Dreams Of Destiny

"John," Maria said. "Did you know you were voted Mr. Youth Division?" she asked, laughing. "I just got an E-Mail about it."

"No. This is news to me," John replied. "What on earth is Mr. Youth Division?"

"It's a little known popularity/beauty contest conducted by secret ballot by the women employees of the Youth Division. But there hasn't even been a candidate in years. I have no idea who resurrected it. I don't even know who won it last."

"Great," John said sarcastically. "So what does it get me? A scholarship to cosmetology school? A date with the Mayor? Modeling contracts in biker magazines?"

Maria snickered. "It's a great honor and privilege," she advised him with a note of fake wonder in her voice. "You've been recognized as the most desirable man to grace the halls of Youth Division this year."

"Oh my God, you've got to be kidding me," John groaned. "Please tell me it ain't so."

Maria snorted with laughter. "Oh John , this is the funniest thing to happen here in years. Don't tell me you don't love it. I'm riding with the sexiest man in the police department."

"I don't love it," John said through clenched teeth. "I don't even remotely like it. I feel like I just had a bad nude photo of me displayed over the Internet without my permission. Its insulting."

"John Rodgers I'm surprised at you," Maria chided playfully. "Where is your sense of humor? Your southern laissez faire attitude? Where's your masculine pride, your opportunistic nature? You could go far with a title like this. Think of all the babes out there just waiting for you to give them the nod."

"Give it a rest, Maria," I'm forty six years old, not sixteen. I don't want to be a sex object."

"If you say 'been there, done that,' I'm gonna puke," Maria warned.

"I don't mean that, Maria, and you know it. I'm a private guy. I hate the idea of every woman in the building looking at me and wondering how I perform in bed. That's disgusting. Its enough to put me off sex permanently."

"Now that would be a waste. No. It would be a national tragedy for women."

"Do you want to go to bed with me Maria?" John suddenly asked. He was furious. He backed her up against the wall, using his masculinity as a weapon.

She could feel his heat. If only he knew. "Jesus, John, I was just kidding around." She shoved him back.

He felt a connection. A sudden rush of arousal coursed through him. He backed off. "Of course you don't, he said brusquely. I know it and you know it. So don't talk like that. Its inappropriate."

"All right already. I didn't know you were so touchy. I'm sure the girls didn't mean anything by it. It was done in fun to break up work place tension. You know. Give people something to laugh about."

"I know," John sighed. "But how would you like it if it were at your expense? Say the guys put together a tit contest and you won. Every time you talked to a man in our office you'd wonder if he were checking out your breasts."

"Yeah. I see your point. I hadn't thought about it like that," Maria conceded. "What do you want to do about it?"

"What can I do about it?" John asked. "Not much. What's done is done. Damage control, I guess. Let's try to keep it from going any further. And I don't want any female secretaries walking by my desk tittering."

The light on his phone line started to flash. John picked up the incoming call. "Good morning, Officer Rodgers here."

"This is Marty Feinstein, John, in corporation counsel's office, said a reedy voice on the other end of the line. I'm papering the Devon James case this morning and I need to talk to you. Meet me in my office in twenty minutes.

"Good morning to you too, Marty," John said coldly. "I'll have to check my calendar and get back to you." He hung up. Pompous ass, he said to himself. No please or thank you, or if it is convenient. Just be there. Well, I'll think about it.

The phone rang again. John left his desk to get another cup of coffee and a donut. The phone was still ringing when he got back.

"Yes," he said impatiently into the receiver.

"This is Marty again. Can you be in my office in twenty minutes?"

"A simple please and thank you would help," John said sweetly. "That's how we do things down south."

"This is Washington, DC, not West Palm Beach, John. An any event, I would thank you to please have your ass in my office in twenty minutes Mr. Youth Division," Marty said maliciously."

Oh great, the word's out.

