TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2
The October air held the bite of fall as Jaime pushed out a breath and entered the domain of the enemy. The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s offices in Arlington were located in a tall stone building near the courthouse Metro station just minutes down the road and across the Potomac from Washington, DC.
She’d spent time on the opposing side of each attorney in the Commonwealth’s office. Would the person assigned to her for this conversation see her as the enemy as well? Or would the attorney be willing to dig deeper into the heart of Jaime’s conflict?
She didn’t know, and that had her moving with hesitant steps.
This appointment was her birthday present to herself. Rolling back two decades wouldn’t be easy, but it was time. She crossed the lobby and rode the elevator to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s offices. Unlike the public defender’s office where Jaime worked, the walls here weren’t painted an industrial beige, but a calming robin’s egg blue. There was real carpet on the floor rather than cheap stick-down carpet squares, and the chairs for those waiting for an audience with the attorneys weren’t seventies relics with duct tape holding cracked vinyl together.
How very different the resources were on the two sides of the criminal process. It was hard not to feel bitter. The only thing the public defender’s office had going for it was the dedication of the men and women who practiced there, serving those who needed an advocate.
Now Jaime was on the other side, about to beg a prosecutor to believe in her enough to take a huge risk and launch an investigation that reached twenty years into the past.
No small task.
After giving her name to the receptionist, Jaime settled on the faux leather chair and glanced around, taking in the photographic images of courthouses located around northern Virginia and Washington. Jaime had litigated inside many of them. It was hard to think of herself as accessing one of those courts in the role of victim instead of the avenging defender. Her voice was her power, and now she had to trust someone else to take on that responsibility for her.
A short, thin man with a five o’clock shadow on his jaw came into the waiting area and, after a quiet word with the receptionist, strode toward her. Mitch McDermott? They’d been opposing counsel in at least half a dozen low-level felony trials. If she’d known she’d have to talk to him first, she wouldn’t have come.
“Hello, Jaime.” He stuck out his hand and shook hers firmly. “Good to see you. Let’s go to a conference room.”
Jaime eased to her feet, a wave of confusion flooding her as she prepared to follow the man she’d battled one month earlier. “Did the receptionist tell you why I’m here?”
“To join the right side?” When she didn’t laugh at his weak joke, he nodded toward the door. “Let’s head where we can talk.”
“Okay.” This was even more uncomfortable than she’d imagined.
She followed him through the door and down a hallway to a closet-sized room with a table and handful of chairs. This nonpublic part of the office looked more run-down and familiar.
He held the door for her, then followed her inside, where he gestured to a chair. “Let’s sit, and you can explain what you’re doing here.”
“I really would feel more comfortable talking with one of your female attorneys. Maybe Adrienne Ross?” Ross was a bulldog on cases like this, and the kind of prosecutor Jaime wanted in her corner.
Mitch gave her a rueful smile. “You know how the system works. I’m afraid you get me.” He studied her closely, just to the point of awkward, and said, “Why don’t you go ahead?”
This was not the way Jaime had imagined the scene, but what choice did she have? She sank into the chair and felt the rough fabric prick her legs through her navy slacks. She set her bag in her lap and pulled out a battered cloth-covered journal.
“Here.” She slid it across the table to him. “This is a journal I kept as an eight-and nine-year-old. I know it’s not perfect, but it’s the best evidence I have. If you don’t believe what I wrote, there won’t be any point wasting more of your time.”
“All right.” Mitch slid the book around and in front of him and opened the cover.
“Start where I put the Post-it note.” She sat back and watched as Mitch frowned his way through her childish scrawls. She’d thought long and hard about bringing something so personal to this office, but she had few options.
Watching him read the intimate thoughts of her younger self was excruciating. She had envisioned a woman in this role, someone who would understand and champion her.
Could she trust Mitch McDermott to do that?
Did she have a choice?
The minutes dragged on. At least he was taking time to read it . . . or taking a nap with his eyes open, fingers flipping the pages every minute or so.
Finally he glanced up at her, his light green eyes slicing through her. Laying her bare. “Jaime, this happened a long time ago. Why haven’t you acted before?”
She had anticipated the question. “I’ve spent the last eight years in therapy, coming to grips with what he did to me and how it impacted me.” She rubbed her temple, wishing she could whip out her roller of lavender oil to ease the growing tension. “I’ve spent thousands on counseling, but it’s only in the last year that I’ve become strong enough to ask the Commonwealth to consider filing charges.”
She was losing him. She could feel it, and her heart rate spiked. “There’s no statute of limitations, and I’ve recently been diagnosed with dysthymic depression. That gives us some fresh evidence of the harm.”
“No counselor tracked back to the alleged abuse?”
She sucked in a breath. “Alleged? Really? How would you feel if you poured out your experience to someone and they used that word?”
“Jaime . . .” The way he drew out the word warned her to be careful.
She took a deep breath. She knew it was his job to probe, but couldn’t he do it without the quirked eyebrow that communicated skepticism?
“It’s an onion. One counselor peeled back a layer or two, then the next probed deeper, but it took years to get to the core.” She leaned forward, closing the space between them and willing him to understand. “This isn’t something I do lightly. It’s taken me years to gather my courage.” She met his gaze. “I don’t know that my uncle has abused anyone else, but if I remain silent, I’m tacitly allowing him to harm others.”
“Was your mother aware of the abuse?”
“No. I used to think she was, and I couldn’t understand how she allowed it. But I was a child, and I didn’t know how to explain what was happening. I’d throw a fit each time she took me to his house, but she thought I just didn’t like going away, didn’t want her leaving me.”
“Never probed deeper?”
“I didn’t know how to tell her.”
And how she regretted that to this day. Would her teen years have been different if she hadn’t believed she deserved to be abused, and tried to fill the holes in her heart with one unhealthy relationship after another?
It had been by the grace of God—not that she believed in Him—that she hadn’t become pregnant or contracted an STD or become a victim of violence . . . It wasn’t until a college roommate intervened and practically forced her into counseling that her life began to change, one hard-fought step at a time. She’d worked hard to pull herself out of the morass of ongoing pain she’d self-inflicted to add to Dane’s abuse.
“Jaime, would your mother testify to any of this?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Mitch leaned against his chair and crossed his arms. “You understand this will not be easy. I’ll run it by the Commonwealth’s Attorney, but she’ll have to sign off on taking your matter. Even without a statute of limitations, cases like this are hard to prove.” He studied her as if trying to weigh her commitment, his hand still resting on her journal.
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do.” He leaned onto the table. “When you go after people for crimes like this, the gloves come off. Things you never thought would come out do. Are you prepared for the defense team to dig into your history? You will be on trial as much as your uncle is.”
Jaime swallowed. She’d witnessed exactly what he was talking about more often than she cared to admit. It was a classic defense strategy in sexual crimes. A defense attorney had to challenge the victim. Doing less than that could lead to an “ineffective assistance of counsel” charge lodged in the appeal or before an ethics board.
“I’ve lived that side of cases,” she said.
“It’s very different when you’re sitting at the prosecutor’s table.”
“Thank you for your concern, but I know what to expect.” Jaime squared her jaw and reached for her journal, hoping she could live up to her firm words. “Get the prosecutor on board. I’ll do my part.”