Abuse of Power

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “Oh,” Rachel said, pouring herself a glass of water, “I’m not certain what time it was. I was so tired when I got home, I went straight to bed.” Removing the rubber pitcher from underneath the sink, she filled it and walked around the kitchen watering the plants.

  “You did not,” the girl snapped, certain her mother was lying. “I just looked in your room and your bed hasn’t been slept in. You spent the night with that lawyer, didn’t you?”

  Rachel had always been truthful with Tracy, but she wasn’t certain her sex life was something she should discuss. “We just talked,” she said. “It was nice.”

  Tracy’s face came alive. “You like him, don’t you? What was his house like? What kind of car does he drive? When are you going to go out with him again?”

  Rachel held up a hand. “Slow down,” she said, smiling at her daughter’s enthusiasm. “I’m not going to marry the man. I may never see him again. No one knows how things like this are going to work out.”

  “Humph,” Tracy said, staring at her mother’s face. “You look different. I don’t know what that guy did to you, but you don’t look the same.”

  Rachel gave her a quick hug, then headed down the hall to wake her son for breakfast.

  For most of the day, Rachel sat at the dining room table trying to complete her report. She kept writing and rewriting, ripping up the pages and tossing them in the trash. Exposing the truth might not bring the Hillmont boy back, but failing to report that Grant had kicked the shooter while wearing steel-toed boots created another problem. If Grant had not kicked Trueman, the boy might not have fired the gun. In itself, she didn’t see this as a defense against murder. It did explain the Trueman boy’s anger, however, and Rachel knew it might be considered a mitigating circumstance in determining his punishment if he was ever convicted.

  Jimmy Townsend had been assigned the task of interviewing the other juveniles who were present that night. She headed to the phone in the kitchen, calling Townsend’s house and asking his wife to tell him to stop by as soon as he woke up. After the words they had exchanged during the debriefing, Rachel wasn’t certain if he would come.

  Had one of the kids seen Grant use the Hillmont boy as a shield? Surely one of them had witnessed him kicking Trueman on the ground. From what they had learned thus far, the gun had not belonged to Trueman, but had been handed to him by another juvenile.

  She stopped and placed her head down on the table.

  The situation could turn into a nightmare in the courtroom. She was an awful liar. Telling the truth was easy. Lying required finesse. On the rare occasions when she uttered an untruth, Rachel became flustered. A strong defense lawyer could rip her to shreds.

  Joe toddled over with a miniature truck in his hand. He ran it down her shoulder. “Vroomrriy vroomm,” he said, balancing the toy on the top of her head. Rachel moved and the tiny truck tumbled to the floor. “Come here, sweetie,” she said, hoisting him into her lap. She cradled his head to her chest, rocking him in her arms. Some day she would have to teach him right from wrong. Would she tell him it was all right to distort the truth, lie to save yourself at the expense of others? She felt a heavy sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  Joe scrambled out of her arms, retrieving his toy and running it back and forth on the wood flooring. Watching him, Rachel thought back to her childhood. Carrie had been her primary role model, teaching her younger sister about values, morality, decency. Rachel remembered all the nights she had crept into Carrie’s room, then cuddled in her bed as her sister tried to explain the basics of life. Years later, she had understood why Carrie had taken on such a maternal role. When Rachel was fifteen, her sister had told her the truth about their mother.

  “Mother used to be a prostitute,” Carrie had said. “Didn’t you notice that her students were all men? She never taught them to play the piano, Rachel. That’s why we had to go on welfare, because after the kidnapping she couldn’t turn tricks anymore with you in the house.”

  Their mother’s drinking had consumed her, turning her into a wasted shell. No more tinkling piano keys. No more show tunes and family singalongs. It was as if someone had tossed a dark shroud over the house. As soon as her sisters finished school, they left home and moved to Los Angeles, leaving Rachel to struggle with her mother alone. Six weeks after she graduated from high school, Rachel came home to find her mother dead in the living room from a mixture of tranquilizers and booze.

