Abuse of Discretion

by Pamela Samuels Young

I realize how tight I’m squeezing his arm and loosen my grip. If I overreact, he’s not going to tell me the truth. “Has anybody ever sexted you?”

  Little Dre takes way too long to answer. “Yeah,” he admits. “But I always delete ’em.”

  WTF? I try not to show my shock. “Who sexted you?”

  “Aw, Dad. I don’t wanna get nobody in trouble.”

  “I’m not going to tell anybody. I swear. Just tell me.”

  He hangs his head. “Some of the girls in my class.” He smiles deviously. “Moneequa sends naked selfies all the time.”

  “A girl sent you a naked picture?”

  “Not all the way naked, Dad. Just her breasts.”

  My son might as well have punched me in the face. Does a fourth grader even have breasts?

  “And my friend Colton sent a picture of his you know what back to Moneequa. He showed it to me.”

  I’m so floored my brain can’t even form another question.

  “Dre, that’s just what kids do with them phones these days,” Sheila interrupts us again. “It ain’t that serious. They’re just being kids.”

  Sheila’s dumb-ass remark is why Little Dre is coming to live with me as soon as me and Angela get straight.

  My phone rings and Apache’s name appears on the screen. My pulse takes a leap. Maybe he has some good news for me.

  “Hate to have to tell you this, cuz, but the guy I asked to keep an eye on Angela’s office, just called me. Somebody trashed the place last night.”

  ***

  The reception area of Angela’s office suite is spotless, but when I step inside her office, I feel tingles of anger. Nothing is untouched. The place looks like a tornado ripped through it. The desk is on its side and the two guest chairs are broken into pieces. The printer looks as if it’s been smashed with a hammer. Paper is everywhere. Cotton stuffing sticks out of the gutted couch like clusters of clouds. The blood-red words spray-painted on the wall make me shiver: YOU R NEXT!

  There’s no way I can avoid coming clean with Angela now. The problem won’t be telling her that this is the handiwork of The Shepherd, but admitting that once again I lied to her.

  “Sir, you shouldn’t be in here.”

  I look over my shoulder to find Prentiss, the clown of a security guard. “This is a crime scene. You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  When I step back into the hallway, I hear the chime of the elevator. Angela steps off, her face full of anguish. Jenny is right behind her.

  “I was a block away when the police called me,” she says. “How’d you find out?”

  Luckily, she doesn’t wait for my response. She brushes past me and tries to enter the office, but Prentiss stops her. “I’m sorry, Miss A, but you can’t go inside until the police have processed the crime scene.”

  He spreads his arms, blocking the doorway like a comical rent-a-cop straight out of central casting.

  “But it’s my office. I need to see how bad it is. C’mon, Prentiss. I’ll only be a second and I won’t touch anything.”

  His lips twist in frustration and his arms fall to his side. “Okay, but hurry up. If the cops ask me, I’m telling them you went in there against my orders.”

  She darts inside, followed by me and Jenny.

  Angela gasps and covers her mouth with both hands. Her eyes linger on the words scrawled in red. “Why would somebody do this?”

  As I pull her back into the hallway, Jenny walks up to Prentiss. “Were any other offices in the building vandalized?”

  “No, just Miss A’s.”

  Jenny squeezes Angela’s shoulder. “Is there a problem with one of your clients?”

  “No way. Besides Graylin’s case, I only have one active criminal matter plus a couple of sexual harassment lawsuits. I don’t think this has anything to do with anybody I’m representing.”

  Angela stares at me. I want to look away, but I don’t. Her probing eyes tell me she knows that I know exactly why her office was trashed.

  “Did Graylin make bail?” I try to change the subject. To pretend this didn’t happen.

  “Yeah, but the paperwork is still being processed. He’ll likely be home tomorrow.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Angela turns to Jenny. “I need a minute to talk to Dre. Can you excuse us?”

  CHAPTER 52

  Sullivan

  The new case I received today throws me for a loop. Graylin Alexander. Fourteen years old. No prior record. It’s my job to put him away for possession of child pornography. Cases like this make me want to rethink my career choice.

  Ten years ago, there were only a handful of women in the D.A.’s Sex Crime Unit. Now, more than half are women. My colleagues are smart, tough and ambitious. The cream of the crop. We enjoy taking pedophiles off the streets and putting them behind bars where they belong. But in the last few years, the defendants facing charges for possession and distribution of child pornography have been getting increasingly younger. Somebody decided to start reading the laws literally and that means going after teens who have no concept of the danger they face when they take a seductive selfie and post it online or send it to a friend. They’re simply kids being kids with a technological spin no one could have predicted.

  I flip through the detention report and frown. This boy reads like an angel. Stellar grades, a stable home life, and no record of truancy. The affidavits from his minister and teacher would qualify him for sainthood.

  Picking up the phone, I dial Martinez’s office.

  “I just got the Graylin Alexander file. This kid doesn’t belong in adult court. Even the detention report says so. What’s the deal? How did he end up on my desk?”

