“What the hell is that?” Lou asked, chuckling, just as Bear jumped up and tried to get the ball from Mary’s hand.
Judy frowned, puzzled. “Is it a dog toy?”
“Of course,” Anne answered, her tone helpful. “Bennie got it so Mary can play with the dog, obviously.”
Bennie’s heart sank. “No, it’s not a dog toy. It’s a stress ball.”
“Rowf!” Bear jumped up, snatched the ball from Mary, and bounded out of the office with his prize. The three associates started laughing.
Lou smiled. “It’s the thought that counts.”
Suddenly Marshall appeared at the threshold, a concerned look in her blue eyes. Her light brown hair was pulled back into its low ponytail, and she had on a denim smock with a white turtleneck underneath. “Bennie, I hate to interrupt, there’s a call from a new client. He left two messages on the answering machine and just called back.”
“Who is it?” Bennie asked, and the associates and Lou quieted down.
“His name is Matthew Lefkavick. He says it’s an emergency.”
“Okay.” Bennie headed for the office door. She wasn’t that busy and she could use a new case. “You guys have fun, I’ll take it in the conference room.”
“But you’ll miss the fun,” Lou called after her, and Bennie responded by flipping him the bird. She hurried into their nicer conference room, which was large and rectangular, dominated by a long table of polished walnut and allegedly ergonomic black mesh chairs. Bennie grabbed the phone on the credenza. “Bennie Rosato.”
“Hi, I’m Matthew Lefkavick. I’m calling about my son, Jason.”
Bennie thought the man sounded upset, though if he had been crying, it was over now. “I understand, what seems to be the problem?”
“They took him to jail, just like that. He got in a fight and they took him to jail.”
“Did he have a weapon?” Bennie rolled one of the chairs over, sat down, and eyed the view from the panel of floor-to-ceiling windows, facing west, showing off the Center City skyline. The cold sun gleamed off the metallic top of the Mellon Center, the whimsical Mickey Mouse ears of Commerce Center, and the spiky ziggurats of Liberty Place.
“No, nothing like that.”
“What was he charged with? Assault?”
“No, they didn’t charge him. They just took him, they took him away. They picked him up right out of school!”
“School?” Bennie asked, surprised. “How old is he?”
“Twelve. He’s only in middle school. He got into a fight and they took him right to court and put them in jail. They can’t do that, can they?”
Bennie thought it sounded crazy, but it wasn’t her field. “Sir, I don’t represent juveniles. Where are you located? Are you in Philadelphia?”
“No, up northern PA. Mountain Top.”
Bennie had never heard of it. It sounded like a fake name. “Where is that?”
“Near the Poconos. It’s not that far, a two-hour drive, tops. Please, you have to help me.”
“Sir, there are major differences between the juvenile system and the adult criminal justice system. The procedures are different, the court rules are different.”
“How? What’s the difference? One’s just the junior version of the other, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all.” Bennie knew it was a common misconception, as if juvenile justice were the kiddie table of the law. “The juvenile justice system isn’t adversarial at all. The proceeding isn’t a trial, which results in a conviction of a crime. It’s an adjudication hearing, and when a child is adjudicated delinquent, the idea isn’t to convict and punish them, but to rehabilitate them, because they’re still young enough. That’s why adjudication hearings, unlike criminal trials, aren’t public.”
“I know, they’re secret!”
“No, just private, to protect the juvenile’s identity. Their names in the case captions are in initials only, and the records are kept sealed.”
“Jason doesn’t need rehabilitating. He’s a great kid.”
Bennie couldn’t ignore the pain in his voice. “I’m sure, but the judge made a determination, and they don’t even put a kid in out-of-home placement unless they’ve already considered the less restrictive alternatives. It’s called restorative justice.”
“What’s the difference if you call it a sentence or placement, and they put him in jail!”
Bennie didn’t have a quick reply. “I do think you need help, but I’m not an expert. Unlike a lot of states, our juvenile justice system is decentralized, and a lot of power is given to the juvenile court judges in the counties.”
“You sound like an expert.”
