First Offense (8 page)

“My mom did whip me,” Rogers yelled back, undaunted and long suffering under Claudette’s abuse. “That’s what’s wrong with me. Now I’ve got you for a boss. I’m going to apply for a mental disability if you don’t leave me alone, Claudette. Maybe even sexual harassment might work. Then every month when they pay me, they’ll deduct it from your check.”

“I wouldn’t fuck your skinny white ass if you was the last man on earth,” Claudette quickly retorted.

Chuckles and snide comments from other probation officers rang out and then were replaced with a chorus of voices: “Welcome back, Ann.”

“Thanks, guys. Glad to be back.” The probation officers in the unit had been very supportive, coming to see her in the hospital, offering to help with David, bringing food to the house.

“I want to take Jimmy Sawyer back to court and get his probation switched,” she said to Claudette once the unit was quiet again. “What do you think? Do you think Hillstorm will go for it? I more or less promised Sawyer I’d do it.”

“Why in the hell would you do that?” Claudette barked, her dark eyes flashing. “The D.A.‘s office is about to charge him with the shooting and toss him in jail.”

“He saved my life, Claudette,” Ann said. She couldn’t believe Glen was really going after Sawyer, with no solid evidence to back him up. Not only that, it was completely unlike him to jump in feet first. He liked cases that led to certain convictions. “You know Glen Hopkins and I have been dating, Claudette, and he’s livid over what happened to me. He must think the sooner he files, the sooner I’ll be out of danger. There are no other suspects or leads, so he’s going after Sawyer.”

“Maybe the man is right,” Claudette said.

Ann shook her head. “I’m certain it wasn’t him.

How many people shoot you and then stop to give you first aid? If he wanted to hurt me, why didn’t he just let me bleed to death?”

“Humph,” Claudette said, shifting her ample hips from side to side in the small chair and then lunging forward over the desk. “No free rides. You know how I feel about that. Besides, Hillstorm will just think you don’t want to supervise him. It’ll never fly.”

Although Ann respected this woman, she also felt Claudette was being unnecessarily callous. If her supervisor had been the person bleeding on the sidewalk, she would know how Ann felt about Jimmy Sawyer. But Claudette was the boss, and Ann didn’t have the strength right now to go up against her. “You’re the supervisor,” Ann said, standing.

Time to take the plunge, she thought, see how bad the damage was in her office. “Shit,” Ann screamed once she walked into her cubicle. Half the people in the unit, including Claudette, rushed into her office, looks of terror on their faces. Ann glanced over her shoulder at them. “Sorry. No one’s shooting at me but the records clerk.” Ann kicked a big cardboard box out of her way so she had a small path to walk to her desk. “Look at this place. I knew it would be bad. I never thought it would be this bad.”

Everywhere Ann looked were case files and cardboard boxes. Her ten years with the agency, coupled with her considerable expertise, had left her in the unenviable position of handling only the most complex and serious cases in the system. This meant mountains and mountains of paper: trial transcripts, police reports, preliminary hearing transcripts, criminal histories from other states and agencies, autopsy reports, forensic reports. All of these documents Ann had to read and study. They were tossed and stacked everywhere. On her desk, rising four feet high from the floor, set haphazardly in a plastic basket on top of the metal file cabinet, any second ready to spill over onto the floor.

Ann turned around and saw Claudette still standing there, a concerned look on her face.

“I tried my best, Ann. I really did. I took work home. I assigned it to other people. Just do your best. That’s all you can do.” She sighed in weariness.

They were in a sad state at the agency. The cases just kept coming and coming, all of them with deadlines: filing dates, dates for interviews, dates to appear in court, review dates, secondary offense dates. Having more work than they could handle was bad enough, but when everything had a deadline, the pressure escalated to an almost intolerable level.

Once her supervisor had gone off, Ann collapsed in her seat. Her desk was situated flush against a floor-to-ceiling window which allowed her to look out over the parking lot for the complex. Her eyes went immediately to the shrubs on the outer border of the lot, searching for the opening leading to Victoria Boulevard. Then she found it—the exact spot in the bushes where she had stepped through only seconds before she was shot. Earlier this morning, she had made a point to park on the opposite side of the building, not wanting to come anywhere near it.

