Why was a sixteen-year-old kid being held in adult lockup?

Kate Steele leaned against the cold wall of the interrogation room and flicked a sliver of sawdust off her sweatshirt. She’d been putting the final touches on the old warehouse she and her friends had been renovating when her colleague in the P.D.’s office had called, and she’d headed straight here.

The door opened, the bright light of the hallway illuminating dust mites over the metal table and two chairs. The narcotics officer led in a gangly teenager wearing a tee shirt adorned with a questionable Spanish slogan and a surly scowl.

“Miss Kate!” Arturo Alvarez’s face momentarily lapsed into a relieved smile, then resumed its glare. “It’s about damned time.”

“Juvie already sent a public defender up here,” the officer said, nudging the boy toward a chair, “but the kid said he’d only talk to you.”

Kate nodded. She’d given Arturo her business card months ago, and apparently he’d wisely held on to it. She motioned to the teenager’s cuffed wrists.

Officer Johnson narrowed his brows, but he shrugged, removed the handcuffs, and left the room.

Arturo scraped the metal chair against the concrete floor as he pulled it out and sat. Eyeing Kate’s dusty jeans and sweatshirt, he smirked. “Is this casual Friday?”

“It’s my day off.” Kate sat in the chair opposite. “I came because you asked for me.”

“I know my rights,” the teenager said proudly.

Clearly, he didn’t. Arturo was entitled to a Public Defender but he didn’t get to choose which one.

Kate leaned back as far as the foldable chair would allow and sighed with an edge of tsk-tsk in her voice. “Turo, I’m extremely disappointed in you. You told me you didn’t do drugs.”

“I don’t.” The teenager’s dark eyes flashed. “I was just driving the car. And I didn’t know we were going to a drug buy. Teresa just said she needed to run an errand.”

“Teresa?”

“My mom.”

Kate gritted her teeth. What excuse-for-a mother did drugs? And involved her innocent child in a drug buy? Unless he wasn’t innocent. “This report said you were arrested inside the building.”

“I ran in to warn her when I heard the cop sirens.”

Kate rolled her eyes, but there was a slight chance he was telling the truth. In the six months she’d known Arturo Alvarez, she’d always given him the benefit of the doubt. Her friends called her naïve. But she’d believed a kid with his background needed a break.

She still did.

“You’re not going to tell Antonio about this, are you?” The boy’s hardened eyes turned fearful. “He said if I dropped out of school or got arrested, he’d fire me.”

“You should have thought about that before you got involved in a drug deal.” At least he still held the part-time job her friend had found for him. The last time she’d checked, Turo’s boss at the auto repair shop had said the boy was a good employee and a talented mechanic. “Did the police find any drugs on you?”

Turo stood and turned his empty pockets inside out. A senseless gesture. But the boy’s story was plausible and at the very least, he should be released until his hearing.

“So you’re going to be my lawyer?” Turo sat back in the chair and drummed his fingers on the metal table.

“Actually, I don’t do Juvenile cases. I’ll find you someone appropriate, if it comes to that. But I’ll work with you until your hearing.”

“Juvenile?” The boy’s face screwed up. “I ain’t no child.”

“You are in the eyes of the law. Unless the court chooses to prosecute you as an adult.”

“Let’s do that then. You can represent me and my mom.” He smiled, pleased with himself. “That’s a good idea, no?”

“It’s a terrible idea.” If found guilty as an adult, the boy could do hard jail time. As a minor, his case would probably get thrown out. Or at least draw probation. “If your mother isn’t released, is there anyone else you can stay with meanwhile? Grandparents, other family members?”

He shook his head.

“You have an older brother, don’t you?”

“Jaime’s in the Army.”

“What about your stepfather?”

“What stepfather?”

“Tomas Gomez.” Last year, Arturo’s mother had been living with a man. “Is he no longer in the picture?”

“Nah, he kicked us out when Teresa stole money out of his wallet for a fix.”

Kate bit her lip. The boy’s history of temporary stepfathers and ‘uncles’ was as long as some kids’ rap sheets. “Are you and your mother staying with anyone now?”

“No. We pretty much live in our car.”

Kate’s heart wrenched. If no friend or relative could serve as Turo’s temporary guardian, Child Protective Services would undoubtedly put him in foster care until the hearing. Kate could imagine how much a sixteen-year-old ‘adult’ would love that.

But the first order of business was to get the charges against Arturo dropped.

“This is the first time Arturo’s been in trouble,” Kate told the assistant D.A. assigned to his case, hoping the incident from six months ago had been sealed or thrown out. “He comes from a broken home.”

“Yeah, so do half the teenagers in this part of Dallas.” Probably fresh out of law school, the twenty-something attorney brushed his knuckles against a suit that probably cost three times a public defender’s salary.

“Has the mother made bail?”

The assistant D.A. shook his head. “This is her third offense and the judge set a high bail. Unless she’s holding a winning lottery ticket, Ms. Alvarez will remain in custody until her hearing.”

Damn.

“I’m willing to offer probation for your client,” he continued, “with two conditions. One: he goes to school and gets a job. Two: he will provide eye witness testimony as to what went down.”

“You’re asking him to inform on his own mother?”

“Don’t sell it that way. Tell him we just need him to confirm where he was and what he witnessed. Strictly for corroboration of other witnesses’ testimony.”

Kate frowned. If they had other witnesses, why would they need a sixteen-year-old boy to testify against his mother? This deal sucked. But she wasn’t representing the mother. Her job as Arturo’s attorney was to keep her client out of jail.

The A.D.A interpreted her silence as acceptance. “Make sure you have your client in court by nine a.m. Monday.”

One step forward, two steps back. Turo was no longer under arrest, but the cops would only release a minor into the custody of a family member or supervising adult.

Raising eyebrows from her colleagues as she entered her office in her faded jeans and  paint-stained sweatshirt, Kate scrambled to find a solution to the problem. But despite help from her private investigator friend Selena, no relatives could be located.

Winding a scrunchie through her medium length brown hair, Kate stared out her office window at the fading colors of the afternoon sunset. If she were going to keep Turo from spending the night in jail, CPS was her last option.

But not a good option. The social worker assigned to the case offered to house the teenager with a bunch of other juvenile offenders, many of them charged with serious crimes. It seemed like a worse situation than leaving him in jail.

“It’s the best I can do right now.” Monica Green, a twenty-something woman sporting an Afro hairstyle that looked like it belonged on a woman thirty years older, sighed apologetically.

“You can’t place him with a family?” Kate asked.

The social worker narrowed her eyes as if Kate had asked her to conjure a rabbit from a hat. “For two days? Would you want to risk taking on a rebellious, possibly dangerous teenager who might steal your stuff and destroy your home and maybe come back later to steal anything he might have missed?”

Would she? Kate swallowed. “Yes,” she said from her heart, not even consulting her head. If she left Turo in jail, not only would he lose his job, but his already slim chances of going to college would vanish like that magical rabbit. “I’ll take him home with me, if that’s all right.”

The woman ruffled a hand through her dishwater-blonde hair, examining Kate’s painting clothes. “Are you a relative?”

“No.” Kate stared back. “But I am an officer of the court.”

She produced her ID and Monica Green pretended to study it before excusing herself to talk to her supervisor.

When the social worker came back with the official paperwork, Kate felt a smile start on her lips and spread all the way to her ears. Being a public defender was all about helping people who couldn’t help themselves, and keeping Turo out of jail was a solid check in the win column.

All she had to do was keep him fed, sheltered and out of trouble until Monday’s hearing. How hard could that be?