Joe Dillard: Reasonable Fear Part 14

"I'll talk to him," I said, and I punched the flashing b.u.t.ton.

"I just want you to know that if John Lips...o...b..isn't convicted of murder, I'm going to the legislature and I'm going to have you removed from office," Governor Donner said. "There better not be any plea bargains, no reduced charges, nothing. He pleads guilty to second-degree murder or a jury convicts him. Otherwise, you're gone, my friend."

"I'm not your friend."

Donner laughed. "That's the first intelligent thing I've heard you say, Dillard. I'm going to take great pleasure in watching you go down in flames."

The line went dead.

I knew I was in dangerous territory. Unfamiliar, dangerous territory. I'd never gone up against the kind of power or the kind of people I was facing. Lips...o...b..had plenty of money, he had high-dollar lawyers, he had political clout. That, in itself, wasn't so dangerous, but I knew he was also willing to cross lines. The attack on Sarah proved it.

The entire investigation had turned into a runaway train, and I was the engineer. I wasn't about to jump off, though. I had to keep going. Whether it was for Erlene and her girls, for Sarah, or to serve my own foolish pride, I didn't know, but I couldn't back down. If I did, how could I ever look my wife, my children, my sister, or even myself, in the eye again? As I sat there with the governor's threat echoing in my head, I felt a burgeoning sense of dread unlike anything I'd ever experienced.

These people weren't just hoping to beat me in court.

They wanted to destroy me.

The Davidson County sheriff did what he said he'd do. Lips...o...b..and Pinzon were arrested in their posh Nashville office a couple of hours after the sheriff and I spoke on the phone. We let Nelson Lips...o...b..dangle, hoping he might come running to my office, beg to make a deal, and tell us what happened on the boat. I suspected that Bates was illegally tapping Nelson's cell phone, but I didn't mention it and if he was, nothing came of it.

As soon as we heard Lips...o...b..and Pinzon had been arrested, Bates sent Rudy Lane and a patrol deputy to Nashville in a van to pick them up. They left late in the afternoon, were going to spend the night at a hotel near the jail, pick up the prisoners bright and early, and have them back in time for a one o'clock arraignment. There was a provision in the Rules of Criminal Procedure that allowed their lawyers to appear on their behalf, so I knew as soon as their they'd been booked at the jail and their bond had been posted, Lips...o...b..and Pinzon would be traveling straight to the airport to their private jet and would fly back to Nashville.

I awoke early, as usual, the morning of the arraignment, fixed myself a cup of coffee, and drank it in the cool darkness on the deck. The crisp morning air felt good against my skin. The stars were beginning to fade, and I could hear the whine of a small outboard motor, no doubt a fisherman, rounding the bend in the channel below. There was a slight breeze blowing in off of the water, carrying with it an earthy, musty odor. I finished the coffee, went back inside, dressed in my running gear, grabbed a small flashlight, and Rio and I took off down the trail that bordered the bluff above the lake. Chico remained in the house, curled up between Caroline and Gracie on the bed.

Forty minutes later, I was back at the house, drenched in sweat. I walked around to the front and started up the driveway to get the morning paper. I glanced toward the woods, which looked like an out-of-focus, black-and-white photograph in the faint, gray light of pre-dawn. Rio, who'd been investigating the base of a maple tree behind me, came loping up the driveway. I could hear his claws sc.r.a.ping against the asphalt and hear his breath, which always reminded me of a locomotive. Just as he pa.s.sed me, he stopped and let out a low growl.

"What's wrong, big boy?"

I looked ahead, and could make out two dark shapes at the top of the driveway, side by side, ten or fifteen feet from the road. They weren't moving. Rio continued to growl a deep, throaty, threatening sound. I reached down to calm him and noticed that his teeth were bared, something he did rarely. I'd stuck the flashlight into the pocket of the hooded sweatshirt I was wearing, so I reached in and retrieved it. I pushed the b.u.t.ton and cast the beam at the shapes. They were still about fifty feet away, eerily still and silent. I couldn't tell what they were.

"h.e.l.lo? Who's there?"

No answer.

I reached down with my right hand and grabbed Rio's harness. He resisted, apparently not wanting to go any closer to the objects. I let go of the harness and started walking, very slowly, to the road. The shapes in the driveway gradually came into focus. My first thought was to turn and run back to the house, but I couldn't. I had to see if they were real. I moved closer still.

Ten feet away, I stopped.

"Oh, no," I murmured. "Please, please, no."

