Judgment Calls (7 page)

Someone picked up after four rings. “Walker.”

“Detective Walker, it’s Samantha Kincaid at the DA’s office. I’m calling about the Derringer case.”

“Sure. What can I do you for?”

I told him what I’d found out the day before from Deputy Lamborn and Dave Renshaw.

“Oh, hang on a sec. The rest of the guys have got to hear this.” I heard him put me on speaker. “You want to tell ‘em or should I?”

Figuring I was more likely than Walker to keep the conversation on track, I repeated the information about Derrick Derringer’s previous offer to serve as an alibi witness for his brother and then got to the part about Derringer’s body hair.

Walker couldn’t help himself. “Can you believe what a fucking waste of time and money that is? Everyone knows these guys never change. They just get off having someone watch them watch that smut. But the system manages to find the money to pay some doctor to handle these guys’ Johnsons, when it could use the money to keep them in the pen where they belong.”

I heard Ray Johnson nearby. “How many times I gotta tell you that you make my workplace hostile when you call something like that ajohnson, man? So, Kincaid, what’s the doctor say about Derringer’s broken pecker?”

I certainly didn’t know what it meant. “Look, five different shrinks could probably come up with five interpretations. What’s important is that we know Derringer shaved within a few days of the attack. That’s big. Any news on that end?”

“No,” Walker replied. “The lab’s still working the rape kit and the other evidence. No leads on who this second guy is. Ray’s looking at Derringer’s known associates from before he went to the pen, but nothing yet. So far, Derringer’s only calls from the jail have been to his brother. He’s playing it cool.”

“Alright, let me know if you get anything new. Also, I need one of you to come out to Kendra Martin’s with me tonight. Grand jury’s on Friday, and I want to prep this girl while she’s still on board.”

“Geez. I really want to help you out on this one, since you’re going out of your way for us. But my anniversary’s tonight. The wife’s got the whole night planned: dinner, some dance thing. She’ll kill me if I cancel on her.”

“Don’t let me mess up your marriage. It doesn’t really matter who goes. I just need a witness.”

“Hold on. Hey, Ray. Can you run out to Rockwood with Kincaid tonight to interview the Martin girl? She wants to get her ready for grand jury on Friday, and she needs a witness.”

“Depends what you mean, can I go? I can go, if it needs to be done. But Jack, you know my mama flew up from Call today. She’s probably at my house waitin’ on me as we speak. What kind of boy am I to go on OT while my mama’s in town? Can I go out with her tomorrow, or does it have to be tonight?”

I heard another voice farther in the background. “Go home to your mama, Ray. I’ll go.”

Uh-oh. I knew that voice. “That’s alright, Jack,” I said hastily. “It’s probably better to go out there with someone who’s already met Kendra. It can wait until tomorrow.”

“It’s up to you, but Chuck can go. He’s met the Martin girl too. He and Mike went to talk to the mom on Sunday and stopped by the house to check on Kendra.” He yelled into the background, “Hey, Chuck. You get a pretty good rapport with the girl?”

I heard something; then Ray came back on the line. “Yeah, he says things went real good. He took over some CDs that were donated by the rape victims’ advocates.”

There was no easy way out of this one. I wanted to talk to Kendra tonight, and Chuck made as much sense to take along as anyone. “If he’s willing to go, that works for me. Can you ask him to meet me in front of the Martin house at seven?”

He was waiting for me with a Happy Meal in one hand. He held the box up as I got out of my car in front of Kendra Martin’s house. “Mommy Martin didn’t strike me as the type to make sure there was a pot roast on the table by supper-time. I figured Kendra might want something to eat. I would’ve picked up something for you, but then I pictured you trying to run it off at midnight.”

“Very funny.” Call me an extremist; I have a tendency to couple large meals with monster runs. It had been two months since we’d seen each other, and he was already trying to pull me into our flirtatious rhythm. I was determined to make this quick, but as I started walking to the front door, I realized he wasn’t following.

I turned around and walked back to where he still stood with a grin on his face. “What the hell’s so funny, Forbes?”

