Chapter 7

Over the last few years, Horst Schuler, Esq. had become a prosecutor’s nightmare when it came to guiding young offenders through the vagaries of the legal system. In his long, illustrious, and sometimes controversial career, Horst, now nearing retirement age, had worked both sides of the courtroom as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. Now and for the last dozen years or so, he was a full-time defense attorney specializing in juvenile cases. As a prosecutor, he’d put many a delinquent behind bars and was lauded for his successes by virtually every cop in the city.

Then one day he ran into a psychologist by the name of Helen Widener. One of her charges ran away from the home during the night and hijacked a car to get out of town. Unfortunately, the owner of the car he was interested in fell and broke her wrist during a scuffle over the keys, and she was in no forgiving mood. She wanted the boy hanged, shot, electrocuted and then prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The runaway was fifteen years old and already on the road to becoming a career criminal. What he wasn’t was particularly bright, and he was chased down by the state cops for driving ninety in a fifty zone before he made it five miles out of town. He was hauled back to the local juvenile detention center to await arraignment.

Dr. Widener showed up at the courthouse the next morning to meet with his court-appointed attorney and locked horns with Schuler in the hallway outside the courtroom when she overheard him say he was going for the maximum on the “pea-brained little asshole”. When Widener asked him point blank if he even knew anything about the boy, Schuler said all he needed to know was that from what he read on the kid’s rap sheet, he was beyond any hope of redemption. The sooner and the longer he was caged up, the better it would be for society in general.

Widener, rather than call the attorney’s IQ and his parentage into question, invited him to drop by her facility for a free tour and dinner with the kids. To his credit, Schuler accepted.

That turned out to be the first of many sessions he spent with Dr. Widener learning about the adolescent mind and how it perceived the world. Now, having learned that kids simply do not and cannot think like adults, he worked full time in their behalf. Before he decided to switch sides, the more he learned and the more he probed into the backgrounds of the kids he was assigned to prosecute, the more he was convinced that treating a fifteen year-old, or even an eighteen year-old offender the same way a twenty-five year-old offender was treated was blatantly erroneous and too often a gross miscarriage of justice.

Within a year of meeting and being educated by Dr. Widener, he resigned from the DA’s office and started his own juvenile-oriented practice. Sometimes the kid for whom he was advocating was a total shit with few if any redeeming qualities, but under Schuler’s wing, he or she was given every chance the law would allow. They might still be convicted, but it wouldn’t be because they were denied competent counsel.

Widener became his favorite expert witness on adolescent emotional and intellectual development because she knew how to sway discerning minds. She never tried to baffle a jury with psychological bullshit, and the court showed its appreciation, often acquitting the offender of criminal charges in favor of referring them to some sort of treatment regimen.

Schuler sat with Widener across the desk from Detective Sergeant Jerry Haldeman. The detective had just finished viewing the recording of Anton’s comments. He held his hand over his mouth when Anton broke down at the end because he felt his chin tremble just a bit.

“Dr. Widener,” he said, “I really appreciate you bringing this in to me. I have to say I’m inclined to take Anton’s statement at face value, but I need a formal statement and I need to speak to him in person. When can you have him here?”

Schuler took it from there. “Detective Haldeman, as you can well appreciate, Anton Balan is in a very fragile state at this point. Surely you understand how risky it would be to the boy’s emotional health to subject him to any interrogation, so I have to ask; based on the evidence you have now, do you intend to charge my client with a crime?”

Haldeman knew Schuler had him in a corner. “Based on what I have now, no, because everything is circumstantial; well, that and this video. Look, Dr. Widener, counselor, I don’t want to cause this boy any more grief than he’s already suffered. Lord knows nobody should ever have to live through what he and his sister lived through, but I have to clear this case. Based on what I’ve just seen, I’ll start looking more intensively at other possibilities, but I still need to speak to Anton. I need to look into his eyes as he tells me what happened. You call it interrogation, but I call it simply pursuing and verifying the facts in evidence. I know how juries work, Mr. Schuler, and I can’t even imagine he’d be found guilty of anything if he did do it. So when can I see him?”

