Close Case

by Alafair Burke

  “No.” It could have been, of course, but not if it was related to this story.

  “Oh, was it the Buckeye Neighborhood Association meeting? Second Saturday of every month, two o’clock. Contact person: Selma Gooding.”

  “Yeah, that was it.” Buckeye was a Northeast hot spot. “I can’t believe I forgot about that.”

  “Well, the next one’s day after tomorrow, so don’t forget that one either.”

  “I won’t. Thanks.”

  17

  Between losing the motion in Crenshaw, cutting a deal with a loser like Hanks, my blowup at MCT, and the fallout with Chuck at home, I had been grateful when one of the worst days in recent years had finally come to a close. Chuck and I had talked for hours but had gotten nowhere. The discussion had begun reasonably enough, with me explaining that I really had meant to tell him about my inheritance of the Hamilton case. But as we moved from topic to topic—covering the tensions between me and the other detectives, him and Mike, and him and me—it quickly dissolved into a long, frustrating night where we argued more about the things we said during the argument than any of the things that had necessitated the we-need-to-talk talk in the first place.

  In the end, he wound up outside, tinkering with his car in the dark and leaving me to watch the Daily Show alone. He came to bed eventually, but the night was spent without the usual spooning.

  If I had any hopes of things looking up with a new day, they were quickly squashed. When I woke Friday, Chuck had already left. A note on his pillow said he wanted to hit the gym before work.

  Then, on the drive to the courthouse, I was pulled over for a rolling stop at the corner of my block. I didn’t recognize the young officer, but I made a point of holding out my District Attorney badge while I was pretending to fumble with my driver’s license and registration.

  As he was writing out a ticket for running the stop sign, I was more explicit. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m at the DA’s office, in MCU. I live just back there,” I said, gesturing to my bungalow at the middle of the block.

  “Nice place,” he said, smiling and handing me my citation. “I’d cut you some slack, but I wouldn’t want you to prosecute me for shirking my duties.”

  Apparently word of the Hamilton case had gotten out.

  Then came the grand jury hearing itself—the one I’d taken so much grief for, the one Russ Frist had told me not to worry about. My first witness was Marla Mavens, Delores Tompkins’s mother. She knew nothing about the shooting itself, but I thought the grand jurors needed to hear something about Delores other than the fact that she was shot by a cop. Mrs. Mavens brought a picture of her daughter and her two grandsons with her.

  She told the grand jury that Delores’s only flaw in life had been her pattern of picking bad men for herself instead of finding her own way. The separate fathers of her two children were both long gone. More recently, she’d been seeing someone who seemed like a good man until Delores figured out that he was deeply involved in drugs, yet another disappointment.

  Tragically, Delores finally seemed to be turning things around for herself in the weeks before her death. She had broken up with the louse in question, had gotten a job with benefits at a home improvement store, and had said she was working on something that made her feel special—something Marla had never heard her daughter express before. Marla had pushed to hear more about it, but Delores had wanted to keep it private. Now that she was gone, Marla would never know.

  “Do you know why your daughter was in her car at three-thirty in the morning?”

  Marla shook her head. “No, I can’t figure it. I was keeping the boys for her that night, like I do once a week or so. Or did. I’ve got them full-time now. But it wasn’t like her to be out late like that.”

  “Can you think of any reason why she would try to drive away from a police officer during a traffic stop?” That was the kind of question I could never ask in court, where the rules of evidence actually applied.

  “Delores? Oh, no. I can’t even imagine why she’d be pulled over, she was such a careful driver. But she certainly wouldn’t cause any trouble.”

  After Marla left the room, I made a point of showing Delores’s PPDS printout to the grand jurors. No arrests, no convictions.

  My next witness was Alan Carson, the Internal Affairs detective who responded to the scene of the shooting. With helmet hair and doughy skin, he looked like he’d sell Bibles door-to-door. From his assignment alone, I doubted that many cops outside his unit were friendly with him. But so far he had struck me as reasonable and competent, expertly reconstructing the incident based on the ballistics evidence.