"That's much better, Marty," John said ignoring the rudeness and the jibe. I'll see you shortly. He hung up the phone with a bang. What he really wanted to do was hurl it against the office wall. John spent the next fifteen minutes on the telephone with various calls. Several calls were about cases he was currently investigating. He got two or three hang ups which he passed off as wrong numbers. The other two were giggly overtures from female Youth Division employees asking for clandestine meetings.

John started to get annoyed, and then forced himself to relax. Ah hell. Let the twits have their fun. They're not doing me any harm. Its not as if they are going to rape me or anything. And it is kind of flattering, he finally decided

.

John looked up at the clock on the wall. 8:25 already. It was a ten minute walk to the Office of Corporation Counsel. Oh well, John thought, Marty's kept me waiting often enough. He won't kill me if I'm five minutes late. John shrugged into his rumpled jacket and set out for the prosecutor's office.

Marty was chaffing at the bit when John arrived ten minutes later. "Where the hell have you been?" Marty demanded as John walked into the office. "Do you have my police report? Judge Raven's really been hammering at us to get the juvenile cases papered as early in the day as possible. I can't paper my cases without police reports."

Rodgers handed Marty the police report and Marty read it eagerly.

"Good, good," he said as he read. "Wait a minute, I thought there was a resisting arrest charge."

"No," said Rodgers, "Devon didn't resist."

"Are you sure about that?" Marty prodded him. "I thought I heard resisting."

"I should know, I was there."

"Yeah, right. Well there's definitely reckless endangerment, carrying a pistol without a license, possession of an unregistered firearm and possession of unregistered ammunition.. That ought to hang the kid out to dry. I'm going for secure detention on this one. We'll have to have a probable cause hearing. Do you have time for me to prep you now?" Marty asked.

"I don't need preparation," John said flatly. "You put me on the stand and I tell the judge what happened. Its as simple as that.

"No its not as simple as that," Marty snapped. "I want secure detention even though this is a first offense. Judge Raven doesn't like to lock kids up on first offenses."

"Neither do I," said John.

"Your opinion doesn't count," Marty said shortly.

"Gee, thanks."

"Here's how I see it . This was a highly volatile situation. You and your partner arrived at Devon's apartment. When he saw police officers entering his home, Devon picked up his gun and fled the apartment. You took off in pursuit. Shots were fired at you. A lengthy pursuit ensued in the dark of night ."

Marty paused for effect.

"Loaded weapons were brandished. You could have been shot. Bystanders could have been killed. Devon might have been shot. You had to run him down to exhaustion and physically restrain him. You wrestled with him to get the gun. Clearly the boy's danger to the community and a flight risk. Have I got it right, officer Rodgers?" Marty asked.

"Well, not exactly." John said. He crossed the room to the water cooler and poured himself a drink.

"What am I missing?" Marty asked.

"That's not the way it happened," Rodgers said bluntly.

"Okay, so now you tell me what happened," Marty suggested.

"My partner, Maria Dias and I were responding to a anonymous call that came in at 5:20 concerning domestic violence. The caller was tearful and sounded scared. She was an older woman. She said she thought three little children, Mikey, Lily and Devon James, were being beaten up by their mother's boyfriend. She said the mother was a hooker and on drugs. The boyfriend was her pimp. She was especially afraid for the twelve year old girl. She said she thought there were drugs and guns in the house.

"Maria and I arrived at the scene at about 5:40 a.m. As we approached the apartment we could hear loud music blasting out of the windows. Maria knocked loudly on the door and an African American female, age approximately 30 answered, by opening the door about four inches. The woman was dressed up like she was headed for a party. Her eyes were blood shot and she appeared to be high.

"Maria showed her badge and explained that we were investigating an anonymous complaint of child abuse. She asked the woman her name.

"The woman said she was Dominica James. She said she was the mother of Mikey, Lily and Devon James, but that there was no child abuse problem in her home. She turned and started to close the door but I put my foot into it. Maria asked if we could come inside and take a look around. Ms. James hesitated, and then shrugged her shoulders and opened the door to let us in.

