Abuse of Power

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “I noticed his car was weaving,” she said. “I followed him for several miles, during which I observed his vehicle cross the yellow line on four separate occasions.”

  “So you initiated a traffic stop, assuming this individual was under the influence? Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Rachel said. Atwater had instructed her to answer the questions without elaborating. She didn’t understand why the process of testifying had to be so time-consuming. She was telling the truth. No matter how many questions the attorneys asked her or how cleverly they composed them, the truth was still the truth. Why couldn’t she simply tell them what had happened and leave? She had not slept in over forty-eight hours. When she went this long without sleep, she felt as if she were swindling underwater.

  “Can you tell us what happened after you stopped the defendant’s vehicle?”

  “I asked the defendant for his license and registration,” Rachel said, her voice stronger than before. “Once he handed these items to me, I proceeded to run a wants and warrants check. When the dispatcher advised me that Mr. Brentwood had an outstanding warrant for failure to appear on a drunk driving violation, I requested a backup unit.”

  “This is customary procedure, correct?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Did you then conduct a field sobriety test?”

  “Not until the backup unit arrived.” She looked at the defendant. The nasty, sloppy drunk she had encountered that early morning in April had transformed himself into a clean, sharp-looking businessman with his three-piece suit, his crisp white shirt, his snappy tie. In his late forties, Carl Brentwood had graying hair and the puffy, bloated face of an alcoholic. He sold used cars at the Lexus dealership off the 101 freeway in Thousand Oaks.

  “Can you advise us of the name of the officer who responded for backup?” Atwater asked.

  “Jimmy Townsend,” Rachel said.

  “Once Officer Townsend arrived and you administered the field sobriety test,” he continued, “what were your conclusions?”

  “That the defendant was under the influence of alcohol,” Rachel replied. “He had difficulty walking a straight line. He could not touch his nose, nor could he count backward accurately. In addition, there was a strong odor of alcohol about the defendant’s clothing and person. I advised him I was placing him under arrest for driving under the influence, then informed him that he would be booked on the outstanding warrant as well.”

  “What did the defendant do at this point?”

  Rachel cleared her throat. “He spat at me.”

  “Did he strike you in any way?”

  “No,” she said. “But after he spat at me, he proceeded to unzip his pants and urinate on my legs and shoes.”

  Cackles of laughter rang out from the five male spectators in the courtroom. Rachel assumed they were the defendant’s friends or relatives, maybe some of the car salesmen he worked with at the dealership. She narrowed her eyes at them, wondering if they had any idea of the degradation police officers endured.

  “Where was Officer Townsend when this was going on?”

  “Standing about five feet away, near the rear of my patrol unit. When he saw I was encountering problems, he came over to assist me.”

  “Did you handcuff the defendant?”

  “I assisted Officer Townsend in handcuffing him,” Rachel said. “Mr. Brentwood was cursing and struggling. It took both of us to control him.”

  “Who searched him once the handcuffs were in place?”

  “Officer Townsend,” she said quickly, the attorney having carefully coached her on this area of her testimony. “I went back to my unit to order a tow truck for the defendant’s vehicle.”

  “Did you see Officer Townsend remove a .22 pistol from the defendant’s left pocket?”

  “I saw…” Rachel stopped and sucked in a deep breath. The defendant claimed the gun was planted on him. He swore Townsend had whispered to him that he was going to pay, that no one urinated on a police officer and got away with it. Carrying a concealed weapon constituted a felony, whereas the drunk driving offenses the defendant was charged with were only misdemeanors. Jimmy Townsend wanted Rachel to say she had seen him remove the gun to substantiate his story. Atwater wanted the same thing, but during their meeting, he had insisted that he was in no way encouraging Rachel to commit perjury. He called it “realigning her memory.” When Townsend had discovered the gun, she had been inside her unit ordering the tow truck. How could she swear she had seen something she knew she had not seen?

  “I saw the gun when Officer Townsend showed it to me,” she finally said, a slight tremor in her voice. “I didn’t see him remove it from Mr. Brentwood’s pocket.”

