The Conviction

by Robert Dugoni

  “And people commit their children willingly to this,” Molia said.

  “Not like they once did,” Lynch offered. “These camps were much more popular in the 1980s and 1990s when a perception developed that juvenile crime was the product of too much coddling, that society needed to get tougher on juvenile offenders before they became hardened criminals. The thought of using military type boot camps to accomplish this was almost romantic: taking the ragged edges off troubled teens and shaping them into sharp lines of marching cadets.”

  “That’s not how I remember boot camp,” Sloane said.

  “After the reports of emotional and physical abuse, critics began to question the propriety of using military techniques to instill discipline in kids, not to mention the ethical dilemma associated with a system that allows private individuals to make a profit off the incarceration of those kids.”

  Lynch pulled up another article she’d downloaded. The headline said everything Sloane needed to know.

  Selling Justice for a Profit

  The dilemma of privatizing the criminal justice system

  “Fresh Start is owned by a limited liability company, Fresh Start LLC.” She clicked open a file and clicked through documents she’d downloaded from the California secretary of state’s office.

  “Stop,” Sloane said. “Go back. That one. Scroll down.” He read the names of the individual members of the liability company and pointed to the screen while looking up at Molia. “Victor Dillon.”

  “The same guy who owns Truluck?” Molia asked.

  “And the brewery,” Sloane said.

  The road meandered along the South Fork of the Cosumnes River, a roller coaster of asphalt barely wide enough to accommodate a car traveling in each direction. The sun had not yet set, but it had descended low enough that the rolling hills and trees cast shadows across the road, making it even more difficult for Molia to judge the proximity and degree of approaching turns. More than once he had to hit the brakes hard to keep from ending up in the ditch.

  Back at the motel, Sloane and Lynch had dug in, preparing the motion for a new trial, which they would file in the morning, as well as a second motion to have it heard on shortened notice, which meant asking the court to forsake the lengthy time delay usually associated with anything that has to do with the legal system. Wanting to keep busy, Molia volunteered to find them something to eat, though he had no appetite himself. The task had proven easier said than done. He tried Dillon, the closest town to Tristan, but struck out, though a gas station attendant offered a recommendation. The young man said he lived in Dry Creek and that his mother and father owned a diner there that stayed open later than most. He’d even agreed to call ahead and let them know Molia was coming. It was further evidence that businesses in the small towns were hurting.

  Not long after the road sign announcing the town of Dry Creek’s existence, Molia came upon the string of brick and rock buildings the gas attendant had described. The Dry Creek Diner, just past the Dry Creek Theater, reminded Molia of Merle’s Coffee Shop, his favorite diner back in Charles Town, West Virginia, and that made him melancholy for home.

  The woman behind the counter had already set to work on the order, but said it would be a few more minutes. She offered Molia a cup of coffee and a seat at the window. He picked up a copy of the Dry Creek Reporter and read without much interest, but hoping anything would take his mind off the conversation he’d had earlier that afternoon with Maggie. It had been the single most difficult call he’d ever made. Maggie had answered with a bright tone, but she knew him too well for him to sugarcoat the news. He told her straight out that T.J. had gotten himself in some trouble with the law.

  “T.J.? What kind of trouble?”

  As he set out the details of what had transpired Maggie listened in stunned silence, whispering little more than “Oh my God” until Molia told her T.J. had been incarcerated and that he might not be getting out anytime soon.

  “What?” she exploded, anger and fear fueling a string of difficult questions for which Molia had no answers.

  “How did this happen, Tom? How could this happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where were you?”

  “The boys wanted to share a room. We were in the room right next door; we never heard them get up.”

  “This isn’t like him. Why would he do this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You haven’t spoken to him?”

  “They sentenced him without us present.”

  She grew more upset with each answer, crying now, “Where the hell were you?”

  “A police officer pulled us over. He wouldn’t let me go.”

  “But you’re a cop.”

  “I explained that to him. He—”

  “Can you visit him?”

