Chapter Thirteen: Unexpected Outcomes
I
MAY
PLAY
MY
AUNT'S
TRUMPET,
CHARLEY.
Prompted by frequent student complaints, Jesse had worked hard over the past week to change his doctor's scrawl into a very legible block print. He was unusually proud that he had, in such a short time, managed to learn to write clearly enough so that his kids could actually copy the notes he put on the board. Now he stood off to the side, grinning as his students muttered confusedly to one another and obediently copied the words into a chart in their notebooks, using a different colored pencil for each word. He didn't think anyone who had seen him on his first day teaching would have expected such an orderly, compliant class today.
As soon as he opened the door to his classroom, Jesse knew he was in over his head. A child at a computer in the back of the room was looking at "Hot Mexican Babes" on the internet, and Jesse had to wonder how he had gotten around the school's security program. In one corner at the back of the room, a couple was making out, doing everything two people could do to each other with their clothes on, and in the other corner, six desks had been pushed together and a group of boys were playing poker. Several small knots of children were copying homework assignments, looking at teen magazines, or just gossiping. One or two were trying to sleep despite the chaos, and one girl was apparently eating her breakfast from a McDonald's bag.
When Jesse walked up to the front of the room, the bulky P.E. teacher, who had been assigned monitor the class until a substitute was located, closed her Sports Illustrated magazine, looked at him like he was a cockroach, and said, "Son, I'm sorry, you need to go back to the guidance office and tell them I can't take on another student. They should put you somewhere else."
Narrowing his eyes, Jesse replied, "I am not a new student. I'm Dr. Travis, Mrs. Bertolli's substitute."
The very manly woman's eyes went wide, and she looked Jesse up and down. She didn't even try to stop the snort of laughter that escaped when her eyes rested on the young man's face again.
"Now, if you aren't going to do anything useful, like call the class to order, could you at least get out of my room?" Jesse said in a tone that clearly showed his rising temper.
"Oh, of course, where are my manners?" Standing up, she said, "Class, this is Dr. Travis, your new teacher. I expect you to show him the same respect you have given me."
Half the class glanced up disinterestedly, looked him over for about two seconds, and went back to what they were doing. The other half ignored them completely.
Picking up her magazine and a thermos, the P.E. teacher muttered, "Good luck, kid," and was gone.
And things went down hill from there.
"Why are we taking these notes in Technicolor, Dr. Travis?" Shatanya Morgan asked.
"I'm hoping it will help you remember each set of information. The color should cue your mind to group together the facts you're about to learn."
Shatanya nodded her understanding, and then said, "What if you're colorblind?"
"Then you're SOL!" Larry Barton called out.
"Larry," Dr. Travis said in a warning tone.
"Sorry," Larry apologized.
He might be new on the job, but Jesse recognized a teachable moment when he saw one. Answering his kids' questions with real explanations, even if it meant getting off on a tangent, helped keep their interest, and that helped keep his lessons on track. So, as the kids continued copying, Jesse gave a crash course on colorblindness.
"Actually, Shatanya, very few people are colorblind, and ninety-nine percent of those who are don't see the whole world in shades of gray. They usually only have trouble distinguishing between two colors, red and green, although there are a few who have trouble with blue and yellow."
"I see," Shatanya nodded, and she went back to work.
Jesse had gotten off to a rocky start as the biology substitute, but that had only left him more determined than ever to take charge and teach his classes well. Mrs. Bertolli was on six weeks of maternity leave, and word in the teachers' lounge was that she planned to use her accumulated sick days from the past few years to extend her time off with the new baby right up to the end of school. Still, she had been with her students long enough to make a lasting impression, and the four classes of twenty-five to thirty-five children each had not appreciated the young stranger who had come in trying to take over, especially after a week with a P.E. teacher who had let them do what they wanted. The one study hall he monitored was, to his surprise, even worse, with forty-five kids competing for the forty-one chairs in the overcrowded room. His planning period had been a frantic rush to make copies and grade papers, and his only break had been the Advanced Placement class of twenty students, most of whom already had plans to enter scientific careers, and all of whom had earned early acceptance to college.
By the end of the first day, he found himself standing ankle deep in balled up paper. A small spitball war that had started in first period after the gym teacher left had escalated during each class until, by the seventh and final hour of the day, kids were blatantly sailing paper airplanes, rubber bands, and erasers across the room right before his eyes with no thought of any reprisals. After helping the custodian clean up the mess, Jesse headed for the office to seek the counsel of the assistant principal, Robert Edwards, who, so he was told, was the chief disciplinarian at Southgate High. Fortunately, he found a sympathetic ear, and within an hour, the two of them had developed a plan to help him take control.
"Hey, I only have six colors," a voice from the back called out. "Can somebody lend me another?"
"Sure, what color do you need?"
"Ummm . . . green."
"Here you go."
"Thanks."
The two students immediately went back to work drawing their color-coded charts. Jesse didn't always require his children to raise their hands, and he even let them chat a little while they took notes or did assignments, as long as they kept working and didn't get too loud. Only if he was lecturing or when they were having a class discussion did they have to wait for permission to speak. Of course, it had taken a lot of work to get to that point, and he was still amazed at how quickly it had happened.
To the students' surprise, they arrived to a locked classroom the day after Dr. Travis arrived, and they waited in the hall until the tardy bell rang. When they tried to leave, teachers at either end of the hall turned them back and told them to wait for their teacher. After a few minutes, the door opened and the young substitute stepped out.
"Please line up against the wall," he said in a quiet voice.
Not knowing what else to do, the students complied.
"When I call your name, step forward. If I mispronounce it, or if you have a nickname that you prefer, let me know. Then you may go into the room, find your new seat, and get to work. When you enter, you will notice that the room is clean. There is no paper on the floor or writing on the desks. I expect it to be that way when you leave."
One by one, the students stepped forward, were marked present, and entered the classroom, the last of them followed by their new teacher. Their seats had been changed so that they were in alphabetical order, making it easier for Dr. Travis to learn their names. There was a work packet on each desk, to be completed by the end of the period, and a stack of discipline referral forms on the corner of the substitute teacher's table at the front of the room. The first page of the work packet detailed Dr. Travis' rules and consequences. The students were expected to read and sign the page to indicate that they knew what was expected of them. After a brief discussion, all of them complied.
The class had been working in silence for two minutes when a handsome, cocky youth named Alec Carver decided to strike up a conversation with the pretty girl next to him.
"Alec, this is your warning," Dr. Travis told him before the girl had a chance to reply. "You need to be quiet and get to work."
With a smirk, Alec said mockingly, "Yes, sir," and opened his book.
The young teacher jotted a note down on one of the discipline forms, and then a student raised her hand. He went to the back of the room to help her, and when he had finished, he looked up to see Alec talking with one of the guys who sat in front of him.
"Alec, this is your second warning, you have an assignment, please concentrate on that."
Alec rolled his eyes and said in a sing-song voice, "Yes, Dr. Travis."
Squashing his frustration, Jesse moved to the front of the room and made another note on Alec's discipline form. He had hardly finished when Alec had gone back to flirting with the girl behind him.
"I'm sorry, Alec, but if you can't do as you are asked, you'll have to leave." Jesse made another note on the form and said, "Gather your things and go to Mr. Edwards' office. You can work there until the end of the period."
"I ain't goin' nowhere!" the young man said belligerently, and he turned in his seat to face the front of the room and braced himself in his desk. His rebellious attitude was in stark contrast to his teacher's calm and patient correction, and the rest of the children waited to see if Dr. Travis would respond in kind.
Jesse moved across the front of the room, aware that all eyes were on him now. Pressing the call button on the wall, he waited for someone to respond.
"Yes?" came the elderly secretary's crackly voice.
"Ms. McGair," Jesse spoke as calmly as a man placing an order at a fast-food drive through, confident that it would be delivered quickly. "I've just asked Alec Carver to report to Mr. Edwards' office, but he doesn't want to go. If he doesn't show up in three minutes could you send an escort for him?"
Jesse tried to hide a smile as he heard a collective gasp from the class and saw twenty-eight heads bow down to their work. From his conversation with Mr. Edwards, he knew that requesting an escort would bring Mike Callahan, the School Resource Officer, a full-time, fully trained and armed cop who had been assigned to the school under the Safe and Drug-free Schools Act of 1994, to their classroom. More importantly, the kids knew the same thing from experience.
Jesse had been concerned that calling for a police escort was a bit over the top, but Mr. Edwards had assured him that, given the circumstances of the previous day, it was appropriate and necessary to make the point that he was the one in charge and that he had the full support of the administration. Though he still wasn't sure about what he was doing, he had to admit it had the desired effect. Alec stood and stared at him for a moment, and then he gathered his things, took the discipline form Dr. Travis was holding out, and headed for the door.
