"Reasonable Fear"

SCOTT PRATT.

This book, along with every book I've written and every book I'll write, is dedicated to my darling Kristy, to her unconquerable spirit and to her inspirational courage. I loved her before I was born and I'll love her after I'm long gone.

Reasonable Force That degree of force which is not excessive and is appropriate in protecting oneself or one's property. When such force is used, a person is justified and is not criminally liable. Black's Law Dictionary.

PART I.

Chapter One.

A ten-year-old boy, fishing along the bank of Boone Lake with his father, was the first to spot the body. She was floating about ten feet from sh.o.r.e in the gray light of dawn, slightly submerged in the still, green water. I arrived around 6:30 a.m., shortly after the emergency medical people. The sheriff had called me as soon as he was notified.

It was the end of summer, the "dog days" as they're known in the Northeast Tennessee idiom, the time of year when the heat is sweltering and the humidity stifling, when the first of the leaves separate from the branches that have sustained them through spring and summer. They float briefly, silently, on the breeze until they drop to the earth, signaling the beginning of the season of death.

Normally, the district attorney wouldn't show up at the scene of an apparent drowning, but the sheriff said the boy's father told the emergency dispatcher that the woman in the water was naked. Maybe she was skinny-dipping and drowned. Maybe she was drunk and fell from a boat. Maybe she committed suicide. Or maybe she didn't go into the water voluntarily. If she was murdered, I'd ultimately be responsible for seeing to it that whoever killed her was prosecuted, and I liked to be in on the investigation from the beginning whenever possible.

My name is Joe Dillard, a name bestowed upon me when Lyndon Johnson controlled the White House and Robert McNamara and "the hawks" controlled U.S. foreign policy. My father, the son of a Unicoi County cattle and tobacco farmer, was a casualty of those hawks. He'd been drafted and sent to Vietnam. He'd visited my mother and infant sister in Hawaii while on leave from the Vietnam War six weeks before he was killed. It was during that visit to Hawaii that I was conceived. I never met my father, but from the photos I've seen of him, there's no doubt in my mind about my paternity. The last photograph ever taken of him two days before he died showed a tall, strapping young man, tawny and shirtless beneath the afternoon sun on a mountainside, both of his arms draped over the shoulders of his buddies. His hair, like mine, was dark, his eyes, like mine, were green, his shoulders and chest wide and thickly muscled, his waist lean and rippled. He was grinning widely, an innocent, boyish grin that belied the fear that must have resided in his belly.

At the age of forty-three, I found myself occupying the office of district attorney general over four counties in Northeast Tennessee. I wasn't elected. I was appointed by governor of Tennessee after the previous district attorney was accused of a terrible crime. My temples were flecked with gray, and my joints ached occasionally, but all in all, I'd managed to remain relatively robust as I entered middle age.

A young sheriff's deputy and his stocky partner were dragging her onto the gra.s.s as I walked down the bank from the road. Two other deputies were searching for evidence, while yet another was standing in the road talking to a man whom I a.s.sumed made the initial call and a boy. It was Sunday morning, the day before Labor Day. In two days, the Tennessee Valley Authority would begin the yearly process of steadily drawing down Boone Lake. By October, the lake would be twenty to thirty feet below full pool and would look like a giant mud puddle. It would stay that way until February, when the TVA would begin using the system of dams constructed during Roosevelt's New Deal era to gradually fill it again. Each year, on the Sat.u.r.day before Labor Day, the lake is covered with house boats, pontoon boats, deck boats, ski boats and jet skis as the locals take advantage of their last opportunity of the summer to enjoy the water at full pool. They come early and stay late, many of them drink like Irish Catholics at a wake, and nearly every year, someone dies.

The rising sun was hot against my face and a purple haze enveloped the surrounding mountains like a giant shroud. The sky was pale and blue, the air thick and moist. I could already feel sweat running down the side of my face from my temples. I stopped about ten feet from the body and watched while a paramedic efficiently but unenthusiastically attempted to revive her. After a few minutes, he looked at his partner and simply shook his head.

"How long you reckon she's been in the water?" a voice behind me said.

I turned and saw Sheriff Leon Bates, mid-forties, tall, lean and tan, clad in his khaki uniform, cowboy hat and boots, striding toward us. Bates was an immensely popular sheriff who was in the last year of his first four-year term, although I had no doubt he would be around for as many terms as he desired. He was a consummate southern sheriff, mixing a congenial brand of backwoods lingo with a sharp mind for law enforcement, and over the past three years, he'd earned both my respect and my friendship.

