Joe Dillard: Reasonable Fear Part 9

"Are you her husband?" she said brightly.

"Brother."

"She was so combative in the emergency room that they had to restrain her. We left them on in case she woke up in the middle of the night and decided to leave."

Sarah began to stir. She lifted her head and looked at the nurse, then at me.

"Where am I? Where's Gracie?"

"Gracie's fine. You're in the hospital. We'll talk about it after the doctor comes in."

The nurse took Sarah's vitals, and a couple of minutes later a stodgy-looking redhead wearing a white lab coat walked through the door. A pair of reading gla.s.ses hung from a chain around her neck.

"Ms. Dillard," she said, "I'm Doctor Fritz. I see from your chart you had a busy night last night. The paramedics' report says you had a child in the car with you. What happened to the child?" Her tone was unfriendly and judgmental.

"My mouth tastes awful," Sarah said. "Do you have any toothpaste or gum or anything?"

"I'm sure the nurse will find you something. What do you remember about last night, Ms. Dillard?"

"Not much."

"I'm not surprised. You had enough alcohol in your bloodstream to float an aircraft carrier. Was this an isolated incident or do you do this to yourself on a regular basis?"

"That's none of your business."

"Really? You seem to have made it my business. And who is this?" She pointed at me. "The lucky husband?"

"The lucky brother," I said.

"Since your sister doesn't seem to have any manners, I'll talk to you. She's obviously built up some tolerance to alcohol or she would have been comatose last night. The blackout and the rage are symptoms of alcoholism, especially in a woman her age. She's been hydrated with intravenous fluids and given ibuprofen to combat the swelling in her brain. Since there don't seem to be any other medical problems, I'll discharge her immediately. I suggest you get her into an inpatient rehab program for a minimum of thirty days as quickly as possible. Have a nice day."

Doctor Fritz turned abruptly and walked out the door.

"b.i.t.c.h," Sarah muttered as soon as the doctor was out of sight.

"We need to talk," I said. I stood and walked across the room to close the door.

"I don't feel like talking."

"Fine, then you can just listen." I stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at her, once again amazed at her remarkable physical appearance. She showed no signs of the abuse she'd heaped on herself the previous night. Her skin was smooth and taut, her eyes clear and bright. She'd folded her arms across her chest and was staring at the wall to her left.

"If I hadn't just happened to stop by the grocery store last night, you'd be in jail right now and Gracie would probably be with Child Protective Services. You were already hammered and you were buying more beer. You'd driven to the store with Gracie in the car, and you were about to leave the store and drive some more. One of the check-out clerks called the police. I'm not going to go through the whole sad story, Sarah, but the police showed up and you made an absolute fool of yourself."

"Did I embarra.s.s my little brother in front of his cop buddies?" she said sarcastically.

"What's wrong with you?" I snapped. "Didn't you hear what I said? You had Gracie in the car. That's a crime, Sarah. Thirty days in jail, minimum, and with your record, the judge will give you a lot more."

"I don't believe you," she said. "If that was true, the cops would be sitting here waiting for me to get out of the hospital so they could take me to jail."

"They're not here because I made a deal. I told them I'd make sure you go into a program and pull yourself together. If you don't go within a week, they get a warrant and arrest you."

The idea had come to me on the spur of the moment, when the doctor mentioned in-patient rehabilitation. Sarah had been through the twelve steps, she'd been to Narcotics Anonymous, but she'd never gone through an in-patient program. It sounded like a good plan to me, so I lied to her hoping it would be for her own good.

"There's no way I'm going into a nut house for a month," Sarah said. "Where are my clothes?"

She threw the blanket back and started looking around the room. She spotted a plastic bag next to the wall beside the bed and picked it up.

"You're either going into a program or I'm calling the cop who wanted to arrest you," I said. "I'll call him right now. You'll be in jail by noon and you'll stay there for at least six months, I guarantee it."

"No you won't," she said, pulling on her shorts. "You wouldn't do that to Gracie."

"I'd do it for Gracie! You're no good to her when you're like this. You're no good to anybody." I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and wielded it like a weapon. "So what's it gonna be, Sarah? Rehab or jail?"

She sat back down on the bed and looked at me for the first time since she'd awakened. The stare was cold and contemptuous, a look I'd seen many times before.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because I'm tired of cleaning up after you. Every time something bad happens in your life, you fall right back into the same old patterns. I've always felt sorry for you. I've always felt like your pain was somehow my fault because I didn't stop Raymond from raping you when we were kids, but that was almost forty years ago. When Gracie was born I thought you'd finally put all of that behind you, but now look at you. You're selfish and pathetic, Sarah, and I'm not going to let you dump your baggage on Gracie the same way you've dumped it on everyone who's ever cared about you. You're going into rehab, and you're going to deal with this problem once and for all."

"Wow," she said. "That was quite a speech. I think maybe you missed your calling. You should have been a football coach."

