The TF-77 Trilogy Read online

  “Objection. An unproven characterization, your honor.” Rodriguez was up on her feet.

  “Which is exactly what this trial is for, Ms. Rodriguez,” Anderson said calmly. “I did not allow Mr. Wilson to interrupt your opening, which, I might add, was replete with unproven characterizations of Detective Karen Jones.”

  “Yes, your honor. I apologize.” Rodriguez sat swiftly. Wilson, although a little thrown by the interruption, continued. “A police officer in threatening, possibly dangerous circumstances, trying to apprehend a suspect, is allowed, under the law, to use deadly force when he believes his own life is in jeopardy. The facts of this case will show that Mr. Sanchez ignored Detective Karen Jones’s repeated commands to stop moving and put up his hands. He ignored repeated commands to keep his hands in plain sight. Let me quote Sun Tzu in The Art of War. When Detective Karen Jones encountered Sanchez on that dark, rainy street three years ago, she entered what Sun Tzu called the Dying Ground. At that point, Detective Karen Jones had to fight or perish, shoot or be shot. To second guess her actions now are impossible—and unfair. We weren’t there. We didn’t have to make that split second, life-or-death decision. Detective Jones reacted as she should have—just as all her training and experience taught her to—with deadly force. Mr. Sanchez had only himself to blame. His death was a result of the choices he made that night. Detective Karen Jones acted properly, under the color of law...” He paused at the end of his statement and thanked everyone.

  Wilson shuffled over to his place and sat down. Karen glanced at the jury. They seem unmoved, blasé. Judge Anderson shuffled papers. He seemed to have lost interest halfway during Wilson’s statement. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think that’s enough for today. We are going to take tomorrow off, to separate opening statements from the start of the plaintiff’s case.” he announced. The courtroom started to stir, relieved. Anderson continued. “Please remember the court’s admonishment to avoid reading or listening or watching any media reports on this trial. I wish you all a good weekend. Thank you all very much.”

  “All rise.”

  The judge left the bench, and the jury shuffled through the rear door to the assembly room. The media exited first. Rodriguez and the Sanchez family were in tow. Wilson leaned back. “What do you think?”

  Karen pushed her chair back and got up. Without saying anything, she left Wilson in a pool of his own flop sweat. She knew how this case would pan out with Wilson on her side.

  CHAPTER 4

  In the precinct, Karen walked past a couple of custodies cuffed to a bench. She stepped through the back door of the detective bureau. Being a late afternoon on Friday, the bullpen was half empty. Her desk was at the far-away corner from the entrance assigned to the rookies.

  She wasn’t a rookie, yet she sat there. But it wasn’t always so. A top graduate from the academy, she had had a promising start at a small-town station under the tutelage of the town Sheriff. Each case she solved led to her meteoric rise in the town and, eventually, it reached the people who could elevate her to the heights she deserved.

  She had shifted her base to the New Jersey police department almost a year ago, with big dreams in her eyes.

  What she didn’t know was that it wouldn’t be the criminals, but the department’s internal politics and her instincts—which had earlier led her to the right path—that would be her biggest impediments. After a year-and-a-half of sub-par performance, she was still measured like a newbie in the precinct along with her partner, who was inept at best because of his inability to capture the basics of a fact. She hated her partner, and she knew that the feeling was mutual. And then, during one operation, she accidentally shot Alejandro Sanchez, allegedly involved in a rape case and multiple homicide cases. The department had promised to back her, but once the case moved to the court, the tables turned quickly. The department’s patience seemed to wear thin and the people who had backed her earlier were now slowly turning against her.

  At times, she thought of running away.

  This too shall pass, she thought and stayed.

  But she had no idea that this was just the beginning. The worst was yet to come.

  CHAPTER 5

  Karen walked to her desk in the bullpen amidst the usual clutter: file cabinets, counters, desks, and every flat surface awash with files and paperwork.

  Her desk was neat and orderly, stacked on both sides with files. The surface was glass-topped and beneath the glass were several photos of different men and women, and a few children—victims in cases she was still working. There was a coffee mug full of pens. On the wall next to the desk was a bulletin board cluttered with various reports and messages. A yellowed printout in large block letters pinned in a corner: Success comes to those who knock on doors. Partially hidden was an old photo of her father and her old team. Usually, a smile came to her face looking at those, but not today. The other corner was somewhat plain looking.

  She started looking through a stack of phone messages.

  “Jones.” Someone called her name. She raised her head and looked toward the lieutenant’s office on the other side of the squad room. Lt. Robert Wade, 45, was standing in the doorway, signaling her over. The few other officers smirked at the call.

  Karen walked over, consciously avoiding their faces.

  Wade seemed all business while he closed the door. His desk had a sign with his name on it and photos of his family. He was a proud family guy and a devout Christian. Although he said enough times that he believed in his people and their integrity, Karen knew that when the shove comes to push, for him the color of the law was thicker than human blood. She ignored everything else in the room. She had seen this enough times.

