The conversation with Doug Connaboy reverberated loudly in my mind, when what I really wanted to be thinking about was the afternoon’s meeting with David, Julie and her client. How could I banish the unwelcome thoughts? A massage? A Bloody Mary?
Remember what Grandma Burnett always told you: You can’t really escape from something unless you know what it is.
I walked out of the federal courthouse and dialed a number I knew by heart—the DA’s office—and asked to speak with Jerry Alexander.
“You must have ESP,” he said when he answered. “Tom Robbins is sitting here in my office, and we’re discussing something we hope you can help with. Any chance you can come by?”
I looked at my watch: eleven-thirty. “I can be there in five minutes and can spare about an hour. Will that do?”
“Sure. See you soon.”
**
I had been back to the District Attorney’s office several times since my resignation, usually for special occasions like baby showers and farewell parties. I’d had mixed emotions each time. The camaraderie I experienced during my tenure as a prosecutor was unparalleled. But so were the pressures.
Today, I received hugs and warm greetings from many of my old co-workers. It took me ten minutes to move from the reception area, past the lunchroom—smelling, as always, of burned coffee—and fifteen feet down the hall to Jerry’s office.
It looked just as I remembered. Beige walls adorned with dozens of framed political cartoons. A nondescript desk buried under stacks and stacks of legal files and an empty pizza box. Tom Robbins occupied the only comfortable chair. He rose and engulfed me in his arms. “You’re too thin, Miz Caroline! Ain’t your husband makin’ enough to feed you?” he said with a grin.
I laughed and turned to Jerry. His greeting, while warm, was decidedly less demonstrative. Shortly before I’d left the office, we had jointly prosecuted a major trial. We worked flawlessly together and presented a strong case. In my office, while waiting for the jury to deliberate, Jerry had put his hand on my shoulder. An innocent gesture—a platonic move made in offices everywhere every day. But this time it was different. I knew as well as I knew my own name he’d felt the same electricity I did. We had never spoken of it, but we had never again stood as closely to one another.
“It’s good to see you, Jerry.” I said.
“You, too,” He moved his gym bag from another chair and motioned for me to sit. “Would you like a cup of coffee or anything?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Like I told you, I’m kind of pressed for time, and there’s something I wanted to ask you about, too. How ‘bout you go first?”
Jerry nodded. “I’ll let Tom explain.”
“As you know, Caroline, I’m in charge of investigating criminal conduct within the jail,” Tom said. “I recently busted a deputy named Anita Jackson for bringing in coke. It’s a damn shame, too, ‘cause she was one of my better people. She’d been on the job about two years. A sister. Single mom, supporting herself and her two kids. Always glad to work overtime.
“Last week we did a shake-down of the women’s cell block and found two eight-balls of coke. The inmates snitched on Anita in a heartbeat. They’ll roll on anybody to save their own asses. Once the administration had her name, they insisted on setting her up. She was caught on video making a delivery.”
I knew where this was going—and I didn’t like it.
“Anita broke down immediately and gave a full confession,” Tom said. “She said the first time she brought in coke was several weeks ago—for your client, Dr. Daniels.”
“Oh, man—” I started to protest.
“Hold on,” said Jerry. “We don’t think Kathryn Daniels set it up or even suggested it. Her pusher friend did that.”
“Who’s ‘her pusher friend’?” I asked.
“Joe Ames.”
Joe Ames? I had a vague recollection of seeing that name somewhere in the discovery materials from George Cooper and struggled to recall in what context. It wasn’t coming to me.
“I presume from your reaction the name is familiar to you?” Jerry asked.
I shrugged.
Tom shifted in his chair and continued. “As we’ve reconstructed it, Joe Ames, claiming to be your client’s brother, visited her on her first night in jail. We don’t believe she’d made any outgoing phone calls, so he must have decided to visit on his own. We presume he asked her if she’d like him to get her some cocaine and she said yes. But their conversation wasn’t one of the ones being monitored that evening.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, though it didn’t matter to me. In reality, I was stalling. I needed time to digest what I was hearing.
“Lack of manpower and equipment,” Tom said with a sigh. “Our visiting room officers have to focus on the folks they think are most suspicious. Ames walked in looking like a businessman visiting his college professor sister, and the officers figured they should concentrate on the gang-bangers in the next booth instead. Ninety percent of the time they would’ve been right.”
