Shielded In The Shadows

In his softest, oldest, hole-spattered T-shirt, a leftover from the police academy, and a pair of gray running shorts, he wandered barefoot out to the kitchen. He looked at the unopened six-pack on the bottom shelf of his refrigerator—the only alcohol in the house—and opted for a fruit-flavored sports drink.

Maybe he’d have a beer with dinner. Or before bed. Lying down wasn’t going to be all that pleasant, according to what the emergency room doc had said in his release instructions.

Moving into the extra bedroom, he sat at the desk, flipped on the 70-inch flat-screen TV hung on the opposite wall, and picked up the phone. Every time he left the office, he had his calls forwarded to the home line. Or to his cell if he was going to be away overnight. The message light was blinking on the answering machine. He’d get to those.

Opening the file he’d dropped on his desk when he’d come in, he dialed.

“Pick up, Wallace,” he said aloud, reminding himself to feed the goldfish he’d purchased when he’d realized he was talking to himself too much. And then he remembered the feral cat he’d taken in had eaten the fish. He was not caregiver material.

He’d fed the cat that morning. That was a plus.

Three rings and then four. The man had been released and told to go home. If he—

“Yeah?”

“It’s Jayden Powell.” Officer Powell would have been better.

“Yeah.”

“What’s up with your kid?”

“Yeah.”

“Whose gun was it?”

“Some gangbanger brother of a kid I coached in T-ball, for Christ’s sake.” At one time Wallace had been Joe Dad, a banker climbing the ranks and doing well for himself and his family. And then he’d had an affair and gotten hooked on meth, which had derailed his life. He’d gone to prison for fraud, but on a plea deal.

His wife had died while he was in prison. Though he’d tried to get the courts to let his girlfriend take his son, the boy had ended up in the foster care system—until two days before when Wallace had been released early on good behavior.

“You still clean?” Jayden asked, though he knew if the guy wasn’t, he wouldn’t get a straight answer.

“I am. I peed for the cops today, just to prove it, too.”

Good man, Jayden had thought after he’d read the man’s file and watched a tape of his parole hearing. “I gave you the benefit of the doubt, meeting at your home, alone, as you asked,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You owe me some good behavior.”

“I owe myself and my son good behavior. I don’t know what the hell I owe you. More than that, I’m sure. My kid shot you today.”

And that was the crux of the matter, as far as Jayden was concerned. He needed his client to succeed at reacclimating to the outside. A son in jail and facing charges, his offender blaming himself, wasn’t a promising start.

“What about Bettina? Where’s she at with all this?” Jayden asked about the woman Wallace’d had the affair with, the woman he was still with. The one who’d turned him on to meth. And, ironically enough, Bettina was the reason the courts had let Wallace’s son leave foster care. She had no criminal record and had already been in the process of petitioning for his care.

“Telling me not to blame myself. Yeah, right.”

“Is she clean?”

“She never was hooked,” Wallace told him. “Only tried it a couple of times. I let her down, too, when I got hooked. But she stuck by me.”

“And now?”

“She says Tyler needs me, she needs me, and I better keep my stuff straight.”

“I’ll help any way I can. I know a lot of people. Can try to smooth things for the kid.” What the kid had done was wrong. But he’d done it out of panic and love for his father. To defend his father. There was still a chance for him to turn his life around. And doing that was the best shot Jayden had at getting his client successfully reentered into society.

“He shot you, man!”