by Lis Wiehl
Frank came on the line. “So at what point did you start listening?” he demanded.
“People don’t feel safe, the city is lawless . . .” Mia tried to peel Brooke’s fingers loose and hoped Frank could still hear her over Brooke’s cries. “Somewhere around there.”
“Then you missed what he said earlier.”
Mia’s stomach clenched as if it were deciding whether to reject the toast all together. One of the workers, a young woman named Sarah, swept Brooke into her arms, trying to distract her.
“And what was that?” Mia smiled her thanks at Sarah and gave a little wave as she hurried out the door, trying not to listen to Brooke’s wails. She told herself that Brooke would be fine, that her daughter always had a hard time with transitions. Still, she wished she had had a few minutes to play with her, maybe to build a block tower or gallop a Playmobil cowboy on his plastic horse, something to make the switch from home to preschool a little easier.
“It turns out there’s more video footage from the shopping mall. Fifteen minutes before they dropped the cart, it shows all three boys leaning over the walkway, dropping cans of Mountain Dew and watching them explode. Raines said that meant they knew exactly what would happen when they dropped a shopping cart onto a woman’s head.” He sucked in a breath. “I don’t like having to learn things from my opponent’s press conference, Mia.”
“Neither do I.” Mia mentally kicked herself. Why hadn’t she made sure she had all of the video?
Maybe Frank felt somewhat to blame, because he didn’t continue to excoriate her for missing it. Instead, he launched into a series of questions. “Who’s leaking?” he demanded. “How come they seem to know more than we do? What have you done so far on this case?”
The honest answers would be I don’t know, I don’t know, and I have conducted a bunch of interviews but am finding more questions than answers. But Frank didn’t want honesty. He wanted her to fix this.
“It doesn’t have to be a leak from our office,” she reminded him as she took the freeway on-ramp. “Raines could have gotten the footage from someone in security at the shopping mall. Now that it’s all on a computer instead of an actual tape, it’s easy for anyone with a jump drive in his pocket to make a copy. And the other information about the second-degree murder charge could have come from a friend, a family member, even a different victim. The thing that concerns me is that if it’s true, it wasn’t in any of the paperwork I saw. I need to talk to Tracy.” Tracy Lowe was head of the Juvenile Unit.
“If they really were dropping cans of Mountain Dew, I think it’s pretty clear that they knew what they were doing. In a way, that would just make your job easier.”
Did their action show intent? How close was a Mountain Dew can hitting the pavement to a shopping cart hitting a woman’s head?
“We can’t rush to judgment, Frank. Were they really capable of understanding the results of what they did? You’ve got kids. You know that sometimes they make stupid, impulsive decisions.” She thought of Gabe trying to help his friend. And sometimes they made sweet, impulsive decisions.
“Yes, they do. And sometimes they have to pay for the consequences of those decisions. A woman is near death, Mia. We can’t overlook that. We can’t say that these were just kids horsing around. Not when the results were so grave.” He took a deep breath, and she could almost see his shoulders straighten. “You know that you only have a day to make your decision, Mia. And the longer this drags out, the worse it looks.”
And Frank needed it to be her decision. Not just to provide him with some political cover. But also, Mia thought, to provide himself with some psychic cover. That way Frank could tell himself he hadn’t let the upcoming election pressure him into it. He had let her investigate and make a fully reasoned decision.
“I still need to talk to Manny, but his psychiatrist has not given us the all clear. Not only can Manny tell me what they were talking about beforehand and shed light on the other boys’ states of mind, but we also need him as a witness. Without him, all we’re left with is a blurry videotape.”
“Do we really need him now?” Frank said bluntly. “Think about it, Mia. We only have to charge these kids as adults, then everyone is satisfied. No more crying about how Seattle is letting these kids run around like packs of wild dogs. And if the charges later get dropped or moved to juvenile court, well, people will have moved on by then. They won’t be so focused. They’ll have some new obsession and they will barely remember this case.”
