Times and Seasons (5 page)

Late
that night, when Annie and Rick were sound asleep in bed, Cathy gave up trying to sleep. She went into Mark’s room, saw the clothes thrown on chairs and across the bed. CDs lay scattered around the table, and his stereo had been left on. She turned the power off and sat down in the middle of the mess. What was Mark doing tonight? Was he in a cell alone, or in a room with others, scared to death that harm might come to him? He didn’t even like spending the night away from home much. He said there was something about sleeping in his own bed.

Was he repenting of his crime? Or was he merely looking at this with the logic of a child, wishing his mother would come and rescue him, or hoping his father would ride in on a white horse?

She wondered if a mother had any chance of getting inside River Ranch tonight.

“Oh, Lord, please don’t let any harm come to him,” she whispered. “Please take care of him.”

She wasn’t one to get down on her knees when she prayed. She’d always believed that God wanted her to be comfortable, like a child in the lap of her father, when she talked to him. But somehow the gravity of these prayers knocked her to the floor.

Her knees were cushioned on a pile of T-shirts and underwear, and she leaned up on the bed, her elbows on a pair of wadded blue jeans. She prayed morning would bring Mark’s release. If she could just get him home, she told the Lord, she knew she could straighten him out. All he needed was one more chance. All he needed was an opportunity to start over.

But as night wore on and turned into morning, Cathy knew that his crime had a penalty. And she couldn’t pay it herself.

The
next morning, Jerry waited for Cathy in the hallway outside the courtroom. He looked like an older version of Rick, only more comfortable in a suit and tie than Rick had ever been. He paced and perspired, cracking his knuckles as if preparing for a boxing match.

Cathy always felt awkward and uncomfortable when she came face-to-face with her ex-husband. If she smiled and acted civil, it seemed too familiar. Their relationship felt better at arm’s length. Soft or fond feelings were strictly forbidden, for she had long ago counted them futile. Besides, too many bitter, hostile memories had buried themselves deeply in her heart.

Last night he had called her after a lengthy telephone conversation with the lawyer, and he’d agreed that a guilty plea was probably the best course of action. She’d spent the rest of the night second-guessing the decision and wondering if they were doing the right thing for Mark.

They both looked tired, strained, and had little to say to each other as they waited there for the attorney to show up.

“He’s late,” Jerry said.

Cathy looked at her watch. “He’s not late. We’re just early.”

Annie went to stand beside her father. Rick lingered in the middle of the hall. “That him?”

They all looked up and saw the man starting toward them with a briefcase in his hand. “Yes,” Cathy said. “That’s him.” She met him halfway up the hall.

“Cathy?” he asked.

“Yes.” She shook his hand. “I recognize you from church now. Thanks for coming.”

“Steve filled me in on Mark’s case, and I did a little checking last night after I talked to your ex-husband.”

Jerry pushed off from the wall. “I’m Jerry Flaherty.”

“Slater Hanson,” the attorney said, shaking his hand. “They’ll be bringing Mark. We can go in this room right here.”

He opened a door and ushered them in, but Cathy asked Annie and Rick to wait in the hall.

The attorney sat down and opened his briefcase, shuffled some papers around. He seemed so rushed and distracted that Cathy got the feeling he had twenty other clients down the hall waiting for him. She silently prayed that he wouldn’t take this case lightly.

The room seemed so cold that she expected icicles to be hanging from the folding chairs. They should have something more comfortable, she thought, when people were awaiting the fate of their children.

By the time Slater Hanson had fished Mark’s paperwork from his briefcase, the door opened and Mark was escorted in. He was dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit and wore handcuffs. His hair was greasy and hung in his eyes.

“Mark!” Cathy burst into tears at the sight of him and pushed his hair back from his eyes. When they removed his handcuffs, she hugged him, and he clung back. Jerry stood off to the side, looking down at the floor, fingers jingling the change in his pockets.

The attorney interrupted the hug and reached out to shake Mark’s hand. Cathy stepped back.

“Mark, I’m Slater Hanson, your attorney. How was your night?”

“Horrible,” he said. “Mom, you can’t believe where they put me. I had a mattress that was like two inches thick. It was noisy. There were people yelling all night, cussing up a storm. You just wouldn’t believe it. They had me in a little cell that wasn’t any bigger than our bathroom.”

“You were alone?” she asked through her tears.

“Yeah, I was alone.”

“Well, maybe that was a blessing.”

“
None
of this is a blessing! Mom, get me out of here.” He looked up at his father. “Dad, can’t you do something?”

