Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(53)

“They’re already ruined. You just don’t know it,” I said.

“No they aren’t. If you could just hold off another couple of weeks, we’ll have it done and you can go ahead and get your boys off the hook.”

“Have what done, Erlene?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You’d better tell me. I’m not messing around here, Erlene. Three young men’s lives are at stake. Even if I get them released, they’re still going to be in danger. You set it all in motion somehow. I want to know why.”

She looked at me and spat the words like a spitting cobra: “Because those miserable fools at the university deserved it, that’s why.”

“Deserved what?”

“They deserved to be humiliated, they deserved to be embarrassed, and they deserve to pay through the nose.”

“Why? What did they do to you?”

She composed herself, at least somewhat, and sat back down.

“I’ve been planning this for two years,” she said. “Just waiting for the right girl, the right opportunity. Do you remember when it was announced that the hospital was renaming its new heart hospital from The Sloan-Miller Heart Hospital to just the Sloan Heart Hospital?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t remember that at all.”

“That’s because they didn’t want anyone to think it was that big of a deal. They just quietly took Dr. Albert Miller’s name off of the hospital. Dr. Miller was extremely wealthy—old money wealthy—and just happened to be a regular visitor to my club for a while. He taught at ETSU’s medical school in the cardiology department, and he’d donated a bunch of money to the school to have his name put on the heart hospital. He was in his fifties, he was filthy rich, and he was divorced, so I guess he was lonely. He called one day and asked to speak with me. He’d found out that I owned the club and he wanted to visit, but he wanted complete privacy. He didn’t want anyone knowing he was there, and he was willing to pay top dollar to make sure nobody saw him come and go. So I had one of my employees pick him up and drop him off at the back entrance to the VIP lounge at least a couple of times a week for two years. He’d come in, have his fun, and my employee would drive him home.

“During that time, there were three girls he really took a shine to. I won’t tell you their names because it really doesn’t matter, but what he did was, he offered to help them. He offered to help them get into college, pay their tuition, and give them enough money every month so they didn’t have to work for me anymore. I was skeptical about it at first. I mean, who’s that nice? Nobody, right? But he seemed sincere, and before I knew it, three of my girls were gone and so was he.”

“I didn’t hear anything from any of the girls for almost two months, so one day I drove by one of the girls’ trailer just to see how she was doing. She was a mess. A mess. This doctor had been good to them for a little while. He never got them into school. He just kept making excuses. But he did send them money, and it was quite a bit of money for them. But then they found out the catch. There’s always a catch, isn’t there, sugar? I mean, nobody in this world is pure-hearted. You’re the closest person I’ve met to having a pure heart, but you’re human, aren’t you sweetie? You have your moments of weakness, don’t you?”

“I suppose I do, Erlene. Keep going.”

She took a deep breath and said, “Well, they found out the catch was that they had to have sex with him. Whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted, all of them at the same time sometimes. And he did unspeakable things to them. I’ve run across some perverted men in my day, as you can imagine, but this man was at the top of the class. I don’t even want to go into all the things he was making them do. It was just disgusting.”

“Why didn’t they come back to you, report him to the police? Maybe go to the university and tell them what he was doing?” I said.

“We did all of those things, sugar. I did all of those things. I would have called you but you were off in Nashville doing a big murder case down there with some record company executive. But I went to the Johnson City police. They laughed me out the door. Just refused to take the word of a few strippers over the word of a rich doctor whose name was on a heart hospital. When I went to the university, they said they didn’t believe a word of it, and even if they did, it was between the doctor and the girls. The university had absolutely no responsibility whatsoever. So the next thing I did was, I went to a reporter at the Johnson City newspaper. He was nice, a real sweetie pie. He listened. He talked to the girls and he even went and talked to the doctor. It must have rattled the doctor pretty badly because he said some things he shouldn’t have said and the reporter wound up writing a story about these terrible accusations my girls were making against this rich doctor. But you know what? The gutless owner of the newspaper wouldn’t publish the story. He said he was afraid of being sued.

“So nothing happened to that doctor, other than they very quietly removed his name from the hospital. They placated him by naming a chair of excellence after him, though. The Dr. Albert Miller Chair of Excellence in cardiology. It’s still there today and it disgusts me. He’s still there. Can you believe that?”

I folded my arms and rocked back and forth in my chair. Erlene was as angry as I’d ever seen her, and I’d seen her angry enough to have someone killed.