Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(38)

I’d known Anita White for several years. She was an agent in the Johnson City office when I was working as an assistant district attorney and she single-handedly brought down a man who had murdered a judge named Leonard Green. She’d since moved her way up the chain and was now the Assistant Special Agent In Charge of the TBI’s Knoxville office. Assistant Special Agent In Charge. The TBI loved their titles.

“How are you, Joe?”

“Hanging in there.”

“Caroline?”

“Doing the same. Tough as ever.”

“I have some good news and some bad news for you,” she said.

“Good news first,” I said.

“The lab has been working around the clock on the DNA analysis. They finished yesterday. The woman who made the accusations had DNA from five different males on her and in her.”

“How can that possibly be good news?” I said.

“None of the males were ETSU football players. Not a single player sample matched up with anything from the rape kit.”

A smile came over my face.

“That’s good to hear, Anita. I really appreciate you letting me know. When is the public going to hear about this?”

“We’re going to hold a press conference at ETSU on Monday,” she said.

“So, this entire thing was a hoax. I wonder if Armstrong will charge her with making a false report.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I called Mike Armstrong yesterday afternoon after the report hit my desk. He wasn’t pleased at all. He said he’s going to do two things: hire a private lab to go over the DNA again and arrest three of the players who were apparently picked out of a lineup by the victim. He’s going to announce at the press conference that he is proceeding with the prosecution.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said. “He’s actually going to arrest them?”

“He’s going to indict them first so he doesn’t have to subject his case and his victim to cross-examination during a preliminary hearing.”

“I swear, Anita, I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what is going on in that man’s mind.”

“He said he’s going to do it the old-fashioned way. He’s going to put his pretty young white girl on the stand and have her tell the jury she was raped by three black men. He said he has some other tricks up his sleeve, but he didn’t say what they were and I didn’t ask.”

“He’s gone nuts,” I said. “We have a video showing the rape couldn’t have happened. We went to Mike’s office and he wouldn’t look at it. When I tried to talk to him, he covered his ears.”

“Covered his ears? You mean like a kid?”

“Yeah, can you believe that? Then he started singing some stupid song until we left. It was surreal.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s your problem,” Anita said. “I just thought I’d give you a heads up.”

“Thank you, Anita. Nice talking with you.”

I hung up the phone and walked into Jack’s office. He was working on a motion to exclude some evidence in a DUI case he was handling. Charlie was in court in Elizabethton, about twenty miles away.

“The DNA tests are in. All of the players are clean,” I said when I stepped inside Jack’s door.

“That’s great!” he said. “Absolutely fantastic. Kevin’s out of the woods.”

“No, I’m afraid he isn’t. Anita White just called me. She said they’re holding a press conference at ETSU on Monday to make the DNA results public, but Armstrong is also going to announce that he’s going to proceed with the prosecution and indict three players who were identified by the victim.”

“What? Do you think he can get an indictment?”

“Of course he can. The grand jury will only hear from one witness, and that witness will be Johnson City Police Investigator Bo Riddle. They’ll ask him a few questions, he’ll tell them a few lies, and they’ll rubber stamp a true bill. The old saying that a DA can indict a ham sandwich if he wants to is true.”

“So what do we do?”

“Right now? You’re going to call Stony and tell her I need to see her again, ASAP. I’m going to call Kevin and his parents and give them the bad news.”





FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

“I need to get to the bottom of this,” I said to Stony. Jack had called her and she’d come to the office within two hours. I was meeting with her alone in the conference room. I didn’t want anyone to hear what I was going to ask of her. “It just doesn’t make any sense. Somebody, somewhere is calling the shots.”

“You don’t just think it’s a rogue DA showing himself to be tough on crime so he can get re-elected?” she said.

“This goes beyond rogue and passes into the realm of magical realism. I can’t think of a single reason Mike Armstrong would want to take up this fight.”

“Maybe he and Riddle are both racists. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they just want to inflame an already intense situation.”

“And start a race war here in town? Because with the climate in the country today, I can see it happening. I’m afraid people will get killed, maybe lots of people. Why would they want to do that?”