Lost Girl by Larry Martz

Author:Larry Martz [Larry Martz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/Thrillers
ISBN: 9781640191860
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2018-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

“I’ve seen a lot of shit, but this really stinks,” said Don Forster.

“Tell me again,” I said. We were on the phone, and he was almost incoherent. I thought for a moment he might be drunk.

“Get the wax out,” he snapped, but he slowed down a little. It was Chuckie, he said, Chuckie Johnson; they were finally going to charge the kid with Molly’s murder. But there wasn’t going to be a trial. They didn’t have a case against Chuckie, so they fixed it so there wouldn’t be a trial.

“Who’s ‘they’?” I said. “Don, I’m not getting any of this.”

“It’s greased, Billy,” he said. “Sheriff and Charley Cooper and old Judge Williams, gonna have a special hearing tonight. Charge the kid, hold a sanity hearing and ship him down to Wyandotte until he gets sane enough to stand trial, which means never.”

“God damn,” I said. It suddenly made too much sense, and the worst of it was, they could do it. In Michigan, Cooper as the prosecutor could bring charges without consulting a grand jury. Chuckie was only fifteen, so he was in the tender hands of Judge Theo Williams, who doubled as juvenile and probate judge in the parts of Wayne County that weren’t in any city’s territory. Juvenile judges had wide powers and total freedom from press coverage, a privilege meant to shield children under sixteen from being stigmatized as criminals. If Williams chose, he could rule Chuckie insane, send him to the asylum in Wyandotte, put a gag order on everybody present and keep the whole hearing secret except for the fact that the boy had been committed. If Mike Steele and Cooper wanted to get rid of the Molly case, this was a perfect way to do it: People would simply assume Chuckie was guilty and rapidly forget about it. “Is there any way to stop them?” I said.

“I don’t know, Billy,” Forster said heavily. “Better get out here. Hearing starts in forty-five minutes, in that office Cooper keeps in the jail.”

So, there I was again, headed for the yellow brick fortress, wondering what I was going to do about all this. I was also thinking, in a confused, unfocused way, about Theo Williams and the way he had taught me about my own corruption.

I’d first run into him a little over two years before. It was in my peak learning time on the Gazette, a stretch when I was almost literally inhaling the whole newspaper business and the way things worked and all the people I ran into. I would spend evenings riding around with the vice squad cops, raiding blind pigs and arresting whores and breaking up poker games. I would write about that, and anything else that came along: the whole world was new and fresh and fascinating. I look at those old clips now and wince at the naivete, but I can see why the Gazette liked the stuff: The energy and sense of discovery comes through. The paper even let me

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