The breeze shifted slightly and the smell of blood filled my nostrils. I turned my back to the bodies and began to vomit.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

As the last bit of bile erupted from my stomach, a frightening realization gripped me. I was up against something I'd never encountered a terrorist. The bodies in my driveway were placed there for one reason, to strike terror into my heart.

Rio had moved over to my side but was still growling. I stood unsteadily, my thighs like molded gel, and turned back toward them. Both had been duct-taped into chairs and were sitting side by side, their torsos covered in dark blood, their faces luminescent in the pale light. Their chins weren't resting on their chests as they should have been. Instead they were sitting up straight, eyes open, their death stares seemingly tracking me like the eyes in a portrait. I pulled Rio back down the driveway and walked through the kitchen into the bedroom.

"Caroline," I whispered. Her eyes opened and she smiled.

"What time is it?"

"A little after six. You need to get up, baby. Things are about to get a little crazy around here."

"Crazy? What do you mean?"

"Just get up and get dressed. I'll explain in a few minutes."

I kissed her on the forehead and went back into the kitchen. Rio paced nervously back and forth between the front door and the kitchen door. I dialed Bates's cell number.

"There are two bodies in my driveway," I said when he answered. My voice was quivering involuntarily. "You need to get over here with your crime scene people and a couple of ambulances, but I don't want you to do it through the normal channels. Use your cell phone. I don't want the media crawling all over my place, and I don't want them crawling all over this crime scene."

"Do you know them?" he asked.

"Yeah. So do you. Come as quick as you can. I'm going back outside."

Caroline walked into the kitchen wearing a robe. I watched her fix herself a cup of coffee and sit down at the table.

"What's going on, Joe?"

"Something bad has happened. Two people have been murdered. They're in our driveway."

She set her coffee cup down and looked at me like I had suddenly started speaking a foreign language.

"In our driveway? What are you. . . what?"

"I'm not sure what's going on yet."

"Are you sure they're. . . how could this. . . are you sure they're dead?"

"They're dead."

"How? I mean. . . who? Who are they?"

"Witnesses. Against John Lips...o...b.."

"Have you called the police?"

"Bates is on his way. Stay inside, and try to keep Rio from going nuts when they show up."

I turned away from her and walked to the door. I wasn't looking forward to going back outside, but I felt like I needed to. I didn't think they should be alone, and at some level, I felt responsible for their deaths.

I closed the door behind me and walked back up the driveway. It was lighter now, but the sun still hadn't cleared the eastern horizon. All of the stars except Venus had faded into the grayness. I walked slowly, consciously taking deep breaths in an attempt to quell the fear and anxiety coursing through me. I briefly entertained the thought that perhaps I'd experienced some kind of mental spasm, that a group of neurons in my brain had misfired and created an illusion, complete with the smell of blood. I actually hoped I'd gone temporarily insane, and when I went back outside, the bodies wouldn't be there.

But they were. Frozen, like b.l.o.o.d.y mannequins, continuing to stare silently at me in death. I still had the flashlight, and as I got to within five feet, I shined it onto the body to my right. It was Zack Woods. I circled him, careful not to get too close. Duct tape a lot of it had been wrapped around his forehead, shoulders, thighs, and calves. A piece of two-by-four had been shoved between his back and the back of the chair, obviously before the tape was applied. His head had been fastened to the board with the tape. That's why he was sitting up straight.

The other body was Hector Mejia, Lips...o...b..s caretaker, whom I'd met only briefly at the Washington County Jail. He'd also been duct-taped to a chair and braced with a two-by-four.

I looked around at the surrounding hills. I wondered whether the killer was hiding in the woods, watching me survey the scene he'd so carefully crafted, enjoying my shock and horror. Maybe he was looking at me through a rifle scope. I shook off the thought and turned my attention back to Zack and Hector.

The first sight of them had been so shocking that I was unable to concentrate, unable to look closely, to examine the scene with any kind of a.n.a.lytical thought. But I'd managed to calm myself, and I looked closely at Zack's face. It was a horrible sight. His mouth was open, his lips were black, and blood had poured down his chest. His throat had been cut, a gaping wound three inches wide surrounded by a black crust of dried blood. I looked at the wound and noticed something unusual, something protruding from his throat a couple of inches beneath his chin. I moved a step closer, then recoiled, nearly vomiting again.

It was Zack's tongue. Whoever did this wasn't just a killer. He was a psychopath.

