”Well, I swan, honey. I must have just missed him somehow.”
”My name isn’t honey. It’s Landers. Special Agent Landers. And you’re about to find out how much I hate it when sluts lie to me.” Landers took out his phone and dialed Jimmy Brown. ”You guys ready?”
”All set. Standing outside the front door.”
”Go.”
There was a scream from the lobby, and the door banged open. SWAT guys in black combat gear and helmets came rushing in. They looked like fucking Navy SEALs. They had their weapons up and were yelling.
”Police! Get on the floor! Get on the floor!”
Landers stood up and pointed his.38 at Erlene Barlowe’s face.
”This is a raid, bitch,” he said. ”Get your hands up against that wall and don’t move until I tell you to.”
The look on her face was priceless.
April 26
11:00 a.m.
Two weeks after my birthday, I finished up a hearing on a drug case in federal court in Greeneville and had just gotten in my truck to drive back to Johnson City when I looked at my cell phone and saw a text message from Caroline: ”Call me. Urgent.”
Caroline had taken on the job as my secretary/
paralegal two years earlier, after we made the decision that I was getting out. Since I was taking fewer cases, I needed to cut down on my overhead. The classes Caroline taught at her dance studio were held in the evenings, so she volunteered. When the lease was up on my office downtown, I found my secretary a job at another law firm and moved the essentials out to my house. The move saved me almost sixty thousand dollars a year, and Caroline took an online course and got herself certified as a paralegal.
She turned out to be a quick study. I still had a small conference room downtown where I met clients, but it cost me only two hundred a month.
”What’s up?” I said when she answered the phone.
”Could be good, could be bad,” she said. ”A woman named Erlene Barlowe called early this morning. She was frantic. She said the police barged into her house and arrested a young friend of hers for murder and that she needed to hire a lawyer. She kept saying the girl couldn’t have done it.”
Right.
”She wants to meet with you. It’s been a long time since you’ve been hired privately on a murder case.”
”Billy Dockery’s mother hired me.” I’d never told anyone about Billy’s confession. Not even Caroline.
”You made a lot of money on that case, didn’t you?”
”Fifty thousand.”
”We could use it.”
”I thought we were in good shape.”
”We are, but a murder case? And this one could be big money, babe. It’s the case where the preacher was murdered. The one who was found in the motel room.”
”I don’t want to take on a murder case, high profile or not, Caroline. It could go on for years.”
”That’s why I didn’t make her an appointment.”
She sounded disappointed.
I thought about it for a minute, weighing the pros and the cons. Curiosity finally got the best of me.
”Ah, what the heck, it won’t hurt to talk to her.
Call her back and have her meet me downtown at one.”
It took me an hour to drive back to Johnson City.
I ate a quick lunch at a cafeabout two blocks from my conference room and walked in the door about ten minutes before one. There was a woman sitting at the table waiting for me. She stood when I came in. It was all I could do to keep my jaw from dropping. She was dressed in tight black spandex pants and an orange and black tiger-striped top that nearly exposed the nipples on her very substantial breasts.
Her hair was a shade of red I’d never seen before, on or off a woman’s head.
”Joe Dillard,” I said as I shook her hand. Her fingernails were at least an inch long and painted the same design as her shirt.
”Erlene Barlowe. You’re even better-looking in person than you are on television.” She smiled, and when I looked her in the eye, I saw that despite the shocking outfit, she was an attractive woman. I motioned towards the chair.
”What can I do for you, Ms. Barlowe?”
”Oh, honey, I have the most terrible problem. It’s just awful. A very close young lady friend of mine has been arrested for a crime she didn’t commit.”
”Close friend?”
”More like a daughter. I sort of took her in about a month ago.”
”Start from the beginning, Ms. Barlowe. Tell me everything you want me to know.”
”Please, sugar, call me Erlene. I suppose I should start by telling you that I own the Mouse’s Tail Gentlemen’s Club. My husband and I owned it together, but he passed away last year and now I’m running it. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you out there.”
I laughed. ”Haven’t had the pleasure. I’ve heard a lot about it, though.”
”Doesn’t surprise me. We’ve had several lawyers come and go over the years. A couple of judges, too.”
Which judges? I considered asking her, but then I decided I didn’t want to know. Screw them. Before long, I’d be moving on.
”Tell me about your friend.”
”Have you heard they made an arrest in the murder of that pastor from Newport? The one who was stabbed?”
”I think everybody’s heard.”
”She didn’t do it, Mr. Dillard. I’d swear it on a stack of Bibles. I want to hire you to represent her.”
”How do you know she didn’t do it?”
”Because I was with her all night. I drove her home from the club after her shift ended. She lives at my place and she never went out. She couldn’t have done it. And besides that, she’s the sweetest, kindest little thing you’ll ever meet. She wouldn’t so much as step on a bug, let alone kill a human being.”
Erlene Barlowe had an almost mesmerizing southern drawl and a sweet kind of charm about her. The fact that she was easy to look at, even in those wild clothes, made the conversation even more pleasant. I got the sense a few times that there might be more to Erlene than she wanted me to see, but there was something about her-maybe danger-that held my interest.
After a half hour, I glanced back over my notes.
She said she’d taken Angel Christian, the girl who was arrested, into her home after Angel showed up here on a bus with another girl, a dancer named Julie Hayes, a little over a month ago. She said Angel reminded her of her dead husband’s beautiful young daughter, who’d been killed in a car accident. I got the distinct impression she’d convinced herself that Angel was the reincarnation of the daughter. She said Angel had suffered some serious abuse at home and was a runaway. She mentioned something about Angel’s hands.
I was more than a little concerned about a few things. Erlene told me that she’d initially lied to a TBI agent I knew named Phil Landers. She said Angel Christian wasn’t the girl’s real name. She said the police had obtained a warrant to take a hair sample from Angel, or whatever her name was, and one from Erlene. That meant DNA evidence would probably be involved, and DNA almost always proved to be devastating to defendants. The police obviously had witnesses or some other evidence or they wouldn’t have been able to get the warrants. And she said something about the police searching for a missing Corvette.
But Erlene was adamant about the girl’s innocence, and if she was telling the truth, it certainly didn’t sound like Angel had either the motive or the opportunity to commit a murder. I was tempted, but not so tempted that I was willing to take on a murder case that would probably wind up going to trial. I didn’t want to waste any more of her time, and I didn’t want to just flat-out refuse her, so I decided to set the bar so high she’d either be unable or unwilling to jump it.
”Erlene, do you have any idea how much it would cost you to hire me on a case like this? A first-degree murder. I heard something about the death penalty on the radio, you know. And it’ll most likely go to trial.”
”Mr. Dillard, my husband provided well for me, both while he was alive and after he passed. Money isn’t something I’m concerned about.”