Law of Attraction (21 page)

•  •  •

Inside the yard, D’marco looked at his watch: 3:30. He stood up from his place at the concrete table. As he did, he nodded at two men on the opposite side of the yard. The two men nodded back at him and turned to each other.

“Fuck you, mothafucker!” the first one screamed, and shoved the second man.

“Fuck me? Fuck you!” The second man grabbed the first by the lapels of his orange jumpsuit. They started brawling. A crowd quickly gathered around them, yelling and egging them on.

The four guards in the yard ran over to the fight and pushed their way through the crowd. “Break it up! Break it up!” The guards grabbed at the thrashing men, trying to get them under control.

Perfect. D’marco nodded to Peanut. They were standing at the corner by the big metal door. The ledge above the door was about eight feet off the ground. Peanut locked his fingers together, forming a stirrup with his hands. D’marco put a foot in the stirrup and Peanut boosted him up with a grunt. D’marco’s head was level with the gap above the door. He peered out and saw Ray-Ray walking quickly away on the sidewalk outside. D’marco looked at the wide concrete ledge above the door. A small brown paper package sat right in the middle.

D’marco swept his arm across the ledge and grabbed the package. He hopped down from Peanut’s hands. D’marco slipped the package into his pocket and walked casually back to the table where he’d been sitting; Peanut walked the other way.

The guards were hauling away the two inmates who’d been fighting. Those prisoners would get some mild discipline, but it would be worth it for the heroin D’marco would give them later. D’marco raised his chin at them as they were led away. They’d done their jobs. The guards had been distracted by the fight, and hadn’t seen D’marco retrieve the package from above the door.

D’marco settled back at his seat at the table. His fingers stroked the
package nestled inside his pocket. He let out a sigh of pleasure, and felt something close to love as he fondled the solid feel of powder wrapped in plastic and paper.

They would make several thousand dollars on this package alone. This was a gold mine.

But it wasn’t just about the money to D’marco. Cash could get him a few perks in the jail, but he understood the limits of money inside these walls. It couldn’t buy him a comfortable bed, a flat-screen TV, a night out on the town. It wouldn’t let him sink his fingers into the soft curves of a woman’s body. No matter how much money he had in here, he would still have to sleep in a concrete box that reeked of shit and bleach. And if he got convicted, they’d ship him off to a federal prison, which could be anywhere in America. D’marco had grown up with a guy who was now serving twelve years in a federal prison in Kansas.

That’s why he needed to take this opportunity now. To D’marco, this package of drugs wasn’t just a way to make money. It was a way to get Ray-Ray used to throwing things into the jail. Once Ray-Ray got casual about smuggling drugs in like this, D’marco would ask him to get a gun. And then things could really start to happen.

19

A
nna sat back in her chair and stared at the files stacked on her desk. She was combing through the prior cases where D’marco had been charged with assaulting Laprea. In each of these cases, the charges had been dropped after Laprea went back to him. Why? Anna wondered. Why did she keep doing it? Why didn’t Laprea just leave him the first time he hit her?

But Anna knew why. At least, she knew all the theories. Experts talked about the “cycle of violence.” After a beating, the man is repentant and sweet. He promises to change. He tells the woman he loves her, he needs her. And he does need her—no one else needs her like that. No one who doesn’t hit her. So she goes back to him, hoping for the best, and for a while everything is fine. Until the next fight, when he beats her again, and the cycle starts over.

Rose had mentioned that Laprea’s father was abusive, too. That explained a lot. Something happened to little girls who grew up watching their mothers being hit—something that created an internal compass steering them into their own abusive relationships. Anna had seen the same history in so many of her cases. It was a peculiar law of attraction. Each woman subconsciously tried to re-create the relationship she’d seen between her parents.

To understand her own family, Anna had taken classes about domestic violence in college; she’d read all the literature. After she learned how often abuse was passed down through the generations, she vowed that she wouldn’t accept the inheritance of violence. That determination impacted every relationship she’d had since then.

For a moment, her thoughts turned to Nick, and how easily and naturally she’d fallen in love with him.

She wrenched her mind away from the defense attorney and focused on her computer. She needed to finish this
Drew
motion, in which she was arguing to admit evidence of the past violence in Laprea and
D’marco’s relationship. As part of the motion, Anna had to summarize all of their prior DV cases. It was depressing work. Anna reread a police report and started typing.

