“’Cuz that presidential debate, bro.”
He’d lost me. “A debate?”
Cecil nodded. “When those candidates came up into town, they put all them cameras all over the place. The other days, I was in the park. Look up, and sees this little camera on the lamppost. That’s when I realized I gots the proof.”
“But even assuming those cameras were still running when you were there, these requests”—I looked at Emma and then back at Cecil—“the government is notoriously slow in responding to these things. In a month, you’ll probably get a letter that says that they received it, and then who knows how long it’ll take to get it back.” I picked up the FOIA letter and read it through, hoping that this action would satisfy Cecil that I knew what I was talking about. “The truth is,” I said, looking up again, “we don’t have a year to wait. We don’t even have a month. Our trial is next week, and the judge isn’t going to give us a continuance for this. It isn’t going to happen.”
“Well then you get it some other way.” Cecil was agitated now. “You my lawyer. You figure it out. I been doing all the work.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The next day, I arrived at the office early. A stack of files waited for review. When that was done, there were phone calls to return and meetings with potential clients all over the Saint Louis area.
The coffeemaker popped and gurgled as I raised the shade. The early morning light flooded my office, and my mind felt a lightness that I hadn’t experienced for quite some time, maybe more than a year. The situation with Annie and my brother was done. I had made the decision that Sammy was going to private school—probably on the Judge’s dime for now. I didn’t know where exactly, but she wasn’t going back to the place where she was hurt, and that’s what mattered.
These things offered some clarity and satisfaction, at least before the rest of the world woke up and interfered with my dream.
I stared at the beautiful restored buildings across the street. Even though there was decay behind them, they were enough to give a man a little hope. There was nobody around at that time, and I could almost imagine a bustling business corridor, a Norman Rockwell painting with more soul. Maybe the Northside was ready to be reclaimed one block at a time.
The coffeemaker beeped. Reality returned.
I walked into the main reception area, poured a cup, and went back to my desk to work. When Emma arrived a few hours later, I had reviewed almost every file.
She sat down across from me. “Been busy this morning.” She reviewed my pages of notes. “Impressive.”
I brushed aside the compliment. “Every once in a while.”
We discussed the paying clients first and then finished with a general discussion about the Lost Boys interviews.
“They’re slowing down,” Emma said. “Not as many calls, but it’s hard to predict. You really should talk to the Turners.”
“The Turners?” I couldn’t remember the significance of that one.
“The boy who came in yesterday with his mother,” Emma prompted. “He saw the van.”
“The van.” I nodded, remembering. “Makes sense.”
Emma got up to leave. “Anything else?”
I thought for a moment. Then I wrote a name down on a piece of paper. “Can you look up the contact information for Judge Danny Bryce? Maybe see if you can set up a meeting.”
I handed the sheet of paper to Emma and she took it. “What for?”
“I need to talk to him about Poles,” I said. “My grandpa knows Bryce, says he works in the juvenile courts here, and we can drop his name to get in.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The rest of the day was a blur of security screens, metal detectors, and conversations through bulletproof glass. I prioritized the in-custody clients and then had a couple of meetings with people who were out on bail and awaiting their first hearing.
Two of them couldn’t afford my retainer. One needed to ask his parents for the money, but was pretty sure he’d get the cash, and two others signed the retainer agreement and handed me cashier’s checks for $3,500 each. That money would get them representation up to trial. If they wanted to go to trial, it’d be more.
It was late afternoon when I arrived at the police station. After some hassle with the front desk, I was awarded a badge and allowed to proceed to the elevator. The box took me up to the sixth floor, and Schmitty was waiting for me when the doors slid open.
“Afternoon.” He held out his hand. We shook, and then he led me back to his office.
Once he’d closed the door and we were sitting across his desk from each other, Schmitty said, “My DNA guy says you’ve been busy.”
I nodded. “But I’m still waiting for that big paycheck from the city.”
“Be waiting a long time on that one.” Schmitty leaned back. “Anything new?”
“Not really.” I thought about all the things that Emma and Nikolas had found out about Poles in the dark corners of the Internet, but figured that Schmitty already knew. I also decided that trying to explain how I’d obtained the information would be more trouble than it was worth.
I talked about the interviews and gave Schmitty a copy of the new spreadsheet that Emma and I had prepared. “We added a column about whether they’d be willing to talk to you.” I leaned across the desk and pointed at the column on the far right. “Figured you might want to send a detective out on a few, since the families seemed willing.”
Schmitty flipped through the sheets of paper, nodding. “This is good.”
“Mostly my paralegal,” I said, then added, “There was a mother and a kid who came in recently—Turner is the last name. Kid thinks he saw his brother get into a blue van.”
Schmitty’s eyebrows raised. “Want me to send somebody over?”
I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said. “It’s all secondhand for me. I want to interview him myself first. Don’t want to waste your time.”
Schmitty nodded. “Anything else?”
“Don’t think so.”
“OK.” Schmitty paused, looking uncomfortable. “We’re starting to feel some heat now. That group of protesters by the highway is growing, and I heard that they’re talking about shutting down the highway.”