"I'll see you back here at 3:20," Dr. Travis said as the now not-so-cocky young man put his hand on the doorknob.
"I have football practice after school," Alec said, not challenging him, but informing him that he already had plans.
"Not anymore," Dr. Travis replied. "You should have read the discipline agreement you just signed." Picking up the paper, the young teacher read aloud, "Any student removed from the classroom for discipline reasons may, at the teacher's discretion, be required to report after school to make up the instructional time missed." Looking at his watch, he did some quick mental math and said, "I owe you thirty-seven minutes of teaching, and you deserve the best education I can give you, so I am gonna make sure you get that opportunity, but I have to do the same for your classmates, and I can't do that when you won't stop talking. So, I will teach them now, and you will have to get the lesson after school."
"But if I'm late, Coach will make me run laps!" Alec protested, shocked that this slight little man would dare interfere with the sacred ritual of football practice.
"Well, then, I guess while you are running you will have plenty of time to consider what you should have been doing in here yesterday and today," Dr. Travis said pleasantly. "Now you better get going before Officer Callahan shows up."
Too stunned to offer a response, the boy had simply opened the door and left the room.
Jesse grinned as Alec looked up from his paper and frowned. He had unwittingly played hardball with the varsity football team's starting quarterback and won. Word had spread quickly, and there had been no more problems that day. When Alec had come to see him after school, Jesse had been his usual charming self, and, without his peers around to impress, Alec had warmed up to the sincere young teacher and the two of them had reached an understanding. Of course, kids being kids, there had been other difficulties throughout the past two weeks, but Jesse had gained his students' respect after his face-off with Alec Carver, and he could now quell most disturbances with a shake of the head or a warning look.
"Dr. Travis, what does this have to do with biology?" Alec asked.
"More than you might imagine," Jesse replied.
"I don't see it," the student replied.
"Try this one," Jesse suggested. "King Phillip Came Over For Great Spaghetti."
"That's easy: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Mrs. Bertolli taught us that," Sandy Green said.
"Good," Jesse nodded his approval. "How about this one? How you feel and where you are . . ."
" . . . is when you use the verb estar!" About half the class was able to finish the rhyme, and Jesse knew instantly which of his students had taken Spanish. In the back of his mind, he realized with surprise that none of the Latino students knew it, and then he laughed at himself. Of course, they wouldn't. They didn't need to study Spanish as a foreign language because they grew up with parents and grandparents who spoke it fluently.
"Every good boy deserves fudge!" Pedro Velasquez offered from the back of the room.
"The lines on the treble clef," Jesse responded. "You get the picture."
"Ohhhhh, memory tricks," Irene Rodriguez said.
"But what does this one mean?" Alec asked.
Grinning, Jesse said, "Look at the reading from last night and see if you can figure it out for yourself."
Books opened and pages turned, and after a minute, Irene said, "Ohhhhhhhhhhh!"
"Hey! I get it!" Alec called out.
"What?" someone asked from the back.
"It's the cell cycle," Alec said.
"Interphase is followed by mitosis, which includes prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase, and then . . . " Sandy began.
"The cell splits in two during cytokinesis!" Larry Barton interrupted.
"And each word of the sentence starts with the same letter as one of the steps," Alec said. "Cool! Where'd you learn that one?"
Unable to avoid blushing slightly, Jesse said, "I made it up back in high school, but they actually taught it a little differently then, and the sentence was just, 'I play my aunt's trumpet.' Since then, our understanding of the cell cycle has changed, so I had to change the sentence for you."
For the next thirty five minutes, Dr. Travis led his kids through filling out their notes on the cell cycle and advised them to study because in the coming week there were going to be more discussions and they would need to understand what happened during each stage in order to comprehend the rest of the class. After the lecture, he assigned homework to the usual chorus of groans and complaints, and with two minutes left until the bell, he asked the students to straighten up their desks and allowed them to pack up.
As the bell rang, he dismissed the students saying, "We had a good class today, people. Thank you, and have a great day. You may go."
Jesse had gotten used to using the time between classes to review his notes, so he wasn't aware that one of his students had not left until Sandy Green came to his desk.
"Dr. Travis, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure thing, Sandy, that's what I'm here for," he said smiling.
"Remember last week when we were talking about Nature and Nurture how you said some things just are the way they are and other things are learned?"
"Yeah, why?"
"How can you tell the difference?"
"Well, with some things like physical characteristics or color-blindness, for example, it's usually obviously Nature, but with behavior, it's harder to tell. Some medical conditions, like obesity, addiction, high blood pressure, and other problems, could be the physical result of learned behavior passed down in a family, which would be Nurture even though it looks like Nature because most of the family has the same medical history," he explained.
"I see. What about say, having a temper? Which is that?"
Jesse really wanted to tell the girl that, with some help, her boyfriend could change if he wanted to, but Sandy had no idea he knew of her connection to Tucker, and he couldn't risk blowing his cover if he was to find out who Rico Alonso's killer really was.
"Well," Jesse gave his answer some thought. "Even if a person is genetically predisposed to violence, if he is capable of average school work, he can almost always learn to control his temper if he wants to, just like people suffering from obesity and high blood pressure can learn to exercise and eat differently to improve their health even if they are genetically predisposed to those diseases. It isn't always easy, but it is possible. About the only way he couldn't would be if there were some kind of brain injury involved."
Sandy nodded, "What about the other way around? Can someone who is really nice just go off and beat someone else up real bad?"
Jesse thought back to the conversation he'd had with Steve, Cheryl, and Amanda not so long ago outside of Cletus' hospital room. "Anyone can become violent in the right circumstances," he said. "If a person is scared or threatened or angry enough, yeah, they could beat the living daylights out of someone."
The two-minute warning bell rang and Sandy scooted off, calling back, "Thanks, Dr. Travis. I'll see you tomorrow."
Sloans' Deck
A groan that seemed to come from deep inside the wiry frame filled the room, and the one who was watching moved closer. Gummy eyelids slitted open, and icy blue eyes peered out.
"Hey, Pa," a soft voice said gently.
A barely acknowledging grunt came from the figure on the bed, and the eyes slid closed. Donald Baxter grinned up at the guard who had come into the room when he'd pressed the call button to signal the nurse that his father was beginning to stir.
"He always was hard to wake up," Donald said, and he settled back in his chair to watch his father sleep some more. "It's all right, Pa. I'll still be here when you're ready to talk to me."
"What makes ya think I'll wanna see your ugly face when I wake up?" Cletus asked with his eyes still closed.
"Nobody wants to be alone in the hospital."
"Don' be . . . so shoor . . . "
Donnie just grinned and shook his head, taking his Pa's cantankerous comments as a good sign that he was almost out of the woods.
The forms required to let him see his father had taken a week to process, but as soon as the doctor had bailed him out, Donald had gone first to see his son, and then to the hospital to keep a vigil outside of Cletus' room. When the elder Baxter's condition had been upgraded to serious and he had been removed from intensive care, Donald had started dividing his time more evenly between the county jail and the hospital. Day after day, he went from visiting with his son and trying to keep the boy's spirits up to waiting anxiously outside his father's room, hoping today would be the day he was allowed in to see him.
When he finally got word that the paperwork had been pushed through, he made a quick call from the nurse's station, and with Tucker's reluctant blessing, settled down inside the room to wait for his Pa to wake up.
Sloans' Deck
As his patient sat stubbornly silent in his seat, Bennett Taylor studied him with a knowing eye. The tense shoulders, clenched fists and jaw, and the rigid posture in the cushioned easy chair were all signs of a man about to snap like a tightly coiled spring. It wasn't the first time he had seen such anger and hatred, and he knew he had to help his patient find some way to release it before it became a way of life for him, or he would never be fit for duty again. Fortunately, his experience had given him plenty of practice in dealing with patients like the man who sat before him now.
Bennett Taylor had joined the U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps in college and gotten his medical degree with money from the G.I. Bill. The day after receiving his diploma in 1991, he had left for his first post, working with stressed-out, homesick soldiers in the Persian Gulf. He'd been close enough to the action to have actually needed his helmet and sidearm a time or two, but had made it out with nothing more than some bruises and scratches, which was more than he could say for some of the men he worked with. As the war ended, he was shipped home again, and found himself dealing with some of the same soldiers as they faced the stress of becoming fathers and family men again.
