First Offense

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  This was the sentiment of the majority of probation officers assigned to court services, and Ann had heard this so often she shrugged it off. “Why don’t you see what you come up with now. Perry?” she said, handing him the sheet with her corrections and waiting while he tried to complete it.

  Through the years the job had become increasingly more technical. Up until six months ago Perry Rogers had been assigned to field services. In that position he only supervised offenders and filed reports when they violated their probation. Field officers were a different breed from court investigators. Many were negligent in managing their caseloads, came to work in jeans and T-shirts, and seldom had to appear in court on their cases. Now that Perry had transferred to court services, however, his job centered on writing and investigating presentence reports for the court.

  “Why did you aggravate this count?” Ann said, looking over his shoulder at the form.

  “Because he used a gun,” the man responded.

  “But you’ve already added a two-year enhancement for the use of the firearm. Therefore you can’t use it to ask for a higher term. Don’t you see?” Ann said. “That’s like double jeopardy. He can’t be punished for the same crime twice.”

  “Well,” Rogers said, clearly confused, “his prior record is an aggravating factor, and I’ve enhanced his term for it. Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “No, it’s not,” Ann said, beginning to get as frustrated as Perry. She knew it was complex, and she felt sorry for the man, but he had to understand the law in order to do his job. “This enhancement is for one particular prior, this burglary. You’ve aggravated the crime based on his criminal record as a whole. See the difference?”

  Ann glanced at the stack of files on her desk and back to her coworker. She didn’t have the time to sit here all day trying to explain it to him. Grabbing the sheet out of his hands and inserting the correct terms, Ann computed it herself and handed it back. “There you go, Perry,” she said. “But one of these days you’re going to have to take the time to learn it yourself.”

  After Rogers had returned to his own cubicle next to Ann’s, he started talking again from the other side of the partition. “It was right over there, wasn’t it? You know, where you were shot?”

  Without answering, Ann picked up her work and quietly left her cubicle, deciding to find an empty desk she could use temporarily, one that didn’t have a window overlooking the parking lot.

  At twelve-thirty, Ann heard her name being paged on the loudspeaker system. Collecting her papers and files from the long table in the conference room where she’d been working, she rushed back to her desk to take the phone call.

  “Hi,” Jimmy Sawyer said. “I wanted to see how you’re feeling.”

  “Oh, Jimmy,” Ann said, recognizing his nasal voice. “It’s nice of you to call. To tell you the truth, I was going to call you this afternoon.” Not wanting to give him the bad news over the phone, Ann suggested he come to the office so they could talk. Then she thought better of it. “Tell you what,” she said. “I owe you one. I’ll buy you lunch. Why don’t you meet me at Marie Callender’s?” No matter what anyone said, Ann was grateful that he had stopped to help her. Many people didn’t want to get involved, and Ann knew she could have bled to death on that sidewalk.

  “Marie Callender’s is too far from my house,” Sawyer said. “Let’s meet at the Hilton.”

  Ann got to the hotel restaurant, took a table, and was looking over the menu when Sawyer walked in. His long hair was slicked back in a ponytail, and he was wearing Levi’s and a white shirt with an embroidered pocket. “I can’t really stay,” he said, not sitting down. “I have to go. I’m late.”

  “You mean you don’t want to have lunch?” Ann asked, surprised. “I wanted to do something for you. I mean, I know it’s not much, but…”

  Sawyer was having difficulty maintaining eye contact, she noticed. He would look at her and then flit away. “I thought you said you were going to take me back to court, tell them what I did. You know, get my probation switched so I don’t have to report every month.”

  “Why don’t you sit down, Jimmy?” Ann said, studying his face, her assessment of him shifting by the second.

  “I can’t. I have to go. I have to study.”

  “Are you in school?” she asked, confused. She really recalled very little about his case. It seemed like everything that had occurred right before the shooting had simply vanished from her mind.

  “No,” he said. “But I will be by next semester. I have to get my SAT scores up.” He stopped abruptly and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “I’m going to one of those cram courses. If I don’t get my scores up, I’ll have to go to a stupid junior college.”

