“I’m okay. How are you?”
“What’s wrong with your voice? It sounds hoarse.”
“I, uh, I don’t know. I think maybe I caught a cold or something.”
“I’m sorry, Jake. We tried to get there. Tom and I tried to get to court but—”
The words stopped. Jake looked to Atkins. He had pressed the button.
“—anyway for the first thirty days.”
Jake had no idea what David had just said. “I’m sorry, too, Dad. I guess I deserved this, but I’m real sorry about T.J. I think he’s having a harder time.” Jake looked to the window. Atkins shook his head and pressed the button.
“Could you tell Mr. Molia I’m sorry?”
“I’ll tell him. But he doesn’t blame you, Jake. Are they treating you okay?”
Atkins held up his finger to indicate he would depress the button. “Yeah. Yeah, they’re treating me real good, Dad. This is a real nice place. It’s like a camp, you know? Remember that soccer camp I went to that I loved so much?” Jake had not liked the camp and hoped David recalled as much. “They have basketball courts and a lake and one of those outdoor theaters. What are they called?”
“An amphitheater?”
“I think maybe they put on plays or something. I don’t know yet. And we get to go on hikes.” Jake looked to Atkins. “I went on a hike this afternoon.”
“How was that?”
Atkins sat poised to depress the button. “It was hard, but I think this place is going to help me do better, you know?”
Jake heard three beeps. He looked to Atkins, who made a slashing gesture across his throat. “I have to go now, Dad.”
“I love you, Jake. You take care of yourself.”
Jake spoke more quickly. “Could you do me a favor, Dad?”
“Anything.”
Jake looked to the glass. Another three beeps. “Could you tell Mom I love her? And tell her I miss her, and I hope she comes to visit.” Atkins tapped on the glass.
Time was up.
Jake hung up the phone and stood from his chair as Atkins reentered the room. “You did real good, Stand-up. I was sure you’d screw up again, but you actually stuck to the rules. Maybe there’s hope for your sorry ass.”
“Maybe,” Jake said, “I just needed the right motivation.”
T
HE
T
RISTAN
M
OTEL
T
RISTAN
, C
ALIFORNIA
When Tom Molia reentered the room Sloane had his head down, eyes closed.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Molia asked.
Sloane couldn’t get his jaw to work, couldn’t speak. His mind continued to go over Jake’s request. “He asked me to tell his mother he loved her. He asked me to bring her for a visit.”
Molia stood mute.
Sloane stood. “He also talked about a soccer camp he attended and how much he loved it. He said Fresh Start was like that camp.”
Sloane looked to Molia. “Jake hated that camp. He hated the bunkhouse and the food and said the older boys bullied the younger ones. He wanted to come home after a day. He was sending me a message. They’re in trouble, Tom. They’re in a lot of trouble.”
Big Baby lay on his lower bunk, a hand down the front of his white boxers, nursing a boner as if he were the only person in the room. Jake had removed his mattress from the top bunk and shoved it against the far wall, as far from the man-child as he could get. At just minutes before “lights out” some in the dorm were screwing around, hurling insults at one another. Others were rushing to get things into their plastic bins. A guard stood at the front of the room watching.
When the first bell rang everyone dutifully climbed into their beds. A minute later the clock on the wall buzzed and the lights shut
off, plunging the room into darkness but for elongated rectangles of light on the floor, moonlight streaming through the overhead windows. Jake heard the guard leave, the door shutting. His eyes adjusted quickly. He noted a green blinking light atop the camera in the corner of the room and three red lights, evenly spaced across the ceiling, marking the locations of the smoke alarms. Though exhausted, he fought to stay awake, alternately counting to himself or singing the words to songs in his head, but his body could not hold out. His eyes fluttered open and shut and he felt himself drifting off.
The sound of metal springs creaking woke him. Big Baby rose from his bed, a huge black shape. He seemed to hover for a moment, staring down at Jake. Fear pulsed through him, and he clenched his fists, determined to fight if Big Baby came for him, but Big Baby turned and walked down the aisle, toward the door, likely headed to the bathroom to relieve his boner.
Halfway down the aisle, however, Big Baby stopped.
