"Ma? Can you hear me?"

She didnt respond. She lay motionless, almost catatonic. I looked over at the bedside dresser. On top of it were several photos of our fractured family.

There was one of my grandfather, wearing bib overalls and following a plow pulled by a mule through a cornfield. There was a framed photograph of me walking across the stage at my law school graduation ceremony. Next to it, in a smaller frame, was a black-and-white of Sarah and me when I was seven years old. We were standing on a plank raft in the middle of a half-acre pond out back of my grandparents home. Both of us were grinning from ear to ear. Two of my front teeth were missing.

Just to the right of that photo was a slightly larger one of Uncle Raymond, taken about six months before he died. He was seventeen years old, standing next to a doe that had been shot, hung from a tree limb, and gutted. He held a rifle in his left hand and a cigarette in his right. I walked over and picked up the photo. I looked at it for a minute and then turned back towards the bed. Ma was still staring at the ceiling.

"Can you hear me?" I said.

Nothing.

I sat back down on the chair next to the bed and began to dismantle the picture frame. I pried the small staples loose on the back of the frame, pulled the photo out, and tore it into little pieces.

"Hope you dont mind too much, Ma, but Im going to put Raymond where he belongs." I walked to the bathroom, dropped the pieces in the toilet, flushed it, and watched them swirl around the bowl and disappear.

I went to her bedside and sat down again. I leaned back, closed my eyes, and tried to compose myself, the mention of Raymonds name still ringing in my ears. Finally, I sat up straight.

"Since you cant hear me anyway, Im going to tell you what he did," I said. "At least itll give me the chance to finally get it off my chest."

I leaned forward, rested my elbows on my knees, and clasped my hands.

"I was eight years old. Sarah was nine. You and Grandma and Grandpa had gone out"it was a Friday evening"and you left Sarah and me at Grandmas house with Raymond. He was sixteen, I think.

"I remember watching a baseball game on TV. I must have dozed off, because when I woke up, it was dark. The only light in the house was the light from the television. I remember sitting up and rubbing my eyes, and then I heard this noise. It scared me, because it sounded like a cry for help, but I got up off of the couch and started walking towards the noise, more scared every step I took. I was tiptoeing.

"As I got closer, I could make out some words, something like No! Stop it! I knew it was Sarahs voice, coming from Uncle Raymonds bedroom. I pushed the door open just a little and I could make out Uncle Raymond in the lamplight. He was naked on his knees in the bed with his back to me. Sarahs voice was coming from underneath him."

I stopped and took a deep breath, the image of my naked uncle looming over my sister burning in my minds eye. "Can you hear me, Ma?" I said. "Are you getting this?" I noticed my voice was shaky. Ma was still staring at the ceiling.

"Sarah kept saying, It hurts. Stop it! I didnt know what was going on. I didnt know anything about sex. But there was so much pain, so much fear in Sarahs voice that I knew it was bad. I finally managed to say, Whats going on? I remember being surprised that my voice worked.

"Raymonds head snapped around and he looked at me like he was going to kill me. He said, Get the fuck out of here, you little twerp. I asked him what he was doing to Sarah. And then, Ma, right then, Sarah said something that haunts me to this day. Ill never forget that little voice. She said, Get him off of me, Joey. Hes hurting me. "

I had to stop for a minute. The rape of my sister had haunted me, and her, for more than three decades. When I started talking to Ma, I thought it might somehow help to finally describe to another human being"even a human being who couldnt take it in"what had happened to Sarah. But talking about it was transporting me back to that tiny bedroom. I could feel my heart pounding inside my chest, and my hands had become cold and clammy.

"I stood there like an idiot for a second trying to figure out what to do, but Raymond didnt give me a chance. He jumped off the bed and grabbed me by the throat. He slammed my head so hard against the wall that it made me dizzy. Then he picked me up by the collar and threw me out the door. I remember skidding along down the hallway on my stomach.

He slammed the door, and I froze. I thought about going out to the garage to get a baseball bat or a shovel or an ax, anything. I could hear Sarah crying on the other side of the door, but it was like one of those nightmares where your arms and legs wont work. I was too goddamned scared to move.