Grabbing the Delvecchio file, Ann opened it, thinking she could distract herself and forget what she could see out the window. Five or ten minutes passed, but Ann wasn’t looking down at the file. She was thinking about that spot, about how much she didn’t want to see it ever again. People fought for these desks by the windows, but right now Ann would have preferred to work in a closet.

Without thinking, she stood and walked around her desk, placing her palms flat against the glass. When she saw her hands there, Ann knew why she had done it. She wanted to feel the glass, test the thickness. What she wanted was to assure herself that there was something between her and the spot in the shrubbery.

The next moment questions leaped into her mind against her will. They pounded inside her head like a migraine headache, pressing against her forehead, pushing in at the tender spots at her temples—incessant marching questions—questions she knew she would be asking forever, just as she had with Hank. “Exactly like Hank,” she mumbled, shaking her head from side to side, wanting to put a stop to it right this very minute.

Where had he been standing when he fired? Why had he fired at all? What had she done to this person? Who hated her enough to shoot her in the back and leave her bleeding on the sidewalk? On and on the dreaded questions marched, taking on a life of their own.

At last Ann pulled herself from the window and sank again into her chair, looking around at the mountains of paperwork and files, the questions a secondary, whispery voice now. “Where did that file go I just had in my hand?” she said, talking aloud in an attempt to override the voices.

Where was Hank’s body buried? erupted another voice. What had happened that night on that lonely stretch of road? Who had turned her life upside down?

That was the problem when you started asking questions and looking for answers that were not there, Ann thought. One set of questions only led to another.

Around ten o’clock, Ann ran into Perry Rogers on her way back from the coffee room. “Ann,” he said, a thick file in his hands and a look of frustration on his face, “I know you just got back and all, but I can’t figure this bingo sheet out. This is worse than figuring out my income tax return.”

Ann chuckled. A bingo sheet was what they called the form they used to compute prison terms, and it reminded a lot of people of an income tax form. The state of California had enacted a determinate sentencing law many years back, with specified terms for each crime. “Sure,” she told him, “come into my office and we’ll go over it right now.”

Perry Rogers was a wisp of a man in his late twenties, so thin and emaciated that he had to sit on a pillow when he was at his desk. Ann had never seen him so much as touch food, and the rumor was that he suffered from an eating disorder. But he was a likable guy, and Ann was always willing to lend a hand to less experienced officers.

“Okay, Perry,” she said once he’d pulled a chair up next to her desk. “Give me your bingo sheet and the court order, setting forth the convicted counts, along with your recommendation.”

Rogers handed Ann the entire file and waited while she pored over the particulars. One of the reasons he was encountering so many difficulties, Ann noted, was that the case he was handling involved multiple counts, all sex crimes. Sentencing guidelines for sex offenses had become more complex than those for any other crime. Every year a new law was enacted affecting sentencing. As everyone knew, Ann was the expert at this particular task. She could compute a fifty-count case in her head in a matter of minutes, whereas Rogers and most of the others had difficulty doing it at all.

“Here’s where you went wrong,” she told him, pointing at the sheet as she talked, “this count must be served consecutively, not concurrently, and you put the enhancement for the prior burglary offense in the wrong spot.”

Rogers wasn’t following what Ann was saying. “Why can’t the damn judge just figure this out for himself? They make a lot more money than we do.”

This was the sentiment of the majority of probation officers assigned to court services, and Ann had heard this so often she shrugged it off. “Why don’t you see what you come up with now. Perry?” she said, handing him the sheet with her corrections and waiting while he tried to complete it.

Through the years the job had become increasingly more technical. Up until six months ago Perry Rogers had been assigned to field services. In that position he only supervised offenders and filed reports when they violated their probation. Field officers were a different breed from court investigators. Many were negligent in managing their caseloads, came to work in jeans and T-shirts, and seldom had to appear in court on their cases. Now that Perry had transferred to court services, however, his job centered on writing and investigating presentence reports for the court.

