At Daddy’s Hands

by Jacob Paul Patchen

  Officer Barnes shook his head as he thought.

  “No. I don’t like that. We can’t have the perpetrator and victim in the same room as we interview them.”

  “But it’s Jim. Come on. How long have you known him? Fifteen… twenty years?” Wouldn’t you want that courtesy if you were in his position?”

  “Well…” Officer Barnes sucked in deeply and let it out loudly. “Five minutes. We’ll give him five minutes in there to tell his side of things and see if her story changes. Five minutes, Nick. That’s it. I’m serious.”

  “Oh, I’m sure her story will change. I’d bet my job on it. There’s no way that Jim could do something so… disgusting.”

  “After this, it’s by the book. You got it? We don’t need any kind of scene down here at the school. Okay?”

  “Alright, I’ll give him a call. Let’s hear him out.”

  Officer Swine opened up his phone, rifled through his contacts and gave Jim a call.

  The officers walked back into Mike’s office to see that Ashley had returned from the restroom.

  “Hello, Ashley. It’s good to see you, again. Although, I wish it were under other circumstances.” Officer Barnes said. “Officer Swine just got off the phone with Jim, he’s on his way over here so that we can straighten this out.”

  Ashley’s jaw dropped. Mike’s head snapped up from his notes.

  “What? Are you out of your mind? This isn’t the policy procedure! This is absurd!” Mike said furiously.

  “Just calm down, Mike,” said Officer Barnes. “We just want to get to the bottom of this. That’s all.”

  Ashley threw out her hands. “How is that going to help the situation? You need to arrest him! Not invite him down here for tea and cookies!”

  “Arrest him?” Officer Swine laughed. “How about you let us do our job first, Ma’am.” He said coldly. “Now, Nikki, how about you tell us what happened? Every detail.”

  Nikki was reliving the details for the third time, at the request of officer Swine, when Jim burst through the door with the school secretary close behind.

  “Jim! Jim!” She shouted, “I said wait until I ring you in. Mike, I’m so sorry. He just came rushing in.”

  Mike held up his hand and nodded to Mrs. Wright. “Thank you. We’ll handle it from here.”

  Jim offered a warm smile and handshake to both officers. He tried to hug Ashley, but she refused. With a genuinely concerned face, he gravitated toward Nikki. But, his concern was more for himself than for her.

  “What happened, Nik? Are you okay? Did someone hurt you? Who was it? I’ll bust their skull open!”

  Ashley couldn’t hold back her anger any longer. “You son of a bitch! You sick, sick, son of a bitch.” She stormed Jim in an angry rush of wild slaps to the head.

  Both officers pulled her off of Jim and took her out to the other room to calm down. They came back in and locked the door behind them.

  “Uhhh, Jim… I uh, I don’t know how to say this exactly,” Said Officer Barnes.

  Officer Swine interrupted. “You daughter is accusing you of sexually assaulting her. Could you talk some sense into her, please?”

  “This is absurd!” Mike shouted. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “Now, calm down, Mike,” Officer Barnes insisted, “Let us do our job.”

  “Your job? Your job is to protect this young lady from this man! But, here you are, bringing them face to face, let alone in my office. This is insane!”

  “Mike,” Jim was on his knee beside Nikki with his hand on her leg, squeezing it tight enough to let her know that she had better keep her mouth shut. She was shooting flames and daggers at him from both eyes, “Listen, let’s just keep our cool, alright. Or we’re going to have to ask you to leave so that you don’t upset my daughter.”

  “Leave? This is my office, if anyone is leaving, it will be you!”

  Officer Barnes held up his hands.

  “Alright! Alright, everybody. Let’s just take a second to breathe. Jim, you want to explain your side of the story here?”

  “My side of the story?” Jim stood up. “I haven’t done anything but give my family everything that they’ve ever wanted.”

  Nikki looked down at the floor and shook her head. She didn’t know whether to kick this man in the leg and run, or just give in and accept that she would always be his victim.

  “All I’ve ever done is spoil her.” Jim started to stroke her hair, but she pulled away quickly.

  “Don’t touch me! Get away from me!” She growled.

  Jim pulled her against his chest, holding her still, hugging her, pressuring her.

  She tried to push him away. Jim tried to calm her down.

  “It’s ok, Nikki. It’s alright. Whatever happened, it’s over now.”

  “No! Get off me! Stop! Quit touching me!” She screamed.

  Mike had enough. He took an aggressive couple of steps toward Jim.

  “Let her go, Jim!”

  With his attention at Mike, Nikki saw her chance. She reached up and raked her fingernails down his face. He let go, shocked.

  “You’re not going to touch me anymore!” Nikki became hysterical.

  Jim reached out for her as Mike reached out for Jim. Nikki reared back and swung at Jim, smacking him across the face, turning his cheek a stinging red and leaving his mouth gaping open. She shattered into tears as Mike shoved Jim away from her.

  Officer Swine jumped in front of Jim, more protecting him than holding him back. Officer Barnes grabbed Nikki and cradled her in the opposite corner.

  “Alright, get him out of here, Nick.” Officer Barnes took charge of the room. “It’s ok, honey. It’s alright. Calm down, it’s over. He’s leaving.”

