Dominion (86 page)

Clarence kept thinking maybe they’d come and escort him out, apologizing for the mistake. Or at least that they’d let him out to visit with Geneva or somebody. But nothing happened. He felt as if everything he’d worked for, everything he’d earned, his character, his reputation, suddenly meant nothing. He told them he needed more insulin, that he needed to check his blood sugar, but guards and nurses alike seemed to assume he was lying, that he was trying to get away with something. It seemed not to occur to them that he might be innocent.

They let him out of his room at 7:00, just for an hour. He looked at the books on some makeshift shelves. Most of them were trashy. He found a Bible. He devoured it, reading the Psalms. He asked if he could take it back to his cell. The guard wouldn’t let him.

He lay in the bed, cold and shivering, a frightened child lying in the darkness. He remembered what they’d done to his daddy in jail and wondered if this was punishment for what he’d done to that boy in the projects. He wanted to sleep until the nightmare was over. He didn’t.

After breakfast the next morning, at which Clarence traded sausage for pancakes, a guard ushered him into a room where Ollie and Jake came in to meet with him, they on the free side of the thick glass, he on the captive side. He instinctively placed his hand on the glass. Jake put his up to it.

“How are you, brother?” Jake asked, eyes red and wet.

“Been better. The food’s not Lou’s, that’s for sure. You’d starve, Ollie.”

“I had to pull in some favors to get in here with Jake,” Ollie said. “We don’t have much time. I’ve been talking to everybody since you called last night. It doesn’t look good.”

“You’ve got to believe me,” Clarence said. “I didn’t do it!”

“I know you didn’t do it, Clabern,” Jake said. “We’re doing everything we can to get you out.”

“Ollie, why would somebody do this to me?” Clarence asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe it means we’re getting close. Maybe it means they wanted to get you off track or undermine your credibility. If they can make this thing with the girl stick—or even if they can’t—who’s going to confide in you? People back off from anyone involved in a scandal. When I was accused, even after I was cleared, people wouldn’t trust me. Maybe they’re trying to dry up your contacts. Obviously they see you as a threat.”

“I don’t feel like much of a threat.”

“The good news is I pitched a case to the lieutenant this morning. I convinced him you’re being framed. Well,
maybe
being framed. He thinks I’m a good judge of character. He’s always thought that since I lobbied for him to get his promotion. Anyway, I sold him on the idea that whoever did this to you didn’t want you nosing around about your sister’s murder. So if we can find who framed you, we may find out who killed your sister.”

“Hadn’t thought of that.”

“You’ve had other things on your mind. Anyway, I’ve got some latitude to look into Gracie Miller’s case against you. Maybe I can help clear you
and
we can find whoever’s behind the murders.”

“When can I get out of here?”

“They’re raising bail right now. Unfortunately by the time people found out yesterday, banks were closed. Hopefully you’ll get out today. I’ve made some calls on your case. I’ve talked with several people and looked at the reports. Wednesday night the Miller girl was definitely picked up at the Gresham end-of-the-line MAX station by a big black guy in a suit who checked into the motel with her. Last week she definitely left her uncle’s bar with a big black guy in a suit, presumably the same guy. People noticed they were … familiar with each other.”

“But it wasn’t me. Can’t you just show them my picture?”

“I did. I even went to the bar last night. Talked to the girl’s uncle and two barflies. They all looked at the picture of you and said the same thing. ‘Yep,’” he put on his best redneck bar voice, which wasn’t that far from his own, “‘that’s him all right. Like we said, he’s a big black guy.’”

“What did you say?”

“I said it doesn’t matter that he was a big black guy, the only thing that matters is whether he was
this
big black guy. They insisted he was, but I could tell they weren’t sure. Problem is they say they are. Now, this blonde girl they could pick out of a lineup of twenty blonde girls the same size. But you put twenty big black guys in a lineup and they’d maybe narrow it down to fifteen. Same with the hotel manager. He looked at the picture and of course he said yes. What else would he say?”

“My brother Harley says white folks are descriptively disadvantaged about black folks.”

“Yeah. And it sure made it easy to set you up. This big guy dresses like you, shows up in a shadowy bar, then he walks out with the girl and kisses her under the streetlights. You didn’t help things by writing out your home phone number on your business card. You really called her at home?”

“I know. It was stupid.”

“Yeah. But stupid isn’t the same as statutory rape and drug abuse.”

“No. But who’s going to believe it isn’t?”

All three knew the answer.

“Clarence,” Jake said, “I want to pray for you now.” He put one hand up to the glass, Clarence matched his hand to it, and Ollie sat uncomfortably while Jake prayed aloud.

At noon, twenty-one hours after he’d been arrested, Clarence was escorted out of his cell and taken through out-processing. Forty minutes later he walked out the door into the Justice Center lobby, into Geneva’s arms. They held each other for a long time.

