Justice Burning (Darren Street Book 2) Read online

  “I don’t want to find another way to make a living.” I felt a sudden surge of anger, and my voice rose involuntarily. “I’m not a quitter. I’m not going to just give up my law practice because you say I have PTSD.”

  “I’ve upset you,” she said. “I apologize.”

  “Apology accepted.” I stood and started walking toward the door.

  “You’re leaving? We still have a lot of time.”

  “I’ll show myself out.” I dropped the two hundred on a table by the door. “Have a nice day.”

  CHAPTER 2

  As I looked out over the football field four days after my visit to the doctor, I felt a sense of peace and satisfaction I hadn’t felt in a long time. I knew it was only temporary, but it was nice just the same. It was Tuesday night, late October, and it was mop-up time in the Boys & Girls Club city football championship game. The team I was helping coach, a group of fifth- and sixth-grade children from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, was on the verge of winning.

  Bob Ridge, a high school and college buddy of mine and a longtime Knoxville cop who played four years of football at the University of Tennessee, was the head coach. I coached the linebackers and called all the defensive signals during the games. Bob had been coaching kids who attended Stratton Elementary for seven years. He’d won two city championships during those seven years and was about to win his third. He’d asked me to help not long after I was released from prison, saying he thought it would be good for me, and he was right. This was my second year coaching, and it was one of the most pleasurable things in my life. I still couldn’t sleep, but at least there weren’t any prosecutors or judges that I was arguing with, and no clients that were lying to me and stiffing me out of my fees. And I genuinely cared about the kids. Winning and losing didn’t matter that much to me, but I cared about how they were doing at home, how they were doing in school, how they got along with each other. I thought about Dr. Benton and her suggestion that I was becoming a nihilist. Nihilists didn’t care about groups of youngsters. Nihilists didn’t volunteer their time to help needy kids.

  The group of kids we coached were diverse in terms of skin color. We had fifteen black boys, fourteen white boys, and five Mexican boys. The one thing they all had in common was poverty. I’d learned that poverty didn’t discriminate. It was equally cruel to all who were held in its viselike grip. About 80 percent of the kids we coached came from broken homes. Many of them lived with grandparents or aunts and uncles or foster parents. Several were being raised by single mothers, some that worked multiple jobs, and some that were substance abusers and lived off government assistance.

  Many of their fathers were in jail or prison, and many who weren’t locked up were abusive. We would see bruising occasionally around the eyes or mouth and ask what had happened. Inevitably, the boy would say he ran into a door or fell down some steps. One boy, whose name was Chuckie Stone, was thrown off his front porch by his father. When he landed, his femur snapped. Chuckie’s brother, who was also on our team, witnessed the incident and told Bob and me about it. It was a difficult dilemma for us, because the father actually had a job and provided for the family. If we’d had him arrested, he would have gone to jail, and the family would have been devastated. So we—the entire coaching staff—decided to pay Daddy a visit. There were eight of us, led by Bob Ridge, who was a six-foot-seven-inch, 280-pound wall of muscle. We went to Chuckie’s home and invited his father outside. When he came out, we informed him that if we ever caught wind that he had so much as cursed at either of the boys again, we would come back and break both of his legs and both of his arms. He wet his pants right there in front of us, the coward, and threatened to call the police. Bob pulled his badge out of his pocket and said, “I am the police, motherfucker.”

  Some of the boys went to bed hungry at night, but Bob and I and the rest of the coaches did everything we could to make sure that they were all fed after practice every day during the football season. Feeding thirty-four hungry boys five days a week was expensive. We’d become creative about it—we held fund-raisers and solicited donations from local businesses and restaurants and food banks. Somehow, we managed to pull it off, but like I said, it was only during the football season, which ran for three months. The other nine months of the year, the boys were pretty much on their own. Bob and I talked about them often. What frustrated Bob more than anything was that he couldn’t help much beyond the football field, and that the kids moved on through so quickly. They would be on the team for two years if they stuck it out the entire time, and after that, he might never hear from them again.

  As the clock wound down, a sixth-grade boy named Julius Antone walked up to me and spread his arms. I wrapped my arms around him and picked him up off the ground. Julius was the team’s middle linebacker, a smart, tough, incredible kid.

  “Congratulations, Julius,” I said. “You’re my man.”

  I set him back down, and he stood there, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Thank you, Coach,” he said. “You’ve taught me a lot.”

  “You’ve taught me more,” I said.

  I knew Julius didn’t have a phone—only a couple of the kids on our team did—so I said, “I’ll come around and see you at Christmas. How’s that sound?” I knew where he lived. I knew where all the kids lived, because I’d hauled them all home at one time or another. Julius lived in a small house in an old government housing project with his mother, her boyfriend, two brothers, and a sister.

  “That would be great, Coach.”

  “What can I bring you for Christmas?”

  “You don’t have to bring anything, just come by and say Merry Christmas. That’ll be enough.”

  “Do you guys do a big Christmas thing? Turkey and all that?”

  He looked down at the ground and scraped his cleats through the grass. “Nah, we don’t do much. It’s just another day.”

