Scott Pratt - In good faith

“After the preliminary hearing went so badly, Lee got involved for a week or so,” Masters said. “One of the girls kept a diary, and Lee used it to convince the grand jury to indict Trent on ten counts of sexual abuse by an authority figure. We could have charged him with more than a hundred counts, but Lee didn’t want to spend six months at trial proving all of them. He said if everything went well, Trent would wind up with thirty years.”

“Did you say he used a diary to get the indictment?” I said.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because we can’t use it at trial.”

“We can’t? Why the hell not?”

“It’s hearsay, and it doesn’t fall under any of the exceptions to the hearsay rule.”

“So what are we going to do? We don’t have shit other than the girls’ statements.”

“I’ll figure something out. In the meantime, I want you to go back and reinterview every single employee who worked there for the three years before he was arrested. If any of them will admit to having sex with him, and if they’ll come testify, we can prove a pattern of conduct. Once you get them lined up, I want to talk to all of them.”

“Done,” Masters said.

“When you did the preliminary hearing, did you get any sense of what the defense is going to be?”

“From the way the lawyer was questioning them, it looked like he was going to make them all out to be liars.”

“So Trent is going to deny having any kind of sexual contact with any of his employees?”

“That’s what he said when I arrested him.”

“Did he give you a statement?”

“Nope. Lawyered up five minutes in. Acted like he didn’t have a care in the world.”

“Go ahead and get started on your interviews as soon as you can,” I said. “Keep in mind that in order to convict him under the authority-figure statute, we have to prove three things. We have to prove there was sexual contact between him and the girls, we have to prove the girls were between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, and we have to prove that he had supervisory power over them by virtue of his occupation. The last two will be easy, but the first one will be the key.”

“You know something?” Masters said. “Even if these girls aren’t as pure as the driven snow, no grown man should be allowed to take advantage of them like that. They’re just kids. They were only fifteen years old when he started having sex with them.”

Masters slid the evidence box across the table towards me.

“All the statements, the payroll records, and the diary are in here,” he said. “You want to take a look?”

“Give the diary back to the girl,” I said. “Have her bring it when she comes in to talk to me. I’ll read it then. I’ll take the rest of it home with me.”

Masters shrugged his shoulders and took the diary out of the box. As I’d talked to him, an idea had formed in my mind, but the less he knew about it, the better.

“Guess I’d better get to work,” Masters said as he rose, stretched, and started for the door.

“One more thing,” I said. “Why did these girls decide to come forward after all this time?”

“They didn’t come right out and say it, but I think it was jealousy more than anything else,” Masters said. “Trent let both of them go and replaced them with a couple of fifteen-year-olds. I guess he was tired of them.”

“Women scorned, huh?”

“You got it. Hell hath no fury.”

Nearly two weeks had passed since the Becks were murdered, and despite the fact that Fraley and his fellow agents were working up to fifteen, twenty hours a day, they hadn’t been able to identify a suspect. Dozens of tips had come over the CrimeStoppers line, and we’d made a public request for help, but the killers were still on the loose, and we were no closer to catching them.

On Thursday morning, Caroline and I were sitting in a tiny, cramped office inside the Johnson City Breast Care Center. A silent nurse had led us there quickly upon our arrival. As I looked around, I could see it was an office where only one person worked, probably someone who entered data into a computer. There were three chairs that looked as though they’d been placed hurriedly and haphazardly, one at the computer and two just inside the door. It was a lousy place to tell someone they had cancer, if that was what we were there for.

Caroline had already been through all the tests. Her primary-care doctor had ordered a mammogram and a chest X-ray. I’d gone with her to both appointments, although she insisted she could handle it without me. She kept telling me I should be at work, but I insisted on going with her.

The mammogram showed a suspicious shadow. The doctor who read it wasn’t able to make a diagnosis. She said from one angle, the mass looked like a benign cyst. From another angle, it looked like it could be something else. There was a 95 percent chance it was a cyst, she said, but just to be safe, she wanted a biopsy. The X-ray had been inconclusive. Caroline had gone in four days later for the biopsy. We were there for the results.

Caroline sat down in one of the chairs. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved, red T-shirt. Plain attire, but she made the jeans look fantastic. She’d been quiet on the ride into town, and there was a distance in her eyes that told me she was frightened.

“Why couldn’t they just call us?” she said. “Why do they make us come all the way up here?”

I didn’t want to think about the obvious answer to the question.

“Maybe they want to show you the lab report,” I said. “They’re probably just covering their butts from a law-suit in case something goes wrong later.”

She gave me a look of uncertainty.

“Ninety-five percent,” I said. “There’s a ninety-five-percent chance you’re clean, plus the fact that you’re young and you have no history of cancer in your family. You’re going to be fine.”

“What if it’s bad?” she said.

“If it’s bad, we deal with it. Think positive.”

There was a soft knock on the door and it opened. Into the room stepped a black-haired, thirty-something male wearing a white shirt, brown tie, and khaki pants. There was a pager on his belt. I assumed he was a doctor. Behind him was a chubby woman wearing a colorful print smock. I barely looked at her. There were now four of us in a room designed for one. I was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic.

“Mrs. Dillard?” the man said.

Caroline nodded.

“And you are…?” He looked at me.

“Her husband,” I said.

“My name is Dr. Jameson,” he said, ignoring the woman behind him.

I reached out and took Caroline’s hand. Maybe it was the somber tone of his voice, but I knew this was going to be bad.

“As you know, we’ve conducted a biopsy on the mass in your left breast. I have the results here, and I’m afraid the news isn’t what you want to hear. The tests are positive for cancer, Mrs. Dillard. Invasive ductal carcinoma. I’m sorry.”

I heard the breath rush involuntarily out of Caroline’s body. My own mind went temporarily blank, as though I’d been blasted with a thousand volts of electricity. I looked at her, she looked at me, and in that moment-that awful moment that I’ll remember until the day I die-we were connected by something I would never have dreamed possible. It was fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. Neither of us could speak.

I could see that Caroline was fighting to hold back the tears, fighting to keep her composure in front of these strangers. Dr. Doom and his assistant were hovering awkwardly. Finally, I spoke.

“Could you give us a minute?”

“Certainly,” the doctor said. He appeared relieved to have been given permission to leave the room. The two of them turned and walked out without another word.