Jerry pulled out a chair roughly and sat down. “Mark, that’s what we’re here for. We’re trying to undo the damage you’ve already done.”

“Dad, I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to do this. I just—”

“Shut up, Mark,” Jerry said. “Sit down.”

Cathy didn’t know whether to come to Mark’s defense or join in on the tough love that Jerry seemed intent on practicing. They all took their seats, and she pulled out a Kleenex and dabbed at her eyes.

“So how does it look?” Jerry asked the attorney wearily.

“You have to know that we’re going up against Judge Massey today, and he’s one of the toughest judges in the city.”

“Oh, great,” Mark said. His face looked as if his blood wasn’t circulating well.

“Look at him,” Cathy said. “He’s fifteen years old. It’s not like he was standing on a street corner selling crack through car windows.”

“In the district attorney’s eyes he did,” Slater said. “He did it of his own free will, and no one coerced him.”

“Come on,” Mark said. “I just wanted to make a few dollars.”

“Mark, enough with the few dollars,” Jerry said. “You’ve dug yourself in deep enough. Just shut your mouth and don’t say another word.”

“But he’s my lawyer! I’m supposed to talk to him.”

Jerry ignored him. “He’s just a kid. So he experiments with drugs occasionally, and yesterday he was going to do a favor for a friend. You’re going to let them throw him in prison for that?”

“Of course not,” Slater said. “I’m going to do the best I can to get him out. I’m just telling you what the possibilities are.”

“So what do we need to do?” Cathy asked. “Just tell us.”

“Well, neither of you has given me a clear answer on what you want Mark to plead.”

“Innocent,” Mark said quickly. When his parents were quiet, he looked from Cathy to Jerry. “Come on. I’m nothing like the guys they’re trying to get off the streets. It was my first time to do anything like that, and I was set up.”

“If you plead not guilty, there will be a trial if the judge thinks there’s enough evidence. From the looks of things, I’d say there is. And you have to know that if there’s a trial, there’s a possibility they’ll keep him incarcerated until the trial date. Frankly, that could be longer than the sentence if he pleads guilty.”

Were they really talking about her child, this little boy who had had curly hair and skipped everywhere when he was two? Were they really discussing trials and guilty pleas and convictions?

“So let me get this straight,” she said. “If he pleads guilty, he’s got an automatic conviction, but they may just give him probation again, right? Or community service or something like that?”

“That’s a possibility,” the attorney said, but seemed tentative.

“But if he pleads innocent, he’ll have to go to trial, and the trial may not be for months and months, and he may have to stay incarcerated until then. Is that what you’re saying?”

“But, Mom, they
might
let me out,” Mark said. “I might get to go home today and then we can figure out what to do next.”

Cathy leaned across the table, locking into her child’s eyes. “Mark, even if they let you come home and you have to stand trial, we’d have to hire lawyers, and somehow we’d have to prove that you didn’t do it. There’s a big problem with that, because you
did
do it.”

“What do you recommend we do?” Jerry asked the lawyer.

He looked down at the file, flipped through a few pages, then glanced up at Mark, meeting his eyes. “Son, I want you to be straight with me. Did it happen like they said?”

“Well, yeah,” Mark said, “I mean, I sold the drugs and everything, but I didn’t know it was a cop.”

“Did the cop who was with your friend talk you into selling the drugs?”

“No, he didn’t say much at all. Just sat there, waiting to bust me.”

“He didn’t coerce you at all? Convince you to make the sale?”

Mark shrugged. “No…When Ham called, I told him I had gotten one bag and I’d sell it to him. There wasn’t much conversation about it once I got there.”

“Did the cop talk to you on the phone?”

“No. Just Ham.”

The lawyer jotted a few notes, and Cathy wondered where he was going with this. “So you’re guilty of doing exactly what they said?”

“Yeah, but it’s not the way they made it out. I’m not some kind of junkie.”

The man took a deep breath and looked from Jerry to Cathy, then back to Mark. “A trial would be expensive, and the chances are you’d lose, anyway. And, like I said, you still might not get to take Mark home today.”

Mark slammed his hands on the table and threw himself back in the chair. “I am
not
pleading guilty,” he said. “I am
not
going to go in there and say I sold drugs.”

Cathy dropped her face into her hands. “But you
did
sell drugs.”

“But, Mom, I’ve got to deny it as long as I can. People get off all the time. We can say he didn’t read me my rights, that there was an illegal search and seizure. Something.” He looked at Slater. “That’s your job, man!”

“Mark, they have evidence. I have the police report right here,” Slater said. “There weren’t any of those things.”