  “The kid got it into his head that he’d be better off in adult court because he’d have a jury and his attorneys couldn’t talk him out of it,” Martinez explains. “You should’ve seen how he acted out at the fitness hearing. Refused to stand up, ignored the judge’s instructions, even swore at her. So, she granted his wish. I thought his father was going to have an aneurysm.”

  Martinez didn’t answer my question. A kid can’t just act out and end up in adult court. Martinez had to file a motion for a fitness hearing. “Why’d you even push to have this kid tried as an adult? He’s sounds like a choir boy. I wish my eighth grader had his grades.”

  “There’s some heat on the case.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The parents of the girl are politically connected. I got an order to go for the jugular. And if you haven’t felt the heat, don’t worry, it’s coming.”

  As I think about it, maybe I already had, but didn’t realize it. It’s rare for my boss to inquire about a minor case like this. In the hallway this morning, he asked me what I thought of it. I told him it was too soon to know. My boss is far savvier than Martinez’s. If he tried to force me to pursue a case for political reasons, he knows I’d balk.

  “So what’s going on?”

  “That’s why I filed the pornography charges as felonies rather than misdemeanors.”

  “Can we prove he took the picture?”

  “We don’t have any evidence of that yet, but he admitted to the police that he saved it from Snapchat. So, the possession charge is your clear winner. The witness intimidation charge isn’t as solid, but it’s still doable. A kid at Eastlake named Dontay Davis was bragging that Graylin Alexander asked him to threaten the girl to drop the case. Unless you can find some evidence to show he took the picture, the distribution and invasion of privacy charges are losers. I planned to drop them down the line anyway.”

  “What about the criminal threat charge? Is that based solely on the anonymous note?”

  “Yeah. If no evidence turns up, you might have to drop that one too.”

  This is not how I operate. I don’t file charges and t
hen hope that the evidence to support them somehow magically appears.

  “What about the victim? Is she in bad shape? Suicidal or anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Any negatives on our side that I need to know about?”

  “Something’s up with the victim’s dad. He doesn’t want her to testify.”

  “Why?”

  “Claims it would be too traumatic for her. He’s about to be appointed to the bench and wants the case to disappear. He tried to pressure me to offer the kid a plea. But I think the guy’s hiding something.”

  “You’re talking in code. What are you saying? You think he’s molesting the girl?”

  “My investigator sat in on our interview. She thinks that’s a possibility. I don’t know what’s going on. But something’s not right with him.”

  “Thanks a lot for such a wonderful case.”

  Martinez chuckles. “Unless the jury goes rogue, the possession charge is your clear winner, even without the girl’s testimony. The mother can testify about the effect on her, but it’ll be a stronger sell if the jury can see the devastated victim herself.”

  “What do you know about the kid’s attorney?”

  “He has two. Angela Evans and Jenny Ungerman. Both of them are excellent lawyers and fairly reasonable to deal with. Jenny knows the juvenile court system inside and out. Very committed to her clients. Angela used to be a federal prosecutor. They’re going to give you a run for your money.”

  I hang up and try to psyche myself up for this case. I miss the good old days when there were no cell phones, texts, tweets or kids posting provocative selfies online every five seconds. You can’t watch ten minutes of TV without seeing two strangers jump into bed and start humping each other’s brains out. So why would our kids think there’s anything wrong with sharing pictures of their privates?

  Cases like this make me ultra-paranoid about keeping my own house in order. I open my laptop and dial into Net Nanny. I’m determined not to become one of those naïve, helicopter parents who control every aspect of their kids’ lives. Successful professionals who spend more time making money than raising their kids. Their heads are so deep in the sand, they have no idea what their kids are doing online. And the kids are so shielded from real life, they have no idea how to think for themselves.

  Protecting my two kids and protecting my career go hand in hand. Considering what I do for a living, it would be more than embarrassing if one of my kids were accused of sexting.

  I punch in the password and go through my son’s texts, emails and social media accounts. I can see in real time everything he’s doing online. At thirteen, Jonathan is still into video games and has recently become fascinated with rattle snakes. As long as he doesn’t bring one home, his new hobby is fine with me.

  With a greater sense of trepidation, I switch over to my daughter’s account. My fifteen-year-old is growing more and more obsessed with the number of likes she receives on Instagram. She came home in tears last week because her friends teased her about only getting twelve likes for the picture of a new blouse she’d posted.

  I’ve been giving serious thought to taking away Nina’s cell phone and limiting her computer use to schoolwork. But I know from firsthand experience that the helicopter-parenting model is doomed to fail. I’ve sat across the table from far too many devastated parents who’d banned their kids from social media, only to find out they used a Snapchat or Instagram account their parents knew nothing about to post the tweets and pictures that landed them in court. At least this way, I can monitor everything she’s doing.

