Judgment Calls (32 page)

“So what do you want?” she asked.

“Now that’s more like it. Get in.”

Fourteen.

When I finally got home it was nearly two in the morning.

Chuck’s Jag was in my driveway, and Chuck was asleep in the backseat. I tapped on the window, and he reached over his head and unlocked the front door.

“This piece of crap chose my driveway to break down in?” I said.

“Cute. Where have you been?” he asked, sitting up and pushing his hair down from sleep.

“Another late one,” I said.

“A late one where? I’ve been leaving you messages all night.”

“Sorry. I got busy. I would’ve called you tomorrow.”

“So, again, where have you been?”

Shoot. He’d learned something about interrogations over the years. “Working. Griffith told me I had to dismiss the case against Derringer, so I went out to Rockwood to break the news to Kendra.”

“You were at Kendra’s until two in the morning?” He sounded appropriately skeptical.

“I had some follow-up. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now I’m exhausted.” I headed toward the front door.

He grabbed my arm as I was walking up the steps to the porch. “Dammit, Sam. What kind of follow-up? Where the hell have you been?”

I pulled my arm from his grip. “Jesus, Chuck. The stalking routine really isn’t becoming. Is this jealousy? Do you actually think I was with someone else?”

He shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“You scared the shit out of me. I thought something happened to you.”

“Well, nothing happened to me. With Derringer’s charges dismissed, he doesn’t have any reason to try to scare me off anymore, so stop worrying. I told you, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Please respect that.”

“Don’t do this, Sam. You were distant last night, you blew off my calls all day, and now you’re out till whenever and won’t tell me where you were. I know you. The only thing I have to compete with is your job, so something must be happening on the case. What’s going on? My guys tell me the governor’s cutting Landry and Taylor loose. You tell me you’ve dismissed the case against Derringer. So why were you out so late?”

I looked at him but didn’t say anything.

“You don’t trust me, do you, Sam?”

I knew I should say something, but I didn’t. I couldn’t get my mouth to work.

I finally spoke up when he started walking toward his car. “Explain it to me, Chuck. How did Landry know so much about Jamie’s murder if she wasn’t a part of it? And if she was a part of it, how come she passed a polygraph while some guy tells the Oregonian where the police can find Jamie’s purse? Explain it to me. Come inside and talk to me about it.”

He turned his head just long enough to say, “You’re really unbelievable, Kincaid. You don’t know me at all.”

I stopped myself from pulling out my cell phone as I watched him drive away. Part of me wanted to apologize; another part wanted to scream at him.

Instead, I decided to get to sleep so I could wake up and work on what I’d learned from Haley.

Two days later, my ducks were finally in a row.

Sneaking around hadn’t been easy. Once the charges against Derringer had been dropped and the news had been broken to Kendra, my role in the matter was officially over. I was taking a big risk by jumping back into it again without notifying Duncan and O’Donnell.

I had reserved a block of time in front of the grand jury without indicating a specific case name. Anyone looking at the schedule would just assume I was presenting several drug cases together. Actually, I was trying to indict Derrick Derringer.

Getting an indictment’s much easier than getting a conviction. The grand jury’s only role is to decide if there’s enough evidence against the defendant to warrant a trial, and in practice grand jurors “true bill” almost every case presented to them. Because the grand jury doesn’t actually determine the defendant’s guilt, the proceedings are considerably less formal than at trial. No judge, no defense attorney. Just the prosecutor and seven trusting grand jurors. We rarely even kept a record of grand jury testimony in state court, but I’d gotten a court reporter for this particular session. At least if I got fired, I’d have a transcript to show for my hard work. It wouldn’t be a great trade, but it was better than nothing.

“Members of the grand jury, today’s proceedings will not be typical of the hearings you have experienced so far as grand jurors. By now, you have figured out that most criminal cases are cut-and-dry. The prosecutor says hello, calls in a police officer or two, and asks for an indictment. No one gives you the other side of the story, the evidence that complicates the picture, what the defense will say at trial.

