"So youre asking me to ignore a material witness in a murder investigation."

"Im asking you to ignore an unreliable and irrelevant witness who will do nothing but muddy the water and give Dillard more ammunition when we go to trial. As far as Im concerned, weve got the right person. Her DNA was found on the body, she had contact with the victim earlier that evening, we have a witness who says she left the club at the same time as the victim, and shes refused to talk to us. And what if we did dismiss on the girl and arrest Barlowe? What evidence do we have that she committed the murder?"

"She lied to me from the start, and I cant quit thinking about that car. Watterson said he saw a red Corvette on the bridge."

"Then find the goddamned thing! But until you do, Id appreciate it if youd stop trying to help the other side!"

With that, Deacon hung up. Landers wadded up his notes and tossed them in the trash.

June 23 3:30 p.m.

On Monday, I called Phil Landerss office to set up a time when I could take a look at the physical evidence they intended to present at Angel Christians trial. It was my right as a defense attorney and I was always diligent about doing it, but the meeting loomed like a dentists appointment for a root canal.

The bad blood between us went back more than ten years, to when I first began practicing criminal defense law in Washington County. Landers had been sleeping with a woman whod just gone through an acrimonious divorce. The woman told Landers her ex-husband was a small-time pot dealer and asked Landers to arrest the guy as a favor to her. She gave Landers the make and model of her exs car and told him which bar her ex was likely to be hanging out in. She said if Landers would just wait in the parking lot outside the bar for her ex-husband to leave, hed be sure to get a DUI arrest and probably find more than a little marijuana.

So Landers did what she asked. He waited in the parking lot until the ex left, and when the guy didnt give him a legitimate reason to stop his vehicle, Landers made one up. He arrested the man for DUI, searched the car, and found an ounce of marijuana.

The ex-husband, a man named Shane Boyd, hired me to represent him. He had no idea hed been set up until his ex-wife grounded their teenage daughter for staying out too late on a Saturday night two weeks after he was arrested. The girl was pissed off, so she called Shane and told him that both she and her boyfriend had heard her mother and Landers talk about the setup. The teenagers came into my office and signed sworn affidavits. I filed a motion to suppress all of the evidence based on Landers having had no legitimate reason to stop the vehicle.

When it came time for the hearing, Landers got on the witness stand and lied. He denied he even knew Shane Boyds ex-wife. He said he stopped my clients vehicle "because he failed to activate his turn signal before making a left turn." I knew TBI agents didnt routinely make traffic stops, and so did the judge. I called the daughter and boyfriend to the stand and subpoenaed Shanes ex-wife. She was afraid of getting charged with perjury, so she admitted the affair with Landers, admitted shed asked him to arrest her ex, but swore she never dreamed hed do it.

The judge was so outraged that Landers had committed perjury in his courtroom that he dismissed the case and wrote a letter to Landerss supervisor at the TBI, but nothing happened. It was my first reality check when it came to cops committing perjury. Since then, Id questioned everything Landers did in every case I had that involved him. I didnt trust him, and I didnt have any problem letting him know it.

We set our evidence meeting for three fifteen, but knowing Landers would enjoy making me wait, I didnt show up until three thirty. He wasnt there, so I sat down at the table and fumed for a little while.

I was about to leave when he finally walked through the door in his expensive gray suit, carrying a cardboard box under his arm. Landers is around my age, a couple of inches shorter than me, in pretty good shape, and has blue eyes and short brown hair. I suppose hes handsome"he certainly thinks he is"but there were dark circles under his eyes and I could smell booze on him. It was the kind of smell you cant shower off, the kind that comes from your pores.

"Youre a half hour late," I said as I stood up.

"Yeah," he said with a smirk.

He started taking things out of his cardboard box, the last item being a photograph of Angel. She was sitting at a table looking up at the camera, and she had what appeared to be a nasty bruise on her left cheek. The photograph was dated two days after Testers murder. Angel hadnt mentioned anything to me about the police taking her picture, and the photograph wasnt in the initial packet of discovery material Id picked up from the DAs office. As soon as I saw the photo, I knew Id need to file a motion to keep them from being able to use it at trial. Unless they had some concrete proof of how Angel got the bruise, the photo could unfairly prejudice a jury.

"So I hear Bill Wrights about to retire," I said, trying to keep things civil. "Whos next in line?"

"No such thing as next in line," Landers said. "The job will go to whoever the suits think is best."

"Who do you think it will be?"

"What do you care?" He looked at me as if I were a fly on his wrist, nothing more than a nuisance.

