Landers smiled. "Not bad," he said.

"I didnt get elected to this position by being stupid."

Landers thought of a couple of wiseass responses to the comment but chose to keep his mouth shut.

He rose to leave.

"Wait just a second, Phil," Baker said. "Theres one more thing we need to discuss."

Baker didnt come right out and say it, but over the next few minutes, he made it clear to Landers that he didnt give a shit whether Dillards sister told the truth in court or not. He said he needed "direct testimony that Angel Christian confessed to Sarah Dillard that Angel killed John Paul Tester." Landers was authorized to offer Sarah a get-out-of-jail-free card in return for her "truthful" testimony.

The more Landers thought about the idea of Dillards sister as the star witness against Dillards client, the more he liked it. He couldnt wait to see the look on Dillards face when his sister stepped up on the witness stand and helped the state convict Angel Christian of murder. And Dillard would have to go after sis hard on cross-examination. What a fucking show that would be.

Since Baker gave Landers the impression he wasnt going to be too particular about the truth, Landers figured hed make the process a little easier. Before they brought Dillards sister into the interview room at the jail, he sat down and wrote out a statement, wording it in the way Landers thought would help the most. If Sarah Dillard signed the statement, Landers would leave her a copy and she could use her time in the cell to memorize it. Then, when she took the witness stand at the trial, all shed have to do was repeat what shed memorized. It would be perfect.

Landers looked up and smiled when the guard brought Sarah in. She nodded in return, a good sign.

She looked pretty damned hot.

"I thought it might be you," she said.

"I hear youre about to be shipped off to the pen.

Bet youre looking forward to that."

"About as much as Im looking forward to my next enema."

"I heard what your brother did to you. Its a damned shame. I dont see how anybody could send their own flesh and blood to a place like the womens prison in Nashville. Doesnt he know how bad it is down there?"

"He doesnt seem to care."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"Pissed off."

"Pissed off enough to help us?"

"Whats in it for me?"

"In exchange for your testimony, your sentence will be reduced to time served, plus you get to make your brother look bad."

She sat back and thought about it, but it didnt take her long. She took a deep breath and looked Landers in the eye.

"Tell me what you want me to do," she said.

Landers slid the statement across the table, and she started to read.

July 16 9:20 a.m.

Maynard Bushs arraignment on the new charges of killing Bonnie Tate and the Bowers twins in Mountain City had taken only fifteen minutes, but it was fifteen of the most intense minutes of my life. The courtroom was packed with relatives and friends of Darren and David Bowers. Judge Glass was at his most belligerent, Maynard at his most flippant. He wouldnt stop smiling. I wanted to crawl under the defense table and hide until it was over.

The people of Johnson County didnt understand that Id been appointed to represent Maynard Bush by a heartless judge who dumped terrible cases on me for his private amusement. What they understood was that I was dressed in a suit, standing beside and speaking on behalf of a sociopath whod killed two of their own. If theyd known that Maynard had manipulated me into helping him escape, theyd have strung me up right then and there.

Id parked my truck a block from the courthouse in an alley. As soon as the arraignment was over, I grabbed my briefcase and headed straight for the back stairs. Once I got to the bottom, I jogged across the spot where David Bowers was shot, got to my truck as quickly as I could, and drove the hell out of Johnson County.

Judge Glasss plan was to arraign Maynard in Mountain City in the morning and in Elizabethton"

for the murder of his mother in Carter County"in the afternoon. The two towns were forty-five minutes apart. Under normal circumstances, I wouldve enjoyed the drive. The road wound through the Cherokee National Forest and along Watauga Lake, which acted as a gigantic mirror for the surrounding mountains. The views were breathtaking. There were times in the past when I might have stopped along the way to take in the scenery, but today I didnt even notice.

I drove all the way back home and went through the mail. There was an opinion from the Supreme Court on Randall Finchs case. The opinion said Randall had a right to plead guilty at arraignment, and if the state hadnt bothered to file their death notice in a timely manner, too bad. I couldnt believe it. Id won. For once, they put the sophistry aside and used a little common sense. I was pleased until I thought about what Id really done"helped a baby killer escape the death penalty.

I returned a few phone calls and drove over to Elizabethton. I tried to eat lunch at a coffee shop on Main Street, but I only picked at the food. Ever since Maynard had killed the Bowers twins, Id lost my appetite. Food made me nauseous. And I was having trouble making myself work out. Exercise had always been an important part of my daily life. Exercise produced endorphins, and endorphins made me feel good. But I didnt seem to care about feeling good.

I was having more trouble sleeping than ever, and when I looked at myself in the mirror in the mornings, I noticed circles under my eyes that seemed to be getting darker with each passing day.

