The Conviction (24 page)

“Which is what?” Sloane asked.

“That a confrontational model using intimidation and humiliation is counterproductive with kids, some of whom may already have severe emotional or behavioral problems.”

“You take a kid who has spent his life committing violent crimes—robbery, rape, assault—and you’re basically just reinforcing that use of physical force,” Molia said.

“
And
that using degrading tactics is appropriate to achieve your purpose.” Rizek added. “You reinforce that in a kid who’s bigger and stronger than the others, and you’ve created a potential Frankenstein.”

F
RESH
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TART
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RAINING
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ACILITY
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IERRA
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EVADA
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OUNTAINS

The guards had put an end to the utensil salute, but they couldn’t erase the smiles on the faces of the inmates, not completely anyway. Jake set his tray down across from Bee Dee, who was doing his best to conceal his own shit-eating grin. He knew he should be hungry, but he had little appetite. He sat staring at the mound of food on his plate.

“Just start slow,” Bee Dee said.

Jake started with the eggs, which he figured would require minimal chewing. His jaw, like the rest of his body, hurt to move. The ham was a problem but for a different reason. He couldn’t hold a knife and apply the pressure needed to cut the meat.

“I gotcha, man.” The kid sitting next to him stabbed the two pieces, put them on his plate, and cut them up.

“Thanks,” Jake said, realizing he didn’t know the kid’s name.

“Rafe,” he said. “No problem.”

The kid seated beside Bee Dee introduced himself as “Tommy” and the kid beside him was “Jose.” Jake already knew Henry. T.J. sat at the far end, but unlike the others he kept his head down, picking at his food.

“Why is breakfast so late?” Jake’s voice was hoarse from yelling over the sound of the storm.

“Saturday,” Bee Dee said. “Everything gets pushed back for family visits at ten. If you don’t have family, you have chores. You’re working in the horse stables with me and Henry. Afternoon we get free time.”

Jake looked around the room.

“I told you, he’s not here,” Bee Dee said.

“Even an asshole like Atkins gets a weekend off from torturing us,” Rafe said.

“Probably why he gave up last night,” Henry said. “Wanted to get home and beat his dog.”

“Maybe the steroids wore off and he needed another shot to pump back up,” Tommy said, puffing out his chest like a bodybuilder.

Rafe leaned forward for all to hear. “He gave up because our boy Jake beat him. That’s why.”

“How’d you do it?” Tommy asked. “How’d you last so long?”

Jake shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think I had a choice.”

That brought chuckles, though not from T.J.

Jake ate most of his meal, though his stomach balked at times, cramping. When the bell clattered guards barked out orders and the inmates dutifully carried their plates to be cleaned, scraping the leftovers into large blue garbage cans before setting them down on the wash belt.

“Fifteen minutes to get cleaned up before we have to be at the horse stables,” Henry said, getting up from the table. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Jake looked to the end of the table. T.J. had picked up his tray, moving slower than the others. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”

“I got your tray.” Rafe lifted Jake’s tray. “And with Atkins gone you can bunk in our dorm. The weekend guards won’t know. Cal went home yesterday, so we got an empty bunk. They don’t bring in nobody on the weekend.”

“Get moving,” one of the guards said, approaching their table.

The table emptied. Jake started after T.J., about to call out his
name when he overheard a conversation at another table where the inmates sat lingering.

“I don’t know,” a kid with a horse face said. “He was there arguing about something; I think his kid’s in here. He left, but then he comes back in.”

“And he just agreed to represent you?” another kid asked.

Jake’s pulse quickened. He moved closer to the table.

“Like I said, he was walking out and then he just came back. He walked up to the kid and asked him, ‘Hey kid, you want an attorney, don’t you?’ or something like that. He didn’t even know the kid’s name. He said it just like that. ‘Hey kid, you want an attorney, don’t you?’”

“What did the kid say?”

“At first he just stood there, like he didn’t know what to say. Then he says, ‘Are you any good?’ Man, I about peed my freaking pants. ‘Are you any good?’ And the guy, this attorney, he just says, ‘Yeah.’ So the kid says ‘okay.’”

“And he got him off?”

“I thought Judge Earl’s head was going to explode.”

Jake leaned closer. “What was his name?” The group stopped talking and pulled back. “The attorney,” Jake said. “Did he tell you his name? Was it David? David Sloane?”

The kid nodded. “Yeah, that was it. Sloane.”

“You said he was trying to get his kid out?”

“Him and a woman. They were asking for a new trial.”

Jake remembered the lawyer with David in the Martinez courtroom though not her name. “The woman. Was she short with blond hair?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“What happened? What did the judge do?”

The kid shrugged. “Fucking Boykin does what he always does. He said no. So they said they were going to appeal it.”

They were still close. They hadn’t left. They were still trying to get him and T.J. out. Jake looked up but did not see T.J. at the table or in the line to scrape his plate. He hurried for the exit.

Outside Jake did not see T.J. He started across the yard, figuring T.J. would go back to his dorm before going to whatever chore he’d
been assigned. He was halfway there when something weird caught his eye, a mass exodus of red coveralls from the bathhouse, like ants pouring out the top of their mound. Then T-Mac stepped out from behind the block wall that shielded the entrance, casually leaning against the edge as if waiting for someone.

Jake looked to his left and saw T.J. walking in the direction of the bathhouse with his head down. He had not seen the others fleeing. Jake was about to call out when a guard stopped in his path, blocking his view.

“Do you have someplace you’re supposed to be, Inmate?”

“Uh, yes, sir.”

“And where is that?”

“Horse stables, sir.”