After completing his service requirement, he had left the military and began looking for a position in private practice. Having dealt with soldiers who had faced real terror and survived to live with real emotional problems, he felt that listening to the rich and famous lament about all the horrible things their parents had done wrong would leave him in need of counseling. At six feet, three inches tall and two hundred pounds, he thought he was a bit too imposing to work with traumatized children. Never having been married, he didn't think he was a good candidate for marriage counseling, and he wanted something more challenging than lonely housewives and businessmen who really just needed someone to talk to. So, he had applied to the LAPD.
Bennett's combat experience, limited though it was, had stood him in good stead with the cops he dealt with. He might never have been shot, but he had been forced to shoot, and he knew what it was like to live with a target on his back. He didn't often speak about his own experiences, but his patients could tell he understood something of theirs, and they respected him for it.
Of course, that wasn't always enough to make them cooperate.
"Look, Steve, we both know why we are here," Bennett said with a sigh when it was apparent that his patient wasn't willing to speak. "Officially, I am supposed protect the public by making sure you haven't been so traumatized that you are going to shoot up a shopping mall full of teenagers and old people because some kid makes a smart remark about your shoes after he mixes up your order at the food court and gives you French fries instead of onion rings. Unofficially, I am supposed to protect the Chief of Police, because he's the one the press is going to go after if you do open fire in that shopping mall. Personally, I am going to cover my own behind because I am the one the Chief is gonna fire if the press come after him when you shoot up that mall."
"Gee, and I thought we were here because you cared about me," Steve said sarcastically.
"That goes without saying, Steve, and I think you know it," the doctor replied. "Just like your job, mine is too difficult and demanding for someone who doesn't really care. So, why don't you tell me about what happened with Cletus Baxter?"
Steve sighed. "I was leaving for work and someone hit me in the head. The next thing I . . . "
"Tell me something that isn't in the police reports, Steve."
"Like what?"
Bennett watched as the hands clenched and unclenched, and he decided to push some buttons to get things rolling.
"Tell me what it felt like to beat the hell out of a defenseless old man."
"He wasn't defenseless!" Steve snapped. "He was just unarmed, and I had to defend myself."
"From a man old enough to be your father? Why didn't you just walk away?"
"I couldn't!" Steve protested. "He wanted to fight. He asked for it."
"Asked for it? So, he roughed you up a little. You broke four of his ribs, knocked out several teeth, ruptured his spleen, punctured his lung, and gave him a concussion, all after he was wounded with his own shotgun," Bennett challenged. "How can you say he asked for it?"
"I took part of that blast, too," Steve replied hotly. "He kept me chained to the wall, and treated me like a dog! And he hit me with the butt of his shotgun and beat me with the buckle end of his belt."
Suddenly overwhelmed with anger and hatred he stood and turned his back on Bennett. Pulling his t-shirt up to show the angry red welts on his still-healing back, he demanded, "Look at what he did to me! Look at it and tell me I didn't have the right to want to kill him where he stood!"
Steve wasn't sure what kind of reaction he expected, but dead silence certainly wasn't it. He stood there, his scarred and battered back exposed, for what seemed like forever, breathing hard and waiting for Bennett to respond. Finally, he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"Tuck your shirt in and have a seat, Steve," Bennett quietly commanded. "I'm gonna get you a glass of water and then we can talk some more."
As Steve complied, he heard the clink of ice and the gurgle of water sloshing into a glass from the corner of the room where Bennett kept a small refrigerator. After sitting down again, Steve accepted his drink with a quiet, 'Thank you,' and turned to face his counselor when Bennett took the seat beside him instead of going around the desk to sit behind it again. As the silence grew, Steve felt the need to fill it.
"You know, I thought I'd made my peace with what happened . . . "
"You mean with what you did to Cletus Baxter."
Steve took a sip of his water and then put it on the small table between the two chairs. He nodded reluctantly, for once in his life feeling uncomfortable with accepting responsibility for his actions, but realizing, 'he made me do it' was a childish excuse. "Yeah, with what I did, but now I'm not so sure. I didn't enjoy it or anything, I just wanted to stay alive, and somehow, I guess I got carried away. So, was it really such an awful thing? Was it really wrong?"
Bennett shrugged. "I don't know, and it's not my job to forgive you. If you want absolution, talk to a priest. I'm just here to make sure you're fit for duty, and from what I have seen, you're not ready yet."
Steve dipped his head. Everything about him signaled defeat. Bennett reached out and put a hand on his arm. "Whether you need to be forgiven for what you did is a matter between you and God, Steve, but I can tell you that your reaction was well within the parameters of what we would call normal for the situation. You were pushed too far, and you snapped, end of story, and I know you and your dad have talked about that. I am more interested in how you are feeling right now."
"I hate him," Steve said with quiet intensity, "I'm glad I didn't kill him, but I hate him and I wish he was dead."
Bennett knew he was as close as he had ever been to finding the problem that had to be resolved before this cop was ready for the streets. Before his eyes, he saw his patient's whole demeanor change. The fists were clenched again, the left one pounding softly against the arm of the chair, the shoulders were tense, and the posture was as rigid as ever. He had to act now, had to keep Steve talking until the real issue was brought to light.
"Why do you hate him?" Bennett asked softly.
"Because of what he did to me."
"The way he abused you, you mean?"
Steve shook his head. "I've been beat up before. I got over it."
"What then, what makes you hate him?"
"He turned me into a monster," Steve explained as he stared intently at the floor. "I would have beat him to death with my bare hands if my dad hadn't pulled me off him, and don't care if that was normal for the situation, it wasn't normal for me. I hate him for making me do that. I hate him for holding that kind of power over me, and I wish he was dead."
Bennett reached out and put his hand over Steve's left fist, subtly forcing him to stop pounding on the chair.
"Steve, I think you have made your peace with what you did. I think you understand what happened to you, and I think you know you aren't likely to do it again, but I can't let you go back to active duty yet. You still need to make peace with Cletus Baxter."
When Steve opened his mouth to protest, Bennett held up a hand to hush him.
"I know expecting you to forgive him is too much to ask, and frankly, I see no need to even consider it, but you do need to stop hating him, because until you do, he will always have power over you."
Steve shot him a look that told him he had struck right to the heart of the matter. "I don't know how I can," he said. "After what he did to me . . . "
"I know it will be hard, but you have to do it," Bennett said. "Hatred, the kind of burning hatred you feel for Cletus Baxter, is an all-consuming thing. It takes too much energy to sustain it. I'm concerned that if you don't let it go, you'll burn yourself out. One day, you just won't be able to face going into work, so you'll call off sick. Then you'll have a hard time getting out of bed, and wind up sleeping half the day away. Before you know it, you'll be popping Xanax like breath mints and taking early retirement on medical grounds. You've got to let it go. You'll never be free of him until you do."
"But how can I do that?" Steve asked, truly bewildered.
Bennett stood up and went around behind his desk. "Have some fun, get some exercise, hang out with your friends and family, focus your energy on the people you love, and with any luck, you'll soon realize that hating Cletus Baxter isn't worth the effort."
"And if it doesn't work?"
"Let's be optimistic and assume it will. If, after a few weeks, it doesn't, then we will consider Plan B." Bennett mentally crossed his fingers, hoping his suggestion would work, because, if were honest with himself, he really didn't have a Plan B.
Sloans' Deck
" . . . then I put the body back in the cooler, clean the autopsy table with high-pressure scalding water, and file my report," Amanda finished. It was the beginning of Jesse's third week of substitute teaching, and he had asked her to come in as a guest speaker. Officially, she was there to tell the kids about a career that involved biology and get them excited about the frog dissection unit they were about to do. In reality, she was trying shake something loose about the Rico Alonso murder.
"But you cut up dead bodies," a girl in the back complained, her disgust clear in the tone of her voice.
"I agree it's not a career for the squeamish," Amanda replied. "But for me, it is great. I get to be a doctor, which is something I always wanted, at least from the time I found out I was too big to be a professional ballerina, but I am never called out for emergencies on my sons' birthdays or while they are unwrapping their Christmas presents. And best of all, I don't have to deal with the emotionally painful experience of having patients die, though I have had one come back to life, but that's another story."
The kids perked up at her veiled reference to Gregory Othon, but she just kept talking. "As a county medical examiner, I get to help the families of murder victims get final justice, and sometimes, I find information that will actually clear the innocent. Just a few weeks ago, for example, we had a guy who was apparently killed by someone he had repeatedly tormented and teased. It seemed like an open-and-shut case. The suspect was found over the body holding the murder weapon, covered in the victim's blood. He'd even sent the victim threatening letters."
