JUSTICE BE DONE
Author: Carla Damron
First Edition
Trade Paperback
Retail: $18.95US; 302pp
ISBN 978-1-62268-181-5 print
ISBN 978-1-62268-182-2 ebook

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JUSTICE BE DONE

A Caleb Knowles Mystery
Book 4

Author: Carla Damron

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Chapter One

As the heavy metal door clanged shut, social worker Caleb Knowles felt the grim vibrations in his teeth. The stainless steel sliding bolt engaged with a bang as loud as a gunshot. How final it must sound to most of the men confined in the jail, including the kid Caleb had come to see.
    The officer escorting Caleb said, "Hands at your side. Walk in the center, out of reach."
    Caleb knew the drill. He passed cell after cell and tried not to react to the cacophony of shouts from inmates celebrating this smallest interruption to their routine.
    "Well, well, well. A redhead! I want me some of that!" A baritone voice boomed.
    Caleb kept his face neutral as he stared ahead, gripping his notepad.
    The officer smirked. "Moved the kid to the suicide watch cell yesterday. We got eyes on him all the time via video camera. That pen in your pocket—don't let him get his hands on it."
    Caleb understood the danger a pen could pose: a weapon that might be used on others or himself. They passed the spartan "suicide watch" cell where the boy spent his second night: a bare light that never turned off. No bed except a thin plastic pad on the floor. No sheets or blankets. A urinal that hadn't been cleaned since the Clinton administration. Loud. Cold. The child shouldn't have been in the adult jail but that was South Carolina for you.
    Hell on earth.
    "We agreed I'd meet with him in the interview room, right?" Caleb asked.
    The officer halted, giving Caleb a skeptical look up and down. "Yeah. He's waiting for you in Room 1. You got ten."
    Caleb didn't reply. He knew the kid would be handcuffed, a guard right outside the door. But getting him away from the relentless clamor might make him more likely to talk.
    Caleb entered the tiny cell at the end of the unit and dropped into a seat bolted to the floor. The kid, Laquan Harwell, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, leaned forward, the shackles chaining his wrists to his waist clacking against the metal tabletop.
    "Hi, Laquan. I'm Caleb Knowles. I'm a social worker." Caleb didn't reach to shake his hand because that was against the rules. Jails come with a lot of rules.
Laquan cocked his head, saying nothing. He had short black hair and big ears, as though he hadn't grown into them yet. His brown eyes looked crusty from lack of sleep.
    "You understand why you are here?" Caleb had no time for relationship building. They only had ten minutes.
    "Because of Friday," he muttered, his gaze fixed on the scarred tabletop.
    "Because Friday you . . ." Caleb needed the kid to speak the words. This would determine what he remembered about his crime and his level of self-awareness.
    "Because I beat up somebody at a store." He voiced no pride, just resignation.
    Awareness and memory intact, Caleb scribbled on his notepad, then added: Blunt affect, which meant his blank expression didn't match the situation.
    "And why did you beat him up?" Caleb leaned forward, hoping for eye contact.
    The kid shifted again. His hands, folded on the table, lay still. Calm. His nails were neatly trimmed, his fingers pudgy. Not that the kid was fat, he just looked boyish. He was only sixteen. "He pissed me off."
    "Can you tell me how he pissed you off?"
    A half shrug. Lip curling in a sneer that did not look genuine. "Wouldn't wait on me. I'm in line to buy my mama some soup and crackers behind a white guy. He waits on the white guy. Skips me and rings up a white girl with cigarettes she ain't old enough to buy. So yeah, I was pissed." He faked a no-big-deal tone, as though he was some bully used to assaulting people. Caleb didn't buy it.
    Still. The victim, Palmer Guthrie, age sixty-nine, owner of Guthrie's Stop and Shop, had three broken ribs, a sprained wrist, and a fractured orbital. Yeah, Laquan had been pissed all right.
    "You thought he was being racist?"
    Laquan wiped his upper lip where tiny beads of sweat had gathered. "Know he was. It ain't exactly a new phenomenon."
    Caleb leaned back and wished that for a moment, he could step outside his own whiteness. He understood the damage done by generational racism. The anger and pain handed down after centuries of abuse and maltreatment. But he understood it as a Caucasian, not as someone who'd lived it, who felt it roiling in his DNA. Being Black in South Carolina came at a cost.
    "You've dealt with Mr. Guthrie before?"
    "Only store within walking distance so yeah. Been dealing with him my whole life."
    "Does he always treat you like that?"
    Another shrug. "Sometimes better. Sometimes worse. Once I got myself a fountain drink and he tipped it over so it splashed all over my jeans. Made me clean it up."
    Caleb felt his jaw tighten. He'd want to punch the man, too.
    "What happened yesterday? What made you react like you did?" Caleb needed to determine if this was an act of impulse or something Laquan had been planning.
    Another shrug. "Last straw, I guess. Stupid. Look, I admitted what I done. Do we need to keep talking about it?"
    "I suppose not." Caleb felt for the kid. One bad decision, an impulse, had derailed his life. "You told one of the guards that you wanted to hurt yourself. That's why I'm here."
    The kid didn't look suicidal, but Caleb knew from experience how good males could be at hiding it.
