Judgment Calls (16 page)

“Does rubbing my face in my youthful attempts to be a good person make you guys feel good?” I said. “OK, you win. I love the smell of leather. I like being at the top of the food chain. I eat thick slabs of beef, still pink in the middle. Vegetables are what my food eats. Are you happy now? Maybe we should talk about the time Chuck joined the feminist center in college so he could scam on women. Or how about, Dad, when you got a CB radio and grew a mustache after you saw Smokey and the Bandit? What was your handle again, the Rocking Ranger?”

We continued like that, recalling our most embarrassing moments at least the ones clean enough to tell in front of my dad until the high-pitched beeping of a pager broke through our laughter. By instinct, Chuck and I both immediately hit the “stop making that wretched noise” button on the right side of our waists and looked down at the digital display. “It’s me,” I said. “Grace. I better get it.”

Grace was calling to let me know that she’d dropped off Kendra and to wish me luck with trial the next day. She also told me that when she went inside with Kendra, Kendra had played the answering machine in front of her. Apparently, her old friend Haley was looking to get back in touch with her, had heard that she was living at home again, was wondering what she was up to, that sort of thing. It was hard not to be furious as I remembered my only encounter with the girl.

I tried to keep cool as I dialed Kendra’s number.

“Hey there. How you holding up?”

“Alright, I guess. I just want the trial to be over with.”

I said what I could to relieve the anxiety. In the end, there’s nothing you can say to comfort a victim who senses the system’s potential to fail.

I raised the phone message from Haley with caution. “Grace mentioned that Haley is trying to get in touch with you. I didn’t realize you had stayed in contact with her.”

“I haven’t. She called, that’s all.”

“She give you any idea what she wanted?” I said.

The distinctively teenage sulk came through loud and clear over the phone. “Will you please, like, not freak out? She was just wondering how I was doing.”

I didn’t like the idea that Haley might be working her way back into Kendra’s life, so I said what I could to discourage her from returning the call. I knew in the end she’d do what she wanted.

I’d been looking forward to curling up with a book and going to bed early when I got home. That’s not what happened.

I should’ve known something was wrong as soon as I put my key in the lock. Vinnie usually runs to the front door to welcome me home. OK, so it’s more of a waddle. The point is that he comes to the door when he hears my keys. This time, I could hear Vinnie barking, but he wasn’t at the door.

I remember the noise behind me in the dark as I bolted the front door. And I think I remember feeling the crack against my head that quickly followed, but maybe I fabricated that memory later with the help of blinding head pain and a lump the size of a golf ball.

When I came to, the clock told me I’d been out for an hour. My house was a wreck. Cupboards were open, cushions were thrown, drawers were emptied. And I could still hear Vinnie’s muffled barks from somewhere in the back of the house.

As much as I wanted to run to him, I’d watched enough scary movies to know what to do if someone might be in your house. What you don’t do is creep around in the dark silence. That’s how you wind up skewered by some guy in a bad mask.

Instead, I went to my car, started the engine, and used my cell phone to call 911. And my dad. And then Chuck. And then I realized I could call everyone I knew, and it wouldn’t get the first of them here any faster.

So I waited and watched. Even when I could hear the sirens, still no sign of life. Whoever tore the place apart must have left after knocking me out.

Two patrol officers swept through the house while the EMTs finished checking me out in the ambulance. No concussion, just assurances that I’d have a brutal headache for the next forty-eight hours.

The police cleared me to enter after I showed them my ID and assured them I knew how to handle a crime scene. A pane in the back door had been smashed to gain entry.

Chuck and Dad showed up around the time I was freeing Vinnie from the kitchen pantry. Knowing Vinnie, he’d made a valiant effort, but it doesn’t take much to kick a French bulldog into the nearest closet. He put up a brave front when I picked him up, but I could feel him shaking.

Dad kept on eye on me, while Chuck pulled rank to make the patrol officers page out a technician to search for prints. PPB doesn’t dust every home burg, so I was getting special treatment. Must have been the nasty knock to the head.

