At Their Own Game (6 page)

“Yeah, I guess.”
 

“Anything I say to him will just help his case,” I said. “And I don’t guess that. I know. And you should, too. You’re a detective, for Christ’s sake.”
 

Butch frowned. “I still think it could maybe go the other way. Clear some things up.”
 

“No.” I shook my head, my jaw clenching.
 

“Why not?”
 

“Because fuck him, that’s why not.”
 

We went to the interview. Falkner was cool and professional, but there was a definite buzz of hatred coming off him. Maybe I was the only one who noticed.
 

He clicked on his tape recorder, identified himself, the date and the time. He asked us to identify ourselves for the clerk who would eventually transcribe this interview, and give permission to be recorded.
 

“Butch Atwood, union delegate. Permission granted.”
 

“Tina Crowne, attorney for the police union,” came a voice from the telephone speaker. “You have my permission.”
 

I leaned toward the recorder. “Officer Jake Stankovic. Permission granted.”
 

Falkner frowned slightly when I spoke, but the expression quickly disappeared under the flat expression he maintained.
 

He started his interview by calling me “mister” instead of “officer”. Every time he did it, I could feel the intent behind it.
 

You’re not worthy of being a cop.
 

This is going to be the end of the line for you.
 

I’ve got you, motherfucker.
 

I’d read the reports he’d filed already. Butch got copies almost as soon as they were filed, within a day at least. He asked me most, if not all, of the same questions he asked witnesses. Did I know the other person involved? Was this a planned event? He kept planting those little seeds. Even though I said, “I decline to answer on the advice of my attorney” to every question, I knew those seeds of doubt were going to take root.
 

When the interview was over, he stood first. “I’m sure you’ll want to consult after this,” he said, before gathering up his notes and leaving. He said it as if he’d just proven that I’d been on the grassy knoll in 1963.
Like now was the time I’d want to chat with my lawyers about how to cut a deal to avoid the electric chair or a perp walk with a Jack Ruby kicker.
 

When he’d gone, I turned my fury on Butch and Tina. “How long have we been in here?”
 

Butch shrugged, but Tina answered immediately. “An hour and twelve minutes.”
 

It figured that the lawyer would know. Billable hours and all.
 

“Seventy-two minutes?” I asked. “And in all that time, neither one of you had a single thing to say? No objections, no clarifications? Nothing? What the fuck?”
 

Butch opened his mouth to speak, but Tina beat him to the punch. Her firm voice blared from the speaker phone. “It’s his interview, officer. And when you invoke the Fifth Amendment, it puts me in a difficult position to object to his questions since you aren’t going to answer them, anyway.”
 

“This was a dog and pony show,” I said.
 

Turns out I was wrong. The dogs and ponies were yet to come.
 

SIX
 

When Falkner trotted his case over to the prosecutor, I expected him to be in for a huge disappointment. I read the case, courtesy of Butch and Tina keeping me in the loop. I was no Major Crimes detective, but even a cadet at the Academy could see that he didn’t have probable cause for robbery. And even if he did, there was no way a prosecutor would be able to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that I’d conspired with this unknown shoplifter to commit a robbery for beer and cigarettes. The public might be buying into some of the newspaper’s line about police corruption, but this was going too far.
 

I should’ve never underestimated people where politics were concerned, though. Even though this was a shit case, the deputy prosecutor still signed it up as a robbery. There was simply too much pressure on the Chief and on the Prosecuting Attorney, who was running for re-election. Some of the other high-profile cases had been dumped, one lost at trial, and one had resulted in the guy being fired but then getting his job back via arbitration. Their record was hurting.
 

Next thing I knew, I got arraigned in Superior Court on robbery charges. They did release me on my own recognizance after the arraignment, though. I thought that was nice of them.
 

Tina had a closed-door session with the prosecutor a week later. She met with me afterward at Butch’s office. I turned down the offer of coffee. After she had a sip of hers, she made a face and pushed it away. So at least I knew she was smarter than Butch, who drank this swill like it was ambrosia.
 

“That,” she said, “was the bloodiest meeting I’ve ever had with a prosecutor. What did you do to them? They want your hide.”
 

“I didn’t do anything. I’m not a bad guy. The detective on the case hates me.”
 

“Why?”
 

I glanced around the near-empty coffee shop. Then I turned to her and said quietly, “I had a thing with his wife a few years ago.”
 

She didn’t balk at that. “Well, that doesn’t help us any. His case is solid and professional. I can’t go into court and argue that this should be dismissed because the detective did a super good job out of spite because you once boinked his wife.”
 

“Boinked?”
 

“You know what I mean.”
 

“It’s just…such an eighties word. High school eighties.”
 

She shrugged. “I try to avoid the F word when I can. The cops I represent use it more than enough to make up for my lack thereof.”
 

Suddenly, I really didn’t care about her speech patterns or word choice. What I wanted to know is what happened in her meeting. “Fine. How about the prosecutor? Did he say
fuck
during your meeting? Like how he was going to
fuck
me?”
 

She shook her head. “He’s very sophisticated. I don’t think he talks like that.”
 

“Really, I don’t give a fuck if he’s so classy he gets out of the shower to take a piss. I just want to know what he’s going to do with my case.”
 

“He’ll take it to trial,” she said, “unless we cut a deal.”
 

“Why should we cut a deal? He’s got nothing.”
 