"Finally, after what seemed like forever, they came out of the room. I remember Sarah sniffling and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Raymond grabbed both of us by the back of the neck, dragged us into the living room, and pushed us onto the couch. He bent down close to us and pointed his finger within an inch of my nose. And then your brother, the one you loved so much, said to me, If you say one word about this to anybody, Ill kill your sister. Then he turned to Sarah and said, And if you say anything, Ill kill your brother. Got it?

"Neither one of us ever said a word to anyone, including each other. When that sorry piece of shit drowned a year later, it was one of the best days of my life. I tried to get him out of my mind after that, but I couldnt do it. Obviously, neither could Sarah."

I sat back in the chair and let out a deep sigh. "So now you know."

She hadnt moved since I started talking. She lay there, barely breathing, staring at nothing, blinking occasionally.

"I cant believe you didnt notice the changes after that day. I cant believe you never even bothered to ask what was wrong. I might have told you about it, and maybe you could have done something to help Sarah. But you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself, werent you? Youve spent your whole life being miserable, and now its over."

I looked for some telltale sign that she understood. Nothing.

"Did you hear a word I just said? Did you hear?

Ma? "

There was a knock and the door opened. A nurses aide stepped tentatively into the room.

"Is everything all right?" she said. "I thought I heard someone shouting."

It took a few seconds before I understood what she was saying. I suddenly realized where I was, like Id just been awakened from a deep sleep.

"Everythings fine," I said. "Please close the door."

She turned and left. I got up from the chair and looked down at Ma.

"I guess I better go now. Im glad we had this little talk."

April 12 4:00 p.m.

Shitdammit. Erlene Barlowe missed Gus more than ever. Hed have been better than her at handling the TBI agent. As soon as she got away from him in the parking lot, she sat down at the bar and asked herself what Gus would do. She was worried. The TBI man didnt strike her as the type she could hold off for long. She knew hed be back, and she knew it would probably be soon.

Like she told the agent, Gus had been elected high sheriff of McNairy County when he was only twenty-six years old. It was nearly thirty years ago. Erlene hadnt been much more than a baby, only twenty-two, and didnt know the first thing about the world.

Her uncle on the McNairy County Commission helped her get a job as a dispatcher at the sheriffs department. She and Gus were sweet on each other right from the get-go.

What she hadnt told the agent was that Gus was married to another woman at the time, and his wife Bashie caught Erlene and Gus in a motel room in Gatlinburg on a Friday night. Bashie divorced Gus a few months later and he resigned from the sheriffs department. There was also some talk that Gus was selling protection to gamblers and marijuana smugglers, but Erlene didnt believe a word of it.

Gus met some people while he was sheriff who helped him get into the adult entertainment business in Hamilton County after he resigned. He asked Erlene to go with him, and she did. She was love struck, and it went deep down. Gus was big and strong and handsome, a real mans man. He treated her like a princess. They werent able to have children"a botched abortion had left Erlene barren"

but they had a wonderful life together for almost thirty years. She and Gus owned four clubs in four different counties during their marriage. Theyd either buy a club that wasnt making a profit or build one on the cheap and start up. Gus ran the business and dealt with the customers; Erlene handled the girls. Theyd make the club profitable, ride it for a while, and then sell it. They took in tons of money.

Along the way, they helped a lot of young girls who were in bad situations.

Erlene and Gus were planning to run the Mouses Tail for another five years and then move to the South Carolina coast and retire. But late last September, hed been mowing the yard on a Sunday afternoon, keeled over, and was already dead of a coronary when Erlene found him. Her heart broke into a million tiny pieces. Her sweet Gus. He was there one minute, smiling and waving on the riding mower when she looked out the kitchen window, and then poof! Just like that. Gone. The only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that the two of them would be together again someday. Her Gus would be waiting on the other side.

After the agent left and she thought for a while, she called the bartender and all of the girls who worked the night before and told them to meet her at the bar at four oclock, an hour before the place opened. Ronnie was the bartender. Mitzi, Elizabeth, Julie, Trisha, Heather, and Debbie were dancers. The other two were waitresses, April and Alexandra.

They were all beautiful, with wonderful bodies. The older Erlene got, the more she loved being around them. She tried to teach them to respect themselves and to stay away from bad men and drugs. It was a challenge, but she did the best she could.

Angel had waited tables the night the man was killed, but Erlene didnt want Angel to be at the meeting. The man who was killed had behaved shamefully towards Angel, and Erlene was afraid that if the TBI man found out about it, he might suspect Angel of something. Besides, Erlene felt guilty for even having Angel working at the club.