"I'm not an expert," the EMT said, "but it doesn't look like she's been in long. Her lips are purple, but I don't see any signs of lividity. She isn't even in rigor yet."

I moved closer and looked down at the woman. I guessed her age at mid-to-late twenties. She was pretty, even in death. Her face was angular, her nose pet.i.te. Her open eyes were turquoise, and her hair was long and blonde. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were ample and her body lean. Her pubic area was shaved clean. She was wearing a thin, gold chain around her neck and rings of various types on all of her fingers.

"Any wounds or marks that you can see?" Bates said.

The EMT shook his head. "Just a tattoo."

I'd noticed the tattoo when I walked up, but I hadn't looked closely. When the EMT mentioned it, I stepped over and crouched down next to her. It was on the inside of her right forearm, a single, pink petal clinging to the stem of a dying rose. Beneath the rose were several withered petals lying in green gra.s.s. Above the stem and petal was the word, "Hope."

Bates removed his cowboy hat and began scratching his head.

"How does a young beauty like this wind up drowned in the lake on the busiest night of the year without a soul seeing it?" he said to no one in particular. "n.o.body's reported a girl missing, n.o.body's called in and said she fell in or went swimming and went under. n.o.body's said a word."

"She didn't drown," the EMT said.

"Excuse me?"

"I said she didn't drown. There isn't any water in her lungs."

"That's an important tidbit," Bates said. "I appreciate you getting around to sharing it with me."

Bates walked over next to me and hooked his thumbs in his belt.

"No water in her lungs means she was dead when she went in," he said. "Not a mark on her. How do you reckon she died, brother Dillard?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "You're the sleuth. I'm just the lowly lawyer."

Bates looked around, scanning the tree-covered hills that surrounded the water. He raised his head skyward, and I followed his gaze. A half-dozen turkey vultures, black against the sky with wing spans of at least six feet, were circling ominously above.

"Amazing," he said. "How do you reckon they figure it out so fast?"

"They smell it," I said.

"Is it true they don't make any sound?"

"They hiss. Like a snake."

Bates sighed and resumed his survey of the surrounding area. "No houses in sight," he said. "Maybe a few campers scattered here and there, but we'll play h.e.l.l finding anybody who saw anything. I guess we do what we always do when we run across a body with no witnesses."

"What's that?" I said.

"We start at the end and go backward."

Chapter Two.

I left a short time later and drove my truck along the narrow back roads that wound through the gently rolling hills of the Gray and Boones Creek communities. I rolled the windows down and let the smell of the morning swirl through the cab of my truck. Cattle were lying in the pale-yellow shade of the elms, locusts, poplars and oaks that grew along the fringes of the pastures, and the rectangular tobacco patches were golden against the hillsides. Along the way, I started thinking about how hardened I'd become, how the sight of a dead young girl no longer moved me. It troubled me to think that I'd come to accept violence and cruelty as a part of everyday life.

Other att.i.tudes had changed as well. I'd long ago rearranged the idealistic beliefs of my youth when it came to understanding or rehabilitating violent criminals. Whether the traits that caused them to commit their terrible transgressions were created by genetics, environment or substance abuse was no longer of concern to me. My single purpose was getting them off the streets, into a secure warehouse, and keeping them there for as long as possible so they couldn't injure, maim or kill again.

I pulled into a convenience store in Boones Creek and was just starting to fill up the tank in my truck when I heard someone call my name. The voice was vaguely familiar. I turned and saw a woman walking out of the store toward me. She was as vaguely familiar as the voice. Then it hit me.

"Leah? Leah Turner?"

The woman walked quickly to me and threw her arms around my neck.

"I heard you were here," she said into my ear. "It's so good to see you."

She stepped back, and I looked at her. Leah Turner was a cla.s.smate of mine at the University of Tennessee College of Law. I hadn't seen her in close to twenty years, but she'd changed very little. She had light brown hair that fell in ringlets around her dimpled cheeks, the clearest, prettiest, blue eyes I'd ever seen and a smile that could melt the iciest heart.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I've been transferred," she said. "Just this week. I can't believe I ran into you like this. Tell me you're not still married."

I smiled. As much as I hated to admit it, there had been something between us in law school. It was an attraction that was deep and physical, and it took every bit of control I could muster to resist her. Not that she made it easy. She hit on me openly and shamelessly. She even hit on me in front of my wife, Caroline, a couple of times; I remember it was all I could do to keep Caroline from punching her in the nose.

"Still married," I said. "It's been good."

"How many kids did you end up with?"

