Redeeming Justice

by Jarrett Adams

  Her passion feels palpable. I feel it because I share it. At first, MiAngel had me reading files and taking notes, and then she would quiz me on the specifics of cases. If I didn’t have the answer she wanted, she sent me back to the file until I found it. One day, wearing a broad smile, she sent me into the field. I’ve been taking the lead looking for witnesses ever since. When I go out, usually to the South Side or the West Side, I always dress up.

  “Why do you wear a suit and tie?” an investigator, a white guy, in the office asks me. When he goes out, he wears sweats. If he wants to dress up, he puts on some jeans.

  “When I go into these neighborhoods, I look the same as the people I’m trying to find and serve,” I say. “I stand out if I wear a suit. I don’t want the police to roll up on me, slam me against the hood, and put my hands behind my back because I fit the description.”

  I don’t know if the investigator understands, but I can tell by the way he nods uncomfortably that I’ve made my point.

  When I wear a suit, the folks I talk to look at me differently.

  “Who are you?” a woman asks me as she sits on her front porch. “Where did you come from?”

  “I’m on a job,” I say.

  “What kind of job?” she says. “A young Black man out here, wearing a suit? I want to know about this job.”

  I do look and feel out of place. But a part of me feels as if I never left.

  * * *

  —

  Grandmothers and pit bulls.

  That’s what I find at nearly every house, on every street.

  One time, looking for an important witness, I park in front of a house on the West Side. I get out of my car and lean into the backseat to get my file. That’s when I see out of the corner of my eye a blurry shape moving toward me. I hear the scraping of claws on concrete and I hear a growl. Pit bull. Charging. Larger and angrier than Cujo, his eyes fiery red slits, his mouth wide as a yawn, his fangs moist and glistening. I panic. I slam the door to the backseat and jump onto the trunk.

  The dog jumps up next to me.

  I shout, roll off, race to the driver’s side, fling open the door, and dive into the car.

  “Oh, he’s fine! He won’t hurt you.”

  The grandmother.

  “Ma’am,” I say, opening my window a crack, “all due respect, he seems upset.”

  “Nah, he’s a big baby. Just don’t look at him. Don’t make any eye contact.”

  Later, with the pit bull chained up, I sit across from the grandmother, sipping tea, swapping stories about our families.

  “I’ll give my grandson a call for you,” she says.

  “It’s important. Our client was accused of robbing a bank. Your grandson is my client’s alibi witness. He could keep an innocent man out of prison.”

  “I’ll definitely get in touch with him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. By the way, I love your suit. You say you come from the South Side?”

  “Originally. I’m living downtown now. Going to school at Roosevelt University. I just started my junior year.”

  “Is that right? Are you married?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “That’s surprising.”

  “Well, I’d better be going. Thank you for the tea.”

  I fish out my card, hand it to her.

  “Your grandson can call me at this number.”

  “He’s always losing his phone,” she says. “Tell you what. Why don’t you come back next week, same time? He’ll meet you here.”

  When I return the following week, I see no sign of the pit bull that jumped up on the trunk of my car. I cautiously approach the front door, but before I even knock, a woman in her twenties, wearing a dress, opens the door. The grandmother appears behind her.

  “Oh, I see you’ve met my granddaughter. Come on in, Mr. Adams.”

  The granddaughter offers me iced tea. We sit in the living room. We make small talk for an hour as I wait for the grandson to show up. He never does.

  “I don’t know what happened to him,” the grandmother says.

  “As I mentioned, he’s our client’s alibi witness. I have to talk to him.”

  “We told him you’d be here. He said he would come. You might have to wait until dinner until he gets here. You like pork chops?”

  “I’m sorry, I have to be at class.”

  “Well, then, come back next week. I’ll be sure he gets the message. I know he’ll want to help you.”

  The following week when I return, a different granddaughter also wearing a dress answers the door. She pours iced tea. We talk. The grandmother makes herself scarce. The grandson never shows.

  “It’s really urgent that I speak with your grandson,” I say, getting ready to go.

  “Come back next week. He’ll be here.”

  The next week, a third granddaughter invites me in. More iced tea—I’m drowning in iced tea—more small talk, no grandson, a different set of excuses.

  As I leave, I tell the grandmother that I’m seeing someone so I’m afraid, sadly, that I can’t be fixed up with her granddaughters.

  “That’s a shame,” she says. “I guess I’ll go let the dog out.”

  I laugh and, thankfully, she does, too.

  “I do need to talk to your grandson,” I say.

  “He got a new cell phone,” she says, scribbling the number on the back of my card.

  Back at the office, I finally connect with the grandson, who confirms he spent the night of the bank robbery with our client. Locating this witness results in clearing our client and my first big win as an investigator. I feel triumphant and valued.

