A Gambler's Jury

by Victor Methos

  He sighed. “Talk to Sandy.”

  I watched him get on the elevator, and I was left alone in the hall.

  I shot over to the Hoover County District Attorney’s Office and went up to Sandy’s office. The secretary said something about having an appointment, and I rushed past her before she could get up from her seat. Sandy was sitting at her desk, speaking on the phone.

  “What the hell was that about today?”

  The secretary came in behind me and said, “Sorry, Sandy.”

  “Let me call you back.” She hung up the phone. “It’s all right, Wendy. I’ll speak to her.”

  Wendy shut the door, and I stood in front of Sandy’s desk. “You didn’t need to take him into custody.”

  “I say we did. Who knows what he’s capable of?”

  “Bullshit. What’s going on? Why are you doing this?”

  “What makes you think I’m doing anything?”

  “Please. Roscombe would want to do this with your approval, for appearance’s sake if nothing else. Why are you so eager for this to go to trial?”

  She stared out the window. “When my parents moved here from Wisconsin, do you know what the crime rate was? Single digits. Almost nonexistent. Now, just forty years later, we are one of the most crime-ridden counties in the western United States. There are many factors, but I think it’s interesting that the black and Hispanic populations of the city increased in parallel with the crime rates.”

  “So what? That’s not Teddy Thorne’s fault.”

  “No, it’s not his fault. Not his exactly.”

  She stared at me. Without a word, I knew what she was telling me.

  “You’re banking on him being convicted because he’s black, and you need a conviction because you want someone to appeal this. You’ve got someone on the court of appeals ready to rule for you, just like Roscombe.”

  “I didn’t say anything, Ms. Rollins.”

  “I don’t get it. What does it matter to you if you can charge juveniles as adults? What does that do for you? If anything, it’s more work.”

  She leaned forward. “I’m quite busy. Please leave now. And I’ll see you in trial on Friday.”

  “He doesn’t need to be in custody. Ask that the warrant be withdrawn.”

  “No.”

  “He’s a disabled kid. He can’t be in jail without anyone looking out for him.” I had to swallow my pride, and it felt like fiery poison going down. “Please. I’m asking you as a favor to me: please do not take him into custody.”

  “Good-bye, Ms. Rollins. I will assume you know the way out.”

  I stood over her desk awhile longer, but she was already back on her phone.

  I turned and left the office in a haze. I didn’t know what to do. I could take Teddy and stash him somewhere, but that would only make things worse. When he was eventually picked up, they would hold him in custody until the trial, which would be reset to a lot more than three days away. There was always appealing and trying to push it through on an emergency basis, but if my gut was right—and it usually was—this plan had been in motion for a while, and Sandy had already cleared it with at least one or two members of the court of appeals. They likely wouldn’t be granting any stays for me.

  I got the impression suddenly that I was a mouse in a very elaborate trap that had been set a long time ago.

  37

  I drove up to Salt Lake and told Kelly to cancel anything I had today. I couldn’t think. My brain felt like mushy oatmeal, and the only solution on my mind was to drink until I felt better. I called Will.

  “What’s up, my snow-colored sister?”

  “Sandy Tiles cleared the Teddy Thorne case with people on the court of appeals and probably the Utah Supreme Court, too. I need to know who.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, girlfriend. That’s a serious accusation. You got any proof?”

  “None.”

  “Hm. Didn’t think so.” He sighed. “Fine, I’ll look into it for you. What makes you think this, though?”

  “They’re way overconfident. They wouldn’t do this if they knew the higher courts were just gonna smack them down. This was planned out, and I’m just the mark.”

  “All right, let me see what I can find. I’ll call you back.”

  I drove over to Will’s condo instead.

  He answered the door in a robe, though it was the afternoon. I guess being rich, you could wear a robe whenever you wanted.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . . I feel like shit right now and didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  He hesitated a second before opening the door and letting me in.

  He sat me on the couch and got me a drink. The cushions were plump and soft, and I sank into them like warm sand. “So, how much money do you make at this little private investigator firm of yours?”

  “A lot,” he said from the kitchen as he got us two beers. “Growing up poor gives you drive like that.”

  He sat across from me on another sofa as I explained what had happened in court.

  “Just like that?” he asked after hearing the whole sordid tale. “They’re just going to take him to jail over nothing?”

  I nodded. “It won’t be pleasant for him either. Hoover County Jail isn’t like other jails. There are a lot of hard mofos in Hoover County.”

  “Well, you gotta decide: If you’re gonna keep the case, you gotta do something. If you think this case is taking too much outta you, we gotta find someone else today. Someone good. Either way, you have to do something.”

  “I am, I’m drinking.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Hey, you got any ideas? I’m open to suggestions. But I don’t understand it. Why do they care if they can send juveniles to jail instead of detention?”

  Will was silent for a second. “You said she mentioned blacks and Hispanics specifically.”

  “She did, but I always guessed she was racist. That’s not a surprise—she wants a gambler’s jury so she can be guaranteed a conviction and guaranteed an appeal.”

