Chump Change (2 page)

“Stay down,” I cautioned, but by then, it was too late. As he slid a knee beneath his body, and began to lever himself upright, a piteous groan escaped his lips. The sound must have scared the kiddie cop, cause a moment later, a pair of silver wires flashed across my field of vision. The high-voltage jolt from the Taser contracted the big guy’s muscles, hurling him against the house, throwing his head back into the cedar siding with a resounding thud.

As he began to slide down the wall, he looked up at me with wet, uncomprehending eyes and said something I’ll never forget.

He said, “Leo?”

And then he died. Right there on the cold concrete.

The orange jail coveralls had been recycled so many times they felt like they’d been woven from aluminum filings. I caught a glimpse of myself in an office door as a pair of deputies led me down the rear corridor of the Lewis County Law and Justice Center. What I saw was not encouraging. Between the scratchy coveralls and the quarter mile of surgical tape holding my nose to my face, any chance of being considered innocent until proven guilty seemed, at best, remote. Be lucky if I didn’t get the death penalty.

Ten minutes later, minus the obligatory belly chains and leg restraints, I was ushered into Courtroom 4, where the Honorable Rosemarie Keenan was holding Superior Court, in and for Lewis County, Washington. As I walked in front of her bench, she looked up from her paperwork and eyed me like I was something escaped from a petri dish. I pretended not to notice.

Seemed like Jed James had been my attorney since conception. We’d been in the same class at Briarcliff Elementary School. Played ball together. Double-dated the toothsome Moody sisters. Had our first drink together. My history was his history. Sort of, anyway. If there was a gulf between us, it was the matter of motivation. While my old man was hanging out in City Hall, carving his ill-gotten fortune from the Seattle taxpayer, Jed’s dad was drinking a lot of cheap rye whiskey and carving meat loaf down at Marty’s Diner. Unlike me and my trust fund, the only thing Jed’s old man left him was alone.

Over the past thirty years, Jed had cultivated a reputation as one of Washington’s fiercest litigators, and had built a prodigious law firm that employed a coupla hundred people. Me? I guess I’m still a few pitons short of the peak. No matter what anybody says, money changes everything.

He took one look at me shuffling into the courtroom and put on his bemused face. Same expression as when we were eight years old and thought the height of humor was phoning Kennedy’s Funeral Home and asking for Myra Mains. Back in the day, extricating me from trouble had been a fairly common occurrence. These days . . . not so much. Apparently, I’m not nearly as interesting as I used to be.

His uptown Brioni suit looked out of place in the funky old courtroom. I gave him my best Elvis lip curl and sat down in the chair beside him. I looked back over my shoulder. Apparently, assaulting an officer was not front-page news in this neck of the woods. The courtroom was nearly empty. Half a dozen geezers in the back row and the older of the two cops from last night. That was it.

Rachel sat two rows behind us. She’d been shopping. Found herself a well-tailored black suit that looked a bit tight across the chest but otherwise seemed to convey the moral gravity of this morning’s proceedings. A fashion plate, that one.

The bailiff wasted no time. Took him fifteen seconds to run through the wheres, the whos, and the whys, during which Judge Keenan looked as if she’d rather be nearly anyplace else on earth. Before the bailiff’s echo had successfully exited the room, she looked out over her half-glasses at Jed and me. “To what do we owe the honor of a visit from the estimable Jedediah James?” she inquired.

“Just practicing my trade, Your Honor,” Jed said, with a straight face.

She arched her right eyebrow. “You’ll have to excuse me if I find it a bit odd that a relatively mundane matter such as this should attract such high-powered legal representation. Rather like hunting ants with an elephant gun, wouldn’t you say?”

“Leo and I are old chums,” he said with an embarrassed smile.

She lowered the eyebrow to half-mast, nodded, and turned her attention to the nondescript assistant district attorney sitting at the table across the aisle. “I’m given to understand, Mr. Fisher, that you and Mr. James have reached an accommodation as to the disposition in the matter of . . .” She read from the document in front of her. “Felonious assault. Assault on an officer. Interference with an officer in the performance of his duties. Resisting arrest. Disorderly conduct . . .” She rolled her wrist a couple of times, as if to say “et cetera, et cetera.”

“We have, Your Honor,” the ADA interrupted.

She began to read again. “Wherein Mr. Waterman is released on his own recognizance, pending possible further legal action at the discretion of the Lewis County District Attorney’s Office at some unspecified future date. Is that correct?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” he said.

She scowled and sat back in her chair. “And why would that be?” she asked. “I mean . . . you charged the man with everything short of murder. Why the sudden urge to largesse?”

“I’m not sure what you mean . . .” the ADA stammered.

She peered down at him, disbelievingly. “The matter of assaulting an officer . . .” She leaned forward onto her elbows. “. . . is, in my opinion, not subject to plea agreements. I understand the young man had to be hospitalized.” She threw a disgusted hand in the air. “I don’t see that kind of offense as bargainable.” Her tone dared him to disagree.

Fisher may have been nondescript, but he wasn’t stupid. “There were . . . uh . . . extenuating circumstances,” the ADA said.

“Such as?”

The words were across my lips before they crossed my mind. “Such as, a man ended up dead for absolutely no reason.”

She gave me that specimen-jar look again. “Excuse me?”

I stood up. “I guess I want to say something.”

“I don’t recommend it,” she snapped. “That’s what lawyers are for.”

“I want to get what happened onto the record,” I said.

