“Tell that to Timothy Stewart! Wait, you can't. He's dead.”
“That's what this has all been about. You want to destroy an entire industry because of one mistake.”
“One? The Stewart case is only one example of the problems with the current system.”
Simon's phone beeped. On cue. He'd told his secretary to never leave Matt Elliott alone in his office for more than five minutes.
“Yes, Janice? Right, I'll take it.”
He covered the mouthpiece. “Get out, shut up, or your career is over.”
II.
Senator Matt Elliott hung up with the fiery Paula Ramirez who was as livid as he was that Beck had replaced her on the Public Safety Committee. Matt had spent the entire three years of his legislative term working on Paula, earning her trust and respect. It all came to a head when he asked for her support of this bill, against their party line. Matt was the maverick, the others expected him to vote however he damn well pleased, but Paula was one of theirs: a dyed-in-the-wool, intellectual, steadfast liberal.
And he'd won her over on this issue. He'd also grown to like her, though they still didn't see eye-to-eye on criminal justice reform.
It was Hannah Stewart, the slain boy’s mother for which “Timothy’s Law” had been named, who'd swayed Paula. Her raw, honest testimony that Matt, a former prosecutor, could only attest to, not recreate. She'd been to hell and back in the five years since her son had been murdered. Matt had been the assistant district attorney when her son’s killer had gone to trial; he’d been with Hannah since the very beginning. It was that case that had prompted him to run for office to change the laws that he had vowed to uphold as a prosecutor.
And now he had to tell her that not only was the bill dead as the result of political posturing and corruption, but he didn't think they had the time or resources to qualify an initiative for this year's ballot. It would be put on the back burner until the next election.
His chief of staff, Greg Harper, knocked on the door. “Mrs. Stewart and her sister are here.”
“Send them in.”
He stood and walked to the door to greet them. Matt felt like a prosecutor again, giving bad news to surviving family. He'd always hated that part of the job, and this was worse because he knew Hannah.
“What's wrong?” she asked as soon as they sat down on the couch facing his desk.
She'd always been perceptive. Even when she was going through the emotional ringer during Rickie Coleman’s trial, she'd picked up on the subtleties of the court testimony.
“Paula was removed from the Public Safety Committee,” Matt said. “She was replaced by someone who opposes Timothy's Law.”
“Why?”
“I told you this was going to be a tough sell.”
“But after Senator Ramirez agreed to support Timothy's Law, we had the votes, correct?
He nodded. Hannah sounded calm, but her eyes were glassy. She knew what this setback meant.
“And she was removed why? Because someone didn't want the bill to pass?”
“Essentially.”
“You mean the Senate Leader.”
“I'm not going to lie to you, Hannah. Politics reigns supreme in this building. We knew what we were up against—the group home industry is worth tens of millions of dollars and growing. All they are doing is slowing down the tide against them. We will change the system. But I learned this isn’t the way.”
Hannah said, “Since Timmy, more kids have been hurt. It'll happen again. Are human lives a justifiable cost for these people?”
Matt had nothing to say. He agreed with Hannah. “I'm truly sorry. Paula is sorry, too. We did everything we could.”
Hannah turned away from Senator Elliott and looked at her niece in the stroller. Rachel was a beautiful child, perfect in every way, round and plump with chubby hands and deep dimples. The dimples ran in their family—both Hannah and her sister, Meg, had them.
Unlike Rachel's twin indentions, Timmy had had a solitary dimple on his left cheek.
She squeezed her eyes shut as the wave of pain hit her, palatable. Unconsciously, her hand fiercely rubbed her forehead.
“Hannah, are you okay?”
It was the senator speaking. He’d tried. He’d been so kind, so steadfast, he’d worked so hard. But it wasn’t enough.
She lied. “I'm fine.”
“I know you're disappointed. I'm furious about this, and I promise you I'll take it to the voters. I'm not going to sit back and let this power play go unnoticed. My chief of staff is crafting a press release, and I'm having a press conference—with Paula—immediately after the committee hearing.”
Hannah nodded, though she only heard part of what he said. She'd known this could happen. And, really, why had she come to testify in the first place? It wouldn't bring Timothy back. It wouldn't piece together her destroyed marriage.
You did it to save other children.
And now other children were still at risk because of politics. Politics that allowed juvenile sex offenders to move quietly into neighborhoods without anyone knowing. Politics that allowed those perverts to live across the street from an elementary school, to watch the little boys and little girls walking to and from school every day.
They could slip out of the poorly secured houses because people who had no idea how to care for these criminals were put in positions of authority. Did they even understand that their young charges hurt other children? That it was only a matter of time before they escalated from sex crimes to murder?
What was the difference between a seventeen-year-old convicted rapist and an eighteen-year-old rapist? The public was allowed to know when the older predator moved into their neighborhood, but not the younger.
“Hannah?”
It was her sister Meg, in her motherly tone. A sign that she was worried.
Rachel started fussing in her stroller and Meg reached for her. Hannah interrupted.
“Let me take care of her,” she said.
