“You with me? You with me, Dillard?” he said as he shook my shoulder. “You understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded as best as I could.
“All right, here’s the deal. You found Fraley’s body; you knew it had to be Natasha that killed him, so you came over here to check it out and you called me on your way. Once you got here, she ambushed you in the backyard. She staked you out and drove that ice pick through your arms. Just when she was about to finish you off, I showed up. I tried to get her to back off, but she came at me and I killed her. That makes a hell of a lot more sense, and it makes me a goddamned hero.”
“It was Fraley’s shotgun,” I whispered.
“Hell, son, I got one, too. I’ll just run up there and get Fraley’s, wipe it down real good, and put it back in his car. Where was it?”
“Trunk.”
“Okay. Now, do we have the story straight? They’ll be here any minute.”
“Thanks,” I whispered.
“No need to thank me. You owe me now, Dillard.” He popped a cold pack and set it on the back of my head.
“Yes, sir, you owe me. And believe me, one day I’ll collect.”
Six months later… Friday, May 15
I’m sitting in the vacant jury room just down the hallway from the courtroom in Jonesborough. Jim Beaumont, his blue eyes gleaming like a South Pacific island lagoon, is brushing a tear from his cheek as he recounts the story.
“You should have seen the look on his face when I plopped those photographs down on his desk.” Beaumont chortles. “He thought I was there to beg for mercy or to try to make some kind of deal. I made a deal, all right! The deal of the century!”
His laughter is infectious, and my diaphragm begins to cramp slightly as I pound the table. I’ve heard the story at least a half dozen times, but each time he tells it he enhances it a little, and I can’t get enough.
“The one with his thumb up that girl’s ass was my favorite. I nearly pissed myself when I saw it! Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!”
Prostitutes, and the younger the better.
That was the secret his retired FBI guys unearthed in Cumberland County. It took them just over two weeks to find out what was beneath Freeley Sells’s skirt, another three days to set him up and get their video and photographs. The girl cost me five thousand dollars, but I considered it money well spent.
“He wilted like an orchid in a blizzard!” Beaumont says. “I thought he was gonna run over to the jail and let Sarah out himself!”
“I surrender,” I say, holding up my hands and trying to catch my breath. “You’re killing me.”
His mood changes suddenly as something catches his eye. It takes only a second before I realize what it is. I’d taken my jacket off when we entered the room and hung it on the back of my chair. I’m wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and Beaumont is looking at the scars on my forearms.
“They’re fading,” he says.
I put my arms on the table, embarrassed. “Yeah. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“You’ve been through a lot, you and your wife.”
“We’re still standing.”
“I admire both of you.”
I passed out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital the night Natasha met her demise, and when I woke up almost twenty-four hours later, Caroline, Lilly, and Jack were all standing over me. Caroline’s white cell count had risen during the early-morning hours as quickly as it had fallen a couple of days before, and although the doctors attributed her miraculous recovery to their regimen of antibiotics, I wondered whether the true explanation was something far beyond their-and my-understanding.
Caroline has since endured a breast reconstruction and another round of chemotherapy. She still faces six weeks of radiation, but her hair is starting to come back in, and during the entire ordeal, she’s missed less than two weeks of work. I’ve loved and respected Caroline since I was a teenager, but as I watch her deal so bravely with the calamity of cancer, my respect for her grows exponentially with each passing day.
Hank Fraley’s daughter took him to Nashville to be buried less than a week after he was killed. I was still a little woozy from the blow to my head, but the family and I made it to the funeral. I was amazed at how much Fraley’s daughter, whose name is Jessica, resembled the photograph of Fraley’s wife that he’d shown me in his office. Jessica was a beautiful young woman, very gracious. I cried when they put him in the ground. He’d become a good friend, and I miss him.
Sarah was released the same day Jim Beaumont had his meeting with Freeley Sells. She’s stopped going to church. I drop by to see her at least three times a week, but she’s withdrawn and sullen. She says she hasn’t heard from Robert Godsey. I suspect she might be drinking again.
Leon Bates convinced every law enforcement agency in the region-and the media-that he killed Natasha in self-defense. A Johnson City detective came and questioned me in the hospital, but the questions were cursory and he didn’t stay long. I lied to him, but I don’t regret it. What’s right isn’t always what’s legal. Bates has since become a folk hero. He’s appeared on a half dozen national talk shows and has let the news leak that he’s thinking about running for state senator when his term as sheriff expires. He told me a couple of weeks ago he might even consider a run for the United States Senate.
I agreed to a plea deal with Alexander Dunn’s attorney. Alexander pleaded guilty to one count of accepting a bribe as a public official and agreed to serve six months in jail and another two years on probation. Despite the fact that Leon Bates told me Lee Mooney wasn’t involved in the extortion scheme, Alexander’s attorney convinced me otherwise. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to drop the hammer on Alexander, and I find it difficult to look Mooney in the eye every day.
I haven’t seen or heard from Alisha, but my experience with her and Natasha has changed me in a fundamental way. Although I still don’t believe I know the answers to questions of eternity, I’ve become much more reverent, and instead of just gazing at the rising sun each morning, which has long been my habit, I take a little time to pray.
A bailiff sticks his head through the door.
“The judge is ready for you,” he says.
I stand and put on my jacket as Beaumont does the same.
“This is certainly unusual, isn’t it?” he says.
“I guess it is.”
We walk out to the courtroom, and I take my seat at the prosecution table. Beaumont goes straight to the podium as his client steps through the bar and walks up to be arraigned.
The elderly woman Billy Dockery has attacked and robbed is in a coma, but this time he cut his hand breaking into her house and left his blood at the scene. Dockery is charged with attempted first-degree murder, burglary, and theft of over five thousand dollars.
He’s looking at forty years in prison.
I intend to make sure he gets what he deserves.