Amanda's explanation of the case had been carefully rehearsed with Cheryl to be sure she didn't release too much information or get too specific and tip their hand, or, worse yet, compromise the police investigation. It was rather inconvenient that she had been at the school before, but so far, the kids didn't seem to have recognized her. It was amazing how much scrubs and a lab coat could change one's appearance, and how little notice the children seemed to take of the adults around them. Steve hadn't been told of their plans, though, because he was still struggling with lingering issues from his captivity.
"Hey, that sounds like something that happened here a few weeks ago," Alec Carver interrupted. "I think Tucker went a little over the top, but the truth is Rico had it coming."
"Yeah," someone agreed from the back, "Tuck wasn't the only one who wanted to off him. Rico being gone has made life easier for a lot of us."
"No it hasn't, it just means all of his buddies are pushing us around now instead of watching him do it. Things are worse, because as mean as he was, Rico could only be in one place at a time. Besides, nothing justifies killing."
"Oh, yeah? What if he was beating you up at the time?"
Jesse frowned. The discussion was quickly getting away from Amanda. "Ok, folks," he broke in loudly. "Justifiable homicide is something you can discuss in Government, Economics, and Political Systems or Criminal Justice. Dr. Bentley is here to talk about pathology and forensic medicine." Turning to Amanda, he asked, "So what did you find in this case?"
"Well, when I reviewed the autopsy report, I found that injuries indicated a smaller, weaker killer, probably female."
"You mean you can . . . you can tell if it was a man or a woman?" Sandy Green asked in surprise.
"Not to a one hundred percent certainty," Amanda admitted, "but from the angle of the wounds, I can estimate the height of an attacker, and from the depth and severity of injuries, I can guess how strong they were. In this case, the young man the police have in custody is much too big and strong to have been the killer."
"Maybe . . . maybe he was deliberately not using all of his strength. Maybe he was trying to throw you off?" Sandy didn't sound at all certain of what she was saying.
Amanda gave it some thought. "I suppose that could be," she admitted. "But if he was mad enough to kill someone, I think he would be pounding on the other guy as hard as he could. Also, if he was trying to cover it up, why didn't he use gloves and get out of there before the body was found? Besides, from the angle of the wounds, we know he was too tall to have been the killer."
"So, because of what you found, this guy is gonna go free?" Pedro Velasquez asked.
Amanda shook her head. "It's not that simple. Everything I have found is called circumstantial evidence. It might be enough to give the jury reasonable doubt, and they might acquit him, but the DA still has a lot of hard evidence . . . "
"Like the guy actually holding the weapon?" Alec Carver asked.
"Right," Amanda confirmed, "so, unless we find something else to prove he didn't do it . . ."
"He's going to jail anyway?" Sandy asked sadly.
"Probably," Amanda said. "That's if the DA doesn't ask for the death penalty." She was stretching the truth just a bit here, but she knew, if Sandy Green was the real killer, she'd have to create a situation the girl's conscience couldn't tolerate to get a confession. The odds for a conviction were definitely against Tucker, but there were now enough alternate theories of the murder that, without more evidence against Tucker, the DA would be willing to make a deal for a reduced charge and Tucker would probably be eligible for parole in his thirties.
"But if you know that he didn't do it . . . " Sandy began.
"I don't know that he didn't," Amanda interrupted. "I have evidence that suggests somebody else did. It's not the same. Look at it this way . . . if you and Alec . . ." She looked at the young man, and when he nodded that she had his name right, she continued, " . . . turned in identical test papers, with all the same mistakes and misspellings, Dr. Travis would have to assume that you had been cheating, right?"
"I suppose."
"He'd probably assume one of you had copied off the other, wouldn't he?"
"Yeah, but we didn't," Sandy replied.
"Of course not," Amanda agreed, "because you are both good, diligent, honest students, right?"
"Well, ninety percent of the time," Alec said with a grin, and the class chuckled.
"And you're working hard to bring that figure up to one hundred percent, right, Alec?"
Alec grinned at her, "Yes, Ma'am."
"Now the fact is, you didn't cheat. Maybe you studied together, or maybe one of you was absent and got the notes from the other, or maybe one of you copied without the other's knowledge, or maybe Susana," Amanda looked at the girl in front of Alec, "accidentally left her notes open under her desk and both of you copied from that. Whatever the case, Dr. Travis is left with two identical papers from two people who sit beside each other."
"And he has to assume we copied from each other," Alec said.
"That's right," Amanda agreed.
"He could give us a retest, couldn't he?"
"Yes I could, but that would only show what you knew of the information on the test, it wouldn't prove whether or not you were actually cheating the first time," Jesse jumped in to explain. "Just like if the police reenact a crime, without knowing for certain exactly where everyone was at the time of the incident, their results are, at best, an educated guess. The only thing that can really clear one of you would be for the other to confess, just like the only thing that will clear the suspected killer Dr. Bentley is talking about will be for the real killer to come forward."
Looking at his watch, Jesse continued, "It is almost time to pack up . . ." A few children started gathering their things, and he said, "Don't be rude. If I wait for you now, you'll wait for me to finish after the bell." Immediately, all activity stopped and all eyes were attentively on him.
"Tomorrow we start our dissection lab. Make sure you study your list of terms, you can't follow the instructions without them, and remember, on Wednesday, you'll have to be able to identify the fifteen structures on the diagram in chapter eight and explain their functions. That's a test grade." He paused a minute, to see what the kids would do, and then with a smile, he said, "Now you may pack up."
As he watched Sandy Green collect her things, he exchanged a worried glance with Amanda. The girl was clearly miserable. If she was indeed Rico's killer, her conscience was obviously eating at her. If she wasn't, she could only assume that her boyfriend was guilty and facing the death penalty. Either way, all Jesse and Amanda could do was pray that they had done the right thing.
Sloans' Deck
"Listen, Pa, Tuck is takin' the blame for this out of love for you. I'd hate for him to find out that you ain't worth the trouble."
Cletus Baxter narrowed his eyes at his son, not sure what the fool was getting at. Over the past two weeks, he had been holding his tongue and keeping his temper, worried that Donald would walk out and not come back if he didn't watch himself. He would never admit it, but being strapped to a hospital bed waiting until he was well enough to go to jail was harder than he had expected, and it was easier when he had company, even in the form of a stupid ninny like his own misbegotten son.
"I don't reckon you meant to do it, you was prob'ly just tryin' to help Tuck, but you got him into more trouble than we could get him out of."
Suddenly, Cletus realized what his son was accusing him of. "Shaddup, you blatherin' idjit!" he yelled, and the sudden stress on his lungs started him coughing, which the caused his broken ribs to complain, and the next thing he knew, he was fighting for consciousness. It might have hurt less if he could curl up in a ball, but with his hands cuffed to the bedrails, he just had to tough it out instead. Roused by the noise, the guard came in, but when Donald waved him off, the young man just cast them both a doubtful look and stepped back outside.
"Oh, gee, Pa, I'm sorry," Donald apologized, "but you gotta help Tuck. He shouldn't go to jail for somethin' he didn't do."
"Why . . . you think . . . we snatched . . . the cop . . . y' durned fool?"
"Well, it didn't work. They had more people out lookin' for him than was tryin' to help Tuck. You shoulda just 'fessed up to it in the beginnin'. I know you was there. The cops say somebody seen your truck the day it happened."
"I was there . . . gonna beat the puppy love . . . outta that boy if . . . talkin' didn't work." Cletus was slowly getting his breath back, but conversation was still difficult. "'Sides, if I'd kilt someone . . . wouldn't been no aks-dent . . . I'd of done it a purpose . . . an' told you 'bout it, too . . . I had good reason . . . punk was tryin' t'git my . . . grandson in trouble."
"So, you're tellin' me you didn't do it, Pa?"
"That's right."
"An' that's your story an' you're stickin' to it?"
"Yup." Cletus was grateful that he could give short answers. Since his coughing fit, he felt like he'd been kicked in the chest by a jackass.
"Well, then, Pa, I guess I should tell you somethin'," Donnie said in the most threatening tone Cletus had ever heard him use. "If you don't fess up to what you done an' get Tucker off the hook, I'm gonna tell the police what you done to his mama. It might not get Tuck out of jail, but it'll make sure you rot there forever."
For the first time in his life, Donald saw his father's eyes grow wide in fear.
"That's right, Pa, I know what you done to her," Donald said tauntingly. "Gettin' loaded an' slappin' her around when she was layin' there dyin'. Then you found her works in the dresser drawer an' gave her an overdose."
"You . . . you were there?"
"My wife was dyin', Pa!" Donald shouted at his father. "We fussed with each other too much, but where the hell else would I be?"
The guard poked his head in, but once again determining that the two men were just having a heated discussion, he retreated to his post in the hallway.