After I paid the check at the coffee shop, I headed for the Carter County Courthouse, a truly unique structure. I dont know who the architect was, but the taxpayers should have taken him out and shot him the day he decided it would be a good idea to build the jail directly above the courthouse. It may have seemed like a grand idea at the time, but the reality soon set in. The inmates quickly realized that they could flood the jail by stuffing rolls of toilet paper into the commodes. They also realized that the raw sewage overflowing and spilling onto the floors soon seeped into the courtrooms and clerks offices below. I could imagine some inmate having just been sentenced to ten years heading back to his cell and dropping a little shit of his own onto the judge below. It happened often enough that the place smelled like an outhouse.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw an ambulance with its lights flashing near the sally port at the jail. There were also several patrol cars, all with their lights flashing. Somehow, I knew what had happened. Instead of heading inside to the smelly courtroom, I parked and walked directly towards the ambulance.

They were bringing someone out on a gurney just as I turned up the sidewalk towards the sally port.

Several police officers were milling around the door that led to the jail. A short, burly female paramedic with bright orange spiked hair was pushing the gurney. It was obvious that whoever was on the gurney was dead. A sheet had been pulled over the head.

"Step back, sir," the paramedic said as I approached.

"Is that Maynard Bush?"

"You need to step away and mind your own""

I reached down and snatched the sheet back from the head. Maynards eyes were wide open, frozen in what must have been a last moment of terror. His tongue was black and swollen and sticking out of his mouth at a macabre angle. There was a dark bruise across his throat. Id seen enough ligature marks to know what it meant. Maynard had hanged himself, or, more likely, someone had hanged him.

The orange-headed paramedic was glaring at me.

I flipped the sheet back up over Maynards head and glared back.

"He was right" was all I could think of to say.

"He was right."

I walked into the courthouse to tell Judge Glass I was leaving. He didnt bother to thank me for representing Maynard or say anything about Maynards death. He just nodded his head and grunted. When I got back out to the parking lot, I noticed Carolines car backed in next to my truck. The door opened and she stepped out. Her eyes were red and puffy.

"Im so sorry to have to tell you this, baby," she said. "The nursing home called right after you left.

Your mother died a little while ago."

July 17 10:20 a.m.

We went up to the nursing home to clear out Mas room the day after she died. Jack had flown in on a red-eye the night before and he helped me carry the furniture out to the truck. Then Caroline and I went to the funeral home while Jack and Lilly took the furniture back over to Mas house. A tall, slim, bespectacled man who spoke in a quiet voice with a slight lisp showed us into the room where the caskets were kept.

About twenty caskets were spread around the room, mahogany and teak and oak and stainless steel. The man led us first to a round table in the corner.

"Please, have a seat," he said. "Can I offer you something to drink? Some cookies, perhaps?"

Cookies. I didnt want any goddamn cookies. I gave him a look that would have silenced most people, but he just smiled. He set a pad of paper down on the table and produced a pen.

"Ive read a lot about you, Mr. Dillard," he said, "but I didnt know your mother. Tell me about her."

"Why?" I knew he didnt care about her or me.

He just wanted to get as much money out of me as he could.

"We take the responsibility of contacting the newspaper on your behalf for the obituary," the man said.

"I just need some basic information. Try to think of all the good things you remember about your mother."

"She was a tough woman. She raised my sister and me all by herself after my father was killed in Vietnam. She worked as a bookkeeper for a roofing company and did other peoples laundry for extra money. She wouldnt accept help from anyone. She didnt say much and thought the world was a terrible place. Hows that?"

"Where did she go to church?"

"She didnt believe in God. She thought the Christian religion was a global scam set up to control people and extract money from them by making them feel guilty. Do you think theyll print that?"

"Did she have brothers and sisters?"

"One brother. A jerk who drowned in the Nolichucky River when he was seventeen."

"And her parents?"

"Both dead."

"Would you excuse us for a minute?" Caroline said. She reached over and took my hand and led me out the door into the lobby.

"Why dont you let me handle this?" she said.

"I hate these jerks. Preying on other peoples misery."

"You look tired. Why dont you go out to the car and nap while I finish up here?"

"I cant sleep in a bed. What makes you think Ill be able to sleep in the car?"

"Please? Just try to relax. Youll feel better. Ill be out as soon as I can."

I was beginning to think I was going insane. Id been half-jokingly telling myself I was nuts for years, but with everything that had happened over the late spring and summer, beginning with Sarahs release from jail and subsequent return, Id found myself falling deeper and deeper into a mental abyss. No sleep. No appetite. No exercise. Nothing seemed to give me pleasure anymore, not even music. My attitude was becoming more and more fatalistic and hopeless. I had no enthusiasm and no particular interest in anything, including sex. It was as though Id become a passionless robot, simply existing from day to day without feeling.

I went back out to the car and sat in the passenger seat for a while. I closed my eyes a few times, but I couldnt doze. I finally wrote Caroline a note, got out of the car, and started walking towards home. It was at least seven miles and my legs felt like lead, but I thought the exercise might help and it would give me some time to try to sort things out. At first, I tried to force myself to think pleasant thoughts. I envisioned Jack hitting home runs, Lilly dancing across the stage, Carolines jubilation when I brought her a quarter of a million dollars in a gym bag .

