Judgment Calls (3 page)

“Assault Three? That’s it?” I said.

Johnson nodded. “I know, ridiculous. He says the ID’s weak, plus the defense can say the whole thing was a consensual trick, that the girl cried rape so her mom wouldn’t find out she was turning tricks for smack. Said he was only issuing the assault because of Derringer’s prior. He basically called the girl a piece of trash.”

“And you guys don’t think she is. You think she’s telling the truth?”

Walker looked at me and tilted his head slightly. “Ms. Kincaid, I really do. It’s almost in her favor that she lied to us at first. Shows she still knows that working’s shameful, not just a matter-of-fact thing to her. Maybe that logic doesn’t make any sense to you, but I think she’s basically still a pretty good kid. We pissed O’Donnell off by not reading the case right, but he’s taking it out on the case, and this Derringer dirtbag is going to get the benefit.”

“I agree that Derringer needs to be done, but I’m not sure how I can help you.”

I wasn’t surprised that Sergeant Garcia had a suggestion. He had the respect of his fellow officers because he was a smart cop and a good guy. In a bureau where most black and Latino officers stall out at the front line of street-level enforcement, administrative staff promoted him because he had a political savvy so smooth that its targets never even knew they’d been had.

“The way I see it, this girl could be a good link for Vice. She’s young and probably knows a circle of working girls we don’t have access to. If we can earn her trust, she might be able to lead us to some of the pimps we haven’t been able to latch on to, the guys who are turning out the real young ones.

“I’ll call O’Donnell like I don’t know much about the case but think it might have potential with Vice, then ask if he minds me getting MCT’s OK to approach the vie as a potential informant. At that point I can sell him on letting a DVD attorney take the case, so they have a head start if the vie winds up developing other contacts for us. And then I’ll seal the deal. “Unless,” I’ll say, ‘you want to keep the case yourself and help me flip any vice contacts I work.” “

Johnson was impressed. “Tommy, my man, you oughta run for president. That is slick. You in, Kincaid?”

“I don’t mind taking the case, but here’s the problem: it still needs major help. The rape kit’s not back, the victim’s clothes are still at the lab, Derringer’s alibi needs work, and we still don’t have the driver. If this case is filed as an Assault Three, it’s outside MCT jurisdiction. You know the precinct detectives aren’t going to do the follow-up that’s needed.”

Garcia was a step ahead of me. “I’ll make another call to O’Donnell, telling him that you want to file the case as a major crime so MCT can keep working on it, but that MCT understands it might get bumped back down later on.”

I hate this kind of crap. The four people at the table agree what needs to happen and are willing to put in the work, but have to plot how they can even start without bruising a fragile ego.

I was skeptical. Garcia was good, but I still thought O’Donnell might see right through it and blame me when he wound up looking like a chicken shit. It would have been so easy to blame O’Donnell for the bad decision and say there was nothing I could do.

Apathy is grossly undervalued and never there for me when I need it. I was already sucked in. I’d broken up some escort services and prosecuted a few pimps, but I’d never had a chance to handle a case like this one. And, to my mind, with scum like Derringer, it was better to issue the case and lose than let him walk away up front.

“Alright, let’s give it a try,” I said.

Two.

Raymond Johnson was right. Tommy Garcia should run for office. Around nine o’clock, Tim O’Donnell popped into my office to give me a heads up that Tommy Garcia might be calling about an assault that happened over the weekend. I feigned ignorance. According to O’Donnell, the victim was a strung-out Old Town Lolita who acted surprised that a trick might want rough sex.

By ten, O’Donnell told Garcia he didn’t care what charges were filed if someone from DVD agreed to pick it up. Once I got the word from Garcia, I called O’Donnell to be sure he was aware I’d be filing Measure 11 charges against Derringer. I didn’t want him getting ticked off later.

Oregon joined the growing ranks of “tough on crime” states a few years ago when voters passed Ballot Measure 11 by a landslide. The law requires mandatory minimum sentences for the most violent felonies. Not surprisingly, once

Measure 11 defendants figured out they were facing long minimum sentences upon conviction, whether they pled out or not, they stopped pleading guilty and started rolling the dice at trial. As a result, the DA’s office stopped filing charges that fell under Measure 11 unless the bureau’s investigation was flawless. In response, PPB formed the Major Crimes Team. The precinct detectives weren’t too happy about what they understandably viewed as a demotion.