Bates came rolling down the road in his BMW about five minutes later, followed by two marked cruisers, two unmarked cruisers, a crime-scene van and two ambulances. None of them were flashing their emergency lights. I walked to the top of the driveway and watched while they parked along the curb, got out, and followed along behind Bates to where I was standing. Bates stopped next to me and peered down the driveway at the backs of Zack and Hector. The others eight men and two women, all in uniform stood silent and stone-faced, each one preparing in his or her own way to deal, once again, with man's inhumanity to man.

I was grateful we didn't have neighbors close by. When I bought the property, one of the things that appealed to me the most was the isolation. The land that ab.u.t.ted to the east was TVA land and would probably not be developed, at least not in my lifetime. The land to the east was owned by a young farmer named Graves. He was the closest neighbor, and his house was almost a mile away.

"Who are they?" Bates said quietly.

"Zack Woods and Hector Mejia."

"s.h.i.t." Bates rarely used profanity.

"Look at their throats," I said. "I've never seen anything like it."

Bates glanced over his shoulder. "Let's go," he said, and the group moved forward.

I walked alongside Bates until we were standing where I had stood earlier, just a few feet in front of Zack and Hector. He looked at them for several seconds, then bent forward and rested his hands just above his knees. I thought for a moment that his reaction was going to be the same as mine, that he was going to vomit, but his eyes were fixed intently on Zack's throat.

"This ain't good, brother Dillard. This ain't good at all. Do you know what this is?"

I didn't understand the question. Of course I knew what it was. Two dead people with their throats cut in a manner I'd never seen placed in my driveway. I waited for him to continue.

"It's called a Colombian neck tie. It's usually something that happens in the drug trade. I've been to seminars and I've seen photos, but this is the first time I've seen it around here. Look at this."

Bates pulled on a pair of latex gloves and moved close to Zack. He squatted.

"See here?"

He pointed with his pinky finger and moved it diagonally a couple of inches from the center of the wound to beneath Zack's jaw line on both sides.

"After they cut the throat, they make a deeper incision here and here. They cut the cartilage away from the larynx, reach through with their fingers, and pull the tongue down through the wound. Looks like a little tie, see?"

"It's sick," I said.

"It's a message, delivered directly to you. A pretty simple message."

He came out of the squat and took a step back, removing the gloves and stuffing them into his back pocket. Then he took his cowboy hat off with his left hand, turned it over, and started running the index finger of his right hand around the inside of the brim.

"Same message as with Sarah," I said. "Back off."

"This one's a little louder. It means stop doing what you're doing or we'll do the same thing to you."

"Joe?"

I heard a familiar voice behind me. I turned to see Caroline, who had dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie, walking cautiously toward me. I didn't like the look on her face.

"I wish you hadn't come out here," I said.

"Who are they?"

Caroline moved next to me and I put my arm around her shoulders. She stared at Zack and Hector.

"One of them is takes care of John Lips...o...b..s property at the lake. He told us he saw Lips...o...b..and a man named Andres Pinzon get on the boat with the girls the night they were killed. The other is Zack Woods. He said he saw Lips...o...b..dumping one of the girls off the back of the boat that morning."

"But why? Why are they here?"

"We're not sure yet. Please go back inside."

"I don't want to go back inside. I want you to tell me why these people are here. This is my home too, you know."

The tone of her voice was agitated, bordering on frantic.

"We think the men we've arrested for the murders are responsible for this, Mrs. Dillard," Bates said. "But don't let it worry you. We'll take care of it."

"Don't worry? You'll take care of it?" I could see the veins in Caroline's neck pulsing. "They kill two people and bring them to our house for the whole world to see and you're telling me not to worry? Are you serious?"

"They're trying to scare us," I said.

"Well, it's working! If they can do something like this, what's to keep them from killing us, too?"

"I'm the district attorney, Caroline. They're not going to kill a district attorney."

"Really? They'll kill his witnesses and dump them at his doorstep but they won't kill him? Why? Because they're so terrified of him?"

"We have work to do here, Caroline. We have to take care of these people-"

"They're not people any more! Look at them!"

I'd never seen her so hysterical, but I certainly couldn't blame her. Telling her about it inside the house was one thing, but this was something else, something she could see and smell. I took her by the arm and began leading her to the house. She jerked away from me but kept walking. When we got to the door that led into the kitchen, I opened it for her and she walked through. I closed it and went back outside. One of the crime scene techs was beginning to pull the tape from Hector.

"Thanks a lot," I said to Bates.

"What?" he said.

"For setting her off like that."

"I ain't too good with women."

"That's obvious. How could they have known about Zack and Hector? The witnesses weren't listed on the warrants."

"You're guess is as good as mine, brother. Maybe a leak in the grand jury."