When he was done with immediate business, Chuck came into the kitchen where my dad was fixing me a drink and monitoring the ice pack on my head. “You doing OK?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“How’s the mutt?” he said, smiling as he flipped one of Vinnie’s ears over.

“Seems to be getting over it. Dad’s going to take him to the vet for me tomorrow just to make sure he’s alright.”

One of the young patrol officers walked in and gave the kitchen a cursory look over “Man, they really did a number, didn’t they?”

I looked around and took in just how bad the place looked. And then I took it out on the patrol officer. “Better call off the crime scene team. McGruff the Crime Dog here has got the whole thing figured out. Yep, they really did a number on the place. I hadn’t picked up on that, Mr. Sensitivity. Jesus Christ, get yourself a copy of Policing for Idiots before you go out on any more calls.” I put my hands against the kitchen table, pushed my chair back, and stormed over to the sink to look out the window.

Dad came to my side and patted my shoulder while I fought back tears and tried to regain my composure. When I’d gotten myself under control again, Chuck suggested that I look around when I was ready to see if anything was missing. As I started to leave the kitchen, the patrol officer said, “Just make sure you don’t touch anything, ma’am.”

I didn’t turn around, but I heard Chuck say, “You got a death wish or something, Williams? Use your fucking head.”

The only valuables I own are some jewelry I inherited from my mother, and I’d be surprised if anyone ever found those. If every old house has some irregularity that invites fantastic stories, mine is an old wall safe that someone had built into the baseboard of my bedroom. The day I was entrusted with my mother’s jewelry, I locked it inside that safe and moved my solid maple headboard directly in front of it.

The bed was right where I’d left it. In fact, nothing seemed to be missing, making me wonder why someone had bothered.

We were throwing around theories in the kitchen, with me desperately searching for one that didn’t involve any further mortal danger. First I floated the typical teenage thrill burg. Wannabes get a high off being in another person’s house, going through their stuff, and trashing the place. But they probably wouldn’t have slugged me in the noggin.

My next front-runner was a smalltime junkie thief who broke in and then went nuts and trashed the place when he realized I didn’t own the kinds of things that smalltime junkie thieves steal, like CDs, DVDs, and other small items that are easily resalable to those who live in the modern world.

That theory just might have stuck, at least for the night, if I hadn’t decided I needed a beer.

I opened the fridge to find my twelve-inch chopping knife prominently displayed on the top shelf. It secured a note that said, Next time we slice up you and your dog. It’s that easy.

So much for a theory that didn’t scare the shit out of me.

Seven.

Like any other crime victim, I could do nothing about the intrusion into my home and assault upon my person except wake up in a messy house with a pounding headache.

PPB had assured me that they’d do what they could to find prints, but I knew there wouldn’t be any. And I assured PPB that I’d go over my files to identify anyone who might want to scare me, but I felt in my gut that it had something to do with Derringer. Unfortunately, Derringer currently enjoyed the greatest protections a defendant can enjoy. Lopez had served me and the police department with written notice that he was invoking his rights to counsel and to silence, which meant that, while his trial was pending, the police couldn’t question him about anything, even suspected new crimes.

The truth is that prosecutors are rarely threatened. Some speculate that it’s because they are feared, but the real reason prosecutors are generally safe from the scum they prosecute

U1

is that they’re replaceable. You take out your prosecutor and nothing changes. The same witnesses bring the same evidence to the same jurors, only with a different mouthpiece coordinating the show.

Unfortunately, an occasional defendant is too stupid to see that reality, and I suspected Derringer was one of them. Now I had to go into trial with yet another reason to feel sick whenever I looked at him.

The first day of trial was mercifully quick. Judge Lesh had reviewed all the written motions in advance and was ready to rule on them without holding an evidentiary hearing. Even though the appearance took only a few hours, I still found Derringer’s presence disconcerting. I’d almost hoped he’d throw me a look to confirm my suspicion that he was behind the ransacking. His seeming indifference only served to foster the combination of rage and fear that I’d been nursing since the previous night. I tried to use it to fuel my concentration on the pending motions.

I was nervous about Lopez’s motion to exclude the false alibi Derrick Derringer had volunteered for his brother the last time around. It was my position that this was relevant in determining whether Derrick was telling the truth now.

