by David Ellis
“I just want to talk to you, kid. Relax.” The officer is standing at the threshold, casting an ominous figure with the light behind him. One hand on his police radio, the other extending forward. But not holding a gun. The officer shakes his head, even shows the palm of his open hand, as if to decelerate the threat. He is moving cautiously toward the boy, shuffling his feet as each one eyes the other.
“See those hands,” he calls out. “Lose the bag.”
The officer moves slowly, his gaze alternating between the boy and the gym bag. The boy shows the palm of his free hand as he moves backward. It actually hurts less to backpedal, but he still moves with a limp. His heartbeat drums, not from the physical exertion. He swallows hard and feels a hot, sickening taste in his mouth. He asks himself, in a flash of a moment, how it could have come to this.
The officer pulls his radio close to his mouth, speaks urgently but quietly. Then he moves closer to the boy, his index finger still extended. Do-not-move.
“I said drop the bag,” he says to the boy. “Let’s just talk a minute.”
The boy drops the bag.
The officer’s right hand falls to his side, sweeping gently at his leather jacket, exposing for the first time the holster, his weapon. The boy waits another beat, looks into the eyes of the police officer.
“I haven’t said anything,” the boy says. “I won’t. I swear.”
The officer looks at him. Then he brings his radio close to his mouth. He mumbles something into the radio that the boy can’t make out.
“I repeat,” the officer says in a louder voice. “Suspect is armed.”
PART ONE
Offenses
1
Chances
SHE ALWAYS LOOKED into the eyes of her clients to see if the hope was still there. She wanted to believe that, for some of these children, a legal victory was the road to a better life. She needed to believe, at the very least, that she was giving them a chance.
Shelly took the boy’s hand by the wrist. She would not pat it reassuringly or offer empty words of comfort. There was no need to condescend. It was a serious situation and everyone knew it. The teenager sitting next to her in the courtroom looked younger than his years, a quiet boy with coffee-colored skin, an elongated neck and small flat nose, with long eyelashes covering the wide, awed stare of his dark eyes.
It had been a three-week hearing, on and off. Over a dozen witnesses had testified, primarily for the city board of education. The school was trying to expel Rondell based on a pattern of violations of school policy. The acts alleged included acts of defiance—such as violations of the school dress code and misbehavior in class—as well as violent altercations on school grounds. Shelly, as the advocate for Rondell, had a two-tiered trial strategy. First, she tried to dismantle each of the acts in the “pattern” as not being adequately proven. Second, and in her mind more pointedly, she argued that Rondell shouldn’t be expelled but transferred to one of the city’s “alternative” schools, set up years ago to take in troubled students.
A chance. In the end, that’s all she wanted for Rondell. A chance. If they kicked him out of school, he would retreat to the drug- and gang-infested streets. School was the only option for this boy. The school had expelled him without much of a hearing—in these post–Columbine days, schools were increasingly embracing the “zero tolerance” policy—and by the time Shelly caught the case, the act was completed. She had run to court and now sought a preliminary injunction against the school board, forcing them to keep Rondell in school until the issue was sorted out. Some would say she was buying time. What she was really doing was seeking leverage. If the judge leaned her way, the school might decide to give Rondell the alternative school option, which Shelly would take in a heartbeat. Her client was no saint. He probably didn’t belong in a traditional school. He just needed a chance.
Shelly had cross-examined school officials, students, and school security personnel. She could do it in her sleep by now. She had lost count, but in her time as an attorney representing students, she had tried over forty cases, including civil hearings such as these and about a dozen cases in juvenile court, which essentially meant criminal court for children. She felt good about her defense of Rondell, but the problem was numbers. One or two witnesses might not be credible, but over a dozen? Sheer numbers would seem to tip the balance against her client.
“All rise.”
The judge, the Honorable Alfred Halston, assumed the bench. His Honor was battle-worn, a weary man with snow-white hair, a lined face and gravelly voice. Shelly considered Halston a tough draw. He was presumably next in line for presiding judge, a politician’s politician who took the bench fifteen years ago after leaving the state’s House of Representatives. As an elected judge, he was no longer subject to popular election—a judge only had to run for “retention” once a decade, and no judge had been ousted in recent memory—but that didn’t erase political considerations. Everything was political in the city, and a judge hoping for elevation soon was always thinking two steps ahead of every ruling. Returning a violent boy to school was all he needed. If this kid turned around and shot someone, everyone would look back at the judge for blame.
Shelly had become adept at knowing the verdict before it was rendered. Look at the jurors’ eyes, look at the judge’s demeanor. Judge Halston looked first at Shelly’s client, and she knew the answer.
“What we have here, young man,” he began, “are allegations of a very serious nature. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
That confirmed it. The judge wouldn’t begin in such a testy manner if he were going to rule against Rondell. If he were going to uphold the expulsion, he wouldn’t need to scold Rondell—the ruling would be punishment enough. Shelly nodded along, because she was never arguing that her client was a prince. Plus, when you’re ahead, you let the judge feel like Solomon himself could not have divined a more exquisite outcome. The judge continued on for several minutes, castigating Rondell Moten for taking the gift of education for granted, for vanquishing this opportunity to learn, improve, find a constructive place in this world.