On October 14, 2004, at 10:15 p.m., two MPD officers responded to a radio run for a family disturbance at the home of Laprea Johnson. When they arrived at the home, the officers found Ms. Johnson standing on her front porch. She was crying, shaking, and bleeding from a small cut above her eye. As the police approached her, Ms. Johnson pointed to a man walking down the street and shouted, “My boyfriend just hit me! I want him locked up!”

Anna’s phone rang. She glanced at the incoming number; it was the receptionist transferring a call. Anna pinned the receiver to her ear with her shoulder but continued typing, trying to finish the paragraph before she lost her train of thought.

“Anna Curtis,” she answered distractedly.

“Hey, Miss Curtis, how you doin’? This D’marco Davis. I gotta talk to you.”

Her fingers froze on the keyboard.

“I’m sorry, this is
who
?”

“D’marco Davis.”

She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it, wondering if this was a prank. But she recognized his voice.

“Hello?” he said.

“Mr. . . . uh . . . Mr. Davis.” She tried to pull her thoughts together as she brought the receiver back to her ear. “I’m sorry but I can’t talk to you.”

“You busy now? I can call later.” He was annoyed but trying to sound friendly.

“No, it’s not that. It’s—you can’t call me.”

“Why not?” he demanded. D’marco paused, and she could feel him struggling to get his anger under control. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and sugary sweet. “I just wanna tell you a coupla things. ’Bout my case. They important.”

“I’d like to hear anything you want to say, but your lawyer needs to be there. We can meet, all of us together, or you can tell your lawyer anything you’d like the government to know, and he can
pass it on.”

“That ain’t happening,” D’marco replied with growing frustration. “That’s why I called you. I already told my lawyer—”

“Mr. Davis!” She cut him off. “Don’t tell me anything that was said between you and your lawyer. That’s attorney-client privileged.”

“What if I don’t want no attorney-client privilege?”

“I can’t advise you about that. You should talk to your lawyer if you want to consider waiving that privilege.”

“I’m tryin’ to tell you! I don’t wanna talk to my lawyer—”

“Mr. Davis.” She spoke over him again. “Really, I can’t speak to you. I have to go now.”

“This’s fucked up! I wanna give you information—you gotta take it! What about my rights, bitch?”

She hung up.

Anna stared at the phone as if it might bite her. She fielded crazy phone calls every day. Sometimes the family and friends of men she was prosecuting called, asking her to go easy on their loved ones, or cursing her out if she had not. Sometimes people called thinking she had the power to do all kinds of things, like take care of the rabid pit bull that lived down their street. But this was the first time she’d gotten a call from a defendant himself. Her heart was pounding from being cursed at by a furious prisoner, and her mind was filled with questions.

Why had he called her? What could he want to say that Nick wouldn’t let him say?

She was sorry she had to hang up on him. If it were up to her, she would have listened to anything he wanted to say. But the rules were clear. Prosecutors weren’t allowed to talk to defendants who had a lawyer, except with the lawyer’s permission, and she certainly didn’t have that. The rules were meant to protect the accused, to prevent the government from going behind a defense attorney’s back to get information that a defendant with the benefit of good legal advice wouldn’t reveal. They were fine rules, Anna thought. But she’d hated to hang up when D’marco clearly wanted to tell her something.

She dialed Jack’s number, and he picked up on the first ring.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Anna began. “I just got a call from D’marco Davis.”

Jack was in her doorway a minute later. “You’re kidding,” he said.

“Nope. Come on in, make yourself comfortable.”

Jack stepped easily around Grace’s files, which were stacked at
irregular intervals on the floor. He was used to navigating their messy office by this point.

“So, what happened?” he said as he sat in Grace’s desk chair.

Anna told him about the phone call. He listened with quiet concern.

“You doing okay?” he asked when she was done.

“Sure. It was just a little surprising, is all.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you. If D’marco’s going to harass anyone, I’d prefer him to choose me.”

“It comes with the territory, right? This is a homicide case, not a bake sale.” Anna tried out McGee’s words, sounding tougher than she felt. “You can’t worry every time an AUSA gets a little harassed, right? You wouldn’t have time for anything else.”