Lisa argued that the evidence was too prejudicial to provide to the jury. Or, as she put it, “Your honor, Ms. Kincaid knows full well that, under the Rules of Evidence, my client’s prior conviction is inadmissible. By framing this evidence as impeachment of Derrick Derringer, she’s trying to find a way to get my client’s prior conviction through the back door.”

Lesh went off the record. “Ms. Lopez, you’re doing a good job for your client, but if I were you I would avoid using the term ‘back door’ when referring to his prior conviction, which I see is for attempted sodomy.”

David Lesh was one of those people who could say the most inappropriate things and yet somehow never offend anyone. A legendary story holds that when Lesh was still a prosecutor, one of the female judges and her law clerks saw him leaving the building wearing shorts. The judge jokingly commented that the DAs were letting their dress standards lapse a bit. Lesh’s response? “I don’t mind telling you, judge, that these legs are under a court order from the National Organization for Women. I cover these beauties, and those fanatical broads at NOW will have me arrested.” The clerks held their breath, sure that their judge was about to unleash. Instead, the story goes, she laughed and said, “Well, in that case, counselor, you should at least get out in the sun periodically. You could blind someone with those things.” My guess was that Lesh had so much going for him on the stuff that mattered that people were almost reassured by his irreverence.

Proving once again that he was a complete professional where it counted, Lesh went back on the record and made what I believed to be the right ruling. The jury should be allowed to consider Derrick’s previous lie for the limited purpose of judging his credibility as an alibi witness in this trial. The problem was that if the jury knew the whole story, including the nature of Derringer’s previous conviction, the unfair prejudice to the defendant would be overwhelming. So Lesh carved out a fair compromise.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, folks. First of all, the State can’t get into any of this until after the defendant’s brother has taken the stand and offered testimony to exonerate the defendant. Until he does that, Ms. Kincaid, the evidence you want to use is irrelevant.

“Even after the evidence becomes relevant, I am concerned about the potential for unfair prejudice. Ms. Kincaid, the only facts you really need to get to the jury are that Derringer Derrick Derringer, I mean provided an alibi for the defendant in the past and that the defendant, contrary to the proffered alibi evidence, eventually admitted that he was, in fact, at the scene. I assume you can find a way to put those facts into evidence without revealing the underlying charge to the jury or whether the defendant was ever actually convicted.”

I nodded in agreement, but then said yes aloud so the court reporter could transcribe my answer.

“Alright, then, that’s the plan. And, Ms. Kincaid, I cannot emphasize this enough. The facts that I just mentioned are all I want to hear from your witnesses on this matter: Brother supplied alibi for defendant, but then defendant later admitted he was there.” He counted off the points on his fingers. “If I hear one other word one mention of sodomy, or kidnapping, or a teenage girl victim, or the fact that a jury found the defendant guilty of something I will declare a mistrial. And I may even declare a mistrial with prejudice. So I warn you to proceed with caution and make sure your witnesses understand the rules we’re playing by. Do we understand each other?”

I assured him that we did, and he moved to the rest of Lisa’s motions.

Lisa had filed a motion to suppress the evidence regarding Derringer’s pubic hair. She tried to argue that the pethismographic examination and the jail booking process consti

U4

tuted unlawful searches in violation of Derringer’s Fourth Amendment rights. But once she agreed that both processes were part of the normal corrections process and not intended to produce evidence of a crime, Lesh quickly denied the motions.

In the alternative, Lisa asked the court to prohibit Derringer’s parole officer from testifying that he had seen Derringer without his pants at the pethismographic examination. She argued that the evidence was overly prejudicial because it revealed the fact that Derringer was on parole for a sex offense.

In the end, Lesh decided to permit Renshaw to testify that he was Derringer’s parole officer and had occasion to see him without his clothes. The jury would not hear about the setting or circumstances. I didn’t like it, because I thought the jurors might come up with their own oddball explanations as to why a parole officer would see a client naked. But I decided there was no other way to get Renshaw’s observations in without letting the jury know about the prior sex offense, which surely would lead to a reversal on appeal.