  By then she and Joe, whom she’d met at a nursery where she worked after school, were already seeing a lot of each other. Without his love, she knew she would not have survived. Her husband had resisted the marriage. He was still a college student, determined to earn his degree. They had made it work, though. Rachel had taken a job as a waitress. In addition, she typed all Joe’s reports, conducted most of his research. Joe worked two jobs, carrying a full college curriculum at the same time. When he had finally stepped onto the stage to accept his diploma, Rachel had felt as if she were up there with him. She had never given consideration to her own future, never realized that she would one day regret her lack of education and feel inferior because of it. Rachel and her husband had been a team. Whatever Joe accomplished, she accomplished. When he died, much of her self-esteem had died with him.

  She felt as if her entire childhood had been built on lies. The little house in San Diego with the frilly white curtains. The baby grand piano in the living room. The picture of her father on the mantel in his white Navy uniform. Toward the end, her mother had finally told her the truth. The man in the photo was not Rachel’s father, although he had lived with her mother for a few years and Carrie and Susan remembered calling him Dad. Frances was not certain who had fathered any of her children, only that each of the girls had been sired by a different man. Rachel’s sisters became her half-sisters. The man she had thought was her father became her mother’s boyfriend, possibly her pimp. The people on the block didn’t look down on them because they were poor, or because their yard was not well-kept like the other yards in the neighborhood. They shunned them because Frances was a prostitute. Everyone had known but Rachel.

  She looked over at little Joe, then quickly placed the blank pages of her report back in her briefcase. She could not give her son expensive toys, private schools or fine clothing. All she had to give him was herself. When he looked at her, she wanted to see respect mirrored in his eyes. She was not prepared to sell her soul just yet. Before she fell, she would at least put up a fight.

  Jimmy Townsend stopped by Rachel’s house after dinner. Instead of talking in the house where the kids could overhear, she led him into the backyard, indicating he should take a seat in one of the plastic lawn chairs. “I know you saw what Grant did last night, Jimmy. Why are you denying it?”

  He fixed her with a steely gaze. “You’re being foolish, Rachel. If you persist with this, I guarantee you’re going to regret it.”

  “Is that a threat, Jimmy?”

  “Of course it’s not a threat,” he said, trying to get his mammoth body comfortable in the unyielding chair. “You’re bringing the heat down on all of us, though. What do we need this kind of shit for, huh?”

  “You saw it, didn’t you?” Rachel said, refusing to let up. “What does Grant have on you? He’s holding something over your head, I bet. I’ve seen how he operates. He waits until someone makes a mistake, then he jumps in and fixes it for them. He controls people that way. Haven’t you seen how he’s influencing Ratso? Ratso’s turning into another Grant. I saw him smashing that kid’s head against the pavement. You know he was only mimicking Grant.”

  “Ratso’s a good guy,” Townsend said. “He just doesn’t know how to stand up for himself. You have to draw lines with Grant. If you don’t, he’ll squeeze you dry.”

  “I know you saw what Ratso did,” Rachel argued. “I yelled at you to go over and stop him. Don’t you remember?”

  “No,” he said. “There was a lot going on out there, Rachel. I remember you saying something to me about
Ratso, but I forgot what it was you said. Lately, my memory isn’t the best.”

  “Great,” she said, swinging her leg back and forth. “Suddenly everyone involved in the Majestic Theater incident has a terrible memory. Pretty convenient, isn’t it, Jimmy?”

  Townsend was wearing a light blue shirt and sweat pants. Dark stains appeared under his arms. “Right after you called the house, Lindsey went into premature labor and I had to take her to the hospital. The doctor’s afraid the baby is going to be born too soon. I can’t leave her alone now even at night. I’m going to have to hire a nurse.”

  Rachel tilted her head. “I don’t understand what this has to do with Grant. You’re talking in circles, Jimmy.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said anxiously. “Grant loaned me a few thousand dollars to hold me over until the baby is born. I’ve tapped my father too many times. Now that he’s retired, he’s living on a fixed income and can’t afford to help me out as much as he did in the past.” His voice took on a pleading tone. “We’ve had plumbing problems this year. The engine on Lindsey’s Escort blew up and I had to sell it for salvage. Our grocery bill alone takes almost my entire salary. We have a lot of mouths to feed.”