“I can’t say I blame them.”
Schmitty stared at me, and we sat in silence for half a second too long. Then he opened the bottom drawer of his desk. “Guess we better deal with this now.” He reached down and pulled out a large brown accordion file.
I stood behind him and watched Schmitty push in his computer’s open disc drawer, loaded with the disc he’d pulled from the accordion file. With a couple of clicks, the player whirred to life, and a new window flashed up onto his screen. Images jerked, then started to flow.
It was the security video from Sammy’s school.
We watched for a moment, and then Schmitty forwarded the recording to a time that he had written down in his notes. “Here we go.” He clicked again, and the video played.
It was shot from a distance. The camera was likely mounted high on the wall in the lunchroom. At first I didn’t see her, but then I spotted Sammy sitting alone at a table on the far right. Alone, I thought. My beautiful, smart daughter eats lunch by herself.
I held my breath as I watched four girls surround Sammy. The video didn’t have any sound. There was no way to know what was being said, but the body language wasn’t friendly.
The crowding continued for a few minutes, and then Sammy got up to leave. Good, I thought. Walk away. Sammy made it through the wall of girls. She started toward the dish room window with her tray, but the others followed her. Words were still being said, but Sammy didn’t respond. She kept her head down, returned the tray and silverware, and started walking toward the door.
Other kids in the lunchroom were now paying attention. They could sense the situation escalating. They stopped eating and watched. A few stood on their seats and said something, egging on the group hounding Sammy.
Then Sammy wa
lked out the door.
“That’s where this one ends.” Schmitty leaned over and pressed the “Eject” button. The tray slid out, and he replaced that disc with another. “But this picks it up in the hallway.”
The second disc started, and Schmitty pressed the button to forward it ahead. “We’ll just jump to the right time.” He checked his notes, the images flashed, and he clicked “Play.” “Here she comes.”
I felt my stomach turn and my hands go cold as I watched Sammy enter the hallway followed, half a second later, by a gaggle of girls. They made it about five yards when the leader—a big girl wearing some sort of purple outfit—edged closer to Sammy. It looked like she whispered something in her ear, and then Sammy turned and pushed her away.
That was when the fight started.
The big girl threw a punch, and it caught Sammy on the right side of her face. She raised her arms to cover herself. Then another girl ran forward and pushed her to the floor. Another one kicked Sammy’s side. They circled her as Sammy got up, swinging blindly.
More kids, likely drawn by the commotion, streamed into the hallway.
Schmitty stopped the video. “It goes on like this until the teachers and school resource officer come to break it up.” He pressed a small button and the disc ejected. Schmitty leaned over to get it and put the disc back in the file, but I stopped him.
“I want to watch it.”
“But you can’t really see what’s going on from the angle of the security camera. Pretty much the same as that one on YouTube that I showed you before.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “It’s my daughter, and I need to see what happened.”
He hesitated and then loaded the disc back into the computer. We watched the rest of the chaos play out.
When it was over, I slumped back down in my chair. “What now?”
He shook his head. “Unless you want us to, there’s not going to be any charges. We could get a couple of the girls for assault, but the fat girl is claiming self-defense.”
“Self-defense?” I shook my head in disbelief. “How’s that self-defense?”
“Legally, it’s not,” said Schmitty. “But they’ve concocted a whole story about threats that Samantha had made toward them. They say that she was bullying them, and that your daughter was going to come get them with some older boys, so they all decided to stand up to her first before anything happened.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I closed my eyes. “Sammy was surrounded.” I said it more to myself than to Schmitty. The peace that I had felt that morning was long gone, and it took everything in my power to keep my cool.
I opened my eyes and saw that Schmitty was looking at me with a helpless expression. “I’m only saying what they told our investigator.”
“And the beat-down. That was all in self-defense.” My voice was louder than I intended.
“Of course it wasn’t.” Then Schmitty leaned in and softly repeated himself. “Of course it wasn’t, but we gotta be smart. You’ve gotta be smart. With your brother on the ballot and you maybe making a run for something else, I hear, we should make this go away. No good is gonna come from this.” He sat back. “A juvenile judge isn’t going to do anything to any of these girls. Maybe some community service, and what does that do? Nothing. Just riles the crazy family up and makes your daughter relive it. Imagine your daughter being cross-examined by some asshole defense attorney.” Schmitty stopped himself. “No offense.”
I let the comment pass. “So you don’t want to press charges against them?”
“No,” Schmitty said. “I don’t, and neither should you.” He began to pack up the notes and police reports, pushing the few small stacks back into the brown folder. “We start doing that, then they start claiming special treatment, and then it’s in the newspapers and we get pressure to charge Sammy. Best thing to do is to leave it alone.”
“Leave it alone,” I repeated dully.
“Good.” He shrugged. “And you’re not gonna send her back to that school, right?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not sending her back there, but I’m sure those girls will soon find a different target. Can’t be on top without somebody on the bottom.”