Meg agreed, her eyes following Hannah as she left with the baby.
Meg said to Matt, “She needs to do something. Rachel helps, I think.”
Matt would never forget the pain in her eyes when he first met her, even though he’d always thought of Hannah as a quietly strong woman. Yet five years later, the agony was still there, a permanent reminder of the uncaring bureaucrats and a callous system that made it more profitable to house sex offenders in middle-class neighborhoods than in prison.
Of course, the group homes were officially “non-profit,” but the people who ran the facilities also owned the food supply, laundry services, and transportation companies. Investors quietly bought up houses in middle-class neighborhoods and leased them out to the “non-profits” at inflated rates. Then there was court-ordered counseling, attorney fees, private security companies—Matt had only just begun to trace the money trail of those connected with these facilities.
“How's she holding up?” Matt asked.
“Hannah's strong. She's gotten through the worst of it, and now that the divorce is final, I think she'll be okay. It’s just—”
“What?”
“Every time Hannah speaks in public, like in front of the committee, she relives Timmy’s murder.”
Matt hated thinking he was partly to blame for Hannah’s pain. He'd sympathized with her, he took care of her needs, but he'd never failed to use Timmy's murder to advance his goals. And while his goals were for the protection of all children, he'd lost sight of his own humanity in the process. That maybe everything he'd asked Hannah to do had kept the wounds open and festering, instead of healing.
He wished he could help Hannah move forward, reclaim her lost life. Five years was a long time to grieve.
But he'd never lost a child to violence.
III.
Hannah pushed her index fingers into her temple, pushing back the dull, constant ache that she’d learned to live with for the last five years.
She'd lost her only child. Then she'd lost
her husband. Eric wasn't dead, but he was dead to her.
“Why weren't you watching him? How could you let this happen?”
He'd apologized, but the damage was done. Eric thought she was responsible. That her actions and inactions had resulted in Timmy being stabbed six times after enduring a rape.
Rickie Coleman said he didn’t mean to kill Timmy—that he was scared of going to jail if he was caught. The judge only gave him nine years. For manslaughter, not murder.
The sixteen-year-old Coleman lived right down the street from Timmy’s school in a group home for juvenile sex offenders. Timmy had passed by that house every day, unaware of the depravity that hid behind the door.
If she'd only known, she'd never have let Timmy walk home alone. Or even with friends. She would have picked him up. Or arranged a neighborhood carpool.
Dammit! His school was only three blocks from home! He should have been safe.
She worked only ten minutes away and had adjusted her work schedule in order to meet Timmy when he came home from school every day.
But he never came home that day. She called every friend and ran from her house to the school, calling his name, her panic growing.
She ran right past the house where Timmy lay dead in the backyard, to be discovered three hours later when the owner came home from work.
The house next door to the group home.
Rachel let out a yelp and Hannah cleared her head. Remembered where she was . . . in a restroom in the California State Capitol.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” She changed the wet infant's diaper. Rachel reached up and pulled Hannah's long brown hair. Hannah was in the handicap stall, which she'd often used when Timmy had been in a stroller. Now, she needed it for privacy more than the room.
“Sorry, Rachel,” she murmured as she reached under the stroller. Her hand touched the cold metal.
Are you sure?
Of course she was sure. Her son was dead, her marriage was over, and she had nothing left but distant memories of happiness.
Rachel gurgled in her stroller, reached again for Hannah's hair. She allowed the baby to grab a handful, a tear falling onto Rachel's little pink dress.
“I love you, Rachel,” she whispered. “I hope your mommy forgives me.”
Hannah loosened the gun, which she had strapped down with duct tape under the stroller that morning when she volunteered to load Rachel's stroller into the car.
She had watched people coming and going through security during her numerous trips to the capitol. The guards passed the strollers around the metal detector and only took a cursory glance at the contents. Diaper bags and backpacks were run through the X-ray, but not the stroller itself.
She and Meg had grown up on a farm in the Central Valley and their father taught them to shoot at a young age. Hannah never expected to use a gun on a human being.
Senator Beck was anything but human.
“Let's tell your mommy you want a walk,” she told Rachel, securing the gun in the small of her back, under her loose-fitting blouse. “Auntie Hannah has a meeting.”
IV.
“I'm not going to sit here and pretend none of us know exactly what happened today. Senator Ramirez was unceremoniously removed from the Public Safety Committee after faithfully serving for seven years. Why? Because she supported Timothy's Law.”
He stared at his fellow committee members one by one. They in turn looked disgusted, bored and angry. Angry at him, perhaps, because he was shining a high-wattage light on the dark dealings of the Capitol.
Good bills were killed because of special interests every day of the week. Matt's bill was simply another casualty.
“We've heard enough,” the Chairman, Senator Thomas, said. “You're getting very close to being censured.”
“Censured? You think I care about being censured when you sit there and abstain on a bill that would protect children and save lives?”
“Senator Elliott, that is enough.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Matt noticed Hannah Stewart enter the committee hearing room. She came in through the rear entrance and sat in the back row.
