Prosecutorial Weakness Ch. 1

BACKGROUND

Surrounded on each side by a scattered array of notes to herself, fact sheets and statements, 32 year old Andrea Bell leaned back on her weathered sofa and exhaustedly combed her hands through her short, curly brown hair.

"How in the Hell am I ever going to make this work?" the budding assistant district attorney sighed, wondering aloud how the Gods of Law could have given her such a difficult case for her first lead endeavor with the Colorado Springs Prosecutor's office.

When Darrell Blevins, the man who had held her current job, took a pay raise and moved to Denver, Andrea saw the job opening posted on the state government's website and decided to send her resume.

Desperate to leave Limon, the small town in Eastern Colorado where she had spent her entire life, and the dull throbbing emptiness that came with her recent divorce, Andrea gladly accepted the job in Colorado Springs when it was offered and the fresh start it provided

* * * * *

Even though she had been in her new position for over a month, the case of The State of Colorado V. Becky Montclaire would be the first one Andrea's head would be on the chopping block for.

Cautiously reading over the history of the case, Andrea fought the throbbing headache that had been steadily increasing in intensity since she was officially handed the Montclaire case from Darrell Blevins' files.

The fact that 75 % of her belongings remained in boxes spread out across the room like dusty cardboard statues did nothing to help Andrea's self esteem as she tried to organize her thoughts.

"God you're lazy ...this place is a mess...At least you got all of Cory's stuff unpacked," Andrea caught herself thinking, satisfied for the time being in the small victory of knowing her two year old Son was having some semblance of a normal life despite the fact that his Mother was neck deep in the draining reality of her job.

Taking a sip of iced tea, Andrea rubbed her eyes as she tried focusing on the VCR's digital clock.

"Five minutes till 10...one more hour then I need to get some sleep," Andrea grunted, taking solace in the fact that Cory was now old enough that he didn't wake her up crying during the night on a regular basis.

Sucking in a deep breath, Andrea looked like a diver preparing to submerge herself under water as she leaned forward and resumed her seemingly impossible task of developing a winning strategy for the Montclaire case.

Engrossed in the pure absurdity of the facts of the case, Andrea bit down roughly on the shaft of her Bic pen as she returned her focus back to the beginning of the case file to scan over it for the 10th time of the night.

"How in the Hell could something like this happen?" Andrea groaned to herself, also for the 20th time of the night, as she carefully perused through the notes.

Having endured Law School and six years in Limon's Prosecutor's office, Andrea had come to understand that people were inherently capable of anything. The case of Becky Montclaire, a 42 year old former high school English teacher who had been caught red-handed in an affair with one of her teenage students, didn't seem all that unusual on the surface considering the spat of similar cases around the country following the Mary Kay Lourtourno ordeal in Washington during the late 90's.

In many ways, Becky Montclaire was the textbook example of the type of woman who had found herself in that situation. Suffering from marital problems, history of dependency and depression along with a huge void in her self esteem. Andrea was also young enough to vividly remember some of the crushes she had on certain male teachers in high school and college herself, so she completely understood how a pubescent teenager could easily be tempted into a relationship with an attentive and attractive authority figure.

So on some level, Andrea understood how a situation like Becky's spiraled out of control. On the other hand, there was something particularly seedy, raw and perverse about the Montclaire case that made Andrea's fair and freckled skin crawl.

* * * * *

REWIND 3 YEARS

A numb and listless, then 39 year old Becky Montclaire, curled like a paralysed slug under the sheets of her marital bed as she listened to the sounds of her husband Jeff's footsteps make their way up to the second floor bedroom.

"I saw it in his eyes...all night long... I saw it in his eyes...he wants to have sex when he comes to bed...how long has it been...two weeks...maybe three...and I'd just as soon he shove a shotgun between my legs right now and fire it instead of his dick...maybe the sonofabitch will trip coming up the steps...tumble down and break his neck," Becky imagined vividly as the sound of the bedroom door creaked open and her Husband of 15 years staggered in.

Through all the ups and downs a decade and a half together could bring, the Montclaire marriage had been spat out the other end, not in the best of shape. Even though they had three beautiful kids to show for their efforts, the love, passion, energy and joy had long been sucked dry from the relationship.