  “It sounds like she meant more than that. I mean, think about it. If the Serious Youth Offender Act is overturned, she can get them when they’re young and lock them away for as long as she wants, right? I mean, in detention they’d get out at eighteen, but not in jail, right?”

  I stared at him. Holy shit.

  At first I’d thought this was about Teddy’s disability, then about his race, but it was about neither. This was a program. Sandy had been telling me in her office, and I’d been too upset to listen.

  “This isn’t about this case at all,” I said, barely able to control the rising surge of adrenaline. “It’s about social engineering. She’s lined up the judges to give her the power to lock kids away until they’re much older. To get them out of society.”

  Will stared at me. “Creepy.”

  It wasn’t enough that over 80 percent of blacks across the nation received harsher sentences when convicted for the same crimes committed by other races. She wanted to control the children. She could get them off the streets in droves and lock them away until they were in their twenties and didn’t know anything else. They would become lifelong criminals and end up convicted felons in the revolving door of prisons. An entire underclass of citizens would be marked, as children, to fail in society, and therefore be removed from society entirely. It would drop the crime rate in suburbs, and force them into ghettos when they finally got out of jail or prison. They could be controlled and monitored and away from everyone else: segregated.

  “I’m gonna need another drink.”

  38

  I wouldn’t have the strength to go drop Teddy off at the Hoover County Jail after I picked him up from school. I’d let them take him into custody tomorrow after the arraignment. Maybe Roscombe had some heart left under all the bitterness. It would be harder to lock Teddy up if Roscombe had to look into his eyes while the bailiffs slapped the cuffs on.

  Will and I sat in th
e Jeep outside of the school until Teddy came out with his backpack and gave his teacher a hug. He waved to us and then ran over. He got into the backseat and said, “Hi!” to Will.

  “Hi yourself, Teddy.”

  I said, “How was school?”

  “Good. We learned about checking accounts.”

  “Checking accounts? Wow, that sounds fun.”

  “No,” he said simply. “It wasn’t.”

  We drove down to a burrito place I liked and sat in a booth and ate. Will cracked jokes and showed Teddy various apps on his phone. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do anything but sit there and stare at Teddy. He had been a mark even more than I had.

  After we ate, we drove Will home, and I stopped near the curb. He stared at the building for a second and said, “You can’t control the system. You can only do your best with what you’re given.”

  “That doesn’t cheer me up, somehow.”

  “Hey,” he said, lightly touching my arm, “keep your chin up.”

  I watched him leave, and Teddy said, “Bye Will!” through the window. He turned and waved and gave me a little smile.

  We spent the evening watching movies. I was impressed by Teddy’s ability to consume movie after movie without the slightest decline in enthusiasm. I think as a kid I had that, too, and about more than just movies. I could spend hours watching bugs crawling around in the dirt, or clouds floating in the sky, or the way people interacted in public together. It was all . . . magic. As an adult, I lost that sense of magic somewhere along the way.

  After our nighttime ritual, I sat in a chair close to his bed and knew I had to say something.

  “Buddy, something’s going to happen tomorrow, and it’s not going to be fun for a while. You’re going to have to go away for a little bit.”

  “Go away where?”

  “To a place by the court. The judge is ordering that you go there. They’re going to take you tomorrow. You’ve been there before. The jail.”

  “But I want to stay here.”

  I nodded, staring at the carpet. “I know. It’ll just be for a little while. I’ll get you out of there as fast as I can. There’s going to be some nice people in there and there’s going to be some mean people, and you won’t be able to tell the difference. The mean people will act like nice people at first. So I want you to do something for me; just keep to yourself. Do you know what that means?”

  “Don’t talk to anybody.”

  “That’s right, don’t talk to anybody. Don’t hang out with anybody, don’t do anything. Just keep to yourself and know that I’m going to get you out. Be alone. Okay? Will you do that for me?”

  “Sure, Danielle.”

  I stood up, my eyes never leaving his. “All right, get some sleep.”

  “Danielle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you read to me, please?”

  “Um, sure. Huck Finn?”

  “Yes.”

  I sat back down in the chair and picked up the book—his only possession in the world. I opened it randomly and started reading:

  “Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn’t think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together . . .”

  I kept reading until he fell asleep. I closed the book and set it on the nightstand. He looked like a child, free of worry and regret and malice. It was hard to understand that there were people in this world who looked specifically for those traits, the best traits in us, so that they could exploit them. Worse still were those who did it in the name of justice.

  I rose, shut his door behind me, and sat on the couch and drank until I was too tired and drunk to do anything but sleep.

  39

  The next morning, I got Teddy ready and buckled him into the car. I called his parents. They didn’t answer, so I left a voice mail.

  “Hey, it’s Danielle Rollins. I don’t know if you even care at this point, but the judge is taking Teddy into custody today. I don’t know how long he’s going to be in there, but if you could visit him or . . . something. If you could just drive down and visit him . . .”

  I hung up. There was nothing to say.

