Joe Dillard - 03 - Injustice for All Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART 2

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  PART 3

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  PART 4

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Praise for the Novels of Scott Pratt

  “Newcomer Scott Pratt brings a fresh voice to a crowded field in his stellar debut, An Innocent Client. Joe Dillard is the best defense lawyer in his small town in Tennessee. He’s also desperately trying to leave the practice of law. Tired of cutting deals for the guilty, Dillard hopes to end his career on a high note—by representing one innocent client. A murder at a local strip club may give him his chance. Artfully plotted, carefully nuanced, and immensely readable, An Innocent Client is a terrific debut novel. Joe Dillard is an engaging, complex character who is worth rooting for. We will be hearing much more from Scott Pratt. Highly recommended.”

  —Sheldon Siegel, New York Times bestselling author

  of Judgment Day

  “A well-crafted, compelling debut, and Scott Pratt is a talent to watch.”

  —Jeff Abbott, national bestselling author of Collision

  “A smart, sophisticated legal thriller. Scott Pratt knows his stuff and it shows.”

  —Alafair Burke, author of Angel’s Tip

  “The most impressive first novel I’ve read in years. Think Harlan Coben meets John Grisham. Scott Pratt has written an unputdownable legal thriller, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.”

  —Jason Starr, award-winning author of The Follower

  “I’ve read An Innocent Client and am truly stunned. It’s Scott Turow and Grisham on meth. The opening chapter is maybe the most compelling I’ve read in a decade.”

  —Ken Bruen, Shamus Award-winning author of Cross

  “As polished and engrossing as any John Grisham or John Hart legal thriller, Scott Pratt’s stunning debut novel, An Innocent Client, sings with intrigue, crusty Tennessee characters, and gut-wrenching personal choices. To protagonist Joe Dillard’s wish for ‘just one innocent client,’ I’d say, ‘Watch what you ask for.’ To everyone else, I’d say, ‘Go buy this book now.’ ”

  —Louise Ure, Shamus Award-winning author

  of The Fault Tree

  ALSO BY SCOTT PRATT

  In Good Faith

  An Innocent Client

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18725-8

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, May 2010

  Copyright © Scott Pratt, 2010

  All rights reserved

  Obsidian and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Injustice for All, my third novel, is dedicated

  to Lil’ Smacks, the toughest girl I’ve ever known.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks first of all to Shirley Pratt, my mom, for being my biggest fan. Thanks also to the gentlemen at the Philip Spitzer Literary Agency—Philip Spitzer, Lukas Ortiz, and Luc Hunt—for working so enthusiastically on my behalf. Thank you once again to Jon Ruetz, a man of many talents, who did a splendid job helping me get the manuscript into shape, and thank you to all the talented folks at Penguin, especially Kristen Weber and Brent Howard, who work so hard to put these projects together.

  I’d also like to thank former assistant U.S. attorney Dan Smith, who took the time to explain to me how the feds allocate resources in certain situations, and Ian Harmon, who shared his computer expertise.

  And finally, thank you to Kristy, Dylan, and Kody, my favorite peeps, for believing in me, for keeping me positive, and for being such a fruity bunch of human beings. I love you, I love you, I love you.

  justice: the quality of being just, impartial, or fair.r />
  —Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary

  Prologue

  May 2007

  My name is Joe Dillard, and I’m leaning against a chain-link fence watching a baseball game at Daniel Boone High School in Gray, Tennessee, on a spectacular, sun-drenched evening in early May. The sky is a cloudless azure, a mild breeze is blowing out toward left field, and the pleasant smell of fresh-cut grass hangs in the air.

  There are five of us watching the game from our spot near the right-field foul pole: me; my wife, Caroline; her best friend, Toni Miller; my buddy Ray Miller (Toni’s husband); and Rio, our German shepherd. The Dillards and the Millers have been watching our sons play baseball together for ten years, alternately rejoicing in their successes and agonizing over their failures. Rio is a relative newcomer—he’s been around for only three years—but he seems to enjoy the games as much as we do.

