"Offn that woman," he said.

"What woman?"

"That woman I killed. I got a bunch moren this.

I figger you earned a piece of it."

I threw him and his money out onto the street.

There wasnt any use in telling the police about it.

Double jeopardy prevented Billy from being tried again, and the rules about client confidentiality meant I couldnt divulge his dirty little secret anyway.

Prior to Billy, I did what all criminal defense lawyers do"I avoided discussions with my clients about what really happened. I concerned myself only with evidence and procedure. But when Billy slapped me in the face with the truth, I realized Id been fooling myself for years. I realized that my profession, my reputation, my entire perception of myself was nothing more than a facade. I was a whore, selling my services to the highest bidder. I wasnt interested in truth; I was interested in winning, because winning led to money. Id completely lost my sense of honor.

When that realization hit me, I wanted to quit practicing law altogether. But my children were in high school and would soon be going off to college. Caroline had managed our money well, but we didnt have enough stashed away to allow me to quit outright. So Caroline and I talked it over, and we decided Id keep going until the kids had graduated and gone on to college. After that, wed figure out what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

I immediately began to cut back on the number of cases I took. The death penalty cases I was doing these days were all appointed, payback from judges for the days when I was spinning facts and helping people like Billy Dockery walk out the door. Now my son was in college and my daughter was a senior in high school. In less than a year, I hoped to finish up the cases I had and walk away from the profession that Uncle Raymond, at least indirectly, had led me to.

By the time I got back from Mountain City, it was almost dark. So far, my birthday had been a bust.

Johnny Wayne had been gagged, Id practically fallen apart in Mas room, and the flashback of Sarahs rape kept playing over and over in my head. And I couldnt reach Caroline or either of the kids on my cell phone. Id called ten times on the way back down the mountain.

I finally pulled into the driveway and pushed the garage door opener. There wasnt another car in sight.

Rio, my young German shepherd, came bounding out of the garage and started his daily ritual of running around the truck. Id rescued Rio from a bad situation when he was only two months old. I was his hero. When he saw me pull into the driveway every day, the excitement was too much for his young bladder. As soon as I got out of the truck, he peed on my shoe.

Where could they be? I didnt see my sons car.

When Id talked to Jack on the phone last week, he promised to come to dinner with us on my birthday.

I thought seriously about backing out and going somewhere to drown my sorrows but decided Id go in and see if they left me a note. Surely they wouldnt forget my birthday. These were the people I loved more than anything else in the world. Theyd never forgotten my birthday. They always made a big deal out of it.

Caroline hadnt said anything that morning, but Id left at five thirty and showered at the gym after I worked out. She and Lilly were still asleep when I walked out the door. Maybe they did forget.

Or maybe something was wrong. Something had to be wrong. I rubbed Rios ears for a minute and walked up and opened the door that led to the kitchen. It was dark inside. I let the dog go in ahead of me. It was quiet.

"Hello! Anybody home?" I flipped on the light in the kitchen.

A huge poster had been hung from the kitchen ceiling. It stretched all the way to the floor and was at least six feet wide. It looked like something a high school football team would run through when they took the field for a game. The poster, in bright blue letters, said: Happy Birthday, Dad!

WE LOVE YOU!.

I laughed as the three of them came around the corner from the den into the kitchen, singing "Happy Birthday." All three were wearing striped pajamas and grinning like monkeys. Theyd tied their wrists together. The Dillard family chain gang. My self-pity vanished and I opened my arms for a group hug.

Caroline announced that they were taking me to dinner, and they changed out of their striped pajamas. I chose Cafe Pacific, a quiet little place on the outskirts of Johnson City that served the best seafood in town. As I sat there eating prawns and scallops in an incredible Thai sauce, I looked at their faces, settling finally on Carolines. Id fallen in love with the most beautiful girl in school all those years ago, and she was even more beautiful now. Her wavy auburn hair shimmered in the candlelight. Her smooth, fair skin and deep brown eyes glowed, and when she caught me looking at her I got a coy smile that brought out the dimple in her right cheek.

Caroline has the firm, lithe body of a dancer, but its soft and curvy where it matters. Shes studied dance all her life and still operates a small dance studio. Lilly is Carolines clone, with the exception that her hair runs to a lighter shade and her eyes are hazel. Lilly is seventeen and in her senior year of high school. She wants to be a dancer, or a photographer, or an artist, or a Broadway actress.

Jack looks a lot like me. He just turned nineteen and is tall and muscular, with dark hair and brooding eyes that are nearly black. Jack is a top student and a highly competitive athlete whose goal is to play professional baseball, and he works at it with the intensity of a fanatic. He and I have spent countless hours together practicing on a baseball field.

Hell hit until his hands blister, throw until his arm aches, lift weights until his muscles burn, and run until his legs give out. The work paid off in the form of a scholarship to Vanderbilt, but the scholarship paid only half his tuition. I still had to come up with twenty thousand dollars a year.

