Judgement Calls Read online

  down later on."

  I hate this kind of crap. The four people at the table agree what

  needs to happen and are willing to put in the work, but have to plot

  how they can even start without bruising a fragile ego.

  I was skeptical. Garcia was good, but I still thought O'Donnell might

  see right through it and blame me when he wound up looking like a

  chicken shit. It would have been so easy to blame O'Donnell for the

  bad decision and say there was nothing I could do.

  Apathy is grossly undervalued and never there for me when I need it. I

  was already sucked in. I'd broken up some escort services and

  prosecuted a few pimps, but I'd never had a chance to handle a case

  like this one. And, to my mind, with scum like Derringer, it was

  better to issue the case and lose than let him walk away up front.

  "Alright, let's give it a try," I said.

  Two.

  Raymond Johnson was right. Tommy Garcia should run for office. Around

  nine o'clock, Tim O'Donnell popped into my office to give me a heads up

  that Tommy Garcia might be calling about an assault that happened over

  the weekend. I feigned ignorance. According to O'Donnell, the victim

  was a strung-out Old Town Lolita who acted surprised that a trick might

  want rough sex.

  By ten, O'Donnell told Garcia he didn't care what charges were filed if

  someone from DVD agreed to pick it up. Once I got the word from

  Garcia, I called O'Donnell to be sure he was aware I'd be filing

  Measure 11 charges against Derringer. I didn't want him getting ticked

  off later.

  Oregon joined the growing ranks of "tough on crime" states a few years

  ago when voters passed Ballot Measure 11 by a landslide. The law

  requires mandatory minimum sentences for the most violent felonies. Not

  surprisingly, once

  Measure 11 defendants figured out they were facing long minimum

  sentences upon conviction, whether they pled out or not, they stopped

  pleading guilty and started rolling the dice at trial. As a result,

  the DA's office stopped filing charges that fell under Measure 11

  unless the bureau's investigation was flawless. In response, PPB

  formed the Major Crimes Team. The precinct detectives weren't too

  happy about what they understandably viewed as a demotion.

  In theory, the DA's office chose carefully which cases to file under

  Measure 11, because the consequences of a conviction are profound. But

  when it became clear that pissed-off precinct detectives were slacking

  on their general felony cases, the DAs started looking for creative

  ways to justify filing cases under Measure 11 so MCT would be

  responsible for the follow-up. Once the work was complete, they'd

  threaten the defendant with the mandatory minimum sentence in order to

  get him to plead guilty to whatever he should've been charged with in

  the first place. And now I had to pretend I was doing exactly that so

  a loser like Tim O'Donnell would give up a case he didn't even want.

  I could hear laughing in the background when O'Donnell picked up the

  phone. As usual, the rest of the boys in the major crimes unit were

  huddled in his office for mid-morning coffee and a round of "No, I've

  got the raunchiest big-tit joke."

  "Hey, Tim. It's Samantha Kincaid. You were right. Garcia did call me

  about that Derringer case. I agree it's a solid Assault Three, but MCT

  won't do the follow-up unless we file it under Measure Eleven."

  "Listen, Kincaid, if you want to do the work on it, that's fine with

  me. I don't know why you'd want to. I talked to the vie at the

  hospital she's a white trash junkie liar, no matter what those MCT guys

  tell you. The case is a loser."

  "Yeah, you're probably right, but Garcia seems to think she might be

  able to get us some good vice cases."

  "Tell me the truth, Kincaid. Do you actually give a shit about those

  whores?" More laughter in the background. I tried to control my anger

  as he put the phone on speaker.

  "Alright, seriously, you guys. Who in this room really cares if some

  sack teaches a drug addict from Rockwood how to sell it to support her

  junkie habit?" When no one said anything and the guffawing started

  again, he said, "See, Kincaid? That's why you get all those vice

  cases. Ask me, we should give those guys a medal. Without them, those

  girls would be breaking into houses and stealing to get the money."

  When he realized I wasn't joining in the festivities, he tried to

  cover. "We're just giving you a hard time, Sam. You know that, right?

  Sure you do. Hey, here's a good one. What does a Rockwood girl say

  right after she loses her virginity? "Get off me, Daddy, you're

  crushing my smokes." "

  I'd love to be one of those people who could throw off the perfect

  zinger. The kind with the optimal amount of sting, but with enough of

  the funny stuff to keep you from looking like a freak. But in my

  experience, those perfect zingers never leap to mind at the right

  time.