As if the realization that her marriage was disintegrating wasn't depressing enough, the fact that Becky had re-discovered the joy of swimming to the bottom of a bottle of gin every night at about the same time her Father died unexpectedly four months earlier made the hopeless Mother of three feel like she was walking in quicksand each time she tried taking a step.

Her eyes clenched shut, pretending to be asleep the same way she did when she was 5 and her Mother would come to wake her for school, Becky hoped against hope she could fend off her drunk Husband and his lust filled advances.

By the time Jeff had folded himself under the covers and snuggled up beside his catatonic wife, the wrenching gurgle of air that escaped Becky's mouth let him know that she was still awake.

"I could be dead and he'd still do what he's going to do," Becky hopelessly groaned to herself.

Knowing it would be better to just get it over with and not put up a fight, Becky eased her thighs apart and gave Jeff the slim alleyway he needed to get his beer soaked libido satiated.

With all the passion, heat and intimacy of one of those machines you hook up to a dairy cow to extract the milk, Becky laid there and robotically squeezed her cunt muscles together until several globs of Jeff's sticky cum leaked into her indifferent womb.

Less than 3 minutes after he had started his torrid pace on top of his wife's body, Jeff rolled over and lit a cigarette in the dark.

"Damn that was good," He drunkenly babbled.

Unable to control her fractured emotions for an instant longer, Becky started to sob like an orphaned refugee beside her increasingly disgusted Husband.

"You piece of fucking trash," Jeff bitterly spat, after a moment to survey his wife's teary outburst.

Scrunching the remaining length of his Camel Light into the ashtray on the nightstand, Jeff pulled himself and all the covers off the bed.

"You can fuckin' lay there and cry all God Damn night if you want Becky...I ain't listening to it...I've told you a million times...if you can't deal with me...your God Damn job...your Dad dying...go see a fuckin' shrink...I ain't got the time to deal with it...you can have the whole fuckin' room to yourself to boo-hoo all night if you want...I'm going downstairs to sleep...and you now what...YOU'RE A LOUSY FUCK!!" Jeff vengefully growled, slamming the bedroom door hard enough that all 3 of his children were immediately jolted awake down the hall as their Mother sobbed helplessly on the bed.

* * * * *

"What a poor miserable sonofabitch to be married to," Andrea Bell thought to herself as she studied Becky Montclaire's background. "At least my EX never treated me with that much venom...he'd just do the shit behind my back."

Flipping the page in the case file, Andrea came to the background of the student Becky was caught in the affair with.

* * * * *

Carlos Vargas was the only Son of Ramon Vargas and Jillian Varner. Originally from Columbia, Ramon had been a studio drummer for several of the prominent funk acts of the 70's before joining a band with several of his friends to do their own touring in the 80's and early 90's.

One of the stops Ramon's band happened to make during the Summer of 1982 was a small nightclub in Denver. It was there that Ramon met a sweet, young and sexy 22 year old brunette named Jillian Varner between sets at the bar.

Jillian frequently made the rounds on the Denver club scene during those wild years of her youth but when Ramon slid up behind her and offered her a drink that fateful night, it was the first time one of the musicians that she had openly flirted with from the crowd actually showed any interest when he got the chance.

One thing led to another until Jillian and Ramon's one night stand grew into a steady, long distance relationship. Desperate to get away from the constricting cocoon of her life in Denver and totally infatuated with being in love with a musician, Jillian moved away from her parent's house to accompany Ramon on the road. The two married a few months later in Vegas and less than 10 months after they met, Jillian gave birth to Carlos.

Even though Jillian and Ramon stayed married for long 8 years, the combination of Ramon's infidelity, Jillian's dependency problems along with the natural angst that goes with relationships when one person constantly stays on the road to leave the other to do all the hard day to day work of raising a child, was a weight that eventually led the two to split.

When the pressure finally caused Jillian to snap, she left the motel room in Miami where she had been staying with then seven year old Carlos, and bought a one way ticket for a flight back to Denver where she still had some family that would take her in.

