Free Joe Dillard - 01 - An Innocent Client by Scott Pratt Page A

Landers took out his phone and dialed Jimmy Brown. ”You guys ready?”
    ”All set. Standing outside the front door.”
    ”Go.”
    There was a scream from the lobby, and the door banged open. SWAT guys in black combat gear and helmets came rushing in. They looked like fucking Navy SEALs. They had their weapons up and were yelling.
    ”Police! Get on the floor! Get on the floor!”
    Landers stood up and pointed his .38 at Erlene Barlowe’s face.
    ”This is a raid, bitch,” he said. ”Get your hands up against that wall and don’t move until I tell you to.”
    The look on her face was priceless.

    April 26
    11:00 a.m.
    Two weeks after my birthday, I finished up a hearing on a drug case in federal court in Greeneville and had just gotten in my truck to drive back to Johnson City when I looked at my cell phone and saw a text message from Caroline: ”Call me. Urgent.”
    Caroline had taken on the job as my secretary/
    paralegal two years earlier, after we made the decision that I was getting out. Since I was taking fewer cases, I needed to cut down on my overhead. The classes Caroline taught at her dance studio were held in the evenings, so she volunteered. When the lease was up on my office downtown, I found my secretary a job at another law firm and moved the essentials out to my house. The move saved me almost sixty thousand dollars a year, and Caroline took an online course and got herself certified as a paralegal.
    She turned out to be a quick study. I still had a small conference room downtown where I met clients, but it cost me only two hundred a month.
    ”What’s up?” I said when she answered the phone.
    ”Could be good, could be bad,” she said. ”A woman named Erlene Barlowe called early this morning. She was frantic. She said the police barged into her house and arrested a young friend of hers for murder and that she needed to hire a lawyer. She kept saying the girl couldn’t have done it.”
    Right.
    ”She wants to meet with you. It’s been a long time since you’ve been hired privately on a murder case.”
    ”Billy Dockery’s mother hired me.” I’d never told anyone about Billy’s confession. Not even Caroline.
    ”You made a lot of money on that case, didn’t you?”
    ”Fifty thousand.”
    ”We could use it.”
    ”I thought we were in good shape.”
    ”We are, but a murder case? And this one could be big money, babe. It’s the case where the preacher was murdered. The one who was found in the motel room.”
    ”I don’t want to take on a murder case, high profile or not, Caroline. It could go on for years.”
    ”That’s why I didn’t make her an appointment.”
    She sounded disappointed.
    I thought about it for a minute, weighing the pros and the cons. Curiosity finally got the best of me.
    ”Ah, what the heck, it won’t hurt to talk to her.
    Call her back and have her meet me downtown at one.”
    It took me an hour to drive back to Johnson City.
    I ate a quick lunch at a cafeabout two blocks from my conference room and walked in the door about ten minutes before one. There was a woman sitting at the table waiting for me. She stood when I came in. It was all I could do to keep my jaw from dropping. She was dressed in tight black spandex pants and an orange and black tiger-striped top that nearly exposed the nipples on her very substantial breasts.
    Her hair was a shade of red I’d never seen before, on or off a woman’s head.
    ”Joe Dillard,” I said as I shook her hand. Her fingernails were at least an inch long and painted the same design as her shirt.
    ”Erlene Barlowe. You’re even better-looking in person than you are on television.” She smiled, and when I looked her in the eye, I saw that despite the shocking outfit, she was an attractive woman. I motioned towards the chair.
    ”What can I do for you, Ms. Barlowe?”
    ”Oh, honey, I have the most terrible problem. It’s just awful. A very close young lady friend of mine has been arrested for a crime she didn’t