  “Sorry, Jim. I got to take you outside.” Officer Swine opened the door. Jim looked at him, at Nikki, Mike, and then at Officer Barnes.

  “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

  Then, he walked out on his own, passed the hissing eyes of his wife, out into a burning sun and to the back of the police cruiser. Officer Swine opened the rear door and politely asked Jim to get inside.

  . . . . .

  Judge Norman sat in his chambers twisting his gray mustache between his finger and thumb while looking over the evidence of a very quick and quiet investigation. At his large rosewood desk, and still in his black robe, he wrestled with the idea of sentencing a local hero.

  To his rear, hanging on the wall, was a large picture of Thomas Jefferson. Around his chambers were remanence of a simpler time. Mounted on an Ohio State shaped plaque to his right, he sported the big twelve-point buck that he shot on his brother’s farm, and above that was an old English musket of which he was the winning bid for at the Mayor’s nephew’s cancer benefit over at the VFW. To his left stood both the American and Ohio State flag. Presented on a stand directly beneath them was a picture of Judge Norman in his Army fatigues, posing with his rifle in front of an Apache helicopter. In the center of the room was a large bear rug; a brown bear that he bagged in Alaska on a hunting trip of a lifetime when his father was diagnosed with cancer. On the mantle above his bookcase were a seventeen-year-old bottle of scotch and two whiskey glasses. His desk was decorated with a picture of his family, an autographed baseball from Pete Rose, and an antler-handled letter opener laying on top of a pile of envelopes.

  He leaned back in his old groaning chair, reading over the police reports and statements from Jim’s family. For him, personally, it was extremely difficult to visualize Jim Handler doing anything remotely close to the accusations that were brought against him by his youngest daughter. He grew to know Jim very
well over the years, from several big drug busts to kidnappings, armed robberies, and of course The Wills Creek Massacre. Jim had proven himself to be a reliable, honest, trustworthy, and respectable enforcer of the law, as well as a good friend. Jim was on Judge Norman’s championship softball team, played host to many parties and cookouts, and would even drop off a bottle of Jack Daniels during the Christmas season.

  Judge Norman read over part of Nikki’s statement one more time:

  Sometimes dad gets really angry after work. Those are the bad days. Those are the days where we try to avoid him. He takes it out on mom, mostly. We can hear it from our bedrooms. His yelling and cursing, his hand smacking across mom’s face, it echoes up the stairway and down the hall into our rooms.

  Mom doesn’t fight back. I don’t know why – I guess she still loves him. But, the mornings after, I watch her powder over the bruising on her cheeks. I feel bad for her. I wish she would do something. I wish she would stand up to him.

  It’s usually on those nights that he’s the worst. Those are the nights that he sneaks into my room. I can feel him watching me. It’s like that feeling when Mrs. V. asks us to write something on the chalkboard, you can just feel all those eyes staring at you, hoping that you mess up or do something funny, so that they can laugh at you. That’s kind of how it feels when he’s standing outside my door watching me. I think he’s trying to see if I’m awake or not.

  Those nights... he touches me. Those nights…he makes me touch him. The first time, about a year ago, I had no idea what was happening. I thought it was… normal. But it didn’t feel normal. It felt wrong. It felt so… so… wrong.

  He said that if I told anyone, he would deny it. He said that he would take it out on Mom. He said that he would beat her until she couldn’t talk. I don’t know if he was serious or just trying to scare me, but it worked for a long time.

  Dad told me that if I was a good girl, he would buy me whatever I wanted. So, I did what I was told. I let him touch me, and I touched him back. Then he would buy me new shoes, a TV, clothes, toys… anything that I asked for. He did that with all of us.

  Those were the good days. When he would take us shopping. It was almost as if it wasn’t wrong anymore, it almost felt right. We would laugh and talk about how our days have been. He would buy us snacks and candy. He would tell us how much he loved us and that he would never let anyone hurt us.

  I don’t know if he realized that he was the one that was hurting us.

  Judge Norman tossed the file onto his desk. He was mentally in a hard place as he realized that there was not enough evidence to convict Jim of sexual assault. It was another case of her word versus his, and he figured the whole town would have his head if he tried to criminalize their hero in a public forum. He could see it now, protests and disorder, angry citizens crucifying him for tarnishing their hero. Not to mention, it was an election year. He was aware that he had to please the masses if he wished to be re-elected. He wanted this all to go away. He wanted it gone, off his desk, to disappear like that drug dealer who sold his nephew that heroin. He even thought about sweeping it under the rug. But, the moral side of his conscience wouldn’t allow that to happen.

  He paged his bailiff.

  “John. John, could you bring them in, please?”

  “Yes, sir, judge.”

  The bailiff escorted Jim’s defense lawyer and the prosecuting lawyer into Judge Norman’s office.

  The defense lawyer, an enthusiastic young man fresh out of law school, dressed in a flashy black suit and thin-rimmed glasses, attempted to shake Judge Norman’s hand.

  The Judge glanced at his outstretched hand and then quickly up into the young man’s optimistic eyes.

  “Have a seat, son.”