  A stupid junior college, Ann thought, compressing her lips in distaste. She knew kids who would love to go to any college. “That’s not so bad. A lot of people do the first two years at a junior college and then transfer to a university. My husband did that, and he later graduated from UCLA with honors.” Mentioning Hank in Sawyer’s presence gave Ann a strange sensation. Suddenly the night of the shooting reappeared in her mind. Why had she thought Hank was present that night? Ann knew she’d been delusional, but still it had weighed on her mind. If anyone could dispel this, Ann thought, it should be Sawyer. He had been there. “Jimmy, can you describe the people who stopped the night I was shot?”

  “Some old couple. I don’t know. I don’t really remember.”

  “Detective Abrams told me there were a lot of people that stopped. Did you see a man about my age, crew cut, small eyes, tall, stocky build? Someone that looked like a drill instructor, maybe?”

  “Look,” Sawyer said, getting annoyed, “I was trying to help you. I don’t remember.” His anger mounted as he added, “The cops treated me like I was a suspect or something. Let me tell you,” he said, “if I had to do it again, I don’t know if I would stop.”

  Ann swallowed, feeling a pang of guilt. If she didn’t talk Glen out of filing charges against him, this poor kid would really be bitter. He’d never help another person the rest of his life.

  “That district attorney was there,” Sawyer interjected, as if he could read Ann’s mind. “You know. Glen Hopkins.”

  “I didn’t mean him,” Ann said.

  Sawyer continued, “Don’t they teach those guys first aid? I mean, he didn’t seem to have a clue about what to do. All he did was just stand there and look at you like a lame dick. My dad’s a doctor, so…”

  So, Ann thought. Glen wasn’t quite as cool in a crisis as he was in a courtroom. Then she thought of an ulterior reason he might be so determined to file against Sawyer. He was her lover and he’d panicked. Sawyer had shown him up.

  “Why are you asking me all these questions?” Sawyer said, getting more restless by the second. “I thought you asked me here to tell me something good, not interrogate me like another cop.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ann said, embarrassed. “I really am grateful for what you did, Jimmy. Why don’t you sit down a minute? It’s a little difficult to carry on a conversation this way.”

  Sawyer was standing next to a large artificial palm tree. He looked behind him nervously and then back at Ann. “I have to go. I don’t want to sit down.”

  “Whatever,” Ann said, frustrated by the way he was acting. The waitress had arrived, ready to take their order. “Are you sure you don’t want something? Maybe a soft drink or some ice cream?”

  When Sawyer didn’t answer, Ann shrugged and started ordering. All the while, though, she watched him out of the comer of her eye. He was staring at a plastic leaf on the palm tree as though it contained the mysteries of the universe. As soon as the waitress left, Ann said his name several times, and he didn’t respond. Suddenly the picture came clear. He was high on drugs. Exactly what, she didn’t know, but she knew now why he wouldn’t eat, why he couldn’t sit still, why his palms were sweaty.

  Ann always trusted her instincts, and they told her Sawyer was nothing more than just anot
her screwed-up kid on drugs. He might have stayed straight for his day in court, but Jimmy Sawyer was a user. Peering up at him, she tried to see if his pupils were dilated. “What are you on, Jimmy?”

  “What?” he said, giggling as if she had just said something outrageously funny.

  “Are you on drugs right now?” Ann’s guess was LSD or speed.

  “No way, man. I have to go.” He turned and quickly walked away.

  “Hey,” Ann yelled, shooting to her feet. “Get back here.” He was her probationer. She couldn’t let him get away with this no matter what he’d done for her. The last time she’d tried to cut a probationer some slack, the man had taken five hits of LSD and then later stabbed his wife, saying she was a demon from hell. The girl had been only twenty-three years old, and the couple had three tiny babies. Ann didn’t take chances anymore. Her responsibilities to both the court and the community were too grave. But Sawyer was already out the door, and Ann was too weak to chase him down.