Mia couldn’t censor herself any longer. “You mean they will have voted by then.”
“Well, there is that.”
For a second she loved Frank for his unexpected honesty.
“But that’s not the only reason you should seriously consider charging them as adults. If we want to send a message to youth, then we need an example. And these two are perfect.”
“They’re perfect because they have zero advantages. Bad home lives, bad neighborhoods, bad schools. There is no one to speak for them except for maybe a teacher or two and whatever public defender they draw. I’m moving as fast as I can, Frank, but if we move too fast we can get ahead of the facts.”
“I know that. And I trust you to get this right. That’s why I assigned it to you. But I still need your decision as soon as possible.”
Mia stifled a sigh. “Sure. Can you put me through to Judy?” As she waited, she reflected on how hard it was for an elected official to balance doing a good job with campaigning. How could you effectively govern when you were dealing with a media that was so quick to pursue the most sensational aspects of a story, with a public that all too often only skimmed the surface?
This morning she had read that so far only sixteen percent of King County residents had turned in their vote-by-mail ballots. In the polls, Raines was behind Frank by four points. That was the good news. The bad news was that the margin of error was plus or minus four points. Basically, the two men were tied. All it would take was one mistake, one wrong word, one revelation to tip the balance. And Raines was clearly determined to make this case be that one thing.
Finally she heard Judy’s voice. “Mia?”
“Can you schedule a meeting for Tracy and me as soon as possible this morning?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Mia was starting to say good-bye when Judy added, “And you should know that the public defender’s office just called. The lawyers for the two boys charged in the shopping cart case have both indicated they are willing to talk to you with their clients today.”
“What lawyers have they been assigned?”
There was a pause as Judy found the information. “Naomi Fairchild and Eli Hall.”
Eli. Mia blinked. She had wondered when this day would come.
CHAPTER 38
Eli, Mia thought as she took the elevator to her office. Representing one of the teens Frank wanted her to charge as an adult. She hadn’t seen that coming.
Oh sure, she had figured that someday they would work opposing sides of the same case, but she had always pictured it involving an adult. She was in Violent Crimes, after all, not the Juvenile Unit. But the public defender’s office didn’t have the budget for their lawyers to specialize.
Before she met with Tracy Lowe, the head of the Juvenile Unit, Mia tracked down the footage of the kids dropping the cans of Mountain Dew. All three kids had leaned over the railing and tried it. Manny had dropped one, and Dylan and Jackson had each dropped two. The remaining can they had passed back and forth to drink. Two of the cans had been dropped when people were passing by, although neither had hit anyone. One man had been sprayed, judging by the way he had swiped at his pants and then shaken his fist at the three laughing boys.
After she had watched it twice, Mia headed for Tracy’s office.
“Hey, Mia.” Tracy looked up from her computer. Her thick, straight golden-brown hair fell to her shoulders. Looking at it always made Mia think of wheat fields, a comparison that didn’t really factor in Tracy
’s brightly painted nails and face.
“Tracy, I thought I had all three boys’ records, but then I heard Raines on the radio this morning. What’s this about a second-degree murder charge that was dropped? Frank isn’t happy he didn’t know about that, but it wasn’t in any of the paperwork I got.”
Tracy made a face. “Raines was exaggerating. Dylan broke into a neighbor’s house. And that is in the records you got. What isn’t is that when the guy came home and found Dylan sitting at his kitchen table, eating his leftover chicken out of his refrigerator, he had a heart attack. He died two days later.”
Mia nodded. She shouldn’t be surprised that Raines’s story had a backstory.
“And this guy was pushing eighty, extremely obese, and on a million meds for high blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol.” Tracy ticked off her points on her red fingernails. “The medical examiner who did the autopsy said he was a heart attack waiting to happen—and that certainly wasn’t Dylan’s fault.”
“But why was he charged with second-degree murder at all?”