  "Funny, O'Donnell. Hey, hold on a sec." I set the phone down on my

  desk and rushed down the hall to his office. Standing in the doorway,

  I could see their wee brains straining to figure out how I could be in

  O'Donnell's office and on the phone at the same time. "There's nothing

  funny about the Derringer case, and there's definitely nothing funny

  about some guy getting over on his daughter. You say something like

  that to me again, and it'll feel like someone stretched your sad little

  ball sack up over that big empty head of yours."

  I stormed back toward my office before I could make things worse.

  Behind me, I heard O'Donnell yell out, "Real nice, Kincaid," over the

  other guys' laughter. I hadn't meant it to be funny, but if they were

  going to take it that way, so be it.

  I had to hand it to O'Donnell. He could be a Grade A jerk, but at

  least the guy could take it. As I slammed down the phone in my office,

  I could hear his laugh above all the others.

  I waited for my pulse to return to normal, then called over to the jail

  to make sure Derringer was still in custody. The Multnomah County

  holding center's under an order from a federal judge for overcrowding.

  If the cells get full, the sheriff's office is required to start

  releasing prisoners according to a court-created formula. In theory, a

  sex offender in on a parole hold should be one of the last to be

  released, but I'd stopped being surprised by MCSO's decisions a long

  time ago.

  I finally got connected to a Deputy Lamborn.

  "You calling about Frank Derringer?" he asked. "Because I've been

  trying all morning to figure out who to call, and I'm getting ready to

  come off shift. Can't read the PO's signature for shit."

  "What's going on?" I asked.

  "Well, we noticed something I thought the PO should know about. When

  we bring the prisoners in for booking, they've got to strip down out of

  their street clothes and put on their jail blues. Anyway, when

  Derringer was changing, one of the guys noticed that Derringer doesn't

  have any pubic hair."

  "Come again?" I said.

 
; "Yep, all gone down there. So, anyway, we assumed he had crabs or

  something and were joking around about what lucky prisoner was gonna

  have to share a cell with him. But then I noticed Derringer had a

  parole hold for an Attempted Sod One and figured a sex offender might

  have a more sinister reason for getting rid of the short and cur lies

  Thought someone should know about it."

  That someone was me. I wrote down Lamborn's information so I could add

  him to my witness list. Then I cut the call short so I could call

  Derringer's parole officer to see if he knew anything else.

  He picked up the phone on the first ring. "Renshaw."

  I introduced myself to Dave Renshaw as the DA who was going to pick up

  the Derringer case, then passed along Deputy Lamborn's observation.

  "Well, I don't like what he had to say about my penmanship, but the boy

  was certainly using his noggin, wasn't he?"

  "I'd say so. Unless Derringer's got some explanation, it looks like he

  knew he was going out for a victim and didn't want to leave any

  physical evidence behind. I was calling to see if you had anything in

  your file that might help. Derringer hasn't been out on parole for

  long, so if we could show that no one ever noticed anything unusual

  about Derringer's appearance when he was in prison "

  Renshaw cut me off. "Oh, I can do better than that. One of Mr.

  Derringer's parole conditions is that he submit to pethismographic

  examination." My silence told him I didn't know what that was.

  "Standard for most sex offenders. A counselor hooks the guy's private

  parts up to an EKG and then shows slides of various sexual images. By

  monitoring what gets someone like Mr. Derringer hot, the counselor can

  see whether the parolee's preferred fantasy images are changing with

  treatment or whether he's still perverted."

  "Are you about to say what I hope?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Derringer was in let's see, I've got his file right here

  yep, just last week for his initial examination, and I was there for

  it."

  "And everything was normal down there?"

  "I don't know about that, but, yes, I definitely would've noticed if he

  had shaved that area, and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary."

  "And what were the pethismograph results?" I asked.

  "Oh, the doctor would tell you that Derringer was responding to

  treatment. Derringer's pulse got pretty fast during some of the

  violent porn and stayed flat and steady during what most of us would

  consider straight porn, but his Johnson stayed limp the whole time. The

  doctor thought Derringer's pulse raced out of nervousness that he might

  get caught getting off on the violence. But with what I know so far

  about this new case, I think Derringer was getting turned on but just

  wasn't responding downstairs."

  Definitely possible. We were wrapping up the call when Renshaw said,

  "Now this is interesting. I was flipping through the file while we

  were talking. I usually get the facts of my guys' cases straight from

  the police report, but intake typed in something that must've come from

  the prosecuting attorney's file. The notes say that Derringer's

  brother, Derrick, had offered himself as Derringer's alibi witness."

  "This is on Derringer's old case?"