  I quickly scan all of Nina’s social media accounts, ending with Instagram. Finding nothing objectionable, I’m about to log off when I decide to click on the page of Nina’s best friend, Brooke. The first picture that catches my attention is a shot of Nina, Brooke, and Zoey. All three girls are bent at the waist, looking back over their shoulders with puckered pink lips. They’re wearing identical butt-exposing shorts—shorts I didn’t buy for Nina—their tight little rear ends pointed directly at the camera. It’s the perfect shot for a pedophile to zero in on. They might as well have written the caption Mr. Pedophile, please come and get me! underneath the picture.

  I snatch the receiver from my desk phone, then slam it back into the cradle. I grab my keys and cell phone instead and head for the elevator. I need to have a talk with my darling little daughter in the safety of my car. It wouldn’t look good for the deputy D.A. prosecuting Graylin Alexander to be overheard screaming at her daughter for her pornographic post.

  CHAPTER 53

  Dre

  Angela and I ride the elevator in silence. When we reach the lobby, I finally speak. “Why don’t we go to your apartment? This could take a minute.”

  “No,” she says. “My car will do.”

  We head for the parking garage.

  Angela hits her key fob, opening the door of her Saab and climbs into the driver’s seat. I take my time getting into the passenger seat.

  “So what’s going on?” she demands before I can even shut the door.

  “It’s The Shepherd.”

  Fear crinkles the corners of her eyes. “The Shepherd’s in prison.”

  “Yeah, but I got word that he’s put a price on my head.”

  “Word from who?”

  “He put the word out on the street. Apache brought it to me.”

  She suddenly softens. “He’s trying to kill you?”

  “Yes. And apparently threatening me too.” I pause. “By going after you. That dude I confronted in your office was one of The Shepherd’s guys.”

  Her face clouds with fear. “How do you know that?”

  “Apache connected him to the guy who was casing Donna’s house. Because of that, I had Donna take Brianna to stay with her girlfriend in Lancaster for a few weeks.”

  “Oh, so you thought it was fine to tell Donna what was up, but not me? I asked you more than once what was going on and you said nothing. Is that the reason you’ve been staying at my place all the time? Because you knew The Shepherd might try to come after me?”

  I nod.

  “So you lied to me. Again.”

  I don’t respond.

  “You didn’t think I deserved to know what was going on? At least for my own safety?”

  “You were under a lot of pressure from Graylin’s case. Besides, I was watching out for you and I had somebody else looking out too.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

  “Because I knew you’d freak out.” I inhale. “Like I said, you’ve been crazy busy with Graylin’s case. I wanted to solve the problem without you ever finding out there was a problem.”

  “Nice job on that plan.”

  I turn and look out of the passenger window.

  “Look, Dre, I made the decision to stay with you despite your past because you told me all of that was behind you.”

  “And it is. I haven’t—”

  “I understand that what The Shepherd decides to do is not within your control. I don’t blame you for my office being trashed. I blame you for not being honest with me about what was going on. This is the same problem we’ve had over and over and over again. You trying to be Superman and not being truthful with me.”

  “I thought I could handle it. Shut it down. And I will.”

  “How?”

  I look away.

  “You’re not trying to go after him in prison, are you?”

  “I can’t spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “You don’t wanna know.”

  She stares at me. “You’re right. I don’t.” She throws open the car door and starts a brisk walk back toward the building.

  I go after her, grab her by the arm and spin her around. “I’m going to
handle this.”

  “How? By having somebody kill him in prison so you can end up there too?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Which part? Having somebody kill him or you ending up in prison? What are you planning to do, Dre?”

  “I’m going to handle my business. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I’m done. I can’t have this craziness in my life. We never should’ve gotten back together!”

  We stand there, eye-to-eye, saying nothing.

  “I’m going to protect you,” I tell her. “So you don’t need to worry about anything.”

  “Really?” she snickers. “I feel so safe right now. Since the price is on your head, I guess breaking up with you will solve all of my problems. Maybe you should put the word out on the street that we’re no longer together.”

  Angela turns and walks away, and I let her.

  CHAPTER 54

  Mei

  The day after my interview with Crayvon, I decide to return to his street to nose around Kennedy’s house. I need to figure out how someone took that picture through her bedroom window.

  I’m leaning toward siding with Graylin that Crayvon was the one who set him up. I haven’t shared this with Angela or Jenny yet. I’d like to have something a little more concrete than a gut feeling before I finger Crayvon as our guy.

  I park my Prius a few houses east of Kennedy’s house and climb out carrying a clipboard and my Nikon. If anyone asks, I’m a photographer hired by a local builder to take pictures of homes in the area. The builder wants to make sure his new construction stays consistent with the neighborhood.

  I approach Kennedy’s house and knock lightly on the front door. When I get no answer, I ring the doorbell. To my relief, no one answers. I know from the pictures on that real estate site that the bedrooms are facing the back of the house. I walk around to the side and see a gate leading into the backyard. I check to see if it’s locked, but the latch opens easily.

  After gazing over my shoulder to make sure no one is watching, I squeeze through the gate, waiting a second or two to make sure the Carlyles don’t have a vicious guard dog before going all the way inside. I snap a wide shot of the backyard, take a couple pictures of the two bedroom windows and scurry back out.