“Sure, sure.” Jack shifted uneasily in his chair. Anna wondered if he was this protective with the other attorneys he supervised. “Anyway, you did a good job handling that phone call.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Exactly. You refused to talk to him. That was the right thing to do. It’ll make our follow-up a lot easier.” Jack pointed to her phone. “We need to call Nick Wagner and inform him about this.”

“Oh.”

She just sat there, staring at Jack, trying not to panic. Jack smiled at her and nodded toward the phone. She smiled back weakly, but still didn’t move. Jack walked to her desk, hit the speakerphone button, and dialed the main number for OPD. He asked the receptionist for Nick Wagner, then sat down at Grace’s desk again as the line clicked over. Anna hoped the defense attorney wouldn’t pick up.

“Nick Wagner,” he answered.

Jack nodded to Anna; he expected her to take the lead. She cleared her throat and tried to sound normal.

“Hello, Nick, this is Anna Curtis.”

“Anna.” Nick’s voice softened. She hadn’t called him since the case started. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“I’m sitting here with Jack Bailey,” she rushed ahead. “You’re on speakerphone.”

“Hi, Nick,” Jack called, with forced cheer.

“Oh. Hello, Jack.”

“You’ll be happy to know that Ms. Curtis is looking nice again today.”

Nick paused a beat. “I am happy to know that. Is there anything else
you wanted to tell me, or is that the reason you called?”

Anna needed to get this call over with.

“Listen, Nick, we just wanted to let you know that your client called me a few minutes ago. He wanted to talk to me about the case.”

“Christ. What did he say?”

“Nothing, I wouldn’t let him talk. I told him that I’d be willing to listen to anything he wants to tell me, but only through you. Do you want to set up a meeting for that?”

“No.”

“No, I didn’t think so.”

“We’ll send you a letter documenting all this,” Jack said. “I’m also sending you a copy of the results from the CODIS search—we got the report yesterday. The father isn’t in CODIS.”

“Fine,” Nick said curtly. The news didn’t surprise anyone. The father of Laprea Johnson’s baby was not a convicted felon. That got them pretty much nowhere. It could be anyone else in the world.

“Listen . . .” Jack hesitated. “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job—”

“Then don’t.”

“Just make sure your client doesn’t call Anna again.”

“No kidding.”

The line clicked as Nick hung up.

“Asshole,” Jack muttered. “Anyway, write up a memo to the file about Davis’s call. Then call it a day. Go home, get some rest for once, forget about Davis.”

“I don’t want to rest. I want to be helpful.”

“You’re more helpful than I could have imagined when you were assigned to this case.” He smiled at her. “I’m being selfish. I don’t want you to burn out. I know you’ve been working late nights on this case. Tonight, I want you to go home early, rent a movie or—I don’t know—go rollerblading or clubbing, whatever it is you kids do these days.”

“Okay, Gramps.” She laughed, feeling some of the tension from the phone call drain from her shoulders.

“Gramps!” Jack huffed with mock indignation. “No more back talk from you, missy, or you’re grounded.”

Anna laughed. Jack was only ten years older than her, and he certainly didn’t look like anyone’s grandfather. His shaved head conveyed a tough hipness, and he was trim and athletic, moving with a lean
elegance. With his tall stature, smooth mocha skin, and striking green eyes, Anna supposed Jack would do pretty well with the ladies at a club himself. She was surprised at the thought. She’d always seen him as her stern, demanding boss, but she suddenly recognized that Jack was actually a young man.

“In the meantime,” Jack added, “I’m getting Davis cut off, for good. No more phone calls for him.”

“That should be tattooed on his forehead. ‘No phone calls for me.’”

As Jack walked out, she turned back to her computer, humming without realizing it. She was in a better mood than she’d been in for a while.

•  •  •

A few weeks passed without another word from D’marco. Jack thought the issue was closed, until one night in late September, when he sat at his desk, flipping through that day’s mail. It was the usual stuff: reports from the FBI, memoranda from MPD, D.C.
Bar Bulletin
s. Then he saw an unusual envelope, light blue and slightly crumpled, with his name and address handwritten in bold, slashing strokes. Jack looked at the return address: D’marco Davis’s name, prisoner ID number, and the address of the D.C. Jail. Jack shook his head. Without opening the envelope, he walked it down the hall to the war room.