“Not exactly,” Chief Wilson said. “You mentioned that probation officer, and I heard you talked with Poles yourself.”
“I did.” I was surprised he’d brought this up, but I wondered whether this was the real reason they’d called me out to the woods so early in the morning. “Didn’t learn much, other than he didn’t want to talk with me.”
“Well that’s not a surprise.” Chief Wilson looked at Schmitty and then continued. “I don’t want you doing any of that type of investigation anymore. Just focus on the families.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No,” Chief Wilson said. “I know Sergeant Schmidt was trying to be helpful when he arranged that meeting, but I want you to leave that sort of thing for the real investigators.”
“The real investigators? You mean the ones that hadn’t noticed that a dozen kids had gone missing?”
Chief Wilson stayed calm. “This is a high-profile case, and I want you to be safe.”
I shook my head. “Safe?”
“And I don’t want you to do anything that is going to jeopardize the investigation.”
“I won’t jeopardize the investigation.”
“Well this is sensitive business,” Chief Wilson said. “Poles was placed on paid administrative leave.”
“And why’s that, exactly?”
“Can’t say too much,” Schmitty said, “but he has used the government’s computer system inappropriately and accessed files he shouldn’t have accessed.”
“Related to these kids?”
Schmitty shook his head. “Not exactly, but it’s important that you be discreet about him. I think what the chief is trying to say is that we don’t want people jumping to conclusions. We don’t want you telling people that he may be a suspect.”
“But he is,” I said. “The only suspect, as near as I can tell. Why don’t you tell me what you found? Tell me what you know.”
Wilson ignored my question and didn’t offer any further information on Poles. “It’s a tense time.” His face turned grave. “I know you can feel it. The hot weather isn’t helping anybody relax, either. I don’t want a media firestorm before we know what’s going on.”
“Things could turn violent.” Schmitty put words to what Chief Wilson had implied.
“You guys don’t get it.” I looked back over the crime scene. “Things have already turned violent.” I looked at them, thinking about laying on the ground with blood in my mouth as a white police officer cracked my ribs with his boot. Being cooperative and respectful didn’t make me safe. It didn’t change the color of my skin. “Things have been violent for years—not just this, but everything.” I started to walk away, then stopped and turned back to them. “But you’re right. When this breaks open, it’s not just young black kids who are going to get hurt.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I arrived at the office after one o’clock. My cell phone had been off. It was a deliberate decision, although somewhat irresponsible. I needed the quiet. I had meetings with clients all over town. Cases and tasks were waiting to be prioritized, and I had to make sense of all the mounds of dirt and little orange flags representing missing sons that the police didn’t want to find.
But even with no phone calls and no radio, I didn’t make much progress during the drive. My mind bounced from one case to the other and then back again. I tried to focus, but my thoughts drifted to Sammy and my brother and my father and my future.
I knew I was on the edge.
Things were going well, but it was now getting too complicated, and when it got complicated, things inevitably fell apart for me. Depression is like that. I was smart enough to know when I was about to be kicked down. I just didn’t know what was going to do it, and I certainly didn’t know it was going to happen the moment that I walked in the door.
Emma was on the phone at her desk, writing down a message. She looked up at me, and I waved as I went through the reception area toward my office. She held up a finger.
I stopped.
Without a word and with the phone still pressed against her ear, she pointed at the chair behind me. I turned and looked, and then I saw my daughter.
Sammy’s eye was swollen shut. Her lip was cut, and when she saw me, she started to cry.
I had failed.
My job was to protect my daughter from harm. I was supposed to love her, nurture her, and shield her from the ugliness that pervaded our brutal and broken world.
Some may argue that we shouldn’t shelter our children. We should let them see and experience the sins that are all around us. By keeping the children unaware, they say, we are preventing the development of their defenses.
I disagreed.
We have our whole lives to experience the ugliness. We have our whole lives to grapple with the reasons for society’s misplaced priorities. Trying to give a child a childhood was nothing to be ashamed of.
And now my little girl was broken.
I walked Sammy back to my office. “Sit down in my chair, sweetheart.” I guided her behind my desk. “Going to talk with Emma for a little bit, and then I’m going to get you home.”
I watched as she sat down in my chair. She wiped the tears off her cheeks and tried to be brave.
I promised her I’d only be a minute or two, then turned and walked out of the office. I closed the door, because I didn’t want Sammy to overhear the conversation, and then said to Emma, “Sorry I had my phone off.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Didn’t expect this.”
“Not a problem.” She shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal, but her eyes were filled with sympathy. “I go pick her up. Knew you were coming back.”
“What happened?”
Emma took a shallow breath. “Not sure.” She bit her lower lip. “They almost didn’t let me take her—not on some preapproved list—but I wasn’t having any of it.”
I looked back toward the office where Sammy was waiting and lowered my voice. “And she didn’t tell you what happened?”
“Didn’t ask, and she didn’t offer.”