They walked out the front door, past the Justice Center cornerstone with its prominent quote above the name Martin Luther King—“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Geneva drove Clarence to the law offices of Bowles and Sirianni.

“How much did it take to bail me out, Grant?”

“For the three charges it was going to be thirty-one thousand, so 10 percent was thirty-one hundred.”

“Going to be?”

“Well, you managed to pick up a few more charges. Try Assault 2. Class B Felony. Something about ‘Intentionally causing serious physical injury.’ Ring a bell?”

“You mean the crankster in the holding cell?”

“Yeah, for starters.”

“He kept calling me nigger and then he dissed my mama.”

“There’s no law against that.”

“There ought to be.”

“Clarence, the guy’s a career felon arrested for armed robbery. What do you want them to do? Add ‘using the n-word’ and ‘saying naughty things about somebody’s mama’ to armed robbery and assault and battery charges? Did you have to hit him?”

“I guess I was a little upset. It’d been a bad day, all right?”

“Remind me to stay away from you on a bad day. You broke his nose.”

“Yeah. I thought I heard something crack.” He looked at Geneva out of the corner of his eye.

“Your final charge was assault on a public safety officer.” Clarence looked surprised. “Two officers claim when they came into the holding cell, you tossed one of them against the wall.”

“I didn’t know it was an officer. I thought it was one of the other creeps in the cell.”

“Well, you’ve made things complicated, to say the least. Final bail was sixty thousand, so we had to pay six.”

“Where’d you get six thousand dollars?” Clarence asked Geneva. “We’ve got just two thousand in the bank.”

“Now it’s fifty in the bank,” Geneva said. “Jake and Janet came up with another two thousand. Pastor Clancy threw in eight hundred from the church. Our Bible study group came up with the rest.”

Clarence lowered his head, saying nothing.

“Okay, we need to talk strategy,” Grant Bowles said. “Nick checked into your arrest. There were some procedures we can challenge. We can say the officer was out of his league, should have turned it over to the detectives and the sex abuse experts. It’s a judgment call, but we’ll argue it was a bad one. Also, he failed to give you a drug test and didn’t get the girl to the med school for the semen examination. Has to be done within forty-eight hours. We’re lucky he blew that one.”

“Why?” Clarence asked. “If he’d done it, it would’ve cleared me.” He looked uncomfortably at Geneva, sitting quietly beside him, her arm in his. “There would have been no drugs, and no semen, or it would’ve been someone else’s, not mine. Right?”

“Sure. Whatever.” Clarence looked at his attorney long and hard. For the first time it occurred to him that he didn’t believe him.

“Look, Grant, I didn’t do this. No way. If you don’t believe that, I want another lawyer.”

“Clarence, it’s my job to defend you, and that’s what I’m going to do. But if you’re sure you’re innocent, you can take the polygraph test and that will help us.”

“If I’m sure? Of course I’m sure. I didn’t do it!”

“Okay. Then we’ll submit to a polygraph test. It’s not admissible, but it makes a strong statement to the prosecutor. The DA’s looked over the officer’s interview notes, and he’s taking it to a grand jury so they can determine whether there’s probable cause.”

“So I’ll be able to tell them my side of the story?” Clarence asked.

“No, you won’t. It doesn’t work that way. They just hear your accuser. They aren’t giving a final verdict, just determining if there’s probable cause to take it further.”

“And if there
is
probable cause?”

“The DA puts out a warrant for your arrest. Then you go through booking. But you’ve already done that. So you’d just show up at the arraignment.”

“When’s that?”

“Tuesday, 2:00 P.M., Room 3 back at the Justice Center. There’s just one arraignment hearing a week. Lots of other people will be there.”

Clarence remembered that the
Trib
had a reporter assigned to the weekly arraignment. As a respectable citizen with no record, and as a fellow reporter, surely Dan Ferrent wouldn’t put his name in the paper. Especially not with a minor involved. Would he?

His heart sank. He kept thinking of his children, especially Jonah. And what people would be thinking and saying.

“Manny talked with the officer who arrested you,” Ollie told Clarence as they sat in his living room. “They’re buddies.”

“That figures,” Clarence said.

“What figures?”

“That they’re buddies.”

“Why? Because they’re both Hispanic?” Clarence didn’t respond. “Well, I’ve got a lot of white friends,” Ollie said. “You got a lot of black friends?”

“Yeah.”

“Then don’t make something of it because Hispanics have Hispanic friends, okay? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Anyway, Manny asked him why he chose to follow through on the case rather than hand it over to the sex abuse detectives or the CAT.”

“Cat?”

“Child Abuse Team. He said he likes to follow a case through. That’s okay, it’s his call. Manny asked him why he cuffed you, given your history as an upstanding citizen and all. I’m sure he checked and saw you didn’t have a record. He said the reason he did it was you were so hostile with him. Of course, I didn’t realize you would be so incredibly stupid as to actually lay a hand on him.”