When the waiter brought me a piece of chocolate cake, Caroline reached into her purse and produced a candle. She stuck it in the cake and lit it.

"Make a wish," she said.

"And dont tell us what it is," Lilly said. She says that every year.

I made a silent wish for an innocent client. And the sooner the better.

Jack reached under the table and pulled out a small, flat, gift-wrapped box.

"This is from all of us," he said.

I opened the card. There was a message, in Carolines handwriting: "Follow your heart. Follow your dreams. Well all be there, wherever it leads. We love you." Shes as eager as I am to get me out of the legal profession. She thinks my work keeps me at war with myself"shes told me more than once that shes never seen anybody so conflicted. Shes been encouraging me to go to night school and get certified as a high school teacher and a coach.

Inside the package were box seat tickets to an Atlanta Braves game in July.

"I cleared your calendar," Caroline said. "Were all going. Dont you dare schedule anything for that weekend."

"Not a chance," I said. It was perfect.

We finished dessert and drove back home around nine. As I pulled into the driveway, the headlights swept over the front porch about thirty feet to the left of the garage. I saw something move. We lived on ten isolated acres on a bluff overlooking Boone Lake. Wed left Rio in the house when we went to the restaurant. I stopped just outside the garage and got out of the car. I could hear Rio raising hell inside.

"Ill go in and turn on the porch light," I said to Caroline. "You guys stay in the car."

"No way," Jack said as he got out of the backseat.

I walked around the corner towards the front with Jack right beside me. Someone stood on the porch.

"Whos there?" I said.

Silence. And then the porch light came on. Standing next to the porch swing in a pair of ratty khaki shorts and a green T-shirt that read, "Do me, Im Irish," was my sister, Sarah.

April 12 2:00 p.m.

By the time Landers returned to his office, the Johnson City dicks had managed to gather more information on the murder victim. John Paul Tester was a widower with one grown kid, a son who was a deputy sheriff and a chaplain at the Cocke County sheriffs department. Tester had come up to Johnson City to preach at a revival at a little church near Boones Creek. He delivered the sermon, collected almost three hundred dollars from the offering plate for his trouble, and left the church around nine. Nobody had seen him since. His bank records showed that he withdrew two hundred dollars in cash from an automatic teller machine at eleven forty-five p.m. The machine was at the Mouses Tail. If Tester ran through three hundred dollars there and needed more money around midnight, the Barlowe woman had to have noticed him.

The bitch lied.

Landers spent the afternoon drafting an affidavit for a search warrant and running down a judge. All he had to do was tell the judge that the owner of the club where the murder victim was last seen had lied and was refusing to cooperate. The warrant the judge signed authorized the TBI to search the Mouses Tail for any evidence relevant to the murder of John Paul Tester. And since it was a strip club, the judge didnt have any qualms about Landers executing the warrant during business hours.

Landers planned the raid himself. About an hour before the SWAT guys were supposed to hit the front door, hed go in to check things out, and then at the appointed time hed signal the start of the raid. Landers was looking forward to it, especially the part about checking things out.

A little after nine, he stopped by his place to shower and change. He put on a pair of jeans, a collared black pullover, and a jacket. He stuck his .38 in an ankle holster, and drove out to the Mouses Tail around ten fifteen. It was a tacky joint, built of concrete block and painted powder blue. The front entrance was covered by a bright blue awning trimmed in black. A big gray mouse, grinning from ear to ear and with a tail that curled up into what looked like an erect penis, had been air-brushed on the side of the building that faced the road.

There were twenty or thirty cars in the parking lot out front. Landers had to pay a ten-dollar cover to get past the blonde in the foyer. She looked like a high-end hooker, in elaborate makeup and black spandex. Huge tits. The ATM the murder victim withdrew the money from was sitting right beside the counter in front.

Blondie buzzed Landers through into the main part of the club. It was a large, open room, about a hundred feet long and forty feet wide. On each side of the main room were what appeared to be small anterooms, the entrances covered by black curtains.

There were three stages, each about the size of a boxing ring, set in a triangle and complete with brass poles. Each stage was framed by mirrors and occupied by a naked, gyrating lady. Cigarette smoke hung in a cloud about ten feet off the floor, and a mirror ball was throwing light around the room. The music was loud. Landers had heard the bass buzzing off the walls from the parking lot. He didnt recognize the song that was playing, but it was by one of those dumbass black rappers.

Landers did a quick head count. There were six people, all men, at the bar to his right and another thirty or so sitting at counters and tables around the stages. Besides the dancers and two waitresses, who were wearing extremely attractive tight white nurses outfits, there wasnt a woman in the place. Landers didnt see Erlene Barlowe anywhere.

He took a seat at a table towards the back. The redhead onstage was magnificent. She had a gorgeous face and she kept throwing her head around and making her hair fly. Her legs were long, her ass was tight, her tits were small and firm, and she could move. Landers was sitting there fantasizing about his balls slapping off of her ass when one of the nurses stopped by the table. Her little top was a zip-up that hadnt been zipped up very far. Her tits were falling out all over the place.