  I hugged him again and said, “You take care of yourself. I’ll see you soon.”

  As I walked down the line congratulating the other players and the coaches, I thought to myself, Things will be different at Julius’s house this year. I’ll make sure of it.

  I enjoyed the satisfaction of having seen those young boys accomplish something together late into the night. Grace invited me over to spend the night and celebrate. I drank two glasses of wine and told Grace tall tales of the team’s heroics on the football field. She smiled and congratulated me and acted as though she was interested. She probably was, too. Grace was too genuine, too honest, to fake anything.

  Around midnight, Grace put her head on my shoulder and yawned deeply. I was living with my mother, but I occasionally stayed with Grace. “Are you going home tonight or would you like to come to bed?” she asked.

  “I don’t think I’ll drive after drinking this wine.”

  “It’s good to see you this way, Darren. I know you’re proud of the boys, but you seem proud of yourself, too. That makes me happy. It’s a good sign.”

  I squeezed her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER 3

  It had been eighteen months since I’d been released from prison. The Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility had taken six months to have a hearing to reinstate my license after I was exonerated for a murder I hadn’t committed, and for which I’d served two years in jail. During the hearing, I had to prove by “clear and convincing evidence”—a very high standard of proof—that I was no longer “a danger to the community.” The entire thing was nothing but a charade. The feds should have apologized to me, written me a check for the two years of my life they’d taken and the torture they’d put me through, and been done with it. And the Board of Professional Responsibility should have simply recognized the federal court’s dismissal of my charge and reinstated me on the spot. But that would have made entirely too much sense. I guess I could have sued the feds,
but it would have meant reliving the experience over and over, and I just wanted to move on.

  It took another month for the opinion to come down that I was no longer dangerous and that my license to practice law should be reinstated. After that, I had to catch up on my continuing legal education hours—classes that lawyers are required to take each year. They’re usually held at a fancy resort or hotel somewhere, and most of the lawyers either duck out of the classes or sleep through them. But they’re required to take a certain amount of hours. Why? Because they have to pay for the hours. The CLE racket is a huge moneymaker for the elite few who organize and host the events. The whole thing reminded me of a prison hustle.

  Once I’d been reinstated and caught up on my CLE, I had to set up shop all over again. Rachel, my secretary and paralegal before I went to jail, had taken a job with another lawyer. I still had some of the money I’d earned representing fellow inmates in prison, but I didn’t have enough to hire anyone, so I rented a small office in a rough building in a neighborhood known as the Old City, and hung out a shingle.

  I was living with my mother on the west side of Knoxville. I made a down payment on a compact car with almost two hundred thousand miles on it and prayed it would start every morning. I was able to see my eight-year-old son, Sean, every other weekend, but his mother, my beloved ex-wife, Katie, had sued me for child support as soon as I was released from prison. She didn’t have to sue me. I would have paid child support, and I told her as much. I would have paid more than a court would have ordered me to pay, but she took such pleasure in dragging me into court that she couldn’t resist. I was making such a small amount of money at the time that she wound up getting only $400 a month. I knew as soon as I started making more money, she’d drag me back into court. It was something I could look forward to until he turned eighteen.

  I was pleasantly surprised by one thing. As soon as I was reinstated, business started coming in the door. I’d built a good reputation as a criminal defense lawyer prior to going to prison, and I’d gotten a ton of free publicity over the past couple of years, both during my trial and after my exoneration. A reporter for the Knoxville News Sentinel ran a story on me the day I opened for business in my new office, and by the end of the day I had eight appointments scheduled.

  I also took on appointed cases. Rupert Lattimore was, by far, my most notorious case. Lattimore and three accomplices had carjacked and murdered two college kids. The Criminal Court judge who appointed me to Lattimore, a woman named Eleanor Montgomery, actually thought she was doing me a favor. She called me on the phone, was extremely courteous and complimentary, and asked me whether I would take on what she suspected would be a difficult case.

  “It’ll do you good, Mr. Street,” she said. “Lots of free publicity, jumping headlong into a bad murder, representing your client zealously. It’ll get you all the way back into the game.”

  She was right about getting all the way back into the game, but she was wrong about it doing me good. Because I’d never before felt genuine hatred for a client, and I hated Rupert Lattimore.

  On the Sunday evening following the football championship, I sat in the interview room at the jail looking at him. For the first time in my career, I genuinely regarded my client as a miserable, worthless piece of garbage. Prior to representing this guy, I had nearly always been capable of maintaining a sense of indifference about my clients. It’s simply something defense lawyers have to learn to do—just part of the job. But I loathed Rupert Lattimore. I hated everything about him. I hated the way he looked. I hated the way he smelled. I hated his name, his tattoos, the constant sneer he wore on his face. But more than anything else, I hated what he had done, and by extension, I hated myself for being a part, albeit indirectly, of what he had done.

  I guess the name Rupert would have alone been enough to turn him into a jackass. He told me he’d been named after a great-grandfather, but who names a kid Rupert? Life is tough enough without having to deal with the unnecessary shit dished out by bullies who would take exception to the name Rupert. His parents should have been slapped.