"I thought it was real decent of you to give her your bed seein' as how she only had a few days left an' all, an' I didn't mind sleepin' on the livin' room floor so's you could have the couch, but that night when I went to check on her, an' I saw what you was doin' to her . . . "
"We'd have gone broke lookin' after her, an' we didn't have much to begin with. She could've made us both sick, too. She wasn't worth the risk. I was just protectin' you."
"You were protectin' yourself! You didn't never give a damn about anyone else, an' . . . "
For a moment, Donald's voice choked off, but he stopped and swallowed a couple of times, and then he continued softly. "You was right about her, Pa. She was a useless wife an' a lousy mother an' a good for nothin' junkie, but I still loved her, an' I'd have sold my soul for the chance to take care of her when she was dyin'. It was a chance for me to do somethin' good an' decent, but you took it away from me, Pa, an' I been mad about it ever since."
Cletus gave his son a narrow-eyed glare and said, "Then why didn't you do somethin' about it?"
"'Cause I'm a weaklin' an' a coward, like you always said I was. I wanted to kill you that night, but all I could do was watch you beat her up an' then shoot her full of stuff. When I realized you was plannin' to leave the house, I went off an' pretended to be asleep in the livin' room. Then I followed you an' watched you throw her body in the bay. You must've thought I was real dumb to believe that lie you told me about her goin' off to get a fix that night. I knew she was too weak to get out of bed."
Donald was as angry as he had ever been in his life, but he kept his voice to a low, furious tone, not wanting to bring the guard in yet again. "It was easy to get back to the house ahead of you, Pa, 'cause you was too drunk to drive fast. You never noticed the needle you used had been took out of the trashcan. I meant to give it to the cops the next day, with your finger prints on it, an' tell them what you did."
"Then why didn't you?"
Donald shrugged. "'Cause you're my pa, I guess, an' a son should respect his pa. 'Cause blood is thicker than water. 'Cause I was afraid of you. 'Cause of all that garbage you taught me when I was growin' up. Well, I ain't afraid no more, Pa, an' I love my son more than you ever did me. You confess to killin' that kid, or I'll tell the cops what you did to Mary-Jane. One way or the other, you're goin' to jail for murder, Pa."
As Donald walked out of the room, Cletus yelled to him, "Dammit, Donald, I did not kill that boy!" The shouting made him cough again, which made his ribs hurt, and he collapsed back against the pillows, consumed with white-hot pain, before the door had even closed behind his son.
Sloans' Deck
Jesse sighed and called a half-hearted 'come in' when he heard the knock on his door. It was Friday afternoon at three thirty and he was loading his backpack to head home for the weekend. He'd been looking forward all week to a quiet night in and a lazy day Saturday, but now it seemed he was going to be delayed a bit longer. Jesse had never had trouble balancing work at BBQ Bob's with his responsibilities at the hospital, so he had figured it would be a piece of cake to handle teaching and medicine once Steve was ready to take over at the restaurant. Then, a couple of weeks into his substitute teaching, he realized he had never counted on all the take-home work a teacher had to do, and now he was beginning to feel run down. Fortunately, he wasn't scheduled to work at the hospital until Saturday night, and Steve, though he hadn't been released for duty yet, was fit enough to cover double shifts at Bob's. Still, he deeply wished he had been able to get out of the building before anyone came looking for him.
As he looked up at the two girls who came through the door, he couldn't help but smile. As badly as he wanted to get home, he was still glad to see them. They were bright, diligent students who showed real promise for science, and he was trying hard to encourage them in that direction. Getting them past the 'gross factor' with the frog dissection had been a real triumph for him.
"Sandy, Shatanya, hi. I'm glad you dropped by. I have your tests graded, and girls, you both made A's. I'm so proud of you!"
Shatanya smiled nervously. "Thanks, Dr. Travis."
"I knew this was a bad idea," Sandy muttered, and as she tried to turn around and walk away, Shatanya grabbed her by the arm and said, "Umm, actually we were here about something else."
Coming around his table, he indicated a couple of seats in the front row and said, "Please, sit down, girls." Once they were situated, he joined them, and was surprised by what a comfortable fit the student's desk was for him. Now he understood why the P.E. teacher had thought he was a new student when he had walked in carrying a backpack.
"What seems to be the problem?" he asked neutrally. As anxious as he had been to get home, he was still very happy he hadn't missed the girls. He was also very sad that it appeared they had been right about Rico Alonso's death. He had grown to like Sandy a great deal and had secretly been hoping all along that someone else had been responsible for killing the class bully.
Shatanya looked at her friend and tried to coax her with a gesture to talk, but when she didn't, Shatanya took the lead.
"Remember when we started the frog dissection how you brought your friend in and she told us about that guy who had been beaten to death and how she had found evidence that the guy they thought had done it really didn't?"
Jesse just nodded, and Shatanya continued.
"Remember how the kids all said it was like something that had happened here not to long ago?"
Jesse nodded again.
"And you said something about justifiable homicide, right?"
"Yeah, I did, but . . . "
"Would it be justifiable if he grabbed me in the hall and took me to the boys' bathroom and ripped my clothes and tried to make me . . . uh . . . do it?" Sandy burst into the conversation.
"It might," Jesse said, "but Sandy, if we are talking about Rico Alonso and Tucker Baxter, I think you need to call your parents and have them call a lawyer and then go to the police. Detective Cheryl Banks at the North Hollywood station is on the case, she will be glad to take your statement, but Sandy, I think you will have to have something to prove it, otherwise they might think you were just lying to protect Tucker."
"A lot of us saw her right after it happened," Shatanya said while Sandy sat there crying. "We pick a time and a bathroom every day before the first bell, and then we meet there to smoke and copy homework. Once we tried drinking, but a lot of us didn't like it, and one girl got drunk before she want back to class, and that was more trouble than it was worth."
Jesse had to suppress a smile at the folly of youth. "Witness statements are good, but hard evidence would be better," Jesse said, "and you really need to tell this to the police."
Shatanya nodded. "I still have her clothes in my locker," Shatanya said. "I threw them there after she changed because I didn't want anybody to find them in the trash, and I . . . well, I don't clean my locker all that often."
Sighing, Jesse stood up and went to the call button on the wall. He knew Ms. McGair was usually in the office until five.
"Yes, Dr. Travis?" The old woman's voice crackled in the room, and Jesse winced. He knew the uninitiated would assume the noise was static, but, thanks to his medical training, he also knew it was really the sound of emphysema, the result of many years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes.
"Ms. McGair, could you please page Officer Callahan. We have some new evidence in the . . . death of Rico Alonso."
He had decided not to call it murder because he still didn't want to believe Sandy was capable of such a horrible act.
Sloans' Deck
"Cheryl, thanks for letting me watch this," Steve said to his partner as she prepared to go into the interview room to get Sandy Green's statement. "I know it couldn't have been an easy sell with Newman."
"Actually, he was pretty understanding about it. He agreed with me that after what you have been through, you deserve to see this case through to the end." She gave him a pat on the shoulder and left.
As he sat there in the observation room waiting for Cheryl to appear on the other side of the glass, Steve took a few deep breaths and tried to relax. He would have preferred some company while he watched Cheryl's interview, but his dad was working, Jesse was covering for him at bob's so he could be here, and Amanda had to take the boys to the dentist. Intellectually, he understood why he couldn't yet take part in questioning Sandy Green or any other suspects or witnesses, but emotionally, he resented it. He had done nothing wrong, but he felt very much like he was being punished. As Cheryl entered the interview room, Steve made an effort to relax his hands, which had clenched themselves into fists so tight it made his knuckles ache. After flexing his fingers a few times, he leaned forward to hear what Sandy Green had to say.
"It all started in the cafeteria before school that day," Sandy began quietly. "I was helping Tuck with his algebra. He'd been doing really well until he got suspended, and with a little help, he might have been able to catch up again."
"Then what happened?"
"Well, Rico kinda sat at the end of the table where we were working, and he started saying stuff about me."
Cheryl waited a minute, but when the girl didn't speak, she said, "Sandy, I know this must be difficult for you, but if you want to help Tucker, you have to tell me everything that happened that day. You're our only chance to prove he didn't kill Rico, and if the other girls corroborate your story and the evidence supports it, the District Attorney will honor his deal. You won't go to jail, but you will be on probation until you turn eighteen. Now, do you think you can go on and tell me the whole story?"
Sandy took a deep breath and reached out her hand to her mother. Mrs. Green took it, and she held on tight throughout her daughter's story.
"Well, Rico and I dated for a while. We kinda fooled around, but I never let him do anything more than touch me, y'know?"