"It was a small, one bedroom apartment. It was hot inside and smelled of urine, dirty laundry and stale food.. The place was filthy, and crawling with cockroaches. The front door entered into the living room. I noticed the kitchen behind the living room. The bedroom and bathroom were off to the left. There was a back door leading out to a porch and the alley below.

"As I entered the apartment I saw a young teenager in the kitchen with a handgun in his right hand. He froze for a second when he saw me. Then he turned and ran out the kitchen door. I followed him out. At about the time I stepped out onto the back porch I heard a gunshot in the back yard. I drew my service revolver. As I looked down into the back yard I saw the kid run out the gate and into the alley. He was moving fast. I jumped over the porch rail down into the yard and passed through the gate about forty feet behind the kid. The kid ran out flat. It was dark and he knew the neighborhood well so he kept a good distance between us. He led me a merry chase, but I could tell he was tiring when he turned right, into an alley.

"I gained on him until there were no more than fifteen feet between us, and then the poor kid tripped over his own feet and went down flat on his face. The gun skittered out of his hand and ended up in a gutter a few feet away from him.

"I told the kid to freeze. He started to reach out as if to go for the gun. I' told him to freeze, mother fucker, or words to that effect. I told him that if he didn't want to die he'd better lie down flat on his face with his hands behind him.

"The kid flattened out and put his hands behind him. I put on the cuffs nice and gentle, like, and read him his rights. I called in to the dispatcher and then went over to the gutter to recover the gun. After that me and Devon sat together and watched the sun rise whilst waiting for the troops to arrive. And we had us a nice little chat."

Rodgers finished up his tale leaning his long body back in Marty's one comfortable chair. His legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankle. Rodgers was finally starting to relax after hours of built up tension.

"So I guess you think I should put this kid back out on the street," Marty said with disgust.

"No. But I don't think you should screw him, either. Maybe he'd do okay if he had a decent relative somewhere."

"He doesn't. I've checked. And even if he did I wouldn't want him released."

"Don't be such a hard ass, Marty," Rodgers said. "You can't lock up every juvee that ends up in the system.

"Sure I can. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

"You'd be happy if we went back to the dark ages, wouldn't you? 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'."

"Yep," said Marty. "Don't screw around with me on this one, Rodgers. I want the kid locked up."

Rodgers' gave Marty a hard look. He stood up and leaned his hands on the prosecutor's desk. "Don't tell me how to testify, Marty. I don't like it."

Marty looked nervously at the big man across the desk from him. "Oh for Christ's sakes John, lighten up. This is kiddy court, remember? Its elementary school for criminals."

"Yeah, right," Rodgers muttered disdainfully. "So who cares what happens to the kids, anyway?" He walked out of Marty's office feeling soiled, and with a bad taste in his mouth.

"Where are you going?" Marty called to him as he left.

"To the officers lounge outside Courtroom 10. I gotta get some sleep, I'm whipped."

The Courthouse was only a block from the prosecutor's office but it felt like a mile. It was downright hot out now, the sun was an angry gold disk in the morning sky. DC summers had all of the disadvantages of Florida with no beach. What a crappie city. Rodgers thought. He was in a real funk by the time he got to the Courthouse. Kiddy court. Christ, who needs it? Why didn't I just stay in West Palm beach with my nice little murders. When he got to the front of the Court he looked up at the letters over he looked at the words over the door. COURTHOUSE OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA and saw them as Outhouse of the District of Columbia. Appropriate, he thought.

John made his way to the officers lounge outside of Courtroom 10. He was exhausted. The lounge was empty and dark. The lumpy cot looked more inviting than any bed he'd seen in a long time. He took off his jacket and lay down. He pulled his jacket over his head to make it seem even darker. He was deeply asleep in a matter of minutes.