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Dan raced into the lobby outside the holding cells. He knew Ossie had been arrested and there’d been some kind of altercation. He wanted to get in the middle of it before something worse happened.
He’d been waiting in his car for almost an hour while they completed processing. Jazlyn told him the boy had attempted to escape arrest. Why would Ossie do that? Had the kid not understood his instructions? Where did he think he could go? He just hoped the boy remembered to keep his mouth shut.
What had Mr. K gotten him into this time? He barely knew this kid. He had a hard time believing the boy was a murderer. But if he’d learned anything during his years of practice, it was that people, even good people, could be pushed to actions they would not normally consider. And this kid had been through the worst series of circumstances imaginable.
How would Mr. K feel if the civil case mutated into a murder case? Or did K predict this all along? Did that explain why he asked Dan to get involved in a family dispute over money?
He approached the front desk. During a prior case, Jimmy had introduced him to Frank, the elderly man who decided who got in and how quickly it happened.
Frank gave him a sad, almost patronizing expression. “You rep the killer kid? Of course you do.”
“Innocent until proven guilty.”
Frank shook his head. “I saw the cops that brought him in. They looked frazzled. And angry.”
“Well, I’m sorry that—”
“Did you know the kid bit one of them?”
“He—what?”
“Like a feral child, that’s what Ferguson said.”
It seemed there was much more he needed to learn about his client. “Look, can you get me in to see him?”
Frank pushed a few keys on his computer. “Good timing. He’s been booked, but they haven’t taken him downstairs yet. I’ll have them bring him to the holding room.”
“How about I just go to his cell?”
Frank laughed softly. “No way. This kid bites.”
* * *
Dan sat on the other side of the Plexiglas panel, waiting. It was always like this. They should install those little mini-kiosks you saw in restaurants that let you play games while you waited eternally for the guards to bring in your client. He suspected they let him sit around longer than was necessary. He couldn’t prove it, but he had a suspicion not all jailhouse personnel thought the world of defense lawyers.
A few moments later, they brought Ossie in. He wore the standard-issue orange coveralls and flip-flops. His face was scratched across the forehead, and one of his eyes was swollen. He appeared to be favoring his right leg.
He picked up the phone receiver and started right in. “Did they hurt you, Ossie?”
“Of course.”
“Was it necessary?”
“No.”
“Did you hit them?”
Ossie hesitated. “No.”
“Did you bite them?”
He tossed his head to one side. “Maybe.”
“It’s a yes-no question.”
“He wouldn’t let me go.”
“Because he was there to arrest you. What happened to your forehead?”
“I scraped it when I jumped off the edge of the roof.”
He pressed his fingers against his temples. “Is that when you hurt your ankle?”
“Yup.”
“And the shiner?”
“Cop punched me.”
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t like me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m black.”
“And...?”
“And escaping. But escaping doesn’t explain why he kept calling me ‘boy.’ Or ‘murdering black trash.’ And it doesn’t explain why he punched me. After I was cuffed.”
Dan fell back into the eggshell chair. Sadly, he wasn’t surprised. Police racism was reported so often these days it was almost a cliché, in a pathetic way. He couldn’t expect St. Pete to be immune from a disease infecting the entire nation.
He opened his backpack and pulled out a legal pad. There would be no kitesurfing or cooking today.
This case just got about a thousand times more complicated.