Judgment Calls

by Alafair Burke

  My face must have revealed my skepticism. “I don’t want to sound like I’ve made up my mind, but that’s pretty weak corroboration, Detective. It just shows Kendra was robbed; it doesn’t say anything about who did this to her. Were there any prints on the purse?”

  “We don’t know yet. We’ve got it down at the lab being looked at with the rest of the girl’s clothes.”

  “OK, so what you guys are telling me is that, at least so far, this case turns entirely on Kendra Martin’s identification of Derringer. Do we all agree on that?”

  They all nodded.

  “So when you went out to Derringer’s apartment with his PO, did this case manage to get any better?”

  The second the words came out, I regretted them. Seasoned cops like Jack Walker and Raymond Johnson no doubt were well aware of the differences between their approach and a district attorney’s. Cops just need to make the arrest. The DA is the one who has to prove the case to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt afterward, who has to deal with a defense attorney gnawing at every argument and challenging every piece of evidence. Trying a weak case can feel like getting poked in the eye for two weeks.

  Cops learn to live with the difference in perspective. But they don’t like being talked down to. And I was pretty sure I had done just that.

  “No confession, if that’s what you’re looking for. Damn it, Garcia, I thought you said this girl was willing to try a close case. We’re not even done giving her the facts, and she’s already shutting us down.” Jack Walker was clearly pissed off.

  I chalked up the “girl” comment to generational differences and swallowed my pride. No use alienating these guys over a careless comment, even one that irritated the hell out of me.

  “Detective, I’m sorry if my tone suggested that I was criticizing your investigation, but to be honest I’m a little frustrated by what I am beginning to perceive as an attempt to portray the evidence as stronger than it really is. Look, if the case is a real dog, I’ll figure that out, whether or not you lead it to me barking. If it’s a gimme, I’ll notice that too. But I want to decide on my own. With that said, I apologize for my smart-ass comment. I should have said exactly what I was thinking, and now I have. I hope you haven’t made up your mind about me, just as I haven’t formed a final decision about your case.”

  The table was quiet as Garcia and Johnson waited to see if I had managed to make things worse. Then Jack Walker shook his head and smiled. “Well, that was definitely direct. And you’re right. I guess we were kind of hyping the case up a little.” He glanced over at Johnson, not so much with a look of blame as like a child who peeks over at his partner-in-mischief when he realizes the teacher has figured them out but good.

  Walker then looked directly at me, and I could tell we’d entered a spin-free zone. “Look, the truth is, the biggest thing we’ve got right now is the girl’s ID of Derringer. Derringer denied everything. He says he was over at his brother’s watching a basketball game and then stayed for Saturday Night Live and some beers. The brother’s name is Derrick Derringer, if you can believe it. Anyway, so far Derrick’s corroborating his brother, but he’s got three felony convictions, so there you go.”

  “So did you arrest Derringer at his house?” I asked.

  Walker shook his head. “Not us. Renshaw hooked Derringer up on a parole violation based on Kendra’s ID and took him down to the Justice Center for booking. We figured the parole detainer would at least hold him overnight, when O’Donnell could decide what charges to file.”

  “And what did O’Donnell make of all this?”

  Detective Walker slumped back in his chair, the excitement draining from his face. “That’s where this whole thing fell apart on us. After we had Derringer hooked up, we went back to central to meet Chuck and Mike. They had finished processing the scene and were working on the warrant. Just as we’re finishing up, O’Donnell shows up—in a fucking suit—to review the warrant. He’s reading it, just nodding the whole time, not saying squat. Then he says, ‘What about this girl?’ So Ray and I explain how she started out like a pill but then was a complete ten on the ID. O’Donnell didn’t like it; said the case rested entirely on the girl. Then he asks whether we’ve run her.”

  “You’d finished the warrant and still hadn’t run her?”

  Walker pursed his lips and shook his head. “I know, we fucked up. We’d been up all night, running around. We assumed she was straight up when she picked a sick fuck like Derringer. We forgot about running her. It was a rookie mistake.”

