First Offense, page 17
She’d just finished Frankie’s math lesson and left him with worksheets to do when she realized it had been days since she’d checked her home telephone’s voice mail. Once Frankie was back with her, she’d forgotten all about it, something that never would have happened had she not been so worried about Frankie returning to Eldridge. Most anyone who called her used her cell-phone number. She didn’t know why she held on to a landline—a relic of an earlier time, it seemed to her—but she had, and it was the number she listed on all her official records. She dialed her home number, pressed the asterisk key when she heard her voice, then tapped out her PIN. “You have two new messages and five saved messages.” The first message was from her pharmacy, letting her know her prescription allergy medication was ready to be picked up. She erased it, then listened for the second message.
“Mrs. Bishop, this is Major Stillman. Please call me back at 800-555-2962. We have some news about your husband.”
Jessica’s breath caught. The message had come in three days ago. She walked into her bedroom, away from Frankie’s ears, then quickly dialed the number. She paced back and forth in the room while the phone rang, too nervous to sit down.
“Major Stillman,” a man’s voice said upon answering the phone.
“This is Jessica Bishop, Alex Bishop’s wife. You left a message for me a few days ago about my husband.”
“Yes. We’ve located him. He’s in a Taliban prison camp.”
“He’s alive?” Jessica asked, her voice choked.
“We believe he is.”
Jessica sank down on the bed. Relief washed over her.
“He was captured with another soldier from his platoon,” the major continued. “As part of our withdrawal from the country, there will be a prisoner exchange.”
“When? How soon?”
“I can’t answer that. It could be a month, a year at the outside.”
“But . . . but . . . he’s okay? They’re not mistreating him?”
There was a pause on the line. “I’m sorry. We just don’t know.”
Jessica thanked him, hung up, then buried her face in her pillow, smothering her sobs so that Frankie wouldn’t hear them. Finally knowing where Alex was had burst the dam she’d built around her heart, closing in all her fears, enabling her to be strong for her sons. Alex is alive! He’s going to come home! She pushed away thoughts of what he was enduring. She couldn’t let herself think that they might torture him. No. Her husband would survive. Frankie would get through the next few months. Everything would return to normal.
CHAPTER
26
Only six weeks had passed since Dani had taken on the case of Julio Rodriguez. She was lucky. The police kit contained DNA from two males, neither of which matched Rodriguez’s DNA. If only all cases were this easy. Even with cases that could turn on DNA, it was often a struggle to get the police to release items for testing, or even find any. Even if items containing DNA were still in the evidence kit, and police tested it, or turned it over to HIPP’s lab, and it cleared HIPP’s client, prosecutors many times fought her request for a new trial. She had just hung up from a phone call with the prosecutor in Rodriguez’s case, in which he’d agreed to jointly file to have the conviction set aside, when her assistant buzzed her.
“Noah Jacobs is on line two.”
Dani’s heart sank. She hadn’t heard from Noah since the court had ordered Frankie to remain in federal custody. She hoped something hadn’t happened to him.
“Noah, how are you?” she said when she picked up his call.
“Good. I’m calling about Frankie.”
“Is something wrong?”
“He’s doing fine. It’s just—since he’s in FBI custody, they got served on his behalf. With a summons in a new criminal matter against him. For running away.”
“I don’t understand. The federal court ruled in your favor. They can’t get him back.”
“Not right away. But once we have a deal, or Frankie’s testimony in their trial is complete, if there’s any time remaining on his sentence, he’ll go back to Eldridge. I think they’re trying to tack on this new violation in order to make sure that happens. And as long as the threat of that hangs over Frankie, I’m guessing they think he won’t talk.”
Dani felt sick. Since her pregnancy, any unwelcome news always made her nauseous. And this was certainly unwelcome. That poor family, she thought. They’ve been through so much. “So, logistically, what happens next?”
“We’ll have to bring him to an arraignment. If you’re going to represent him, I assume you’ll plead him not guilty. He’ll come back with us until his hearing, and then we’ll bring him back for that. If he’s found guilty, then we’ll still take him back to the safe house until the sex-trafficking trial is over. But when it is, he’ll be returned to Eldridge.”
Dani’s nausea intensified. She couldn’t stop the negative images that flooded through her mind. This wasn’t HIPP’s case. She’d stepped in to do a favor for Bruce—that was all. Her desk was filled with pleas from inmates swearing they were innocent. Frankie had a Florida attorney, the one who’d represented him at his initial hearing. He could handle this new matter. He should handle the new matter. And yet . . . she remembered the frightened boy—still a child—clinging to his mother, terrified of returning to Eldridge.
“When’s the arraignment?” Dani asked. “I’ll be there to represent him.”
Dani lay on the examining table as her doctor lathered her baby bump with gel. Doug stood at her side, holding her hand. Dr. Kaplan moved the wand over her stomach, up and down, side to side, while watching the images on a screen. She turned the screen toward Dani and said, “There’s your baby. Everything looks good. Do you want to know the sex?”
