“I do. I believe you. But you’re going to have to tell me exactly what happened so I can figure out the best way to handle it.”
She took a deep breath, and I saw tears gathering in her eyes. She started to speak, then stopped and cleared her throat. She wiped her eyes and nose with the tissue.
“We both came home from work yesterday a little after five. I fixed him some supper, but he wouldn’t eat. He was pacing around the house and kept disappearing into the bathroom. When he came out the last time, I saw a tiny white flake in his nose, and I knew. I knew he was using cocaine. I’ve used enough in my day to recognize it. No appetite, can’t sit still, irritable-he had all the symptoms.
“So I tried to talk to him about it. I asked him if there was anything he needed to tell me, if he was having problems at work, if he felt like things weren’t going to work out between us. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I mentioned the flake in his nose. He went berserk on me.”
“That’s obvious,” I said. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“They took me to the emergency room before they brought me here,” she said. “My nose is broken, and they had to stitch the cut over my eye where he hit me with the fireplace poker.”
The thought of my sister being beaten with a fireplace poker by an oversize brute enraged me, but I kept my mouth shut. The last thing Sarah needed was for me to start yelling or preaching or saying, “I told you so.”
“How many times did he hit you?” I said.
“I don’t know. A lot. When he hit me with the poker it knocked me backwards and I fell across a coffee table onto the hearth. There was one of those little shovels that you use to clean out the ashes in the fireplace, and I picked it up and swung it at him. It hit him in the side of the head and he fell. His head hit the stone, and he just lay there. I tried to help him, but he wouldn’t wake up, so I called nine-one-one.”
She dropped her head into her hands and began to weep again. I stood up and rubbed her neck, but it was obvious that the kind of pain she was experiencing was beyond anything I could hope to assuage.
“Sarah, did you tell all of this to the police?” I said.
What she had described was clearly a case of self-defense. The force she’d used in defending herself was reasonable under the circumstances, especially considering the history of the relationship and the fact that she was being attacked with a fireplace poker. The facts wouldn’t even support aggravated assault, let alone the attempted second-degree murder charge that had been filed against her.
She nodded. “I told them exactly what I told you.”
I moved back around the table and sat down.
“Listen to me,” I said. “It happened. You can’t change it now. What you can do is fight with all of your strength to make sure this doesn’t ruin the rest of your life. They’ve charged you with attempted second-degree murder, which tells me that something isn’t right. It’s a class B felony; maximum sentence is thirty years. Your bond is three hundred thousand, cash only, which is ridiculous under these circumstances. It’s also more than I can raise right now, so you’re going to be stuck here for a while. But I’m going to hire you a lawyer, a damned good one, and we’ll make sure this turns out the way it should. In the meantime, I’m going to go talk to the district attorney and find out what the hell’s going on.”
“I know what’s going on,” Sarah said. “It’s Robert’s father. He has a lot of money and he has a lot of influence around here. He’s a close friend of the district attorney’s. He brags about it all the time.”
“Great. Small-time politics and criminal justice. My favorite combination.”
Her face was battered and bruised, her green eyes glistening with tears, and my heart ached for her.
“I’m scared, Joe,” she said. “I’m really scared.”
I reached for her hands. “I know you’re scared. But have faith. I’ll make sure you get out of here. I promise.”
Less than an hour later, I walked into the reception area of the district attorney’s office in Crossville carrying the photos Fraley took the first night Godsey attacked Sarah. I also had more photos stored in my camera’s memory, photos I’d taken just before I left the jail. I’d never met District Attorney General Freeley Sells and knew nothing about him. I’d called from the car and told his secretary I needed to see him and that I’d be there in just a few minutes. As I rounded a corner, I saw a plump woman wearing a high-necked green dress who looked to be in her mid-fifties. She eyed me warily as I stood in front of her desk.
“I’m Joe Dillard,” I said. “I called earlier.”
“Mr. Sells is busy.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“He’s going to be busy all day.”
“Then I guess you and I will get to know each other pretty well, because I’m not leaving until I talk to him.”
There was a door with Sells’s name on it directly behind her desk, and I could hear someone talking. I walked around the secretary’s desk, knocked twice on the door, and opened it. I could hear her babbling behind me, but I didn’t care.
Freeley Sells was just hanging up the telephone when I walked through the door. His head was shaved and he had a bushy mustache. He reminded me of G. Gordon Liddy. He was wearing a gray suit with an American flag lapel pin just like the one Lee Mooney wore all the time. He stood as I approached.
“Who in the hell do you think you are, barging in here like this?” he said. He was short and wiry, and I could see a thick vein bulging in the middle of his forehead.
“My name is Joe Dillard.” I didn’t offer my hand. “I apologize for the intrusion, but I need to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“I know who you are, and I know what you want to talk about. I don’t have a damned thing to say to you.”
“Why are you holding my sister on a charge of attempted second-degree murder when any fool can see that she acted in self-defense?”
“Your sister nearly killed a resident of this district, a man who happens to be from a fine Christian family. Not to mention that she has a record longer than my leg.”
“My sister defended herself against a man twice her size who was using her for a punching bag. He hit her with a goddamned fireplace poker before she finally hit him back. And this wasn’t the first time he’s done it.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Are you referring to the other recent incident in which Mr. Godsey was badly beaten? He said you were the one who did it.”
“I don’t care what he said. He got what he deserved, both times.”
I held the photos of Sarah up so he could see them. He glanced at them, but quickly looked away.
“These are from the first time,” I said. “I just took some more. This one was even worse.”
“You can tell it to a jury, Mr. Dillard. A Cumberland County jury who won’t appreciate some drug-addled harlot coming into their county and attempting to kill one of their own.”
“I don’t give a damn where the jury’s from. There’s no way they’ll convict her. Did he tell you he was hopped up on cocaine?”
“The jury will convict her if I have anything to do with it,” Sells said. “I intend to try her, convict her, and send her to the penitentiary, where she belongs. Now, I’ve got work to do, Mr. Dillard. It’s time for you to leave.”
I stood there staring at him. “You have work to do? What kind of work? Is there someone else you need to railroad?”
“Get the hell out of here!” Sells roared.
I smiled at him. “You know something?” I said. “I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy showing people that you’re nothing more than a corrupt hick.”
I spun on my heel and walked out the door, hoping I could get out of the district before he thought up a reason to have me arrested. My heart was pounding as I jogged through the courthouse lobby and out the front door to my truck.
Once I cleared the county line, I started thinking about Sarah. I’d been around the legal system long enough to know that if a prosecutor was bent on convicting someone and he had a judge in his pocket who would let him bend the rules, the chances of beating him at trial were slim.