  “What’re you doing here, Jones?”

  “We’re recessed for the weekend. I thought I’d come by to check my messages, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know. You’re off the rotation and, technically, on inactive status until there’s a verdict. So, go home. Now.”

  “I was just about to leave.” Karen turned to leave the room.

  “How’d opening statements go?” Wade asked in a different tone, and Karen had to stop.

  “Ordinary.”

  “How’s Wilson doing?”

  “About what you’d expect. She’s the majors. He’s double-A, maybe, on his best day. And he’ll never hit a big-league curveball even to save his life.”

  “Karen, the department is feeling a lot of heat because of this case. Till now, I’m the one standing between you and your downfall. Just don’t fuck this up.”

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “Good, you can go. Also, Superintendent Hudson has asked for you. He wanted to see if he can help us in any way, but he wants to hear your version before making up his mind. This could be the shot that we need to get you and the department out of this mess. Call his assistant, Samara, and get an appointment.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jones, I’m not getting the feeling that you’re taking all this seriously. If that’s the case then let me know, I have a hundred other places to divert my attention.”

  “Lieutenant, I’m committed to clear my name.” Karen forced the words out of her mouth.

  “Good.” Wade dug his head in thick files. Karen left without saying anything further.

  CHAPTER 6

  Six days ago

  Karen was waiting in the lobby outside Superintendent Hudson’s office. At 63, Hudson was America’s most respected police chief. This reflected, in part, Hudson’s breadth of experience: 29 years working his way up the chain of command in Chicago, eight years as police chief in Washington, D.C., and eight years at the helm in New Jersey.

  Equally important was his passion for the profession and his care for his officers. In his office, five officer portraits occupied a position of prominence on the wall behind his desk. They were the officers who had been killed on the job since he became superintendent. Hudson could recite the details of every single killing with encyclopedic precision—date, time, cir
cumstances, survivors. There were other reasons behind the respect that Hudson commanded. His word was good. He was savvy. There was just a direct honesty about him. It also helped that he had a good sense of humor.

  It was not surprising that, last year, the U.S. President tapped Hudson to take on the current challenges of policing by co-chairing, along with Robinson, his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. By accepting the position and helping craft a blueprint for change, Hudson had put an emphatic exclamation point on his career and had taken a big chance. The task force’s final report, issued in May, included ideas that challenged some of his profession’s most cherished tenets. In particular, it called for moving oversight of alleged police wrongdoing out of police departments and even local prosecutors’ offices, vesting it in outside agencies or task forces instead. Hudson has also promoted a promising yet unproven approach known as procedural fairness to strengthen police-community relations. He had endorsed radical changes to how police departments operate internally and questioned their current focus on intelligence gathering.

  These suggestions had made even the non-believers believe in him. Karen had been one of them.

  “He will see you now.” Samara, Hudson’s personal assistant, nodded her head.

  Karen stood up and took some time to straighten her uniform. She was a little overwhelmed by the opportunity to meet the chief for the first time, particularly as that man was Hudson. She was suspended, but felt it important to be in her uniform when meeting the most powerful man in the state police. Still trying hard to overcome her feelings of inferiority, the stare from Samara made her walk towards the door in a hurry.

  In the office, Hudson was sitting at his desk, reading a thick file. But that was not the first thing that Karen had noticed. The first thing was the five officer portraits hanging on the wall behind Hudson’s desk, whom she had seen only in photos.

  “Detective Jones, please sit down,” Hudson spoke without looking up from the file.

  “Thank you, Sir,” Karen said awkwardly and sat down.

  “Just give me a moment to finish this. If you would like to have something like coffee, you can use the coffee maker there.” He said politely, but still looking at the file.

  “Thank you, Sir. I’m good.”

  “I’ve been told that this is an exquisite machine, but I’ve never come around to using it,” Hudson raised his eyes from the file to Karen, a smile playing on his lips. “I still call Samara to brew me a cup whenever I need one. At least if you use it then you can share your unbiased views on whether the machine company’s claims are correct, or if it is just a marketing gimmick.”

  Karen smiled in response and rose to make coffee.

  “Make one for me too, if you don’t mind. These pages are mind-numbing.” Hudson said from behind.

  “Sure Sir.”

  “I prefer it if people call me Hudson. That way I don’t feel that I’m too old for this job.”

  Karen had heard about his sense of humor and his preference to be on a first name basis with his colleagues, but she didn’t know how much of it was true.

  “Yes, sir. I mean, Hudson.” They both looked at each other, and then Hudson turned back to his file. For the next few minutes, the machine’s whirring and whizzing was the only thing breaking the silence of the office.

  And then a knock on the door broke Karen’s concentration. It was Samara, Hudson’s personal assistant.