She didnt have any way of knowing it when they first met, but Angel wasnt the type of girl who could handle herself in a place like the Mouses Tail. She was just too tender.

Erlene knew some of the girls thought it was a little strange that Erlene took such a shine to Angel right from the beginning, but they didnt understand.

A lot of it was because of Gus. He had a daughter from his first marriage, a beautiful brunette named Alyse. After Gus and Erlene ran off together, Guss ex-wife Bashie hated him so much that he never got to see Alyse again, but he talked about wanting to see her all the time and he sent money for her every month. Hed always tell Erlene, "Shell come someday. You wait and see."

Sure enough, about a week after Alyses seventeenth birthday, Gus got a framed photograph of his daughter in the mail. There was a little note with it that said, "I miss you, Daddy. Ill see you next year after I turn eighteen." Gus hung the photograph up right next to the kitchen door, and every time he left the house, he blew a kiss at it.

Then the most terrible thing happened. Alyse and two other teenagers were killed in a car accident on New Years Eve, just a few months after Gus got the picture in the mail. Gus went down to her funeral, but Erlene stayed home. She didnt think it would be proper for her to go. Gus was the saddest man Erlene had ever seen for the next few months, though he eventually came out of it and got back to being his old self again. But he never took the picture down, and he never stopped blowing kisses to Alyse.

After he died, Erlene left the photograph hanging right where it was. She even started blowing kisses herself.

When Angel showed up on the bus with Julie Hayes, Erlenes teeth near fell out of her mouth.

Angel looked so much like Alyse that Erlene swore they couldve been sisters, maybe even twins. When she first laid eyes on Angel, she heard Guss voice: "Shell come someday. You wait and see." Erlene knew she had to take Angel home with her. It was like having a piece of Gus back in the house all over again, like Gus himself had sent Angel to comfort her. And doing for Angel, helping her, did comfort Erlene. It was healing, thats what it was; it helped heal some of the pain of losing Gus and a lot of what shed carried around ever since the doctor told her shed never be a mother.

After Angel had been with Erlene only a little while, during some of those moments when theyd curl up on the couch in front of the fireplace and watch a movie, Angel started to open up a little and told Erlene some of the terrible things that had happened to her. Thats when Erlene knew she was right. She knew Gus"or God"had sent Angel to her. She didnt really care which. Angel was the daughter she never had. She was meant to take care of her.

The girls showed up between four and four fifteen.

Erlene told them to sit at the bar. As soon as Julie dragged in"late, as usual"Erlene stood on the other side of the bar and gave them a little speech.

"There was a detective from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation here around noon. He was asking about a murder. He had a picture of the man who was killed, and he thinks the man was here last night. He may even think one of us had something to do with it."

Erlene paused for a skinny minute and looked at their faces. She set such high standards for her girls.

They had to dress a certain way when they came into the club and Erlene was real particular about their makeup and the way they wore their hair.

When Erlene mentioned murder, the girls mouths dropped open and they started looking at one another.

"Is that the murder theyve been talking about on the radio?" Heather said. "Theyre saying the man was a preacher. It made me think of that guy last night who was spouting""

Erlene held up her hand.

"I havent heard anything on the radio," she said, "but I want all of you to forget about that man last night. He wasnt here. I want every one of you to look at me, right now, and listen real carefully to what Im saying. He wasnt here. When the TBI man comes back here or if he comes to your place and starts asking you questions, hes going to show you a picture. And youre going to tell him that the man in the picture was not here. Do all of you understand that?"

Everybody but Julie nodded. Julie looked at Erlene and said, "So youre telling us to lie to a cop about a murder? Isnt that illegal or something?"

Julie had become a problem again. A gorgeous green-eyed redhead was great for business, but she was back on the cocaine and she was getting worse by the day. She was always late, always distracted, and she did outrageous, vulgar things sometimes when she danced.

Julie had also had a huge crush on Gus, even though he was old enough to be her granddaddy, and she was jealous. Erlene finally had to fire her last year after she caught her snorting cocaine in one of the storage rooms. Julie made a huge, ugly scene and was hollering at the top of her lungs when she stormed out of the club. Erlene didnt hear a word from her for eight months, and then maybe two months ago she called Erlene up, all sweet and apologetic. Julie told Erlene how sorry she was about Gus and said she was clean as a whistle and wanted to come back to work. She was in Texas at the time, and Erlenes head told her to let Julie stay in Texas, but her heart said Julie was just a lost young girl who needed a job. And she was good for business.