“Oh, so it’s Forbes now?”

“Hey, you’ve always called me Kincaid.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve always called me Chuck. Am I supposed to call you something different now too?”

“You can call me whatever you want, as long as you keep your smart-ass comments to yourself while I interview Ken-dra Martin.”

“They teach you those manners at Hah-vud?”

“Give me a break. Last time I checked, that little park we call the waterfront was still named after your daddy.”

“Yeah, and look at all the good that being the governor’s son has done me. Driving fifteen miles out of my way on my night off for your interview, standing here with a McMeal for your witness. The last time I checked, Kincaid, you and I were still friends. Would it kill you to at least say hi to me before we head in for work?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “No, it wouldn’t. You’re right. Hi. Hi, Chuck. It’s nice to see you. Now can we go do my interview?”

“Yes. And it’s nice to see you too.”

I rang the doorbell. I could hear obnoxious music, the kind that started to sound like noise when I turned thirty, blaring from inside. I rang the doorbell again and then banged on the door. I felt him standing behind me while we waited on the porch in silence. When I heard the music get lower and footsteps approach the door, I looked at him over my shoulder. “That was nice of you. To bring her some dinner, I mean.”

“Thanks.”

I couldn’t tell what Kendra Martin looked like when she answered the door, because her face was obscured by a big pink gum bubble. It popped to reveal a thin pale girl with doe eyes and full lips. Her wavy, dark hair stopped right below her shoulders. She wore an Eminem sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that looked like they’d fit my father. So far, she seemed like a typical thirteen-year-old.

She looked past me at Chuck. “What’re you doing here?”

“I came by to see whether you listened to anything I told you on Sunday. What did I tell you about looking out the window to see who’s here before you open the door to anyone?”

She shifted her weight all the way to one leg and swung her hip one direction and tilted her head in the other. “I guess I forgot this time. Anyway, it was you, so it’s OK, right?” She twisted a lock of hair with her fingers. Obviously Chuck Forbes’s magnetism was not lost on this new generation of teenage girls.

“OK, we’ll treat that as a test run. But I mean it: From now on, you have to look before you open that door. If it’s someone you don’t know, you don’t answer. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it. Whaddaya doin’ here?”

“I brought someone over who I want you to meet. This is Samantha Kincaid.”

Kendra looked at me without saying a word. Then she smiled at Chuck and popped her gum. “She your girlfriend?”

Chuck looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “No, she’s not my girlfriend. But she is a really good friend of mine, and she’s a DA. She’s going to be handling your case.”

I held out my hand to her. She shook it but looked down at the floor while she did it.

“It’s nice to meet you, Kendra. I’ve heard a lot about you. Detectives Walker and Johnson tell me you did a real good job helping them at the hospital last weekend.”

“That’s funny. They told Chuck and Mike I acted like demon spawn.”

“They might’ve mentioned something like that to me too. But they also said you were very helpful. Do you mind if we come in?”

She looked at the box in Chuck’s hand. He said, “I thought you might be hungry. The fries are still hot.”

“Come on in.” She took the box from Chuck. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. It was Sam’s idea, anyway.”

“Thank you,” she said to me.

I looked at Chuck. “It wasn’t a problem. Really.”

The Martin house wasn’t what I expected. I had braced myself for the worst. Unfortunately, I’d gotten used to the fact that an entire segment of the population raises its children in filthy homes that don’t look like they could possibly exist in the United States. Last year, police went to an apartment on a noise complaint and found nine children alone in a one-bedroom apartment. They all slept on the same bare, stained mattress on the bedroom floor. The carpets were soaked with cat urine and feces. The kids had been alone for a week and were living off of dry cat food and some candy bars that the oldest child, an eight-year-old boy, had been given to sell for the school choir.

Their mothers, two sisters in their early twenties, had left on a meth hinge. As they later told police, they lost track of time and never meant to leave their kids alone. It turned out that maternal neglect was the least of the kids’ problems. By the time the investigation was over, police learned that all of the children had been sexually assaulted. Their mothers had accepted drugs and money in exchange for permitting various men to take the children of their choice into the apartment’s bedroom alone.

