An Innocent Client (Joe Dillard Series Book 1) by Scott Pratt

Author:Scott Pratt [Pratt, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Phoenix Flying LLC
Published: 2013-12-13T08:00:00+00:00

He knew it. He knew. He looked back down at the table, and I walked out the door.

June 25

1:00 p.m.

I’d been going down to the jail to see Angel once a week, but the conversations I’d had with her were more personal than professional. I’d already heard her version of what happened the night Tester was killed, so I spent the time trying to get some background information out of her. She was reluctant, but during the second visit she decided she trusted me enough to tell me her real name and where she was from.

I gave the information to Diane Frye. She’d been working for weeks, and I’d also sent Tom Short, a forensic psychiatrist, down to the jail to interview Angel three times. I set up meetings with both of them on the same afternoon.

Diane had traveled to Oklahoma and Ohio, running down witnesses and documents. I was anxious to hear what she had to say. When I walked in, the conference room table was covered in papers.

“Your chickie is a ghost,” Diane said in her Tennessee drawl. She was nearly sixty, but she styled her light brown hair short and spiked. She was wearing her perpetual smile and her favorite casual outfit, a bright orange Tennessee Volunteer T-shirt—she’s a rabid fan—khaki shorts that exposed knobby knees and varicose veins, and orange high-top Converse basketball shoes.

“No Social Security number, no driver’s license, no school records, no credit history, no nothing. She doesn’t exist, at least not on paper. But I’ve talked to everybody I could find, and I think I’ve got everything pretty well organized. At least you’ll know a little more about what you’re dealing with.”

Diane said Angel was born in Columbus, Ohio, on March 15, 1989, to a young woman named Grace Rodriguez. Her biological mother gave her up for adoption the same day to the Columbus Freewill Baptist Home for Children. Angel was adopted five months later by Airman First Class Thomas Rhodes and his wife, Betty. They named her Mary Ann Rhodes.

Diane had flown out to Oklahoma City to talk to Angel’s adopted parents. They told Diane that when they adopted Mary, they thought they were unable to have children of their own, but Ms. Rhodes became pregnant a year later. She subsequently had three more children.

“They said they treated her like a princess,” Diane said. “The mother called her a thieving, ungrateful little wench. She said her husband kept a stash of cash in a box in the ceiling, and Angel apparently cleaned it out before she left. But I always leave a card and tell people if they have any other information to give me a call. A couple hours after I left, I got a call on my cell phone. It was one of their daughters, a seventeen-year-old named Rebecca. She was scared to death and I didn’t get to talk to her for long, but she said her parents didn’t tell me the whole story.”

Diane paused and stared up at the ceiling.

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