Close Case Read online

  “There won’t be riots in the street if we plead it out?”

  “No way. Duncan just wants to get the guy off the force. I’ve spent enough time talking to the crowd of complainers. They know not to expect much more than that.”

  “They seemed pretty reasonable when I met with them at the Kennedy School,” I said.

  “Everyone’s reasonable when they get what they want. They’re so used to hearing that the cops do no wrong, just having us on their side for once is enough. The end result’s less important.”

  “I saw Selma Gooding again this morning. She was helping Percy Crenshaw’s parents find their way around.”

  “Sounds like Selma. I’ve only met her a few times, but I got the scoop from Peterson at the last supervisors’ meeting.” Ken Peterson was the head of the office’s Community Prosecution Unit, our office’s contact point with neighborhood activist types. “According to him, Selma’s been a ten for us on the community policing stuff up there. He told me, ‘Be good to her, and it comes back to you in spades.’”

  “Yeah, well, I was good to her, and what I got in return was a case against a cop.”

  “Tell me if I’m prying, but does this have something to do with Forbes?”

  I paused. Despite my feelings about the dividing line between work and home, for reasons I didn’t always understand, I occasionally let Frist cross over. “Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

  “He’s got to understand it’s your job, right? Is he actually pressuring you not to indict Hamilton? That would be seriously inappropriate—”

  “No. It’s nothing like that.” I paused again, feeling the all-important line dissolving further. “In fact, he doesn’t know I have the case yet. I haven’t told him. Let’s just say that, based on the conversations we’ve had lately, I suspect the reassignment won’t go over very well with him. Or his partner, who’s under fire in Crenshaw.”

  “Well, maybe Calabrese doth protest too much. If you ask me, Forbes should be happy for you. You haven’t exactly been Duncan’s favorite deputy at times, so this is a real sign of faith. Not that you asked me, of course.” I was relieved when he promptly changed the subject. “Hey, one more thing about Selma: Peterson tells me she chases the working girls off her corner every night with a broom.”

  I laughed out loud at the image of round, gentle Selma swinging away at the neighborhood ho cakes.

  “We should probably go over the grand jury before Friday,” he said.

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  Russ sighed dramatically. “And here I was, convinced you’d called about my serious condition.”

  “Nope.”

  “Fine. But I’m no good without a file. Do you mind bringing it out here so we can go over it together?”

  “At your house?”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Kincaid. I’d come to you if I could, but—”

  “Yeah, all right. Where am I going?”

  I scrawled his address down on a Post-it. “Around six?” he asked.

  I thought about Chuck waiting for me after work. “I’ve got something I have to do tonight, but things are pretty slow around here. I’ll try to be there by four. You’re not contagious, are you?”

  “No, and you’re not nearly as funny as you think,” he said, laughing. “And bring me some of that strudel you mentioned yesterday.”

  Alice pulled Frist’s Hamilton file for me.

  The police reports varied from the standardized incident forms I was used to. Most of the documents were typed memoranda to the Chief of Police from detectives in the bureau’s Internal Affairs Department.

  From them, I learned that at 3:25 A.M. three Sundays earlier, Officer Geoff Hamilton had indicated with the computer terminal in his patrol car that he was stopping Delores Tompkins’s 1999 Oldsmobile Alero at the intersection of Northeast Mallory and Killingsworth. At 3:28A.M., Hamilton used his radio to call for an emergency response to an officer-involved shooting.

  That radio call triggered the complicated procedures required by the Bureau’s General Order governing officer-involved shootings. In addition to the swarm of EMTs and police who would respond to any shooting incident, a detective from Internal Affairs, a representative of the police union, and Hamilton’s shift sergeant were also dispatched. Hamilton’s sergeant promptly seized Hamilton’s Glock as evidence and drove him to the precinct to remove him from the immediate scene.