Happy to have some sense of stability in her and her Son's life, Jillian did the best she could with no financial help from Ramon to raise Carlos. Working an endless stream of minimum wage jobs for more years than she wanted to count, Jillian finally got the break she had so wholeheartedly prayed for when she was promoted to assistant manager of the McDonalds she had been slaving at for nearly 3 years.

Satisfied with Jillian's performance in the new position, it wasn't long until an opening was created at a new restaurant in Colorado Springs and Jillian quickly accepted her boss's offer and made the 45 minute move South.

That's where Jillian had spent the previous six years. With Carlos racing through puberty, and all the obstacles that inevitably went with it, being a single Mother to a Fatherless child meant Jillian's life had steadily become extremely bitter, draining and chaotic.

Chaos was something that Carlos Vargas had become very intimate with over the course of his short life. Having moved so often during his early childhood because of his Father's music career, then the upheaval that came with his Mother's attempt to make the best for him during his adolescence, by the time he and his Mom had settled in Colorado Springs, Carlos found himself two full years older than everyone in his 9th grade class.

That combined with the ridicule that came with being nearly 4 inches taller than any one else in his class, being one of only a handful of biracial children at the suburban high school and having a slight reading and speech impediment made for quite a chip on the teenager's broad shoulders.

A 9th grader with an 11th grader's mind and body was something that led to a lot of stress and tension between Carlos, the other students and his teachers as well. The fact that he also fathered a baby to one of the girls at school his first year there did nothing to make his life any easier either. By the time the girl's family had cooled down enough that they no longer were threatening to kill him, it was decided that giving the baby up for adoption would be best for everyone involved.

There were several times his first year at C.S.H.S. that Carlos thought about quitting school for good, maybe being like his Father and running off to a bigger city to put his own burgeoning musical talents to work instead of facing the daily ordeal of ridicule at school. With a Mother who was working her tail off 12-16 hours a day however just to keep the family fed, she wasn't about to let Carlos go down that harrowing path. Instead of letting Carlos quit, Jillian took the initiative to go to the school and beg the powers that be to provide her Son with extra help for his learning disability. That was when Carlos had been placed in a special class for an hour each day that was taught by two C.S.H.S English teachers, one of whom happened to be Becky Montclaire.

* * * * *

"Pheewww," Andrea Bell gasped, tossing the case file back down on her folded legs as she reached for her half empty glass of tea.

"How could a woman jeopardize her marriage like that...her career...the custody of her kids for Godsakes?" Andrea asked indignity. "Jeopardize all that...for what...a fling with a kid?"

A stabbing jolt of chilling irony sizzled through Andrea's spine as she snuck a peek out of the corner of her eye at her own seated frame in the mirror on the opposite wall.

"Yeah...just how could someone jeopardize their marriage and the custody of their kids for a fling?" Andrea laughed sarcastically to herself, internally re-living how her own ex-Husband did the exact same thing two years earlier, leading to the eventual dissolution of their marriage.

"At least Chuck did it the old-fashioned way," Andrea whispered to herself, taking some solace in the fact that her ex-Husband decided to run off with a secretary from his job rather than with a girl that was young enough to be his Daughter.

Setting her glass of Lipton back down on the table, Andrea dove back into the sordid details of the Montclaire/Vargas case, doing her best not to consciously hate Becky for abandoning her family the same way her own ex-Husband did to her and their Son.

Following the paths of Becky and Carlos during that tumultuous period 3 years prior, Andrea slowly came to see how the two bonded in the reading class Carlos had been placed.

"You've got two people feeling like complete outcasts...I guess it didn't matter that one was a student and the other was a 40 year old teacher...all that time they spent together when neither one of them had anybody else to confide in...they opened up with each other...understood each other...validated each other...," Andrea thought out loud as the pieces of the case slowly started to come together in her mind.

"Becky's life is falling apart and Carlos can't seem to get his off the ground," Andrea continued to think to herself. "Spending that much time together each day without anyone else in their lives to compare travails with...Carlos even told Becky about the Daughter he had been forced to put up for adoption...Becky, in turn, felt comfortable opening up and telling Carlos about having to send her own kids off to her husband's parents until she could get her life straightened out. Its just a classic case of two desperately lonely people who find some solace in each other...then it took on a life of its own."