“Then I’d suggest you get moving before you’re late.”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“You should have thought of that before you stood here jerking off. You’re just going to have to hold it until you get there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jake started for the path leading to the horse stables. In his peripheral vision he watched as T.J. neared the bathhouse. T-Mac did not try to stop him. He stepped out of his way, as if about to walk off. But T-Mac didn’t walk away. He walked to the side of the building. Jake could not see what T-Mac did next, but seconds later Big Baby lumbered around the corner of the building and entered. Jake’s instincts made him want to change course, but when he looked back over his shoulder the guard remained rooted in place, watching him.

“They don’t have to beat us all up,”
Bee Dee had said.
“They just have to catch one of us alone. And trust me, you don’t want to be the one.”

FIFTEEN

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HANGHAI
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INCHESTER
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ALIFORNIA

R
izek continued to explain what she had learned from her research into private detention facilities. “Fresh Start is a good example,” she said. “It’s remote. That’s good in some respects but it also makes it expensive to operate. They have to truck in all the food and supplies.”

“They need bodies,” Sloane said. “They need a certain number of kids paying a certain amount to make a profit each month.”

Rizek nodded. “They get some state and government subsidies, but yeah, the more bodies, the more money.”

“And the longer the sentences, the longer the income stream,” Sloane said.

“The selling of youth offenders,” Rizek said, sliding her article beneath that headline back to Sloane.

“Did you find anything that could explain Judge Earl’s sentences? Why he would do it?” Sloane asked.

Rizek smiled. “You mean like was he taking kickbacks?” She shook her head. “But Boykin was the reason they built it.”

“What do you mean, he was the reason?” Sloane recalled Lynch telling them Fresh Start’s construction was controversial.

“Boykin convinced two of the three county supervisors that the existing juvenile facility was outdated and a potential source of lawsuits. He convinced them to approve a land grant gifting the land to Victor Dillon. The trustee for the estate objected and sued the bank that held the deed in trust to recover the land.”

“What was the basis for the suit, a noncomforming use?” Sloane guessed.

Rizek nodded. “The deed specified the land was to be used for a nonprofit camp for kids, you know, like a YMCA.”

“How’d it come out?” Sloane asked.

“Dillon settled it. Reportedly he paid the estate a million dollars.”

“No small change,” Molia said.

“Dillon can afford it. The county supervisors gave him a twenty-year, fifty-nine-million-dollar lease. Add in what parents pay for each child, state subsidies, and what other counties pay if their facilities are full, and juvenile offenders stop being a problem and start being fungible commodities.”

“Why didn’t this cause more of a public outcry in the county?” Sloane asked.

“Because the
Winchester Recorder
wouldn’t run the article. Boykin got word of my investigation and told the editor he would consider any insinuation that he was incarcerating kids for profit to be nothing short of slander. It was a mom and pop paper, they weren’t about to take on Boykin or Victor Dillon. The
Sacramento Bee
also declined.”

“Do you know why?”

“Not completely. I brought it to one of my former editors at the
Mercury.
She loved it but wanted a more personal angle. She wanted me to get a family to open up and talk. That wasn’t going to happen in Winchester.
Nobody
would talk. The
Mercury
ran it, but severely edited.” She shrugged. “And I had another bun in the oven to keep me busy.”

The mention of the baby caused Sloane to consider his watch. He knew Rizek needed to leave. “What can you tell me about Victor Dillon?” he asked.

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ILBER
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INCHESTER
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ALIFORNIA

Victor Dillon called it a Kodak Moment. With his left arm draped around the boy’s shoulders and his right hand holding one end of
the oversize check, the shot was worth more than gold, even at its current inflated prices.

The boy and his mother stood on each side of Dillon, each holding the prop with two hands, as if it were the check itself. After the photographers finished they stepped to the side and another boy and his mother, Caucasian, stepped into place. The process would be repeated a third time, for an African American boy. Three scholarships to underprivileged kids. Thirty thousand dollars. It was not an inconsequential sum, but it was a tax write-off, thanks to how Dillon’s financial advisers had structured his nonprofit foundation, and it was a publicity bonanza. In addition to the local paper, which would run the article and photographs on the front page, the
Sacramento Bee
was also present, thanks to some well-placed phone calls, as were reporters from the local television stations, including the show
Good Day Sacramento.

When the last photo op finished, Dillon returned to the elevated platform and took his seat just to the right of the podium, the place reserved for the guest of honor at this breakfast to promote opportunity, his publicist’s idea. The president of the Wilber House stood at the microphone. “I would like now to say a few words about the man of the hour. Victor Dillon has been a generous supporter of our youth here in Winchester County. The list of all of his financial contributions would be too long for me to enumerate in the time we have allotted.”

Which was why those contributions had been listed on the inside of the program.
Direct them to the inside of the program,
Dillon silently urged. But the woman did not. The crowd had gathered at the Wilber House on the spacious grounds of the Black Oak Winery, in which Dillon had a 35 percent stake, to pay him homage and to open their checkbooks.

“Still, I would be remiss if I did not touch upon his extraordinary gifts to promote opportunity for youth through his sizable donations
to the Winchester county school system, to fund the expansion of the Winchester County library, and to construct the Fresh Start Youth Training Facility.”

Dillon gave a humble smile.
Why was she leaving out the amounts of his generosity?
And yet the woman continued to do just that, noting the contributions, but not the dollar amounts then abruptly concluding.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the man of this hour and so many others here in Winchester County, Victor Dillon.”

The applause was adequate but not thunderous. Frankly, Dillon had expected more, but the woman had no sense of timing or how to build up a crowd. He met the president at the podium, shaking hands while the photographers reassembled. When Dillon felt the woman’s hand pulling away he gripped it to allow the photographers adequate time to get their shots. He knew applause was contagious, and his publicist had ensured that several well-placed guests would stand. When they did, so did everyone else, and the applause increased in volume. Only when every butt had left its seat did Dillon let the president’s hand drop and take the podium for himself.