Tina drew a deep breath and let it out. “On paper, you’re right. The probable cause is slim. There are plenty of reasonable doubts, all of which I will bring up during testimony. But a trial doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The people in the jury know about the Tyler case, where two cops beat a homeless black man near to death.”
 

“They were exonerated,” I said. “And that homeless black man was an assault suspect who was six foot seven and three hundred pounds and fought like a grizzly bear.”
 

She shrugged. “What the potential jury pool knows is what was on TV and in the paper. Besides, there’s the other case where the cop was having the affair with the court clerk, then started stalking her when she broke it off. That was another black mark on the PD.”
 

“
He
broke up with
her
, and she stalked him, not the other way around,” I said.
 

“Funny,” she said, her tone becoming a little snippy. “That’s not how it reads in the paper.”
 

“The paper blows.”
 

“People read it,” she said. “And don’t even get me started on the racial profiling that the two traffic officers were doing.”
 

I leaned back, shaking my head. “That’s bullshit, too. Check their numbers.”
 

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t matter that I
know
they’re not guilty. It doesn’t matter that most of those cases were resolved in the officer’s favor. That doesn’t make the news, or if it does, it’s portrayed as a miscarriage of justice. What matters is that the people who are going to be judging you are going to know about all of those incidents. They won’t just be judging you on the facts of your case, they’ll also be judging you on how they feel about those cases.”
 

“But—”
 

“Some of them – not all of them, but some of them – will be looking to balance the ledger regarding what went wrong in those cases. To set the things right. And they’ll want to do it by making what they think is the
right
call in your case.”
 

“What if I take the stand and testify? I can explain what happened to the jury.”
 

She frowned. “You’ll look self-serving at this point. And after invoking the Fifth Amendment during the police interview, you’ll have zero credibility.”
 

“But the facts are—”
 

“The facts don’t matter. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.”
 

“But—”
 

She held up her hand. “Stop, and listen to me for a moment.”
 

I hesitated, then nodded.
 

“O.J. Simpson,” was all she said.
 

Shit.
 

She was right.
 

I sank back in my seat. “A deal, huh?”
 

“Yes. Taking it to trial is a giant crapshoot, and you don’t want to risk a felony conviction.”
 

“So why is the prosecutor willing to deal, then?”
 

“Same reason. He could go to trial and lose, and between him and the Chief, they’re zero for three on high-profile cases recently. If he gets a plea, he can turn that into a win and sell it that way.”
 

“What’s in it for the Chief?” I asked, but I knew the answer before she even said it.
 

“He looks tough on police misconduct. Plus it’s a no brainer termination that can’t be overturned.”
 

“So he’ll fire me,” I said, more a statement than a question.
 

“Without question. Make no mistake, Officer. If you are convicted, via plea or otherwise, your career as a police officer is over.”
 

“But if I want to roll the dice for an acquittal, and try to keep my job, I have to face felony charges.”
 

“Yes. And, quite frankly, there is nothing stopping the Chief from firing you after that, even if you are acquitted. The threshold of proof is much lower in civil law. You might get your job back on appeal or via arbitration, but that will take two years.”
 

“You’re a basket of joy,” I told her, rubbing the bridge of my nose where a headache was suddenly brewing.
 

“I deal in reality,” she said, her tone unapologetic.
 

“The reality is that I didn’t commit a crime.”
 

“No,” she said. “The truth may be that you didn’t commit a crime, but the reality is that you are going to plead guilty to one, or be tried for one.”
 

“Fuck,” I swore quietly. Then looked directly at her, and repeated, “Fuck.”
 

I took the plea. As much as I protested that I wasn’t a bad guy and there wasn’t any case, it was the right choice from a strictly legal and pragmatic viewpoint.
 

That didn’t make it suck any less.
 

The charge was reduced to a pair of misdemeanors. Assault, and obstructing a law enforcement officer. I bristled at the second one.
I
was a law enforcement officer. All the security guy had was a limited commission that allowed him to make misdemeanor arrests. But that was enough.
 

I got the max sentence for both. A five thousand dollar fine and a year in jail. The judge suspended forty five hundred of the fine and all but sixty days of the jail sentence. He put me on a fifty dollar a month payment
plan for the five hundred bucks, and I started my jail time right away.
 

Detective Falkner showed up at my sentencing. He stood in the back of the courtroom, and I didn’t notice him until the proceedings were finished. When I saw him standing there, I expected him to have a smug expression on his face. What I saw instead was something else entirely. Something that spoke of dissatisfaction, of something unfulfilled. He shot me a glare that said he wasn’t finished with me yet.
 

And that much was certainly true.
 

SEVEN
 

Matt and Brent listened to my story with hardly any interruptions. I left out some things, especially about Helen’s hold on me, but I gave them enough so that they’d understand what was going on.
 

After I’d finished, we were silent for a few moments. Then Matt let out a long, low whistle.
 

“Banging his old lady in
their
crib? Man, that’s some cold shit. No wonder he hates your guts.”
 

Brent said nothing.
 

“I mean, I knew about you being a cop and all,” Matt continued. “But I didn’t know the whole story.”
 

“Now you do.”
 

“Yeah,” he whispered, nodding his head with what appeared to be newfound respect.
 

“You said he didn’t mention me during your interview?” I asked him.
 

Matt shook his head. “Nope. He didn’t know much of anything specific. He just asked a bunch of general questions.”