  Ray Miller and I have much in common. We’re both lawyers. After many years of practicing criminal defense, I switched to prosecuting a few years back, while Ray remains on what I now call the “dark side.” I rib him on a regular basis about defending scumbags, but I know he does it for the right reasons and I respect him. He doesn’t cheat, doesn’t lie, doesn’t try to pull tricks. He tends to see things in black and white, much as I do. We both despise the misuse of power, especially on the part of judges, although Ray is a bit more venomous than I in that regard. We’re close to the same age, and we’re devoted to our families.

  We watch the game from our position in the outfield, away from the players and the other parents, because none of us wishes to distract our sons. We don’t yell at them during games as other parents do. We don’t criticize the umpires or the coaches. We just watch and worry. If something good happens, we cheer. If something bad happens, we cringe.

  My son, Jack, is the star hitter on the Boone team. Ray’s son, Tommy, is the star pitcher. Back in November, both of them signed national letters of intent to continue their baseball careers at the Division I collegiate level. Jack signed with Vanderbilt, and Tommy signed with Duke. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

  This evening’s game has been intense. It’s the finals of the district tournament, and if Boone beats Jefferson High, they move on to the regionals. If they lose, their season is over. Jack doubled off the left-center-field fence in the first inning with runners on second and third to put Boone up 2-0. Jefferson’s cleanup hitter hit a solo home run off Tommy Miller in the second. Jack came up again in the fourth and hit a home run, a long moon shot over the center field fence, to put Boone up 3-1. In the top of the fifth, Tommy walked the leadoff hitter, and the next guy laid down a bunt that Boone’s third baseman misplayed, leaving Jefferson with runners on second and third with nobody out and their cleanup hitter coming to the plate. Tommy threw two great pitches to get him down 0-2, but the next pitch got away from Tommy just a bit and hit the batter in the thigh. Jefferson’s coaches, players, and parents all started screaming, accusing Tommy of hitting the kid on purpose. It looked as though a fight might break out, but the umpires managed to calm things down. Jefferson scored two runs when the next batter hit a bloop single to right field, but then Tommy struck out three in a row. The game is tied, with Jack leading off for Boone in the bottom of the seventh, the final inning in a high school game.

  “They’ll walk him,” Ray says. I turn and look at him incredulously. He’s wearing sunglasses that shield his dark eyes. He’s an inch shorter than I at six feet two, but he’s thicker through the chest and back. His long brown hair, beginning to gray, is pulled back into a ponytail, and his forearms, which are leaning against the fence, look as thick as telephone poles.

  “You’re nuts,” I say. “They don’t want to walk the leadoff man in a tie game in the last inning. They’ll pitch to him.”

  Jack digs into the batter’s box and takes his familiar wide, slightly open stance. He’s a big kid, six feet two inches and a rock- hard two hundred ten pounds. He has a strong jaw and a prominent, dimpled chin— a “good baseball face,” as the old-time scouts would say. He’s crowding the plate as he always does, daring the pitcher to throw him something inside.

  The first pitch is a fastball, and it hits Jack between the eyes before he can get out of the way. I hear the awful thud of the baseball striking his head all the way from the outfield. Jack’s helmet flies off. He takes a step backward but doesn’t go down, and then starts staggering slowly toward first base. The umpire, as stunned as everyone else, jogs along beside him, trying to get him to stop. I sprint down the fence line toward the gate, watching Jack as his coaches scramble out of the dugout to his side. By the time he gets to first base, I can see blood pouring from his nose.

  I make my way through the silent crowd and onto the field. Jack’s coaches have taken him into the dugout and sat him on the bench. One of them is holding a white towel over Jack’s face. I see immediately that the towel is already stained a deep red. The coaches step back as I approach.

  “They did it on purpose,” the head coach, a thirty-year-old named Bill Dickson, says. “They haven’t come close to hitting anyone else.”

  I bend over Jack and gently remove the towel. His head is leaned back, his mouth open, and he’s staring at the dugout roof. The area around both of his eyes is already swelling, and there’s a deep, nasty gash just above the bridge of his nose. He’s bleeding from the cut and from both nostrils.

