Judgment Calls (13 page)

I headed straight down, skipping the antiquated and over-stressed elevators for the four flights down to Judge Leeson’s courtroom. Lisa was waiting near the defense table and rose when I entered the room.

“My apologies, your honor,” I said. “I wasn’t aware of the appearance.”

“Check your docket, Ms. Kincaid.” Maria Leeson peered down at me over the top of her half-moon glasses. “Alright, Ms. Lopez, now that we’ve got a DA here who’s heard of your client, tell me again what you’re asking for.”

“Thank you, Judge Leeson. My client is currently in custody, unable to meet bail imposed by Judge Weidemann during the arraignment. He wants a speedy trial, and I’m requesting the earliest available trial date.”

Leeson pointed her glasses down at me again. “Ms. Kincaid?”

“The defendant waived his speedy trial rights at arraignment, your honor. In light of that waiver, the State requests a trial date in the usual course.” Translation: let the defendant rot for a year while I finish getting the goods against him.

“Did you waive at arraignment, Ms. Lopez?” Leeson asked.

“Only because of the limited ability to consult with my client, your honor. I was appointed to the case at arraignment and only had so much time before the case was called. Ms. Kincaid was requesting a no bail hold, so, as you can imagine, my initial discussion with my client focused on the release issue. Once that was decided, I didn’t have much choice other than to make the usual stipulations. Since then,

I’ve spoken further to Mr. Derringer. He can’t make bail, and he wants a speedy trial.”

I did my best to argue that Lopez should’ve preserved all rights at arraignment if she had any doubts, but we all knew that’s not how it works.

“Alright,” Leeson said. “I’m allowing the defendant to withdraw his waiver of speedy trial rights, meaning he gets his trial within thirty days.” Leeson held a hand up to the court reporter, indicating her wish to go off the record. “You sure about this, Lisa?”

Invoking speedy trial rights was incredibly short-sighted. The requests usually only came from newbies who’d never been in custody before. I was surprised to hear that Derringer couldn’t stick it out while his attorney prepared for trial.

Lopez shrugged. “I’ve advised Mr. Derringer against it. What can I do?”

Leeson arched her eyebrows and signaled for the court reporter to go back on record. “Alright then, let’s set a date. I got a bunch of judges out for spring break in late March, so … that means Judge Lesh two weeks from Monday.”

No way. “Your honor, this is an attempted murder case. There is physical evidence that still needs to be tested. The state needs more than two weeks.”

“Too bad, Ms. Kincaid. I don’t have anything else. If you can’t proceed when the case comes up for call before trial, Mr. Derringer will be re cogged

I had to be ready for trial in two and a half weeks, or else Derringer would be released on his own recognizance. Lopez’s strategy was a risky one. She was betting that we had only the evidence in the initial police reports. Too bad for her; she placed the bet without the benefit of the new evidence Chuck gave me. A quick trial date was fine with me.

The change in schedule gave me a good excuse to revoke the dinner invitation I had extended to Chuck. I broke the bad news to Dad and worked late instead.

My pager buzzed the next day around one as I was inhaling fish tacos at my desk. I could tell from the prefix that it was a bureau cell phone.

“Garcia.”

I recognized Tommy’s voice. “Tommy, it’s Samantha Kincaid. You page me?”

“Yeah. I was out riding with patrol checking on hot spots, when whaddaya know; your vic’s friend, Haley Jameson, is sitting with a bunch of the other street urchins outside Pioneer Courthouse.”

At any given time, you could find a pile of homeless kids hitting people up for money by the Max tracks on the north side of the federal appellate courthouse, next to fountain pools decorated with stone beavers, Portland’s unofficial mascot.

“If you’ve got the time to walk down here, I thought your connection with the vie might help me get a rapport with this girl. Otherwise, I’m left saying that I know someone who knows someone.”

I looked at the clock. “I’ve got time. Tell me where to meet you, and I’ll be right down.”

Tommy met me at the southeast corner of the Pioneer Courthouse.

“So tell me about this girl,” I said. “She been through the system?”

Garcia shook his head. “Nothing serious. Couple RJVs, loitering pops. Spent a few nights at juvie, went through LAP a couple times.”