“The preliminary complaint did have that charge, but it was to encourage Dylan to plead guilty and get the help he needed. He was never formally charged with it, just with the B&E. Dylan never raised a hand to the man and actually never stole anything. All he did was eat some leftover chicken.”
Mia thought of Dylan’s dark, malodorous apartment. “Charlie Carlson and I were over there yesterday to talk to the mom, and afterward I ended up asking Children’s Services to check on the other kids. As far as I could tell, they had no electricity.”
Tracy made a tsk-tsking sound as they raised their eyebrows at each other and shook their heads. “Poverty’s no crime,” she said, “but Dylan’s mom is not equipped to deal with it. She’s not really raising those kids. They’re raising themselves—and falling through the cracks. In fact”—she steepled her fingers—“I have to tell you, Mia, that neither of these two kids who dropped the shopping cart seems to me to rise to the level of someone who should be tried in an adult court. If Dylan’s anything, he’s a victim of a system that hasn’t intervened enough for him. And while Jackson may be more culpable, he’s still only fifteen. The frontal lobe of a fifteen-year-old’s brain is simply not capable of foreseeing the possible consequences of their behavior. They’re impulsive and they don’t consider the future. I’m not even talking about the results of poor parenting or abuse, although those things certainly don’t help. It’s simply because they’re too young. Trying these kids as adults is like punishing a baby for not being able to walk yet.”
“But these are particularly serious offenses.” Mia made the arguments Frank would. “And both kids have juvenile records. And you can’t tell me that they couldn’t foresee the consequences of their actions, especially given that they were dropping cans of soda right beforehand.”
“And I heard you spent yesterday interviewing people who know these two boys.” Tracy’s voice underlined the word boys. “Then you must know that these are kids who truly come from nothing. If you put them into adult prison, you’ll make them into criminals. You’ll ruin their lives, and for what? It won’t undo what’s been done. I chose to work with juveniles because I sometimes have a chance to help these kids turn their lives around before it’s too late.” She shot Mia a pointed look. “You yourself know how important that is.”
When Gabe had agreed to give up the names of the other kids in the flash mob, Tracy hadn’t prosecuted him.
“No decision has been made,” Mia said. “We’re still investigating. We’re talking with both boys and their attorneys today. One of them may be guiltier than the other. And if the other one agrees to cooperate, he might have a very different outcome.”
Tracy shook her head. “Just don’t let Raines—or Frank, for that matter—get in the way of doing the right thing. We can’t run this office based on politics. We have to run it based on what’s right, and let the chips fall where they may.”
When Mia went back to her office, Frank had sent her a draft of a statement he was planning to release to answer Raines’s charges.
Sadly, my opponent is trying to score political points by capitalizing on the tragedy that has left Tamsin Merritt gravely injured. But this case will not be tried in the press.
Instead, it is the prosecutor, and the prosecutor alone, who is officially charged with the duty of seeking the truth and pursuing justice in this case. The prosecutor is in the best position to know the gravity of the crime, the evidence that supports the filing of charges, the criminal history of the accused, and the impact of the crime upon the victim.
Thus the prosecutor has the best reference point from which to make the critical decisions that will affect the victim as well as the offenders. I trust Mia Quinn, a prosecutor in the Violent Crimes division, to carefully weigh all sides in this case before making her decision on how to proceed.
CHAPTER 39
Charlie and Mia discussed strategy as he drove them to the Youth Service Center, where both Jackson and Dylan were being housed.
“How many hours left in your forty-eight before you have to charge them?” Charlie asked.
Mia looked at her watch. “Less than twenty-two.”
“I’m sure Frank took Raines’s press conference this morning well.” Charlie’s face was innocent.
“Yeah, right.” Mia’s mouth twisted. “He’s still telling me it’s my choice, and he’s even putting out a press release saying that, and emphasizing that the case shouldn’t be tried in the media. But if I decline to charge these two as adults, you can be sure that Dominic Raines will claim it’s even more proof that our office doesn’t take crime seriously.”