In theory, the DA’s office chose carefully which cases to file under Measure 11, because the consequences of a conviction are profound. But when it became clear that pissed-off precinct detectives were slacking on their general felony cases, the DAs started looking for creative ways to justify filing cases under Measure 11 so MCT would be responsible for the follow-up. Once the work was complete, they’d threaten the defendant with the mandatory minimum sentence in order to get him to plead guilty to whatever he should’ve been charged with in the first place. And now I had to pretend I was doing exactly that so a loser like Tim O’Donnell would give up a case he didn’t even want.

I could hear laughing in the background when O’Donnell picked up the phone. As usual, the rest of the boys in the major crimes unit were huddled in his office for mid-morning coffee and a round of “No, I’ve got the raunchiest big-tit joke.”

“Hey, Tim. It’s Samantha Kincaid. You were right. Garcia did call me about that Derringer case. I agree it’s a solid Assault Three, but MCT won’t do the follow-up unless we file it under Measure Eleven.”

“Listen, Kincaid, if you want to do the work on it, that’s fine with me. I don’t know why you’d want to. I talked to the vie at the hospital she’s a white trash junkie liar, no matter what those MCT guys tell you. The case is a loser.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right, but Garcia seems to think she might be able to get us some good vice cases.”

“Tell me the truth, Kincaid. Do you actually give a shit about those whores?” More laughter in the background. I tried to control my anger as he put the phone on speaker.

“Alright, seriously, you guys. Who in this room really cares if some sack teaches a drug addict from Rockwood how to sell it to support her junkie habit?” When no one said anything and the guffawing started again, he said, “See, Kincaid? That’s why you get all those vice cases. Ask me, we should give those guys a medal. Without them, those girls would be breaking into houses and stealing to get the money.”

When he realized I wasn’t joining in the festivities, he tried to cover. “We’re just giving you a hard time, Sam. You know that, right? Sure you do. Hey, here’s a good one. What does a Rockwood girl say right after she loses her virginity? “Get off me, Daddy, you’re crushing my smokes.” “

I’d love to be one of those people who could throw off the perfect zinger. The kind with the optimal amount of sting, but with enough of the funny stuff to keep you from looking like a freak. But in my experience, those perfect zingers never leap to mind at the right time.

“Funny, O’Donnell. Hey, hold on a sec.” I set the phone down on my desk and rushed down the hall to his office. Standing in the doorway, I could see their wee brains straining to figure out how I could be in O’Donnell’s office and on the phone at the same time. “There’s nothing funny about the Derringer case, and there’s definitely nothing funny about some guy getting over on his daughter. You say something like that to me again, and it’ll feel like someone stretched your sad little ball sack up over that big empty head of yours.”

I stormed back toward my office before I could make things worse. Behind me, I heard O’Donnell yell out, “Real nice, Kincaid,” over the other guys’ laughter. I hadn’t meant it to be funny, but if they were going to take it that way, so be it.

I had to hand it to O’Donnell. He could be a Grade A jerk, but at least the guy could take it. As I slammed down the phone in my office, I could hear his laugh above all the others.

I waited for my pulse to return to normal, then called over to the jail to make sure Derringer was still in custody. The Multnomah County holding center’s under an order from a federal judge for overcrowding. If the cells get full, the sheriff’s office is required to start releasing prisoners according to a court-created formula. In theory, a sex offender in on a parole hold should be one of the last to be released, but I’d stopped being surprised by MCSO’s decisions a long time ago.

I finally got connected to a Deputy Lamborn.

“You calling about Frank Derringer?” he asked. “Because I’ve been trying all morning to figure out who to call, and I’m getting ready to come off shift. Can’t read the PO’s signature for shit.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Well, we noticed something I thought the PO should know about. When we bring the prisoners in for booking, they’ve got to strip down out of their street clothes and put on their jail blues. Anyway, when Derringer was changing, one of the guys noticed that Derringer doesn’t have any pubic hair.”