  Johnson continued with the bad news. When they ran the victim, they found a few runaway reports and an arrest for loitering to solicit. Worse, the cop who made the loitering pop found a syringe in the girl’s purse with heroin residue on it. Furious that the detectives had miscalculated their victim, O’Donnell had tried to bully her into coming clean, but his tough approach only made her dig her heels in deeper. Walker had to smooth things over with her, and she eventually admitted to a nine-month heroin habit that she worked the streets to support.

  “So it’s basically a trick gone bad?” I asked.

  “No,” Walker said. “At least we don’t think so. She admits she was walking Old Town, looking for a trick. She’d just finished one up and had scored some horse on the street. She figured she’d keep working while she was high. Anyway, these two guys pull up and offer her fifty bucks if they can high-five her.”

  “OK, I’ve been working vice a few years now, but I still don’t know what a high five is.”

  I knew it had to be bad when Walker and Johnson looked to Garcia for help and raised their eyebrows. Garcia averted his eyes while he told me. “It’s when a girl gets on all fours and one guy does her from behind while she blows the other one.” I was about to ask why the hell it was called a high five until I got a mental image of two naked guys on their knees giving each other a high five.

  I rolled my eyes in disgust. “So they ask her to work for both of them, basically, and she goes with them?”

  Walker eagerly accepted the invitation to change the subject. “Not according to her. She says she told them to meet her in the parking lot of the motel at Third and Alder. She rents a room there when she works. She assumes they’ve got a deal and starts walking to the hotel. That’s when Derringer pulls her into the backseat.

  “The rest of it happened pretty much like she said originally. When the car was stopped and Derringer was undoing his pants, she tried getting out but the guy in front pushed her back in. They told her she wasn’t going anywhere and she may as well shoot up what was left in her purse, so she did. Thing is, she says it never dawned on her they were gonna kill her until Derringer started to choke her out. But, my thinking is, she knew it at some level when they pulled her back into the car. She was just trying to get it over with. She said she injected so much horse, the assault didn’t hurt that bad, and this guy really worked her over.”

  Ray Johnson shook his head. “Man, you should’ve seen O’Donnell. I don’t know if you guys are tight, but he can be one tight-sphinctered prick. He got all moralistic and lectured the entire team about our obligation to be ‘cautious wielding the stern hand of the law.’” Johnson’s nerdy white guy impersonation pretty much nailed Tim O’Donnell.

  “Anyway, it was bullshit,” he continued. “O’Donnell had us clean up the warrant to include the new information and then signed off on it, saying he was gonna kick it out of major crimes territory if we didn’t find anything that changed his mind. We found some porn, but nothing damning. So, he’s planning on filing it today as an Assault Three and assigning it to precinct detectives for general follow-up before grand jury.”

  I couldn’t believe it. All you had to prove for assault in the third degree was that two or more defendants acted together to injure another person. It didn’t begin to portray the savage acts that had been committed against Kendra Martin.

  “Assault Three? That’s it?” I said.

  Johnson nodded. “I know, ridiculous. He says the
ID’s weak, plus the defense can say the whole thing was a consensual trick, that the girl cried rape so her mom wouldn’t find out she was turning tricks for smack. Said he was only issuing the assault because of Derringer’s prior. He basically called the girl a piece of trash.”

  “And you guys don’t think she is. You think she’s telling the truth?”

  Walker looked at me and tilted his head slightly. “Ms. Kincaid, I really do. It’s almost in her favor that she lied to us at first. Shows she still knows that working’s shameful, not just a matter-of-fact thing to her. Maybe that logic doesn’t make any sense to you, but I think she’s basically still a pretty good kid. We pissed O’Donnell off by not reading the case right, but he’s taking it out on the case, and this Derringer dirtbag is going to get the benefit.”

  “I agree that Derringer needs to be done, but I’m not sure how I can help you.”

