"Johnson needs to talk to Townsend. Some evidence might come out at
the prelim that could be disturbing." I told Roger about the
nonoxynol-9, my conversation with Tara, and Clarissa's phone records.
"That's a hell of a lot to dump on a guy, Samantha. Your cops didn't
think to mention any of this to him earlier?"
"Don't blow this out of proportion. This is the usual way it's done.
We guard the information, but in the end the family hears it first from
us. The only thing that's making this hard is having to go through you
to get to our victim's husband."
"When Johnson asked him the other night about barrier methods, Townsend
assumed there must have been a sexual assault."
"We still don't know," I said. "Maybe the nonoxynol's Jackson's.
Either way, Tara seems to think Clarissa was seeing someone else. Think
what you want about the phone calls."
"I'll tell him myself," he said.
"I want to send someone over, Roger. You can pick whomever you're most
comfortable with, and you can be there. But I want a cop to tell him."
It was the first step to bridging the gap between Townsend and PPB, an
accomplishment that would help the rest of the case run smoothly.
Roger wasn't having it. "I'm not trying to be an ass, Samantha, but
don't tell yourself you're doing this for Townsend. There's not a man
in the world who'd choose to hear something like that from a cop
instead of someone he at least knows is on his side. You want the cop
there to see his reaction, and it's totally unnecessary. Townsend's
cleared. I'll tell him myself."
I had to admit it with Townsend's alibi and poly, there was no
compelling justification for having a detective present when he heard
the news. "Fine," I said, "but some words of advice?" He was silent
during the pause. "When you break the news to Townsend, try to be a
little more subtle than you were with me."
I hung up, angry at myself for losing my cool. I wrote a memo for the
file about my conversation with Tara and sent a duplicate and the phone
records to the discovery desk. Now that Townsend would be getting the
news, I could make the disclosure to Slip.
I needed a pick-me-up. Fortunately, I had saved the best call for
last. Chuck answered at MCT.
"I was wondering when I'd hear from you," he said. "You find my note
last night?"
"Pretty cute. I'm not sure Vinnie enjoyed being the messenger, though.
Looked like he tried to chew it off of his collar."
"He was probably trying to eat the damn thing. Greedy mutt snarfs down
anything within a three-foot radius."
"Takes after his mommy that way. Now, as much as I'm enjoying
deconstructing my little man's eating habits, can you please share the
good news? I didn't appreciate the cliff-hanger."
"I am pleased to announce that Heidi Chung, famed PPB crime lab
specialist, will testify that blood on the hammer Johnson took from
Jackson's apartment belonged to Clarissa Easterbrook. The ME says it's
consistent with her injuries."
"Yes! I knew we'd get it." Even so, I felt relieved to have the news
officially in. Establishing probable cause against Jackson would be a
breeze.
"Ah, but there's more," he said. "A little surprise to end your day
with."
I kicked my door shut with my foot and dropped my voice low. "It's not
exactly a surprise if you tell me about it ahead of time."
"Get your mind out of the gutter, Kincaid. This surprise is from
Chung. She got Jackson's prints from his booking. Matched his right
index and middle to two of the unidentified latents on the
Easterbrooks' door knocker."
I let out a small scream. It always felt good when a case came
together, but it was particularly satisfying to have my first murder
case wrapped up with a tidy little bow on top. I told him to ask the
crime lab to get the reports to me ASAP so I could include them in
Slip's discovery package.
"Now," he said, "if you want to get back to that conversation you
started a second ago, I'm up for it. But I charge two ninety-nine for
the first minute and one ninety-nine thereafter."
"As tempting as that sounds," I said, "I think I'm in the mood for
something a little more personal."
"I could probably handle that. Maybe come up with a surprise or two of
my own."
"You're on. Seven o'clock, my house. Bring your toothbrush. This one
might be an overnight."
Eight.
With the evidence in against Jackson and the charges formally filed, I
finally got a taste of a regular MCU morning on Thursday. It was just
like a morning in DVD, but instead of grinding out morning drug
custodies, I was churning through the night's assault arrests.