“Come again?” I said.

“Yep, all gone down there. So, anyway, we assumed he had crabs or something and were joking around about what lucky prisoner was gonna have to share a cell with him. But then I noticed Derringer had a parole hold for an Attempted Sod One and figured a sex offender might have a more sinister reason for getting rid of the short and cur lies Thought someone should know about it.”

That someone was me. I wrote down Lamborn’s information so I could add him to my witness list. Then I cut the call short so I could call Derringer’s parole officer to see if he knew anything else.

He picked up the phone on the first ring. “Renshaw.”

I introduced myself to Dave Renshaw as the DA who was going to pick up the Derringer case, then passed along Deputy Lamborn’s observation.

“Well, I don’t like what he had to say about my penmanship, but the boy was certainly using his noggin, wasn’t he?”

“I’d say so. Unless Derringer’s got some explanation, it looks like he knew he was going out for a victim and didn’t want to leave any physical evidence behind. I was calling to see if you had anything in your file that might help. Derringer hasn’t been out on parole for long, so if we could show that no one ever noticed anything unusual about Derringer’s appearance when he was in prison “

Renshaw cut me off. “Oh, I can do better than that. One of Mr. Derringer’s parole conditions is that he submit to pethismographic examination.” My silence told him I didn’t know what that was. “Standard for most sex offenders. A counselor hooks the guy’s private parts up to an EKG and then shows slides of various sexual images. By monitoring what gets someone like Mr. Derringer hot, the counselor can see whether the parolee’s preferred fantasy images are changing with treatment or whether he’s still perverted.”

“Are you about to say what I hope?”

“Yes, ma’am. Derringer was in let’s see, I’ve got his file right here yep, just last week for his initial examination, and I was there for it.”

“And everything was normal down there?”

“I don’t know about that, but, yes, I definitely would’ve noticed if he had shaved that area, and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

“And what were the pethismograph results?” I asked.

“Oh, the doctor would tell you that Derringer was responding to treatment. Derringer’s pulse got pretty fast during some of the violent porn and stayed flat and steady during what most of us would consider straight porn, but his Johnson stayed limp the whole time. The doctor thought Derringer’s pulse raced out of nervousness that he might get caught getting off on the violence. But with what I know so far about this new case, I think Derringer was getting turned on but just wasn’t responding downstairs.”

Definitely possible. We were wrapping up the call when Renshaw said, “Now this is interesting. I was flipping through the file while we were talking. I usually get the facts of my guys’ cases straight from the police report, but intake typed in something that must’ve come from the prosecuting attorney’s file. The notes say that Derringer’s brother, Derrick, had offered himself as Derringer’s alibi witness.”

“This is on Derringer’s old case?”

“Right, the Attempted Sod,” Renshaw clarified. “I didn’t realize that Derringer ever tried to go with an alibi, but it says here that Derrick was scheduled to testify that Frank was with him when the girl said she was attacked. Then our Mr. Derringer turned around and changed his defense. Instead of saying it wasn’t him, he argued the whole thing was consensual rough sex, trying to get the case bumped down to statutory rape. In the end, Derringer pled guilty as part of a plea bargain, but that doesn’t stop him from telling me at every opportunity that the girl consented. Everyone I supervise is innocent, don’t you know.”

I thanked him profusely for all the information and assured him I’d be calling him as a witness. For now, I had other work to do.

Renshaw had lodged a detainer against Derringer based on probable cause that he’d had unsupervised contact with a minor, a violation of his parole conditions. Derringer was booked over the weekend, so his case would be called in the Justice Center arraignment court this afternoon for a release hearing. Technically, a parole detainer is enough to hold a parolee for up to sixty days pending a hearing. I would have liked to keep Derringer in custody on the violation and wait for MCT to finish the investigation before I decided what charges to file.

The problem was that the allegation underlying Derringer’s violation was essentially an allegation of new criminal conduct. In these circumstances, most local judges won’t hold the parolee in custody unless the State actually files new charges. So I needed to have a charging instrument ready in a few hours or the court might cut Derringer loose.