Little Boy Lost

by Trafford, J. D.

  “Well,” I said, “that ain’t exactly my problem.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  After a moderately successful morning as a lawyer, I ate lunch at the Northside Roastery and then drove down North Grand and over to the Juvenile Justice Center. The JJC was tucked behind Saint Louis University’s ever-expanding sprawl. On one side, pristine athletic fields. On the other, vacant lots and barbed wire.

  From the outside it looked like a worn-down 1970s school, featuring light-tan brick and futuristic curves. The arches were likely intended to mirror the famous Gateway Arch, but these arches weren’t dramatic. They were squat, resulting in a building that looked like it was frowning at you.

  Inside, it wasn’t much better. The lighting was dim. The linoleum tiles were chipped at the edges, and everything smelled like cleaning antiseptic.

  I went through the metal detectors. As I walked through the security gauntlet, the machine beeped loudly. A beefy private security guard pulled me aside and wanded me. The scanner didn’t like my belt or my shoes, but the security guard didn’t seem to mind.

  He patted me on my back. “Good to go.”

  The security was lax, but I was wearing a suit and tie, after all.

  Judge Danny Bryce’s chambers were on the third floor. I found the elevator with a young mom and kid. She got off on the second floor, and then after another jerk upward, I got off at my stop.

  To my left were two courtrooms and four small conference rooms. The hallway expanded into a waiting area, which held a smattering of parents and their delinquent kids.

  A sign pointed me in the other direction, and I followed it to a thick wooden door with a series of buttons on the side.

  I pressed the button labeled “Hon. Bryce” and waited.

  A voice came through the speaker, clouded by static. “Chambers.”

  I leaned over. “This is Justin Glass. Here to see Judge Bryce.”

  “Yes. Come back.” There was a loud buzz, and then the magnetic locks released the door.

  Judge Bryce’s chambers didn’t look like any judicial chambers that I’d ever seen before. There was no ego wall filled with awards, degrees, and certificates. There also weren’t any law books that I could see. Instead, the shelves were filled with children’s toys. Some of them were old, probably played with by the judge himself when he was a kid. Others were new.

  By the door, there was a bulletin board filled with the pictures of kids and notes from grateful parents. The rest of the walls were covered with children’s artwork from floor to ceiling. None of it was in a frame. It was hung on the wall with Scotch tape. There was no order. Wherever there was an empty space, a picture covered it.

  Judge Bryce smiled. “Like it?”

  “I do.” I walked over to the empty chair in front of his desk. “Ever rotate them?”

  Bryce nodded. “In the summer, the humidity causes the tape to lose its stickiness.” Judge Bryce looked over at one of the pictures that was crooked and partially folded over. “Like that one.” He pointed. “When it falls, I’ll throw it away and then put a new one up in its place.”

  “Ever keep any?”

  “I used to keep the ones if they got sent to prison. Thought that somebody had to remember these kids, and it might as well be me.” Judge Bryce’s voice trailed off, and then his face tightened. “But then the stack got too big. Better just to throw them away.”

  We worked our way through the juvenile courthouse, starting at the top. Each floor had the same plan. There were two courtrooms per floor, conference rooms, and a secure area for the judges and their chambers. In the far corner of each floor somebody had built bookshelves and filled them with used books in various stages of neglect.

  On the main level, Judge Bryce took me toward the back of the building. There was a woman behind a window made of bulletproof glass. He smiled and waved at her. She smiled back.

  Then Judge Bryce leaned closer and spoke to her through a small opening. “My friend needs to sign in.”

  I signed the clipboard, and a light above a steel door turned on. Judge Bryce opened the door. We walked into a small entryway, and then he let the steel door close behind us. Once it was closed, another light came on above another door, and we were allowed to enter the secure area where juveniles were held while waiting for an initial appearance, trial, or placement out of the home.

  “I want to welcome you all to one of ‘America’s Top Ten Places to Work.’” A large, grinning correctional officer approached us with his hands held out wide. “Who’s the Honorable Danny Bryce brought to us today?”

  Judge Bryce shook the man’s hand. “This here is Justin Glass. He’s an attorney, and you’ve probably heard of his dad.”

  “Of course.” The correctional officer held out his hand, and we greeted each other. Then he gestured to the hallway behind him. “Let me show you around.”

  He turned, and we started walking down a hallway with a half dozen doors. “This is our administrative area. We don’t ever have any kids on this floor. All staff. Sometimes a visitor will come through here or a parent visiting their kid. We greet them out here and take them where they’re supposed to go.”

  He then walked us to the elevator, continuing to explain the mechanics of housing juvenile delinquents. “One floor down, we got a visiting area for attorneys or family that want to talk with the kids. Above us, we got a floor that has a place for medical, cafeteria, as well as a school and gym. The top two floors contain the pods. Our capacity is about one hundred twenty, but since JDAI, the numbers are way down.”

  “JDAI?”

  “Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.” Judge Bryce laughed. “One of those wonky programs that we do.”

  “But this one actually works, as Judge Bryce is quick to tell anybody who will listen.” The correctional officer put his hands on his hips, goading Judge Bryce to elaborate. “Correct, Your Honor?”

