Daniel Palmer - Helpless

“Okay. Mr. Hawkins, you’ll be escorted to the clerk’s office once your bail has been posted. A probable cause hearing will be scheduled for October the fifteenth.”

Tom turned again to search out Adriana to thank her. But she was already gone.

Angie Didomenico repeated her demand. “I’m asking you to resign, Tom, effective immediately.”

Tom sat back in his chair. He had anticipated this, but it stung to hear it aloud. They were alone, seated across from one another in Angie’s cramped office. In the aftermath of his arraignment hearing, Angie had hastily scheduled an emergency meeting with Tom, Craig Powers (who was apparently back in her good graces), and Shilo High School principal Lester Osborne. Angie, it seemed, wanted some time alone with Tom and requested that he show up fifteen minutes before the others were scheduled to arrive. Twenty-four hours spent as a free man, and already Tom felt persecuted again.

Marvin had spent an hour on the phone prepping Tom for this meeting. He’d painted a bleak picture of Tom’s finances. Tom had enough saved to keep up with the mortgage payments. But he’d be hard pressed now to land another job, with all the negative publicity surrounding him. And without the teaching and coaching income, his ability to make the mortgage payment was once again in jeopardy.

Marvin warned him it was unrealistic, but Tom had hoped to hold on to both positions, at least until his trial. With one swift demand, Angie had all but crushed that possibility.

Resign.

“I’m not guilty of any crime, Angie.” Tom assessed Angie’s stern, unyielding expression and tried, but failed, to read any agreement on her face.

“It doesn’t matter, Tom. The battle for public perception has already been fought and lost. The risks here are substantial if you don’t resign.”

“Tell me. How could this get any worse?”

“If you ever want to teach again, it can certainly get much worse. Resignations are protected under employment laws and maintain better confidentiality. Firing you will make it a public record.”

“Are you firing me?”

“Not yet,” Angie said. Her expression now betrayed a feeling of sadness and remorse. “But you don’t have to be convicted of this crime to get fired. We can look at the evidence and make our own assessment. That’s within our rights.”

“The union wouldn’t like that move, I bet.”

“True. They probably wouldn’t,” Angie said. “They could agitate the situation, try to overwhelm us with paperwork, but they can’t change the eventual outcome here. Look, Tom, I don’t want to fire you.”

“Then don’t.”

“It’s not that easy. I’m getting a lot of pressure. Calls are flooding our office from concerned parents demanding you be kept away from their kids.”

“This is no better than a witch hunt, and you know it,” Tom said. “I haven’t done anything wrong here. I have no idea how that junk got put on my laptop. But I do know that I haven’t been convicted of any crime. The only crime here is my arrest. Whatever evidence the police have against me is bogus, and we both know it.”

Angie held her stony gaze. She was less convinced of Tom’s innocence than he’d first assumed.

“Do what’s right, Tom, and make this go away.”

“No, you do what’s right, Angie. I love teaching. I love coaching. I love helping these kids. And I’m not going to go quietly. My daughter is still here. And I won’t stop fighting to clear my name and provide for her.”

“Just what sort of future can you provide if you can’t work, Tom? Think about it.”

Though she’d just pricked at one of his biggest concerns, outwardly Tom did his best to seem unfazed. “I’ll work a dozen different jobs if that’s what it takes,” he said. “But if I’ve read my union guidelines correctly, you can’t officially fire me without documenting your case to the union’s satisfaction. So if I don’t resign, you’ll first have to place me on paid administrative leave. Isn’t that right?”

Angie’s brow furrowed. “Yes, that’s right,” she said.

“Well then, that should quiet down the tribe. I’ll take that option and go from there.”

“You’re going to be fired,” Angie said, her face now reddening from anger. “You’re making a mistake, Tom.”

“No, Angie, you are,” Tom said.

The office door swung open. Craig Powers and Lester Osborne entered. Tom stood. Without saying a word to either man, he left.

Jill couldn’t look her father in the eye. She knew only vague details about the charges against him. She knew that her best friend, Lindsey Wells, was suspected of having a relationship with her father. She knew the police had found illegal images on his laptop computer, that her father had been charged with possession and distribution of child pornography, but she did not know the specifics.

Because of privacy laws specific to crimes involving minors, and Angie’s concerns for the students’ well-being, everybody involved with Tom’s case had agreed not to reveal any information to the public. Nobody knew the identities, ages, or nature of the images Tom had been accused of distributing. Jill was unaware that her father allegedly possessed lewd and lascivious pictures of her classmates, her best friend’s images among them. Or that he would be accused of masterminding a distribution ring that deployed online recruiting to scout victims to procure new product.

Jill’s already shaky world seemed shattered beyond repair. First her mother, and now this. Tom didn’t want to further test her ability to cope.

“It’s not fair, kiddo,” he kept saying to her. “It’s just not fair to you.”

They sat together at the kitchen table, but neither spoke for quite some time. On a usual school-day morning Jill would have her backpack ready for the day. But today she had her army green duffel bag at her side. And the bag was stuffed full of her clothes.

“Don’t give up on me, Jill,” Tom said. “Did you look at any of the articles I gave you?”

“I read them.”

“And?”

“And what do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say that you’ll give me some time,” Tom said. “You’ll give me a chance to clear my name.”

Jill looked past him, out the kitchen window and into a backyard that was green and lush and peaceful.

With Marvin’s help, Tom had found dozens of cases of computers being used to falsify evidence of statutory rape. Men wrongly accused on the Internet of having a sexual relationship with a minor. Even the sensationalized TV show A Predator Among Us was found guilty of entrapment. Apparently, one overly zealous producer had goaded a man with whom he’d been quarreling into meeting a girl presumed to be twenty-one years old. But when the guy showed up, the producer had changed the transcript of his “chat” and lowered the age to thirteen. The poor guy was arrested but later acquitted. The producer lost his job. Not surprisingly, the other guy’s company found cause to fire him as well.

Marvin found even more instances of pornographic images that were maliciously transferred to an otherwise clean computer. The motive for planting evidence was often revenge—a disgruntled employee or jealous lover. It happened frequently enough to give rise to a cottage industry of attorneys who specialized in proving that exact defense. Marvin didn’t count himself among those self-proclaimed experts, but Tom remained confident that his attorney was better.

Marvin had printed out more than a hundred pages from the different cases that had similarities to his own. Tom had put them in a folder, which he gave to Jill.