No Matter How Loud I Shout (6 page)

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During the pause between cases, Peggy Beckstrand approaches a public defender manning the defense table. They need to confer on a murder case they are trying together—the
People v. Ronald Duncan.
The trial of the kid accused of murdering the owners of a nearby Baskin Robbins store has become the most infamous—and certainly the most brutal—case currently on display in the Inglewood courthouse. Although her duties as deputy in charge are primarily administrative, Peggy is handling the case personally, unwilling to entrust it to one of the young DAs barely out of law school assigned to her office. Something about the way that short, squat kid with the scraggly goatee walks grinning and waving into court for each hearing—as if he was in on a curfew violation, not a double homicide—just infuriates Peggy. She is determined to win his conviction, despite the absolute certainty that, no matter how great her labors, she will not find the outcome either satisfying or just.

“We're supposed to set a trial date today,” Peggy reminds the PD, knowing the lawyer will complain about needing more time, standard procedure in Juvenile Court. Nothing happens when scheduled. Nothing.

“I'm going to need more time,” the defense lawyer says, eyeing her opponent cautiously. Peggy and the head public defender in Inglewood have been battling recently; the PD's office just finished an unsuccessful attempt to have one of Peggy's young prosecutors censured for misconduct. The fallout has left the two offices quibbling over the most routine matters, further slowing down a process that only crawls on its best day. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Peggy knows there would be no point in fighting it. Defendants in Juvenile
Court, particularly those accused of murder, are pretty much entitled to unlimited delays, unlike prosecutors, who must be ready at the appointed hour, or lose. Besides, Peggy cannot find her star witness in the case, a potential disaster on the horizon. She didn't want to telegraph this by asking for a postponement of her own, and she conceals her glee at being taken off the hook with a chagrined expression and a tired shrug. “I guess not,” she says. “It's not like Ronald's going anywhere.” The hypocrisy implicit in playing such games bothers her, but they are a big part of the process here, a shabby mirror image of adult court. In both venues, winning the case is everything. Figuring out what's best for a kid—and for the community—well, that isn't her job. Peggy's job is to get a conviction. Her opponent's is to do whatever it takes to get an acquittal. Only when that contest is resolved does the Juvenile Court take up the question of what to do about a screwed-up kid. Like so many other initiates of the juvenile justice system, Peggy despises this order of priorities, while feeling powerless to change it.

The two lawyers agree on a new trial date, knowing the judge will go along with whatever they want. “I think the family is hiring private counsel anyway,” the PD says, “so I doubt that I'll be trying this case.”

Peggy looks at her for a moment, then, with a bitter sincerity she didn't mean to show, says, “Lucky you.”

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With the question of the trial date for Ronald Duncan settled, Peggy lingers in Dorn's courtroom long enough to watch him give probation to a seventeen-year-old girl convicted of driving the getaway car in a bank robbery—a shockingly lenient sentence, Peggy fumes to herself. The girl is articulate and attractive, despite her cartoonishly long, red-lacquered nails extending daggerlike from each finger. But she also has prior arrests for threatening a teacher with her fists and a fellow student with a knife, and she is believed by police to have ties to the infamous Rolling Sixties street gang as well, one of the toughest, deadliest in LA, with branch “offices” nationwide for dealing crack, and a series of bank jobs and daring Las Vegas casino robberies to its credit. Both the prosecution and the Probation Department have asked that this girl be locked up in the California Youth Authority, widely considered the biggest, toughest juvenile prison system in the country. But Dorn is impressed by the girl's membership in a church choir and her plans to go to college, where, she says without a trace of irony, she plans to study to be a police officer or a CIA agent.

“I daresay very few bench officers would send you home on probation for this,” Dorn says, and Peggy can't help nodding, then hoping Dorn didn't see her.
“I'm giving you a rare chance. No one can love themselves robbing a bank. Sooner or later, you'll end up in the penitentiary or the cemetery unless you change.”

The girl leaves all smiles, her own lawyer blinking in surprise at the outcome. But moments later, this same judge lambastes the prosecutor assigned to his courtroom for being too lenient with a thirteen-year-old first-time offender accused of breaking into a car. As often happens in such a case, the prosecutor horse-traded the case down from a felony to a misdemeanor, something few judges would care about, but which Dorn hates. Felonies carry longer sentences—they let Dorn take charge of a kid's life for years, rather than the few months that misdemeanors allow.

“You on the wrong side of the table, that's your problem,” Dorn announces, employing the greatest insult possible for a prosecutor—accusing him of acting like a defense lawyer. Then he pointedly stares straight at Peggy as she sits in back. “Maybe no one has taken the time to explain to you how Juvenile Court works. . . . Next time, check with me before you tie my hands.
I'm
the judge, not you.”

Most of the people in court crane their heads around to see whom Dorn is addressing. Peggy just smiles, waits until the next case is called, then walks out, if a little stiffly. It was all posturing, she chafes later. Dorn accepted the misdemeanor plea anyway, then imposed exactly the same sentence as he would have had the kid received a felony conviction: probation, a seven o'clock curfew, and the cemetery-penitentiary lecture. For better or worse, first-time auto burglaries are routinely pleaded down to misdemeanors—the system would seize up like an engine with no oil if such deals were not cut daily and every case went to trial. Dorn knows this—he was a prosecutor himself once, Peggy says. The criticism is just his way of announcing who is in charge.