  Hamilton was permitted to confer privately with his union delegate before his sergeant and IA Detective Alan Carson saw him. According to the GO, the union rep was supposed to explain the procedures required over the next few days. Hamilton would be placed automatically on paid leave pending completion of both criminal and administrative investigations. There would be media scrutiny and psychological counseling. He would probably never approach the job the same way again.

  The EMTs who responded to the scene pronounced Tompkins DOA. According to Detective Carson, Hamilton was noticeably upset, even breaking down and crying when his sergeant confirmed that Tompkins was dead.

  Hamilton was advised that he had the right to remain silent and that anything he said could be used against him. His delegate notified Carson that Hamilton was willing to give a brief statement about the shooting but would not answer any follow-up questions until he had a chance to recover. I had never been involved in an officer-involved shooting before, but that part surprised me. When your everyday suspect invokes, police and prosecutors alike assume he must be guilty. If Hamilton had nothing to hide, why wouldn’t he open himself up to questioning?

  The little that he did say to Carson had been tape-recorded and since transcribed for the file. Hamilton’s statement invoked the same skilled formalism that officers tend to use in their reports and on the stand, but without the usual detail:

  Earlier tonight, I initiated a stop of a black female now known to me as Delores Tompkins. After I approached her vehicle, she disobeyed orders to turn off her engine and to step away from the vehicle. She then surprised me by attempting to drive away from the scene. Because my person was positioned directly in front of her moving vehicle, I discharged my weapon in an attempt to defend myself.

  He provided no explanation for the stop, no explanation for how he came to be standing in front of her car, and—most importantly—no explanation for failing to move out of the way instead of firing his gun three times into the windshield. Before Internal Affairs got a chance to question him again, the media glommed onto the story and Hamilton rightly sensed there could be trouble. Through his union delegate, he declined to speak further about the shooting until the criminal investigation was completed.

  The file also contained Hamilton’s personnel record. He was three years on the force, currently assigned to night shift. In his short career, he’d made thirty-seven collars for resisting arrest, twenty-one of which involved the additional accusation of assaulting a police officer. He’d already had twelve allegations against him for unlawful use of force, ten resolved by IA in his favor, but two left with no formal determination and small settlements paid out to the complainants to avoid threatened lawsuits.

  I was feeling better about inheriting this case. Where there was this much smoke, there was fire. Now that I knew more about the facts, I was sure Russ was right. If Chuck took a little heat around the boys for my role in this, he’d understand. And if Mike put himself in the same camp as Hamilton, that was his problem.

  I had one sentencing hearing I had to cover before I could head to Russ’s. Eddie Carpenter was a pedophile in denial. His so-called girlfriend ran an in-home day-care chock-full of children he had fondled and photographed. She had walked in on Eddie when he was supposed to be changing a diaper. Suddenly, all those frustrated nights in bed made more sense. Once she came clean with the police, Eddie confessed to other crimes as well and eventually pled guilty to four counts of Sex Abuse I in exchange for a sentencing recommendation of eight years.

  Like I said, though, Eddie was in denial. He ha
d been held in custody pending sentencing, and this afternoon’s hearing was our fourth attempt to finalize the judgment. Before each of the three prior hearings, he had informed the jail nurses of various ailments that prevented his transport to the courthouse.

  But at three o’clock on Wednesday, Judge John DeWitt Gregory’s clerk called me to confirm that Eddie had, in fact, entered the building. I took the stairs to Gregory’s third-floor courtroom.

  Once a conviction is obtained—either by verdict or plea—sentencing should be easy. Defense counsel says his thing; I say mine; judge does what he wants. In this case, where there was a joint recommendation from the parties, the entire hearing should have been a no-brainer.

  That’s not how things went. I explained the plea agreement to the judge. Eddie’s attorney asked the judge to follow it. Then, as the judge started to pronounce the sentence, Eddie Carpenter threw himself to the courtroom floor, spasming like a human cramp. His eyes rolled upward, and choking sounds emerged from his throat, and in case we missed the point, his arms twitched at his side.

