Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(35)
“Ms. Self has been talking quite frequently to Investigator Riddle,” Stony said. “I think he’s coaching her. He showed her a lineup on August twenty-ninth and she picked out three black football players, one of whom is your client. Riddle only showed her six photos, all of them black ETSU football players. I think there might be a secret recording of it.”
“How can you know that?”
“I have friends inside the department, lots of them, and many of them aren’t too happy with the way Riddle is conducting this investigation. They don’t like Riddle personally, either. They think he’s a racist. Let’s leave it at that for now. If I have to tell you more later, I will.”
“Was this secret recording audio or video or both?” I said.
“I’ve been led to believe it contains both.”
“Can you get your hands on a copy?”
“I’m working on it.”
“What else?” I said, looking at Jack.
“We have some cell phone videos of the party,” he said. “Kevin gave us some names, and we hit pay dirt on one of them. The video shows her showing up, disappearing into the bathroom for about eight minutes, the dance that wasn’t a dance, the argument, and it shows her stumbling out the door. She didn’t even go into the bathroom after the dance.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said.
Jack was smiling.
“It’ll go a long way toward discrediting everything she said.”
“I talked to Erlene Barlowe, and no, Jack, I didn’t see anybody stripping while I was there. I did see more of Erlene’s breasts than I cared to, but that’s just the way it goes with Erlene. She wasn’t much help. She owns AAA Escort Service, though, and she’s on Sheila Self’s side. Erlene is extremely protective of her girls. She’s almost a surrogate mother to a lot of them, although being a semi-pimp doesn’t exactly go along with being a mother.”
“Does Erlene think she was raped?”
“She says she does, but I don’t know how sincere she was about it.”
“What the hell is going on here, Dad?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to go see Mike Armstrong and try to stop this before it gets any worse. I don’t see how it’s possible there will be DNA evidence if she never even went into the bathroom after the dance. Mike needs to shut this down.”
“Can Jack and I go with you?” Charlie said.
“Have you ever had a one-on-one with Mike Armstrong?” I said.
“No.”
“Neither have I. I’ve talked to him a couple of times, but he’s only been the D.A. for six months, and I haven’t had a reason to meet with him one-on-one. Let’s just go make a party out of it.”
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
In a small, white block building that formerly served as a Pentecostal Church off Buck Mountain Road in the mountains of Carter County, Tennessee, Garrett Brown gathered with eight other men at nine o’clock at night. All but three of the men were locals from Carter County. They were members of the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. One was Brown’s closest friend, another his younger brother, and two were his cousins. One of those cousins was an investigator with the Johnson City Police Department named Bo Riddle. The other two outsiders were also brothers. They hailed from Pulaski, Tennessee, a town of about 8,000 citizens located approximately a hundred miles south of Nashville and thirty miles north of the Alabama state line. Pulaski was also the home of the Ku Klux Klan, and the two men who were visiting were leaders in what was now known as The Knight’s Party.
Garrett Brown had contacted Josiah and Tobias Gibson after reading the stories in the Johnson City and Elizabethton newspapers regarding the alleged sexual assault of a white woman by at least one, and possibly more, black football players from ETSU. He’d expected to see men dressed like soldiers walk through the door. Instead, these two looked like lawyers in their navy-blue suits and white button-down shirts.
A thunderstorm had rolled across the mountains, and rain was pounding on the roof. An occasional crack of thunder made the small building shudder. Josiah Gibson, who was the older of the two brothers, stood and prayed to open the meeting. He was a small man, almost frail, with pale skin and a thin mustache above his upper lip. When he was finished praying, he said, “Brother Brown, we appreciate your invitation to visit with you and to pray about the situation in which we find ourselves. We also appreciate the attendance of the other brothers you’ve gathered. Our country is being taken from us, and we have to find a way to stop it. The constant growth of the immigrant population, coupled with the energizing of the Black Lives Matter movement, has slowly been pushing the white agenda to the side in the halls of our politicians. Before long, we’ll be pushed all the way out of the building. We must fight back through education and spreading our message to the masses. We must stop the advancement of the liberal agenda. We have to beat them at their own game.”
“Forgive me, Brother Gibson,” Garrett Brown said, “but I called you because we have a crisis on our hands.” Brown was a bear of a man, a logger by trade, who wore a red flannel shirt, blue jeans and boots. His hands were massive and calloused. His hair was long, brown and greasy beneath a John Deere cap, and he’d grown a long, thick, bushy beard. “It’s very possible that a young white woman was raped by one, possibly more, niggers who play football for the university in Johnson City. If that happened, and we should know more very soon, then we’re not interested in spreading literature or educating anyone. We’re interested only in vengeance, the kind that will get the attention of every black son of a bitch in this country.”