Scott Pratt - In good faith

We got settled into a booth at the Sitting Bull Cafe in Gray. Both were sleepy-eyed and wearing hoodies. Sitting there looking at them, I couldn’t help thinking how lucky I was. Their appearances were opposite-Lilly was blond, green-eyed, and feminine, while Jack was dark-haired, brown-eyed, and rugged. They’d both grown into young adults I admired and respected. They both worked hard at the things they enjoyed, they treated other people with respect, they followed their conscience, and they loved to laugh. They’d had their share of problems and made their share of mistakes, but neither had managed to do anything dumb enough to have any lingering effects. I was grateful for them.

“I want to talk to you about your mom,” I said.

“What is there to talk about?” Jack said. “It is what it is.”

“She’s looking at a long, hard road.”

Both of them nodded without looking up from their menus.

“So how do you feel about it?” I said. “How are you doing?”

Lilly set the menu down and looked at me. “I’m scared,” she said. “It’s hard to think about her having cancer. It’s hard to think about her dying.”

“She’s not going to die,” Jack said.

“She could.”

“But she won’t. She’s too tough. She’ll probably outlive all of us.”

“I’ve been doing some reading,” I said. The truth was that I hadn’t done nearly as much reading as I could have, or should have. The nurses had loaded us down with pamphlets and the Internet was full of information, but once I understood the basics, I didn’t want to read any more. It wasn’t as though I could gain any control by gaining knowledge. Like Jack said, it was what it was.

“There’s been a lot of progress in the past twenty years,” I said. “Her chances of surviving are excellent, but she’s going to go through some rough times, and she’s going to go through some changes.”

“What do you mean?” Lilly said.

“Hormonal changes. Physical changes. She’ll have to go through chemotherapy. It’ll make her sick and she won’t feel like doing much some days. She’ll probably be cranky and irritable. It might even trigger early menopause. She’ll lose her appetite. She’ll lose all of her hair. She’ll probably lose the breast.”

“Better than the alternative,” Jack said.

“Yeah, it is. But I don’t want you guys feeling sorry for her; at least, I don’t want you showing her that you feel sorry for her. We have to treat her like we’ve always treated her. We have to keep her laughing. And I don’t want either one of you using this as an excuse to feel sorry for yourselves. Your friends will be coming around asking, ‘Are you okay? I’m so sorry about your mother.’ Especially your melodramatic girlfriends, Lilly. Remember, you’re not sick. She is. I don’t want to see any Lilly pity parties going on. We’re here to help any way we can. The more we help, the easier this will be on her. The best thing you guys can do for her is to keep on doing what you’ve always done. That makes her proud. That makes her happy.”

I waited for one of them to say, “Okay, Dad, we’re with you,” or “Don’t worry, Dad, we can handle this.” Instead, Jack looked over at Lilly and said, “What’d you think of it?”

She looked back at him, puzzled. “Think of what?”

“Dad’s speech.”

She grinned. “I thought the reference to my melodramatic friends and the pity party was uncalled-for, but other than that, it wasn’t too bad.”

“A little on the corny side,” Jack said.

The waitress was approaching.

“If you two are finished busting my balls, it’s time to order,” I said.

We spent the rest of the meal talking about other things, primarily the Beck murder case, which was no closer to being solved despite the intense pressure being applied by the media and every opportunistic politician within a hundred miles. We got back to the house around eight. Caroline was still asleep. Jack and Lilly wasted no time heading back towards their own beds.

I took Rio and went for a run, washed my truck, read the newspaper, and puttered around the house until noon. I helped Caroline get lunch ready while Jack and Lilly rode into town to pick up a book Lilly needed for school. After lunch, we decided we’d drive up to Red Fork Falls in Unicoi County and do a little hiking. We were just pulling out of the driveway when my cell phone rang.

It was Lee Mooney, and the news wasn’t good.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Caroline. “I have to go.”

Another gruesome trip, first to a modest ranch-style home in a tidy neighborhood outside Jonesborough, then to a remote area near Buffalo Mountain. Two more dreamlike walks through the scenes of unspeakable crimes.

The victims were Norman Brockwell and his wife, Gladys. Gladys had been beaten and stabbed to death in her bed at their home outside of Jonesborough. Her daughter discovered the body after Norman and Gladys failed to show up for church. Norman had apparently been kidnapped and taken to Buffalo Mountain, where he’d been tied to a tree and shot a dozen times. A couple of hunters scouting deer sign for the upcoming bow season had discovered him about the same time his daughter was discovering his wife. Norman had been shot through the right eye. Gladys had been stabbed in the right eye. “Ah Satan” had been carved into Norman’s forehead. Inverted crosses had been carved into both of their necks. The Brockwells’ dog, a tiny apricot teacup poodle, had been beaten to death, probably with the butt of a pistol.

I spent most of the afternoon in a haze of shock and disbelief. At seven, I met Lee Mooney in Jonesborough. He was waiting for me in a conference room just down the hall from my office. Sitting with him at the table were Jerry Blake, the Special Agent in Charge of the TBI office in Johnson City, Hank Fraley, the agent who was running point on the Beck case, and Sheriff Bates.

All of the murders had happened in the county, which fell under Bates’s jurisdiction, but because both Bates and his lead investigators were relatively inexperienced in murder investigations, Mooney had assigned the case to the TBI. That hadn’t stopped Bates from talking to the press about the case, but up to that point, he’d been excluded from the investigation.

“I want to form a task force,” Lee Mooney said as soon as I sat down. “And I want you to head it up.”

I looked at him, incredulous, then looked around the table at the others. The TBI agents were staring down at the table. Bates was looking at the ceiling.

“Me?” I said. “What the hell do I know about heading up a task force, Lee?”

“You’re a leader. People trust your judgment. And you know how to handle the press.”

“And who would make up this task force?”

“Five or six guys from the TBI. A couple of detectives from Johnson City. The sheriff and a few of his people. We might even be able to get one of the local FBI guys involved.”

Jerry Blake was fiddling with a notepad.

“How long have you been a cop, Jerry?” I asked.

“Close to twenty-five years.”

“Ever been on a task force?”

“A couple.”

“What do you think about them? Be honest. Are they effective?”

Blake gave Mooney a sideways glance. “They’re bullshit.”

“Why?”

“Turf wars, mostly. The different agencies don’t trust one another; then they want to take credit for anything good that happens and they want to blame anything bad on somebody else. Lots of egos involved. You wind up with too many chiefs and not enough warriors. You have communication problems. Things that ought to get done don’t get done. Information that ought to be shared doesn’t get shared. It just doesn’t work very well.”