Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(26)

I was stunned. She had never mentioned owning an escort service. It made sense, but she’d never said a word.

“No kidding? Been in that business a long time?”

“A couple of years. It goes well with what we do here. Extra income for me. Extra income for the girls. They usually make good money.”

“So you know who the girl was at the party?”

“I do. I sent her.”

“Mind telling me her name?”

“Sheila Elizabeth Self. You’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

“Has she told you about what happened?”

“She said she was drugged and pulled into a bathroom. She thinks three men raped her, but she’s fuzzy about the details.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think she has any reason to lie, sugar. Sheila’s had an incredibly difficult life. She’s been used and abused by so many people it’s a wonder she hasn’t killed herself by now. You know how I am about girls like that. I do what I can to help and protect them. And she’s trying to keep it together. She graduated from junior college and is working on a degree at ETSU. She has two small children and nobody to help her raise them. I sent her hoping she’d make some decent money. She needs it for those kids.”

“Have you heard from the police?”

“Of course. Some skin-headed bully named Investigator Riddle came out here and made a bunch of empty threats. I would have called you if I thought it was anything serious.”

“Can I talk to the girl? To Sheila?”

“That’d be up to her, sweetie.”

“Put in a good word for me?”

“I’ll talk to her, but she’s still pretty torn up.”

“I appreciate it, Erlene,” I said as I rose to leave. “It’s good to see you.”

“Give Miss Caroline my best,” she said.

She walked me to the door, opened it, and as I stepped out into the sunshine, she said, “I hope your client is okay if he didn’t do anything to her, but if he did, I hope he burns in hell. And those folks at ETSU? They need to get their ducks in a row. They need to get some control over what’s going on over there.”

“And what might that be?” I said. “What’s going on over there?”

“A lot more than you know.”

As I walked across the parking lot to my truck, I could feel Erlene’s eyes on me. She had played the Southern belle, honey and sweetie role during our conversation, but she had, for the first time since I’d known her, lost her composure just a bit. It manifested itself as slight confusion, but she’d also gone slightly cold toward me. I could sense it, and that had never happened. Erlene knew more than she was telling me. I had a strong sense that I’d be hearing from her in the very near future.





FRIDAY, AUGUST 30

Sheila Self walked into Investigator Bo Riddle’s office just after three o’clock in the afternoon and sat down across from Riddle, who was at his desk. Riddle had stayed in regular contact with Sheila since their first interview. He’d kept her up on the progress of the investigation and seemed genuinely interested in helping her find the man or men who had raped her. He also seemed genuinely interested in what was going on in her life and had assured her that he would help her in any way he could. He asked about her children. He asked about her aunt. He asked whether she planned to stay enrolled in school at ETSU. She said she was going to take at least a semester off and see what happened.

“I have some photographs I want to show you,” Riddle said after Sheila settled in.

“Okay.”

“If you can identify any of the people in the photos as being an assailant, it would go a long way toward helping us make an arrest.”

“But I—”

Riddle held up his hand.

“Let me ask you a question,” he said. “It might be out of line, but it might not. The answer will also go a long way toward helping me know whether I’m going to become totally committed to this case for you.”

“What’s the question?”

“How do you feel about black people, in particular, how do you feel about black men?”

Sheila bit her lip and covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. When she pulled her hand back, she looked directly at Riddle and said, “When I was in high school, right here in Johnson City, there were two black guys that wouldn’t leave me alone. They snapped my bra, they pinched my ass, they felt my breasts and tried to get their hands down my pants. They were always talking about how much they wanted to have sex with me. None of the white guys would come anywhere near me because they’d heard about what had happened to me with my father and my foster father and brother. I was used goods. But the black guys didn’t care. They just kept coming on to me. I went to the principal’s office and complained, but both of them were athletes and they wouldn’t do anything to them. So finally I put a knife in my purse and brought it to school with me. It was a big knife, a butcher knife I took from the kitchen at the group home where I was living at the time. During lunch, I went outside and here came one of them, a basketball player named Damien Thompson. He walked right up to me and grabbed both of my breasts. I pulled the knife out of my purse and slashed his arm with it. I cut him pretty bad.”