“All lawyers sound like experts when they’re not. You need a local lawyer. He’ll know the ins and outs, and the judges tend to favor county lawyers. They’ll consider me an outsider—”
“But that’s what’s good about you. It’s like a club up here, and they all know each other, and I’m on the outside looking in!”
Bennie knew the feeling. She’d felt like an outsider her whole life. “Did you try the public defender?”
“Yes, and they won’t help me. I read about you in the newspaper, it said you take on the cases for the little guy. Well, I’m the little guy.”
Bennie knew which article he was talking about. She had cringed when the reporter had written that phrase.
“You have to help me. I got nowhere else to go. He’s my boy, my only boy. He’s all I got. His mother died, and she had a way with him. The two of them, they were thick as thieves. Ever since she’s gone, it’s like, he’s lost.”
Bennie felt the words resonate in her chest. Her mother had died only recently, and she still missed her, every day.
“Please, I’m begging you. Just come up and talk to me, I can pay you, I’ll pay you. I need my son home. He’s been in jail one night already. He never even slept away.”
Bennie couldn’t believe it. A twelve-year-old boy who’d just lost his mother, sitting in a cell.
“Can I just have an hour of your time?”
“Rowf!” Bear barked, bounding into the conference room, the stress ball in his mouth.
CHAPTER FIVE
Bennie set off at six o’clock, and darkness fell as she drove north on Route 476 in congested rush-hour traffic, traveling past Quakertown and Allentown, where the elevation began to change, higher and more up and down as she got closer to the Pocono Mountains. Snow blanketed the sides of the highway, since the outskirts had gotten more snowfall than the city in the last storm. The big-box stores and warehouses morphed into RV dealerships and manufacturing businesses, then into miles and miles of woods, their tree trunks exposed and limbs bare and black, like etchings in an inky drawing.
She switched onto Route 80, then traveled on back roads through the small-town landscape of aging two-story clapboard houses only steps from the road, their porches decorated with Christmas lights, plastic icicles, and inflatable Santa heads. Zoning seemed fairly chaotic, mixing residential and commercial; the homes were interspersed with Family Dollar Stores, Turkey Hill convenience marts, fire halls, churches, a John Deere dealership, and Masonic lodges, their signs advertising Spaghetti Suppers and Bingo Nights.
Her ears began to pop as the elevation grew even higher, and she passed a colliery, a reminder of the region’s once-booming coal industry. She navigated onto Route 81 and found South Mountain Boulevard heading into Mountain Top, where civilization seemed to reappear in the form of a Weis Market, gas stations, and McDonald’s, as well as independent businesses, selling cigars, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. She took Church Road and Nuangola Road, finally turning off the commercial district into a rural residential area that contained Heslop Road, where Matthew Lefkavick lived.
Bennie turned onto the street, and a pristine blanket of snow lay everywhere. There were no streetlights, and she flicked on her high beams, catching a fox off guard, his blood-red eyes glimmering before he dashed off into the woods lining the street. There were only a fe
w houses along the road on multiacre lots, and the neighborhood looked solidly middle-class, with well-maintained Cape Cods and ranches set back from the road, behind front yards with snow-covered swing sets and homemade nativity scenes, aglow with multicolored lights.
She looked for the house number on the black mailboxes and stopped when she got to the Lefkavicks’, cutting the engine. She wrapped her coat closer around her, grabbed her purse and messenger bag, and got out of the car, breathing in a lungful of freezing air. Snow shimmered in the moonlight, its hard crust making a twinkling layer around the Lefkavicks’ house, which was of golden-yellow clapboard, a bright spot in the darkness some three stories tall. Its porch roof was lined with multicolored lights, which lit her way down a brick path to the front door.
She hurried toward the house, noticing a large bay window to the right of the door, filled with shelves of knickknacks, and as she climbed onto the wooden porch, there was a wooden bench with a matching porch swing. She was about to knock when she heard barking coming from inside, and at the same moment, the door was opened wide, by a heavyset bald man in a flannel work shirt and jeans.