“OK.” I tried to compartmentalize. I forced the sight of my daughter and what she was going through to the side. I needed to organize my thoughts and give Emma some direction before I left for the day. “We should be getting calls about the Lost Boys again. The police found more at Castlewood, so it’s going to be in the media.”
“Do the same as before?”
“Yes and no. We need DNA samples from everybody who comes in, even if we don’t interview. We’re also supposed to circle back and get samples from everybody else who has called or come to us. Saint Louis PD is giving us a tech or some training in how to get the DNA swab. They say it’s easy.”
Emma picked up a notepad. “Anything else?”
My mind wandered to Sammy and all the questions that I had for her, but I forced myself back into the conversation with Emma. “Talked to this probation officer named Jimmy Poles. There’s something there that Schmitty isn’t saying. Poles is now on leave. Hoping you could try and dig up something on him.”
“Like on the Internet?”
“Whatever you can find.” I shrugged. This was out of my depth. “Maybe some background databases that we can pay to search . . . court actions, past addresses, relatives, stuff like that. Cops are always protective of their own, and Schmitty doesn’t seem to think they’re going to press him. The chief is worried about whatever’s going on with him going public.”
Emma made some notes. “I’ll try.”
“And we have to connect with Cecil Bates. Try and convince him to plead. The judge isn’t too happy with us at the moment.”
“And the new clients?”
“New clients.” I smiled just saying it, more in muted bemusement than anything approaching happiness. “I have no idea. Put them off. Can’t do anything more today, maybe not even tomorrow.” I thought about Sammy and felt the darkness again, a black tar seeping down and through my head. “I don’t know.”
Back home, Sammy was tucked
into her bed. I snuggled the blankets up a little higher than normal. The ice pack sat on the nightstand, wrapped in a kitchen towel. “Want to talk about it?” I leaned over and kissed her forehead, careful to move slow and act soft.
She shut her eyes and turned her head away. “I want to sleep now, Daddy. Please?”
“Fine.” I rubbed her leg. “But we’ll have to talk about it at some point.”
“I know.”
“Love you, tiger.” I turned and walked to the door. As I turned off the light, Sammy told me that she loved me, too.
I shut the door, walked out into the narrow hallway, and went downstairs to the kitchen. My mother and the Judge were waiting for me. It was rare for them to come to the carriage house. Their presence was a product of their concern.
My mother looked at me as I approached. “Anything more?”
“No.” I sat down at the table with them. “It was the other girls at school that had been giving her trouble . . . I can guess that, but nothing about what led up to it.”
“The bullies.” My mother took a sip of tea. Her hands held the cup so tightly that I thought it might shatter. “Sammy told me about them. Tried to reassure her. Told her they were harmless. Told her to talk to the teachers. Maybe I was wrong.”
The Judge shook his head in disgust and then pushed himself away from the table. “Public schools, one step removed from the—”
I held out my hand. “Lower your voice,” I said. “And it’s not the time—”
“It most certainly is the time.” The Judge wasn’t a man to be quieted by anyone. He sat more erect. “Had concerns for quite a while, but I’ve kept my mouth shut out of respect for you and at the urging of your mother to mind my own business. But this is my very special little great-granddaughter.”
“Judge, I appreciate what you’re—”
The Judge looked at me and I stopped. Even though I wasn’t in his courtroom, the Judge had that power. He had presence. The way he stared at me was an order to stop speaking, not a suggestion, and I didn’t want to know what would happen if I disobeyed.
“Thank you.” The Judge nodded. “This afternoon I made several phone calls to some excellent private schools. I explained the situation, and the directors assured me that Sammy is welcome at any time. They are ready to arrange for tours, and I have the personal cell phone numbers for all of them, when Sammy is ready.”
I looked at my mother and she looked away. I wasn’t going to get any support from her. Even if she didn’t like her father’s politics or approach, I could tell she agreed with the Judge.
My head bowed and I closed my eyes. In a whisper, I said, “Please don’t think that I don’t appreciate how much you love Sammy, or that I’m ungrateful for how much support you’ve given us these past few years.” I didn’t look up. I couldn’t look at them. “I simply can’t afford those schools.”
It was a shameful confession, even though my mother and the Judge were fully aware of my financial situation. Saying the words seemed to push me even further into the dark places in my head. Not only could I not protect my daughter, I couldn’t provide for her.
My mother’s hand touched mine, and she leaned in toward me. She put her head on my shoulder. “That’s why we’re here, son. That’s why you have family.”
“You’re not poor, Justin.” I felt the Judge put his hand on my other shoulder. “We have plenty of resources to do this. We want to do this. What kind of family would not support you? We’ve got money to cover whatever tuition there is. If you refuse to take it, consider the money a loan. Take it out of your inheritance when I kick the bucket. Who cares?”
I didn’t know what to say. I looked up at both of them with tears in my eyes, and then there was a knock at the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The video’s sound was bad, but the picture was clear. Light from the school’s hallway window flashed as the crowd of kids shifted and swelled. It was a mob, and in the middle was my little girl. There were screams. There were shouts, but the most haunting sound was laughter.