  I put the towel back over the wound.

  “Jack, can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who am I?”

  “Dad.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “Boone High School. Dugout.”

  “What’s the score in the game?”

  “Three-three, bottom of the seventh.”

  “Has anyone called an ambulance?” I say to Coach Dickson.

  “They’re on the way, but it always takes them fifteen or twenty minutes to get here.”

  I can sense someone beside me, and I turn my head. It’s Ray, Caroline, and Toni.

  “He all right?” Ray asks.

  “He’s coherent.”

  “Let me see.”

  I pull the towel back again. Caroline gasps, and a flash of anger runs through me like an electric current. How could they do this? Why would they do this? It’s just a baseball game, for God’s sake. Jack has been hit dozens of times in the past, but never in the face. And Coach Dickson is right; their pitcher displayed excellent control until Jack came to the plate in the seventh. They hit him intentionally.

  I gently replace the towel and look at Ray. I’m thinking seriously about grabbing a bat from the rack and going after Jefferson’s coach.

  “You don’t want to wait for an ambulance,” Ray says. “We need to take him now.”

  “Why?”

  “His pupils are different sizes. There’s already a lot of swelling. I’ve seen this before, Joe. He might be bleeding internally.” Ray was a medic in the navy for eight years, so he knows what he’s talking about. At that moment, Jack leans forward and vomits on the dugout floor.

  “We have to go,” Ray says. “Right now.”

  Caroline and Toni rush off to get the cars while Ray and I each drape one of Jack’s arms over our backs and lift. Coach Dickson holds the towel in place to try to slow the bleeding as we walk Jack out through the gate. Just before we reach the parking lot, he loses consciousness, and I feel a sense of dread so deep that I nearly pass out myself.

  He regains consciousness after we put him in the backseat, but during the ride to the hospital, he’s in and out. He keeps saying his head feels like it’s going to explode. I call the emergency room on my cell phone along the way, and they’re waiting when we arrive. They take Jack immediately into a trauma room, and in less than ten minutes they’ve taken him to surgery. A doctor comes out to talk to us briefly. He says Jack is suffering from an acute epidural hematoma. In layman’s terms, he says, Jack’s brain is bleeding. A neurosurgeon is going to perform a
n emergency craniotomy to drain the blood, relieve the pressure, and repair the damage.

  We wait for three agonizing hours before the neurosurgeon comes out. The waiting room is filled with Jack’s coaches and their wives, his teammates and their parents, plus dozens of his friends from school who were either at the game or heard about what happened. Everyone falls silent when the surgeon, a dark-haired, serious-looking, middle-aged man wearing scrubs, asks Caroline and me to step into a private room. My daughter, Lilly, who is a year younger than Jack and was sitting in the bleachers behind home plate when Jack was hit, grabs my hand and comes into the room with us.

  “I’m told you didn’t wait for the ambulance,” the doctor says gravely as soon as the door closes behind us. “Whose idea was that?”

  “Why?” I ask. “Was it a mistake?”

  “Under some circumstances, it could have been. But this time, it was the right decision. If your son had bled for another ten or fifteen minutes, I don’t think he would have made it.”

  “So he’s all right?”

  “He’s in recovery. It’s a serious injury, but thankfully we got to it in time. We’ll keep him in intensive care for a day or two. He’s going to have a heckuva headache, but we can control the pain with medication. He’ll have to take it easy for a couple of months, but after that, he should be as good as new.”

  “When can we see him?”

  “He’ll wake up in about half an hour. He’ll be groggy, but you can talk to him for a few minutes.”

  We thank the doctor, and Caroline, Lilly, and I embrace silently. Caroline and Lilly are crying, but I’m so relieved, I feel as if I could float on air. We walk back out to the crowded waiting room. Ray and Toni Miller, along with their son, Tommy, are standing just outside the door. When the group sees Caroline’s tears, I can sense they think the news is bad. Ray looks at me anxiously, and I smile.