“Bennie, come in, it’s cold out there!” Matthew shook her hand, tugging her inside the house, with a smile that looked relieved. A small black-and-white mutt barked excitedly, jumping around his workboots.
“Thank you, Matthew.”
“I can’t thank you enough for coming. They say snow’s on the way, but not until later.” Matthew opened the door. “Go on out, Patch, run your willies out.”
“What about traffic and cars, with the dog?” Bennie watched the little dog run into the snow.
“Around here?” Matthew closed the door, extending a hand. “Here, let me take your coat.”
“Thanks.” Bennie shed her coat, glancing around. The house was small, but neat, with a living room to the left, furnished with blue quilted couches, matching chairs, and a blue hooked rug. To the right was a large kitchen/dining area, with a round wooden table set with three blue-checked place mats. In the center was an arrangement of blue silk flowers.
“Ever been up here before?” Matthew took her coat to a wall closet with a louvered door, hanging it up neatly.
“No. I never leave my office.”
Matthew chuckled. “Rice Township is on the north side of the county. On the east is Wapwallopen Creek, with Nuangola Borough on the west.”
“What’s with these names?”
“They’re Indian, Delaware mostly, though the Iroquois settled this part of the state, too. Back behind the house is all woods, state game lands, pretty but a pain in the butt this time o’ year.” Mathew motioned out the back window.
“How so?”
“The hunters start around four thirty in the morning, which gets the deer runnin’ and the dog barkin’. They gut the deer and leave the innards, so the dog’s out all day, eatin’ God-knows-what and draggin’ home bones. I love to hunt, and Jason could field-dress a deer by the time he was ten, but he didn’t like to hunt. Used to turn his stomach.”
“I hear that.”
“We got quite a lot of history in Rice Township, they call it the Ice Lakes Region. My father worked in the icehouses.” Matthew gestured at a wall over the TV, which showed framed black-and-white photographs of men walking behind a draft horse and plow, in the snow. “That’s my dad harvesting ice. That went by the wayside when modern times came along.”
“Where do you work?”
“I’m a fabricator at Parnell Ironworks in Mountain Top, it’s been here a long time, too, makes garage doors, hurricane doors, insulated doors, fire doors, and whatnot. I’ve done real well with them, gotten promoted up to supervisor. I’m a member of Mountain Top Legion Post 781, and of course, our parish is St. Mary’s. Jason’s an altar boy.” Matthew paused, faltering. “God knows why I’m tellin’ you this, I guess so you know we’re a good family.”
“I can see that.” Bennie smiled, touched.
“Our family name, the Lefkavicks’, it means something to me, it means something in this town. Nobody’s ever went to jail from the Lefkavick family, nor my wife’s side, the Brushevskis.” Matthew met her eye, determined again. “That’s why I can’t abide what they did, lockin’ my son up like a common criminal. My mother and father, they’d be turnin’ over in their graves with the shame of it, and my wife, this would kill her.” Matthew ran a wrinkled hand over his bald head, frowning deeply. “Anyway, can I get you a cup of coffee? I just made some.”
“Thanks, that would be great.”
“Good, make yourself comfortable.” Matthew pulled out a chair at the table, and Bennie set her purse and messenger bag on the floor, then sat down, facing the bay window that she had seen from the outside. On the windowsill rested a homemade case that had displayed things made of Legos: houses, cars, a tiny railroad station, an oversized shoe, a truck, a grandfather clock, and an entire forest with Lego butterflies.
Bennie was astounded. “Who made all these? Did Jason?”
“Yes, he’s been playing with Legos since he was a little boy.” Matthew came over to the table with a thick mug of black coffee. “Want cream or sugar?”
“Neither, thanks.” Bennie accepted the mug and took a sip of the coffee, which tasted hot and delicious.
“Jason started buildin’ when he was little, his mother got him the first set. She found some at a garage sale, and he took to it like crazy.” Matthew crossed to the display case and plucked a blue brick truck from the shelves, setting the rubber wheels spinning. “He made this when he was only four. Keeps a catalog in his room and every card has a picture of what he made, when he made it, and how many hours it took.” Matthew set the truck back on the shelf. “My wife always said he’d be an engineer someday.”