  Judge Gregory and I stared in disbelief, but Eddie’s attorneys, a husband-and-wife team named Jim and Kara Newby, tried to save the day. I’d heard they were dedicated, but still. Kara tried to loosen Eddie’s tie, while Jim inserted his fingers in Eddie’s throat to clear his air passages. One of the many other defendants awaiting sentencing had his own suggestion: “Get your fingers out of there, man. That’s nasty.” The concerned litigant jumped the bench in front of him and tried to help by replacing Jim’s hand with the eraser tip of his pencil.

  All hell broke loose until suddenly Eddie emerged upright, pleading theatrically for water. With a sly grin and a glance in my direction, Judge Gregory appeared to share my suspicions but was understandably reluctant to sentence a defendant who claimed to be suffering from a seizure. The court announced it was calling for medical attention and setting over sentencing, and I left the courtroom, wondering if the remainder of Judge Gregory’s docket would be delayed by copycat epileptic episodes.

  On my way to the elevator, I heard a woman’s voice call out behind me.

  “Samantha, wait, you can save me a phone call.” I stopped my quick courtroom-walking clip and turned to see Lisa Lopez rushing toward me. “I got a call from Judge Gables. He sent us out to Judge Lesh’s courtroom on Thursday for Corbett’s motion.”

  “Thursday? As in tomorrow? You didn’t think to get my input on that?”

  “We both told him we were ready to go, and the first open court date was tomorrow.”

  “When exactly were you planning on letting me know?”

  “Cut me some slack. I’ve been in trial all day. We’re only taking a break so I can pee.”

  “What time?” The Crenshaws had been kind enough to invite me to Percy’s funeral in the morning, and I wasn’t about to miss it because of one of Lisa’s stunts.

  “Two o’clock. OK?”

  “Yeah, sure.” The way she’d gone about it pissed me off, but it wasn’t worth fighting over.

  “You calling anyone other than Calabrese?”

  I thought about Chuck’s point from our fight the night before: Two cops were always better than one. “Yeah, his partner, Charles Forbes. He’s in the reports.”

  Thanks to Eddie Carpenter’s performance, I was running late for my meeting with Frist. On autopilot, I headed to the garage where I usually parked the Jetta. As I was roaming the floors, trying to remember where I had left the car, I realized today had been a bus day. Eventually, before I retired, I’d develop a system for keeping track of these things.

  After twenty minutes and a schlep to the county lot, I was finally on the road in a borrowed fleet car. I used my cell to call Mike Calabrese about the hearing. Neither of us acknowledged the nasty way he ended our last conversation. True to form, he was still pissed about Lisa putting him through the wringer, but he didn’t sound the least bit worried about losing the confession. “I didn’t do anything wrong. She just wants to break my balls.”

  Five minutes later, I broke down and called Chuck. He also needed to know about the hearing, and I probably needed to tell him I’d be home late.

  By the fourth ring, I regretted it. Mike had answered his own phone immediately and hadn’t mentioned anything urgent. So why couldn’t his partner pick up?

  At the tone, I wished I had prepared an appropriate message. “Hey,” I said. “It’s me. I’m really sorry about this, but Russ Frist is out sick for a few weeks and I have to go to his house to meet with him about something. So I’ll be home a little late. I know it’s bad timing. I’ll be back as soon as I can: seven probably, maybe seven-thirty. Oh, and in case Mike forgets to tell you, the motion to suppress the Corbett confession is scheduled for tomorrow at two before Lesh. I’d like to have you there. OK, I guess that’s all. I’ll see you tonight. I lo—”

  The system cut me off before I could finish telling him I loved him. I thought about calling back, but one rambling message seemed like enough humiliation for the moment.

  I followed the Mapquest directions I had printed, making a quick pit stop at Zupan’s market. My endpoint was in front of a series of new row houses in John’s Landing, just a few miles south of downtown. I found a spot on the street and browsed the house numbers, looking for the right address.

