JUDGMENT CALLS
Alafair Burke
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Orion, an imprint of the
Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
Copyright 2003 by Alafair Burke
For my loving parents, James Lee and Pearl Chu Pai Burke
One.
A February morning in Portland, Oregon, and it was still dark outside
when I walked into the courthouse, the air thick with the annoying
drops of humidity that pass for rain in the Pacific Northwest. No
surprises there. What did surprise me was finding a Police Bureau
sergeant waiting in my office.
I'm a deputy district attorney for Multnomah County, making me about
one percent of the office that prosecutes state crimes committed in the
Portland area. Since I took this job three years ago, I've gotten used
to having voice mail and e-mail messages waiting for me on Monday
mornings. People just don't seem to realize that government law
offices aren't open on weekends. It's unusual, though, and rarely a
good sign, to find a cop waiting for you first thing in the morning.
At least I knew this one.
"Hey, Garcia, who let you in?" I said. "I thought we had some
security around here."
Sergeant Tommy Garcia looked up from the Oregon State Bar magazine he
had lifted out of my in-box. He smiled at me with those bright white,
perfectly straight teeth that contrasted beautifully with his smooth
olive skin. That smile had led me to believe he was a nice guy when I
met him for the first time three years ago, and I had been right.
"Hey, Sammie, what can I say? I love reading the part at the back that
tells about all the bad lawyers and what they did to get disbarred or
suspended. Gives me a sense of justice. You should be careful about
giving me such a hard time, though. I might start to think you're like
the rest of the DAs around here, with a stick up your ass."
Tommy's in charge of the bureau's vice unit, so I know him well. As a
member of the eight-lawyer team known as the Drug and Vice Division, I
talk to Tommy almost weekly about pending cases and see him at least
once a month at team meetings.
"You must want something from me big and bad, Garcia, to be buttering
me up like that. What is it," I asked, "a warrant?" The local judges
won't even read an officer's application for a search warrant unless it
is reviewed and approved first by a deputy DA. In a close case, the
cops tend to "DA shop."
Garcia laughed. "You're too smart, Kincaid. Nope, no warrant. I do
need your help on something, but it's a little more complicated." He
reached behind him to shut the door, looking at me first to make sure I
didn't mind.
"MCT picked a case up over the weekend, thinking it would be an attempt
murder. The suspects are bad, bad guys,
Sammie. Two of them grabbed a girl out of Old Town. One of them
started to rape her, but couldn't get it up, so he beat her instead,
and then the second guy finished what the first couldn't. When they
were done, they left her for dead out in the Columbia Gorge.
"I don't know all the details, but apparently the initial investigation
was a bit of a cluster fuck. It sounds like everything's on track now,
but O'Donnell was the riding DA and got pissed off at some of the early
mistakes. So he's planning on kicking it into the general felony unit
for prosecution. You can pretty much figure out what's gonna happen to
it."
The general felony trial unit is a dumping ground for cases that aren't
seen as serious. The trial DDAs often have extremely limited time to
spend on them, and the overwhelming majority plead out to reduced
charges and stipulated sentences during a fast-paced court calendar
referred to as "morning call." It's the criminal justice system's ugly
side. Tim O'Donnell was a senior DDA in the major crimes unit. If he
bumped a Major Crimes Team case down to general, he knew it was gone.
"Sounds bad, but it also sounds like MCT's beef is with O'Donnell."
"Yeah, well, O'Donnell's mind's not an easy one to change, and I think
there's another way to go here because of a vice angle. The victim's a
thirteen-year-old prostitute named Ken-dra Martin. Unlike most of 'em,
she doesn't try to look any older. Wears schoolgirl outfits like that
one girl used to wear on MTV before she got implants and started
running around naked. What's her name? My daughter likes her. Anyway,
she looks her age, is my point.
"Turns out her injuries weren't as bad as they first looked,
so the MCT guys know it'll be hard to get attempted murder to stick.
But they kept working the case, even after they realized that they
could've handed it off to precinct detectives. This case is under
their skin."
Any reluctance on the part of the Major Crimes Team to hand over a case
to precinct detectives was understandable. In theory, regular shift
detectives are perfectly good investigators, but in reality,
disappointed precinct detectives who were passed over for the elite MCT
frequently drop the ball, deciding their cases must not be sufficiently
"major" to warrant good investigations.
"I don't doubt their earnestness, but I still don't see why they'd come
to DVD with this, let alone to me. I've never even handled an MCT
case."
"They figured because of the vice connection that someone in DVD might
take the case from O'Donnell and run with it on something more serious
than a general felony. And I've been watching you since you got here,
Kincaid. You're good, and this could be a case for you to show what
you can do when given the chance."
"Don't think you can play me like that, Garcia. I know an ego stroke
when I see it." Of course, recognizing the stroke for what it was
didn't prevent me from succumbing to it. The truth was, he was right.
I'd been eager to get my hands on a major trial. It's a no-win
situation: DVD cases aren't sexy enough to prove yourself to the guys
running this place, yet you're supposed to prove yourself before you
can try victim cases. Garcia was dangling a way for me to beat the
system.
I wasn't about to sign on for this, though, without knowing the
details.
"I don't think there's much I can do about it, but I'm willing to talk.
Have someone call me?" I asked.
"I can do better than that," he said. "I got two MCT detectives
waiting for you down the street."
Garcia must've known he'd be able to work me. He had told Detectives
Jack Walker and Raymond Johnson to wait for us at the cafeteria in the
basement of the federal building. Created to provide subsidized meals
to low-level government workers, the cafeteria had found a cultlike