  “What a world,” she said, sitting back down in her seat. She would have to test Sawyer for narcotics. The way it looked, the test would come back dirty and Ann would end up responsible for sending the man who’d saved her life to jail.

  Chapter 5

  Ann pulled out of the government center parking lot in a white county car, proceeding on a case that was uppermost in her mind. She would contact one of the victims in the Delvecchio rape, the one who had been Glen’s teacher. Prior to the brutal attack, Estelle Summer had led an independent and active existence, even though she was in her mid-seventies. According to her children and neighbors, she’d had her own comfortable home, her friends, and her club work. And she’d been a neat, well-groomed woman, pretty for her age. That is, until she met up with Randy Delvecchio. The rapist had been waiting inside her bedroom closet. Once the woman had walked into the room, he’d sprung out and placed a knife at her throat. Wearing a stocking mask, the attacker forced her onto the floor, frightening the old woman so much that she had defecated in her pants. Randy had been a real sweetheart, Ann thought grimly, even going so far as to get a washrag and clean her up. Once he had done so, he had proceeded to beat her, rape her, and force her to orally copulate him. Then while Estelle lay on the floor, beaten and in shock. Randy had gone to her refrigerator and made himself a ham and cheese sandwich. For dessert, he had flipped the old woman over and sodomized her.

  Estelle Summer would never live independently again. The woman had been so terrorized by the assault that she suffered from severe insomnia. Months after the attack, she lay awake night after night, shaking in her bed with fear. She had proceeded to build a fortress around her house, expending all her meager savings to install sophisticated alarms, build fences, hire security officers to stand by her door all night. When that didn’t calm her fears, Estelle had boarded up all the doors and windows and refused to leave the house. Her weight had plummeted to sixty-eight pounds. She became incontinent and was forced to wear diapers. Finally her children had placed her in a nursing home.

  After thirty years in the public school system, a respected and dedicated teacher, Estelle Summer was unable to enjoy her retirement, her few remaining years on this earth. No wonder Glen was so intent on punishing this man to the full extent of the law.

  Ann parked in front of the nursing home, a long brick building set far back from the road, and got out and headed to the entrance. Lovely multicolored pansies were planted along the walkway leading to the front door, but through the open windows Ann could see the hospital beds and wheelchairs.

  “I’m here to see Estelle Summer,” she told the nurse in the lobby. An attractive woman in her thirties, the woman had fluffy blond hair, fair skin, and blue eyes.

  “Oh,” the woman said, her face blanching, “are you a relative?”

  “No,” Ann said, removing her county identification and flashing it. “I’m a deputy probation officer. I need to talk to her about a case.”

  The woman looked at the identification card and then slowly raised her eyes to Ann’s face. “Ms. Summer passed away three hours ago.”

  Ann lurched back from the desk, as if pushed by some invisible force. She knew it was fear, but she didn’t know why. She had never even met Estelle Summer. Why was she so stunned by this woman’s death? It had to be the shooting, she told herself She knew now what it felt like to be terrified, helpless, desperate. Estelle had counted on the police to find her attacker and bring him to justice, but before they did, it was too late. Would this happen to Ann? Would they never find the person who had shot her? Would the fear grow and grow until it consumed her every thought?

  “Did Ms. Summer have a heart attack?” Ann asked, unable to walk away.

  The nurse glanced over her shoulder and then back at Ann, standing and leaning forward over the counter. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t her heart.” The nurse dropped her eyes and started mindlessly rearranging the various items on her desk. Ann could see that her hands were trembling. “She quit eating,” the nurse said. “We tried to tube-feed her and she just pulled the tubes out.” The woman looked up. “You know what she said to me right before she died?”

  Ann didn’t answer.

  A metal chart in her hands, the nurse slammed it down on the desk. “She said you people were going to let that animal that raped her off, that the jury was going to find him not guilty. That’s why she wanted to die. She said she didn’t want to be alive when the verdict came in.”