He couldn't drag her through another hearing, not like this. Her face was ashen, and she was as skinny as he'd seen her during the trial when her sister told him she'd lost weight, going from one hundred forty pounds to less the one hundred ten.
“It may be enough for you, but I will continue to fight for child safety legislation even if some of the members of this committee believe in politics over human lives.”
Thomas stared at him icily as Matt took his seat. He stared back. He wasn't going to let them get away with it. He knew what he would tell the press.
Without fanfare, the committee voted. Three ayes, four abstentions.
Failed.
The next time he looked at the audience, Hannah was gone.
V.
Though Hannah had grown up listening to her father’s tirades about the corruption of government, she'd always believed in the system. That good people ran for office—people like Matt Elliott, the man who'd prosecuted Timmy's murderer. The man whose eyes teared up when he told her the judge was going to give Coleman a lenient sentence. That Rickie Coleman would be a free man at the same time Timmy should have been graduating from high school.
Senator Elliott was not to blame. He'd done what he could. It just wasn’t enough.
It was Beck's fault. Simon Beck, the man who'd stacked the committee for the sole purpose of killing Timothy's Law. A man who cared more about politics than a little boy who'd bled to death, alone, crying for his mommy . . .
Hannah screamed, but no sound escaped her tight throat. She heard Timmy's silent pleas every time she closed her eyes, every time she tried to sleep. But never in daylight, never like this.
She pretended to look through her purse as she watched the traffic in the corridor. It didn't take long before she saw the group she needed. Six women of different ages, walking with briefcases and purpose. She quickly trailed after them, standing only a foot from the rear as they opened the door and piled into the Senator’s waiting room.
The short woman of the group announced them. “Betsy Franklin with the Nurses Coalition. We have a meeting with Senator Beck.”
The secretary checked the schedule, nodded, and told them to have a seat and she would let the senator know that they'd arrived.
If any of the women noticed her, they must have assumed she also had an appointment with the Senate leader. They didn't comment. She didn't offer an explanation.
She sat in a chair while Nurse Betsy Franklin spoke to Beck's secretary. Hannah hadn't been in this office before, but she was a good observer. She watched as the secretary vaguely nodded toward a door behind her and to the left. Was Beck's office right on the other side of the door? Or down a hall?
Now that she’d made her decision, an eerie calm descended around her.
Killing Senator Beck wouldn't bring Timmy back from the dead, but it would punish him for what he'd done to stop justice. It would make a statement: that people who had the lives of others in their hands could not callously disregard the dead, or the living.
“Janice, I'll just be a sec.” A tall, lanky man with a boyish face and graying hair walked past the secretary with a half-smile at the nurses. He opened the door, then closed it. But Hannah saw what she needed to see. A short hall, then double doors.
Where that bastard worked.
Rickie Coleman was to blame for killing Timmy. But what about the system that put him in the neighborhood in the first place? Even though Coleman was now in prison and the staff fired, that house was still open and operational in her old neighborhood. Nearly every day she drove by, watched as the so-called “counselors,” who looked barely old enough to vote, escorted the six teenage boys from the house to an unmarked van. Followed as they drove across the county to “school.” Their school was housed in a recreation center that also held a preschool and several after-school programs. They put those sexual predators in t
he same building with innocent children.
When she'd gone to the Recreation Board, she was told that, “There have been no reported problems. And they pay their rent on time.”
She'd been in the Capitol building enough over the last six months to know that she couldn't simply walk into the Pro Tem's office. The secretary would ask if she had an appointment. And she doubted that Senator Beck would talk to her, even if she did ask for a meeting.
Are you sure you want to do this?
She wasn’t sure of anything. She couldn't sleep; she could barely eat. She'd never wanted to move, but she couldn't live in the same house where Timmy had lived. She was in limbo, going through the motions of living while having no real life.
Her soul had died the same day as Timmy.
The man left Beck's office ten minutes later and Hannah jumped up.
“Ma'am, you can't—”
Hannah closed the door and ran to the double doors, opening them at the same time as the secretary opened the outer door.
“Sergeants!” the woman called.
Hannah closed the door.
She'd noticed Matt Elliott had locks on his doors and was pleased to find that so did Senator Beck. She turned it.
“Ms. Franklin?” Senator Beck asked, confused, as he rose from his desk.
Recognition crossed his tanned face as he stared at her.
“Hannah Stewart,” she said, though it was unnecessary. “You killed Timothy's Law.”
Fists pounded on the door behind Hannah. She drew the gun.
“Senator? Senator?” a muffled voice called through the door. Someone shouted, “Get the Sergeants!”
“Mrs. Stewart—” Beck put his hands up, slowly. He stared at the gun, not at her.
Her enemy cowered in front of her. Sweat formed along his receding hairline. She should kill him now. But her hand trembled, so she held the gun with both hands; her purse fell to the floor with a thud. She jumped, heart pounding.
“You sacrificed innocent children for politics,” she said, surprised that her voice sounded normal.
“Mrs. Stewart, put the gun down.”
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