Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow

There was a long silence and I guess Jackson was looking for words that would prepare me for what was ahead.

“I’ve gotta tell you the truth, man. There’s nothing out there. I’m just about ready to start selling cars, but all the car dealers are in the toilet, too. Anyway, give me a call. Maybe we can watch out for each other, trade tips or something.”

I played the message again and then erased it. I would take my time about calling Jackson back. I didn’t want to be dragged down further than I already was. I was hitting the big three-oh but I still had options. I wanted to keep my momentum. I had a novel to write.

Jacob Meyer was late to our meeting on Tuesday morning. For nearly a half hour I sat in the waiting room of the Public Defender’s Office surrounded by clients of the state-funded agency. People too poor to afford their own legal defense and reliant on the government that was prosecuting them to also defend them. It was right there in the constitutionally guaranteed rights- If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you -but it always seemed to be a contradiction to me. Like it was all some kind of racket with the government controlling both supply and demand.

Meyer was a young man who I guessed was no more than five years out of law school. Yet here he was, defending a younger man-no, a child-accused of murder. He came back from court, carrying a leather briefcase so fat with files it was too awkward and heavy to carry by the handle. He had it under his arm. He asked the receptionist for messages and was pointed to me. He switched his heavy briefcase to his left arm and offered to shake my hand. I took it and introduced myself.

“Come on back,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

“That’s fine. I don’t need a lot of your time at this point.”

We walked single file down a hall that had been narrowed because of a row of file cabinets pushed against the right wall and extending its entire length. I was sure it was a fire code violation. This was the kind of detail I would normally put in my back pocket for a rainy day. Public Defenders Work in Fire Trap . But I was no longer worried about headlines or coming up with stories for the slow days. I had one last story to write and that was it.

“In here,” Meyer said.

I followed him into a communal office, a twenty-by-twelve room with desks in every corner and sound partitions between them.

“Home sweet home,” he said. “Pull over one of those chairs.”

There was another lawyer, sitting at the desk catty-corner to Meyer’s. I pulled the chair over from the empty desk next to his and we sat down.

“Alonzo Winslow,” Meyer said. “His grandmother is an interesting lady, isn’t she?”

“Especially in her own environment.”

“Did she tell you how proud she was to have a Jew lawyer?”

“Yeah, actually she did.”

“Turns out I’m Irish, but I didn’t want to spoil it for her. What are you looking to do for Alonzo?”

I pulled a microrecorder out of my pocket and turned it on. It was about the size of a disposable cigarette lighter. I reached over and placed it on his desk between us.

“You mind if I record this?”

“Not at all. I would like there to be a record myself.”

“Well, like I told you on the phone, Zo’s grandmother is pretty convinced the cops picked up the wrong guy. I said I would look into it because I wrote the story in which the cops said he did it. Mrs. Sessums, who is Zo’s legal guardian, has given me full access to him and his case.”

“She might be his legal guardian, and I would have to check on that, but her granting you full access means nothing in legal terms and therefore means nothing to me. You understand that, right?”

This was not what he had said on the phone when I’d had Wanda Sessums speak to him. I was about to call him on that and his promise of cooperation when I saw him throw a quick glance over his shoulder and realized he might be talking for the benefit of the other lawyer in the room.

“Sure,” I said instead. “And I know you have rules in regard to what you can tell me.”

“As long as we understand that, I can try to work with you. I can answer your questions to a point but I am not at liberty at this stage of the case to turn over any of the discovery to you.”

As he said this he swiveled in his seat to check that the other lawyer’s back was still to us and then quickly handed me a flash drive, a data-storage stick with a USB-port connection.

“You will have to get that sort of stuff from the prosecutor or the police,” he said.

“Who is the prosecutor assigned to the case?”

“Well, it has been Rosa Fernandez but she handles juvenile cases. They’re saying they want to try this kid as an adult, so that will probably mean a change in prosecutors.”

“Are you objecting to them moving this out of juvenile court?”

“Of course. My client is sixteen and hasn’t been going to school with any kind of regularity since he was ten or twelve. Not only is he not an adult by any legal standards but his mental capacity and acuity is not even that of a sixteen-year-old.”

“But the police said this crime had a degree of sophistication and a sexual component. The victim had been raped and sodomized with foreign objects. Tortured.”

“You are assuming my client committed the crime.”

“The police said he confessed.”

Meyer pointed to the flash drive in my hand.

“Exactly,” he said. “The police said he confessed. I have two things to say about that. My experience is that if you put a sixteen-year-old kid in a closet for nine hours, don’t feed or hydrate him properly, lie to him about evidence that does not exist and refuse to let him talk to anybody-no grandmother, no lawyer, nobody-well, then, eventually he’s going to give you what you want if he thinks it will finally get him out of the closet. And secondly, it’s a question of what exactly he confessed to that concerns me. The police point of view is definitely different from mine on that.”

I stared at him a moment. The conversation was intriguing but too cryptic. I needed to get Meyer to a place where he could speak freely.

“Do you want to go get a cup of coffee?”

“No, I don’t have time. And as I said, I can’t get into specifics of the case. We have our rules here and we are dealing with a juvenile-despite the state’s efforts to the contrary. And, ironically, the same District Attorney’s Office that wants to prosecute this child as an adult will happily come down on me and on my boss if I give you any case documents relating to a juvenile. This is not in adult court yet, so rules of privacy designed to protect the juvenile are still in place. But I’m sure you have sources in the police department who can give you what you need.”

“I do.”

“Good. Then, if you want a statement from me, I would say that I believe that my client-and, by the way, I am not at liberty to identify him by name-is almost as much a victim here as Denise Babbit. It is true that she is the ultimate victim because she lost her life in a horrible manner. But my client’s freedom has been taken from him and he is not guilty of this crime. I will be able to prove that once we get into court. Whether that will be in adult or juvenile court doesn’t really matter. I will vigorously defend my client because he is not guilty of this crime.”

It had been a carefully worded statement and nothing short of what I expected. But, still, it gave me pause. Meyer was crossing a line in giving me the flash drive and I had to ask myself why. I didn’t know Meyer. I had never written a story involving him and there was none of the trust that builds between reporter and source as stories are written and published. So if Meyer wasn’t crossing the line for me, who was he doing it for? Alonzo Winslow? Could this public defender with the briefcase bursting with his guilty clients’ files actually believe his own statement? Did he really think Alonzo was a victim here, that he was actually innocent?