Joe Dillard - 03 - Injustice for All by Scott Pratt Page B

hair and a handlebar mustache that he fiddles with constantly. He’s wearing a brown tweed jacket over a white shirt and beige tie. His gray eyes are angry.
    “What the hell’s going on with you?” he barks disdainfully. “I go away for a little while, and you dismiss a case outright after you’ve gotten your ass kicked in a hearing. Have you no sense of the public’s perception of this office?”
    He’s talking about my case against Buddy Carver, the pedophile Judge Green allowed to walk away. He’s Monday-morning quarterbacking, and I don’t appreciate it.
    “I’m taking Carver to the feds,” I say. “The federal laws are tougher, the jail terms are longer, and they don’t have a judge down there who sympathizes with pedophiles.”
    “We need to make sure the public knows it when the federal grand jury issues an indictment,” Mooney says. “I’ll put out a press release.”
    “Do you remember Brian Gant?” I say, changing the subject. “He was convicted of killing his mother-in-law and his niece a long time ago. I guess it was before you moved here.”
    “What about him?”
    “He’s about to be executed, and I think he’s innocent. I was wondering whether you might be interested in taking a look at the case. Maybe we should get involved.”
    Mooney starts to answer, but is interrupted by the buzz of his intercom. He speaks in muffled tones, then looks back up at me.
    “Let’s go,” Mooney says.
    “Where?”
    “I said let’s go!”
    I shrug my shoulders and walk out the door behind him. When we get to the parking lot, he tells me to follow him in my truck. He’s tense and upset, more so than usual. He leads me to a wooded lot in an exclusive subdivision called Lake Harbor near Boones Creek. The driveway is asphalt and winds nearly a quarter of a mile through a stand of sugar maple trees toward a massive colonial-style brick house. We round a curve and top a small hill, and as we descend into a shallow valley about halfway to the house, I see it—the unmistakable activity of a crime scene. Vehicles, flashing lights, yellow tape, uniformed men moving slowly about. Mooney pulls over into the grass about a hundred yards short of the tape, and I do the same. As soon as I get out of the truck the smell hits me—the unique, acrid smell of burned flesh, and I jog to catch up to Mooney as he hurries toward the group of officers and paramedics.
    “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Mooney mutters, and I follow his gaze toward one of the trees.
    A blackened body is hanging by its neck from a rope, which has been wrapped around a branch about eight feet from the ground and tied off around the maple’s trunk. The body appears to be a male, but beyond that, it’s virtually unrecognizable. Chunks of charred flesh cling to the limbs and torso. The lips and most of the face have been burned away, leaving only a garish snarl.
    Ten feet to my right, a smaller tree—a Bradford pear—is lying across the driveway. A black Mercedes is parked perhaps five feet from the tree. A TBI agent is photographing the car. I recognize him and walk over.
    “Agent Norcross,” I say. “Long time, no see.” I’d gotten to know Norcross when he worked a murder case with me a little more than a year ago—the Natasha Davis case.
    “Well, I’ll be damned,” Norcross says. He straightens to his full height, around six feet seven, and reaches out to shake my hand. “Joe Dillard.”
    “Good to see you again. What can you tell me?”
    There’s a large lump in Norcross’s left cheek—chewing tobacco—and he steps off to the side and spits a stream of brown juice onto the ground.
    “This your case?” Norcross asks.
    “Will be as soon as you catch the killer.”
    “Looks like somebody hid out in the tree line over there for a while.” Norcross motions to a spot where two other agents are walking a grid. “Not really sure how long he was here, but from the look of it, he moved around quite a bit before he decided where he