The judge sighed. “Nevertheless,” he began.
Not a complete victory, though. The judge was only finding that Shelly had established a likelihood that she would win at a final trial—the judge was simply issuing an injunction keeping the boy in school until the matter was finally resolved.
Shelly knew what would come next. The attorney for the board of education would offer Rondell alternative school to drop the matter, to prevent the further draining of resources directed against a single student in litigation that could go to the state’s highest court. The attorney knew Shelly well, knew her resolve.
Rondell’s mother hugged her son. Shelly watched the mother nervously gather her child in her arms. Perhaps she was in need of a fix, or maybe she was simply fearful of what might have happened. Shelly didn’t know which, and she didn’t know whether keeping Rondell in some form of school would miraculously transform his life, currently straying down the wrong path. She certainly wasn’t in the guarantee business. She just gave them a chance.
After parting with Rondell and his mother, she reached into her bag for her cell phone and turned it on. She almost dropped the phone, which was ringing. She answered it and heard the voice of Rena Schroeder, her boss at the Children’s Advocacy Project.
“Shelly, do you know someone named Alex Baniewicz?”
She closed her eyes, standing in the hallway outside the courtroom. “Yeah.”
“You remember that police officer who was shot last night?” Rena asked.
Of course, Shelly remembered. It was the headline of the Daily Watch today, covered as the lead story last night on television. A city police officer had been shot in the face while in pursuit of a drug dealer. The city always noticed when one of its finest went down.
Shelly dropped her head.
“He’s asking for you,” said Rena.
2
Dreams
A memory that is hardly a memory at all. A memory of dreams, of racing, wild, intoxicated dreams. Men running and shouting. Winter. Screaming. Crying. Stabbing. Grunting. Hands, cold hands. A voice, Shelly’s voice. Don’t. Stop. What are you doing? What’s—what’s this—? A man’s voice. Relax. The cold hands, again. She is flying through the chilly air, so cold, so very cold. She is suffocating. A weight on her, pressing down on her chest, her abdomen. Tobacco and alcohol and winter—
“Relax.”
Darkness. Where is she? She has forgotten. She feels the bed. She is spinning. She is nauseous. The bile rising to her throat. He is on her. Her shirt is open. Her—her bra is off. His face, whiskers scraping against her cheek. The smell. Alcohol, not like the kind Daddy drinks, cigarettes on his breath, his body odor, the flannel rubbing against her chest—
“Don’t.”
“Shut up and relax.” His voice. Her legs are spread and this is what it is. This is what she’s heard about. He is inside her, his penis is inside her, ripping into her, back and forth, in and out, and she’s not dreaming because she can feel his sweat on her face and his awful breath and he’s so heavy. She raises her hands but can’t make fists. She concentrates on what she can control. Her name. Her age. My name is Shelly. I am sixteen years old. I took the train from Haley. My parents are out of town and don’t know. I don’t know where I am.
“Don’t,” she hears herself repeat.
Light, coming from her right. A voice, a man’s voice, then a female, then she hears the voice of the man on top of her. “We’re in the middle of something here.” Laughter, muted laughter as the door closes part of the way, reducing the light, then opens again.
She remembers the name Andrea. She remembers Mary and Dina and—
She remembers now. She remembers coming in here, thinking this might be the bathroom, but it was a bedroom and she was overtaken, simply overcome with drowsiness and she thought if she just sat for a second on the bed, just for a second, she might get the energy to get up and find the bathroom because she needed to go—
She looks into the blinding light and opens her mouth but the words don’t come. Laughter from the light, then darkness again. Harder now, and quicker, driving inside her. He is going to come. The phrase, she didn’t know what it meant when Brandon Ainsley asked her at lunch, sixth grade, in front of a table full of boys—“Do you come when you’re called?” and she said “Of course” and oh, how they laughed and now he’s going to come, this person whoever he is, he’s making the noise and she feels him shiver and moan, she feels it shooting inside her and she wants to return to the dream, she wants him to leave, it hurts and she wants him to leave but it’s over now, he’s off her, and she catches her breath and shuts her eyes and she’s crying. She hears him zip up his pants and she doesn’t know what it means when he chuckles and says, “Nice to meet you,” and then, “Go back to sleep, it was just a dream.”
3
Lost
SHELLY RACED FROM the courthouse to her car and found the jail where Alex Baniewicz was being held. She approached the police station and assumed an air of confidence. So much of being a lawyer was presentation, and she did not anticipate a warm reception.
The interior of the police station had been remodeled. The reception area was spacious, with white walls and a long bench on each side of the door. The rest of the structure was cordoned off from the reception area by a wall with a secured door. Visitors were directed to the one division along the wall, a window covered by bulletproof glass, behind which sat a uniformed officer busying herself with paperwork. Above the thick glass was a sign in black, bold letters, ALL VISITORS ARE SUBJECT TO SEARCH, with the same words written in Spanish beneath it. Shelly walked up to the window and spoke into the small microphone embedded in the thick glass. She felt like she was buying a movie ticket.