Dani looked toward Doug. They had discussed it for hours. Dani wanted to know; Doug wanted to be surprised. Eventually, they’d reached a compromise. “Would you mind writing it down on a piece of paper and putting it into a sealed envelope for us?”
“No problem.”
Dani stared at the image of her baby. Seeing the picture made it all so real. At times, she’d wondered if she were crazy, having another child at her age. She’d be collecting Social Security while still paying college tuition. But now, looking at the perfectly formed hands and round head, she knew how much she wanted this child, how much she would cherish him or her.
They left the office, with the doctor’s envelope tucked away safely in Dani’s purse, then headed back home, stopping first at their local bakery with a special request.
The next day, Dani returned home from work, cake box in hand.
“Who’s that for?” Jonah asked. “Is it someone’s birthday?”
“It’s a special cake. You’ll see after dinner.”
Katie had been invited to join them. After all, by now, she was part of their family. At seven o’clock, the doorbell rang, and Dani opened the door to Doug’s parents. Her own parents were gone, her mother to breast cancer and her father to a heart attack two years later. Right behind them were Fran and Duncan, Dani and Doug’s closest friends.
“Gammy, Pop-Pop,” Jonah squealed as he gave his grandparents a hug. “I was incognizant you were coming.”
Dani ushered everyone into the kitchen, where Katie had placed the cake in the center of the table. It was covered with white frosting and decorated with blue and pink flowers. She turned to Jonah. “Remember we told you that you were going to have a brother or sister?”
Jonah nodded.
“Well, we don’t know which it’ll be. But this cake is going to tell us.” When she and Doug had stopped by the bakery the previous evening, they’d handed the baker the sealed envelope Dr. Kaplan had given them. They’d asked him to open the envelope after they’d left and then prepare a cake where the inside filling was blue if they were having a boy, pink if it was a girl. Dani explained this to Jonah, then handed Doug the cake knife.
“Go ahead, Dad.”
Doug held the knife over the cake, then cut out a piece, and held it up for everyone to see the pink filling. Hugs and cheers rang out as Dani’s eyes teared up. She hadn’t thought it mattered whether it was a boy or a girl—and it really hadn’t. Yet images of dolls and frilly dresses and tea parties flashed through her mind. I’m having a daughter. I’m having a daughter!
CHAPTER
27
Two days later, Dani was back in juvenile court in Cypress County. Frankie sat by her side, with Patrick Collins, the FBI agent who’d escorted him from the safe house to Florida. Today was a formality—Frankie would enter his plea of not guilty to the charge of escape.
Once Judge Humphrey entered the courtroom, the whole proceeding took less than five minutes.
“How do you plead?” Humphrey asked after reading the charge.
“Not guilty,” Frankie answered.
“Hearing set for three weeks from today. Any problems with that, counselors?”
“No, sir,” Dani answered.
“I’m okay, too,” Warren Camden said.
The judge banged his gavel. “So ordered.”
They exited the courtroom, and Dani pulled Frankie and Jessica over to a bench, where they sat down. Agent Collins waited five feet away, giving them space for a quiet conversation.
“You’re going to need to explain your reason for running away,” Dani said to Frankie. “It’s your only defense.”
“I can’t. I won’t.” Frankie’s arms were locked over his chest.
Dani didn’t know how to convince Frankie that it would be worse for him if he didn’t testify. Speak out, and there was a good chance he’d never go back there. Remain silent, and the judge would have no choice but to extend his sentence. On their way outside, she took Jessica aside. “We have a few weeks before the hearing. You need to persuade him to talk. If he tells them who was behind his beating, even if he’s found at fault for running away, we can convince the judge to send him to a different facility.”
“But will that matter? What if it’s all like some big fraternity where they each have the others’ backs?”
Dani sighed. “I don’t think that’s the case. Please, keep working on Frankie.”
On the flight back to New York, Dani realized she’d never been in this position before—a client who wouldn’t testify. She’d represented men and women who eagerly took the stand to assert their innocence. She needed to figure out something, or without a doubt, he would be sent back to that hellhole.
The next day Dani sat in Bruce’s office. “Is there any chance you can get Frankie to testify?”
Bruce shook his head slowly. “I doubt it. If Jessica can’t persuade him, I have no chance of it.”
“There’s got to be something I can do—but for the life of me, I can’t think of what.”
“I’ve been trying to figure it out myself. But, if anyone can come up with an idea, it’s you. Somehow, you always pull one out of the hat just when it’s needed.”
Dani wished she shared Bruce’s confidence in her. She’d racked her brain all last night and come up empty. But as she walked back to her office, a thought began to swirl around her mind. Maybe I shouldn’t try to fight the escape charge. Maybe I should fight the original sentence. If Frankie shouldn’t have been sent to a lockup in the first place, then he wouldn’t have needed to escape.
She sat down at her desk and began drafting a subpoena for records from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. Maybe, just maybe, this will work.
Joe Cummings hadn’t stopped gnashing his teeth since yesterday’s arraignment of Frankie Bishop. He’d expected the boy would be held in county lockup until his case was called, which would’ve given Williamson a chance to pay him a visit, reinforce the original message that snitches don’t last in his prison. But that damn FBI agent had stayed glued to his side.