  We didn’t speak on the way down. I felt sick. Teddy listened to a classical music station. “My mama used to play music like this,” he said. It was the only thing he said to me all the way down to Richardson. He could tell something was wrong, and he put his hand over mine at one point. I thought how screwed up the world must really be if he was comforting me at this point.

  We parked and went up to the courtroom.

  It was already packed, and the attorneys lined the seats behind the tables, waiting for their turn to speak to the prosecutors. I sat Teddy close to the front and took my spot.

  Attorneys called their cases, and we ran through the court’s calendar. I could have gotten up a couple of times, but I didn’t feel like it. Then again, maybe Roscombe would be more merciful in a courtroom full of people. Or maybe he would use it as a chance to teach everyone that he couldn’t be trifled with. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat quietly until all the attorneys were done.

  It was customary for the people without lawyers to be called alphabetically when no more attorneys rushed to the lectern, but the judge didn’t do that. He called me first.

  “State versus Theodore Thorne,” Roscombe said.

  I rose and waved for Teddy to join me. He got up and came and stood at my side. My eyes locked onto Roscombe’s and neither of us moved.

  “Mr. Thorne,” he said, “you have been bound over on one count of distribution of a controlled substance, a first-degree felony, punishable by five years to life at the Utah State Prison. How do you wish to plead?”

  “Not guilty,” I said. I couldn’t get the words “Your Honor” out.

  “So entered. The issue of bail was addressed yesterday, and a warrant was issued for your arrest, Mr. Thorne. I am ordering that you be taken into custody pending the outcome of your trial. Bailiff?”

  The bailiff came over and grabbed Teddy’s arm. Teddy tried to pull it back behind him and shouted, “Hey!”

  The bailiff pinned him against the lectern.

  “Get the fuck off of him,” I said, shoving the bailiff. The other bailiff came running. The one I had pushed grabbed Teddy and twisted both arms behind his back like a pretzel and Teddy screamed. Without a thought, I swung. I swung harder than I’ve ever swung in my life, and I nailed the bailiff square on the jaw. It was almost comical. He stumbled and fell across the defense table where three attorneys sat with their mouths open. I’d caught the bailiff completely off guard. The other bailiff whipped out a Taser and shot before I could do anything.

  It slammed into my upper arm and shoulder and sent me back onto the prosecution table, where Double D jumped away. Three other bailiffs were swarming the courtroom. Two of them tackled Teddy.

  “Leave him alone,” I gasped, convulsing on the floor.

  I was pinned to the floor by a meaty bailiff who stuck his knee in my back. I could hear Teddy’s screams. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Danielle. Danielle!”

  I felt a palm against my face as the cuffs went around my wrists, and I was lifted into the air.

  40

  I lay on the cot in the cell nearest to the judge’s chambers. My home away from home, apparently. Teddy was supposed to be here, too, but they had taken him to a different holding cell.

  My bicep was the color of an eggplant, and my shoulder hurt so much I couldn’t move my left. My back ached from Bigfoot’s knee, and the side of my face felt burned from being pressed into the courtroom floor. The worst pain was in my right hand—I thought I might’ve fractured it on the bailiff’s jaw.

  I heard boots in the hallway coming closer with each step. T
ilting my head, I saw Tommy, a bailiff I had always joked around with. He came up to the bars and shook his head at me.

  “You shouldn’t have hit a bailiff, Ms. Rollins. That’s not good.”

  “It wasn’t exactly my plan. He okay?”

  “He’s fine. Just embarrassed is all. I think he’s lookin’ to kick your ass.”

  “Tell him to take a number.” I sat up with a groan and electricity seemed to shoot through my shoulder. “Do you know where Teddy is?”

  “They already took him down to the jail.” He paused and looked around the cell. “You need anything, Ms. Rollins?”

  “Some ice and an ibuprofen would be heavenly.”

  He nodded and turned away. I said, “Tommy?” He turned back around. “Thanks for treating me like a person.”

  “You one of my favorite people, Ms. Rollins. It ain’t nothin’.”

  I don’t know how long I sat in the cell. There were no meals. At least there was a single steel toilet in the cell.

  Two bailiffs finally came and got me. They stared at me for a second before opening the cell, and I knew they were contemplating getting a few more shots in before letting me out. I just turned around and put my hands behind my back. They had badges and guns; it was hardly a fair fight. If they were going to hit me, they didn’t deserve to hit me in the front.

  No blows came, though, and they just took my arms and pulled me back to the courtroom. It was evening, and the court was empty except for the judge and Double D. The bailiffs stood me at the lectern and left the handcuffs on.

  “Ms. Rollins, you should know they will be citing you for assault over that little temper tantrum.”

  “I wouldn’t expect less, Judge.”

  He nodded. “The offer still stands: I will withdraw you from the case right now and give Mr. Thorne a public defender. Get out of this case, Ms. Rollins. There’s no reason for you to pursue this. You’re too . . . emotional. Too involved. Women always are. Withdraw now, and maybe Mr. Diamond would consider not filing those charges. If the bailiff you struck approves, of course.”