She looked at Jed. Jed shrugged.

“I need to remind you, Mr. Waterman, that you have the right to remain silent.”

“Yes, Your Honor, but apparently not the ability.”

She stared at me for the longest five seconds in history.

“If you insist,” she said finally.

I laid it out for her. All calm and succinct. She was a good listener. “By that point, that guy was no threat to anybody,” I said as I was winding down. I waved an angry hand in the air. “His ankle was so badly broken the foot was facing in the wrong direction, for pity’s sake.” Inwardly, I winced at the image. “He was on the ground, unable to get up, when that idiot kid Tasered him to death.”

“Your Honor!”

It was last night’s older cop. Sergeant David Downing, if his name tag was to be believed. Like me, he’d gotten to his feet. Unlike me, he was tripe-faced with anger. “Officer Taylor was a trainee,” he blurted.

“Well, apparently he needed a hell of a lot more
traineeing
,” I countered.

The heretofore nondescript ADA Fisher was on his feet now, making an all-out effort to defuse the situation. “Officer Taylor has been placed on indefinite unpaid leave, pending a full investigation of the incident,” he assured the judge.

She wasn’t ready to let it go. She threw her flinty gaze in my direction.

“Did you assault Officer Taylor?” she asked.

“I hit him,” I admitted. “But just once. Kind of a knee-jerk reaction, I guess,” I added sheepishly.

“Officer Taylor was performing his duty,” Downing shouted. “We risk our lives every day, trying to—”

I’d wheeled to face him. “The only thing you guys protect anymore is yourselves, and the only interests you serve are your own,” I said. “There’s no reason that man should be dead.” He opened his mouth to respond, but I cut him off. “If the job’s too dangerous for you, maybe you oughta consider another vocation.”

“Stop it, you two,” the judge ordered. She gestured angrily with the gavel. “Both of you sit down.”

You don’t get to be a Superior Court judge without knowing which way the wind blows. The financial ramifications of an unjustified killing by a police officer were not lost on Rosemarie Keenan. Nor was her duty to protect the good people of Lewis County, Washington, from potential litigation, even if she hated the trade-off. Her seat was, after all, an elective office.

She turned her eyes to Fisher.

“I’m going to approve your agreement with Mr. James,” she announced. “Mr. Waterman is hereby released on his own recognizance.” She lifted the gavel and then looked right at me. “Unless someone else has something to add,” she intoned.

I began to rise, to voice my indignation, one last time, regardless of the consequences. Didn’t take Perry Mason to see that Lewis County wanted this thing long gone and soon forgotten. Any talk of internal investigations was just that . . . talk.

Some sentient self-righteousness that lived at the very center of me hated that somebody’s life could be swept under the rug in such a cursory manner. Just business as usual. Next case on the docket! Are we rolling, Bob?

Jed instantly sensed my intent and laid a restraining hand on my elbow. He looked up at me. “This is the Clint Eastwood moment,” he whispered, then grinned at me. “She’s giving you the chance to make her day. You give her a reason and she’ll clamp your big ass in the hoosegow as a material witness and leave you in there for the next seventy-two hours.” He could tell my blood was up, so he added an additional dose of reality. “During which time, they’ll reinstate the charges on the original complaint, convict you of them—because they are, after all, true—and send your behind to the county lockup, where you can languish for a year or two, while I bluster on about due process and they drag their big rural feet, after which, I can, in all probability, get you out on appeal.”

I hesitated, my hands flat on the table, ass sticking out like a mare’s. I closed my eyes and treated myself to a deep breath. Jed was right, of course. This wasn’t a trip I could afford to take. All that stood between me and a stretch in jail was the county’s horror of being sued. If I pushed them beyond their line in the sand, all bets would be off. Cue the chain gang and the striped suits. I slowly released the air from my lungs and plopped back into my seat like a sullen schoolboy.

The judge waited a full beat before banging the gavel.

“All rise,” the bailiff bellowed.

Behind a final withering gaze, Judge Keenan got to her feet, rounded up her paperwork, and exited stage left. Jed kept his hand on my arm until the courtroom was completely empty, which was probably a good thing.

The jailer was a mouth-breather. He opened the clasp on the manila envelope and dumped the contents onto the battered counter. I pocketed my wallet and car keys, slid the change over the edge, and then dropped the coins into my pants pocket.

He slipped a release form under the wire. “Make sure you’ve got everything you came with and then sign on the bottom,” he said.

“Where’s the folding money?” I asked.

He pulled the paperwork back to his side and squinted down at it.

“Says here all you had at the time of booking was ninety-three cents.”

“I was carrying forty-seven thousand dollars in cash when I was arrested.”

The jailer straightened up. Blinked several times, his bored expression suddenly replaced by confusion.

“Leo,” Jed’s voice came from over on my right. “Don’t.”

“I was you, Waterman, I’d listen to my mouthpiece there,” a vaguely familiar voice piped in. It was Sergeant Downing, the older cop, coming out from behind the counter.

“Just take your things and get the hell out of here.”

I wasn’t going to let it go . . . couldn’t . . . but Downing beat me to the punch.

“Maybe if you weren’t such a clown and did what you were told once in a while . . . maybe that guy would still be alive and Officer Taylor would still have a career.”

I wanted to get loud. Defiant. To scream about how my actions had nothing to do with that guy’s death. Problem was . . . I didn’t quite believe it, so I clamped my mouth closed and turned to Jed.