"What can I get you, honey?" she said.

"Club soda. Twist of lime." The nurse gave Landers a shitty look when he ordered the club soda. He would much rather have had a whiskey, but he never knew what might happen in a raid. He needed to stay sharp.

Nurse Betty brought his club soda a couple of minutes later. Cost him five-fifty. She gave him an even shittier look when he didnt give her a tip. Landers called Jimmy Brown at ten forty-five. The raid was supposed to start at eleven straight up. Landers could barely hear him over the fucking music. Brown said they were just pulling off the interstate. Theyd be in position in five minutes.

Thats when he saw Erlene Barlowe, still wearing the leather pants and cheetah top. She was standing by the bar. Nurse Betty was talking in her ear and pointing in Landerss direction. The music had stopped and the disc jockey was telling the customers that touching the girls wasnt allowed. Erlene spotted Landers and headed straight for him.

"Are you here to arrest me, handsome?" she said when she got to the table. "Or are you just a bad boy looking for a good time?"

"You remember the guy I was asking you about?

The dead guy who wasnt here? He withdrew some money out of your ATM out there in the lobby last night."

"Well, I swan, honey. I must have just missed him somehow."

"My name isnt honey. Its Landers. Special Agent Landers. And youre about to find out how much I hate it when sluts lie to me." Landers took out his phone and dialed Jimmy Brown. "You guys ready?"

"All set. Standing outside the front door."

"Go."

There was a scream from the lobby, and the door banged open. SWAT guys in black combat gear and helmets came rushing in. They looked like fucking Navy SEALs. They had their weapons up and were yelling.

"Police! Get on the floor! Get on the floor!"

Landers stood up and pointed his .38 at Erlene Barlowes face.

"This is a raid, bitch," he said. "Get your hands up against that wall and dont move until I tell you to."

The look on her face was priceless.

April 26 11:00 a.m.

Two weeks after my birthday, I finished up a hearing on a drug case in federal court in Greeneville and had just gotten in my truck to drive back to Johnson City when I looked at my cell phone and saw a text message from Caroline: "Call me. Urgent."

Caroline had taken on the job as my secretary/ paralegal two years earlier, after we made the decision that I was getting out. Since I was taking fewer cases, I needed to cut down on my overhead. The classes Caroline taught at her dance studio were held in the evenings, so she volunteered. When the lease was up on my office downtown, I found my secretary a job at another law firm and moved the essentials out to my house. The move saved me almost sixty thousand dollars a year, and Caroline took an online course and got herself certified as a paralegal.

She turned out to be a quick study. I still had a small conference room downtown where I met clients, but it cost me only two hundred a month.

"Whats up?" I said when she answered the phone.

"Could be good, could be bad," she said. "A woman named Erlene Barlowe called early this morning. She was frantic. She said the police barged into her house and arrested a young friend of hers for murder and that she needed to hire a lawyer. She kept saying the girl couldnt have done it."

Right.

"She wants to meet with you. Its been a long time since youve been hired privately on a murder case."

"Billy Dockerys mother hired me." Id never told anyone about Billys confession. Not even Caroline.

"You made a lot of money on that case, didnt you?"

"Fifty thousand."

"We could use it."

"I thought we were in good shape."

"We are, but a murder case? And this one could be big money, babe. Its the case where the preacher was murdered. The one who was found in the motel room."

"I dont want to take on a murder case, high profile or not, Caroline. It could go on for years."

"Thats why I didnt make her an appointment."

She sounded disappointed.

I thought about it for a minute, weighing the pros and the cons. Curiosity finally got the best of me.

"Ah, what the heck, it wont hurt to talk to her.

Call her back and have her meet me downtown at one."

It took me an hour to drive back to Johnson City.

I ate a quick lunch at a cafeabout two blocks from my conference room and walked in the door about ten minutes before one. There was a woman sitting at the table waiting for me. She stood when I came in. It was all I could do to keep my jaw from dropping. She was dressed in tight black spandex pants and an orange and black tiger-striped top that nearly exposed the nipples on her very substantial breasts.

Her hair was a shade of red Id never seen before, on or off a womans head.

"Joe Dillard," I said as I shook her hand. Her fingernails were at least an inch long and painted the same design as her shirt.

"Erlene Barlowe. Youre even better-looking in person than you are on television." She smiled, and when I looked her in the eye, I saw that despite the shocking outfit, she was an attractive woman. I motioned towards the chair.

"What can I do for you, Ms. Barlowe?"

"Oh, honey, I have the most terrible problem. Its just awful. A very close young lady friend of mine has been arrested for a crime she didnt commit."

"Close friend?"

"More like a daughter. I sort of took her in about a month ago."

"Start from the beginning, Ms. Barlowe. Tell me everything you want me to know."