  Rachel pinned him with her eyes. “So you did see it?”

  Townsend pushed himself to his feet, adjusting the worn elastic on his sweatpants. “You’re making a serious mistake, Rachel. Drop this before it comes back and bites your head off.”

  He started to leave through the side gate, but Rachel called out to him, “Why does Grant do these things? I bet this isn’t the first time he’s hurt someone.”

  Townsend returned to the patio, resting his back against one of the pillars. “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because he knows he can get away with it. I remember when I first started on the job. I was terrified of breaking the rules. During the day, the brass were always breathing down your neck, just waiting for you to fuck up so they could call you on the carpet and rip you a new asshole.” He stopped and took in a deep breath. “Once I transferred to graveyards, everything changed. So a guy gets carried away in a stressful situation and pounces on someone a little too hard. There’s no one around to see you, report you. If the perp complains, it’s their word against yours. Once you get away with one thing, you become convinced you can get away with anything.”

  “What did the other witnesses say?” Rachel asked. “Did they see anything?”

  Townsend shook his head. The look on his face said he had said more than he had intended to say. “I have to go.”

  “If I come forward and tell the truth about Grant,” Rachel asked point-blank, “will you back me up?”

  Townsend didn’t answer. He stared at her a long time, then turned and waddled out the side gate.

  Grant Cummings had just begun his scheduled days off. When Rachel arrived at the station Tuesday night, she was relieved that she wouldn’t have to face him for several days. Still, people were whispering about her behind her back. Other officers simply avoided her, walking right past her as if she didn’t exist. When Carol Hitchcock asked her to have breakfast with her, Rachel immediately agreed.

  The dispatcher gave them permission to eat at 3:10. Rachel met Carol in the parking lot of Coco’s restaurant near her assigned beat. “How was your trip?” she said, locking the door to her unit in the parking lot.

  “Fair,” Carol said, as they walked toward the entrance to the restaurant. “My dad has cancer. From the way he looked, I don’t think he has much time left.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.” They walked to the door in silence, entered and were seated. Slipping into a booth, Rachel dropped her napkin in her lap. Other than a few truck drivers at the counter, the place was empty. “I have some books on cancer if you’re interested.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Carol said, waving the waitress over. “That’s right, your husband died of cancer. Sometimes I forget. You seem too young to be a widow. What kind of cancer did he have?”

  “Lymphoma.”

  “Why did you get pregnant?” Carol asked. “Didn’t you have a baby right before he died? Townsend said you got pregnant after the doctors told you he was terminal. Is that true?”

  “When Joe first found out he had cancer,” Rachel explained, “he insisted that we go to a sperm bank. We’d planned on having a large family. We already had Tracy, but Joe had always dreamed of having a son, and the doctors told him the radiation treatments would make him sterile. He didn’t want me to get pregnant while he was undergoing treatment, though, because he needed me to be strong enough to care for him. When the doctors told us he wasn’t going to make it, I was artificially inseminated.”

  “That’s crazy,” Carol said. “Didn’t you care that your son would grow up without a father?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Joe was able to see his son before he died, so I guess it was worth it. He was with me in the delivery room, although he was so ill by then, they had to bring him in on a gurney. He said it was one of the greatest moments of his life, that seeing his son born took away his fear of death.”

  Carol was silent for a long time. Finally she said, “My dad has prostate cancer. It’s spread to his liver now. He waited too long to get treatment.”

  “It’s terrible, I know,” Rachel said, reaching out to touch her hand. The waitress set her coffee down, and she almost drained the entire cup. Her first day back was always difficult. If she slept the night before, she could not sleep during the day. By the time morning arrived, she felt like the walking dead. “Joe was in college when we met. I was a senior in high school. Once I laid eyes on him, it was all over for me. I never wanted to be out of his sight. Even toward the end when things were awful, I wanted to be with him.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was a landscape architect,” she said, finishing the coffee and waving the waitress over for a refill.