Jake sat up and looked to the corner of the room. The light above the camera no longer blinked, and it was no longer green. It was solid red.
He looked back to the center aisle and watched Big Baby move to one of the bunks. He heard another bed creak, then a muffled protest followed by a frightening silence that seemed eternal. The ensuing sounds, however, were even more horrifying: whimpers of pain, the rhythmic creaking of the metal bed, and Big Baby’s escalating, hedonistic grunts.
ELEVEN
F
RESH
S
TART
Y
OUTH
T
RAINING
F
ACILITY
S
IERRA
N
EVADA
M
OUNTAINS
T
he spray hit him in the face, startling him awake.
Jake jerked to a sitting position and instinctively raised a hand to deflect the stream. Big Baby stood over him, urinating.
Jake jumped to his feet but with the block wall at his back he had no place to escape. The yellow stream became an arc, and Big Baby laughed as he redirected his aim, finishing with a shot to Jake’s mattress.
“Time to wake up,” he said. “You don’t follow the rules, we all get punished.”
Big Baby gave Jake a final inane laugh before walking to where the others had already formed a line for the door. A guard stood waiting but if he saw Big Baby’s wake-up call he didn’t care. Jake, dead tired, had not heard the alarm. He trudged to the back of the line, assessing his condition. He felt as though he’d been run over by a truck, his legs and arms leaden and his head heavy. He followed the others, looking up at the camera as he approached the door. The blinking green light pulsed, but the camera no longer rotated left and right. It remained stationary, the lens pointing directly at him.
W
INCHESTER
C
OUNTY
S
UPERIOR
C
OURT
W
INCHESTER
, C
ALIFORNIA
The following morning, Sloane and Lynch filed the motion for a new trial along with their motion that it be heard on shortened
notice as soon as the Winchester County clerk’s office opened at 8:00
AM.
They also filed a separate motion to obtain a transcription of the record of the prior day’s hearing. The Winchester County clerk, Evelyn Newcomber, handled the papers herself and said she would hand deliver copies of the pleadings to the prosecutor’s office, also located on the first floor of the courthouse, as well as to Judge Boykin’s chambers on the third floor. She suggested Sloane and Lynch wait in the lobby and she would bring them file-stamped copies of the pleadings, as well as Boykin’s order either granting or denying the motion to hear the matter on shortened notice.
Sloane paced the terra-cotta tiles, alternately adjusting the knot of his tie and tugging on the sleeve of the sport coat. The clothes Lynch brought were not a bad fit, but his left arm was slightly longer than his right, and he usually had to have his pants hemmed. Molia also paced. Neither of them had slept, not after the phone call from Jake, and the detective had pronounced bags under his eyes.
Sloane knew it possible Boykin would refuse to accommodate them, refuse to hear their motion that morning and instead set the motion to be heard at some future date on the court’s calendar just to make their lives difficult and to send his own message reaffirming who was in charge. But Sloane didn’t think so. He hoped that the ego and temper Boykin flashed the prior morning was not an aberration but a reflection of the man’s personality and that it would again get the better of him. Sloane pegged Judge Earl to be the type who did not like to have his authority challenged, and in Sloane’s experience those were the types who usually went out of their way to look for a fight and rarely had enough common sense to back down gracefully. The motion for a new trial was a direct challenge to Judge Boykin’s decision to incarcerate T.J. and Jake, and Sloane and Lynch had deliberately not pulled any punches drafting it. If anything they chose words intended to inflame, calling the sentencing “a gross miscarriage of justice” and Boykin’s decision “woefully lacking in both legal support and equity.” Their request that Boykin hear their motion on shortened notice, that very morning, was also a direct shot at the judge’s compulsive need to run his courtroom on schedule.
Just fifteen minutes after filing their motion Newcomber pushed open the smoked glass door and stepped into the rotunda. She wore colorful beads that matched the color of her long, decorated purple fingernails and handed Sloane the file-stamped copies. “Judge Boykin will hear the motion first thing this morning,” she said.
Sloane flipped to the second page and saw Boykin’s flowing signature in black ink.
Challenge accepted. The fight was on.