  “Not for thirty days.”

  “Thirty days! That’s a month.”

  “I know.”

  Then she’d asked the most difficult question of all. “How long is the sentence?”

  “Six months.”

  And the string of “Oh my God”s began again.

  “David is working on getting them both a new trial; he’s filing a motion tomorrow morning.”

  “What are the chances?”

  Molia suspected she knew the answer. “If we lose we’ll file an immediate appeal. He’s also filing a motion to have them transferred to facilities closer to home.”

  “An appeal? How long will that take?”

  Too long. “I don’t know.”

  “My God, Tom, he’s just a boy. How could you let this happen?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How could you let this happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The tone of her voice hardened, a mother’s resolve. “You get him out, Tom Molia. Do you hear me? You get my boy out. You do what you have to do, but you get him out.”

  “I will.”

  “Don’t you come home, Tom; don’t you come home without my boy. Don’t you dare.” Then she hung up. She had never hung up on him. She’d rarely ended a conversation without saying “I love you.”

  When he’d disconnected, Molia felt as if he’d been run through with a spear. He knew Maggie had spoken out of anger, but he also knew she’d spoken the truth.

  He set the paper on the table and turned toward the window, wiping the tears that leaked from his eyes, and caught a blurry glimpse of what appeared to be the back end of a two-tone, blue-and-gray car driving down the street. He spilled his coffee getting up, and stepped out onto the boardwalk but only in time to catch red taillights ascend a hill and disappear around the bend.

  Molia set the two bags of food and the cardboard tray with three chocolate milk shakes on the passenger seat and set out for the drive back to the Tristan Taj Mahal. The switchback, black asphalt, had become even more difficult to navigate with the blanket of darkness. Molia straddled the center of the road, finding a rhythm to the turns and trying to focus, but his thoughts continued to drift back to his conversation with Maggie and the question he could not answer. How could he have let this happen? He’d told her he didn’t know, but he did know. He knew exactly how it had happened. He’d been so eager to help Sloane with Jake that he’d forgotten to consider what was best for his own son. Sloane had warned him of Jake’s problems, but Molia had downplayed it, trying to minimize Sloane’s concern. When T.J. asked if the two boys could share a room together, Sloane had known it was not a good idea and tried to say so, but again Molia had not listened. He was trying so damn hard to be a good friend he’d forgotten to be a good father. Had he been thinking about T.J., had he listened to Sloane’s admonitions, none of this would have happened.

  He’d been wrong to explode at Sloane, his anger born from his concern for T.J., his frustration with the parent liaison’s rigid adherence to her bullshit spiel, and his own guilt. What had happened wasn’t David’s fault, and his attempts to explain the next steps in the legal process had simply been his way of
trying to focus their attention on things they could do, rather than obsess and despair about all the things they could not.

  Headlights in the rearview mirror refocused Molia’s attention on the road. The car had approached at a high rate of speed and did not stop until it was just feet from the Jeep’s bumper. Molia flipped the mirror to cut the glare and saw the metal grill and the lights. Police car. He hadn’t imagined it.

  Wade. Had to be. The son of a bitch was following him.

  Molia contemplated taking Wade on a wild-goose chase, but just as he thought it the flashing lights atop the car spun to life and Wade’s voice echoed through the speaker. “Pull over.”

  “No thanks,” Molia said. “Been there, done that. No jurisdiction outside Disneyland, Carl.”

  Wade punched the accelerator, and the police car shot forward, the metal grill impacting against the Jeep’s back bumper.

  “Son of a bitch,” Molia said through clenched teeth. He decelerated, contemplating coming to a complete stop and confronting Wade right there, but Wade was armed and Molia wasn’t, and along a deserted stretch of road who knew what the crazy SOB was capable of? He sped up, then slowed, deliberately changing speeds, a herky-jerky pattern intended to keep Wade just off balance enough to make him think twice about giving Molia’s bumper another love tap.

  It didn’t work.