  The prosecuting lawyer, a man in his forties with nearly twenty years under his belt, snickered at his young counterpart’s inexperience with whom the people called, No Nonsense Judge Norman.

  “Gentlemen, we have ourselves a bit of a situation on our hands, now don’t we?”

  “Well, sir, my client is clearly innocent, and I can prove it.”

  “Son, I can appreciate your luster, but after reading his little girl’s statement, not to mention all of the others, I’m not so sure that you can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jim is innocent. And, damn it, that pains me more to acknowledge than you realize.”

  He leaned back and turned his chair sideways to look up at the picture of Jefferson hanging behind his desk. He hardly noticed it as much as he used to. Back then, he tried to imagine exactly what America’s Forefathers had in mind when they created this free nation.

  He whipped back around to face them and slapped his hands on his desk.

  “But, on the other hand, the evidence is more his story vs. their story. To be blunt, I’m not quite sure that we have enough here for the case to be substantiated.”

  Without another word, Judge Norman got up and walked over to the bottle of scotch on his mantle. He pointed it in their direction, an offer that each of them declined with a short rattle of their heads.

  He puffed.

  “Well, I need a drink.”

  The Judge poured himself a heavy shot in a whiskey glass engraved with No Nonsense Judge Norman, a Christmas gift from his long-time bailiff, John, and downed it with one gasping swallow. Then, he carried them over to his desk, pounding the bottle to the old worn-down wood like his gavel in the courtroom just outside the door to his left.

  “I don’t like this one bit. It smells like potpourri in a shithouse, it just doesn’t make sense. It’s trouble, gentlemen. Damned trouble for all involved: you, me, our beloved little town… Jim.”

  He poured a little more in his glass and took a sip.

  The prosecuting attorney cleared his throat.

  “Well sir, we are ready to go to trial if we have to, but quite honestly, I think it would be in everyone’s best interest to settle this one by other means.”

  Jim’s attorney sat straight up. “By other means?”

  Judge Norman looked disgusted as he swirled his glass. “He means a plea deal.”

  “Now wait just a minute, here! My client isn’t guilty of anything more than acting as a strong disciplinarian with a bit of a temper and a whole lot of emotion. That’s it! He’s been under a lot of stress lately. Judge, he’s an innocent man… he’s innocent of these ridiculous sexual assault accusations!”

  Judge Norman finished his drink in a quick head tilt back and slammed his glass beside the bottle.

  “You both know what will happen if this thing goes to trial. We’ll have the media up all of our asses. It’ll be national news. They’ll dig up dirt on every single one of us and twist it however they like, just for a story. This town will get a black eye. Do you want that? Well, I sure in the hell don’t. I’ve worked too damn hard to have some punk journalist start smearing my name, my family, my friends, my law enforcement… my town.”

  He turned to look out of his second-story window across the town square. A few people were walking casually down the sidewalk, an elderly couple greeted a young man in a blue football jersey selling raffle tickets outside the local bakery, where everyone gets their morning doughnuts and birthday cakes. He saw Mr. Smith carrying another box of presumed snacks, baby wipes, tobacco, and energy drinks to the post office, another care package gathered at the Stop Nine Church of Christ for his son overseas in Afghanistan.

  He shook his head.

  “I won’t have it! Damn it, I won’t let that happen!”

  He turned back around towards the prosecuting attorney.

  “What do you have for me?”

  “Well, sir, to save face, and well, this town, we are willing to of
fer a pretty impressive deal. After all, it’s Jim. We will drop all felony, and sexual assault charges down to misdemeanor simple assault and misdemeanor child endangerment. I think we can all agree that this is a fair and just deal considering the situation. I believe that this will allow us to not only save this town’s reputation, Judge Norman but also let us quickly deal justice and move on to the more serious drug and gang-related crimes infesting our area.”

  Judge Norman drew in a deep breath of contemplation. Still staring out the window with his hands in his pockets and belly out, he grunted.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can live with that. How about you, son?” He walked back over to his seat, sat down, and extended his hand towards Jim’s lawyer.

  The defense lawyer stared at his hand for a moment, looked at Jim, who nodded his head. He reached out his hand with a thrust and shook Judge Norman’s hand.

  “I think we can all live with that. Let me confer with my client and see if I can’t convince him to take this offer.”

  Twenty minutes later, Jim and his lawyer walked toward the defense side of the courtroom and sat down.

  “All rise!”

  The two attorneys and Jim stood up while Judge Norman entered the room.

  “No need to sit, this will be quick,” he said as he took his seat in front of them.

  “Jim, I assume that your lawyer has explained the circumstances?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Good. Now hear this. I don’t want to know whether or not you did what you’ve been accused of, Jim, I don’t want to know. Given your reputation, your sacrifices for this city, this county, this state, I can’t help but feel… well, quite frankly, pissed off. Jim, how in the hell did you get yourself in this situation? You know damn well what’s expected out of our law enforcement around here. I don’t know what you are dealing with, mentally. Hell, I can’t imagine the nightmares you have to deal with in your line of work. But man up! You have a family, you have a reputation, you have our reputation to uphold. So, get it together. Alright?”