Schmitty nodded. “Just like real life.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The rest of the week passed without anything unusual, except the continuing heat and humidity. Summer wouldn’t quit. By mid-September, the heat was supposed to have broken, but it hadn’t. When I arrived at the courthouse for Cecil Bates’s trial on Monday morning, the temperature hovered around eighty-two degrees, and I could feel the sweat soak through my shirt.
Judge Polansky had scheduled five cases for trial on this Monday morning. Of course it wasn’t possible to begin five trials at the same time. It was a hedge. He wanted to clear as many cases from his calendar as possible. Knowing that some defendants wouldn’t show up and others would likely plead guilty the moment the jury was called into the room, he called five instead of one, thus potentially moving that many more widgets through the law factory in a single morning.
Sometimes it didn’t, but usually the hedge worked.
The clerk banged down the gavel. “All rise,” she said. “The Honorable Saul Polansky presiding.”
Judge Polansky entered the courtroom from a side door, walked up a few steps, and sat in the large leather chair behind the bench. “Please have a seat.” He turned to his computer—a relatively new addition to courtroom—punched a few keys to log in, and called up the cases on the morning docket.
To his clerk: “OK.”
The clerk stood. “State of Missouri versus Tyrone O’Neil.”
Mr. O’Neil and his defense attorney walked from the back of the courtroom to the front as the prosecutor stood. When they were all situated, the judge instructed them to note their appearances for the record. Both complied, and then Judge Polansky asked the defense attorney about the status of the case.
“My client would like to plead guilty, Your Honor.”
Judge Polansky allowed a smile to escape, ever so briefly, and then listened as they outlined the plea agreement, waived the defendant’s right to a trial, and laid a factual basis for the guilty plea. The judge scheduled a sentencing hearing in three weeks and then moved on to the next case.
The clerk stood and called the next one. The parties shuffled into position, but this time the defendant had not arrived for trial, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Two more cases were called: another no-show and then a dismissal because one of the witnesses was refusing to cooperate.
Finally, the clerk called, “State of Missouri versus Cecil Bates.”
I looked over at Cecil and nodded. He nodded back, and then we stood and walked up to the front of the courtroom together.
We noted our appearances on the record as the judge pulled the file up on his computer. All the pleadings and other documents were now electronic. There was no paper record for the court, even though I had been unable to wean myself from the traditional paper files.
“OK.” The judge looked at Cecil as would a parent humoring a precocious child. “I remember you.” He glanced at his screen. “Charged with drinking in a public park.” Then the judge looked at me. “What’s the status?”
“My client would like to proceed with trial, Your Honor.”
Judge Polansky could barely contain his annoyance. Going to trial meant that he couldn’t call another five cases for trial that afternoon. The law factory would have to slow down.
Now conceding that my client was a lost cause, the judge waved the prosecutor, a young lawyer named Cynthia Curtis, and myself forward. “Approach.”
Judge Polansky turned off the microphone as Ms. Curtis and I walked up to the bench. He leaned over. “What the hell are you doing?” His question was directed at Ms. Curtis. “You’re honestly going to take a misdemeanor drinking in public case to trial?”
Curtis glanced at me. Prosecutors aren’t used to being challenged. Usually the wrat
h of a judge is directed at the recalcitrant criminal, not the knight on the white horse. “Sir?”
The judge’s impatience grew. “You dump cases all the time,” Judge Polansky said. “What’s so special about Mr. Bates? Why are we going to waste three days or more of this court’s time on this?”
“Your honor, Mr. Bates is a chronic offender. He’s got multiple convictions for drinking in public, public urination, aggressive panhandling—”
Judge Polansky raised his hand, cutting her off. “Exactly. So?” It was a rhetorical question. “He’ll be back whether you go to trial or not. You’re wasting resources. We could be taking some domestic assaults or robberies to trial. How about them?”
Cynthia Curtis knew enough to know that it was dangerous to argue with a judge, and so she played the only card she had left: she blamed somebody else.
She said, “The deputy told me that dumping the case would reward Mr. Bates for being an obstructionist. He wants a conviction and three months in jail. Get him off the streets, maybe give him a chance to sober up.”
“That’s your plan, huh?” Judge Polansky looked at me and rolled his eyes, but he was playing us both beautifully. He wanted the prosecutor to know that he wasn’t happy with her and also wanted me to hear that my client was potentially facing some significant time in jail.
The judge leaned back. “Well I think you are both assuming a lot of things. This is my only case left for the morning, so I’ll take a fifteen-minute break.” Polansky looked at his watch. “Talk one more time.” To Curtis: “Confirm with your supervisor that he wants to go down this stupid path.” To me: “Confirm with your client whether he really wants to spend three months in jail.” Then to the both of us: “If you’re unable to come to your collective senses, we’ll call up the jury in fifteen minutes.”
Like scolded children, we both responded in unison. “Yes, Judge.”
“And just so you both know.” He pointed at me and then to the prosecutor. “Once this trial starts, I don’t stop. We go until there’s a verdict. I won’t accept pleas in the middle of a trial. We go to the end.”
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