“Why did you aggravate this count?” Ann said, looking over his shoulder at the form.

“Because he used a gun,” the man responded.

“But you’ve already added a two-year enhancement for the use of the firearm. Therefore you can’t use it to ask for a higher term. Don’t you see?” Ann said. “That’s like double jeopardy. He can’t be punished for the same crime twice.”

“Well,” Rogers said, clearly confused, “his prior record is an aggravating factor, and I’ve enhanced his term for it. Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No, it’s not,” Ann said, beginning to get as frustrated as Perry. She knew it was complex, and she felt sorry for the man, but he had to understand the law in order to do his job. “This enhancement is for one particular prior, this burglary. You’ve aggravated the crime based on his criminal record as a whole. See the difference?”

Ann glanced at the stack of files on her desk and back to her coworker. She didn’t have the time to sit here all day trying to explain it to him. Grabbing the sheet out of his hands and inserting the correct terms, Ann computed it herself and handed it back. “There you go, Perry,” she said. “But one of these days you’re going to have to take the time to learn it yourself.”

After Rogers had returned to his own cubicle next to Ann’s, he started talking again from the other side of the partition. “It was right over there, wasn’t it? You know, where you were shot?”

Without answering, Ann picked up her work and quietly left her cubicle, deciding to find an empty desk she could use temporarily, one that didn’t have a window overlooking the parking lot.

At twelve-thirty, Ann heard her name being paged on the loudspeaker system. Collecting her papers and files from the long table in the conference room where she’d been working, she rushed back to her desk to take the phone call.

“Hi,” Jimmy Sawyer said. “I wanted to see how you’re feeling.”

“Oh, Jimmy,” Ann said, recognizing his nasal voice. “It’s nice of you to call. To tell you the truth, I was going to call you this afternoon.” Not wanting to give him the bad news over the phone, Ann suggested he come to the office so they could talk. Then she thought better of it. “Tell you what,” she said. “I owe you one. I’ll buy you lunch. Why don’t you meet me at Marie Callender’s?” No matter what anyone said, Ann was grateful that he had stopped to help her. Many people didn’t want to get involved, and Ann knew she could have bled to death on that sidewalk.

“Marie Callender’s is too far from my house,” Sawyer said. “Let’s meet at the Hilton.”

Ann got to the hotel restaurant, took a table, and was looking over the menu when Sawyer walked in. His long hair was slicked back in a ponytail, and he was wearing Levi’s and a white shirt with an embroidered pocket. “I can’t really stay,” he said, not sitting down. “I have to go. I’m late.”

“You mean you don’t want to have lunch?” Ann asked, surprised. “I wanted to do something for you. I mean, I know it’s not much, but…”

Sawyer was having difficulty maintaining eye contact, she noticed. He would look at her and then flit away. “I thought you said you were going to take me back to court, tell them what I did. You know, get my probation switched so I don’t have to report every month.”

“Why don’t you sit down, Jimmy?” Ann said, studying his face, her assessment of him shifting by the second.

“I can’t. I have to go. I have to study.”

“Are you in school?” she asked, confused. She really recalled very little about his case. It seemed like everything that had occurred right before the shooting had simply vanished from her mind.

“No,” he said. “But I will be by next semester. I have to get my SAT scores up.” He stopped abruptly and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “I’m going to one of those cram courses. If I don’t get my scores up, I’ll have to go to a stupid junior college.”

A stupid junior college, Ann thought, compressing her lips in distaste. She knew kids who would love to go to any college. “That’s not so bad. A lot of people do the first two years at a junior college and then transfer to a university. My husband did that, and he later graduated from UCLA with honors.” Mentioning Hank in Sawyer’s presence gave Ann a strange sensation. Suddenly the night of the shooting reappeared in her mind. Why had she thought Hank was present that night? Ann knew she’d been delusional, but still it had weighed on her mind. If anyone could dispel this, Ann thought, it should be Sawyer. He had been there. “Jimmy, can you describe the people who stopped the night I was shot?”

“Some old couple. I don’t know. I don’t really remember.”