  Mike Atwater scowled. “No further questions. Your Honor,” he said, dropping into his seat.

  c h a p t e r

  TWO

  Once Rachel had been cross examined by the defendant’s attorney, she was exhausted. Knowing Townsend’s testimony would take at least an hour, she rode the elevator to the DA’s office on the third floor of the sprawling court complex, attached to the county jail by an underground tunnel. No matter how long she had to wait, she had to know why Mike Atwater had exposed her past in court.

  Several times she dozed off in the lobby waiting for the prosecutor to return. The receptionist kept watching her. Finally the young woman walked over and asked Rachel if she could get her a cup of coffee, knowing she was a police officer from her visit to the office the previous week. “Yes,” Rachel said, “thank you. That would be great.”

  “My brother’s a cop in Los Angeles,” the woman said when she returned with a steaming mug. A petite brunette in her early twenties, she gave Rachel a compassionate look. “Rough night, huh?”

  “They’re all rough,” Rachel said, resting her head on the back of the chair. Her husband had once earned a fairly decent income as a landscape architect. His illness had been long and protracted, however, and their medical insurance had not been adequate. By the time he had succumbed to cancer, the couple’s savings were depleted and Rachel was deeply in debt. She’d sold their home in Ventura with the gorgeous backyard Joe had designed, exchanging it for a modest rental home in the nearby city of Oak Grove. The profits from the sale of the house had been used to pay down her debt. She had tried to make ends meet by working in a department store, but by the time she paid for child care and other related expenses, there was not enough money left to pay the rent.

  Rachel closed her eyes, wishing she could clear away the painful memories. But as she listened idly to the low hum of the air conditioner, her thoughts drifted back to Atwater’s questions in the courtroom. His probing into her kidnapping raised vivid images of the day her childhood savagely ended. As she continued to sit and wait, the scene replayed in her mind, from beginning to end, as it so often had.

  She had been ten years old, about to step outside the front door of her house in San Diego.

  The screen door slammed shut behind her, followed by the sound of her mother’s voice. “Don’t forget the bread,” Frances McDowell shouted from the entryway.

  Tapping the kickstand with her foot, Rachel grabbed the handlebars of her new bicycle, fire-engine red with chrome fenders. Her mother had bought it for her birthday the previous month. Her father had been an enlisted man in the Navy, but he had abandoned the family shortly after Rachel was born. Frances supported her three daughters by teaching piano lessons out of her home.

  Rachel refused to let go of the hope that her father would come back one day. She didn’t believe the things her mother told her, that he didn’t want them anymore, that he probably had another family by now, other little girls who were much better behaved than Rachel and her sisters. Even though she didn’t remember him, her mother kept a picture of her father on the mantel over the fireplace. Rachel thought he looked handsome in his white uniform.

  The girl next door was playing jacks on her front porch. “Hey, Rach,” she said, “if you let me ride your bike, I’ll give you a
nickel.”

  “No one can ride my bike,” Rachel said, zipping past her.

  Money was tight. Rachel had begged her mother for the bicycle. Knowing such an expenditure fell outside their budget, she had sacrificed having a gift under the Christmas tree in exchange for the promise that her mother would save toward buying her a new Schwinn.

  Her red hair was fashioned in a ponytail, then laced through the back of her baseball cap. She was at the age when her teeth seemed too large for her face. Her arms and legs had recently lost their baby fat and grown into skinny twigs. When she smiled, two deep dimples sank in her cheeks, and her gray eyes sparkled with mischief. Her baseball cap was red as well as her T-shirt, and she was wearing a pair of green and red plaid cotton shorts that had once belonged to her oldest sister, Carrie.

  Rachel worshipped Carrie. Her other sister, Susan, was a quiet, studious girl who kept mostly to herself, but Carrie was outgoing and fun. She was always telling jokes and making Rachel laugh. She had tons of friends, and at sixteen, boys were beginning to take notice. Carrie knew how to make herself look pretty.