"Just trying to make a little friendly small talk. No point in us being at each others throats all the time."

He raised his nose in the air like he was sniffing me. It wrinkled, as though he found the scent repugnant.

"Hate to disappoint you," he said, "but I dont think me and you will ever be friends. I dont like lawyers, especially defense lawyers who do everything they can to get criminals off on bullshit technicalities."

"You misunderstand my role," I said. "I just try to make sure you guys follow your own rules. If you were in the same boat as my clients, youd want everybody to play fair, wouldnt you?"

"If I were in the same boat as your clients, Id sink the goddamned thing and swim away. Now are you going to look at this stuff, or did you get me down here to chitchat? Because to be honest with you, Im not in a real chatty mood today."

I slid the items across the table and looked them over.

"Whyd you take this picture?" I said, holding up the photo of Angel. "And whats it doing in your evidence file?"

"Why the fuck do you think I took it? Look at her.

Somebody cracked her in the face. Were gonna show it to the jury."

"Any proof of how she got the bruise? What if she slipped on a banana peel?"

"She can explain it on the witness stand."

" If the judge lets it in." I tossed the photo back onto the table. "Im going to file a motion to keep it out."

"You see?" Landers said. "Thats exactly what Im talking about. This photograph was taken two days after the murder. Her hair was found on the dead guy, and she just happens to have a bruise on her face. The logical conclusion is that she got the bruise during a struggle with the victim. But then some asshole like you comes along and wants to keep the jury from finding out about it."

"Is this all youve got?" I said. "I see some photos of Tester, a photo of what looks like a shriveled penis, a photo of Angel, a couple of hairs, a couple of lab reports, and some bank records showing that Tester withdrew money from the strip clubs ATM.

Is that it?"

"Itll be enough to convict that little bitch of murder."

"Its not enough to convict her of simple assault."

"Thats what I like to hear," Landers said. "You just keep thinking that way."

"The evidence in this case is as weak as any Ive ever seen."

"Since when is DNA evidence weak?"

"Her hair probably got on him while he was groping her at the club," I said.

"Maybe. You can go ahead and try to sell that to the jury, but the fact is that her hair was found on his corpse in his room."

"Its not enough."

"Our witness says your girl and Barlowe followed the victim out of the club that night. They were the last people to see him alive."

"Your witness is a lying prostitute with a drug problem."

"And your client is a mystery woman who was working in a strip club. A stranger. Not from around here. Jury wont exactly love her, especially when they see that bruise on her face."

"You dont have a murder weapon or a motive."

"Dont need either one. Weve got enough circumstantial evidence to get a conviction. And you know what? I think something else will come up before this is over."

"Something else already has come up. Youve heard of Virgil Watterson, havent you? I think you talked to him this morning."

There was a long, tense silence.

"How the hell would you know that?"

"He called me first. He described what he saw on the bridge that night. He said he thinks you guys arrested the wrong person. Just trying to do the right thing, you know? I told him he should call you and tell you what he saw and maybe youd try to make it right. He called me back after he talked to you.

Said you didnt sound all that interested in his information. I shouldve known better."

"Hes not reliable. He waited two months before he even bothered to call."

"Hes worried about his marriage."

"It was dark out there, after midnight. No way he could have made an identification."

"He saw Erlene. She was alone. He saw the Corvette. Its consistent with what Julie Hayes is saying.

What the hells the matter with you? You guys should be taking a closer look at Erlene Barlowe."

"And you should mind your own fucking shop. I dont need your advice."

"So youre going to ignore him."

"Ignore who? Far as Im concerned, he never called."

Someone banged on the door, and it opened. A police officer named Harold "Bull" Deakins walked in. He and Landers were drinking buddies, legendary carousers. Deakinss nickname was well deserved. His shoulders barely fit through the door.

"They told me Id find you down here," he said to Landers. Landerss eyes didnt move, and neither did mine. Deakins stopped short. "Everything all right with you boys? Are we playing nice?" His voice did nothing to break the tension.

"Your buddy and I were just talking about arresting innocent people," I said, still locked onto Landers. He stared back, saying nothing.

"Watterson saw Erlene Barlowe on the bridge that night," I said. "She was alone. My client wasnt around. You know what that means, dont you?"

"It doesnt mean shit. For all I know, you put the guy up to it. For all I know, you paid him to say he saw the Corvette."

"Sorry," I said, "thats more along the lines of something youd do."

"You know something, Dillard? Youre wasting your breath talking to me. My job was to investigate this case and make an arrest, and thats what I did.