“He sounds like quite a kid.”
“He is.” Matthew pulled up a chair opposite her, and in the light from the overhead fixture, Bennie could see unevenness on the skin over his cheeks, a residual pitting from childhood acne scars. His forehead showed a pinkish indentation where his hairline used to be, and his eyes were a rich, warm brown behind his steel-rimmed glasses, each lens with a visible bifocal window at the bottom.
“Tell me what happened yesterday, as far as you know.”
“Okay.” Matthew reached for his coffee and took a quick sip. “I was at work, and I got a call that Jason and Richie got into it at school.”
“Seventh grade. A twelve-year-old.” Bennie still couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She tugged a legal pad from her bag.
“Yes, at Crestwood Middle School in Mountain Top.”
“Who’s Richie?”
“Richie Grusini.” Matthew shook his head. “Kid’s a bully, a loudmouth, a hood, he gives Jason a hard time, always has, since elementary school.”
“Are they in the same grade?”
“Yes, but my wife used to take care o’ all this. She knew everything, I’m playin’ catch-up. I’ve been hearin’ about Richie Grusini since I don’t know when. They all tease Jason, he’s pudgy like us. My wife used to make homemade pierogies, they were great.” Matthew paused, grief furrowing his forehead. “Once I said to my wife, I’m going over to the Grusinis’, give ’em a piece of my mind. She said it would make it worse for Jason. Jason said the same thing. Richie told Jason, ‘snitches get stitches.’” Matthew swallowed hard. “So I didn’t say nothin’, I wanted my boy to fight his own battles, I sure do regret it now.”
Bennie could imagine the bind as a parent, which seemed no-win.
“Jason just finally snapped, he just snapped. He pushed Richie, then Richie pushed back.” Matthew rubbed his face. “So then the lunchroom monitor calls the principal, and the police arrest Jason and Richie.”
Bennie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Was anybody seriously hurt?”
“Jason was the one who took a punch and he didn’t look that bad to me. I told him when I saw him, you’re fine. Richie didn’t have a mark on him.” Matthew shook his head. “The way I was raised, that’
s jus’ boys bein’ boys, the worst you should get is detention, maybe suspension, that’s it.”
“Right, I agree.”
“But not with the ‘zero tolerance,’ that’s the new thing. They started it at the schools, all over the district. That’s the policy, after that shooting in Columbine, when those kids shot up that high school, in ’99.”
“In Colorado, you mean?” Bennie didn’t see the relevance.
Matthew nodded. “Like I said, my wife was the one who was always in the school. She told me they don’t tolerate any trouble anymore, they take the troublemakers out of school, and they go right to juvie.” Matthew hesitated. “I told her, ‘good’! I liked the idea. Too many troublemakers, they ruin it for the good kids like Jason. They’re the juvenile delinquents, not Jason.”
“So then what happened?”
“They took him to the courthouse and I met them there. It’s right in town, you can’t miss it.”
Bennie had a terrible sense of direction, especially where there was no graffiti to guide her. “What time did you get called?”
“About 3:15.”
“So he was arrested around 12:15 and you don’t get called until three hours later?”
“Yes, when I got there, they had him handcuffed!” Matthew’s eyes widened in disbelief. “He was tryin’ not to cry, and the cop said we hadda see the judge right then, so we did.”
“Was he alone or with Richie?”
“Alone. I took him aside so we could talk. He felt bad I had to leave work, the poor kid.”
“Is there a reason you didn’t call a lawyer?”
“The cop said we don’t need a lawyer, he said nobody gets a lawyer for juvie court.”
Bennie knew that had to be wrong. “What was the cop’s name, do you remember?”
“Remember? I know him. Wright Township police only have a handful o’ cops. It was Johnny Manco, he goes to our church. So then he took us to the courthouse door. We went to a table and they gave us this sheet and the lady said if we signed it, and pled guilty, it would go easier for Jason.”
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