From what I’d heard about Kendra Martin’s troubles and her mother’s parenting style, I had expected their house to be a hellhole. I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. The house was cleaner than my own and reflected the efforts of someone trying to do her best without much to work with. A crisp clean swath of blue cotton was draped over what I suspected was an old and tattered sofa. In the corner, a thirteen-inch television sat on a wooden tray table. In a move that Martha Stewart would envy, someone had made a lamp base out of an old milk jug.

“Kendra, I don’t want to tell you things you already know, so let me start by asking you whether you have any questions about what a DA does.”

“Not really.”

“What do you think my job is?”

“You’re kind of my lawyer, right?”

“Well, technically my client is the State. But in this case, my goal is to help prove who did this to you and then convince the court to put them in prison for a long time. When we do go to court, I’ll be the one who asks you most of the questions. So in some ways it will be like I’m your lawyer. Have you ever testified before?”

“No. I got in some trouble after Christmas.” She looked at Chuck. “She knows about that, right?”

“Yes, I know you were arrested on Christmas.”

“Well, I went to juvie on that, but no charges were filed so I didn’t have to talk or anything.”

“You’re going to need to testify this Friday, but you don’t need to worry about that. Friday’s going to be in front of a grand jury: it’ll just be me, you, and seven jurors. The man the police arrested won’t be there, and there’s no defense attorney or judge. I’ll ask you questions, and the grand jurors will listen to your answers. Then they’ll decide whether to charge him. Assuming he’s charged, there might be a trial later on, and that’s more like what you see on TV. Does that sound OK?”

“I guess.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Not so good.”

“You staying clean?”

“Yeah, so far. I didn’t really think it would be this hard, though.”

I could tell she was having problems. She wasn’t as bad off as older addicts I’ve seen withdrawing in custody, but it wasn’t going to be easy for her. I suspected the only reason she wasn’t out using again was that she didn’t have any money and was scared shitless to hit the street again.

“Is it alright if we talk about what happened?”

“I guess so. Is it OK if I go ahead and eat?”

I hadn’t noticed she’d been holding off. “Go for it.”

She opened the box tentatively and ate the fries one by one, taking small bites and chewing slowly.

“Had you ever seen either of these men before?”

“Unh-unh.”

“So you don’t think they were ever customers of yours or knew you from somewhere before?”

“I don’t know where they’d know me from. They didn’t look familiar or anything like that.”

I couldn’t tell if she was avoiding my question about prior customers or if she believed she’d already answered it.

“So, you’re sure they weren’t customers?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I would’ve recognized ‘em if they were. I haven’t done it that many times.”

Poor girl. She probably justified what she did by telling herself that she wasn’t really a prostitute if she didn’t do it often and stopped before she was older.

“Was there anyone else around when they were talking to you or when you got pulled into the car?”

“No. When they stopped the car, I looked around to make sure no one was watching before I started talking to them. I didn’t want to get caught again after what happened on Christmas. I think there might’ve been one homeless guy sitting on the corner, but he looked really out of it.”

I looked over at Chuck. “We canvassed the area and didn’t find any witnesses,” he said. “We found a guy who usually sleeps on that corner, but he didn’t see anything.”

“Kendra, the police have already told me what they know about what happened. But, if it’s alright with you, I’d like you to tell me in your own words. I need you to be completely honest with me, even though parts of it might be embarrassing. No one here is going to be mad at you or get you in trouble for anything you say.”

She started from the beginning and told me everything. I never needed to prompt her, and she continued talking even when she was clearly very upset about what happened. Her statement was consistent with what she told Walker and Johnson the night of the assault. She would make a great

GO

witness, but unfortunately she did not reveal anything I didn’t already know. I’d been hoping for some new avenue of investigation.

I told her I understood why she initially kept some information from Detectives Walker and Johnson at the hospital, but that I’d be asking her to explain it to the grand jurors.

“I don’t even remember much about when they first came into the room. Whatever that doctor gave me had me feeling really sick. I just remember being mad.”