“Today, I will ask you to indict Derrick Derringer on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, statutory rape, and conspiring with his brother to rape and murder a thirteen-year-old girl named Kendra Martin. This will not be a straightforward story. You will learn, if you do not already know from the news, that the State has already dismissed charges against Derrick Derringer’s brother, Frank Derringer, for raping and attempting to murder Kendra Martin. To complicate things further, someone has written anonymous letters to the Oregonian, claiming that he and an unnamed accomplice, and not Frank Derringer, are responsible for the attack on Miss Martin.

“I’ll be honest with you. I am currently unable to offer a single theory that explains both the evidence against Mr. Derringer and his brother, and the anonymous letter that would appear to exonerate the Derringers. I suspect that you will also find it difficult to reconcile the evidence against

Mr. Derringer with some of the State’s other evidence. That’s why your role today is so important. At the end of the presentation of the evidence, I will ask you to decide for yourselves whether the evidence against Mr. Derringer warrants an indictment, regardless of the exculpatory evidence.”

I started with a thorough overview of Frank Derringer’s trial, the Jamie Zimmerman case, and the Long Hauler letters. The rules of evidence do not apply during grand jury proceedings, so I didn’t have to use live testimony to establish this background. Instead, I offered it in summary form, using the white board to make a list of the central characters in the case and the important points for them to remember. I ended with the discovery of Jamie Zimmerman’s purse.

The jurors looked exhausted by the time I was done. An elderly woman across the table raised her hand. She gestured to her notes with her pen while she spoke. “Um, maybe I’m confused or something,” she said, “but it sounds like whoever wrote these letters killed Jamie and the other women and also raped that poor little girl. And you’re saying that you don’t see how these other people Margaret Landry, Jesse Taylor, and Frank Derringer could have written the letters, so it sounds like they’re all innocent. Have you told us anything about Derrick Derringer yet?”

“Not yet. The evidence I have just summarized for you is the background of a larger investigation that relates to the case against Mr. Derringer. What you’ve heard so far suggests exactly what you’ve stated. Like I said, you may find it difficult to reconcile all that information with the evidence you will hear today. So I want you to consider the remaining evidence in light of the background I’ve given you and then decide whether to issue the indictment.”

There were no more questions, so I called my first witness, Haley Jameson.

Haley walked in with an attitude. I would’ve been disappointed in her if she hadn’t. She slumped down into the witness chair at the center of the room and looked up at the ceiling as I had her spell her name and take her witness oath.

“Where do you live, Haley?” I asked.

“Varies day to day. I been in a bunch of foster homes, but mostly I just crash with friends. Stay at a place in Old Town called the Hamilton.”

“And how do you pay for things like your hotel room at the Hamilton, food, things like that?”

“I got immunity, right?”

“Right. As we’ve discussed, you’re testifying today with my promise that nothing you say will be used against you.”

“Mostly I date,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll sell some pot to friends or something to pick up a few extra bucks.”

“When you say that you date for money, are you referring to prostitution?”

She rolled her eyes and sank into her chair a little deeper. I was starting to worry she might slide right off.

“You need to reply to my questions with a verbal answer, Haley. The court reporter is transcribing everything.”

“Yeah. I meant prostitution,” she said.

“How long have you been working in prostitution?” I asked.

” “Bout three years,” she answered.

“And how old are you now?”

“Sixteen.”

A couple of the grand jurors shifted uncomfortably in their seats as they worked out the math.

“Do you know Frank and Derrick Derringer?” I asked.

“Unfortunately,” she said. “Can’t be on the street as long as I have without running into them.”

I had made the connection when I reviewed the file at Kendra’s. I had printed out Derrick Derringer’s PPDS record so I could cross-examine him about his prior convictions, but I’d never seen the need to pay any attention to the basic identifying information, like hair and eye color, height, and, most importantly, tattoos.

I pulled out one of the photographs that Kendra had given me the first time I met her, the one showing Haley and a couple of girls with a man whose face wasn’t shown but whose tattoo was. I’d retrieved the photographs from Tommy Garcia before I’d gone looking for Haley.