  Rupert was a strapping twenty-eight-year-old man from an area of Knoxville called Mechanicsville. He’d kidnapped, raped, and murdered a young couple, both of them just college kids. He didn’t do it alone—he had three accomplices—but he was, without a doubt, the leader of the group. It was his idea to go out and steal a car. It was his idea to pull out a gun and kidnap Arielle Blevins and her boyfriend, Stephen Whitfield, who just happened to be in the car Rupert decided to steal. It was his idea to take them to the small house where he and his brother and his cousin and his girlfriend were staying. It was Rupert who hog-tied Stephen Whitfield with a garden hose before he dragged him out back of the house to a set of railroad tracks where he raped Stephen with a broomstick and choked him with a belt before he shot him twice in the back and once in the head.

  Then Rupert and his boys went back inside and went to work on Arielle. She’d already been tied up and left in a bedroom. Rupert and his brother and his cousin took turns raping Arielle every possible way a person can rape another person for two days. Then, when Rupert sobered up long enough to realize they might have left some DNA on her or inside her, he decided it would be a good thing to pour bleach down her throat, into every orifice they had raped, and all over her body. Then Rupert put a plastic trash bag over Arielle’s head and two more over the rest of her. He then stuffed her headfirst into a trash can in his kitchen while his girlfriend stood by and watched. After about thirty-six hours—according to the medical examiner—Arielle eventually suffocated.

  Rupert had actually been stupid enough to tell me he did all those horrible things. He was unapologetic about it, proud even. And his reasons for killing, raping, maiming, and torturing two innocent human beings?

  He had a hard life growing up.

  His mother was a drunk, and his father wasn’t in the picture.

  He’d been in prison for robbing people and felt as though he was mistreated by the guards, the administration, and the other inmates.

  He needed Stephen Whitfield’s car so he could sell it in order to buy drugs.

  He was fucked up on alcohol and methamphetamine that night.

  Those were the reasons he gave me, but the reality was that he was a sociopath, a pure predator who felt no empathy for anyone. He hated everyone, including me. In fact, he hated me more than I hated him. I could feel the loathing. It oozed from him like a poisonous fog.

  I looked across the table at Rupert. I had trouble looking him in the eye, and I was sure he could sense my reluctance. “Are you ready for tomorrow?” I said.

  “Are you?”

  I nodded my head slowly. “As ready as I can be under the circumstances. The police have actually done a hell of a job locking down this case. The evidence is overwhelming. You can testify in your own defense if you want, but I wouldn’t advise it because you’ve told me you did everything they’re accusing you of doing, you have a long criminal history, and the prosecutor will eat you alive if you get on the witness stand. We don’t have a single witness who has come forward who wants to help us. The psychological expert we brought in says you’re not crazy or mentally challenged, so those defenses are out. We can say you were high, but that isn’t going to get us anywhere. All of your codefendants have made deals with the prosecutor and are going to testify against you. But yeah, to answer your question, I’m ready. I’ll go in there prepared and cross-examine their witnesses. I’ll give you the best defense I can.”

  “Which ain’t gonna be shit.”

  “You didn’t give me much to work with.”

  “Man, I oughta come across this table and stomp your ass into the floor.”

  I smiled at him. “I wish you’d try. I really do. I spent a year in the max section of the Knoxville jail, and then a year in a federal maximum security prison, you know. Did I tell you that? No, I guess I didn’t. I was falsely accused of a murder, framed by a prosecutor, and did some hard, hard time.
Chances are I could kick your ass without those handcuffs and shackles, but if you come at me all cuffed up like that, it isn’t going to go well for you.”

  He leaned toward me as though he was going to lunge, but he didn’t. Instead, he spit in my face.

  “Motherfucker,” he said. “When I escape, I’m gonna look you up late at night.”

  I wiped my face with my sleeve, stood, and pushed the button on the wall to summon the guard. There was a time in my life when I would have broken his jaw for spitting on me, but instead I just looked at him. Something inside of me was telling me to stay calm for the moment, because I’d get even with him later.

  “You’re gonna be in a small box for the rest of your life until they execute you,” I said. “It’ll probably take them about fifteen years, but they’ll get around to you eventually. But if you ever manage to escape and come looking for me, you can rest assured I’ll be waiting with a pistol in one hand, a beer in the other, and a smile on my face. Have a nice evening, Rupert. I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”

  As I walked down the hall outside the interview room toward the light and freedom outside the jail, I smiled and shook my head.

  I went home, got a couple of hours of restless sleep, and went to court the next morning expecting to begin Rupert’s trial.

  The prosecutors were at their table. I was at my table with my cocounsel, a competent, experienced lawyer named Bret James—defendants get two lawyers in death-penalty cases. There were about a hundred prospective jurors waiting for jury selection to begin. There were several reporters and a few cameras. The judge walked in, sat down, called the case, and said, “Is everyone ready?”

  “I got something I want to say,” Rupert said.

  I cringed as the judge looked at me.

  “Your lawyer should be the one speaking for you, Mr. Lattimore,” Judge Montgomery said.

  “My lawyer threatened to kill me yesterday. I don’t want him representing me.”