  Her sister had promised to teach Rachel how to put on makeup as soon as she was old enough.

  Rachel stuffed the bills her mother had given her into her pocket and took off down the sidewalk to the comer market. It was a beautiful afternoon, the temperature in the mid-seventies. A gentle breeze, fragrant with lilacs, washed over her face.

  She loved pedaling around on her flashy new bike. The kids in the neighborhood had always ridiculed her and her sisters because they were poor. Their house was the smallest on the block, and the grass in the yard occasionally grew too high. When Rachel grew up, she was going to have enough money to hire a gardener, and her yard would be the most beautiful yard in the entire world.

  At Biner’s Market she walked to the back of the store, grabbed a loaf of Wonder bread off the shelf, then headed to the refrigerated section for the gallon of milk her mother had requested. The groceries would fit perfectly in the white basket attached to the handlebars on her new bike. She had even plucked a rose earlier in the day from the yard and tied it to the wicker basket with string.

  A tall, dark-haired man was standing next to the dairy case. Wearing a neatly pressed pair of pants, a white dress shirt, and a polka-dot tie, he reminded Rachel of the principal at her elementary school. His hairline was slightly receding, his nose narrow at the top but full at the tip, his eyes almost the same pale shade as her own. Something about him looked familiar. Rachel decided she must have seen him in the neighborhood.

  “Let me get that for you,” he said, seeing Rachel straining to reach the top shelf. “Do you want skim milk or regular?”

  “Regular.”

  “Here we go,” he said, smiling as he handed the container to her. “What’s your name, cutie?”

  “Rachel,” she said, staring at the man’s hand. Her mother had told her that her father had a tattoo on his hand. She didn’t know what kind of tattoo it was, though, because her father’s hands didn’t show in the picture. This man had a tattoo as well, a little heart with someone’s name inside it.

  “Rachel is a beautiful name,” the man answered. “I have a daughter. She’s eleven. Her name is Marjorie. How old are you?”

  “Ten,” she said, leaving the man and walking to the counter to pay for her purchases.

  “What’s it going to be today?” Mr. Biner said, seeing the girl eyeing the candy counter. A small man in his late sixties, he had graying hair and his face was heavily lined. “Your mother told me you’re going to be in the spelling bee tomorrow. Didn’t you win the first prize last year?”

  “Yeah,” Rachel said, fishing her money out of her pocket. “And I’m going to win tomorrow, too.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Biner said, smiling broadly.

  The man stepped up to the counter to pay for his soft drink. “Warm day,” he remarked, pulling his collar away from his neck.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” Mr. Biner said. “Did you just move into the neighborhood? If so, I can set up an account for you. We also deliver.”

  “Nah,” the man said, glancing over at Rachel at the candy rack. “My daughter plays with a girl down the street. I drove over to pick her up. You might have heard of the people. Their name is Marcus.”

  “Don’t believe I know them,” Mr. Biner said, closing the drawer to the cash register. “Since the new A & P opened, a lot of the folks moving into the neighborhood prefer to do their grocery shopping over there.”

  “See you around,” the man said, exiting the store.

  Rachel stepped to the counter and handed Mr. Biner a ten-dollar bill. Once he gave her the change, she placed fifty cents in her left pocket, putting the money she had to return to her mother in her right. She had already deposited thirty-five dollars in her student bank account, the profits from a summer of selling lemonade. She decided she would rather add the fifty cents to her savings than squander it on candy.

  Loading the groceries into the wicker basket, Rachel began pedaling down the sidewalk to her house. It was dusk now, and the air was getting brisk.

  “Rachel,” a voice called to her.

  She looked over and saw the man from the market. He was speaking to her from the driver’s seat of a long blue car, stopped in the middle of the roadway. “Hi,” she said, waving at him as she continued pedaling.

  “Wait,” he said, opening the car door and stepping out. “I need to ask you something.”

  “What?” she said, placing her feet on the sidewalk.