In fact, it was a late Friday night in October, at an interstate Super 8 on the outskirts Colorado Springs that Carlos and Becky's innocent student/teacher/confidante relationship took a more sinister turn.

* * * * *

Over the course of that Summer and early Fall, Becky had found herself in a purely sexual relationship with the husband of one of her co-workers. Mitch Kraft was the Husband of Alysia Kraft, Becky's teaching partner in the high school English Department and of all of her fellow teachers, her closest friend.

Sensing earlier that year that the Montclaire marriage was on the rocks, Mitch and Alysia had provided Becky with a safe haven when she needed a break from things at home. With Becky's self esteem in the gutter and Mitch fumbling through a mid-life crises of his own, the increased time Becky spent at the Kraft's brought her and Mitch closer in ways neither ever intended.

Over the course of those four months, Mitch and Becky found themselves shacking up at various motels before Becky separated from her Husband and then at Becky's townhouse when she finally got a place of her own, each working out their separate esteem issues while they shared the same bed.

Alysia Kraft was totally oblivious, if not outright blind, to the affair going on behind her back until much later.

* * * * *

Less than 2 hours after Mitch had hooked up with Becky at the Super 8 that fateful Friday night, they had already fucked each other three times and Mitch was ready for a shower. His sense of sexual worth satisfied for the moment, Mitch invited Becky to join him in the shower to wash of the undeniable stench of raw sex that coated each from head to toe.

Turning up the bottom of her 6th rum and Coke of the night, Becky wearily smiled up to her co-worker's Husband from the bed and told Mitch she'd join him after making a quick trip down the hall to refill the ice container.

Forsaking the bra and blouse that Mitch had briskly ripped off her chest when the two got to the motel room, Becky simply slipped on her pants and the jean jacket she had worn, grabbed the room key and made the short trip around the corner to get some ice for drink number 7.

Feeling awkwardly naked as her bare breasts rubbed against in the denim inner lining of her jacket, Becky felt a strange jolt of sexual arousal course through her nerve fibers as she casually said 'hello' to the motel patrons she encountered in the corridor.

"They're all strangers anyway," Becky thought to herself with a coy laugh. "All stopped on the interstate for the night ...no one here is going to recognize me...Hell...I bet some of them are up to the same exact thing I am," Becky continued to internally ramble as she patiently took her place in line behind a tall man bent over getting ice from the humming machine in front of her.

Rubbing her hands together, trying her best not to look as anxious as she really was to get her mouth around another Rum and Coke, Becky found herself watching the guy's bent over rear end as he forcefully dug through the ice.

Already aroused from an evening of great sex, Becky found herself blushing at the sight of the well sculpted behind, less than 2 feet in front of her face.

"I promise I wont make eye contact with him when he turns around...I'm sure I'm not hiding my glow very well right now," Becky promised herself as she continued to gawk and wait.

Looking briefly over to her left at the pictures hanging on the motel's hallway wall, Becky was sure she could see the radiant glow of post orgasmic bliss washed across her devilishly smiling face in the distorted reflection. Swaying in place, lost in her own personal dream world, it took the man in front of her to say her name three times before Becky Montclaire even realized her life had been inexorably rocked.

"Mrs. Montclaire...Mrs. Montclaire...Mrs. Montclaire...," the familiar male voice echoed distantly. "How are You?"

Turning around, feeling her drowsy drunkenness for the first time of the night, Becky looked up at Carlos Vargas towering above her with a full ice bucket in his right hand.

"I'm...I'm...fine," Becky blankly replied.

The two stared at each other for nearly twenty seconds without saying a word, each trying to internally process the consequences of their ill-timed and ill-placed meeting.

Slowly, it dawned on both Carlos and Becky why a married woman and a high school student would be roaming the hallways on an interstate motel, in the town where they both lived. With no clue how to vocalize their rabid and scathing thoughts, each quickly bowed their heads and tried to disengage from the awkward situation.