"Shut up and put your clothes on. Let's get out of here."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"Yeah, you are. You're going home with me. You're going to stay with us until we find you a good program and you go into the hospital. We'll take care of Gracie while you're gone."

"I'm taking a cab home. I'll be out to pick up my daughter in a little while."

I started punching numbers into my cell phone.

"Enjoy jail," I said, and I walked out the door.

I'd dialed my own number, but I didn't send the call. I kept the phone to my ear as I walked down the hallway. A few seconds later, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see Sarah, pulling on her T-s.h.i.+rt and carrying her shoes.

"Alright, I'll go," she said as she caught up to me. "But you're paying for it."

Chapter Eighteen.

When John Lips...o...b..and Andres Pinzon were eighteen, their lives and their destinies changed forever. It all started at a party. Andres was lifting a beer to his lips and looked around the room. Dozens of people were wandering through the house, drinking and laughing. A disc jockey was playing loud music on a large patio out back where dozens more were gyrating on a makes.h.i.+ft dance floor. Andres smiled. Life was good.

At eighteen years old, Andres no longer considered himself a stranger in a strange land. He'd been in America for five years now, and tomorrow he would graduate from prep school. In a few months, he'd be off to college at Harvard University, and from there, on to law school. He'd formed tight bonds with dozens of wealthy students from all over the country, bonds that would no doubt benefit him in the future.

Andres felt something hit him on top of the head and an empty beer can fell into his lap. He looked around, knowing who it was.

"When are you going to grow up?" Andres said.

"When are you going to stop talking like a spic?"

John Lips...o...b..plopped himself down on the arm of the chair Andres was sitting in. The two boys, now young men, had become the closest of friends. After the initial fight, Andres found himself taken under the wing of one of the most unusual people he'd ever known. John was a walking paradox, a person who despised those with wealth and power but who also wanted desperately to become tremendously wealthy. He was capable of occasional acts of generosity, but he was more often inclined to ruthlessness. He was impulsive, yet methodical, adventurous, yet cautious. And he was always, always scheming.

Their fathers, both doctors, had also become close friends, and while the boys were in the eighth grade, it was decided that John and Andres would attend a prestigious private school together. Demeter Prep in Bethesda, Maryland, had an excellent pilot-training program, and since John's father wanted his son to become a licensed pilot like he was, Demeter was chosen. Both of the boys were bright Lips...o...b..bordered on genius and they were expected to make perfect grades. They did, although in different ways. Pinzon was scholarly and worked hard, while Lips...o...b..perfected a long-standing tradition in the prep school world, that of cheating.

Halfway through Demeter, John began to suggest to Andres that they should attend the same college. Harvard was the natural choice, since John wanted to study business and finance and Andres wanted to study commercial law. They'd been accepted a year earlier, and now both of them were well on their way to bright futures. They'd even discussed the idea of joining forces when they graduated, the corporate lawyer and the financier, and conquering the business world together.

"Come with me," John said. "I want to show you something."

He led Andres through the kitchen and downstairs, past the throng of dancers, and down a short hallway. John knocked softly on the door, and it quickly opened.

"Come on in, man," said Timothy Holden, a tall, slender party boy from Philadelphia that Andres knew only casually. "You guys have to try this stuff. It's amazing."

Andres entered a bedroom. Holden was pointing to a bathroom just to his left. John led the way.

"This is what I wanted to show you," he said.

Sitting on the vanity was a round mirror about the size of a dinner plate. On top of the mirror were four lines of yellowish-white powder, each about two inches long, a razor blade, and a short straw.

"Go ahead, I already cut it out for you," Holden said from beyond the door.

"Is that what I think it is?" Andres said.

Both young men had tried marijuana during their soph.o.m.ore year at Demeter, but neither enjoyed the sensation and they hadn't used it again. They'd heard about this new street drug called cocaine, a drug that supposedly caused an intense, euphoric high and had the extra benefit of serving as a potent aphrodisiac, but this was the first time they'd actually seen it.

"Yeah, it's c.o.ke," John said. "Want to try it?"

Andres shook his head. "I don't think so."

"C'mon, man, this is the stuff everybody is going so crazy about."

"Nah, not interested," Andres said, and he turned and walked out the door.

Twenty minutes later, Andres was standing on a veranda overlooking a large swimming pool full of frolicking teenagers. The night air was cool against his skin, and in the distance, he could see the lights of Bethesda twinkling like fire flies. He heard the door open behind him, and turned to see John stepping onto the veranda.

"So how is it?" Andres said.

"Intense, man, really intense. I see why people like it so much."

"So instead of going to Harvard, you're going to become a dope fiend?"

"No, man, I just wanted to try it. Listen, I've got this idea I've been running around in my head for a couple of weeks, ever since I found out that Holden has been selling c.o.ke."

"He's selling it? Isn't that illegal or something?"

"I'm sure it is, but that's not the point. The point is that I talked to Holden, and he's too dumb to realize it, but there's a ton of money in it. I mean a ton. We could make a fortune."