“There’s another option,” Charlie offered. “Charge them as adults in the preliminary complaint. You can always amend it later. But right now it would get Raines off your back. And if it turns out he’s your new boss, then you can decide what’s best for everyone all the way around.”
It was what Frank had hinted at, a variation of what had originally been done with Dylan. Except instead of pressuring a boy to get help, it would provide Frank with political cover. It might even protect her job if Raines ended up being elected. But should Mia play politics when she wasn’t a political appointee?
“I’m just hoping things will be a lot clearer when we’re done here,” she said as they pulled into the parking garage next to Youth Services.
“If wishes were horses”—Charlie held his hand up to his chin—“we’d all be up to here in horse . . . poop. So how do you want to play this?” he asked as they got out of the car. “Good cop, bad cop?”
“Don’t you think that’s a little obvious? I mean, look at you and look at me. It’s almost typecasting.”
“I’ll let you be bad cop if you want.” Charlie offered one of his lopsided grins.
At the thought of herself leaning into the boys’ faces and making threats while Charlie solicitously offered to get them soft drinks and snacks, Mia had to smile. “I’m guessing both of these kids have spent a lot of time parked in front of TVs. They’d realize what was going on within the first thirty seconds, no matter which one of us plays bad cop. Let’s just do this without any games.”
“None?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Of course we’ll still start with softball questions and see if we can get them to open up. Or let down their guard.”
“And we might want to make it worth their while for one of them to roll over on their buddy.”
“Okay, Charlie, you win. We’ll play games. Just not good cop, bad cop.”
First they met with Dylan’s lawyer, Naomi Fairchild. Naomi had sleek brown hair cut in an angled bob. Only a few years out of law school, she was the youngest lawyer in the public defender’s office. Despite her low salary she was dressed in a striking red cashmere jacket that Mia guessed had cost as much as one of Mia’s house payments. Naomi’s father had made a fortune as a software developer. Rumor had it that his money allowed her to pursue her passion for def
ending the downtrodden.
“Okay,” Naomi said as soon as Mia had introduced Charlie and they had sat down at the battered square conference table. “We want all the records you have on file for Dylan, as well as his mother, his stepfathers past and present, and his nine siblings.”
“What?” Mia was shocked. “That’s immaterial. It has nothing to do with the charges your client is facing.”
“Oh yes it does. We will be raising the issue of child abuse. Dylan is a victim as much as Tamsin Merritt is, if not more. His abuse has lasted for years. It’s left him brain-damaged and mentally incompetent. He doesn’t even understand what happened that day. He operates on the level of a ten-year-old. And that’s being generous. We’re still having him evaluated.”
“The very fact that Dylan ran away afterward proves he knew what he did was wrong,” Mia pointed out.
Naomi was undeterred. “We intend to show a systematic pattern that led to Dylan’s not being responsible for his actions. I’ve made a list of everything we need.” She slid a printout across to Mia, and Charlie leaned in to look.
For Dylan and all his family members, Naomi was requesting every conceivable record. Medical screenings and treatment. Counseling. Drug rehabilitation. Alcohol rehab. Results from psychological tests. Any and all results from any standardized tests, including school records. Every family member’s offense history, referrals for placements, disciplinary actions, and any other records held by any department of King County or its affiliates.
With a shake of her head, Mia slid the paper back toward Naomi. “Any records kept on these other individuals are confidential and not material to Dylan’s case. If you try to subpoena them, I’ll tell the judge this is nothing but a fishing expedition.” She managed a smile. “I’m surprised you didn’t go looking for records of violent video game purchases.”
Mia was being sarcastic, but Naomi nodded thoughtfully and scribbled in the corner of the paper. Then she looked up and said, “And before you speak to my client, I want to set some ground rules. I will be in the room with you two and Dylan at all times. And I want the right to be able to pull the plug at any time.”