When I kissed her casket, I realized that I hadn’t ever given her a meaningful kiss. The thought made it almost impossible to keep from breaking down.
I leaned against the casket with my shoulders shaking and tried to compose myself. She’s gone and you’re still here, I said to myself. She’s gone and you’re still here. You’re alive. You have people who love you.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself….
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It was a phrase I’d heard many times, straight from my mother’s mouth, and as I stood there leaning against her casket, I knew I had to try. The same people who loved me also depended on me for strength and support. I couldn’t let them down.
”Goodbye, Ma,” I whispered. ”I’m sorry.”
I took a deep breath, straightened up, wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand, and lifted my chin. I put one arm around Caroline and the other around Lilly, and nodded to Jack.
Together, the four of us walked back down the hill towards the car in the drizzling rain, and went back to our lives.
PART III
July 24
6:15 a.m.
Agent Landers woke up in a foul mood, knowing he had to spend the next few days in a courtroom on a case he might lose, even with Dillard’s sister’s testimony. Just as he was starting to get in the shower, his cell phone rang.
Who in the hell calls at six fifteen in the morning? The caller ID said the number was blocked. What was the point in a caller ID if the person on the other end could block it? Fucking cell phone company morons.
”Landers.”
”I have some information for you.” It was a female. Landers could barely hear her.
”Who is this?”
”I used to work for Erlene Barlowe.”
”How’d you get my cell phone number?”
”Julie Hayes gave it to me. I was going to call you sooner, but when she got killed, it scared me.”
”So why aren’t you scared now?”
”Because I’m gone.”
”Tell me your name.”
”Can’t do it. You’re making a mistake. Angel didn’t kill anybody.”
”How do you know that?”
”Because I was there that night. I know what happened.”
”Are you saying Erlene killed him?”
”I don’t think you even have to ask me that question.”
”If you know something, we can protect you. You need to come back and sign a statement and testify.”
”You didn’t protect Julie.”
”You’re not helping me if you won’t come in.”
”I can help you find something you’ve been looking for.”
”I’m listening.”
”I’ll give you a hint. It’s red and has four wheels.”
”The Corvette?”
”I knew you were smart.”
”Where is it?”
”In a barn.”
”Stop playing games with me. Where’s the car?”
”Do you have a pen and a piece of paper? You’re going to need to write this down.”
Landers called Frankie Martin and told him he wouldn’t be around for jury selection in the morning, but he didn’t tell him why. Landers could tell from the tone of Martin’s voice that he was pissed off, but Landers wasn’t about to tell Frankie or anyone else where he was going. He’d been jerked around enough on the Angel Christian case. If the girl on the phone was sending him on a wild-goose chase, he was going to be the only one who knew about it.
Landers made the drive down I-181 from Johnson City to Unicoi County in thirty minutes. It was already seventy-eight degrees, and there was a thick mist hanging over everything. It was going to be hotter than hell and humid. He took the Temple Hill exit and turned onto Spivey Mountain Road.
Two miles up the mountain, Landers came to an unmarked gravel road, right where his source said it would be. He turned right and followed the gravel road through a gulley and along a tree-covered ridge.
After a mile, he came to a cattle gate that was secured by a padlock. He climbed the gate and followed the trail on foot through a stand of white pine for another quarter mile. As he broke into a clearing, Landers spotted the barn a hundred yards to his right. So far, it looked like the bitch was telling the truth.
Landers pulled his gun and walked slowly up to the barn. He saw something move in the woods to his left and froze. Must have been a deer. He peeked through the wooden slats until his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness inside. Sure enough, there it was.
A vehicle covered by a tarp. The barn door was padlocked, so Landers crawled in through an open window, walked over to the car, and lifted the tarp. A Corvette. A beautiful, red, fucking Corvette. And he could make out dark stains on the passenger seat.
The motherfucking lode. Finally.
Landers pulled a notepad from his pocket and wrote down the vehicle identification number, climbed back through the window, and jogged all the way back to his car. Sweat was pouring off of him. As soon as he got to a spot where he had a cell phone signal, he called Bill Wright and told him what he’d found. Wright said he’d arrange for two agents to secure the property. No one would go in or out until Landers did what needed to be done. Wright also said he’d call the forensics team. They’d be on the way soon.
Landers drove back down the mountain and
straight to the tax assessor’s office at the Unicoi County courthouse. They’d just opened and there was no one there besides Landers. The woman who worked there helped him find the property he’d just left on one of the tax maps. From that, Landers learned that the taxes on the property were paid by a corporation called Busty Gals, Inc.
Landers got back into his car and drove to the TBI office in Johnson City. On the way, he called the Tennessee secretary of state’s office in Nashville and asked them to fax him a copy of Busty Gals, Inc.’s, corporate charter. The incorporator was HighRide, Inc., a Delaware corporation not registered to do business in Tennessee. A phone call to the Delaware secretary of state’s office confirmed what Landers suspected. Erlene Barlowe and her dead husband owned HighRide, Inc., which meant they also owned Busty Gals, Inc. Landers faxed the Corvette’s VIN to the National Auto Theft Bureau, an arm of the insurance industry that tracked nearly every car in the country. The Corvette was also registered to HighRide, Inc. That explained why Landers hadn’t been able to get a hit from the Tennessee Department of Motor Vehicles.
Landers used all of the information he’d gathered to draft an affidavit for a search warrant for the barn.
He didn’t mention the fact that he’d trespassed onto the property on Spivey Mountain. The way he drafted the warrant made it look as though he’d done some excellent police work, which he figured he had. He found Judge Glass in his office at eleven thirty, and the judge signed the warrant.
Landers was scheduled to testify in the Angel Christian case in the afternoon, but depending on what forensics found in the barn, he knew his testimony might have to change. He kept up with the radio traffic, so he knew the forensics team hit the barn a little before one o’clock. He headed down to Jonesborough to talk to Deacon Baker.
July 24
9:00 a.m.
I found out Sarah was going to testify against Angel less than a week before the trial, when the district attorney faxed me an amended witness list and a copy of my sister’s statement. I didn’t believe a word of what I read. The statement had been taken by Phil Landers.
I was confident as I sat in the courtroom on the second floor in Jonesborough, but as always, I was a little nervous. The bailiff announced the entrance of Judge Len Green. The case of the State of Tennessee v.
Angel Christian was about to go to trial.
Seventy-seven citizens from Washington County had been summoned. From that group, we’d choose the jury that would determine Angel’s fate. I’d spend a great deal of time talking to them about being open-minded and neutral and the importance of a fair trial, but I knew the goal of jury selection was to try to make sure the trial was anything but fair. I needed to select people who were more likely to be sympathetic to Angel than to the state. The key was to talk to them as much as I could, accurately gauge their answers and reactions, and then make the right decisions.