As required, I finished the misdemeanor screening cases first. I held
back only one to issue as a felony. Robert Jenkins, a
thirty-seven-year-old man with a prior trespass conviction at an
elementary school, was tackled by the father of a four-year-old girl
after the father found Jenkins taking pictures of his daughter at the
park. The girl remained clothed the entire time, but Jenkins had
manipulated her into various poses that revealed his Chester the
Molester ways. When the responding police officer perused the other
shots in the guy's digital camera, he found forty photographs of eight
different kids. Bent over, legs spread, fingers in their open mouths;
the details varied, but the gist was always the same. Jenkins admitted
to the officer that he used the pictures to pleasure himself sexually
and did not consider them to be art.
A single line at the end of the police report hinted at the problem
with the case: "I decided to arrest the suspect for harassment, since
he touched the vie to achieve the desired pose, and such touching was
offensive under the circumstances." It wasn't obvious what to charge
the defendant with, but I wasn't about to let a guy like Jenkins off
the hook with the misdemeanor of harassment.
I flipped through the penal code to confirm my recollection, but the
child sex abuse laws all required physical contact or at least nudity.
I reread the victim's statement. For the photograph of her straddling
the slide, she said Jenkins told her to climb up the ladder, then
pulled her feet on either side of the slide before she went down. She
said the slide hurt her skin and she didn't know why she couldn't keep
her dress beneath her legs. The officer noted some redness on the
backs of her thighs. Good enough for me. An assault on a
four-year-old is a felony, and I had an appellate case saying a red
mark is enough to get an assault charge before a jury, which I'd pack
full of parents. Jenkins could make all the arguments he wanted about
strict statutory definitions, but the charge would stick.
I sent a follow-up request to a detective I knew in the child sex abuse
unit asking him to run Jenkins's other photographs by the DARE officers
who worked the schools near the park. Even if finding the other kids
didn't lead to more charges, telling the pa
rents seemed like the right
thing to do. They were probably convinced that the "don't talk to
strangers" talk had been enough to protect their kids. It never is.
Thanks to a grand jury appearance and an overdue response to a motion
to suppress, I didn't finish reviewing the rest of the custodies until
nearly noon. I apologized to Alice as I put them on her desk. For her
to finalize the paperwork in time for arraignments, she'd have to work
through lunch.
"The least I can do is bring you something," I offered. She told me it
wasn't necessary. If the attorneys here paid for lunch every time they
screwed over the staff, we'd all be broke, and they'd all be fat. But,
after the polite amount of argument, she accepted.
Alice estimated she had another hour of work, so I decided to take in a
quick run. Jessica Walters was also in the locker room and asked if I
wanted to join her for a loop around the waterfront.
Whenever I run with someone new, I let them set the pace. We were
clocking about an eight-minute mile, which was comfortable for me, but
I couldn't tell if she was holding back.
We crossed the Willamette over the Morrison Bridge, saving the
prettiest, downtown side of the loop for last. Once the noise of the
bridge was past us and we had dropped down to the river's edge, she
asked me if I had ever tried to run with the office's Hood-to-Coast
team.
The Hood-to-Coast is Oregon's annual relay race from Mount Hood to the
Pacific coast. At one time, there had been an official District
Attorney team. When Duncan found out that the members wore T-shirts
bearing electric chairs, one for each defendant the runner had placed
on death row, he pulled the plug.
I reminded Jessica that the group was no longer the official office
team, making no effort to hide my sarcasm.
"Whatever. Have you ever run with them?"
"I didn't think I was eligible." My impression was that a team member
needed to have a reliable eight-minute mile, the ability and
willingness to drink mass quantities of alcohol, and a penis. Two out
of three didn't cut it. "In any event, I figure you choose your
battles." If I was going to become the office's rabble-rouser, it
wasn't going to be for the privilege of running with a group that likes
to polish off the day by watching each other light their gas.
We had started a subtle incline but hadn't dropped the pace. Jessica
didn't say anything until the path flattened out again.
"How's the evidence against Jackson looking?" she asked. She was
winded but could still get the words out.
I gave her the abbreviated version. "I know the case is strong, but
ever since I issued it, I've been finding myself getting worried. Frist
thinks I might regret telling the defense about the affair."
"It's your first murder case," she said, "so you're worrying more than
you need to. It's normal. You'll feel great by the day of trial."
She was right. A case is always strongest at the beginning, when all
you've got is what the police have given you. As you move toward
trial, your job and the defense's is to pick, poke, and prod at every
last thread, any possible wrinkle that might turn out to be the glove
that won't stretch over the defendant's hand. But by the first day of
trial, you've tucked in the loose strings and ironed out the wrinkles,
and the case is clearer than ever.
