Authors: Derek Blass
A local church ran the shelter, and one of the priests was especially adamant about helping the young homeless. This priest approached Shaver, who was a physically fit, able-bodied young man of nineteen, and asked him if he knew about the Police Explorers. Shaver recoiled at the thought of becoming a police officer. They were the enemies of a homeless kid, kicking them out of camp areas, turning them into state offices and foster care. The priest wouldn't give up though and the persistence worked to whittle down Shaver's guard until one day he agreed to talk to a recruiter.
Shaver graduated about average in his Police Explorer class, and got a job at a rural county jail. His instructor explained that Shaver would have to work his way up before applying to the police academy, since he had no high school diploma. Shaver got to spend a year watching drunks at the county jail before moving to a higher security facility in the southern part of the state.
The time in corrections definitively set Shaver's mind against minorities. All he saw in those facilities was some shade of nonwhite. The car thieves, the drug dealers, the pimps, the murdering gang members. They hurled feces at him and spit in his eyes while screaming they had AIDS. Hatred grew. He took liberties with certain prisoners, leaning down extra hard on a pressure point, making holds tighter. This escalated until one day he beat a mouthy black inmate nearly to death. Shaver claimed self-defense, the other correctional officers with him backed his story, and the warden eventually dropped the investigation.
It was also at this point that Shaver learned where the blue, or gray, or whatever color line existed. You never crossed or betrayed one of your fellow officers. This principle developed from the constant stress the officers were under, a necessary sense of team in the face of threat. It also developed from the power that came with the position. Without a rat, a traitor, the officers were untouchable. Shaver found that this principle applied just as readily to the police force once he made it to the academy.
Keys rattled, perking Shaver's ears.
“
Shaver...visitor.” He stood up and put his hands through the open hatch in the door. The officer cuffed him and then opened his cell door to let Shaver out. They walked with another officer in a line to the visitor's center. It was his lawyer, Sphinx.
Sphinx picked up the phone on the other side of the glass partition, “Shaver, good to see you.” Shaver nodded. He wasn't sure about Sphinx yet. Sphinx had a celebrity reputation, having gotten Viscutti off so many years before. He was skeptical of celebrity. It implied individuality, and one of the rules behind the blue line, something imbued in Shaver, was that there is no individual. Plus, things hadn't gone well so far. At his first advisement hearing, Sphinx lost his plea to have Shaver let out on his own recognizance. The second advisement hearing wasn't better. Shaver found out that he was being charged with second degree murder of that old man. Sphinx promised Shaver that he'd be able to plea that down, that there was no way the District Attorney would maintain that charge. Nothing had come of the promise yet.
Shaver's case before the Civil Service Commission wasn't going well either. He was suspended without pay, a rare measure. The rest of the Commission's investigation was stayed pending the resolution of his criminal case. The Commission did not want to prejudice the criminal case with their own investigation. Based on all of that, Shaver greeted the visit skeptically.
“
How they treating you in there?” Shaver shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, are they harassing you? The guards or the inmates?”
“
The guards? Those are my people. I know half of them from my time in corrections. Besides, what do you care?”
“
Your health is critical to our case. If they're mistreating you, we can make special requests of the court.”
“
Like I said, the guards are fine. Four fucking stars.”
“
The inmates?”
“
They're treating me like a cop, what do you expect? I get death threats on a daily basis, especially from the pricks that I've locked up before. The officers set me up in my own cell though, because of the threats. I'm in a pussy section of the place, with the rapists and peds, so I doubt anything's gonna happen to me. You never know though, and I don't give a shit.”
The jail was medium-security, meant mainly to be a holding area until inmates knew where they would be going. It was an old design—probably sometime in the late sixties—a telephone layout prison. There was a main corridor from which cells and program rooms branched out. The seats in the waiting room were teal, gum-laden and cracked. The jail reeked of use, the worst bodily functions and odors collected in a tight, enclosed space. Blood caked the floors of some cells, left there until the understaffed facility could get around to cleaning them. Some inmates refused to bathe, others ate their own feces, while others pissed themselves and didn't tell anyone. This return to primitive nature was inevitable when all of life's hope and freedom was stripped away. A chime sounded in their phones, five minutes.
“
We are going to get you out of here Shaver. I need you to cooperate though.”
“
What the hell do you think I'm doing?”
“
I consider appreciation to be a part of cooperation, so start there.”
“
Fuck you! Appreciation? You'll sap every dime I have defending me. You should fucking appreciate me!”
“
That's where you've got it wrong Shaver. I'm the best defense attorney in this state and you're lucky to have me helping. Who gives a shit about your money. Without me you'll spend the rest of your already wasted life in a cell. You have no family, no friends to speak of, not even fucking pets. Your money is useless except if I get you out. So, from this goddamn moment, you have a choice. Start to fucking appreciate me, or get a new lawyer.”
Shaver glared through the glass at Sphinx. He had really reached the point of not giving a shit. Even if he got out, there was no guarantee that he would ever be allowed to rejoin the force. Working security at a mall wasn't going to cut it. On the other hand, thirty more years or so in some dump of a prison didn't sound that enticing to him either. He decided to stroke Sphinx's ego, because that's all this was about.
“
I'll appreciate you, you man-baby. If that's what you need. I'll never kiss your sandy, Persian ass though, so get that shit out of your head.” Sphinx stared back at Shaver. He already hated this man, but the case was too juicy for him to abandon. Fame was Sphinx's primary motivation, with money a very close second. He could take some verbal abuse from Shaver to further those two motivations.