  “You mean he designed people’s yards?”

  “He did more commercial property than residential.

  You know, hotels, office buildings, apartment complexes. He was very talented. He knew every plant, every shrub.” Rachel recalled the beautiful home they had lived in. Even though the house was not large, the yard had been a virtual paradise. A small artificial stream snaked through the property. They even had a bridge. She used to hold Tracy’s hand as a toddler, walking her back and forth across the bridge.

  Once her coffee had been refilled, Rachel ordered eggs and bacon. Carol settled for an order of wheat toast and a slice of cantaloupe.

  “I heard what you said about Grant and the shooting incident,” Carol said after the waitress delivered their food.

  “It wasn’t just a shooting incident,” Rachel told her, shoving a spoonful of eggs into her mouth. “The kid died, Carol.”

  “Well,” she said, blinking, “Grant didn’t kill him. Aren’t they going to charge the Trueman kid with murder?”

  “Maybe voluntary manslaughter,” Rachel speculated, taking a quick bite out of her toast. “They can’t prove specific intent, so I don’t see how first or second degree murder can apply. Because Trueman’s sixteen, though, they may decide to try him as an adult. That means he’ll go to prison if he’s convicted.”

  “Whatever,” Carol said, pushing her plate away without touching her cantaloupe.

  Rachel was tempted to tell her what had happened on the beach. If she could convince Carol that Grant had tried to sexually assault her, she might believe what she had seen him do to Timothy Hillmont. Carol was in love with him, though. It didn’t take a genius to see it. Telling her Grant had fondled her would be like waving a red flag to a bull.

  “I want you to stop spreading lies about Grant,” Carol said, her voice escalating. “I know you didn’t mention it in your report, but the entire station is talking about it. Grant might try to make sergeant some day. These are the kind of rumors that can destroy a person’s chances to advance in the department.”

  “My report,” Rachel said, flabbergasted at what she was hearing.
“Who told you about my report?”

  “Well, I mean, I—” Carol knew she had made a mistake. Before she had started sleeping with Grant, she’d had a long term affair with Nick Miller. Even though they were no longer lovers, the sergeant still confided in her on a regular basis.

  “Miller told you,” Rachel guessed.

  “Grant’s a good officer,” Carol said, leaning forward over the table. “You don’t know how upset he is by all this. When someone gets killed on his watch, he goes home and cries like a baby. I know you think I’m making this up, Rachel, but it’s true. He really cares about people. He’d never put an innocent person’s life in jeopardy.”

  “Give me a break,” Rachel scoffed, finding it difficult to believe Grant Cummings cried over anyone. “The man packs steel in the toes of his boots. He wears sap gloves, Carol. He loves to punish people. What does he call it?” She stopped and mimicked Grant’s voice, “‘This asshole needs an attitude adjustment.’ That’s what he always says before he beats the crap out of someone. Don’t tell me you don’t know what he’s like.”

  “Sometimes you need an edge,” Carol said huffily. “It’s us against them.”

  “Don’t start with that crap,” Rachel said, her temper erupting. “Our job is to serve people, not brutalize them. I grew up believing police officers were the most honorable people in the world. Am I crazy or did something go wrong? Is every person who doesn’t carry a badge now considered our enemy? Maybe we should drive around in armored tanks. Then if anyone looked at us the wrong way, we could just mow them down on the spot.”

  “I was idealistic too when I first joined the department,” Carol said, staring off into space. “I was going to save babies from drowning, arrest bad guys, leap tall buildings with a single bound.” She brought her fist down on the table, causing the silverware to jangle. “You know what we are?” she said. “We’re trash, scum under their feet. We risk our lives for fucking peanuts. Gangsters are getting rich, cutting records about killing cops. Most of us can’t even pay our damn bills.” She pointed out the window of the restaurant. “You think the people of Oak Grove care about us? They care about us about as much as they care about the dog-catcher, the garbage men, all the stupid little people who clean up after them. If we don’t look out for ourselves, no one will.”