  This case gets me thinking about all the grandmothers and granddaughters I’ve come in contact with since I’ve been an investigator. Overall, I see very few young women and almost no men my age in these neighborhoods. Because of poor education, lack of opportunity, exposure to violence, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness, these men so often make the dead-end journey from the streets to prison, and even, tragically, to their graves. I have seen how the police look at young Black men in these neighborhoods. They see criminals instead of young men of promise. Too frequently, they act accordingly. As a consequence, the criminal justice system has not only decimated the population of young Black men in communities of color but also profoundly affected young Black women, upending the family structure.

  In another era, at another time, the young men might have gone to war. These men have gone to prison. I think about the entire generation of men I saw locked up with me—grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandsons. It’s no wonder that with so few men available Black women sometimes end up with men who may not appreciate their full value. It’s not their fault. With so few men, they have few choices.

  * * *

  —

  The closer I work with the lawyers in this office, the more I respect them. They work harder than any group of people I’ve seen. They inspire me. I strive to keep pace with them. When I become a lawyer myself, I want them to consider me an equal. For now, I can only do what I can do, which is work harder than any other investigator on the staff. I come in before the office opens, work all day, go to class, come back in at night, and stay late. I become tight with the cleaning crew. Many nights, I sit at my desk poring over files to the hum of a vacuum cleaner or floor buffer.

  I’ve also recently moved to an apartment two blocks from the office and a couple blocks from Roosevelt. A strategic move. Walk out my front door and I’m a five-minute walk from either school or the office. Exactly how I want it. No wasted time.

  As the holidays approach, I notice how the lawyers in the office turn to me first on complicated cases. I have become the office’s go-to investigator. That only makes me work harder. One evening, as I focus on a confusing police report, Carol comes out of her o
ffice and drifts toward my desk. She smiles.

  “You work late,” she says.

  “Yeah, this case is a bear. A lot of discrepancies.”

  “No, I mean you always work late.”

  “Well, you know, with school—”

  “You have plans for the holidays?”

  “No. I’ll probably just work.”

  Her eyes shade in concern. “Make sure you eat, get enough sleep. Do you get enough sleep?”

  I shrug. “I sleep.”

  She smiles thinly, a look that I read as “I don’t believe you.”

  “Take care of yourself,” she says.

  “I will.”

  As she leaves, I think, she sounds a lot like—

  My mother.

  * * *

  —

  We get a case.

  Two guys rob a bank on the Northwest Side of Chicago, an impoverished, rough part of town. They hit the bank, indicating guns in their pockets, scarves wrapped around their faces. They stuff their pockets with money, run out of the bank, and scramble into a car parked in an alley, their getaway car, just as the bank manager presses the silent alarm signaling the police. In the alley, the dude behind the wheel turns the key and steps on the gas. He grins because they’ve pulled off the perfect crime.

  Except the car doesn’t start.

  The robbers abandon the car and start walking, their jackets bulging with bills, arguing over what they should do next. By this time, the police have blanketed the neighborhood. In a matter of minutes, the police stop Mel, a jittery, suspicious-looking guy with stacks of money spilling out of his pockets who’s hiding, poorly, in somebody’s backyard. They start questioning him.

  “Bank robbery?” Mel says. “I don’t know anything about no bank robbery. I’m always around here. Ask anybody. This is my neighborhood. I just happened to be in the vicinity of the bank when all the commotion started.”

  They don’t believe him. They take him in, compare Mel with the surveillance footage from the bank.

  “You can’t see that guy’s face,” Mel says. “The video’s too grainy.”

  “You’re the same height, you have the same build, you have the same mannerisms.”

  “I don’t care,” Mel says. “That ain’t me. I had nothing to do with no bank robbery.”

  “What about the money in your pockets?”

  “That’s my money. I hate banks. Don’t trust them. I never go into a bank. I keep my money on me.”

  The police have heard enough. They charge him. One of the top lawyers in our office brings me on as the investigator. I go through Mel’s file, find one crazy, inconsistent statement after another.

  I sit down with Mel. He admits that he has been known to do drugs.

  “But I don’t rob banks, man,” Mel says.

  “You deal?”

  “Just to pay the rent. Minor stuff.”

  “How much do you use?”

  “Recreational. That’s all. Look, this is total bull. They want to send me away for bank robbery? Look at me. Some pot, some blow, dabble in crack, dabble, but I would never rob a bank.”

  Then I drop the bomb on him.

  “They found the scarf, Mel.”

  He studies the wall behind me.

  “What scarf?”

  “The scarf the dude who robbed the bank wore.”

  “So?”

  “We want to have the scarf tested. If they don’t find your DNA, we can make a tremendous case. You’ll walk.”

  I pause.

  “But if they do find your DNA—”

  “Yeah?”

  “You can’t come back from that.”

  Mel coughs, paws at his face. “I just want to get out of here, man.”

  “So, you’re good with getting that scarf tested?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t do it, man. You won’t find nothing on that scarf.”

  I lean forward and lower my voice.