  “Correct.” Then Judge Bryce turned to me. “In the past, we were convinced that the Scared Straight approach worked. So we were locking kids up for all sorts of stuff, even a truancy or a petty theft. Then it turned out that Scared Straight was causing serious problems, and the outcomes for kids who spent just one night in jail were horrible. Criminality is like a contagious disease. After JDAI, we don’t do the shock incarcerations any more. Now instead of one hundred twenty kids we have about forty-five on any given day.”

  I thought about the two floors of pods. “So most of this place is empty?”

  “Yes. And we haven’t seen any real uptick in crime. The media doesn’t report that or make it seem that way, but that’s what the actual data tells us,” said Judge Bryce. “And it’s the same thing at all the JDAI sites throughout the country.”

  After the tour was done, Judge Bryce led me out of the detention facility. I was once again given the clipboard, this time to sign out, and once again I slid it back through the slot.

  Judge Bryce checked his watch. “Well that’s kind of the end of the tour.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.” Then I thought about Isaac Turner and what he’d seen the night that his brother disappeared. “How do they transport the kids here or send them out to placement?”

  Judge Bryce thought for a minute. “Oh . . .” He walked to a window at the end of the hallway. He pointed down at a little parking lot behind the JDC. “We got these vans. They’re down there. Want to see them?”

  I nodded. “A closer look would be great.”

  Judge Bryce hesitated. “It’s getting late.”

  “Please.” I smiled, keeping it light.

  “OK.” Judge Bryce caved pretty easily. He was a social guy, and I could tell that sitting alone in his chambers was killing him. He liked talking to people.

  Judge Bryce led me back toward the main entrance, then back to the administrative offices, where he held his identification card up to the magnetic reader. The door clicked open, and we entered an area where clerks pushed and sorted the massive amount of paperwork that flowed
through the juvenile and family court system. Unlike the adult criminal cases that had been converted to electronic files, juvenile and family courts still conducted business the old-fashioned way.

  Judge Bryce greeted all the staff by name as he led me to another elevator. “This is the secret one,” he said. “It allows us to go from our cars up to our chambers without ever going in the public common area.” He pressed a button. A few seconds later, a bell dinged and the doors slid open.

  We got in the elevator, and Judge Bryce pressed the button labeled with a capital B for basement. The elevator brought us down a level.

  “Not the nicest place in the world, but the parking is free, and it’s convenient.” Judge Bryce led me out into the little parking garage. It was the basement of the Juvenile Justice Center. There were no windows. It was all concrete with large columns that supported the building above us.

  Judge Bryce kept walking, and I followed as he made conversation. “Not too many people get to park under here—there’s the judges, and then the managers of the juvenile courts and the probation supervisors.” We walked a little farther toward a large metal garage door. “Of course the probation officers are always trying to park down here during the off hours, but they really shouldn’t.”

  As we got closer to the garage door, Judge Bryce pointed to a rack of keys. “So here are the keys. Then when a PO—I mean, probation officer—wants to pick up a kid for court, he grabs a key and takes a van. Same goes for anyone who has to transport a kid to a placement somewhere. They grab a key and take a van.”

  “No sign-out or anything.”

  “There’s supposed to be, but we don’t have one. You know Saint Louis. A little weird like that—a big city that acts like a small town sometimes.” Judge Bryce pushed a button, and the garage door rolled open with a clatter. The noise echoed off the garage’s concrete walls. “Why’re you interested in all this?”

  As we walked out into the parking lot behind the detention center, I said, “We had a kid who says he saw his brother being taken. The brother—he’s one of the Lost Boys I represent.” I pointed at the row of blue vans. “Says the guy who took him was driving one of these.”

  Judge Bryce took in the information. Then he nodded. “That explains the whispers I’ve heard about Jimmy Poles.”

  When we got back to the elevator, Judge Bryce and I took a ride back up to the main level. I could tell that he wanted to say something more, but not in the building. We walked out the front door together, and then I pointed at my rusted Honda in the corner of the lot. “That’s me.”

  He nodded, and then, when we got to my car, Judge Bryce said, “Thank you for coming to see me today.”

  “I should be thanking you.”

  “No.” Judge Bryce shook his head. “What you’re doing for these missing kids is important. If this was helpful at all, I’m glad I could do it.”

  “No problem.” I turned and unlocked my car. I was about to get inside when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I stopped. “Something the matter, Judge?”

  “Maybe.”

  I turned back around so that I could face him. “What is it?”

  “I was thinking,” he said. “You should go public with this.”

  “With what?”

  “With what you know,” Judge Bryce said. “The van, the probation officer, maybe even identify Jimmy Poles . . . I don’t know. Just letting these families tell their stories from their perspective.” He shook his head darkly. “Good God. You go public, you’ll get people to come forward. There’d be outrage. It’s the only way that the investigation is going to move forward. They may say that they won’t treat Poles differently—because he isn’t a real cop, just probation—but he’s part of the system, and the system protects its own. It’s called the blue line, and nobody wants to cross it.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re working on it.”