  “Do you know where Annie Marcus lives?” he asked, his eyes darting up and down the street as if he were looking for something. “Marjorie went over to her house after school today. I drove over here to pick her up, but I forgot to bring the address with me. Annie is about the same age as you. Maybe you know her from school and can show me which house she lives in. I’m fairly certain it has blue trim.”

  Rachel thought for a few moments before answering. “I don’t know a girl named Annie,” she said. “Where is she supposed to live?”

  “This is Orangetree Road, right?”

  Rachel nodded. She removed her baseball cap and stuffed it into her back pocket. Now that the sun had gone down, she didn’t need it.

  “Maybe if I show you a picture of the house,” the man continued, “you might be able to recognize it. I know it’s on Orangetree Road, because I came to pick up my daughter at the same house several months ago. Now I can’t seem to figure out which house it is. Stupid, huh? Marjorie is probably wondering what happened to me. Come over to my car,” he told her. “I have a picture of the house in the trunk. I’m a photographer, so I snap pictures everywhere I go.”

  She dropped the kickstand on her bike before following the man to his car. He opened the trunk and motioned for her to come closer, holding a photograph in his hands. As soon as she stepped up beside him, the man moved behind her, tossed a pillowcase over her head and secured it with a scarf pulled tight around her neck.

  Rachel felt the man’s hands lifting her. She kicked out furiously. Was he teasing her, playing a trick? “Let me go,” she screamed, clawing at the pillowcase. Before she knew what was happening, the man placed her in the trunk of the car and slammed the lid closed.

  She shrieked, “Get me out.” Her body shook in terrified spasms. She choked as her efforts to free herself caused the scarf to press tighter against her throat…

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and Rachel’s eyes flew open. For a few moments, she was trapped between the past and the present. She could see herself inside the trunk of the car, hear her own screams. Her eyes roamed around the lobby of the DA’s office, her breath coming in short bursts.

  “Did you want to speak to me?” Mike Atwater asked. “Is something wrong?”

  Rachel remained silent. Focusing on the overhead light fixture, she attempted to dispel the darkness of the trunk. The memory had been so real, she could still feel the scarf around her throat. She massaged t
he side of her neck, then slowly pushed herself to her feet. “I’m fine,” she said. “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

  “Come with me,” Atwater said, leading her through the security doors.

  The interior of the DA’s office was a whirl of activity. Phones jangled, word processors clicked, copy spilled out of printers. Rachel stepped aside as two harried attorneys rushed out with files clutched under their arms. The clerical staff worked in a large open room. Offices for the attorneys were positioned along the outside perimeter.

  Atwater led her into his office and began rummaging through the thick stack of papers on top of his desk. Even though his mind was well ordered, his office resembled the aftermath of a tornado. Law books had been yanked from the bookcase behind his desk, then tossed here and there on the floor. Several cardboard boxes containing trial transcripts from a homicide he had handled several months ago were still stacked in one comer. His in box was overflowing with files and correspondence, briefs and motions. There were no pictures on his desk, only a glass jug of jelly beans, teetering precariously on top of an uneven mound of papers. “I know I had the damn thing,” he mumbled, depressing the intercom for his secretary. “Do you have the blood-alcohol report on the Brentwood case, Marsha?”

  “I put it in the file this morning,” a woman’s voice said over the speakerphone.

  “Get me a duplicate,” he told her. “I don’t know what happened to it. Maybe it fell out on the way to court this morning.”

  After he had disconnected, Rachel grabbed his hand to get his attention. “How could you do that to me?” she demanded.

  “Do what?” Atwater said, finally looking up at her.

  “When I told you those things in the cafeteria, you never told me you were going to bring them up in court. You ambushed me.”

  “Why do you say that?” he said, sitting back. “Does it disturb you to talk about the kidnapping?”

  Rachel was generally a very controlled person. Anger did not come easily. When it did, however, there was no way to stop it. “Of course it upsets me to talk about it,” she shouted. “Is that why you sent me the roses, because you knew you were planning to embarrass me today?”