried to get me to dismiss the murder case against him this morning.”

Bates is silent for several seconds. He begins scratching his head, which I know is his way of manifesting confusion.