  He covered the few facts we knew about that night: Hamilton had discharged his weapon until it was empty, firing a total of seven bullets. Six of them penetrated the windshield of Delores’s Alero; three of them struck her—two in the head, one in the neck. No weapon or drugs were found in the car. Based on the car’s location when it was stopped and Hamilton’s location when he discharged the gun, the car could not have been moving faster than fifteen miles an hour when Hamilton started shooting. I might never be able to explain exactly why Hamilton had panicked that night, but I had enough to show he was at least reckless about the shooting, the standard for the manslaughter charge I was asking for.

  When I walked Carson out of the room, I watched him pass the final witness waiting outside, Officer Geoff Hamilton. If looks could kill—well, it’s a damn good thing they can’t.

  Hamilton didn’t have the right to an attorney during the hearing, so Jerome Black had to wait in the hall. I watched the grand jurors eye Hamilton while the foreman swore him in. He’d worn his uniform, much to my annoyance. His chubby face, stocky build, and boyish blond hair added to the appearance of earnest innocence.

  “Mr. Hamilton,” I said, avoiding any mention of his official position, “we’ve already heard testimony establishing that you discharged your service weapon on the night in question, and that Delores Tompkins died as a consequence.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Shortly after the shooting, you had this to say.” I read the grand jury the terse statement Hamilton had given at the precinct. “Now you have asked for an opportunity to provide additional information to the grand jurors that you chose not to share with your own sergeant or with the officers investigating the shooting?”

  “That’s correct, ma’am, after consulting with counsel.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and say what you’d like to say, then.”

  “Well, I’ll start from the beginning. I initially noticed a black female now known to me as Delores Tompkins because she was crying in her vehicle, close to hysterical.” He had shifted into the formal tone officers tend to use during trial testimony. “Based on my experience, I thought she might have fled a recent domestic encounter, and I wanted to make sure she was not in any danger. I pulled my car to the left of hers at the red light at the intersection of Ainsworth and MLK, then rolled down my passenger’s side window and waved at her in an attempt to get her attention. The subject—”

  “You mean Delores Tompkins,” I interrupted, trying to remind the grand jurors that she was the victim, not the suspect.

  “That’s correct. Ms. Tompkins looked in my direction but abruptly drove away when the light changed. She then proceeded to turn right, moving westbound on Ainsworth. She then took a quick left on Garfield, then her next right. Based on her demeanor, the neighborhood we were in, and her erratic driving patterns, I suspected that the subject may have been under the influence of drugs and attempting to elude me. I activated my overhead lights, and the subject finally pulled over at Killingsworth and Mallory.”

  “But we know that she was not in fact under the influence of drugs, isn’t that correct?”

  “Correct, but I’m trying to explain what I thought at the time, based on my observations. Because she appeared to be attempting to evade me, I was interpreting the emotional demeanor I had witnessed earlier in a different light. G
iven the high-drug neighborhood, I thought it was at least a possibility that she was under the influence or perhaps looking to score.”

  I nodded for him to continue, realizing that the training we give cops to withstand cross-examination was backfiring.

  “She did finally pull over. When I approached the vehicle, I realized that her engine was still running. I ordered her to turn off the engine and step out of the car, but she attempted to drive away. Apparently, she had stopped too close to a vehicle parked in front of her to pull out. I then saw her reverse lights go on, and I stepped to the left to avoid being hit by the car. Once she backed up—barely missing me—I was situated in front of the subject’s vehicle. I unholstered my weapon and again ordered her to stop and to step away from the vehicle.”

  Hamilton’s voice had taken on a new urgency. The grand jurors were listening intently, pens in hand but taking no notes lest they lose a word of the story.

  “What happened then?” the foreman asked.

  “I don’t know how to explain it, but she drove her vehicle directly toward me. It was so quick. I discharged my weapon, and to this day I replay it in my head, wondering if I could have done something different, but I couldn’t. She would have run right into me.” His voice cracked, and for a moment I thought he might actually cry.