But after only a few minutes of walking, my mind began to flash images that were much more sinister, the same images I was seeing when I tried to go to sleep night after night. Johnny Wayne Neal being gagged and dragged out of the courtroom. The bubbles rising in the headlights of my truck the night Junior Tester pushed me into the lake. The look in Testers eyes when he said Id taken his daddy from him. The fantasy of clubbing him to death. The bruise on Angel Christians face in the photograph. David Bowerss blood on my shirt. Maynards smirk, and the terrible image of his tongue sticking out of his mouth. My mother, wearing a diaper and lying helpless in a hospital bed with spittle running down her chin. And finally, Sarah. Always Sarah, when she was young and innocent. "Get him off of me, Joey. Hes hurting me."

By the time Caroline rolled up next to me and pushed the passenger door open about two miles from home, Id reached an entirely new level of self-loathing. I hated myself for putting Sarah in jail and for not being able to break through with Ma. I hated myself for helping monsters like Maynard Bush and Randall Finch and Billy Dockery and a long list of others. I was a whore, a pathetic excuse for a human being.

"I love you, Joe," Caroline said as soon as I got into the car. Caroline is intuitive, especially when it comes to dealing with me. I knew what she was trying to do, but the words bounced off of me like a rubber ball off concrete. I didnt feel a thing.

"Did you hear me? I said I love you."

"I know."

"Do you know how much your children love you?

Jack worships the ground you walk on. Lilly thinks youre the greatest man who ever lived."

"Please, Caroline, dont. Not right now. Im in no mood to be patronized."

"What are you thinking? Whats wrong with you?"

"You dont want to know what Im thinking."

"Youre mother just died, baby. Youre grieving."

"My mother and I werent even close. All those years, all that time together. I grew up in her house.

She raised me, Caroline, and I cant remember a single meaningful conversation between us. Do you know what I was thinking a little while ago? In four years of high school, I played in over forty football games, over a hundred basketball games, and over a hundred baseball games, and she never came to a single one. She never saw me play. Not once."

"Youve been through a lot in the past few months,"

she said. "Weve all been through a lot."

We rode the rest of the way home in silence. Jack distracted me for a couple of hours by taking me out to his old high school baseball field. I didnt hear her say anything, but I felt sure it was at Carolines suggestion. Id bought a pitching machine a couple of years earlier, and I fed balls into the machine while Jack pounded them over the fence. Watching him hit a baseball was a truly beautiful thing to me. He was so quick, so powerful, so fluid. He was so much better than I ever was, and watching him gave me more pleasure than Id had in months. The sun and the exercise felt good, and by the time we got back to the house, I was feeling a little better.

But then the night came, and with it, another bout of sleepless self-flagellation. We drove to the cemetery at eleven the next morning. I felt like a dead man walking when we climbed the hill to the gravesite. It was overcast and drizzling rain. There was a crowd of people there. I sensed their presence, but I couldnt really see them. It was as though they were all standing in a bank of thick fog.

And then I caught a glimpse of Sarah. Caroline had called the sheriffs department and made arrangements for them to bring her to the funeral. She arrived in the back of a cruiser, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and handcuffs and shackles. The deputy who brought her up wouldnt let her under the tent with Caroline, Lilly, Jack, and me, so she ended up having to stand outside with the others in the rain.

Caroline had contacted Mas best friend, a woman named Katie Lowe, to give the eulogy. I sat there, not really listening, until she began to talk about Elizabeths children. I heard some things about my mother that I hadnt known before, things that Ma had told Katie about Sarah and me. One of them was that Ma had been so proud of me when I graduated from law school that she cried. Id never seen my mother cry, and Id never heard her say a word about being proud of me.

When the service was over, the deputy took Sarah by the arm and led her straight back down the hill.

I watched as she climbed awkwardly into the backseat of the cruiser. I felt tears forming in my eyes as the cruiser pulled away and I turned to Mas casket.

I put my palms on it and stood there, not knowing what to say or do, embarrassed to be showing weakness in front of my children. I stood there until the crowd had dispersed and then, for some reason I didnt understand, I felt the impulse to bend down and kiss her casket. Id kissed her at the nursing home, but not until she was too far gone to feel it.

When I kissed her casket, I realized that I hadnt ever given her a meaningful kiss. The thought made it almost impossible to keep from breaking down.

I leaned against the casket with my shoulders shaking and tried to compose myself. Shes gone and youre still here, I said to myself. Shes gone and youre still here. Youre alive. You have people who love you.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself .

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It was a phrase Id heard many times, straight from my mothers mouth, and as I stood there leaning against her casket, I knew I had to try. The same people who loved me also depended on me for strength and support. I couldnt let them down.

"Goodbye, Ma," I whispered. "Im sorry."