I nod.
“He might have said something to her about not remembering what he did last night. He may have been drinking heavily.”
“So you don’t think Tommy would have made any admissions to her about being involved in a crime.”
“No. I don’t think he would have.”
“And do you think this woman, this friend’s mother, would have noticed any injuries of any kind on him?”
“I don’t think she would have noticed anything like that, no.”
“What about his clothing? Do you think she would have noticed anything unusual about his clothing?”
The waitress walks into the room carrying a tray with two Greek salads and two more beers. Caroline remains silent until she leaves.
“I think his clothing may have smelled bad. His shirt, his pants, his shoes.”
I sit back and let this sink in. We’re back in dangerous territory. I should change the subject, keep silent, break into song, anything but continue this line of questioning. But I have to keep going. If she’s done something she shouldn’t have done, I have to protect her, and I can’t protect her unless I know the truth. I’m reminded of the days I was practicing criminal defense. I push my salad away and lean forward on the table.
“And what might his clothes have smelled like?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. Maybe gasoline?”
Shit. My stomach churns. I can feel my mouth going dry. I gulp down a few swallows of the beer.
“Okay, now let’s be sure to stay in the hypothetical. Far, far in the hypothetical, all right? So if Tommy goes to this other friend’s house and this other friend’s mother notices that his clothing smells like some kind of fuel, do you think she might have asked him why?”
“She might have asked him what happened. He might have said he thought he must have stopped for gas somewhere when he was drunk and spilled some on his clothes, but he doesn’t remember.”
“So what else do you think might have been said?”
Caroline’s eyes lock on to mine. She seems to relax completely, as though she’s experienced some kind of spiritual awakening. Her voice is steady.
“First of all, I think this woman might believe him. Then she might ask him to take the clothing off and borrow some from her son. She might just intend to clean the shirt and shoes for him, since he and his mother have so much grief in their lives right now. She might have just been trying to be nice. She might have just been trying to help.”
“And what would she have done with his clothes?”
Caroline lifts the beer bottle to her lips, then sets it back down without drinking.
“She might have put everything in a garbage bag and taken it to the laundry room in the basement.”
I relax a little. This isn’t as bad as I thought. Even if Tommy’s clothes are in our house, she would have taken them before she knew anything about Judge Green’s murder. That doesn’t make her guilty of any crime. The question is whether she now has a legal obligation to make the police aware that she has the clothing and turn it over to them. And now that she’s told me, even hypothetically, I’m wondering whether I, too, have a legal obligation to tell the police.
“So this hypothetical clothing in this hypothetical laundry room,” I say. “Do you think it might still be there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the woman might have put the clothing in the washing machine right after the boy left. Then maybe she started fixing breakfast for her son. Her husband shows up unexpectedly and starts making wild accusations about Tommy. So after her husband leaves, maybe she does something she knows she probably shouldn’t do, but maybe she loves this boy like a son and believes with all of her heart that he didn’t commit a crime. Maybe she wants to make sure that clothing can never be used against him in any way.”
I hold up my hand to stop her. I can see it in her eyes. I know what she’s done.
“Don’t say anything else,” I say.
“After her husband leaves, maybe she makes a decision that she knows she might regret someday, but she relies on her heart. She doesn’t want to do anything to hurt her husband, but she knows, she absolutely knows, that this boy she loves so much simply couldn’t have done this terrible thing. So maybe she goes to the laundry room-”
“Please, Caroline, stop right now.”
“And she puts the clothes in the dryer. Later, she goes back to the laundry room, takes the clothes out to the burn barrel by the barn, and sets them on fire.”
28
Three days after Katie Dean visited the DEA agent, Aunt Mary called her into the den from the kitchen.
“They just did a teaser for the news about a big drug bust,” Aunt Mary said. “I think this might be it.”
Katie sat on the edge of Luke’s bed. A male reporter appeared on the TV screen. He was wearing a camouflage uniform and holding a microphone. He was outdoors. Behind him was a wall of gray smoke.
“Local law enforcement authorities are saying this marijuana field is the biggest ever discovered in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” the reporter said. “Agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department descended from helicopters into this five-acre field early this morning after receiving a tip from an anonymous informant. More than twenty- five hundred plants have been cut and burned. Police estimate the marijuana’s wholesale value at more than three and a half million dollars. The street value is estimated at close to ten million dollars. Sevier County Sheriff Hobart Brackens says the marijuana was most likely meant for out-of-state buyers.”
A heavy man with jowls like a bulldog came onto the screen. He was wearing a cowboy hat with a silver star on it. Beneath his face were the words “Sheriff Hobart Brackens.”
“An operation like this has to be a wholesaler,” the sheriff said. “We’ve had information in the past that marijuana growers were operating in these mountains, but until now, we’ve never been able to find any of the patches.”
Aunt Mary turned off the television set.
“There,” she said matter-of-factly. “What’s done is done. I don’t want anyone in this house to speak of it ever again.”
The firebomb came through Katie’s bedroom window the next week. It was two in the morning on a Thursday. Katie had watched an Atlanta Braves baseball game with Luke before straggling off to bed around eleven. She was dreaming of swimming at the base of a massive waterfall in the bright sunshine, surrounded by brightly colored fish, when the sound of breaking glass and igniting fuel jolted her awake.
It took several seconds for her to realize the bedroom was on fire. The Molotov cocktail had landed against the wall near the door and exploded. The flames were already raging by the time Katie ripped the covers back and jumped to her feet. She heard men shouting outside her window, then heard more windows crash downstairs. She screamed. The flames were racing up from the foot of the bed, gobbling the purple quilt Aunt Mary had made and given to her for Christmas three years earlier. Smoke was already causing her to choke, the heat searing her skin and throat.
Luke. I have to get to Luke.
She couldn’t go toward the door that led to the steps. It was too hot. The flames would consume her, but she had to get out. She unlatched the lock on the broken window and pushed it up. The roof above the front porch was less than ten feet below her. She crawled up into the window frame, cutting her left foot on a piece of broken glass in the process, and jumped. The steep pitch of the roof below sent her skidding toward the edge. Her elbows and knees hit the rough shingles, and she rolled onto her side, once, twice, three times… and then she was falling. She landed on her right side in the grass of the front yard. Her elbow jammed into her rib cage, and she heard the sickening sound of bones breaking. She tried to stand, but found she couldn’t even breathe.
Katie looked up toward the front of the house. Dark smoke was billowing from beneath the soffit, and she could see flames climbing the curtains and reaching out like the devil’s fingers through the windows. Katie willed herself to her knees. The heat was so intense she felt her eyebrows beginning to singe. She lay down on her back and used her feet to push herself away from the inferno.