  Judge Bryce shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Suppose Sergeant Schmidt told you that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  I had hoped that the momentum would continue, but it didn’t. Judge Bryce was right. The investigation had stalled.

  There wasn’t enough. The fact that Jimmy Poles was the probation officer for most of the Lost Boys and that Isaac Turner had seen his brother getting into a probation van on the night he disappeared hadn’t resulted in any arrest. If the JJC had kept a record of who took the vans out and when they were returned, then there’d be something, but there were no records.

  When I talked with Schmitty and told him what Judge Bryce had said about going public with Jimmy Poles, he told me that he’d think about it, but I knew that he didn’t like the idea. Maybe Schmitty was protecting the system, maybe he wasn’t.

  The second interviews were over. The files had been read and reread. The spreadsheet was done, and I couldn’t think of anything more to do. I wondered whether anything would happen, and then I remembered what the police chief had warned me about when we had met at Castlewood State Park. He had told me that it was a “tense time.”

  Anything could happen, he said, and it turned out the police chief was right.

  I was getting ready for bed when Lincoln called with the news. It was a little after ten. Sammy had already gone to bed.

  Lincoln was constantly on Twitter. When he saw it, Lincoln knew it was going to be big. “You gotta get in front of this, bro.” Then he turned conspiratorial. “People are starting to line up for my state Senate seat. I been trying to respect your space and hold them off from announcing, but this could be a real opportunity. Me run for Congress. You run for my spot. Perfection.”

  My stomach turned at my brother’s political calculations as I scrolled through a series of Twitter posts on my cell phone. “Now’s not the time,” I said, squinting at the tiny screen. “I’m serious about running, more serious than I’ve ever been, but I’m not quite there. I got a real job to do, and I still have to find Sammy a new school and get her settled there.”

  Lincoln sighed. Even over the telephone, I could tell that he was rolling his eyes at me. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “This is the perfect time.”

  “Whatever.” I tapped through a series of links and eventually found the original source. “Thanks for letting me know about this.” I hung up the phone and stared at the string of Twitter posts, trying to make sense of who had posted them and why.

  As I read each one, an uneasiness rolled over me.

  This isn’t good.

  It started with a picture posted of Jimmy Poles holding a gun and a Confederate flag. I remembered the photo from the file that Emma and Nikolas had compiled. Below the photo was the statement: Why is this man suspended? #LostBoysRemembered #STLtruth.

  The post was made by a person called @STLtruth. It was a relatively new Twitter account, but there were enough followers to plant the seeds.

  An hour later, another photo with the same hashtags, this one a picture of Jimmy Poles wearing a black T-shirt with a pair of large, cartoonish white eyes printed on the front. Below the eyes were the words OUR PRESIDENT. This one had the descriptor: Saint Louis Probation Officer Jimmy Poles #LostBoysRemembered #STLtruth.

  An hour after that, another photo of Jimmy Poles was posted. He wore an orange prison jumpsuit, blackface, and an afro wig. Below the photo was the statement: Two things all Lost Boys have in common: Jimmy Poles and they are black #LostBoysRemembered #STLtruth. It was an exaggeration, but few people would know.

  Black Twitter picked it up first, and the story built to a boil; then the traditional media couldn’t ignore it anymore. Questions were asked. Accusations went back and forth, and then the Jimmy Poles story got bigger.

  The speed at which information and the pictures spread was stunning. The Lost Boys were no longer merely a tragedy in flyover country. Each minute that passed, the intensity grew and, with that, a movement.

  @STLtruth began posting pictures of the Lost Boys, including pictures of the crime scene. Photos of bones and shallow graves. Then
came the boys’ juvenile system files.

  The posts and information established credibility. Although the true identity of @STLtruth was unknown, it didn’t matter. What he or she was posting was clearly authentic.

  Monthly probation officer reports that Jimmy Poles filed for each of the identified Lost Boys were posted. One every ten minutes. Most of the information was blacked out, but the reports themselves weren’t important. @STLtruth wanted to prove that Jimmy Poles was the common thread that ran through the murders, the person who connected all the Lost Boys together.

  The furor grew.

  The anonymous person had put Jimmy Poles on trial and convicted him through the Internet. It was inflammatory. It wasn’t fair, but it was effective. No mainstream reporter could have done what he or she was doing. This was the new world. The fact that Missouri law made juvenile files confidential didn’t matter.

  The next morning, I sat in my office and watched it unfold, going from the anonymous fringe of the Internet to the mainstream by midmorning. “You seeing all this?” I scrolled through the Twitter feed again, on my computer.

  Emma stood over my shoulder, taking it all in.

  I looked up at her. “I have to call Schmitty.”

  She nodded and then stared out at her desk in the other room. The phone had been ringing nonstop all morning as the story grew. “What do you want me to do about all the calls?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. Guess we have to answer. Can’t just shut down.”

  “Fine.” She patted me on the back, then returned to the reception desk.

  As she was closing the door, I shouted at her. “Hey, Emma.”

  “Yes.” She poked her head back inside my office.

  “Any chance Nikolas is doing this? Maybe he thinks it’s helping me.”

  She paused, considering the possibility. Then she shook her head. “Don’t think so. Not really his style, but I will ask.”