“No, motherfucker!” Ramirez snaps. “I walk out of here. Now. I don’t want to spend another minute in this jail. That’s the deal.”
“If he thinks he’s walking out of here, you’re wasting my time, Roscoe,” I say to Stinnett.
“He says he has some information he thinks is worth it.”
“He could tell me who killed JonBenet Ramsey and he wouldn’t walk.”
“This is better,” Ramirez says with a smirk. “I got something you might care about personally.”
“Really? And what might that be?”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Say what?”
“That you’ll dismiss your bullshit murder charge against me if I tell you what I know.”
“Not a chance.”
Ramirez smirks at me. “She might still be alive,” he says.
I’m temporarily stunned. Could he be talking about Hannah Mills?
“You’ve figured out by now she’s gone, right?” Ramirez says. “Been gone, what, forty-eight hours or so? Ticktock.”
I fight to keep my composure. I want to rip his throat out.
“Exactly what are you talking about, Mr. Ramirez?”
“I’m talking about a little punta who may work in your office, you know? Something bad may have happened to her, and I might know something about it.”
“Is she alive?”
“Could be. Can’t really say.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Maybe.”
My mind starts racing through the possibilities. He obviously knows something about Hannah, but how? He’s been in jail. Has she been kidnapped? Maybe to get back at us for charging Ramirez with murder? Maybe some of his people are holding her for ransom. We let him go; he lets her go. That’s it. It has to be.
“I’m not going to let your client extort me,” I say to Stinnett. “If he knows something, he needs to tell me now. If the information pans out, I’ll ask the judge to take his assistance into consideration when he’s sentenced for the murder.”
“The deal is I tell you what I know about the girl and you dismiss the murder charge,” Ramirez says. “No negotiation.”
I stand up.
“Not interested. Can I talk to you outside for a minute, Roscoe?”
I push the button on the wall to let the guards know I want to leave. As I’m waiting for them to release the air lock on the door, Ramirez gives me his parting shot.
“Somebody wants her dead real bad,” he says, “and I might know who that somebody is.”
The lock releases, and Stinnett follows me back through the maze, through the lobby, and out into the parking lot. I don’t say a word until we’re clear of everyone else, and then I turn on him.
“What the hell was that?”
Stinnett looks as if he’s seen Satan himself. Sweat is running down the side of his face, and he’s gone pale.
“I swear I didn’t know what he was going to say,” Stinnett says. “He called my cell yesterday and said he wanted me to come up today. Said it was urgent. Given the fee he paid, I drove up. When he said he wanted to meet with you, I advised against it, but he insisted. I didn’t know what kind of information he had. I still don’t.”
“Do you remember Hannah Mills? She worked in the Knoxville DA’s office for a while. Victim-witness coordinator.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember her.” Roscoe is distracted, almost panicked.
“She’s missing. We just found out about it a few hours ago, and your boy is already offering information. I’m sure that’s what he’s talking about. Nobody’s seen her since Friday.”
“Sorry. Like I said, I had no idea.”
“I want you to go back in there and give him a message. You tell him if we find her dead, and if he’s withholding information that could have saved her, he won’t have to worry about a murder trial. I’ll put the word out that he’s snitching on everyone he’s ever known. He won’t live a week.”
Roscoe Stinnett hurried back into the jail and through the steel doors and bland hallways. Rafael Ramirez was still sitting at the table. Stinnett walked in and banged his fist down on the table dramatically.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy or something? I told you I had this taken care of.”
Ramirez stared at him coldly. Despite Ramirez’s being cuffed and shackled, Stinnett feared him. He was more intimidating than any defendant Stinnett had ever represented, and Stinnett had represented more than his share of sociopaths and psychopaths.
“All you have to do is be patient,” Stinnett said. “It will happen.”
“Sit your ass down, Counselor,” Ramirez said, “and don’t ever raise your voice to me again.”
Stinnett lowered himself weakly into the chair, making sure he was out of Ramirez’s reach.
“That wasn’t smart, Rafael. You could have jeopardized the whole thing.”
“You came to me with a job,” Ramirez said. “You said you needed it done quick and clean. I put you in touch with the right man. The job is done, yes?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t ask you to be patient, did I? I didn’t try to put you off. I didn’t refuse your request. I just did what you wanted me to do, and now it’s your turn to do what you promised. I want out of this place, and I want out now.”
“It’s a delicate matter. It has to be done a certain way. It has to at least appear to be legitimate. It will just take a little time.”
“I don’t have time to sit around in here,” Ramirez said. “I have work to do.”
“Just a little while longer.”
“I’ll give you a week. If I’m not out of here in a week, the next contract will be on you.”
24
Katie Dean laid her walking stick aside, took off her pack, and sat down on a fallen log to eat. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday in June 1998. The sun was shining, the temperature in the mid-sixties, the mountain air clear and crisp as the breeze rustled through the canopy above. Taking out a Baggie filled with a trail mix of peanuts, raisins, dried bananas, and chocolate, she began to munch.
“You want some?” she said to Maggie, the border collie who had become her constant outdoor companion over the past five years.
The time had passed like a single night for Katie. Her life on the small farm outside of Gatlinburg was simple. The days were long and the work was hard, but Katie had grown to love the animals, the land, and, most of all, the people who surrounded her. She kept her mother and brothers and sister close to her heart always, but she’d come to accept that Aunt Mary, Luke, and Lottie were her family now.
The awful memory of that faraway Sunday crept up on her occasionally. A couple of weeks after she moved in, Lottie had fixed fried chicken for dinner on a Friday evening. The smell sent Katie running out of the house and through the pasture, screaming. Aunt Mary had caught up with her in the old pickup truck, and after she calmed down, Katie had tearfully told Aunt Mary what she remembered about the day her family was slaughtered. She never smelled fried chicken in the house again.
There were other things that triggered nightmares sometimes; little things, such as the sound of church bells, a glimpse of someone who reminded her of one of her siblings, or the sound of shotguns firing in the fall when the hunters took to the nearby cornfields in pursuit of doves. But the reminder Katie saw most often was in the mirror, because in the place where her right breast should have been was an ugly, pink, concave scar. She’d learned to cover herself with a towel or a robe before she looked in the mirror after showering, but it was impossible not to be self-conscious. Katie had dealt with the deformity through high school by wearing a prosthetic-a “falsie,” she called it. She’d stayed away from boys and had avoided discussing it with girls until her closest friend, a townie named Amy, told her one day that nearly everyone in school had heard about what happened to her. It was a small town, Amy said. It was hard to keep secrets.
Despite the missing breast and the memories, Katie had willed herself to overcome. She forced herself to concentrate on what was good in her life, and there was plenty. Luke was her closest friend. She spent hours reading to him, watching television with him, and caring for him. Katie had learned to feed him, bathe him, and change his diapers. He quivered with excitement every time she walked in the door from school or from doing her chores around the farm. She read him stories and watched cartoons with him on Saturday mornings. Lottie had been right. He was a smart young gentleman. He communicated by different sounds from his throat and by the expressions in his eyes. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and Katie thought he was the sweetest, gentlest creature on earth.