"Nothing will happen if we stick together," Erlene told them. "Do you girls have any idea what getting caught up in a big murder would do to this business? People would stay away from this place in droves. Wed all wind up on the street, including you, Miss Julie. All that money youve been making? Gone.

"Besides, Im sure nobody in this room killed that gentleman, and I doubt very seriously if any of you has any information that would help the police. The man was a drunken fool. Every one of you saw the way he acted. He probably went somewhere else after he left here and ran into somebody who wasnt as tolerant of his behavior as we were. So why do we need to get involved in it? If the detective asks you, just tell him the man wasnt here and let him move on to people who can help."

"Wheres Angel?" Julie said. "Shes the one who waited on him."

"Angels at home. She and I have decided that shes not really cut out for this business. Dont worry about Angel. She wont say a word." Erlene paused for a minute and looked at all of them again. "Girls, are we all on the same page?"

They all sat quietly, but they were nodding. Erlene knew mentioning the money they were making would get their attention, and besides, she treated them good. She expected a little loyalty in return.

"Julie?"

Julie popped her gum and shrugged her shoulders.

"All right, then, lets get ready to go to work."

April 12 6:00 p.m.

After I left the nursing home, I spent the next hour driving to Mountain City to stand next to a client who was entering a guilty plea to a reduced charge of negligent homicide in what had originally been a second-degree murder case. My client, a thirty-yearold man named Lester Hancock, had come home unexpectedly one evening to discover his best friend in bed with his wife. Lester had initially handled the dispute admirably. He simply told his buddy to get the hell out of his house and never come back. His friend left but returned fifteen minutes later and began yelling insults at Lester from the road in front of Lesters house. Lester yelled back. His friend grabbed a baseball bat from the bed of his pickup and started towards the house. Lester stepped out on the front porch and blew a hole in him with a black powder rifle. He probably would never have been charged had he not dragged the man inside his house and then lied to the police about the way things really happened.

The drive was spectacular in April. The mountain peaks reflected off of the shimmering water of Watauga Lake, and the mountains themselves were coming to life. Dogwood, redbud, Bradford pear, and azalea blossoms dotted the slopes with pink and white. As I wound slowly through the beautiful countryside, I thought about the question Ma had asked me earlier: "What did Raymond ever do to you?"

Almost immediately following the rape, I started overreacting to anyone whom I perceived was trying to bully me. Over the next year, I got myself thrown out of school three times for fighting, and I was only in the third grade. I was afraid of being left alone and had nightmares all the time.

The nightmares eased after a while, but then, when I was in the eighth grade and just starting to hit puberty, I threw my helmet at a football coach who grabbed my face mask and screamed at me when I made a mistake on a play during practice. The helmet hit him in the head. They threw me off the team and out of school for a month.

My freshman year in high school, during the time when the hormones were pouring and I felt like I wasnt in control of anything, including my own body, I went days without sleep and fell into deep depressions. It was the first time I remember having the dream of floating down the turbulent river towards the waterfall.

And then, during my sophomore year, I met Caroline. She was beautiful, smart, funny, and optimistic, and at first, I had a lot of trouble believing she wanted to have anything to do with me. But she did. She saw something in me that I didnt see, and while I didnt understand, I was grateful. Shed flash a smile at me or give me a sideways glance and wink and my heart would melt. Gradually, the nightmares stopped and for the next few years, I actually started to enjoy life.

Caroline and I were inseparable all through high school. We both worked hard. I was an athlete, she was a dancer, and we were both good students. We both had part-time jobs. I worked on the weekends stocking groceries at a supermarket and she taught dance to kids at the studio where she took lessons.

Carolines father was a long-haul truck driver who was hardly ever home and her mother was almost as emotionless as mine, but she never complained about either one of them. We had each other, and that seemed to be enough.