  I wasn’t surprised that Sergeant Garcia had a suggestion. He had the respect of his fellow officers because he was a smart cop and a good guy. In a bureau where most black and Latino officers stall out at the front line of street-level enforcement, administrative staff promoted him because he had a political savvy so smooth that its targets never even knew they’d been had.

  “The way I see it, this girl could be a good link for Vice. She’s young and probably knows a circle of working girls we don’t have access to. If we can earn her trust, she might be able to lead us to some of the pimps we haven’t been able to latch on to, the guys who are turning out the real young ones.

  “I’ll call O’Donnell like I don’t know much about the case but think it might have potential with Vice, then ask if he minds me getting MCT’s OK to approach the vic as a potential informant. At that point I can sell him on letting a DVD attorney take the case, so they have a head start if the vic winds up developing other contacts for us. And then I’ll seal the deal. ‘Unless,’ I’ll say, ‘you want to keep the case yourself and help me flip any vice contacts I work.’”

  Johnson was impressed. “Tommy, my man, you oughta run for president. That is slick. You in, Kincaid?”

  “I don’t mind taking the case, but here’s the problem: it still needs major help. The rape kit’s not back, the victim’s clothes are still at the lab, Derringer’s alibi needs work, and we still don’t have the driver. If this case is filed as an Assault Three, it’s outside MCT jurisdiction. You know the precinct detectives aren’t going to do the follow-up that’s needed.”

  Garcia was a step ahead of me. “I’ll make another call to O’Donnell, telling him that you want to file the case as a major crime so MCT can keep working on it, but that MCT understands it might get bumped back down later on.”

  I hate this kind of crap. The four people at the table agree what needs to happen and are willing to put in the work, but have to plot how they can even start without bruising a fragile ego.

  I was skeptical. Garcia was good, but I still thought O’Donnell might see right through it and blame me when he wound up looking like a chicken shit. It would have been so easy to blame O’Donnell for the bad decision and say there was nothing I could do.

  Apathy is grossly undervalued and never there for me when I need it. I was already sucked in. I’d broken up some escort services and prosecuted a few pimps, but I’d never had a chance to handle a case like this one. And, to my mind, with scum like Derringer, it was better to issue the case and lose than let him walk away up front.

  “Alright, let’s give it a try,” I said.

  2

  Raymond Johnson was right. Tommy Garcia should run for office. Around nine o’clock, Tim O’Donnell popped into my office to give me a heads up that Tommy Garcia might be calling about an assault that happened over the weekend. I feigned ignorance. According to O’Donnell, the victim was a strung-out Old Town Lolita who acted surprised that a trick might want rough sex.

  By ten, O’Donnell told Garcia he didn’t care what charges were filed if someone from DVD agreed to pick it up. Once I got the word from Garcia, I called O’Donnell to be sure he was aware I’d be filing Measure 11 charges against Derringer. I didn’t want him getting ticked off later.

  Oregon joined the growing ranks of “tough on crime” states a few years ago when voters passed Ballot Measure 11 by a landslide. The law requires mandatory minimum sentences for the most violent felonies. Not surprisingly, once Measure 11 defendants figured out they were facing long minimum sentences upon conviction, whether they pled out or not, they stopped pleading guilty and started rolling the dice at trial. As a result, the DA’s office stopped filing charges that fell under Measure 11 unless the bureau’s investigation was flawless. In response, PPB formed the Major Crimes Team. The precinct detectives weren’t too happy about what they understandably viewed as a demotion.

  In theory, the DA’s office chose carefully which cases to file under Measure 11, because the consequences of a conviction are profound. But when it became clear that pissed-off precinct detectives were slacking on their general felony cases, the DAs started looking for creative ways to justify filing cases under Measure 11 so MCT would be responsible for the follow-up. Once the work was complete, they’d threaten the defendant with the mandatory minimum sentence in order to get him to plead guilty to whatever he should’ve been charged with in the first place. And now I had to pretend I was doing exactly that so a loser like Tim O’Donnell would give up a case he didn’t even want.