As Peggy leaves, she stops in the hallway to chat with a juvenile probation officer who wants help with a girl gangbanger named Carla James. In the background, though, Peggy can't help but listen to the young thief Dorn just sentenced—a sharp-faced little kid in surf dude clothes and a blond mushroom haircut—leave court and say with dripping sarcasm, “Great judge.” Then, safely through the door and into the raucous hallway, he blows a raspberry in Dorn's direction.

“You'd better cut it out,” his father says weakly.

The kid, showing who in the courthouse is truly in charge, stalks off, but not before glancing over his shoulder and telling his dad with practiced scorn, “Just shut up.”

On the day Carla James became a casualty of juvenile crime, she earned an A on her English test, a B in math, and a mild rebuke for missing a history paper deadline, and then she stayed late after school. The staying late was not for the purpose of punishment, but so Carla could perform her regular volunteer work in the school office, taking care of files, answering phones, doing photocopying—generally making herself indispensable to the school staff. Carla was always offering to help out, the kind of kid adults naturally trusted, who did what she said she would do and did it well. Some of her teachers even joked that, some days, Carla seemed to run the place. Her face would split into a huge smile at that—everyone said her smile was dazzling—and she would nod and say something cocky like, “You're right. I do.”

This day, though, Carla had been uncharacteristically quiet. She kept pausing in her work to root around inside her bulging backpack, as if she were afraid of losing something inside. Each time, she carefully snapped shut the pack when she was through, then stowed it out of sight. Five minutes later, she'd be rooting again.

“You look tired today, Carla,” the school counselor commented, poking her head into the office area. Carla appeared startled for a second, almost guilty, then quickly closed and put aside her book bag. The counselor said, “Is everything all right?”

Carla looked up and smiled then, that broad, infectious grin of hers, a model's straight, white teeth gleaming. “Sure,” the girl said. “I was just up a little too late. I'm fine.”

The counselor nodded, studying the tall, thin, charming fifteen-year-old a moment. She had taken a special interest in Carla, ever since her normally excellent grades had begun to slip and her absences began to grow. They visited outside school and talked often on the phone. Carla had opened up to her for a time, revealing how troubled she was beneath her surface élan. She was especially upset about her mother's recent remarriage, five years after Carla's father died in a car wreck. Lately, though, the girl had been pulling back again, dodging the counselor. “We should talk,” the counselor said. “Call me later?”

“Sure,” Carla promised.

But Carla knew she would not call. She could not tell her counselor the real reason she was so tired, how she had not cracked open the front door of her house that morning until just after dawn, the sun still low and weak over the Los Angeles Basin, its light devoid of warmth, barely piercing air the color of watery brown pudding. She had stuck her head in, the living room silent and empty, no sounds coming from the kitchen, her mother and stepfather already gone for the day to work. Good, she had thought—she wouldn't have to hear the same old
your life's headed down the toilet, nice girls don't stay out all hours
speech from her mom. Carla knew her mother was beside herself over the suddenly late hours and disobedient behavior, assuming she was sleeping around. Carla did not correct this misimpression. That would mean having to explain what she really was doing.

Upstairs, Carla had locked herself in the bathroom, showered, then stared into the mirror for a long time. She had been wanting to do this all night, a burning curiosity that had gripped her as soon as the hot edge of fear at what she had done had dulled. Would she—would anyone?—see a difference in her face? Would it be obvious to everyone what had happened? Carla thought about the Shakespeare her English class had read a few months earlier, a lot of stuff she didn't understand, but that scene with Lady Macbeth, struggling in vain to wash the blood from her hands—that had stuck with her. She had even dreamt about it. Would it be the same now with her? Would it show in her eyes, her expression?

She had leaned close, bending over the sink, the medicine chest mirror close enough to steam up with each breath. The same old face had stared back at her, the same long blond hair, the same high cheekbones and ski-jump nose, the smooth skin untouched by makeup—the features boys kept
telling her were so hot and that she couldn't stand, because they got in the way of her being one of the guys. She had searched for signs of guilt, of fear, of evil—for imaginary blood that could not be scrubbed clean—but, to her immense relief, she saw no change. She had not felt guilty, not much, anyway. What she really felt, she had decided, was bursting with life, her secret coursing through her like jet fuel. At school, she concluded, they would have no clue. They would see what they wanted to see, a good kid, popular and polite, a girl who loved school, who liked to help: Carla James, honors student. They would see it because it was true. It just wasn't the whole truth.

“I'll call you later,” Carla lied, looking straight into the counselor's eyes, seeing genuine affection and concern there, and feeling a slight pang at her deceit. But at the same time, she felt relief, because Carla could see the counselor had no idea—she just thought Carla was tired. Her secret was safe. Before she walked through the door, excitement about the night ahead pushed conscience out of the way. She slung her pack over one shoulder, felt the comforting weight of the gun inside, and strode off the school grounds, returning to that new, separate life of hers, another night away from home, another adventure without end. Except it did end, and all too abruptly.

The next morning, Carla did not go to the school office before class as she normally did. Instead, two sheriff's deputies showed up. They had come about Carla. There had been a shooting, they said. A drive-by shooting.

“Oh, my God! How did it happen?” the counselor exclaimed, thinking, It's always the good ones who get hurt. The papers were full of stories like that: Honors student slain. She felt tears welling as office workers crowded around to hear the appalling news. She had sensed something was wrong, berating herself for not doing something more for a child she had come to think of as a daughter. The counselor whispered, “Is Carla all right?”

One of the cops looked at her strangely for a moment. Then he said, “You don't understand. We're looking for Carla James. She's not the victim of a drive-by. She's the shooter.”