"We? Are you talking about you and me?"

John took a long pull from his beer and leaned against the railing.

"You know where they're producing it, don't you? Colombia. Your native land. I'll bet you have relatives in the business."

Andres did have relatives in the business, several of them. He'd heard his father rant about them many times. Andres knew that five years ago, when the family moved from Colombia to the United States, at least four of his uncles and several of his cousins were in the marijuana smuggling business. But now they, like many others, had moved into cocaine. A pound of marijuana would bring perhaps a thousand dollars in Miami, whereas a kilogram of cocaine would bring forty thousand.

"All you have to do is introduce me," John said. "My old man is getting me a used Cessna for graduation. We can fly down there, pick up the stuff, and fly it back. We buy directly from the source, cut out the middle men, and then we distribute to this ready-made market we have right here. Almost all of these people are going to big schools in big cities all over the country. We'll make a mint."

"We'll wind up dead," Andres said. "People in Colombia have been killing each other for years because of the drug trade. If we don't get killed, we'll probably go to jail."

"Stop being such a p.u.s.s.y. We're not going to wind up dead and we're not going to jail. This is the best chance we're ever going to have to make it big right out of the blocks. We make a few trips, get a stake together, and then use it to start up a business when we graduate from college."

"I don't know. It just seems like a line I don't want to cross."

John straightened up and stretched his arms over his head.

"I'm not taking no for an answer, amigo," he said. "Just do me a favor. You're good at math. Sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper and do the math. Or better still, make one phone call to your family in Colombia. Find out how much a kilogram would cost us, then do the math. If you're still not interested, I'll find another way."

John turned and walked back toward the veranda door. He stopped just short and faced his friend.

"We've been together a long time," he said. "We make a good team. If you don't do this with me, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

Chapter Nineteen.

Three days after the near disaster in the grocery store parking lot, we got a break. Jasper T. Yates, the Boone Lake busybody known as Turtle, called me on a Friday morning.

"I got somebody y'all need to talk to," he said.

"About what?"

"Them girls. He seen it."

An hour later, Bates and I were cruising slowly down a rough, muddy driveway that led to a small lot that bordered the lake. A cold front had moved into the area, and a thick, hard-gray sky hung low overhead. It was nearly dark, even though it was mid-afternoon, and slivery raindrops pa.s.sed through the beams of Bates's headlights in a fine mist.

The man we were going to see was named Zachary Woods. I knew him as Zack. I'd defended him on an aggravated a.s.sault charge ten years earlier and remembered him as a tragic figure, tortured by memories of extreme childhood poverty and unspeakable cruelty at the hands of a perverted and violent grandfather. During the time I'd represented Zack, he'd come to trust me, and I hadn't forgotten the stories he'd told me of the beatings, the s.e.xual a.s.saults and the constant hunger he endured while growing up in an isolated section of Grainger County. He'd spent much of his youth in the woods, left home when he was fourteen, and had eventually made his way to Was.h.i.+ngton County where he lived alone and had a reputation as the best stone mason in the area.

The incident that resulted in his arrest happened during a dispute over firewood. Zack, who was in his mid-thirties at the time and had never been in trouble with the law, lived in the same tiny trailer where he now lived. He had a neighbor named Tilman who kept stealing his firewood, which was Zack's only source of fuel in the trailer. Zack knew Tilman was the thief, because he'd tracked him through the trees back to his home. After the third theft, Zack decided to put a stop to it. He set up a blind near his wood pile and waited in the cold darkness for Tilman to show up. Three nights later, close to midnight, Tilman came creeping through the woods. As soon as Tilman loaded his arms with firewood, Zack stepped out and confronted him. But rather than drop the wood and run, Tilman, who was much bigger than Zack, dropped the wood and pulled a knife. Zack had a knife of his own, and unfortunately for Tilman, he knew how to use it. Tilman wound up in the hospital with over two hundred st.i.tches in his arms, chest and back, and Zack wound up in jail. Tilman showed up for the preliminary hearing and lied through his teeth, but when we went to trial, he just couldn't explain why he was on Zack's property in the middle of the night, why the firewood was dropped exactly the way Zack explained it, why a knife with his fingerprints all over it was lying on the ground near the firewood, and why his blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit. The jury acquitted Zack in less than an hour.

As soon as we parked, I saw the trailer door open and Zack stepped out. A ma.s.sive, brindle pit bull was barking fiercely and straining against a logging chain that had been fastened to a steel pole in the ground. Zack didn't have a telephone and didn't know we were coming. People who wanted him to do stone work for them had to leave their name and number on a corkboard at the marina where Turtle worked, and Zack would call them from there. He was a medium height and wiry, all muscle, sinew and bone, wearing a camouflage cap. He had a prominent chin, eyes that always seemed to be moving, and he was wearing work pants, combat boots and a sleeveless, white T-s.h.i.+rt. He was looking at the car suspiciously.