They made their way to Judge Earl’s ornate eighteenth-century courtroom on the third floor and took seats in the gallery.
“Like stepping back a hundred and fifty years,” Lynch said, looking about.
“Wait until you meet Judge Earl,” Molia said. “You’ll think Judge Roy Bean was cryogenically preserved and brought back to life, without his brain.”
Not long after they sat, the courtroom door opened and the prosecutor from the prior morning walked in. Balding, with wire spectacles and a thick mustache, Archibald Pike apparently favored three-piece suits, this one brown. The gold chain of a pocket watch draped from a button on his vest and looped to a pocket.
“Looks like everyone is in costume,” Lynch said.
Pike carried a stack of files, a loose pleading on top, no doubt Sloane’s motion for a new trial. He used a leg to push through the swinging gate and set up in the location he had taken the prior day, at the end of the table closest to the jury box. Once settled he picked up the loose pleading and flipped through it, occasionally adjusting his glasses while reading.
Lynch and Sloane made their way to the rail when Pike lowered the pleading. He turned to shake their hands. “I understand Judge Earl has granted your motion for shortened time.”
“We’re sorry we were unable to provide you with more notice,” Lynch said, ever gracious. “Given the urgency of the matter we felt it necessary to file it first thing this morning.”
Pike nodded. “Would you consider a continuance to allow the court clerk to transcribe the recording of yesterday’s proceedings?”
“How long would that take?” Sloane asked.
“I could ask that it be expedited. I would think we could get a copy early this afternoon and hold the hearing first thing Monday morning.”
It wasn’t an unreasonable request, but Sloane didn’t want to wait three days.
“Do you plan to oppose the motion?” Lynch asked Pike.
“I stipulated to the motion for shortened time; I will oppose the motion for a new trial. Both boys waived their right to counsel and confessed. I was here in court when they did.”
“We don’t believe the waivers or the confessions were made intelligently and with full knowledge of the consequences,” Lynch said. “They didn’t have counsel to advise them, or a guardian present.”
“Judge Earl spelled it out pretty clearly,” Pike said, a smirk to this tone.
“We also don’t believe Judge Boykin should have sentenced them without holding a separate hearing with parents present. This entire thing was rushed.”
“A gross miscarriage of justice?” Pike asked with a bemused smile.
“And if it was your son what would you think?” Sloane asked.
Pike looked from Sloane to Molia, who had joined them at the rail. “I don’t have anything personal against either of your sons, gentlemen. We get juveniles through here regularly, but this wasn’t some penny-ante crime they committed either. They broke into an establishment, stole alcohol and a firearm, and discharged that firearm within range of a populated area.”
“They’re boys; they made a mistake,” Molia said.
Pike shook his head. “Mistakes are accidents. This was no accident. It was a premeditated act of vandalism. We’re just lucky no one was seriously hurt, or worse.” He turned to Sloane. “And it isn’t the first time for your son, Mr. Carter. He’s developing quite a file, and it reveals a continuing pattern of progressively worse criminal conduct. Maybe this is what he needed, to get him back on track.”
Lynch stepped in before Sloane could speak, like a referee separating
two boxers. “What about getting the transcript and having the hearing this afternoon?” Lynch asked. “We’d be amenable to that.”
“If the clerk can get it transcribed that quickly, I wouldn’t oppose it.”
The woman who had been in the well beneath Boykins’s elevated bench the prior day entered the courtroom through the door leading to the Judge’s chambers and retook her seat. The courtroom bailiff followed, with Judge Boykin fast on his heels. Boykin strode past a brass spittoon, an old wooden box, and what looked like an antique stenographer’s machine, and took the three steps to his bench in one bound. Once there he wasted no time.
“Ms. Valdez, call the first case.”
Valdez stood. “The People of the State of California versus Jake Andrew Carter and Thomas James Molia,” she said.
Lynch pushed open the swinging gate and stepped to her left. Sloane caught the gate and followed. Boykin looked up and raised a meaty palm. “Mr. Carter, you may remain in the gallery. Only attorneys and defendants at counsel table.”
Lynch spoke. “Your Honor, this is David Sloane; he’s a licensed attorney in the State of California and cocounsel in this matter.”