  I did my best to cross-examine him, but Black had earned whatever fees Hamilton had paid him. This was a well-prepped witness. He deflected all my questions about why he didn’t move out of the way, why he fired seven times, why he aimed at the driver instead of the tires, returning each time to the same theme: All of a sudden, I had a car gunning right at me, and I responded. He swore he didn’t even realize he’d fired all his bullets until he was told later.

  He was a better witness than I’d expected, which indicated that a trial would be tough if it ever came to that. But despite Hamilton’s skills on the stand, I was confident that the hearing was headed toward an indictment.

  Then the grand jury foreman asked the question that changed everything.

  “Do you regret what happened?”

  Hamilton paused for nearly a minute. When he opened his mouth to speak, he broke down. “Oh, God, you have no idea. I wake up every night wishing I’d let her hit me. You know, maybe I would have made it. But even if I didn’t, at least I wouldn’t be suffering like this. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I won’t let myself drink because I’m too afraid of what will happen. I took my weapons to my dad’s house, so I’m not near them. Even if I get reinstated, I can’t imagine ever being a cop again.” At that point, he finally did shed tears. One of the women handed Hamilton a package of tissues from her purse, and I knew I was in trouble.

  When Hamilton left the room, I did my best to shift the tide. I reminded the grand jury how low the standard was for an indictment. I emphasized that Hamilton wasn’t being accused of intentionally causing Delores’s death, only of recklessness. I even pulled out pictures I had from the file of Delores’s head injuries.

  But, a full hour later—the longest grand jury deliberation I’d ever witnessed—the foreman walked out of the room and handed me a slip of paper. No indictment, by a vote of four to three.

  I walked back to MCU in a daze, wondering how I was going to break the news to Marla Mavens that a grand jury had decided her daughter’s killing did not even warrant a full trial. And, of course, I’d feel the wrath of Russ Frist. He had called Alice Gerstein four times in the last hour wondering why I was taking so long with a grand jury hearing.

  “Oh,” Alice added, “that annoying little Lisa Lopez came by twice looking for you. I didn’t tell her where you were, but she assured me she’d be back soon.”

  Of course she would. I thanked Alice for protecting me. Lisa’s the type who’d bang down the grand jury’s door if she thought her need to see me was urgent.

  My plan was to call Russ first. As harsh a critic as he could be, I knew it would be less painful than calling Mrs. Mavens. As it turned out, a ringing phone awaited me.

  “Kincaid.”

  “Dammit, Kincaid, why didn’t you call me back? And don’t tell me for a second that Alice didn’t give you my messages.”

  “She did, Russ. And, literally, I just walked into my office. I was just about to call you.” I really was.

  “Yeah, right. You really need to keep me in the loop on things, Sam.”

  Great. He was mad at me before I even got to the bad stuff. I broke the news anyway. When he was done yelling about brain-dead grand jurors, Russ was surprisingly understanding. “I’ll call Duncan.”

  “No, I’ll take my lumps.”

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Sam. He’ll blow a gasket when he gets the news, no matter who tells him. If you’re there, he’ll rip into you, and the two of you will butt heads as usual. I can be a buffer and walk him through the stuff he really cares about.”

  “Like—”

  “You know, the fallout. Who’s going to be pissed and why.”

  “Start by explaining it to me.”

  “It’s not that bad. The cops might think we cut Hamilton a break. As far as the community goes, we can lay the blame for the loss on those lame-ass grand jurors. The split vote shows we tried.”

  “Thanks, Russ.” I would make the compassionate call to Mrs. Mavens and leave the political massaging to my boss.

  “No problem. Besides, how bad can he be to a guy sitting at home with Lyme disease?”

  Alice Gerstein walked in just seconds after my call to Mrs. Mavens, when the lump that had formed in my throat was still threatening to squeeze up and burst into a sob.

  “I’m sorry, Samantha, but Lisa Lopez is back. Do you want me to tell her you’re in a meeting?”