  The force of the second attack could have been a result of Wade misjudging Molia’s tactics, or intentional. Either way it jarred Molia’s head back and nearly spilled the cardboard box with the shakes off the seat. And that gave Molia his idea.

  He hated to do it. Chocolate was his favorite flavor.

  He reached across the seat and lifted one of the cups from the tray, removing the straw and waiting until he saw what he needed, a short length of straight road. He slowed.

  “Stay with me, Carl,” he said, alternately considering the rearview mirror and the distance before the next turn. “Just a little longer.”

  Wade tapped the bumper, and in the rearview mirror Molia saw him gesticulating through the windshield for Molia to pull over.

  “Not this time, Carl.” Molia lowered the driver’s window.

  As he approached the turn he let fly. He couldn’t judge the trajectory of his toss, but he could see Wade’s reaction in the rearview mirror.

  Wade swerved and hit the brakes. Too late. The cup exploded against the glass, its thick contents splattering the windshield in a broad swath of chocolate.

  Molia braked, made the turn, and punched the accelerator. The last thing he saw was the back end of the police car fishtail, the tire sliding from the asphalt and into the ditch.

  TEN

  FRESH START YOUTH TRAINING FACILITY

  SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS

  The bright light blinded him. Jake raised an arm to deflect the glare, surprised that it came from four fluorescent tubes in fixtures mounted to a pitched ceiling. Disoriented, he struggled to his elbows, but felt lightheaded and lay back again.

  The last thing he recalled was assuming a fetal position, using his forearms and elbows to protect his head and face. The dogs attacked his limbs, pulling and tugging at the coveralls, but Jake resisted the urge to kick out and remained curled in a ball, hearing the snarls, feeling the saliva wet on his skin.

  Only Atkins’s command had ended the attack. “Off!”

  The dogs continued to bark and lunge at him, paws digging at the ground, until Atkins reattached their leashes. Even then, still amped from the hunt, they sprang up and down on their front legs, tongues hanging out the sides of their mouths, ears perked and attentive.

  Jake sat up again and this time remained upright long enough to consider his surroundings. He lay atop a bunk bed, apparently in one of the corrugated block buildings he’d seen out the bus window. He ran his tongue over his lips and felt the jagged edges of cracked skin and tasted blood, which made him remember the two bullets. One hit him in the back and one in his chest. He looked down at the dark red spot that had flowered in the center of his coveralls, which was sticky to the touch. When he brought his fingers closer he saw that the remnants had stained his fingers and hands, making the cracks look like hundreds of intersecting rivers and tributaries run red. But it wasn’t blood. It was paint.

  He closed his eyes again and this time saw Captain Overbay standing over him, the corner of his mouth twitching, the movement almost imperceptible but just enough to signify enjoyment, bemusement, perverse satisfaction. Then Overbay flipped the rifle, the barrel twirling, and aimed it directly between Jake’s eyes.

  “No second chances,” he’d said.

  The room began to tilt and twirl but Jake held the edge of the metal frame to steady himself. Perhaps forty feet in length and half the width, the room looked like the dormitory at the soccer camp he’d attended in Washington. A series of bunks were positioned perpendicular to unblemished walls with a pale green linoleum floor down the center. Whereas the thin mattress on which Jake sat remained unmade, the other beds were identical in their perfection—white sheet folded back six inches over a forest green blanket tucked so tight Jake could not detect a single wrinkle. No pictures or posters adorned the walls and he did not see any dressers or nightstands or articles of clothing of any kind. He thought maybe he had the dorm to himself. Then he saw the plastic bins beneath each of the lower bunks, like the bins the guard had given him and T.J. for their extra set of coveralls, white socks, T-shirts, and boxer shorts.

  A clock high on the wall, its face protected by a metal cage, indicated it was just after eight, and judging by the darkness outside the row of rectangular shaped windows above the top bunks, it was night, not morning. In the corner of the room, mounted to the ceiling, a camera continuously rotated left to right and back.