I’d seen plenty of them before. Street kids rarely got picked up for anything more severe than runaway juvenile violations, even though they were often at the fringes of more serious crimes like robberies and assaults. If they had any experience in the system at all, it was usually for curfew violations, public drunkenness, loitering, or runaway juvenile pops. Typical arrests for those kinds of offenses resulted in a night at juvie, a trip back home or a foster placement, and maybe a little court-ordered counseling. LAP stood for Learning Alternatives to Prostitution. The probation department developed the program a few years ago. Participants were supposed to learn legitimate job skills and enough self-worth to stop seeing the sale of sex as a good deal. It might be a good program for someone serious about getting out of the life, but, like most court-ordered counseling, it was treated as a joke by the people forced to go through it to avoid jail.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“OK, here’s how we need to play it. If we single her out of the group, she’s going to use us as a way to get props from her friends. We’ve got nothing on her, so once she calls our bluff, it’s over. I’ll play it nice and tell the group they need to stop blocking the sidewalks. Get them to move on. Maybe we’ll have a shot then at talking to her alone. You act like you’re my partner.”

It was the last part I couldn’t go for. I was pretty sure my boss wouldn’t approve of one of his deputies impersonating a police officer. When Tommy was through teasing me about always following the rules, we agreed I’d fall back while he tried to break up the group.

He wasn’t in uniform, so a couple of the less savvy kids didn’t realize Tommy was a cop as he approached them. “Hey, man, spare some change?” one of them asked.

“Not today, dude.” Tommy flashed his badge. “But I do have a tip for you. Mounted patrol should be coming by in a few minutes. Why don’t you guys hightail it out of here before they give you a hard time.”

The one I was pretty sure was Haley piped up. “What do you care?”

“Honestly? I don’t care whether you go to juvie or not. But the officers doing the rounds today are coming up on reporting time, and I got a bet with a buddy at the precinct that their unit’s not going to meet their enforcement quotas this month. Listen to me or not. It’s up to you.”

That did the trick. The kids slowly started getting up, collecting their blankets and bags, and walking in separate directions in smaller groups. Haley started to cross the street to Pioneer Square. “Haley, hold up,” Tommy called after her.

She swung around toward us, throwing a large handbag over her shoulder and placing her hands on her hips. “I knew you guys were full of shit. Give me a break. Alright, man?”

Tommy held his hands up in mock surrender. “We’re not here to hook you up on anything. We wanted to see if you could give us some help with something.”

Hands still on her hips, she rolled her eyes and laughed to let us know that the notion of cooperating with the police amused her. She nodded in my direction. “Yeah, and what’s she here for, fit me for my Girl Scout uniform?”

I had some damn good tacos going soggy on my desk. The last thing I needed was for some twit to patronize me, but I did my best to keep the anger out of my voice. “I’m Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid. Sergeant Garcia and I

were hoping you could talk to us about something that happened Saturday night to a girl you might know, Kendra Martin. Take a minute with us, and we’ll buy you some lunch. You could probably use a bite to eat.”

She raised her eyes toward Tommy with anticipation. He picked up on the cue. “Twenty bucks to hear us out. Up to you whether you stay after that.”

The cash worked. We sat with her on one of the brick steps in Pioneer Square and explained that we were investigating the assault on Kendra Martin and thought she might have heard something on the street about it. We didn’t tell her that Kendra had told me that they were friends or that I had pictures of her getting it on with the Tasmanian Devil guy. She stared at us through hard eyes, lips pressed into a straight line, as we described the violence inflicted upon Kendra. I thought I saw her take a quick downward glance and a small swallow when Tommy told her that a man named Frank Derringer had been arrested and charged.

Tommy made a soft play to get information from her. “Anyway, I’ve asked around the patrol officers and they tell me you know about as much as anyone does about what goes on with the kids down here. If you can give us anything on this guy Derringer, or any other guys who might be into doing this kind of thing to a girl, we’d keep your name out of it.”

“I don’t believe you, but since I don’t know nothing about it, it don’t make a difference, does it?” Haley pulled the twenty bucks Tommy’d given her from her front pocket and shook it in front of her as she stood to face us. “Thanks for the twenty bucks, though. Losers.” She made the shape of an L on her forehead with her thumb and forefinger, just in case we missed her point.