Cheryl nodded slightly, and Sandy went on. "Well, he started telling Tucker all these lies about things he was had done to me, things I never let him do, and he started making up things he would do to me if he ever got me alone."
"What kinds of things, Sandy?"
The girl started to cry then. "Sex stuff," she sniffled, "Dirty stuff. He used the f-word a lot, and said he would make me scream. Do I have to say everything he told me?"
Cheryl looked at the Assistant DA who shook his head slightly, and she said, "No, that's enough detail for now. What happened next?"
Steve realized his hands were once again aching from being clenched into fists, and he had to breathe deeply and make himself relax again. He found he wasn't angry just with Rico Alonso for threatening the girl, he was angry with Sandy for not telling someone, with Tucker for getting caught in the middle of it, and with teachers and administrators who allowed the bully to continue tormenting his classmates for the sheer pleasure of seeing their fear. When his anger extended to Cheryl and the DA for their involvement with the case, he realized he was getting carried away and knew sooner or later he had to face down Cletus Baxter if he was ever going to get a grip. After some more deep breathing, he turned his attention back to Sandy's story.
" . . . and I knew Tuck was gonna fight him, but I didn't want him to get suspended again, so I signed out of class and went looking for him. I found him in the south stairwell, and he . . . he had the hammer. He was gonna fight Rico to protect me, but I made him give it to me and go back to class. I was gonna leave it in the office. My locker is right across the hall and it would be real easy to slip in there and drop it off without being noticed, but Rico found me before I could get there and he dragged me into the boys' bathroom and started tearing my clothes so I hit him and hit him and hit him. I guess he never yelled because no one ever came running, and then I hit him in the head and he made this awful squeaking sound and he fell and didn't move anymore, and that's when I knew he was dead!"
The longer Sandy talked, the faster her words came, and when she finally came to the moment in her story when Rico died, she dissolved in tears. While she wept, Steve paced in the observation room. He couldn't remember ever being so angry. He wanted to hit something, wanted to beat the hell out of someone, and it really didn't matter whom. He settled for punching out the vacant chair next to his while Sandy cried herself out, and decided it was time to do something about his own problems as soon as Tucker Baxter's troubles were resolved.
". . . and I guess Tuck . . . was worried about me be . . . because of what Rico had said . . . he would do," Sandy snuffled, "because the next thing I re . . . remember, he was there. He sent me into the girls' room . . . to clean up, and Shatanya was there be . . . because that is where all the girls had decided to get together that day. She . . . she had some clothes in her locker because her. . . her mom makes her dress like a nun so . . . she changes when she gets to school. Tuck said he'd . . . he'd take care of everything, so he . . . he snuck me out the side door, and I . . . I took the city bus home . . . I didn't know what he had done until I went back to school a couple of days later, and then I just didn't know what to do. I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean for any of this to happen."
As Sandy started sobbing, Steve started pacing again. He was furious with himself and Cheryl for being so easily fooled, with the kids for keeping such a grim secret, and with Donnie and Cletus Baxter for the outrageous way they chose to get his father and friends involved in solving the crime. Suddenly, he felt as if he were about to crawl out of his skin. Leaving the observation room, he walked down the hall, rapped on a nearby door, and when Cheryl poked her head out, he quickly made his excuses.
"Look, I can't listen to any more of this," he said. "I think I know how it is gonna go. Sandy killed Rico, Tucker framed himself to cover for her, and Shantanya was stuck in the middle, not knowing what to do. I'm gonna get out of here. Call me if there are any surprises."
"Ok, but are you sure . . . " Cheryl stopped talking because Steve walked away without waiting to hear her reply.
Sloans' Deck
"Steve?" Mark called quietly, his concern for his son evident in the single word. He had just come home from working the four-to-midnight shift in the ER to find Steve sitting quietly under the light out on the deck. His hair was dried stiff and plastered to his head, and a faint white ring of salt stained his dark t-shirt. His hands were bruised and bloodied from apparently beating the stuffing out of something.
Steve looked up and smiled wanly, and when he looked back at the ocean, Mark stepped quickly back into the kitchen to grab a Gatorade from the fridge for his son and a soda for himself. From the look of him, Steve could use the electrolytes, and if they were gonna stay up talking for hours, which seemed likely from the look of things, Mark knew he would need the help of some caffeine.
Back out on the deck, he took the seat beside his son and held out the bottle of sports drink. When Steve seemed not to notice, he tapped him lightly on the wrist with the cool container, and Steve started slightly, and then, seeming to come back into the world from wherever he had gone, he took hold of the bottle without even a word of thanks.
"Good workout?" Mark asked, undeterred.
At last, he got a grunt, and after a few moments of silence, he decided to try again. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Steve took a breath and opened his mouth as if to speak, but he just sighed noisily, twisted the cap off his Gatorade, and frowned. He took another swallow of the red liquid and finally said something.
"I could really use a beer."
"I think there's one in the fridge," Mark said, knowing alcohol was not a good idea given the mood Steve was in but not sure what else he could say to keep the conversation going. To his relief, Steve declined.
"Nah. The way I'm feeling, if I had one, I'd probably finish the whole case."
"Rough day?"
Steve took another pull from his bottle of sports drink and said, "Rico Alonso's real killer confessed. It was Sandy Green. He was trying to rape her."
Mark nodded then frowned. "But the hammer?"
"Oh, Tucker was planning to fight Rico, and he took it out of the shop to have an advantage," Steve said, "but Sandy found him in the hall and sent him back to class. She was going to dispose of I for him, but Rico cornered her before she could, and she used it to defend herself."
"Then Tucker showed up and covered for her."
"Yeah. Apparently, a little clique meets in the restrooms every day to cut class and smoke and do whatever else kids do. Tucker found one of Sandy's friends and had her clean Sandy up and send her home."
"Then he framed himself for the murder," Mark concluded, gratified that he had been right about the boy, but saddened that the other child had died so brutally despite what he had been trying to do to Sandy Green. Suddenly angry, he wondered, "Where the hell were the teachers when all of this was going on?"
"In their classrooms trying to teach the kids they could reach, Dad," Steve replied. "Don't get so worked up. They're doing their best, but besides being overworked and underpaid, many of them don't have enough books or desks or anything else for all of their kids. A lot of the parents they deal with don't care, don't know any better, or are practically children themselves, and kids have been cutting class as long as adults have been making them go to school. I did it, more often than you ever found out about."
"But you didn't try to rape anyone, or end up killing anybody!"
"No, but if you found out about some of the things I did do, you would probably still ground me for them today," Steve confessed with slight humor in his voice. "Kids are just kids, like they've always been; they're a reflection of the society they grow up in, and teachers are doing the best they can with what they have in very difficult circumstances. Getting angry about it doesn't help. We need more people who are willing to do something."
Now the bruises and scrapes were beginning to make sense. Mark gently tapped one of Steve's battered hands and said, "So you went to Kelley's gym to remind yourself that you are doing something."
Steve grunted and gingerly rubbed one sore hand with the other. "Actually, no, I went there to beat the stuffing out of something instead of doing it to someone."
"Oh? Who did you want to beat up?"
"You know, it didn't even matter. I was just so pissed off I knew that if I didn't leave the precinct I was going to get myself in trouble, maybe suspended, so I just left."
Mark nodded, knowing he would have to tread carefully. He knew Steve had gotten over his guilt about beating Cletus up, but there was a lot of lingering anger and resentment still there that he and Bennett Taylor had been working on in the weeks since he had been rescued. The slowly fading scars that Steve still bore and had to look at every day certainly couldn't make it any easier.
"Well, then, why were you mad?"
"Because I didn't do my job right!" Steve snapped. "I arrested the wrong person. I was angry with myself for screwing up and with Cheryl for having to clean up behind me and with those damned, stupid kids for the mess they created!" As he spoke, Steve had risen to his feet and his voice had gotten louder and he moved to the rail to rage at the sea.
"And I suppose you were angry with Cletus, too, for taking you out of the action, huh?"
"No kidding! What was your first clue?" he shouted. Needing to do something physical, he drew back his hand and hurled his Gatorade out onto the dunes as he shouted a curse that could have shocked the ocean into retreating from the beach.
Still fuming, Steve turned around and saw the look of horror and fear on his father's face, and his rage melted. When he took a step forward, Mark recoiled, and Steve froze in his tracks.
"Oh, God, Dad, I'm sorry." He sank to a crouch and leaned his back against the deck rail. Cradling his head in his hands, he murmured again, "I'm sorry, Dad, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."
Mark moved carefully forward to kneel before his son and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's all right, Steve. Really, it's ok."
"No, Dad, it's not."
