I’m dreaming of sitting in an electric chair with a hood over my head and Brian Gant standing with his hand on the switch, laughing maniacally, when my cell phone awakens me. I pick it up and see that it’s 4:12 a.m. The caller ID tells me Anita White is on the other end of the line.
“I need to talk to you,” she says when I answer.
“Now?”
“Yes. Can you meet me?”
I crawl out of bed, throw on some clothes, and drive to Perkins restaurant in Johnson City. Anita is sitting at a booth in the corner, alone. She’s drinking coffee, looking haggard and exhausted.
“I didn’t want you to hear this on the news,” she says after I’ve sat down and ordered coffee and ice water. “Tommy Miller confessed a little while ago to killing Judge Green.”
The words stun me, as though I’ve just been hit in the face with a shovel. I stare at Anita, unable to speak. When my senses begin to return, I’m left with feelings of betrayal and confusion. How could I have misjudged him so fundamentally? Why did he have to drag my family into this mess? I think of Toni Miller, and wonder just how much more emotional devastation she can take.
“Tell me about it,” I say, barely able to speak. “Tell me everything.”
Anita spends nearly an hour telling me about Tommy’s interrogation. She goes into great detail about Harmon taking over and the tactics he used, which included planting the details of the crime scene in Tommy’s mind. She tells me that Harmon wrote out the confession himself, and that Tommy initialed each page and signed it. By the time she’s finished, I’ve become angry.
“It sounds to me like this confession was coerced,” I snap.
The tone of my voice surprises her, and she folds her arms defensively.
“Maybe,” she says.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“What do you mean? What can I do about it? I’m sure Harmon has contacted every media outlet within a hundred miles by now to let them know we’ve made an arrest and have obtained a signed confession. The bosses in Nashville will know as soon as they show up for work. What’s done is done.”
“What’s done is done? That’s all you can say? You should have done something to stop it.”
“Like what? Harmon didn’t beat him. He didn’t threaten him. He didn’t deprive him of food or water.”
“What about sleep? You said you guys picked him up at six in the morning and were still interrogating him at three the next morning. That’s twenty-one hours straight. It’s over the line.”
“Harmon took breaks. He could have slept during the breaks.”
“You said Harmon lied to Tommy. That’s coercion.”
“No, it isn’t, and you know it. Courts have held time and again that the police can lie to a suspect during interrogation.”
“And I suppose none of this is on videotape.” The TBI doesn’t use video or audio tape during interrogations. Neither does the FBI. It gives the agents more leeway during questioning. It also allows them to deny that they’ve stepped across lines. If a suspect claims coercion, it’s his word against the police.
“Harmon is a pro,” Anita says. “He did what he’s trained to do.”
“Really? When did the TBI start training agents to sweat confessions out of innocent boys?”
“Maybe he did it and really doesn’t remember. His alibi didn’t check out. Norcross went to the convenience store on Oakland where he said he woke up that morning. Nobody there remembers him.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Norcross wouldn’t lie.”
“What did Tommy say about his clothing?”
“He said he must have spilled gasoline on himself when he was pumping gas. He said he gave the clothes to your wife so she could wash them.”
“Which means Caroline will wind up getting a subpoena if Tommy goes to trial. She’ll be a witness against him.”
Anita nods her head slowly. I suddenly find her unattractive, almost nauseating. She’s given me the distinct impression that she doesn’t believe sincerely that Tommy is guilty; yet she stood by and did nothing while her boss browbeat him into a confession. Tommy is in a nearly impossible position now. Nothing is harder to defend than a false confession, because jurors have a hard time believing that anyone would confess to a crime they didn’t commit, especially a murder. But jurors don’t understand the extreme psychological pressure the police can bring to bear during an interrogation. They don’t understand that a person’s psyche can be systematically broken down to the point where the accused begins to believe he must have committed the crime, even though he’s completely innocent.
“Where’s Tommy now?” I ask.
“Probably being booked into the jail.”
I lean forward and look into Anita’s eyes.
“Why did you call me and ask me to come down here, Anita? And don’t say you wanted me to hear the bad news from you instead of reading it in the paper or hearing it on the radio. Why did you really call me?”
She looks down at the table and starts running her finger around the top of the coffee cup. She doesn’t seem to have an answer.
“You don’t think Tommy did it, do you? You wanted to tell me because you want me to do something. You want me to help him.”
Her eyes remain on the table, and I stand.
“You should have spoken up,” I say. “He needed you in that interrogation room, and you should have helped him. But keeping your precious job means more to you than doing the right thing. I misjudged you, Anita. I thought you were one of the good guys.”
I turn and walk out of the restaurant. As I’m walking by the front of the building toward my truck, I look through the window. She’s still sitting at the table, her head in her hands. She appears to be crying.
Several hours later, I’m knocking on the cheap aluminum front door of a small trailer in Cash Hollow. I’ve already broken the bad news to Caroline and been to the jail to see Tommy. Caroline is with Toni Miller now. The TBI held Toni for more than twenty hours on a bogus obstruction of justice charge. As soon as Tommy confessed, they released her.
My conversation with Tommy at the jail confirmed my belief that he’d been coerced. At first I couldn’t believe he’d talked to Harmon, but I soon became convinced his decision was a mixture of fatigue and confusion caused by being on the run, coupled with a young man’s naive belief that if he told the officers the truth, everything would turn out okay.
Anita had told me that Harmon lied to Tommy about witnesses seeing him near the crime scene, but she failed to mention that Harmon broke Tommy when he told him that Toni said she believed Tommy committed the crime. After visiting with Tommy and offering whatever comfort I could, I drove straight to the convenience store on Oakland and was directed to this trailer. I feel certain that Norcross has been here earlier, but Tommy was so adamant about waking up in his car at the convenience store, I feel obligated to be here.
An overweight young woman holding a baby answers the door. She wears the hopeless, defeated look of the impoverished. I introduce myself and ask to speak to Ellis Holmes.
“The police have already been here,” she says hatefully.
“I’m not the police, ma’am, and I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s extremely important.”
She turns away from the door. “Ellis! Get your ass out here!”
A young man, mid-twenties, appears in the doorway a few seconds later. He’s short, less than five and a half feet, and extremely thin. He’s wearing orange shorts, a white tank top, and flip-flops. His hair is thinning, stringy, and dirty blond. He looks like an orphan, an emaciated, unkempt child of the streets.
“Mr. Holmes?” I say.
“Yeah. What do you want?” His voice is nasal and unpleasant, and I find myself feeling sympathy for him. Life can be cruel in so many ways, and in the few seconds that I’ve known Ellis Holmes, it appears that there isn’t a single attractive thing about him.
I’m holding a photograph of Tommy Miller in my hand, and I show it to him.
“Have you ever seen this young man?” I say.