“I am.”
“Tell her I said hello. And tell her I had a little too much to drink that night I called her.”
“Will do,” I said.
As Reid got up and walked out of the room, I leaned back in my chair and let out a deep breath. Reid seemed okay, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d stab me in the back if I gave him half a chance. I’d have to be careful around him.
It was getting to the point where I couldn’t trust anyone.
CHAPTER 36
That same afternoon, I had to go to Criminal Court for a motion hearing on an arson case I was handling. In the motion, I was asking the judge to disqualify the prosecution’s “expert” fire investigator on the grounds that his education, training, and experience did not meet the legal criteria for an expert under the current, controlling case law in Tennessee. My client, a thirty-five-year-old sleazebag named Eddie Burton, had more likely than not burned his girlfriend’s house down so he could bleed her for the insurance money, but the prosecution’s case was thin and their expert simply wasn’t qualified. I had no idea why they had chosen to use this particular expert, but he had very little training, very little experience, a limited education, and he simply wasn’t very bright.
While I was sitting at the defense table waiting for my case to be called, I looked up, and in walked my old client Rupert Lattimore, the man who had engineered the kidnapping, rapes, and murders of two college kids. I’d been appointed to represent Rupert, but the judge had taken me off the case after Rupert and I took turns threatening to kill each other.
Rupert, who was handcuffed, chained at the waist, and shackled, shuffled straight to the defense table accompanied by two sheriff’s deputies. I looked up and smirked at him.
“Well, if it ain’t the murdering, motherfucking lawyer,” Rupert said quietly.
“Go fuck yourself, Rupert,” I said.
“Man, I been hearing what you did up there in West Virginia. I hope they catch you and give you the damned death penalty. From what I hear, you walked into a bar and ambushed them two boys, shot the shit out of them. It was a coward killing from what I hear.”
“Really? Kind of like how you stuck a broomstick up Stephen Whitfield’s ass after you and your boys had him hog-tied? And didn’t you eventually shoot him in the back? And then you went in and raped that poor defenseless girl for two days and then poured bleach down her throat before you covered her in trash bags, stuffed her in a trash can, and let her suffocate? That took a real man, Rupert.”
“Damn shame about your momma,” Rupert said. “How much of her did they find? A couple of little pieces? I’m surprised she wasn’t fucking somebody and got him blown up, too. All I’ve heard about her was that she was a whore.”
I felt heat rise in my stomach, and every muscle in my body tensed. I had a pretty thick skin when it came to the courtroom and clients and some of the things they’d say. But I hated Rupert, and hearing him call my dead mother a whore pushed me over the edge. My vision tunneled. I stood up and looked him dead in the eye.
“You’re gonna pay for that,” I said.
“Yeah? What are you gonna do?”
I turned my back on him and walked out the side door into the hallway. I was seething. I paced up and down the hall for a few minutes and then went outside. I’d gotten into the habit of carrying two phones with me—my regular cell and a throwaway. The throwaway was in my car, and I jogged to the parking garage and retrieved it from the glove compartment. Big Pappy had texted me his most recent burner number, and I dialed it.
“What’s up, my man?” he said cheerfully.
“I have a problem. How much would it cost me to reach out and touch somebody in jail?” I said.
All I could hear was Lattimore’s voice: “All I’ve ever heard about her was that she was a whore.” The indignity of what had happened to her was bad enough, but for Lattimore to remind me of it so blatantly and in such a vulgar manner had thrown me once again into a mental and emotional rage. And he’d been so smug about it. He genuinely didn’t think there was anything I could do about what he’d said, so I could tell he took great pleasure in taunting me. I didn’t just want to fuck him up, I wanted to fuck him up badly. I knew what I was planning could be risky, that it could cause me problems, especially with everything else that was going on, but at that point, with the taunts still burning in my ears, I just didn’t give a shit.
“Depends on which jail and what you mean by touch,” Pappy said. “You want the person dead or beaten or what?”
“The jail is right here in Knoxville,” I said. “The city jail. And I want him oiled up. I don’t want him to have a face.”
“Damn, this dude must have really pissed you off.”
“How much?” I said.
“I can probably get it done for about two thousand.”
“Set it up for me, will you? Just put it on my tab. And make sure you get somebody who will do it right.”
“What did the guy do?”
I told Pappy of my history with Rupert Lattimore, and then I told him what he’d said about my mom.
“Disrespecting a man’s dead mother is not a good idea,” he said. “I can handle it. Take a few days.”
“As soon as possible,” I said, “but do it right. I don’t need any more heat on me.”
I put the phone back in the car and went back into the courtroom. Judge Montgomery was just finishing up introducing Rupert Lattimore to the appointed attorney who would replace me. She set a new trial date, and Rupert shuffled out of the courtroom.
I went back to the defense table, and the judge called my case. We went through the hearing, and I won. The prosecution’s expert witness was disqualified, and since they didn’t have time to get another one before the trial date and the judge wouldn’t give them a continuance, they moved to dismiss the case.
My sleazebag client was thrilled.
Three days later, I heard on the news that an inmate at the Knoxville City Jail had sneaked into Rupert Lattimore’s cell while Rupert was napping and dumped a large bowl of baby oil that had been superheated in a microwave oven onto Rupert’s face. Rupert was in a local hospital in critical condition. The report said that all the skin on his face had melted off into his hands as he screamed and tried to wipe off the baby oil.
Nobody knew—or at least nobody was saying—who the oil-throwing inmate was, and nobody knew why Rupert Lattimore no longer had a face.
Except for me, of course. And a man named Big Pappy.
CHAPTER 37