  “No, send her in.”

  “You sure?” Alice was careful never to pry, but she could clearly tell that I was upset.

  “I’m having the worst thirty-six hours of my career. Why stop now?”

  She smiled sympathetically and sent in the beast.

  Lisa made herself comfortable in one of my guest chairs and pulled a thin file folder from her briefcase.

  “Lucas Braun called me yesterday. I can’t believe that idiot was going to have Hanks testify.”

  I couldn’t believe that Lucas had told Lisa about our deal before I’d even debriefed his client. “So now you’re here shopping a plea for Corbett? Forget it. You’re too late, Lisa.”

  “No, I’m here to get the charges dismissed.”

  “You really have caught me at the worst possible time for game playing—”

  “I have ironclad proof of innocence.” She handed me a printed page of paper with a notarized signature at the bottom. “This is an affidavit from a girl named Tamara Lyons. She was with the defendants from a quarter to ten until one in the morning the night Percy Crenshaw was killed.”

  I gave the document a perfunctory perusal and handed it back to her. “In case you haven’t noticed, Lisa, little girlfriends willing to serve as bogus alibis are a dime a dozen around here.”

  “She’s not a little girlfriend. She’s Hanks’s ex, and she called her best friend a little after one in the morning because she’d just been raped by Hanks and Corbett. She called the crisis center two hours later.”

  “No way, Lisa. Both defendants have confessed at one point or another to killing Percy. You might have gotten your guy’s statement tossed, but that doesn’t change the fact that he made it.” I was arguing on reflex, but internally I flashed back to the rape crisis counselor, Annie of the pierced nose, asking at the arraignment whether the defendants had any chance of release pending trial.

  “My guy confessed because your detective gave him no choice. What was he going to say? Offer up an alibi of ‘Sorry, officer, but I think I was busy raping someone?’ It lands him with a mandatory minimum sentence of a hundred months, and only makes him look worse. Your detective gave him the out of shifting the blame to Trevor Hanks, and that’s what he did.”

  “But even after he blamed it on Tr
evor, we still arrested him. Why didn’t he say something then?”

  “Honestly? He started to think maybe they did do it. He was high out of his mind and couldn’t remember everything that happened between Twenty-third Avenue and Tamara. When Hanks called him in the morning, saying he found blood on his jean jacket, Todd assumed it was from Tamara. But when Calabrese confronted him about Percy, he started to wonder.”

  “And what about Hanks? According to Lucas Braun, I’ve got the right men.”

  “That’s because Lucas is an unethical idiot who figures seven years for manslaughter is better than eight and a half years for rape, truth be damned.”

  “Why didn’t this girl Tamara Lyons say anything?”

  “Because those wackos at the Rape Crisis Center told her no one would believe her. Corbett and Hanks showed up at Fred Meyer right before closing. She works there. Her coworkers will confirm that she said she was leaving with her ex and one of his friends. Hanks had some meth, and she was willing to kiss and make up for the night to get in on the action. When they went out to the river by the airport, things got out of hand. Both of them raped her. When she realized Tuesday morning they’d been arrested for something even worse, she figured it was kismet or something. I talked to her myself last night.”

  I thought about the methamphetamine-related date rapes I’d seen at MCU, like so many alcohol-induced cases, but rougher and more prolonged. “So how’d you get her to sign the affidavit?”

  “It wasn’t easy. I assured her that Corbett would plead to Rape One and testify against Hanks so she wouldn’t have to go through a trial. I also gave her my opinion that Hanks would probably plead guilty once he realized Corbett was coming clean, and that the likely sentence was the mandatory minimum.”

  “And you’ve talked to the people at the Rape Crisis Center?”

  She nodded. “This morning. Tamara agreed to it. They confirmed that the call came in Sunday morning around three. Tamara told the counselor she’d left with the perpetrators from work. Fred Meyer confirms she clocked out at ten. That means Corbett and Hanks weren’t in the parking lot when the super saw two men there and when the neighbor heard the comment about the car.”