“Ames is slick one,” Jerry said. “He and his wife have a catering and cleaning business—mostly a front—through which he runs his drug money. He even takes phone orders and accepts credit card payments. Meaning Kate could charge her cocaine by phone from the jail. From the volume of credit card receipts we’ve looked at, a number of professional people regularly availed themselves of the ‘catering’ and ‘cleaning’ services.”
“But how did he hook up with Anita Jackson?” I asked.
“We’re not sure why he targeted her,” said Jerry. “He started grooming Anita some time ago. Somehow he found out where she lived. At any rate, he followed her when she walked her kids to school one morning. Struck up a conversation about how she was smart to see them to school. So many bad things can happen to kids these days. Then he started talking about how much it costs to raise kids. How they’re always needing braces or shoes. Anita told us she wanted to run away from this guy but felt she needed to see what he was getting at.”
My stomach felt queasy. “Ames used her kids to get her to comply?” I asked.
“You got it,” Tom said. “Eventually he made it clear: he’d pay her to smuggle drugs into specific prisoners at the jail. But the bigger perk was his implicit agreement not to hurt her kids. He gave her a couple grams of coke to deliver to your client, and Anita reluctantly agreed.”
“Why didn’t she come to you for help, Tom?”
“I wish she had. But she wasn’t confident the cops would be able to protect her kids. A couple years ago, one of her cousins agreed to testify against her gangster boyfriend—with the understanding, of course, that she’d receive protection—and ended up bludgeoned to death with a brick.”
“I remember that case,” I said, grimacing. “The detective assigned to the case got fired, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Jerry said, “but three months too late for the victim.”
Tom continued, “Since Anita’s agreed to testify against Joe Ames, we’ve moved her and her mother and the kids. It’s pretty disruptive, but I think we can keep ‘em safe.”
“Kate was only in jail a few days. How did Ames get other buyers there?” I asked.
“You know the inmate grapevine,” Jerry said. “Before long, five other inmates were placing phone-in orders.”
Jerry ran his hand through his hair. “We’d like your client to testify against Ames. Anita’s testimony might not be enough by itself, and your client could seal our case.”
“I’ll talk with Kate about it as soon as I can.”
Tom got up to leave. “It’s important, Caroline. We need to put this asshole away.” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and was out the door.
Jerry shifted in his chair and loosened his tie. “What did you want to talk to me about?” he asked.
“Doug Connaboy is threatening that you’ll prosecute Kate Daniels for obstruction of evidence in the Yvonne Pritchard case.”
“Yeah. I talked with him the other day. He thinks she’s protecting someone.”
“My client swears she’s not. And has volunteered to take a polygraph,” I said.
“You know we don’t have the resources to hook someone up to the machine every time we think they’re lying. Doug has an uncanny ability to see through bullshit. And frankly, I think your client’s handing you a load of it. Has it occurred to you that Pritchard’s dealer and Joe Ames might be one and the same?”
To my own consternation, none of this had occurred to me. But Jerry didn’t need to know that. “I’ll consider what you’ve said,” I said. “What happens now?”
“I don’t have the time or inclination to prosecute Kate Daniels for possessing cocaine in jail. I just want her testimony about it. But more than anything, I want whoever sold drugs to that poor dead girl. If your client knows who it was and doesn’t come clean, I won’t hesitate to go after her with everything I’ve got.”
“Thanks for your candor,” I said, though I didn’t like his message. “I’ll be in touch.” There was no electricity and no warmth when I shook Jerry’s hand to leave. Yet another example of how Kate Daniels was driving a wedge between me and the “good guys” who’d known and respected me for years.
**
The walk back to my office calmed me some, but my nerves were still raw when I walked in. Rosalee was off this afternoon, and without her I felt suddenly rudderless—and famished. I grabbed a granola bar from my desk drawer and inhaled it, taking the edge off and enabling me to think.
David met me in my office a few minutes before two o’clock. I told him the judge had allowed Kate to remain at the treatment center; David told me briefly about his morning. And then it was time for our meeting.
“Is this what it’s like when you’re in a trial?” he asked. “I feel like I’m going to be judged by a jury.”