  At the end of the bunk on which he sat, Jake found a plastic water bottle resting atop a neatly folded white sheet, green blanket, and thin pillow, but the simple task of reaching for the bottle brought pain pulsing through every inch of his body and it took three tries to reach it. The knuckles of his hand ached when he twisted off the top, and the lukewarm water stung his lips and burned his throat but he drank greedily, until he felt a hollow pang in his stomach and thought he might heave. He fell back, one leg dangling over the edge of the bed, forearm covering his eyes. Another image came to him, this one of him being pulled down the mountain by a chain, stumbling and falling frequently.

  Mercifully the images faded and his mind drifted. His aching body, craving sleep more than even food, gave in to fatigue. He did not know whether five minutes or five hours passed when he heard the first voice.

  “Hey, who’s that?”

  “Fuck if I know. He’s a newbie.”

  Too tired to care, Jake tuned the voices out, pretending to be asleep.

  The bunk shook, someone standing on the bottom bed frame to get a closer look. “What happened to his face?”

  “He looks like shit.”

  Jake ignored them.

  Someone tugged on his leg. “You’re on my bunk.” The voice, high pitched, sounded almost girlish. The person shoved Jake’s shoulder. “I said you’re on my bunk.”

  Jake wasn’t in the mood to make friends. He kicked out, striking something solid. “Fuck off. It was empty.”

  The response was a blow to the chest that hit him like a jackhammer and knocked the wind out of him. Before Jake could react the hand that hit him grabbed his coveralls and lifted him as if the bunk were spring-loaded and ejected him. Jake had the sensation of flying, but it was brief. His shoulders and the back of his head hit the block wall, bringing stars. When they cleared Jake was looking at a head as big and round as a pumpkin, the face acne pocked with a jagged red scar that extended from the left eye to the corner of the mouth and caused the eyelid to appear half-closed.

  “I said, this is my bunk.” The behemoth discarded Jake like a rag doll, tossing him across the room and throwing the neatly folded bedding on top of him. “You sleep on the floor.”

  The othe
rs in the room, each dressed in the same red coveralls, stood watching. Some smiled, as if this were part of the camp entertainment, but most looked equally terrified. Then one of them shouted.

  “Officer in the barracks!” They scurried to the ends of their bunks and snapped to rigid attention.

  Atkins walked the aisle between the beds, stopping at the bunk beside which the man-child had taken position. He dwarfed even Atkins, a foot taller and a good hundred pounds heavier.

  “Any problems, Clarence?”

  “No sir, Officer Atkins.” The boy spoke with a pronounced lisp.

  Atkins’s sunglasses were clipped to the front pocket of his shirt. Jake was surprised the man’s eyes were green; he’d expected them to be pitch-black or something equally demonic, yellow or red.

  Atkins considered the bedding on the floor before raising his eyes to Jake. “Inmate Stand-up, I see you’ve made friends with Big Baby.”

  THE TRISTAN MOTEL

  TRISTAN, CALIFORNIA

  Tom Molia entered the room carrying two bags and balancing a tray with two Styrofoam cups. “We have company.”

  Sloane took the tray and looked out the door but did not see anyone or any suspicious vehicles in the parking lot or parked along the highway.

  “Wade,” Molia said, placing the bags on the bed closest to the door. The other bed had papers scattered across it. “He followed me to Dry Creek. I didn’t see him, but he was there.”

  “How do you know it was Wade if you didn’t see him?” Sloane asked.

  “Because we played bumper cars on the drive back. I was the bumpee.”

  Lynch sat at the computer. “Who’s Wade?”

  “Friendly Truluck police officer,” Molia said. “He likes us so much he’s trying to convince us to leave.”

  “Why?” she asked, concern creeping into her tone.

  “It’s just a power play,” Sloane said, then to Molia, “But it sure seems like overkill, doesn’t it?”

  “I had to waste a perfectly good chocolate shake, but I bought us time if we want to move; it will take an hour or more before the tow truck pulls his car from the ditch.”