“Haley, I’m handing you a photograph that appears to show you with a man and two other girls. Will you please tell the grand jurors what’s going on in that picture?”

“Uh, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“Humor us,” I said.

“Well,” she said, looking at the picture, “a few of us were partying with a guy, and someone saw a disposable camera lying around and started taking pictures.”

“Whose camera was it?”

“Kendra’s,” she said.

“Kendra Martin?” I clarified.

“Yeah. Kendra wasn’t actually there. She’d been in my room earlier, hanging out, and left it behind.”

“Are the other girls in the picture also from the Hamilton?”

“Yeah, on and off, like me,” she said.

“Who’s the man in the picture, the one with the tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil?”

“That’s Derrick Derringer.”

“How do you know him?” I asked.

“Like I said, hard not to know him,” she said. “Him and his brother cut in on a lot of the girls’ business out there. They take a share from you, or all of a sudden bad things start happening to you.”

“Do you give any money to Frank and Derrick Derringer?”

“Yeah, I got to give ‘em half of what I make. For a long time, they were leaving us younger girls alone as long as we’d do other stuff for ‘em. Now they want both. Like that night we took the picture, we did the group thing for him, but then I had to keep giving him money on top of it.”

“So you have had sexual intercourse with Derrick Derringer?”

“Duh,” she said.

“The court reporter, Haley,” I reminded her.

“Yes. I’ve had sexual intercourse with him.”

“To your knowledge, did Kendra Martin pay any of the money that she earned to Frank and Derrick Derringer?” I asked.

“Nope. She hadn’t been working long enough to really know who they were yet. She seemed to think she was too good for a lot of it and was real careful to stay on her own.”

“What did the Derringers think of that?” I asked.

Haley and I had gone over her testimony carefully before I’d given her the immunity deal. I was still worried, though, that she’d back out on me.

“They were pissed. All the girls knew Kendra was out on her own. A couple times, we told her to come around when we knew Frank or Derrick were coming by. You know, we’d say we knew these guys and we wouldn’t be getting paid but needed to do it anyway. I figured she knew the score, but she kept blowing us off while we were still getting stuck with them. It was pissing a bunch of the girls off too, and they started telling Frank and Derrick that they weren’t going to go along if Kendra wasn’t.”

“How did the Derringers react to that?”

Haley looked at me and then the door. For a second, it seemed like she considered bailing, but she stayed put. She was going to need some prodding.

“Haley, I asked you how the Derringers reacted to that.”

“All I know is, I saw Derrick the day after Kendra got messed up. He said that me and the other girls should take a lesson from her, that that’s what happened to girls who didn’t have someone watching out for them.”

“Did he ever tell you directly that he or his brother was involved in the attack on Kendra?” I asked.

“No, just that we should take a lesson from it.”

“Did you say anything in response to that?” I asked. I could tell she was considering clamming up again, but then she gave up.

“Yeah. I was pretty messed up at the time and mouthed off to him. I told him he’d better be careful because Kendra had a picture of him.”

“Are you referring to the photograph that we just discussed?”

“Yeah. I saw the pictures after Kendra got them developed. Derrick freaked when I told him and started shaking me to find out what I was talking about. I told him I was just fucking with him, that the picture didn’t show his face or anything. But then he made me tell him where Kendra’s mom lived at so he could try to get the picture back.”

I paused to tell the grand jurors about the key missing from Kendra’s purse and Andrea Martin’s suspicion that some items were out of place in the Martin home. I also showed them reports documenting the breakin at my house, explaining that the photographs had been in Tommy Garcia’s possession until a few days ago.

“After you gave him Kendra Martin’s address, did you ever talk to Derrick Derringer again about the photograph?”

“Yeah. He told me I better get that picture back from Kendra. I’ve been calling Kendra trying to do it, but Kendra will only talk on the phone with me. She won’t meet me anywhere, so I’ve been trying to avoid Derrick.” I mentally apologized to Kendra for doubting her.