The laughter turned my stomach. It echoed, hollow and distorted through the iPad’s tiny speaker. If I had closed my eyes, it could have been laughter from a birthday party or flying on a swing, but it was not. The laughter came from kids reveling in the violence.
Sammy was on the ground. The major blows had already occurred. A girl came from the top of the screen and kicked her in the back. Another pranced toward her and palmed the back of Sammy’s head and pushed it toward the floor. Then the sequence repeated with variations.
Sammy swung and kicked blindly, unsure of who the next attacker would be or where the next strike would occur. Her shirt was ripped and pulled up.
Her pink tween training bra was exposed.
All the while, laughter and taunts echoed in the school hallway.
A teacher entered the fray, ordering the students back into their classrooms. A school resource officer ran to Sammy, kneeling beside her, and then the video cut out.
The ticker below the video indicated that it had been viewed 1,348 times. Below the ticker was a thumbs-up image. Four hundred eighty people had clicked that they liked it; just fifty had clicked that they did not.
The video was titled “Lil Rich Bitch Gets Stomped.”
Schmitty turned the iPad off. “We contacted the website, and they say it’ll be down within an hour.” He looked beyond me, at my mother and the Judge at the kitchen table, and then back at me. “Sammy doing OK?”
“Not really.” The knot grew in my throat. I tried to compose myself. “Thanks for coming, but”—I looked down at the iPad in his hand—“this is a little below your rank, isn’t it?”
“You and your kid are not below my rank.” Schmitty forced a smile, and I could tell that there was something more.
“And?” I pressed.
“And I wanted you to know that this is out there.” He spoke softly. “No calls from the media yet, but it could happen. The district attorney is thinking about charging, but there’s some complications.”
“Complications?”
“It’s high profile, Justin. You’re high profile right now. Most people are thinking you’re our next United States congressman. We’re just now getting out from under the police wrongly arresting you. Plus we got the Lost Boys story about to explode again, and now we got your kid beat up in one of our public schools.”
“So?” I was in no mood to debate the poor reputation of Saint Louis public schools or my political career, such as it was. “My daughter was hurt. I don’t have any comment on any of this.”
“Well that’s sort of the problem,” Schmitty said. “The girls in that video say that your daughter was bullying them. They say that she’s been antagonizing them all year, and that she threw the first punch before this video starts.”
“That’s ridiculous.” My anger boiled.
“I know it’s ridiculous, but we’re reviewing the school security videos now. That should help.” No doubt seeing the agitation on my face, Schmitty spoke in soothing tones. “The girls are being held down at juvie. But their families are demanding that we arrest your daughter, too.”
The muscles in my neck seized up as I spat out the words. “She was on the ground getting punched and kicked.”
“I know.” Schmitty raised his voice to match mine, then turned down the volume again. “But these aren’t rational people. They got dollar signs in their eyes. When they heard it was your daughter, they got an attorney who’s making noises about a civil lawsuit against the school for not protecting their kids, and another against you, against your daughter.”
Now my entire body was locked up tight. My hands balled in fists. “You should go now.”
Schmitty nodded. “That’s fine, but I needed you to know what’s going on.” He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in. “And you need to know that we got you on this one. Chief owes you. I owe you. But know, too, that we got no control over these girls and their welfare moms. No control over th
em.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Before I did anything the next day, I flipped through the entire morning paper. There was no story about Sammy and the incident at school. Then I turned on my laptop computer.
I typed Sammy’s name into the search engine, quickly scanning the results. There was nothing. I ran a search using the school’s name and then typed an increasingly abstract combination of different words.
It wasn’t out there yet.
Instead, the discovery of three more Lost Boys was the dominant story. It was the top headline on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I read the first few sentences of the article and then decided to set it aside for a moment.
I needed coffee.
I walked over to the kitchen counter, scooped some freshly ground beans from the Northside Roastery into the filter, filled the machine with water, and waited for the magical brown liquid to start its slow drip into the glass carafe.
It was quiet in the house. The sun had barely peeked above the horizon. The garden was peaceful, and the low morning light gave it a look of anticipation. The plants knew the heat was coming and wanted to enjoy the day while they could.
Sammy was still asleep, and I figured that I had at least an hour more to myself.
The night before, my mother and the Judge had left shortly after Schmitty. The Judge had told me that we would “revisit” Sammy’s choice of school in the near future, which meant I half expected him to come through the door with a schedule of campus visits at any moment.
The coffeemaker beeped twice, meaning that it was done, and I filled my cup.
There were no more excuses.
I had to figure out a plan. I couldn’t be an observer of my own life. I had to take control, or what little I had left would be washed away. Sammy needed an engaged father. My clients needed a real lawyer. My own father deserved an answer. And Tanisha Walker needed to know what happened to her brother.
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