  “Yes, Samara?” Hudson looked at her with indifference.

  “I’m leaving for the day.”

  “For the doctor’s appointment?”

  “Yes,” Samara said.

  “Okay, see you tomorrow.” Hudson turned back to his files.

  Samara gave a blank stare to Karen, who stood near the coffee machine. The stare remained a second longer than necessary and then she slowly closed the door behind her. It was her first meeting with Samara, but Karen was already finding her too weird to ever meet again. The machine made a wheezing sound while emanating steam and Karen’s train of thought was interrupted.

  “I think the coffee is ready, and so are we,” Hudson spoke while slowly rising from his seat.

  The sentence surprised Karen, who suddenly found herself conscious. At the outset, she wasn’t ready for a cup of coffee with the boss of all her bosses. She had to quickly calm herself.

  “Sugar?” she asked.

  “At my age, I have to say no.” Hudson smiled again.

  Karen found some of her lost confidence in Hudson’s charming demeanor. She took him his cup. Hudson took it without touching Karen’s hand.

  “Where do you want us to sit?” he asked.

  Karen looked around the room. There was a couch set at the right side of the door, along with a large mahogany table. It was a very simple arrangement, but the couch seemed unique. A piece of fine craftsmanship which, unfortunately, also made it seem incongruent with the rest of the office décor.

  “I got this from a Tibetan shop. Very fine artistry. One of my favorite possessions.”

  Karen couldn’t agree more. She had seen nothing like it before.

  “We can sit there, no need to stare at it while our coffee is getting colder,” Hudson said, and Karen found herself slightly embarrassed. She was, indeed, staring at the couch for far too long.

  “Sorry, Sir.”

  “Hudson. And no need to apologize. I had the same expression when I saw it for the first time, and I’ve to say that it still happens to me.” Hudson said as he walked towards the couch. Karen followed.

  “So, tell me, Karen… I hope I can call you Karen?” Hudson was too polite for his stature.

  “Sure,” Karen said as she sat at the other end of the couch.

  “So, Karen, tell me about this case of yours. This Sanchez person.”

  He had given her the space to speak, but she didn’t know what to say or if she wanted to say anything at all. She had been vilified brutally over the last few months since the shooting.

  “Okay, let me ask you a few basic questions to start with. Why didn’t you accept the offer to settle this, out of the courthouse?”

  “That will mean that I’m accepting that it was intentional. I’ll be stained for life.”

  “Karen, I know people try to judge your actions on a decision that you made in 3 seconds. They think they can pour over what we have to do in lengthy court hearings and then arrive at options that they think we should have chosen. But if you put them in the same circumstances, 99 out of 100 times, they would do the same or even worse.”

  Karen said nothing, but she felt relieved that Hudson understood her predicament. Hudson waited for her to respond, but she said nothing. Just kept staring at her coffee mug.

  “You know Karen, I grew up in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. The time was the early 1950s and the area, at that time, was a diverse and densely populated one that was just beginning to attract African American residents. As white families moved out, the percentage of African Americans soared through the 1950s to 1960s, from 11 percent in 1950 to 68 percent in 1960. At that time, I didn’t know about these numbers. All I knew was that most of my friends were slowly moving out of the neighborhood. Mine was one of the white families that chose not to move. That was also the time when the construction on the Dan Ryan Expressway had cut a swath of destruction through the neighborhood. But, to me, Englewood was just a normal neighborhood. People tried to take care of their property. The kids I played with weren’t in gangs, or anything like that,” Hudson recalled.

  “Everything was good until it wasn’t. One evening, Tony, one of my friends, was stopped on his way home by a group of kids. He knew that they were gang members, he tried to run, but they grabbed him. He was stabbed 36 times.

  36 times.

  “I was nearby, and when I heard his cries, I ran to save him, but it was too late. I stayed with him until the first responder arrived. I saw them putting him on a stretcher. He took that last gasp. I was fifteen then. I remember because now I know what it means. Th
at day I decided to be someone who could do something about such things. But I had no money; no one in my family had any money. To become anything, I had to save up the tuition, so I took a job bagging grocery. One of the cashiers had a brother who was a cop. The cop got to know me and one of the grocery clerks. One day, the officer suggested that we should sign up for the city’s police cadet program. We would get training, tuition for college, and a paycheck—all in exchange for agreeing to work flexible hours with the police.

  “The other guy signed up, but I was unsure. That was 1968. That summer, police officers had clashed with protesters at the Democratic National Convention in what some called ‘a police riot.’ Reverend Jesse Jackson had described Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley as a fascist; groups such as the Chicago-based Nation of Islam were ridiculing the early civil rights movement’s emphasis on nonviolence. I remember asking my friend why he wanted to be a policeman. He looked at me and said, ‘What do you have against the police?’