"Just the two. They're both out of the house now. What about you? Are you married?"

"I'm Leah McCoy now," she said. "I got married five years after we graduated. His name is Carmack McCoy, everybody calls him Mack. Great guy."

"Kids?"

"One. Robert. He's fifteen years old, and he's not happy about moving here. He's not happy about much of anything, really. If you want to know the truth, he's a pain in the b.u.t.t."

"Teenager," I said. "It'll get better."

She squeezed both of my hands.

"You look good, Joe," she said.

"Thanks, so do you."

She was tall, just under six feet, lean and leggy. She was wearing running gear skimpy shorts and a light blue, sleeveless top and still had a sheen of sweat on her tanned face.

"Would you be interested in having an affair?" she asked. "I'm so bored."

"Who. . . ah, who transferred you here? Who are you working for?"

"I was kidding, Joe. My husband is a super-human. There isn't a boring bone in his body. And I work for Uncle Sam himself. I'm an FBI agent, believe it or not. So is Mack."

"No kidding? How long have you been with the FBI?"

"Fifteen years. I worked for an insurance defense firm in Nashville after law school, but I hated it. I met Mack at a bar on Printer's Alley. We started dating and got married a year later. He was already an agent, and one day when I was complaining about work he suggested that I apply to the bureau, so I did. They hired me, and Mack and I have been with them ever since. It's been an interesting life. We've lived in a bunch of places, most recently Miami. I loved the work there, but I hated the climate. We both put in for transfers to Tennessee about a year ago, and a couple of jobs came open. They gave us twenty-four hours to make up our minds. It didn't take me twenty-four seconds."

"So you're working in the Johnson City office?"

"No, I'm in Greeneville. Mack's in Johnson City."

"Only thirty miles apart. That's not so bad. What kind of cases are you going to be working?"

"I'm going to be doing crimes against children: kidnappings, p.o.r.nography, stuff like that. Mack worked drugs in Miami, but he's going to work public corruption here."

"I'm sure there's plenty of work for both of you."

"Yeah, it's a shame, but it's true."

The handle on the gas pump popped, indicating the tank was full and breaking the momentum of the conversation.

"We should get together," Leah said, "the four of us."

"Definitely. Where are you living?"

"Just down the road. Big brick house. The corner of Highway 36 and Boring Chapel Road."

"I know exactly the house you're talking about. Been for sale for about a year."

"Not anymore." She kissed me lightly on the cheek. "I'll see you around, big boy."

She turned and I watched her walk away toward her car. She knew I was watching, because halfway across the lot she blew a kiss over her shoulder and started swaying her hips back and forth like a fashion model on a runway. She climbed into a charcoal gray Infiniti and pulled away.

I got back into the truck thinking about what she'd said: "We should get together, the four of us."

Caroline would be thrilled.

Chapter Three.

Seeing Leah tripped another emotional trigger, and as I drove toward home, I found myself wondering about the choices I'd made and the stark contrast between my professional life and my personal life. When I walked out the door each morning, it was as though I stepped into a different plane of existence. Everywhere I turned, there were battles to be fought: battles with defense lawyers, battles with trial judges and appellate judges, battles with defendants and victims and victims' families, battles with employees, and worst of all, battles with my own conscience. There were days I'd return home feeling like I'd been abandoned by my own soul, like it had been ripped from my very being and had crawled off to hide, wounded and bleeding, until it had healed enough to rejoin the fight.

But at home, things were different. Caroline and I had been together since high school and were still deeply in love. She'd been battling breast cancer for more than two years and had been deeply scarred, both physically and emotionally. There was now a long, pink ridge across Caroline's lower abdomen and two more that ran from her scapulas to the small of her back, each a result and a painful reminder of the three failed attempts to reconstruct her amputated breast. Her surgeon had decided that replacing the breast with a "flap," or slab of transplanted tissue, was the best course of action. He took the first flap from her abdomen and it seemed to do well until she underwent radiation therapy. The radiation caused the blood vessels in both the flap and the surrounding tissue to shrink to less than half their normal size, and most of the flap died, liquefied, and exited her body through wounds that opened like large blisters and took months to heal.