Shelly gave her name to the officer. “I’m an attorney here to see Alex Baniewicz. I understand he’s being detained here.”
The uniformed officer glanced over the glasses perched on her nose. The thought passed in and out of Shelly’s mind, the women always got the traffic duty and reception jobs. The woman looked over a sheet before suddenly looking up at Shelly. It registered with the officer now. Baniewicz. The one who had killed the cop. Now came the runaround—You’ll have to wait, he’s not available right now, maybe you should come back later—which Shelly had been through before with a number of her clients held on juvie beefs, when the cops wanted more time to interrogate their suspect. The police were supposed to stop talking to the accused once a lawyer was requested, but the Supreme Court had goofed it up and ruled that any equivocation on the suspect’s part was open game to continue the interrogation, notwithstanding the request for counsel. And if the suspect hadn’t asked for a lawyer, the police weren’t required to tell the suspect that a lawyer was waiting outside, trying to get in. So Shelly was accustomed to being insistent. In this context, she reminded the officer of the high-profile nature of the case and promised her that she would be taking down the names of every officer who prevented her from speaking with Alex Baniewicz. Right now.
Her presentation seemed to buy her something with the officer. Shelly sat on a bench and made a point of looking at her watch. But her mind quickly drifted from the cop to her client. What had happened to Alex in the last few months? How could it have come to this?
A small classroom on the second floor of the law school, doubling as a conference room for the Children Advocacy’s Project. He was seated in a chair, looked no different from any tenth-grader learning English or math or science. Appropriately dressed in a white shirt and khaki trousers, with a long black wool coat folded in his lap—better dressed, in fact, than most of her clients. Well developed for sixteen, a strong neck and broad shoulders, a square jaw, thick curly hair. His eyes were large and expressive, something like amusement playing on his face as Shelly walked into the room.
According to his file, he had been involved in a fight in the hallway at Southside High School. No weapon, no racial epithets, and while it was not his first offense, it was far from a pattern of misbehavior. A brief suspension and nothing more, Shelly had figured.
He was white, which separated him from the majority of her clients. Most of the children she represented were younger and, from what she could see, poorer, and overwhelmingly Latino or African American.
“Alex?” she asked.
“Alex Baniewicz.” He lifted himself from the chair that barely contained his frame. “Nice to meet you.”
They sat in the chairs. “Your mother isn’t here?”
He shook his head as he looked Shelly over. It would not have been the first time a young student leered at Shelly, but she did not recognize lust in the stare. It was more like curiosity.
“You’re prettier than I thought you’d be,” he said.
The security door on the wall buzzed. A man stepped out, wearing shirtsleeves. His belt held a weapon, handcuffs, a cellular phone. He was Hispanic, tall, relatively lean, with a long, worried face. He put his hands on his hips and looked at Shelly. “I’m Detective Montes,” he said to her. The detective led Shelly through the squad room, refurbished like the rest of the building. It looked surprisingly efficient. High ceilings, large thick windows, steel desks, high-powered computers on some of them, typewriters on others, bulletin boards listing cases by the victim’s name with assignments to various detectives, with categories for “Pending” and “C / P”—whatever that meant—and “Closed.”
She saw only two women out of the nine detectives, and nothing but cool glares from all of them, regardless of gender. They took a seat at his desk, which told Shelly that she was about to receive a pep talk—the strength of the police’s case, the importance of getting out in front of this steamroller, giving Alex’s side of the story before things went too far and the death penalty was the only option. She wasn’t in the mood, was in a hurry to see her client, but she also wanted to se
e the government’s hand. “Your client’s a drug dealer,” said the detective. “If he’s calling you for help, I assume you already know that.”
“You sell drugs,” she said to him. “You don’t walk around with a roll like that working part-time at McHenry Stern.” It was always best to say it as fact. If she had a dime for every denial she’d heard from a young client on issues of drugs and weapons, she could retire from the nonprofit legal profession.
“Your client was carrying drugs and a weapon in a gym bag,” said the detective. “Officer Raymond Miroballi, a guy I’ve met, by the way”—he met her eyes when he said this; a cop shooting was personal to any detective, even more so if he was an acquaintance—“Officer Miroballi approached your client and your boy ran. Eventually he’s cornered in an alley and your guy shoots the officer in the face. We have the officer’s blood on your client’s clothes and hair.”
No. Not this fast. Blood was found, maybe, but not blood that could be identified as belonging to the slain officer or anyone else, for that matter. Not in less than a day. This guy was jobbing her.
“We have another cop who’ll positively I.D. your client. And we’re scooping witnesses right now from the area. Eyes and blood, Counselor. He’s done. Finito. So tell your client that if he helps us, maybe he can avoid the gas chamber.”
She took all of this without comment. There was no need for debate, and the police wouldn’t turn over evidence to her this quickly anyway, so she saw no need for a fight. In any event, Shelly knew that there was probably a strong case against Alex Baniewicz.
“You make it sound so bad.” Alex grimaced but did not contest the accuracy of her statement. He was different, Shelly thought, more comfortable with himself, more willing to open himself to Shelly than most teenage clients she had. “I mean, it’s not like you think.”