The only serious problem we had was around graduation time. Caroline wanted to get married"

and so did I"but I had something else I wanted to do first. I had trouble explaining it to her, but I wanted to join the army. Caroline said I was crazy, that I was somehow trying to forge a bond with my dead father. She was probably right, but it didnt matter. Id made up my mind. I enlisted a month after I graduated from high school and left for boot camp the same week Caroline entered college at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She said shed wait for me, and she did. I wrote to her almost every day and I came home to see her every time I went on leave, but it was the longest three years of my life.

By the time I got out of the army, Caroline was almost finished with her undergraduate degree in liberal arts. We were married in her mothers Methodist church in Johnson City the same weekend I got back, and I enrolled in school at U.T. in the fall. Caroline went to work part-time at a dance studio owned by a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. She taught jazz and tap and acrobatics and choreographed routines for the dance recitals. I majored in political science and knew what I wanted to be. I was going to be a prosecutor. I was going to put people like my uncle Raymond in jail.

Marrying Caroline was the best decision I ever made. She was so beautiful, so full of life, and she taught me the most important lesson Id ever learned"how to love. Over the next two years, we had two healthy children, and Caroline helped me learn how to raise them. She nudged me when I needed nudging, held me back when I needed holding back, and did her best to keep my outlook optimistic.

Unfortunately, I brought more than my duffel bag home with me from the army. The Rangers are gungho, small-unit specialists who pride themselves on being able to fight in virtually any environment on a moments notice. I trained all over the world for three years but didnt see any combat until two months before my enlistment expired when my unit was sent to Grenada. Terrible images from the short but bloody battles I fought there haunted me through college and law school. Id wake up in the middle of the night screaming, covered in sweat, with my wife talking softly to me, trying to calm me down.

As with Sarahs rape, I eventually managed to suppress the memories, at least most of the time. I even managed to make excellent grades and graduate from both college and law school, despite the fact that I always held a part-time job and was doing my best to be a good husband and father along the way.

I kept myself so busy I didnt have time to think about the past. I dont think I slept for seven years.

By the time I graduated from law school, my son, Jack, was just entering kindergarten. When I interviewed for a job at the district attorneys office back in Washington County, I was disappointed to find that the starting salary for rookie prosecutors was less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year and that it would take me at least ten years to get to the fifty-thousand-dollar range. It seemed like such a waste to have spent all that time and effort for so paltry a salary. Caroline was starting up her own dance studio and we knew she wouldnt make much money. I figured I could make at least twice what the DA was offering by practicing on my own, even as a rookie, so I set up shop in Johnson City. I told myself that after Id made some serious money and gained some experience, Id close down the office and go to work for the district attorney.

I immediately started taking criminal defense cases, reasoning that the experience would help me later when I went to the DAs office. I put the same amount of sweat and effort into my law practice as Id put into being an athlete, a soldier, and a student, and I soon became very good at it. I found that the law offered a great deal of leeway to an astute and enterprising mind, and I learned to take on even the most damning evidence and spin it to suit my arguments. Within a couple of years, I started to win jury trials. The trial victories translated into publicity, and I soon became the busiest criminal defense lawyer around. The money started rolling in.

I defended murderers, thieves, drug dealers, prostitutes, white-collar embezzlers, wife beaters, and drunk drivers. The only cases I refused to take were sex crimes. I convinced myself that I was some kind of white knight, a trial lawyer who defended the rights of the accused against an oppressive government. And along the way, I made an unfortunate discovery. I learned that many of the police officers and prosecutors who were on the other side werent much different than the criminals I was defending.

They didnt give a damn about the truth"all they cared about was winning.

Still, the thought of moving to the prosecutors office was always on my mind. But the money kept me from it. I was taking good care of my wife and my kids. I took pride in being a provider. I took pride in being able to give my children things and opportunities I never had. Before I knew it, ten years had passed.

And then along came Billy Dockery.

Billy was a thirty-year-old mamas boy charged with killing an elderly woman after he broke into her house in the middle of the night. He was long-haired, skinny, stupid, and arrogant, and I didnt like him from the moment I met him. But he swore he was innocent, the case against him was weak, and his mother was willing to pony up a big fee, so I took it on. A year later, a jury found him not guilty after a three-day trial.

Billy showed up drunk at my office the next afternoon and tossed an envelope onto my desk. When I asked him what was in it, he said it was a cash bonus, five thousand dollars. I told him his mother had already paid my fee. He was giddy and insistent.

I knew he didnt have a job, so I asked him where he got the money.