JUDGMENT CALLS
Alafair Burke
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Orion, an imprint of the
Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
Copyright 2003 by Alafair Burke
One.
A February morning in Portland, Oregon, and it was still dark outside
when I walked into the courthouse, the air thick with the annoying
drops of humidity that pass for rain in the Pacific Northwest. No
surprises there. What did surprise me was finding a Police Bureau
sergeant waiting in my office.
I'm a deputy district attorney for Multnomah County, making me about
one percent of the office that prosecutes state crimes committed in the
Portland area. Since I took this job three years ago, I've gotten used
to having voice mail and e-mail messages waiting for me on Monday
mornings. People just don't seem to realize that government law
offices aren't open on weekends. It's unusual, though, and rarely a
good sign, to find a cop waiting for you first thing in the morning.
At least I knew this one.
'Hey, Garcia, who let you in?' I said. 'I thought we had some
security around here.'
Sergeant Tommy Garcia looked up from the Oregon State Bar magazine he
had lifted out of my in-box. He smiled at me with those bright white,
perfectly straight teeth that contrasted beautifully with his smooth
olive skin. That smile had led me to believe he was a nice guy when I
met him for the first time three years ago, and I had been right.
'Hey, Sammie, what can I say? I love reading the part at the back that
tells about all the bad lawyers and what they did to get disbarred or
suspended. Gives me a sense of justice. You should be careful about
giving me such a hard time, though. I might start to think you're like
the rest of the DAs around here, with a stick up your ass.'
Tommy's in charge of the bureau's vice unit, so I know him well. As a
member of the eight-lawyer team known as the Drug and Vice Division, I
talk to Tommy almost weekly about pending cases and see him at least
once a month at team meetings.
'You must want something from me big and bad, Garcia, to be buttering
me up like that. What is it,' I asked, 'a warrant?' The local judges
won't even read an officer's application for a search warrant unless it
is reviewed and approved first by a deputy DA. In a close case, the
cops tend to 'DA shop.'
Garcia laughed. 'You're too smart, Kincaid. Nope, no warrant. I do
need your help on something, but it's a little more complicated.' He
reached behind him to shut the door, looking at me first to make sure I
didn't mind.
'MCT picked a case up over the weekend, thinking it would be an attempt
murder. The suspects are bad, bad guys,
Sammie. Two of them grabbed a girl out of Old Town. One of them
started to rape her, but couldn't get it up, so he beat her instead,
and then the second guy finished what the first couldn't. When they
were done, they left her for dead out in the Columbia Gorge.
'I don't know all the details, but apparently the initial investigation
was a bit of a cluster fuck. It sounds like everything's on track now,
but O'Donnell was the riding DA and got pissed off at some of the early
mistakes. So he's planning on kicking it into the general felony unit
for prosecution. You can pretty much figure out what's gonna happen to
it.'
The general felony trial unit is a dumping ground for cases that aren't
seen as serious. The trial DDAs often have extremely limited time to
spend on them, and the overwhelming majority plead out to reduced
charges and stipulated sentences during a fast-paced court calendar
referred to as 'morning call.' It's the criminal justice system's ugly
side. Tim O'Donnell was a senior DDA in the major crimes unit. If he
bumped a Major Crimes Team case down to general, he knew it was gone.
'Sounds bad, but it also sounds like MCT's beef is with O'Donnell.'
'Yeah, well, O'Donnell's mind's not an easy one to change, and I think
there's another way to go here because of a vice angle. The victim's a
thirteen-year-old prostitute named Ken-dra Martin. Unlike most of 'em,
she doesn't try to look any older. Wears schoolgirl outfits like that
one girl used to wear on MTV before she got implants and started
running around naked. What's her name? My daughter likes her. Anyway,
she looks her age, is my point.