  “You have to listen to me very carefully.”

  I wait for Mel to stop squirming and to focus on what I’m about to say.

  “What about the car?”

  “Car?”

  “It’s stolen and your fingerprints are all over it. Come on, man. You have to level with me.”

  Mel scratches his head with both hands.

  “I can’t help you unless you tell me the truth,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “The other dude’s a hardened criminal. He has a record long as his leg.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that.”

  “I’m waiting,” I say. “For the truth.”

  Mel takes a very long, very slow breath.

  “I admit I have had some struggles with addiction. I don’t really know this guy. He calls me, asks if I can help him out with something. I say, with what? He says, a pickup. He says he’ll pay me. So, why not? ‘I need a car,’ he says. So, I get a car.”

  Mel’s head moves back and forth like a windshield wiper.

  “Man, okay, listen, I’ve been on drugs my whole life. I have done some dealing. Okay, fine. I deal. But I don’t rob banks. I don’t hurt people. I don’t put people in harm’s way. That’s not me. I had no idea he was going to rob a bank.”

  “So, you were not inside the bank?”

  “No, man, no.” Mel’s lip quivers and he starts to cry.

  “I didn’t know what he was gonna do,” he says, blubbering.

  Now he begins to weep. He buries his head in the crook of his arm.

  “Look, man,” he says, his voice trembling between sobs. “I’ll do anything for a couple of dollars. I was getting sick from heroin, so I just went to pick him up. I needed a fix. I knew he was going into the bank. I thought he was making a withdrawal.”

  “Well, he was,” I say.

  Mel wails. I reach into my pocket and hand him my handkerchief. He honks into it, hands it back.

  “Keep it,” I say. He waves a thank-you with my balled-up handkerchief, then sobs silently.

  Back at the office, I describe my interview to the lawyer.

  “He got caught up in this robbery,” I say.

  “Wrong place, wrong time,” she says. “Is that what you see here?”

  “Yeah. The getaway car wouldn’t start.”

  “You can’t make this stuff up,” the lawyer says.

  * * *

  —

  As it turns out, you can.

  The DNA results come back.

  The scarf we found in the bank is swimming with Mel’s DNA.

  Mel was the guy in the surveillance video—the one who wore the scarf over his face and robbed the bank.

  I interview him again and tell him we have his DNA all over the scarf.

  “Yeah, that was me,” he says. “I never robbed a bank before, though.”

  “You played me,” I say.

  He shrugs. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? I was trying to help you.”

  “I needed the money. I was desperate. I’ve been hooked on heroin my whole life. My mother was an addict. I was strung out in the womb.”

  I look at Mel. I don’t know what to believe. I know this much: he lied to me.

  “I’m really sorry,” he says again. “My addiction has led me to make the worst decisions.”

  I head back to the office, ducking my head as a raw and cold December wind cuts into me. I wanted to believe him so much. I gave him the benefit of every doubt. What an actor, I think. I feel so embarrassed.

  “It happens,” the lawyer I’m working with says when I tell her how Mel lied.

  “I will never let that happen to me again,” I say.

  “Lesson learned,” she says. “Part of your education.”

  I slump into my chair. An immens
e wave of exhaustion suddenly rolls over me. I could fall asleep right here. I could take a three-day nap.

  It’s not enough to work hard, I realize. I have to become more precise. I have to take my time and go through every fact, every facet, listen to every moment on every tape, examine every line in every transcript, and then do it all over again, and then maybe I’ll be able to decide if I think someone is innocent.

  No. I have to do better than that.

  From now on, I have to know.

  How can I achieve that? What lesson have I learned?

  “Slow down, Jarrett,” I murmur. “You have to slow down.”

  I close my eyes, try to fight off the exhaustion, can’t.

  I sleep in my chair until the cleaning crew wakes me up.

  * * *

  —

  I have a job. I have insurance. I have survived ten years behind bars. I have come out with a toughness few people understand—at least an outer toughness. I am sailing toward my bachelor’s degree, and I will continue on to law school. And still—I check the locks on my windows and doors. When I go out, I still keep my head on a swivel, peek over my shoulder, look at faces, hands, shadows. Once, when I started dating someone, she said to me at dinner, “Why are you always checking out other women?”

  “What? I’m not checking out other women. I’m—”

  I stop myself. I can’t explain what I go through every time I step outside. It sounds too insane, too paranoid. It would be easier to say, “Yeah, you’re right, I’m checking out other women. I’ll stop.”

  We break off seeing each other after that. I stop dating, and I do work harder, if that’s possible. I learn to enjoy the pleasure of my own company. Easier that way.

  * * *

  —

  Carol invites my mother to our office Christmas party. I introduce her to everyone, and then as I mingle with the lawyers, I see that Carol and my mother have gone off together and sit huddled intensely in a corner. They nod conspiratorially, they look over at me, they laugh, they both dab at tears, and at the end of their conversation they hug.