out, whether or not you lead it to me barking. If it's a gimme, I'll
notice that too. But I want to decide on my own. With that said, I
apologize for my smart-ass comment. I should have said exactly what I
was thinking, and now I have. I hope you haven't made up your mind
about me, just as I haven't formed a final decision about your case."
The table was quiet as Garcia and Johnson waited to see if I had
managed to make things worse. Then Jack Walker shook his head and
smiled. "Well, that was definitely direct. And you're right. I guess
we were kind of hyping the case up a little." He glanced over at
Johnson, not so much with a look of blame as like a child who peeks
over at his partner-in-mischief when he realizes the teacher has
figured them out but good.
Walker then looked directly at me, and I could tell we'd entered a
spin-free zone. "Look, the truth is, the biggest thing we've got right
now is the girl's ID of Derringer. Derringer denied everything. He
says he was over at his brother's watching a basketball game and then
stayed for Saturday Night Live and some beers. The brother's name is
Derrick Derringer, if you can believe it. Anyway, so far Derrick's
corroborating his brother, but he's got three felony convictions, so
there you go."
"So did you arrest Derringer at his house?" I asked.
Walker shook his head. "Not us. Renshaw hooked Derringer up on a
parole violation based on Kendra's ID and took him down to the Justice
Center for booking. We figured the parole detainer would at least hold
him overnight, when O'Donnell could decide what charges to file." "And
what did O'Donnell make of all this?" Detective Walker slumped back in
his chair, the excitement draining from his face. "That's where this
whole thing fell apart on us. After we had Derringer hooked up, we
went back to central to meet Chuck and Mike. They had finished
processing the scene and were working on the warrant. Just as we're
finishing up, O'Donnell shows up in a fucking suit to review the
warrant. He's reading it, just nodding the whole time, not saying
squat. Then he says, "What about this girl?" So Ray and I explain how
she started out like a pill but then was a complete ten on the ID.
O'Donnell didn't like it; said the case rested entirely on the girl.
Then he asks whether we've run her."
"You'd finished the warrant and still hadn't run her?" Walker pursed
his lips and shook his head. "I know, we fucked up. We'd been up all
night, running around. We assumed she was straight up when she picked
a sick fuck like Derringer. We forgot about running her. It was a
rookie mistake."
Johnson continued with the bad news. When they ran the victim, they
found a few runaway reports and an arrest for loitering to solicit.
Worse, the cop who made the loitering pop found a syringe in the girl's
purse with heroin residue on it. Furious that the detectives had
miscalculated their victim, O'Donnell had tried to bully her into
coming clean, but his tough approach only made her dig her heels in
deeper.
Walker had to smooth things over with her, and she eventually admitted
to a nine-month heroin habit that she worked the streets to support.
"So it's basically a trick gone bad?" I asked.
"No," Walker said. "At least we don't think so. She admits she was
walking Old Town, looking for a trick. She'd just finished one up and
had scored some horse on the street. She figured she'd keep working
while she was high. Anyway, these two guys pull up and offer her fifty
bucks if they can high-five her."
"OK, I've been working vice a few years now, but I still don't know
what a high five is."
I knew it had to be bad when Walker and Johnson looked to Garcia for
help and raised their eyebrows. Garcia averted his eyes while he told
me. "It's when a girl gets on all fours and one guy does her from
behind while she blows the other one." I was about to ask why the hell
it was called a high five until I got a mental image of two naked guys
on their knees giving each other a high five.
I rolled my eyes in disgust. "So they ask her to work for both of
them, basically, and she goes with them?"
Walker eagerly accepted the invitation to change the subject. "Not
according to her. She says she told them to meet her in the parking
lot of the motel at Third and Alder. She rents a room there when she
works. She assumes they've got a deal and starts walking to the hotel.
That's when Derringer pulls her into the backseat.
"The rest of it happened pretty much like she said originally. When
the car was stopped and Derringer was undoing his pants, she tried
getting out but the guy in front pushed her back in. They told her she
wasn't going anywhere and she may as well shoot up what was left in her
purse, so she did. Thing is, she says it never dawned on her they were
gonna kill her until Derringer started to choke her out. But, my
thinking is, she knew it at some level when they pulled her back into
the car. She was just trying to get it over with. She said she
injected so much horse, the assault didn't hurt that bad, and this guy
really worked her over."
Ray Johnson shook his head. "Man, you should've seen O'Donnell. I
don't know if you guys are tight, but he can be one tight-sphinctered
prick. He got all moralistic and lectured the entire team about our
obligation to be 'cautious wielding the stern hand of the law." "
Johnson's nerdy white guy impersonation pretty much nailed Tim
O'Donnell.
"Anyway, it was bullshit," he continued. "O'Donnell had us clean up
the warrant to include the new information and then signed off on it,
saying he was gonna kick it out of major crimes territory if we didn't
find anything that changed his mind. We found some porn, but nothing
damning. So, he's planning on filing it today as an Assault Three and
assigning it to precinct detectives for general follow-up before grand
jury."
I couldn't believe it. All you had to prove for assault in the third
degree was that two or more defendants acted together to injure another
person. It didn't begin to portray the savage acts that had been
committed against Kendra Martin.
"Assault Three? That's it?" I said.
Johnson nodded. "I know, ridiculous. He says the ID's weak, plus the
defense can say the whole thing was a consensual trick, that the girl
cried rape so her mom wouldn't find out she was turning tricks for
smack. Said he was only issuing the assault because of Derringer's
prior. He basically called the girl a piece of trash."
"And you guys don't think she is. You think she's telling the
truth?"
Walker looked at me and tilted his head slightly. "Ms. Kincaid, I
really do. It's almost in her favor that she lied to us at first.
Shows she still knows that working's shameful, not just a