"No, I suppose not, but it will be."
"I hate feeling this way all the time, and I shouldn't have yelled at you."
Mark stayed where he was with his hand on Steve's shoulder for a minute or so, and then when he was sure his son was calm and rational, he began to speak gently. "Son, I know you have been seeing Bennett Taylor, and I trust him to look after you. This isn't even a suggestion, really, just another idea, an option to remember if nothing else works. I was just wondering . . . have you considered checking into the Last Resort?"
Steve's head snapped up, and the look of fear in his eyes made Mark wish he hadn't spoken. He knew Steve understood the value of the special program for cops with substance abuse and emotional problems. However, he also knew that the time he had spent in a mock-up of the facility, trying to help unlock his former training partner's subconscious and get him to confess to killing his wife and daughter, had affected Steve deeply.
Slowly, the fear dissipated, though, and left behind a look of resolve.
"No, Dad, I don't need to go there," Steve said as he calmly stood up. "I refuse to let that hateful old bastard have that much control over me." Slowly shaking his head, he said, "No, a couple of weeks ago, Bennett told me that I knew what I needed to do, and he was right. I'll do it tomorrow, and then, everything will be ok."
Steve smiled slightly at his father's confusion, but didn't offer much of an explanation. He just patted Mark on the shoulder and said, "Don't worry, I'll stay out of trouble."
Sloans' Deck
"Pa!" Tucker yelled and sprinted down the hall into the waiting arms of his father.
Donnie swept him up into an uncharacteristic bear hug and laughed with joy to have his son back.
"I knew you'd git me outtta here, but how did you do it?"
Donald nodded toward the young man who had accompanied him to the county jail and said. "I had a little help. This feller here got the real killer to confess."
Suddenly horrified, Tucker turned toward Jesse and shouted, "No! It was me! I did it! I killed Rico. Sandy's just tryin' to protect me. Don't believe her."
Donald barely caught hold of his son as he bore down on Jesse and said, "Hold on there, young'un! Ain't nothin' bad happenin' to her. They're acceptin' it was self-defense. She'll be on pr'bation awhile, but she ain't goin' to no jail."
"What about college? Pa, you can't go to college if you have a record. That's why I done what I did. She's smart. She should go to college."
Donnie was obviously unsure how to answer, so Jesse spoke up. "She's still a juvenile, so her records will be sealed. Colleges and scholarship committees will never know."
"So, she can still go to college?"
Jesse nodded. "Yeah. You can, too, if you want. That rule only applies to felony convictions. Obstruction of justice, which is what you did when you made it look like you were the one who killed Rico, is only a misdemeanor."
"I ain't sure I'm even goin' back to high school. At this rate, I'll be twenty-one before I graduate."
"Tuck, I want you to git some education," Donnie said as he started walking his boy out of the jailhouse. "If you kin git into college, I want you to go. You're the first of us Baxters to ever have the chance to do anythin' with his life. Make the most of it."
"Are you sure, Pa? I'll be smarter than you, then."
"Shoot, you was smarter than me by the time you got to third grade. I ain't never minded. I was always real proud of you."
Jesse couldn't help but smile as he followed them out. He had been flattered that Donnie had asked him to come along to get Tucker released from jail, and he was honored to have been allowed to overhear their conversation. Now he would take them to the hospital where they would visit Cletus before he was released to the county jail, and then they would part ways. He thought he might still check in with them from time to time, if they didn't mind, but either way, he wished them both all the best.
Sloans' Deck
"Are you sure you want to do this today?" Mark asked worriedly. They had been arguing since breakfast about the wisdom of Steve's decision, and while Steve appreciated his father's concern and desire to protect him, nothing so far had changed his mind.
"I'll have to face him sooner or later, Dad," Steve replied as he stood before the mirror shaving. He was getting ready to go see Cletus Baxter in the hospital for the first time since the day he'd dragged his aching, fever-wracked body to the ICU nearly a month ago.
"I know, Son, but why does it have to be sooner?"
"He's due to be released from the hospital tomorrow," Steve explained. "Then he'll be sentenced and shipped out to one of the state penitentiaries, and I don't want to have to spend a day driving just to see him. Besides, Bennett Taylor is right. As long as I feel this way about him, he has control over me. Every time I think about him, my guts tie themselves in knots, I start to feel sick, and I want to pound the hell out of something."
"You know, what you are feeling is perfectly normal," Mark commented.
Steve nodded. "I know that, and before you say it, I know what I did to him was understandable, too. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it anymore, either. Still, I can't live my life this way, Dad, and I hope seeing him again for what he is, just another creep with a mean streak, will help me move on."
Mark met his son's gaze in the mirror and saw the unspoken fear in Steve's eyes, the fear that if he didn't deal with Cletus soon, he would never be able to face the man, that if he didn't let his anger and hatred go now, he would never break free of the hold Baxter had on him. He knew Steve had an appointment with his police psychologist scheduled for later in the day. The plan was to confront Cletus Baxter and then go straight to his counseling session in case he needed to talk about it. The hope was that after today Steve would be ready to go back to work, free of the burden of hatred that had been plaguing him since his rescue.
Giving his son a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder and a smile that belied his apprehensiveness, Mark said, "Ok, Steve, you do what you have to do. You know where to find me if you need to talk."
Steve smiled back, though not as convincingly as his father had. "Thanks, Dad. I'll be ok."
Sloans' Deck
"I told him that girl was nothin' but trouble," Cletus Baxter grumbled as his grandson left the hospital room.
"Shoot, Pa, I don't blame him for walkin' out," Donnie said amiably. "You been mean to him since he came in here. As for the trouble he got in, he done that all by himself. He might a done a stupid thing, Pa, but he did it for the right reasons. He was tryin' to help someone he cared about, an' I'm real proud of him for that."
"Yeah? Well, what about all the trouble he got us into, huh? You proud of him for that, too?"
"Nah, that weren't his fault, Pa, an' you know it," Donnie corrected his father, and the easygoing tone he had been using was strained. "You was just stupid drunk enough to do somethin' crazy, an' I was scared of you an' dumb enough to follow along. We made our own trouble."
"Boy, if I wasn't chained to this here bed, I'd whup your tail for talkin' to me like that."
Donnie had taken all he could stand. His expression tightened, and his voice hardened. "You might try, Pa, but I think I'd stop you."
"Why . . . " Cletus sputtered and stammered, too shocked and angry to get out another word.
"I been afraid of you way too long, Pa, an' I should of been lookin' after my boy." Donnie spoke calmly but firmly over his father's sputtering rage. "I ain't afraid of you no more," he said, "an' I haven't respected you since I was younger 'n Tuck. I'll always love you 'cause you're my pa, but you ain't gonna push me around no more."
Cletus gave up trying to speak or even curse and just started sullenly up at his son who was, before his very eyes, suddenly becoming the man he always should have been.
"Now, I'll try to come see you once more before you get sent to the penitentiary," Donnie said reasonably, "an' I'll try to get Tuck to come with me, but I won't force him. If I don't make it before they send you wherever you're gonna end up, I promise I'll do my best to come see you at least once a month, an' if you let 'em teach you to read, I'll write to you, too."
Cletus nodded, and Donnie leaned over to speak softly. "I'm sorry I thought you killed that boy, Pa. I should have known you'd have told me if you did it. An' I won't tell nobody about Mary-Jane, neither, so you don't need to live in fear of that. I reckon until you get a conscience you won't see that it's the right thing to do, an' if you ever do figure out that you did an evil thing, you'll want to confess to it yourself."
At the mention of his late daughter-in-law, Cletus' eyes widened. As things stood now, he would be in jail for the rest of his life for what he did to the cop. If he'd been a younger man, he might have lived to make parole, but at his age, he would be in his nineties before he was eligible for his first hearing.
The only thing that could be accomplished by charging him with Mary-Jane's murder would be to make his grandson turn away from him forever, and he didn't want that. He might never say it, but he was awful fond of the boy and he didn't like to think he might hate him. He also knew the boy had suffered keenly from the lack of a mother while he was sprouting up. To Tuck, it wouldn't matter that his ma was nothing but trouble or that she was dying anyway; he would only care that his grandpa had killed her.
Cletus didn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison without ever seeing his grandson again. He was unused to asking for anything and never thought he would have to do so with his son, but finally, he whispered earnestly, "Promise me."
"What?" Donnie asked, unsure he had heard his father correctly.
"You might be a pitiful, sorry excuse for a man, Donald," he said, "but you're honest. Promise me you won't tell Tucker about his ma."
"You have my word I won't, Pa."