It was a risk, pushing for the new charges against the kid, but Wilcox insisted on it. Another hearing just gave the kid another opportunity to squeal. Cummings believed in toughness, but it’d gone too far in the case of the boy the Bishop kid had told his mother about. He’d told the guards to ignore the boy’s pleas to see the doctor. Doctors cost the company money, and he got rewarded for keeping expenses down. Make him tough it out, he’d told them. He’ll be stronger for it. How was he to know that the boy had pneumonia? He supposed it didn’t help when the guard made him do those push-ups. And then kicked him. That wasn’t on him—it was on the guard. It didn’t matter, though. He was in charge.
Wilcox had made himself clear—he couldn’t take a chance on anyone finding out about the boy who died. Big money was on the line. So was Cummings’s job. “Make this go away,” Wilcox had told him. Maybe it had. Maybe the Bishop boy had learned his lesson. But he couldn’t know for sure until he was face-to-face with the kid. He could always tell when he looked into a boy’s eyes if he’d stay quiet.
He took a deep breath, then picked up the phone to call Wilcox.
CHAPTER
28
Spread before Dani were piles of documents from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. They’d tried stonewalling her at first. After all, juvenile records were confidential. She didn’t care about the names. They could black out anything that was personally identifiable. She wanted a record of the violations charged and the sentences meted out. She’d had a hunch that other boys and girls with records as spotless as Frankie’s, caught with a small amount of marijuana, weren’t sentenced as harshly as he was. Maybe there was even evidence of a racial bias in the sentencing. If she could show that Frankie received a harsher sentence because he was black, she could use that to overturn his original sentence. And if that sentence were improper, if he shouldn’t have been locked up in the first place, then running away from it shouldn’t matter. At least, that’s what she would argue if she could find the proof to back up her theory.
Only, that’s not what she found. What she discovered was far more disturbing. Once more, she read through the chart she’d made from the DJJ documents. It was true that the standard sentence for a first offense of possession of marijuana rarely resulted in incarceration. But there were many times when it did. And the affected youngsters ran the gamut of all races and ages. What had startled her was that those sentences all emanated from one judge: Judge Humphrey. It wasn’t just drugs. She read of a high school student who posted on her Facebook page negative comments about her principal. Despite being an A student, on a track for college, she was charged with harassment and sentenced to a juvenile-detention center. A boy in middle school was arrested for egging a house on Halloween. He, too, had never been in trouble before. Yet, instead of a stern warning or probation, he was sent to a juvenile prison. Case after case, Dani read of children as young as nine being sent away for seemingly minor offenses—what in her day would have been considered “kids being kids.” In all, almost half of the youngsters who came before Humphrey were locked up.
At first, she assumed he might just be an exceptionally tough judge. But, as she looked over the dates, she found they all had occurred during the past three years—shortly after ML Juvenile Services had been awarded the contract to run three more juvenile prisons in Florida. Before that, Humphrey’s sentencing was in line with juvenile-court justices throughout the state. Driving down further into the numbers, she realized that the only institutions to which Humphrey sent the juveniles were all owned by ML Juvenile Services.
Was it possible? Could Humphrey be getting kickbacks from ML Juvenile Services? The thought was repugnant to her, but it had never made sense for Frankie to have been sent to Eldridge, and this would explain it. Dani shuddered. Frankie was going back before the same judge in just over a week. She had nothing but data suggesting the possibility that Humphrey was corrupt. Without proof, she couldn’t level an accusation against him. And that left Frankie Bishop defenseless.
“What should I do?” Dani asked Doug as she lay entwined in his arms that evening.
“Find the evidence.”
“Hah! Just wave my magic wand and poof—it’ll appear?” Dani thought it must be so easy to be a law professor. Everything was clean and simple. Read a case, and dissect the decision. The people involved weren’t real to them; they were names on a page. Not so in her world, where uncovering evidence was messy and often elusive. Still, if her fears were correct, there would be money somewhere, probably hidden, but still more than any judge would be expected to have—at least, a judge without family money or a wealthy spouse. As a plan started to rumble around in her mind, she suddenly let out a squeal.
“What’s wrong?” Doug asked.
Dani laughed, then took Doug’s hand and placed it on her stomach. “She kicked me. Her first strong kick. A real wallop!”
“She’s going to be a fighter. Just like her mother.”
As soon as Dani arrived at work the next morning, she stopped at Tommy’s office. “I’d like you to find out everything you can about Judge Humphrey. About his wife, too, and children, if he has any. Also, whatever you can dig up on Roger Wilcox.”
“Sure. What gives?”
“I could be all wet on this, but I’ve started to wonder if Humphrey is getting paid by Wilcox to send kids to the prisons he operates.”
“That’s quite an accusation.”
“Just a theory at this point. But there were two judges in Pennsylvania a few years back that got busted doing just that. They’re in prison now.”
“If that’s the case, why would another judge try the same scheme?”