  I could hear laughing in the background when O’Donnell picked up the phone. As usual, the rest of the boys in the major crimes unit were huddled in his office for mid-morning coffee and a round of “No, I’ve got the raunchiest big-tit joke.”

  “Hey, Tim. It’s Samantha Kincaid. You were right. Garcia did call me about that Derringer case. I agree it’s a solid Assault Three, but MCT won’t do the follow-up unless we file it under Measure Eleven.”

  “Listen, Kincaid, if you want to do the work on it, that’s fine with me. I don’t know why you’d want to. I talked to the vic at the hospital—she’s a white trash junkie liar, no matter what those MCT guys tell you. The case is a loser.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right, but Garcia seems to think she might be able to get us some good vice cases.”

  “Tell me the truth, Kincaid. Do you actually give a shit about those whores?” More laughter in the background. I tried to control my anger as he put the phone on speaker.

  “Alright, seriously, you guys. Who in this room really cares if some sack teaches a drug addict from Rockwood how to sell it to support her junkie habit?” When no one said anything and the guffawing started again, he said, “See, Kincaid? That’s why you get all those vice cases. Ask me, we should give those guys a medal. Without them, those girls would be breaking into houses and stealing to get the money.”

  When he realized I wasn’t joining in the festivities, he tried to cover. “We’re just giving you a hard time, Sam. You know that, right? Sure you do. Hey, here’s a good one. What does a Rockwood girl say right after she loses her virginity? ‘Get off me, Daddy, you’re crushing my smokes.’”

  I’d love to be one of those people who could throw off the perfect zinger. The kind with the optimal amount of sting, but with enough of the funny stuff to keep you from looking like a freak. But in my experience, those perfect zingers never leap to mind at the right time.

  “Funny, O’Donnell. Hey, hold on a sec.” I set the phone down on my desk and rushed down the hall to his office. Standing in the doorway, I could see their wee brains straining to figure out how I could be in O’Donnell’s office and on the phone at the same time. “There’s nothing funny about the Derringer case, and there’s definitely nothing funny about some guy getting over on his daughter. You say something like that to me again, and it’ll feel like someone stretched your sad little ball sack up over that big empty head of yours.”

  I stormed back toward my office before I could make things worse. Behind me, I heard O’Donnell yell out, “Real nice, Kincaid,” over the other guys’
laughter. I hadn’t meant it to be funny, but if they were going to take it that way, so be it.

  I had to hand it to O’Donnell. He could be a Grade A jerk, but at least the guy could take it. As I slammed down the phone in my office, I could hear his laugh above all the others.

  I waited for my pulse to return to normal, then called over to the jail to make sure Derringer was still in custody. The Multnomah County holding center’s under an order from a federal judge for overcrowding. If the cells get full, the sheriff’s office is required to start releasing prisoners according to a court-created formula. In theory, a sex offender in on a parole hold should be one of the last to be released, but I’d stopped being surprised by MCSO’s decisions a long time ago.

  I finally got connected to a Deputy Lamborn.

  “You calling about Frank Derringer?” he asked. “Because I’ve been trying all morning to figure out who to call, and I’m getting ready to come off shift. Can’t read the PO’s signature for shit.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Well, we noticed something I thought the PO should know about. When we bring the prisoners in for booking, they’ve got to strip down out of their street clothes and put on their jail blues. Anyway, when Derringer was changing, one of the guys noticed that Derringer doesn’t have any pubic hair.”

  “Come again?” I said.

  “Yep, all gone down there. So, anyway, we assumed he had crabs or something and were joking around about what lucky prisoner was gonna have to share a cell with him. But then I noticed Derringer had a parole hold for an Attempted Sod One and figured a sex offender might have a more sinister reason for getting rid of the short and curlies. Thought someone should know about it.”