  "Right, the Attempted Sod," Renshaw clarified. "I didn't realize that

  Derringer ever tried to go with an alibi, but it says here that Derrick

  was scheduled to testify that Frank was with him when the girl said she

  was attacked. Then our Mr. Derringer turned around and changed his

  defense. Instead of saying it wasn't him, he argued the whole thing

  was consensual rough sex, trying to get the case bumped down to

  statutory rape. In the end, Derringer pled guilty as part of a plea

  bargain, but that doesn't stop him from telling me at every opportunity

  that the girl consented. Everyone I supervise is innocent, don't you

  know."

  I thanked him profusely for all the information and assured him I'd be

  calling him as a witness. For now, I had other work to do.

  Renshaw had lodged a detainer against Derringer based on probable cause

  that he'd had unsupervised contact with a minor, a violation of his

  parole conditions. Derringer was booked over the weekend, so his case

  would be called in the Justice Center arraignment court this afternoon

  for a release hearing. Technically, a parole detainer is enough to

  hold a parolee for up to sixty days pending a hearing. I would have

  liked to keep Derringer in custody on the violation and wait for MCT to

  finish the investigation before I decided what charges to file.

  The problem was that the allegation underlying Derringer's violation

  was essentially an allegation of new criminal conduct. In these

  circumstances, most local judges won't hold the parolee in custody

  unless the State actually files new charges. So I needed to have a

  charging instrument ready in a few hours or the court might cut

  Derringer loose.

  One alternative was to issue the lowest-level charges, like assault,

  kidnapping, and rape. That would be enough to hold Derringer until MCT

  was finished. Once the grand jury heard the complete evidence, I could

  come back with an indictment for Attempted Aggravated Murder. I'd been

  burned by this method before, though. A smart defense attorney can

  convince a defense-oriented judge that upping the charges on a

  defendant after he has been arraigned on the initial complaint is

  prosecutorial misconduct. Under the law, it's not, but that doesn't

  stop a court from doing what it wants.

  This case would turn on Kendra Martin. Before I made up my mind about

  charges, I wanted more than Walker and Johnson's opinion about her.

  During my stint in DVD, I'd dealt with a few street girls. Most of

  what Walker and Johnson said about Kendra sounded right. I wasn't

  surprised that she would lie about the work and about her habit. And,

  if she was street smart, I believed she didn't get into that car on her

  own. What bothered me was her initial response to Walker and Johnson.

  Detectives with their experience are used to the typical rape victim

  response. It's normal for rape victims to be defensive and to direct

  their anger at police. But this girl, a thirteen-year-old, sounded

  like a nightmare. If I was going to go all out and guarantee myself a

  tough trial, I didn't want to spend the next few months fighting with a

  teenage sociopath.

  I went to the law library and pulled a copy of the Physicians' Desk

  Reference. The emergency room had injected Kendra Martin with Narcan

  to prevent her from overdosing. According to the PDR, the active

  ingredient in Narcan was naloxone, which reverses the effects of

  opiates and induces immediate withdrawal. Even for a relatively new

  user like Kendra Martin, the shock to her system would be enough to

  create a very unhappy camper.

  The effects of heroin last longer than the effects of naloxone. As a

  result, once the naloxone wears off, the person might have a short

  period where they're still under the influence of the opiates. Those

  effects gradually wear off, and
the person returns to their normal

  state.

  If Walker and Johnson were right about Kendra Martin essentially being

  a nice girl, the mix of Narcan and heroin would explain her initial

  crankiness, followed by a period of indifference.

  Having satisfied my main point of doubt, I decided to go with my gut.

  Walker was right. Derringer and his buddy got a thirteen-year-old girl

  to shoot up a boatload of heroin, then beat her, choked her, sexually

  assaulted her, and left her to die in the woods. The case would be

  tough to prove, but it was looking better now with the information from

  the jail and Renshaw. There was enough for an attempted aggravated

  murder indictment and enough to get it to the jury. And even if a jury

  didn't go for the attempted agg, it could still convict on the kidnap,

  assault, and sex charges.

  I spent the next couple of hours reviewing the reports that had been

  written on the case so far. I was impressed. Most of the time, if you

  read a cop's reports after the case has been described to you, the

  reports and the verbal summary don't quite match up. Either something

  was omitted from the conversation or, more commonly, left out of the

  written reports. MCT's good reputation appeared to be well deserved. I

  was pleased to see that everything I already knew, and nothing else,

  was in the reports. And I was irritated that I couldn't stop myself

  from paying special attention to the quality of Chuck Forbes's work.

  Chuck had joined the bureau after college and had wound up on the fast

  track into MCT after he obtained a murder confession that eventually

  led to one of Oregon's first capital sentences. I took a special