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“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think she was killed somewhere else—maybe at her own house—and taken out there and dumped. That’s why there was no car—no nothing—at the scene. Her body had been out on that hillside long enough to decompose. At least a week, I bet. Maybe two. Ask around, Sheriff—see if anybody saw her or talked to her in the past ten days. This guy escaped, what, forty-eight hours before she was found? The timing doesn’t fit.”
“Cotterell!” he roared. The deputy, who I felt sure had overheard our exchange, jogged heavily in our direction. “Get this man out of here and on his way back to Knoxville.”
“Yessir.” Cotterell took my elbow and steered me into the stairwell.
We were only halfway down the first flight of stairs when the sheriff bellowed the deputy’s name again. “Get back up here,” he shouted. “He’s so fuckin’ smart. Let him find his own damn way out.”
Cotterell squeezed my elbow, then I felt him slip something into my hand. It was a business card embossed with the blue-and-gold logo of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and below that, the words SPECIAL AGENT WELLINGTON H. MEFFERT II. “Get to a phone and call Bubba, quick,” he hissed. “They’re fixin’ to lynch this fella.”
“Did you say ‘lynch’?” I stared at him. “You can’t be serious. This is 1990.”
He shook his head. “Not in their minds it ain’t. Dixon don’t speak for everybody—he sure don’t speak for me. But them people milling around? They’re Klan. Outsiders, mostly—Carolina, Virginia, Alabama. Dixon called ’em in for his posse. His posse, their party. I’m tellin’ you, this is a done deal. They’re fixin’ to string this man up right here, right now.”
“Cotterell!” boomed the sheriff. “You get your fat ass up here!”
“Call Bubba,” the deputy hissed, and hurried up the stairs.
Just as I reached the ground floor, the outside door opened and Deputy Number One—Yates?—entered. He was accompanied by a tall, barrel-chested man. He had red hair and a red beard. He also had red scratches on his face.
I ducked down a darkened hallway and found a vacant office. Switching on a desk lamp, I laid down the card and picked up the phone. It took several tries to get through—I had to push down one of the clear buttons on the base of the phone and then dial 9 for an outside line, and my trembling fingers misdialed twice. Finally, miraculously, I heard Meffert’s voice.
My voice shaking, I recounted what I’d learned, what the sheriff had said and done, and what Cotterell predicted.
“Shit,” said Meffert. “Shit shit shit.”
“You really think they might lynch this man?”
“You remember what happened in Greensboro? Bunch of Klansmen shot up a crowd of black protesters. Killed six people, including a pediatrician and a nurse. That was in 1979. Two years later, in Mobile, they hung a black man from a tree, just to show they could. Sheriff Dixon’s telling them a black sex offender has raped and murdered the most prominent white woman in Morgan County, Tennessee? Do I think it might happen? No—I know it’ll happen. Take a miracle to stop it.”
I was just putting the phone back in the cradle when I glimpsed movement in the darkness beyond me. An instant later a pistol entered my small circle of light. A hand aimed the pistol at my chest, and a voice—the sheriff’s gravelly voice—said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I was just calling my wife,” I said. “I told her I’d be home by mid-afternoon. I didn’t want her to worry.”
“Now ain’t that sweet,” he said. “Let me call her, too, and tell her how much we ’preciate your help.” With his free hand, he lifted the handset and pressed Redial. He angled the earpiece so that both of us could hear it ringing.
Don’t answer, Bubba, I prayed.
“Meffert,” I heard the TBI agent say, and my heart and my hopes sank.
“You get in there,” the sheriff snarled, prodding me with the pistol, “and don’t make me tell you twice.”
Cotterell was in the corridor, a plastic cup in one hand, a blank look on his face. “Here, let me help you, Sheriff,” he said, opening the cell door wider. “How about we cuff him, too? Here, hold my coffee for just one second?” Without waiting for an answer, the deputy handed Dixon the cup, then—to the astonishment of both me and the sheriff—he snapped one handcuff on his boss’s outstretched wrist and, with a quick yank, clicked the other cuff to the cell door. As Dixon stared in bewilderment, Cotterell twisted the pistol from the sheriff’s other hand and shoved him into the cell, the sheriff’s movement pulling the door shut behind him.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m placing you under arrest, Sheriff.”
“Bull-shit. What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about assault. I’m talking about obstruction of justice. I’m talking about evidence-tampering, and conspiracy, and corruption, and probably civil-rights violations, too, though I reckon the D.A. or the U.S. Attorney will know more about that than I do.”
“You’re fired, Cotterell. And that’s the least of your troubles. You unlock this cell and unlock these cuffs, and I mean right now, or I will bury you under this goddamn courthouse.”
“I can’t do that, Sheriff. I’m sworn to uphold the law, same as you. Difference is, I really aim to do it.”
A cheer went up from the crowd when Cotterell and I emerged onto the courthouse steps, where one of the shotgun-wielding deputies still stood sentinel, but it quickly faded when the door closed behind us.
“Where is he?” shouted the big red-haired man I’d seen going inside earlier. Donnelly. “Where’s that sick sumbitch that killed my wife?”
“Where is he?” echoed a jumble of other voices. “Bring him out!”
“Hang on, hang on,” Cotterell called. “Y’all just hold your horses. Sheriff Dixon’s still interrogatin’ him.”
“We already know ever’thing we need to know,” shouted Donnelly.
“Yeah.” I heard. “Yeah! Let’s get it on!”
Suddenly there was a commotion to one side, and the crowd there parted, revealing a six-foot cross, its frame wrapped in layers of cloth—wrapped in swaddling clothes, I thought, in an absurd echo of the Christmas story—and a tongue of flame climbing up from its base and spreading to the outstretched arms. The crowd roared its approval.
“Come on!” yelled Donnelly. Someone thrust something into his hands, and I felt my stomach lurch when I recognized the distinctive shape of a rope noose.
Cotterell held up both hands in an attempt to quiet the crowd. “Not so fast,” he yelled. “We might be gettin’ ahead of ourselves. We ain’t sure we got the right man.”
“Hell yeah we got the right man,” Donnelly jeered. “No doubt about it. Now shut up, Jim. Get with us or get outta the damn way.”
To my surprise—to my deep dismay—I felt myself take a step forward. “Listen to me,” I shouted. “You all are making a mistake.”
“Who the hell are you,” Donnelly bristled, “and what business is this of yours?”