  Most of the owners had found a way to personalize their individual residences with flower baskets, season-appropriate nylon flags, cutesy mailboxes, and the like. When my eyes reached 242, I found an unadorned door above a plain brown welcome mat. When I reached the mat, I saw a small sticker on the nearest window: WARNING, THIS HOME PROTECTED BY SMITH AND WESSON. A MESSAGE FROM THE NRA.

  I knocked and heard Russ moan, “Come on in.”

  I cracked the door open a few inches. “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

  “I should be asking you that.” He was referring to an unfortunate incident at my house a year earlier, after which the entire city knew I kept a handgun in my bedroom. “I saw the sticker at a gun show we were investigating. Seemed like a good deterrent.”

  I heard a television power off. Russ was comfortably splayed across an overstuffed denim sofa in a gray Marine Corps sweatshirt and navy gym shorts, a carton of OJ open on the coffee table. I placed the Zupan’s bag on the glass top of a wrought-iron coffee table. “Fresh cherry strudel, as promised. Where’s your kitchen?”

  I took the two turns as instructed and retrieved a couple of plates and forks. “Nice place,” I said when I returned. “Comfortable.”

  “You seem surprised. What’d you think? I’d have a futon, a TV, and a weight bench?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I hadn’t thought about it, I guess. It’s just that everything seems so…together.” The furniture was well coordinated and all relatively new. My house, in contrast, was an eclectic mix of hand-me-downs, law school leftovers, and the occasional recent indulgence, selected to fit with the rest of it.

  “Yeah, well, let’s just say I walked away from most of my belongings a few years ago. You circle a bunch of stuff in the Pottery Barn catalog, and furnishing a place isn’t that hard.”

  I wondered about the comment, imagining that my ex-husband’s house must be similarly well appointed.

  “How’s the Crenshaw case?” he asked, as I settled into a chair sized for two across from him. I told him about Lisa’s rocket-docket motion to suppress.

  “Are you putting your boyfriend on the stand too or just his partner?”

  “I am calling both of the detectives who were present for the confession.”

  “And what’s your plan?”

  “To win the motion then win the case.”

  He caught the tone in my voice, the one that only another prosecutor would recognize. It reflected a stubborn willingness to fight the good fight, even if that involved risking a trial and losing, rather than swallow down an unjust plea agreement.

  “Shit. I knew I couldn’t leave the office. You do know you still need to make a deal, don
’t you?”

  I told him about the carpet fibers on the bat. “Even if I can’t use Corbett’s confession, I’ve got a pretty decent case.”

  “And how do you figure that?” he asked skeptically.

  “I’ve got video proving that an hour before the murder they were out of control, armed with a bat, just blocks away from Percy’s house. Despite Lisa’s lame motion to kick the ID, I’ve got a witness who puts them in Percy’s parking lot around the time of the murder. And I’ve got the murder weapon, found just blocks from the homes of the defendants, containing the victim’s blood and hair, fibers from the carpet in his apartment, and fibers from Hanks’s Jeep.”

  “You haven’t tried enough murders to know how tough jurors can be. Shit, they’ll look over at the defendants and see two little boys whose entire lives rest on their verdict. You’ve only got one witness; it was late at night, and he didn’t see the actual crime. And that trace evidence you’re so excited about? Fiber comparisons aren’t anything like DNA. By the time a defense expert gets done with it, that fiber from the Jeep could be from any manufactured fabric in town.”

  My case didn’t sound so great from that perspective. “One step at a time, OK? We argue the motion tomorrow in front of Lesh.” I made a point of letting him see me check my watch. “Let’s go over Tompkins so I can skedaddle.”

  I had already gathered most of the facts from my review of the file, but Russ filled out the dynamic of the investigation after Hamilton had been taken to Northeast Precinct.

  “You’ve got to understand the General Order,” he explained. “The bureau writes the procedures on the assumption that the officer is essentially a victim of the person who was shot. Sure, the rules simultaneously facilitate the investigation by securing the crime scene and spelling out the procedures for interrogation and so on, but a primary focus is on the mental health and well-being of the involved officer.”

  “So that explains why the officer is taken back to the precinct,” I said.