Six months after the first failure, the surgeon decided to try again. This time the flap came from muscle and tissue in Caroline's back, but because the radiated blood vessels couldn't handle the amount of blood being carried to the site by the healthy vessels, most of that flap died, too, leaving her with another b.l.o.o.d.y mess that seemed as though it would never heal. A year later, over my strenuous objection, Caroline consented to a third attempt at reconstruction. The surgeon, a.s.suring us all the while that the third time would be the charm, "harvested" yet another flap from the other side of her back and transplanted it to the same site. Less than a week later, the transplanted flap began to turn black. The surgery failed so miserably that the surgeon had to remove it. So after more than two years and nearly a dozen surgeries, Caroline now had what looked like a large shark bite where her breast used to be. I dressed the wound every day, and Caroline went about her life as though it wasn't there. I could no longer accompany her on visits to the surgeon, however. His arrogance had caused Caroline untold amounts of pain, heartache and worry, and I wanted to snap his neck like a dry twig.

But I'd grown accustomed to the wounds and the scars that marked Caroline's body like bomb craters on a battlefield. To me, she was still the same beautiful creature I'd fallen in love with so many years ago. I think I loved her even more, if that was possible. Through it all: the chemotherapy, the radiation, the sickness, the fatigue, the surgeries, she'd remained unfailingly upbeat and positive. On the extremely rare occasions that her resolve would begin to flag, she would pull herself out of it immediately and would even go so far as to apologize to me for being weak. She'd shown such courage and such strength during her illness that it left me in awe, and whenever I began to feel sorry for myself because of what I did for a living, all I had to do was think about Caroline and what she'd been through. My problems paled in comparison.

Our eldest child, Jack, had been drafted by the Detroit Tigers after his junior year of college and was finishing up his first season in the minors down in Florida. Our daughter, Lilly, was just beginning her junior year at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and was enjoying her life away from home. Caroline and I shared the house with a couple of dogs, a German shepherd named Rio and a teacup poodle named Chico. We'd saved plenty of money and Caroline had invested it judiciously, primarily by staying away from the wolves on Wall Street. I should have enjoyed life more, but just beneath the surface of my psyche, a bubbling pool of turmoil churned like magma inside a volcano. I struggled constantly to contain this nagging sense of doom and inner rage that seemed to intensify as I grew older. I thought I knew its origins, believed I had a fundamental understanding of the events that had nurtured it over the course of my life, and I'd attempted to take steps many steps in a sustained and determined effort to diffuse it, but still it remained. Most often, the rage manifested itself in the form of nightmares vivid, violent scenes that would cause me to wake up screaming and sweating. Worst of all, they caused me to fear sleep, to avoid it at both a conscious and subconscious level, and the resulting deprivation would inevitably result in exhaustion, followed by restless, involuntary sleep, and even more nightmares. Occasionally, if enough pressure was brought to bear, the psychic magma would spill over the sides of my inner volcano into molten lava and I would lash out, sometimes verbally, sometimes physically. It was as if I would suddenly become some type of feral being, undomesticated and violent, and I would focus my rage upon whatever, or whomever, had caused the internal pressure to rise to the boiling point.

Whenever it happened, whenever I allowed the demons from the past to gain the upper hand, I wound turn, inevitably, to Caroline. She was my Athena, my Great Ameliorator. She knew how to soothe me, how to convince me that the world was not as dangerous as I might believe it to be. She reminded me always that love is most important in this world, that I was loved, and that despite my psychological torments I retained a far greater capacity for love than for violence. She would patiently rea.s.sure me that the path I'd chosen was the right path, that I wasn't wasting my life, that not only was I relevant, I was necessary. I suspected at some level that she was placating me, but she always managed to do it in a manner that convinced me, at least for awhile, that what she was saying was true, and that, as the cliche goes, everything would be alright.

The sun was well above the horizon as I pulled into the driveway. A red Mustang that belonged to my sister, Sarah, was parked to the right of the garage. Sarah was a year older than me, a dark-haired, green-eyed, hard-bodied woman who was living proof of the power of genetics. She's spent most of her adult life abusing herself with drugs and alcohol and had spent a fair amount of time in jail, but you'd never have guessed it by looking at her. With the exception of tiny crows' feet at the corners of her eyes, she appeared the picture of health and clean living.

I hadn't seen Sarah in over a month, which was always a bad sign. So was the fact that she'd apparently come over unannounced on a Sunday morning.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I walked in the door. Sarah and Caroline were standing next to the kitchen table. Caroline's arms were around Sarah's neck and Sarah, who wasn't given to displays of emotion other than anger, was sobbing. Rio, our German shepherd, was lying next to the wall to their left. He must have sensed the sadness in the room, because he always greeted me enthusiastically. His ears perked up and he looked at me, but he didn't move. I walked across the kitchen and caught Caroline's eye. She was stroking the back of Sarah's head, and I could see that she, too, was crying.