The attorney asked, “Are you going to get an arrest warrant to bring him in as a material witness?”

“Not unless you force me to.”

“Okay, then try this on for size: We’ll arrange a time and a place where you can sit down with the three of us; Anton, Dr. Widener and me, and ask your questions. If it looks to Helen or me like Anton is getting the least bit stressed, I’ll call it to a halt. Agreed?”

Haldeman thought over the terms and agreed. “Tell me when and where.”

The morning after the night, Dr. Widener’s houseguests sat around the table having a nice breakfast of waffles and bacon. The general mood might have started out a bit strained because of the elephant in the room, namely, their overnight sexcapades.

Eric was the first to tackle the issue and attempt to clear the air. Looking back and forth between Rhonda and Anton, he said, “Look, guys, we need to talk about what happened last night and we need to get our stories straight. Normally, it wouldn’t be any of my business, but I’m here officially as your counselor, so here’s the way I see it: I don’t think the good doctor is going to have too much of a problem with you guys having sex; in fact, I think she’d see it as a positive thing for both of you. The only issue is going to be some kind of contraception. No, wait, there’s another issue. From a legal standpoint, she can’t be seen as sanctioning sex between two juveniles in her care, but I should think she’d be willing to allow some leeway if you can manage to be a little more discreet than you were last night.”

Rhonda laughed and shot back, “You mean discreet like you guys were?”

Eric held up his hands submissively. “Touché. About what you heard coming from our room, that pretty much has to stay under wraps for obvious reasons. If it got out, it could damage Ken’s reputation and mine as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ashamed of what happened, but for practical reasons, it needs to stay just between us chickens, okay?”

That colloquialism floated right over Anton’s head. “Please excuse my bad English, but what is to do with chickens?”

Ken laughed and Eric said, “Never mind, Anton. It’s just an expression and I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m just saying it’s best if we don’t talk about our personal lives outside this little group. Can we agree on that?”

Rhonda agreed, “I’m down with that. Now about that contraception thing: I’ve been on the pill ever since those two dopers grabbed me off the street, and Dr. Widener thinks it’s just fine if stay on ‘em. I don’t know where those guys got the stuff, but they knew I couldn’t make ‘em any money if I got knocked up. Now, as for Anton and me, as far as I’m concerned, he gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it.”

Eric lifted his coffee cup. “It’s a deal then. I propose a toast to fun, sex, secrets and discretion!”

They all toasted. Then they laughed. Even Anton managed a little smile.

Raul knocked lightly on Dr. Widener’s office door.

She looked up from what she was doing and waved him in. “Good morning, Raul. Did you bring what I asked for?”

“Sí.” He laid a large manila envelope on her desk and took a seat on the couch.

Widener emptied the envelope’s contents onto her desk and flipped through the stack of documents. It included a copy of his degree in music from an academy in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and copies of forms showing that he was employed there as an instructor of classical guitar after his graduation. As she looked them over, he pulled out his wallet and showed her his green card.

She looked up and asked, “Raul, this looks to me like you held a very good position at the academy. Why did you decide to leave?”

He fidgeted, seemingly reluctant to explain, but he knew he would have to be open and honest with her if he stood any chance of getting his job back. “Señora, even this far from Mexico, it could be dangerous for me to talk about this, but I suppose I must. There are people where I come from who get very rich from sending drugs into the United States. Because I was an academic and I had occasions to enter this country, they thought I would be useful to them as a means of transporting some of those drugs. They warned me that if I refused, my life would be in danger, so I pack a few things and drive across the border that same night. Now here I am. I cannot go back home and I cannot find a position here as a guest instructor. It is better if I am a janitor.”

She sat looking at him for several moments. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Raul. Of course I’ve heard and read about the Mexican drug cartels, but it never occurred to me that their influence extended into the academic community.”

“Dr. Widener, their influence extends everywhere, even into the Mexican government and the Mexican Federal Police. Even here in the United States, they have people working for them. That is why it is better if I do not work where I draw attention to myself. This work as a janitor is good for me because people think that I am just another immigrant from the south.”