Cathy closed her eyes and, for the first time, wondered if it had been wise to get a Christian attorney. Maybe she needed
someone shrewd and cutthroat who would go in there and lie through his teeth to get her son cleared. She had only wanted someone who would do the best job he could, who would care about the young boy whose life hung in the balance.

As quickly as those thoughts skittered across her mind, she banished them and whispered a prayer of repentance. God would honor their honesty. If her short time as a Christian had taught her anything, it was that.

Jerry seemed to be struggling with his own emotions as he stared down at the table. She didn’t think she had ever seen him quite so distraught.

“The upside of this,” Slater said, “is that he’s not old enough to be tried as an adult. The juvenile detention center isn’t a place where you’d want to raise your kids, but it’s not the worst place in the world either. It’s certainly better than prison.”

“Prison!” Mark said. “You’ve got to be kidding! All I did was—”

Jerry’s hand came down hard on the table, making them all jump. “All you did was sell drugs,” Jerry bellowed. “Don’t you get it, Mark? You don’t have a leg to stand on. You have humiliated me and your mother and your sister and brother. You’ve broken the law, and they have evidence against you that we can’t refute. You’ve acted like a juvenile delinquent, because that’s exactly what you are. And that’s why they’re going to put you in the juvenile detention center if we don’t get you off. That’s where you belong!”

“
Jerry!
” Cathy’s shock radiated through the room, reprimanding the man she had once called her husband. “My son is
not
a juvenile delinquent. He broke a law and he got into trouble, but it seems to me I remember you breaking a few laws in your day, too. Some people just never get caught.”

Jerry met her eyes. She knew that he knew exactly what she referred to. Back in their teenage days he’d been known to smoke a joint or two, and she knew there’d been a couple of times when he’d even sold some of his own stash to a friend. It was no different than what Mark had done.

“I was never arrested and charged with drug distribution,” Jerry said. “My father never had to come to the police station and discuss my defense!”

Slater looked at his watch, then began loading his papers back into his briefcase. “Why don’t I leave you alone with this decision? I have another client to see. I’ll come back before we go into court and see what you’ve decided.”

Cathy looked up at him, stunned that he would leave them at this juncture. “Well…okay. If you’re sure you’ll be back.”

“Before you know it,” he promised, then hurried out of the room.

When the door had closed, Mark got up. “Great!” he said. “My lawyer cares more about some other client.” He dropped back down, leaned his elbows on the table, and raked his hair back. “I can’t believe they’re doing this to me.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to us,” Jerry said.

“That’s enough, Jerry!” Cathy bit out. He shot a look at her, as if daring her to speak that way to him again. The look only made her wearier. “It looks like we have a few choices, Mark. They’re all equally bad. Most of them require taking huge chances with your life in the next few months, and there are no guarantees.”

“So, what do we do?” Mark asked.

She let out a rough breath and looked at her ex-husband. “Jerry, do you have any constructive ideas, or just more snide comments?”

“He deserves whatever he gets,” Jerry said.

Cathy wanted to throw something. “That may be true, but don’t we all? Some of us never have to pay for what we’ve done.”

Jerry cursed under his breath and got back up, striding to the window at the back of the room.

“Mark,” Cathy went on, “the only thing I can suggest is that you go in there and face up to what you did. You plead guilty and we pray that the judge will have mercy on you.”

“But, Mom—”

Jerry turned around. “Much as I hate to admit it, I think she’s right,” he said. “I have a feeling that if you do that, the
judge will probably let you go home with us today. That doesn’t mean you won’t be on probation, that you won’t have a conviction on your record, that it won’t affect all of our lives. But it might be our only hope.”

Mark’s face burned as he stared at his dad. “You’re not doing this just to save money, are you, Dad?”

The words seemed to ricochet across the room. Cathy flinched.

“Because if you’re gambling with my life just so you won’t have to pay an attorney, then that’s pretty sleazy, Dad.”

That artery in Jerry’s neck looked as if it might burst, and he took a few steps toward his child, wearing that expression that suggested he could break him in two. “You really think I’d gamble with your future to save a buck?”

She held her breath, hoping Mark had the good sense to say that he didn’t, so they could get on with business. Mark just stared him down, too prideful to reveal any intimidation or vulnerability.

Finally, she watched Jerry turn to a barred window and peer out. His shoulders rose and fell with seething breaths.

Cathy tried to clear her brain of accusations and inflammatory memories. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, Mark.”

“Then what should I do?” he asked. “Just go in there and surrender to them? Let them take me off?”

“Lots of people are in there praying for you, Mark. If you plead guilty, maybe God will show you mercy.”