Cletus nodded his thanks, and then there was a rap on the door and it opened. Neither man expected to see the cop they had abducted come into the room, so as he stood there hesitating, they exchanged confused looks.
Finally, Donald found his voice. "Come on in, Detective."
Steve nodded and stepped forward. Neither Cletus nor Donald missed the tense body language, the clenched fists or the twitching jaw, and both were grateful that there was a guard outside the room, just in case.
"Whadda you want?" Cletus said disdainfully.
"I'm here to talk to you, Baxter," he said, and the piercing look he gave Cletus left no doubt about which Baxter he meant.
"Well, you kin save your breath if you come to say you're sor. . . "
"I'm not about to apologize," Steve snapped. "What I did wasn't right, but only a fool wouldn't have known it was coming."
"Well, if you ain't here to ask for my forgiveness, you must be here to enjoy what you done. How does it feel to know you're as bad as me?"
Steve took a step forward and hovered menacingly over the bed. Donnie saw the guard looking in through the glass with concern.
"I'm not like you, Cletus," the big cop said. "I don't get my kicks abusing people who are weaker than me . . . and I don't need to do it to feel like a man."
The taunt hit its mark, and Steve grinned wickedly as Cletus struggled against his restraints, cursing and grumbling furiously. Slowly, the grin faded and then slouched into a frown. Steve's posture relaxed, and he looked at the old man a little sadly. Now that their positions were reversed, Baxter looked far more pathetic than menacing and needling him wasn't nearly as much fun as Steve had expected it to be.
"Dammit all, if you ain't here to apologize an' you ain't here to glory in what you done to me, then what do you want?"
"I'm here to tell you that you don't have any power over me any more. I'm not afraid of you."
Steve could feel the weeks of rage melting out of him. His muscles relaxed, a headache, which he only now realized he'd had for days, went away. His heart felt lighter and he knew he had done the right thing. Stepping up to the bed, he put one hand on the rail.
"Well, you did a hell of a good impression of it back at my cabin," Cletus said. "Froze like a startled rabbit every time I spoke. Another day, an' I'd have had you cryin' for your ma."
"Pa, stop it," Donald hissed at him, sure that his father was trying to provoke another beating, and just as sure if it happened that he wouldn't survive this time.
Cletus ignored his son and eyed the battered hand on his bedrail. It hadn't clenched around the metal yet, hadn't even twitched. Unable to stop himself, he sized up the bruises and said nastily, "Looks like you been usin' your fists again already. Was it some defenseless kid like my grandson or an old man like me? Are you sure you're as good an' squeaky clean as you think you are? For someone who don't enjoy beatin' on people, you seem to do a hell of lot of it."
"Pa!" Donald naturally didn't want to see his father beaten up, but he didn't want to see the cop go to jail for doing it either. Steve Sloan was a decent guy, but Cletus was really asking for it, and Donald knew he wasn't strong enough to stop him if he did light into Cletus. He could only hope the man's decency would keep him from assaulting a man who was chained to his bed.
Steve sympathized with Donald Baxter's worry. Many times his own father had driven him to distraction with reckless behavior, but he also enjoyed the surprise on Cletus Baxter's face when he didn't react to the goading.
"You can't make me hate you, Baxter. You're not worth the trouble," he said.
Cletus' angry, twisted features suddenly went blank. He'd heard those same words just the other day, from his own son when he was trying to get him to confess to a murder he didn't commit. He'd been hated, feared, and despised all his adult life, and it had never bothered him, but to be thought worthless, that cut him to the quick. His father had called him that too many times when he was a boy, and it had hurt then, too. It was the reason he had stayed at home to care for his parents when they grew old, hoping to get some measure of respect out of the old man, knowing that asking for anything else would be expecting too much. It was the reason he had gone out of his way to make people fear him all his life, because he knew they would never admire him. It was the reason he had killed Mary-Jane, because when he refused to help her with her medicines she had called him that, and he wouldn't let a woman talk to him that way.
Cletus Baxter didn't mind being feared and reviled. He wouldn't object to people spitting on his grave or dancing on it with joy to know he was dead. He could tolerate being called mean, dirty, disgusting, hateful, evil, filthy, and any number of other names people could think up, but he couldn't abide being thought worthless.
He looked at his son and knew, as soft as he was, whether he wanted him to or not, Donald would love him. The cop would never respect him, not that he cared, and he really wasn't afraid or angry anymore, but maybe, if he did something people figured was decent once in his life, he could show the man that he wasn't quite good for nothing. Tucker was young, there might be time to win him over, if Donald would just bring him to visit once in a while. After all he had done over the years, he guessed maybe he owed his son and grandson a chance at a decent life, and they couldn't have that with his secret hanging over them.
"I'm gonna die in prison anyway," he muttered, and felt a small amount of amusement at the confusion he saw on the cop's face.
Looking the other man in the eye, he said, "I have a confession to make, Detective. I killed Mary-Jane, Tucker's ma."
"Pa?"
The surprise in Donald's single word stopped Cletus short. He looked at his son with something that tried to be love and said, "I don't know what I woulda done if I'd had a second chance at Tuck's age, or even your age, to do things right, but I do know it will never work as long as you're keepin' my secret. He deserves to know, but I would appreciate it if you would let me tell him myself."
Donald nodded. "I will, Pa. I promise."
"Good. Now go on and git that boy home. Put a decent meal in him, and tell him . . . I said hi."
Donnie almost smiled, but the sadness in he eyes wouldn't let him. "I'll tell him you love him, Pa," he said, and then he was gone.
Steve stood in the room, looking at Cletus, and he knew something remarkable had just happened. The old man glared up at him and said, "Nobody would've blamed you if you'd kilt me, not even my son."
"Probably not," Steve agreed, "but I would have." After another moment's silence, he said, "I'll get an officer to take your statement." Then, he too walked out of the room.
Sloans' Deck
"So, why didn't you take his statement yourself?" Bennett Taylor asked. Despite the damaged knuckles, he had known the moment Steve Sloan had walked in that the man was ready to go back to work. He was calm, relaxed, and in visibly better condition than he had been at their last visit. He was only making small talk so Steve would believe an evaluation was being conducted and accept the results without second-guessing them and worrying that it might be too soon.
"Well, officially, I'm still on medical leave."
Bennett laughed. "I've seen your record. That's never stopped you before."
"No, I suppose not," Steve admitted with a rueful look, "but given my history with Baxter, I think any confession I took from him would be considered suspect."
"It probably would," Bennet agreed. "Does that bother you?"
"Yes and no," Steve said and then considered his answer. He didn't want to lie, but he didn't want to say anything that would make Bennett keep him off duty any longer. "I'm not happy with what I did, and I never will be, but I also know I was pushed to it, and that any normal person wouldn't have expected me to behave differently. My conscience is clear. Knowing that my dad never held it against me has helped a lot, too. Mostly, though, I am just glad it's over."
"Is it over?" Bennett asked. "Are you really free of Cletus Baxter?"
Steve nodded. "What he did to me is just a bad memory. I'm not angry any more because I have my life back, and he can't do anything about that."
"How do you feel to know that he will probably die in jail because of you?" Bennett was deliberately goading his patient, wanting to see how he would react.
"Not because of me, but because of what he did to me," Steve corrected calmly. "I guess I feel like I do with any other criminal, but maybe a little more satisfied because it's personal."
"What about Donald and Tucker Baxter? I know you were thinking about helping them out."
"I'm gonna think about that a little longer before I do anything," Steve replied. "It might be good for my dad and me to set an example for them, but I still don't know if it's a good idea to get too involved with them. Dad's still on the fence, too. We need to talk it over some more."
Bennett said, "I know how highly you value your dad's opinions. How do you think he will feel about the way you conducted yourself today?"
"I think he'll be proud of me, and relieved that it went all right."
Bennett nodded. "It sounds to me like you're ready to go back to work. What do you think?"
"I think you're right," Steve said with a grin.
Bennett came around the desk and extended his hand to shake. "I'll contact your captain and let him know you'll be back on Monday, but only for desk duty the first week. Then, if there are no problems, you can go back to your normal work."
As Steve left the office, his step was lighter than it had been in a long time, and as he walked down the hall, memories came to him: a man holding his infant son; two kids, one a little over six feet tall, and one barely over four feet, playing cowboy; kids riding dirt bikes, his mother fretting for his safety and his father urging him on; proud parents congratulating a newly minted police officer; a worried father watching him go out into a forest fire; searching frantically for a missing friend and trying to help him when he came back lost and confused; helping another friend track a serial killer without becoming a victim herself. Through it all, and through everything he had ever done in his life, one thing remained constant, made the good times sweeter and the bad times bearable, a father's love.