Now my job is to go to trial, testify, and make sure your client gets what she deserves"a fucking needle in her arm."

He started packing up his little box as Deakins loomed over my shoulder. I turned to leave. As I was walking out the door, I stopped and faced Landers. He finished putting items in the box, picked it up off the table, and looked at me.

"Shes innocent," I said. "She didnt kill anybody."

His shoulders lifted the slightest bit. What was that? A shrug?

"Are you listening to me? She didnt kill anybody. "

He knew it. The sonofabitch knew. He looked back down at the table, and I walked out the door.

June 25 1:00 p.m.

Id been going down to the jail to see Angel once a week, but the conversations Id had with her were more personal than professional. Id already heard her version of what happened the night Tester was killed, so I spent the time trying to get some background information out of her. She was reluctant, but during the second visit she decided she trusted me enough to tell me her real name and where she was from.

I gave the information to Diane Frye. Shed been working for weeks, and Id also sent Tom Short, a forensic psychiatrist, down to the jail to interview Angel three times. I set up meetings with both of them on the same afternoon.

Diane had traveled to Oklahoma and Ohio, running down witnesses and documents. I was anxious to hear what she had to say. When I walked in, the conference room table was covered in papers.

"Your chickie is a ghost," Diane said in her Tennessee drawl. She was nearly sixty, but she styled her light brown hair short and spiked. She was wearing her perpetual smile and her favorite casual outfit, a bright orange Tennessee Volunteers T-shirt"she was a rabid fan"with khaki shorts that exposed knobby knees and varicose veins, and orange high-top Converse basketball shoes.

"No Social Security number, no drivers license, no school records, no credit history, no nothing. She doesnt exist, at least not on paper. But Ive talked to everybody I could find and I think Ive got everything pretty well organized. At least youll know a little more about what youre dealing with."

Diane said Angel was born in Columbus, Ohio, on March 15, 1989, to a young woman named Grace Rodriguez. Her biological mother gave her up for adoption the same day to the Columbus Freewill Baptist Home for Children. Angel was adopted five months later by Airman First Class Thomas Rhodes and his wife, Betty. They named her Mary Ann Rhodes.

Diane had flown out to Oklahoma City to talk to Angels adopted parents. They told Diane that when they adopted Mary, they thought they were unable to have children of their own, but Ms. Rhodes became pregnant a year later. She subsequently had three more children.

"They said they treated her like a princess," Diane said. "The mother called her a thieving, ungrateful little wench. She said her husband kept a stash of cash in a box in the ceiling, and Angel apparently cleaned it out before she left. But I always leave a card and tell people if they have any other information to give me a call. A couple hours after I left, I got a call on my cell phone. It was one of their daughters, a seventeen-year-old named Rebecca. She was scared to death and I didnt get to talk to her for long, but she said her parents didnt tell me the whole story."

Diane paused and stared up at the ceiling. She loved drama.

"What?" I said. "Cmon. Out with it."

"She said her daddy did bad things to Angel."

"What kind of bad things?"

"Sexual abuse. She said it went on for years, and she thinks Angel finally just had enough. She also said her mother used to beat Angel pretty badly."

"I wonder why Angel never told anyone."

"The mother is a religious freak. Their living room looked like a sanctuary. She said she homeschooled the kids and was particular about what they were allowed to watch and read. I got the impression she didnt even allow them to have friends. Angel probably didnt have much of an opportunity to tell. Either that or she was just scared. Her sister told me Angel tried to run away a couple of times and the police had to bring her back, so I went down to the Oklahoma City police department and got copies of the reports. In 2001 she only made it ten blocks. She locked herself in the bathroom of a convenience store. The police came and took her straight home.

She took off again in 2003. They found her walking along the highway about seven miles from her house.

The police took her home again. If she told them about the abuse, they didnt believe her."

Diane then turned her attention to Erlene Barlowe.

Id asked her to quietly check into a few things, and Id paid her out of my own pocket.

"No criminal record. Her husband was the sheriff of McNairy County from 1970 to 1973. He resigned under some pretty suspicious circumstances and went into the strip club business. She was with him every step of the way until he died of a heart attack last year. She doesnt seem to have any enemies, at least none I could find. I talked to a couple of her employees. Theyre flat-out loyal."

"Corvette?"

"No Corvette. Or I guess I should say no record of a Corvette."

"And what about Julie Hayes?"

"Very naughty girl. Three drug possessions, two misdemeanor thefts, three prostitution convictions.