  “But that’s not true,” Ann protested. “The trial—”

  The nurse flipped her wrist at Ann, dropping back in her seat. “Trials,” she said, a disgusted look on her face. “I know all about the big promises you people make. I was raped too. One night two years ago when I was working at County General, I was walking to my car and this guy jumps me and drags me into the bushes. I did everything the cops said: I pressed charges, I went to court.” She stopped and inhaled, almost too shaken to continue. “He was found not guilty and released. Know how that made me feel?”

  Ann slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it made you feel horrible.”

  “Horrible, huh?” the woman said, her voice loud and abrasive. “That’s not the word I’d use.”

  A frail elderly woman suddenly appeared at the counter, a look of confusion on her face. “I need a size eight, young lady,” she said. “I want to exchange this dress.” Placing a limp bath towel on the counter, she looked around for a sales clerk to assist her.

  “Go on back to your room, Mabel,” the nurse said, handing her back the towel. “It’s almost time for dinner.”

  Once the old woman had tottered away, the towel dangling from her hands, the nurse returned to their conversation. “The doctors wanted to keep that poor woman alive, put her on life support and all. Well, I knew she was already dead from the day she came in here. Estelle died when that guy raped her. He stole her will to live, you know, ripped it right out of her.”

  “If you ever want anyone to talk to,” Ann said, handing the woman her business card before leaving, “I’m a good listener.”

  “Yeah,” the nurse said. “A lot of people listen, but listening isn’t going to get it. Tell that to your bosses, huh? Do that for me.”

  Emotionally drained, Ann made her way out of the nursing home. No, she told herself on the walk back to the car, squinting in the bright afternoon sun, she would not live the rest of her life in terror. And she would not let this woman’s death go unpunished. By his actions Randy Delvecchio had killed Estelle Summer. The nurse was right. He had stolen her will to live.

  As she got in her car and cranked the engine, Ann’s mind was clocking at breakneck speed. Glen couldn’t possibly know yet that Estelle had died. She was a valuable witness in his case against Delvecchio, and her death could conceivably cause them to lose the rape conviction related to her assault. According to what Glen had told her, they didn’t have enough evidence to try Delvecchio on the outstanding homicides. And if he lost even one of the rape counts, he would be
devastated.

  Turning onto the main thoroughfare, Ann saw a station wagon with the words “Hughes Funeral Home” on the side enter the alley behind the convalescent home. They were coming to take Estelle Summer away. Ann’s hands locked on the steering wheel and her foot depressed the gas pedal, the needle on the speedometer surging as she raced down the street.

  Estelle was no longer able to confront her attacker, but Ann certainly could. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was after four o’clock. By the time she got back. Randy Delvecchio should have been returned to his cell.

  At the courthouse, Ann headed straight to the jail, eager for the confrontation ahead of her.

  Once she had cleared security and had a visitor’s badge pinned to her blouse, the jailer led her to a bank of glassed-in booths. “I told them at the front counter I wanted a face-to-face,” Ann said. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “I wouldn’t advise it,” the jailer said, compressing his lips. “We’ve had some problems with this inmate.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “He jumped one of the other inmates. Doc thinks he’s a psycho.”

  “Of course he’s a psycho,” Ann snapped. “He’s a fucking maniac who likes to rape old women. Go get him, all right? He’s just my type.”

  “Hey, suit yourself,” the jailer said, shuffling off to get the prisoner moved to a secured interview room, the huge ring of keys on his belt rattling and jangling as he walked down the tile corridor. While he was gone, Ann composed herself. She was going to be sweet as pie to this monster—and then nail him. A few minutes later, the jailer returned and escorted Ann to the door, unlocking it and then locking it again once she was inside.

  Ann carried no notebook, pen, or tape recorder. That was how she worked. Prisoners didn’t say much when a person wrote down or recorded everything they said. Ann had an excellent memory. That would suffice.

  “Hi, Randy,” she said brightly, her voice a few octaves higher than usual. “Remember me? I talked to you on your bail review. Ann Carlisle with the probation department. How you doing in here? Pretty tough one, isn’t it?”