We didn’t try to stop her as she walked away. It was clear that we didn’t have whatever it might take to get Haley Jameson to betray the life she’d committed herself to.

“Lost cause” Tommy sighed “but, hey, at least we gave it a shot. I’ll flag it in PPDS for someone to call me if she gets popped for anything down the road.”

“Tommy, I know we were only using the case to get a conversation going with her about vice, but I got the impression she knew something.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Possible. Guy like Derringer might get around. But if there’s something there, we’re not getting it from that girl.”

Six.

I usually spend the day before a trial at my dining room table, reviewing the entire file and practicing my open. I broke from habit for Derringer. The case centered around Kendra Martin, and anything I could do to boost her confidence on the stand would do far more for us than a review of the file.

Everything had gone well in front of the grand jury. I got the indictment in less than an hour, and Kendra did a good job with her testimony. Afterward, to prepare her for the actual trial, I had shown her a courtroom and even put her in the witness chair to run through her testimony. But to make her feel as comfortable as possible tomorrow under the circumstances, I wanted her comfortable with me.

It was an unusually warm day for the beginning of March in Portland, so I decided to take Kendra to the zoo. I invited Grace, too. Kendra seemed a little skittish about leaving her house, but she and Grace seemed to hit it off from the start, and it was hard not to enjoy the warm sun after months of chilling rain.

The Portland zoo is a natural habitat zoo. The advantage is obvious: Instead of being confined in concrete bunkers surrounded by metal bars, the animals get to roam freely on acres of land designed to replicate their environments of origin. The downside is that the animals use their oasis just as any reasonable person would if given the option: to avoid any unnecessary contact with meddlesome humans.

As a result, our visits to the giraffe and lion areas were unproductive. After staring at a boring mound of rocks for fifteen minutes without a single indication of a lion’s presence, I was ready to pack it in to visit lizards, snakes, anything that was stuck in a cage the old-fashioned way so that stupid humans could gawk at it, whether it liked it or not.

Something passed through my field of vision, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. Turning around, I saw a man on a cell phone standing outside the rain forest building. He wasn’t looking in our direction, but I realized I had seen him earlier at one of the other exhibits and, come to think of it, he’d been alone then too.

I gave Kendra some money to buy us all red-white-and-blue ice pops shaped like rockets. As I watched her walk over to the concession stand, I lowered my voice. “Don’t make it obvious that you’re looking, Grace, but you see that guy by the rain forest? On the phone?”

She snuck a little peek. “Sweetie, you do need to get yourself a man if you’re stooping that low.”

I looked at the guy again. “Grace, no. Yuck. It’s just isn’t it a little weird for a man to be at a zoo by himself?”

“Maybe his family’s inside, and he left to make a call.”

“I saw him earlier, though, and I think he was alone then too. It didn’t stand out at the time, but now I think he was looking at us over by the lions.”

“What lions?” She laughed.

“I’m not kidding, Grace. Maybe he’s a little pervert who’s at the zoo to watch all the kids.”

“Or maybe he’s just some suburban dad who’s trying to keep up with the office while he’s on daddy duty at the zoo, and he was looking at us because we aren’t so hard on the eyes.” She slipped into a Mae West routine.

“Hey, knock it off. I’m serious.”

“No, Sam, you’re paranoid. You’ve got crime on the mind, and you’re especially uneasy about Kendra today. If you’re really worried, we can go say something to security. Tell them to keep an eye on him.”

I thought about it. “Nah, you’re right.” I looked back at the guy. He was putting his phone away and walking into the rain forest. “I’m sure he’s harmless.”

We polished off the rocket pops and headed toward the polar bears. Grace and I were entranced, as usual, by Portland’s swimming polar bears, but I noticed that Kendra seemed a little distracted.

“You holding up OK, kiddo?” I asked.

She looked at me like I’d offered her broccoli, and then spoke extremely slowly in the event I’d suddenly become extremely stupid. “Um, yeah. Unless I’m missing something, the zoo’s not exactly a high stress kind of thing, Samantha.”