"I also still wonder why she was calling you," I said, "and if it had
anything to do with the murder. Maybe because of the gang unit? Do
you work with public housing at all?" It wasn't unusual for us to work
with other agencies on long-term crime reduction plans.
She shook her head. "The community prosecution unit will call HAP
sometimes if they know of a problem in the projects, but we stay out of
that stuff in the trial unit. Hard enough to get cooperation on cases
without getting people worried about losing their apartment."
When I didn't respond, she looked over at me and laughed.
"You need to chill out, Kincaid. It's just a phone call. I called
twenty people this morning, and if someone chops me up in little pieces
tonight, I guarantee you it won't have anything to do with any of
them."
"It just seems weird to call someone you don't know, leave a message,
and not say what you're calling about," I said. "And that number she
left you was her cell, by the way."
"It was?" Jessicas tone told me she found that unusual too.
They say murder cases are like any other criminal case, but with one
important difference: Your most important witness, the victim, is gone
forever. The reason for Clarissa's phone call was lost with her death,
along with all the other information she took with her.
We picked up the pace as we passed the courtyard at the north end of
the waterfront, then began the slow jog through downtown back to the
courthouse. She stopped at the Plaza Blocks to stretch, and I put in
about thirty seconds with her before I grew impatient. My doctor says
I've got the heart of a healthy horse but the bones of a
ninety-year-old man. Regardless of his warnings, I still spend every
exercise minute I can spare going after every calorie I can burn.
"I stuck Alice Gerstein with some last-minute custodies and told her
I'd bring her back some lunch, so I better get a move on," I said,
explaining my abrupt departure.
"Don't let Frist know you're being so considerate," she said. "Makes
everyone else in the unit look even worse."
I was happy to find the Mexican food cart parked outside the
courthouse. I got fish tacos on corn tortillas for me and a chicken
burrito for Alice, then climbed the stairs to the eighth floor to
polish off my workout.
Alice accepted the bag with the burrito in it and thanked me. "Sorry
to break this to you, but you've got another visitor."
Still out of breath and in my sticky running gear, I was in no
condition to have a meeting. "Who is it?" I asked.
"Melvin Jackson's mother. She's been here about twenty minutes."
"Can you tell her to schedule an appointment? I'm a mess, and I have
some work I need to do before the death penalty meeting on that
case."
"I'll do it if you want me to," Alice said, "but I can tell you right
now it won't be pretty. She threw a fit when I told her no one was
here to talk to her. We finally calmed her down by telling her you
were on your way back."
"We don't usually meet with a defendant's family members. Maybe she
should call the defense attorney."
Alice was patient, but the look on her face reminded me of that plumber
I'd hired when I told him to try adjusting the flu shy chain doohickey.
"I tried that," Alice said, "but I believe her response was, "I don't
need to talk to some lazy-ass public defender. I need to talk to the
lady who's buying all this bullshit about my son.""
Given Walker's description from the night of Jackson's arrest, it
sounded like the last two days had actually done wonders for Mrs.
Jackson's forbearance.
"F
ine. I'll be ready in a few minutes."
When I'm not distracted by the television, the refrigerator, or singing
in the shower, I can get ready in seven minutes flat. It's one of the
advantages of never learning how to put on makeup or do my hair. A
shower, a hair clip, and a change of clothes are all I need to
transform back into my regular everyday self.
Martha Jackson was in the reception area, shifting in her seat and
tsk-ing every time someone walked by for a reason other than to see
her. She was short for her weight, a trait that was only accentuated
by the hot pink lilies on her dress that appeared to bloom from her
generous bosom and broad hips.
I managed to get my name out, but she was off and running before I had
a chance to offer her some water and a seat in the conference room.
"You got a hundred lawyers in this office. How come I got to wait half
an hour to talk to someone about a case that's been on the news every
day of the week?"
I tried to explain that not all the lawyers work on each individual
case, but she was looking for a fight.
"You trying to tell me you'd leave someone waiting here if they ready
to say they seen Melvin Jackson do it?"
"Is that what you're here to say?" I asked.
That did the trick. "Hell, no. No way Melvin could kill that woman."
It was exactly what I expected to hear, and I herded her into a
conference room while she repeated it every way she could think to say
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