Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(33)

“Oh, I’m with you there. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what shakes out.”

“Good to talk to you, brother Dillard. I’ll get somebody on this drug-stealing nurse right away. Don’t be a stranger.”





WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

We’d scheduled a meeting for 11:00 a.m. at the office, and I walked in at 10:45 after speaking—along with Caroline—to Leon’s investigator. He called me less than five minutes after I talked to Leon and showed up about twenty minutes later. He assured me that he would arrest Tracey Rowland that afternoon, call his employer, and get ahold of the Nursing Board.

As soon as I walked in, Jack came straight into my office. He was practically foaming at the mouth.

“What happened?” he said. “Did he show up?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you show him the video?”

“I did.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it wasn’t him.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, and then he got mouthy.”

“You hit him, didn’t you?”

I nodded and held up my right hand, which was still red and swollen. I’d really hit the guy hard.

“Good. Good for you, Dad. Did you break his jaw?”

“His nose.”

“Did he bleed?”

“A lot.”

“Is Mom mad at you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is he going to be arrested?”

“Yes.”

“What’ll they charge him with?”

“Misdemeanor theft. That’s all they can do. He won’t do any jail time, but he’ll be on probation and have to pass drug tests, they might require him to go to rehab, and they’ll take his nursing license. I guess all that, plus a flattened nose, is enough.”

“I wish I could have been there,” Jack said.

“It was good you weren’t there. You have no clue how dangerous you can be when you get angry, and you would have gotten angry.”

“I’m not any more dangerous than you are.”

“You’re bigger, you’re stronger and you’re younger. You’re also impervious to pain. I wouldn’t want to fight you.”

“Sissy.”

“I said I wouldn’t want to fight you. I didn’t say I wouldn’t kick your ass. Is everybody ready to go?”

“I think so. Stony’s here.”

“Great. Let’s get to it.”

When I walked into the conference room, Kelly Sims, our paralegal was there to take notes. Jack and Charlie were also seated at the table, along with Susan Stoneman, the former FBI agent turned private investigator. I’d previously used a retired Tennessee Highway Patrolwoman named Diane Frye, who had the instincts of a ferret and was, to put it mildly, a bit on the eccentric side, but Diane had become the victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s and could no longer work. Stony was a bit more of a tight ass than Diane, but I’d never met an FBI agent who wasn’t a tight ass. They were expected to be perfect when they were on the job, so tight ass simply became part of their personality. Stony had lightened up a little since her retirement, but her idea of loose was closer to my idea of grim.

“So,” I said when I sat down. “Let’s start with Jack and Charlie. I know you talked to Kevin Davidson’s neighbors. What’d you find out?”

Charlie and Jack looked at each other, waiting for the other to speak. Finally, Jack nodded and Charlie cleared her throat.

“First thing is the neighbors don’t like the football players living there,” she said. “So there’s some inherent bias. But, on the other hand, they said they’re not that bad. They get a little rowdy after games sometimes but always shut it down by midnight, and they throw two big parties a year. Those have gotten out of hand a couple of times and the police were called. As far as what happened Saturday night and early Sunday morning, they just don’t know much. From what the neighbors say, and we talked to ten of them, at least from the outside, it appears the players are giving a pretty accurate account of what happened. People started showing up around eight. They were drinking and music was playing. The crowd kept growing. The estimates we got were anywhere between sixty and a hundred people were there at midnight.

“A couple of the neighbors were watching when a cab pulled up at midnight and a girl dressed like a hooker got out. Red spandex dress, spiked heels, fishnet stockings, bling, the whole nine. Everybody piled into the house—the neighbors heard some people talking about a stripper about to perform—and then, about fifteen minutes later, the girl comes back out. She’s staggering around and yelling at people who have followed her out of the house. Some of the players are yelling back at her, demanding their money back. One neighbor told me she saw the girl throw a wad of cash at a couple of guys. There were some racial slurs, and they weren’t from the players. She was calling several of the players the “n” word. She wound up staggering off up the street, and the next thing the neighbors knew, everybody was gone. They said the place cleared out quickly, like they thought the cops might show up. They said every light in the house went off and there wasn’t a car in the driveway or out front in the street.”