“I’m a lot more confident in a courtroom,” I whispered as we walked into the conference room where Julie Wutherspoon and the young couple were waiting.
I couldn’t help but stare: the child of these two kids would be a knockout.
Miriam, a tiny girl with cherub cheeks, ice blue eyes and picture-perfect teeth, spoke with a confidence beyond her eighteen years. “Thank you so much for seeing us. This is the most important decision we’ll ever make, and we don’t believe we can do so without personally meeting the prospective parents.”
Antonio, her boyfriend, was quieter but equally impressive. His deep, dark eyes were warm and welcoming, and when he smiled, a disarming dimple appeared in his cheek. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said in flawless, unaccented English.
Handshakes and introductions complete, Julie motioned for us all to take our seats. Miriam and Antonio sat next to one another, holding hands. Julie sat to Miriam’s right, and David and I sat across the table from them.
“Why don’t you tell the Spencers a little about yourselves?” Julie said.
“Sure,” Miriam said. “I’m a senior at Edgewood High School. I’ve already got enough credits to graduate, so I won’t have to attend this coming spring if the pregnancy gets too rough. My parents want me to do the Ivy League thing, and my grades and SATs should be good enough for that. But,” she said, looking at her boyfriend with adoration, “I’m leaning toward somewhere closer to home. Antonio graduated from West High School last year, and he’s been going to tech school part-time while working with his father. We struck up a friendship about a year ago when they were doing a landscape project at my parents’ house.” She nodded for him to chime in.
“I knew right away I wanted us to be more than friends,” Antonio said—and there was that dimple. “But we took it slow and didn’t really become a couple until last spring. My family loves Miriam, but, unfortunately, her parents don’t feel the same way about me. They went ballistic when they found out about the pregnancy. And rightly so: we should’ve been more careful.”
“We love each other,” Miriam said. “But we’re smart enough to know we’re unprepared for a family at this point. We want this child to have the best possible chance for happiness.”
“Do you want to remain involved in the child’s life?” I asked before I could censor myself.
Antonio looked at Miriam, whose eyes instantly welled with tears. “We’ve thought a lot about that question,” he said. “We think it would be too confusing for the child—and too hard on everyone. So… no. No contact, no pictures, no updates.”
I sighed silently with relief. A complicated relationship with one birth parent was more than enough for us to handle.
They talked of their future plans. Antonio intended to get a degree in landscape architecture and to take over his father’s business, which currently had twenty employees. Miriam leaned toward a career in social work. They told us they’d never used drugs, rarely drank alcohol, and Miriam hadn’t touched a drop since the EPT stick read “yes.”
And then it was our turn. Miriam and Antonio asked David and me more questions than I could have imagined: about our marriage, our careers, our child-rearing philosophies, and Lily’s adjustment. We smiled through it all, though my facial muscles grew tired from the tension I felt.
“Beatles or Stones?” Miriam finally asked, then giggled at the puzzled look on my face. “Sorry—we had a bet on it.”
When I replied, “Beatles. Definitely!” she pumped her fist with glee.
I glanced at Julie, who pursed her lips and scowled. Giggling and fist pumping were definitely not in her repertoire of behaviors, and I doubted she had a position on the ‘Beatles versus Stones’ question. She looked at David and me. “I think we’re finished here, but why don’t you two give us a few minutes so I can confer with my clients. I just want to make sure we’ve covered all the bases.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll wait in the reception area while you talk. Come get us when you’re ready.” David and I pushed our chairs from the table, got up and walked into the hallway. If felt awkward to me. Should we have said something on the way out? It wasn’t clear to me whether we’d have another chance to talk with Miriam and Antonio.
David and I sat next to one another on a couch in the waiting area. “These are great kids,” I said, grabbing his hand. “I sure hope they like us.”
“I think they like us.” We sat in silence, periodically looking at the wall clock and crossing and uncrossing our legs. When Julie came out to see us ten minutes later, I could read nothing in her facial expression. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head in irritation. “Before they decide,” she said, “they want to meet Lily and ask her some questions.”
My heart jumped into my throat. I looked over at David as he pulled his hand from mine. He stood up abruptly and turned to walk toward my office. “No,” he said. “That’s not gonna happen.”