Chapter 10 #2
She had counted only eleven people in the diner when she’d entered.
Most were men dressed like farmers or tradespeople.
There were a couple of women friends dressed like schoolteachers—attractive but modest. School was already out for summer, but it was possible they were signed up for summer school duty.
Eight o’clock approached, and they made no move to leave, so Jane decided they probably sold real estate or cars.
Today was Friday, and that was a work day, so either way, they’d be on their way before long.
Jane listened to the voices she could hear from the booths, the tables, and the counter.
People were talking, but their talk was what it always was—the early arrival of warm weather, which was sticky and made the mosquitoes thrive, but was also a damned good thing after the flooding they got this spring; the politicians turning every tax into a fee so people didn’t notice it.
They didn’t remember that an ordinary family that didn’t have a pot to piss in had to pay just as much for a quart of milk as a billionaire.
And where does all that money go anyway?
The mid-morning waitress, much younger than the early one, came in so there would be two for the rush, took off a thin raincoat like Jane’s, and disappeared through a door to the left of the counter.
She came back a minute later with Jane’s food, a small shiny carafe of coffee, and a small silvery cream pitcher.
Jane kept listening while she ate. Each time the street door opened she used her ears to get a sense of who it was—male/female, old/young, big/small.
She would look at the shiny carafe to pick up the person’s reflection.
This one was big and male. After a moment she saw the khaki uniform had a badge.
Cop. Someone said, “Davy,” and the cop stopped walking.
He turned to the side and looked at the group at the first table from the door.
He said, “Good morning.” His voice was strong and yet appealing, a smooth and polite cop voice, the one they used when they called you “ma’am. ”
A woman said, “We’re so sorry for your loss.”
His voice warmed a bit. “I appreciate that. It’s one of those times that every family dreads. No matter how many times you see it happen, you never think the next time it’s going to be your family.”
Jane had noticed that the chatter quieted when the cop came in.
The cop said, “We were grateful to see you all at the funeral.”
“Well, we wish you and your family the best.”
“Thank you.” Jane heard a slight change in his voice that indicated he was shaking somebody’s hand.
Jane heard him walking toward her booth, and then past, and she raised her eyes.
He was about six feet two inches, two hundred and ten or two twenty.
The buzz-cut hair was reddish. He had the familiar cop swagger and a pair of aviator sunglasses were propped above his forehead.
He walked up to the counter and the early waitress came around from behind the cash register and hugged him. When she let him go and returned behind the counter, she took her pad out of her apron pocket and seemed ready to take his order.
He leaned toward her to tell her what it was, but she didn’t write it down on her pad. She just unfolded a cardboard carry tray, poured two cups of coffee, capped them with tops, tossed in packets of sugar and pods of cream, handed him the tray, and then watched him walk back out to the front door.
Jane could still hear the people in the front booth. A man said, “Have they found the girl yet? I didn’t want to ask him.”
“I think we’d have heard if they had,” one of the others said.
“They could be keeping it to themselves,” a woman said.
“Why?”
“She’s a minor. Aren’t there special rules about releasing their names?”
“I don’t think they apply in a murder,” the first man said. “She should be grateful if she gets a trial.”
“You think so? I mean Gerry, he was always a kind of wild guy, and he was twice as old as her, nearly,” she said. “I’m not so sure she wasn’t in the right. Maybe he did just what she said.”
“I don’t know. Even if he did, you think that gave her a right to stab him to death? And why was she carrying a great big knife? A killing knife?”
“How do you know how big it was?”
“I just assumed it was, because a sixteen-year-old girl killed somebody with it.”
Jane paid at the cash register and went to the back of the diner to the restroom, then left through the back door.
She walked to the main street and she could see the old white Greek-inspired city hall a distance away.
The closer she came to it the more convinced she was that they had put all the local gravestone carvers to work on the engraved letters and embellishments of the building.
As she drew nearer, she began to see the offices of legal firms, a couple of bail bond businesses.
She found the office of the public defenders, entered, saw the sign-in book sitting open on the counter, and filled in two lines in the page.
She wrote that she was Dora Bull, from the Legal Equality Committee of the National Congress of American Indians.
The National Congress was well-known, but the committee was Jane’s invention.
In the space for the name of the person she was there to see, Jane wrote Monica Fawcett.
After about twenty-five minutes a door across the room opened and a woman wearing a light gray jacket and a charcoal skirt came out. She went to the counter to look at the sign-in book, turned around, and looked at Jane. “Ms. Bull?”
Jane stood and smiled, then followed her through the door into a room that didn’t look like an office but like a converted storeroom.
There was a large cafeteria table with a computer on it with its cord trailing across the open floor like a snake to a wall socket.
There was a cheap bookcase that held a mixed set of law books and a few notebooks that Jane guessed held updates.
The one thing this office didn’t lack was filing cabinets.
Three walls were dominated by a two-tiered collection of olive drab filing cabinets.
On top of those were cardboard file boxes.
The woman said, “I’m Monica Fawcett. Please take a seat.
I apologize for the wait. Everything seems to get busier on Fridays, when people are trying to get bail approved before the weekend. ”
“I’m glad that you could fit me in at all,” Jane said. “Thank you. I’m here for the Committee to see if we can assist in the case of Clare Markham.”
Monica Fawcett took a deep breath and blew it out, and Jane could see she was anxious. “I can’t discuss anything that’s confidential between attorney and client.”
“Of course,” Jane said. “I’ll supply the information we have, and we can talk about that only.
Clare is sixteen. She was subjected to a forced physical encounter by a man named Gerard Fenton, age twenty-six.
He got most of her clothes off and was attempting to rape her.
She pulled a knife out of his jeans pocket and stabbed him in the leg.
He died. She was arrested and charged with murder. Is that all correct?”
“Substantially,” Monica Fawcett said.
“You must have convinced a judge that she was not a threat or a flight risk, because she released her on little or no bail.”
“Yes.”
“Now I have to ask you a couple of questions that you may decline to answer, and I will respect your decision. They’re only asked for her benefit and any answers you give will never be repeated. Is there any chance she is guilty of murder?”
“She committed a homicide. I don’t believe it was murder.
She’s a victim who defended herself. Also, you mentioned the ages of her and her attacker.
The age of consent in Oklahoma is sixteen.
The Senate passed a bill last year which would raise it to eighteen and add a provision that sex between two consenting persons age fourteen to eighteen will not be statutory rape.
Whether or not that bill becomes law doesn’t matter.
Under present law, Clare was of the age to give consent, but she didn’t.
Gerard Fenton’s age is legally irrelevant, but his conduct isn’t. ”
“I assume you know that Fenton has a family that people admire, and one of them is a police officer.”
“Yes.”
“What are Clare’s chances of being treated and tried fairly in local court?”
“I wish I could stick out my chin and say that everyone gets a fair trial here. I don’t believe the record is flawless. Maybe it isn’t anywhere. And Clare is exactly the kind of person who is most at risk from the justice system.”
“Because she’s Native?”
“She might have a jury with a bigot or two in it, or somebody who thinks every woman who is raped is asking for it. These people still exist, but everybody is watching for it. I’m more worried about her age.
Kids don’t have any extra rights or protections that are worth much.
They can be tried as adults without having any of the control adults have over their own defense.
They can be held for indefinite periods before they even get to trial on the grounds that they need treatment for mental illness, including drugs, repeated evaluations, and so on. ”
“But her case, specifically. What are you recommending?”