“
Good, glad we got that straightened out. You'll recall that the judge denied your bail...”
“
Yeah, that was a good start for you, huh?”
“
It was completely a product of what you're accused of. I had nothing to do with the outcome.”
“
That's convenient.”
“
You mean the truth, Shaver? It sure is. Moving on, the judge also found that there was probable cause for your arrest at the preliminary hearing. The next step is your arraignment at the end of this week.”
“
Not guilty.”
“
Right, good. We'll get a trial date then too. Listen, this is going to be your word against Officer Martinez's.”
“
What about the video?”
“
It'll never see the light of day in court.” Sphinx's assertiveness was enough to give Shaver pause.
“
From what I've heard, that video shows everything that happened.”
“
Nah, won't get in. It was never checked into evidence, who knows if it's even the actual video. Martinez or anyone else could have doctored the thing. It's not coming in. You let me worry about that part. That's the legal part. Start to prepare yourself for court. You have to be remorseful looking, but credibly. No one wanted this to happen, but you were acting in self-defense. Attentive. Alert. Don't make faces, don't react to testimony you hear. I'll give you a pad of paper and a pen, all you do is take notes. Like when you were a good student in school, remember that?”
“
Fuck you.”
Sphinx let out a hearty laugh. “That reminds me,” he said as he stood up, “clean out your fucking mouth. I'll see you in a few days.” A corrections officer put her hand on Shaver's shoulder, signaling the return to his cell.
* * * *
Mason pushed open the big, oak doors to the courtroom. The courthouse was situated near the center of the city, set above the buildings around it. Eight columns supported the front porch of the building where people gathered to smoke and meet their attorneys. The inside of the courthouse was semi-illuminated. The lighting that existed was high up in vaulted ceilings and spaced sparingly in meager wall fixtures. Marble floors butted up against old, handcrafted woodwork. There were sixteen courtrooms, eight on each floor.
Some of the most notorious judges in the state presided in this courthouse. They were old judges, screamers. Mason landed one of these cantankerous judges, Judge Melburn.
Judge Melburn had to be in his eighties, Mason thought to himself. In fact, Mason was afraid that the old guy would die any time he was in the courtroom. The judge was a public defender for twenty-two years before winning an election to preside in the city's district court. He was a merciless jurist and engaged in conduct all attorneys despised—yelling at them in front of their clients and in front of the jury. While any attorney could expect to be grilled by a judge, getting screamed at was unanimously considered unprofessional. Didn't stop it from happening.
Unfortunately for Mason, Judge Melburn was also known to be bent against prosecutors. That bias could exist may seem implausible, especially from the only person in the courtroom who should be as unbiased as possible. Again, didn't stop it from happening. To Mason's dismay, Judge Melburn was sitting at the bench when he entered the courtroom. Judge Melburn looked up and then back down without any sign of acknowledgment.
He was a small, Napoleonic man. Mason surmised he was an abused child, picked on by other children growing up, who now had the luxury and the forum to forever turn the tables. It was strange for the judge to be in his courtroom before the hearing started. Usually judges stayed in their chambers until it was time to appear. Nothing was normal with Judge Melburn, though.
Mason opened up his briefcase and pulled out a pad of legal paper and several folders. He sat down in the plush leather chair on the prosecution's side of the courtroom and flipped through his documents. The flipping was a time-passer. Mason knew what he wanted to say, what he would argue.
A cool draft flew into the room. Mason looked behind him and saw Sphinx enter, two associates in tow.
“
Sphinx.”
“
Mason. How have you been?”
Mason set his documents down, “Getting old, Sphinx. Too old for any of your games. You gonna play this one by the book?”
Sphinx smiled as he set his briefcase on the defendant's table. “You know me too well to think I play games, Mason. Everything is legal, within legal bounds. I'm just
creative
.”
Creative at figuring out how to skirt the law, Mason thought. “Your client going to plead guilty and get this over with?”
“
Is the State going to drop its charges on account of a lack of evidence?” Both of them focused on their documents, acting busy and contemplative although the time for preparation was long passed.
Sphinx looked up and said, “Hello, Judge Melburn.”
“
Mr. Sphinx.”
“
Mason, you got a moment to step outside of the courtroom?”
Mason pursed his lips as if to say “sure” and walked out with Sphinx.
“
What do you want?”
“
We haven't talked plea bargain yet.”
“
No need to, I've got a rock solid case against your client.”
Sphinx crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Listen, Mason, I'm going to try to spare you here. You've got
no
case against my client. All of the witnesses are dead except for Officer Martinez.”
“
We're working on that.”
“
What, to bring them back like Lazarus?”
“
I'll find where you've hidden the daughter. Besides, Officer Martinez has been an honorable and accountable officer on the force for six years. He'll be enough.”
“
You mean the officer that went ape-shit, stole evidence, and performed an illegal arrest of my client? Is that really what you're pinning this on, Mason?”
“
Spin it all you want, Sphinx. I'm confident that Officer Martinez will be a credible witness, especially in comparison to your client. In any event, there were exigent circumstances warranting the arrest.”
Sphinx bellowed, “Exigent circumstances?! You mean my client holed up and afraid for his life because of Officer Martinez's lynch mob?”
“
Spin, spin. Your client had a man with him that he was holding hostage. Your client demonstrated that he was willing to kill witnesses to save his own life. Exigent, actionable circumstances.”
“
Whatever, Mason.” Both men had their arms crossed now, faced off. Sphinx's face contorted with frustration. Mason started to turn away. “You know you can't pin second degree on him though. We'll take criminal negligence and five years.”