    He nodded, rubbing his thumbs together.
    "You feel depressed?"
    "I'm in jail, so yeah."
    "Have you ever been depressed before?"
    "No. I'm not crazy. I don't need a shrink. Hell, I don't even need whatever it is that you are."
    "Clinical social worker," Caleb said. "I specialize in mental health. Now tell me more about wanting to hurt yourself."
    "I know what's going to happen. Black guy beating up an old white guy. They're gonna lock me up forever. That's my future. Who'd want to live like that?" He looked up at Caleb, eyes wide and beseeching. And so very young.
    Caleb spoke softly. "You're not an adult. That may not be your future."
    His laugh had a sardonic edge. "Yeah. Right."
    "Do you still feel like hurting yourself?"
    "I couldn't do anything here if I wanted to. But now I don't want to."
    "I'm glad to hear it. What happened to change that?" Caleb's smartwatch buzzed—a text coming in from his brother Sam. About time. He hadn't heard from his older sibling in over a week, but Caleb never responded to texts when he was with a client.
    "I talked to Mama. She was crying and all." He paused, drawing his lips in tight, emotions threatening to surface.
    "That must have been hard for you." Caleb wished he had more time, that he could let Laquan feel what he needed to feel, but that wasn't how it worked.
Tears moistened Laquan's eyes and he wiped them and muttered, "She's been through a lot. I don't want to put her through anymore."
    Caleb's wrist vibrated again. Sam usually wasn't this insistent.
    "I messed up. I don't want her to have to deal with a trial and all. But she said losing me would be worse."
    "I'm sure it would be. You love her very much, don't you?"
    He nodded, taking in a breath. "You got any more questions?"
    "Just a few." Caleb followed up with the typical mental status exam, not surprised that his client was fully oriented and displaying no signs of voices, paranoia, or any other symptoms of psychosis. "Is there anything else you want to tell me? I'm here to help you."
    Laquan's gaze flitted from the table to Caleb's face, his voice softening. "Can you get me out of that cell? I can't spend another night there. Let me go back to the other one. Please."
    Caleb saw it then, in his eyes. The vulnerability. The boy pretending to be a man. No way he should be stuck in an adult jail. "I'll do what I can."
    Caleb motioned to the officer waiting outside the doorway. He entered the room, unlocked Laquan from the table, and shoved him roughly out the door.
Caleb hurried behind them, eager to get to his phone to see what was up with this brother.
    The guard asked, "We need to keep him on suicide watch?"
    "I don't think so. He can return to general population unless he makes another threat or gesture. He needs to be transferred to a juvenile facility."
    The guard laughed at that.
    "Seriously. He's underaged. No way he should be here." Caleb looked him dead in the eye, hoping to sway him.
    "Yeah, well, he shoulda thought about that before he went off on an old man. Likely to be tried as an adult for that."
    Caleb sighed out his frustration.
    Caleb's phone had been secured in a locked cubby—a new jail policy—so as soon as he got it back, he scanned the chain of texts.
    Need a favor. Interpreter fell through. MD appt at 4. Can you sit in? Then, Sorry to bother you at work. If you're busy, I'll figure something else out.
    Caleb checked his calendar app. His four p.m. appointment had canceled. He replied. No problem. Send address.
    TY. Thank you.
    Caleb jogged out to his Subaru. A macramé ornament made by his thirteen-year-old daughter, Julia, hung from the rearview mirror. Julia lived in Charlotte with her mother, but the tasseled jute thing helped keep her with him.
    Early fall in Columbia meant bipolar weather: some days Hades-hot like July, others chilly enough to warn of winter. Today was in-between: warm and dry, with the trees beginning to hint of reds and yellows. Caleb turned on the AC and tapped the address Sam had sent into the GPS.
    He hadn't interpreted for Sam in over a year. Now that his deaf brother's success as an artist had exploded, he had the resources, and the reputation, to command the best sign language experts in the area. At first, Caleb had been a little insulted. He'd been interpreting for his older brother since he was deafened in a motorcycle accident at age sixteen but understood Sam wanting this independence.
    Sam had laughed when he brought it up. "How about you just be my brother for a while? God knows being yours is a full-time job." Which was probably true. When they were kids, and Dad had one of his outbursts, older brother Sam had always been the one to absorb the blows. As adults, Sam was his go-to whenever he had a problem, and Caleb served the same role for him.
    As he followed the GPS instructions, he tried to determine what kind of doctor Sam was seeing. Dentist? Dear God, don't let it be a proctologist.
    He put in a call to the office to let Janice, their sainted office manager, know he wouldn't be returning. "Any messages?" he asked.
    "Detective Briscoe called about your meeting with Mr. Harwell."
    "Yeah, yeah. I told the staff he could stay in general population. Can you let Claudia know I'll email her later?" Detective Claudia Briscoe had arranged for the consult with Laquan. She'd probably want details he wasn't prepared to give.
    "I'll see you tomorrow, Caleb," Janice said, and clicked off.
    Sam's directions led him to a large medical building near the hospital, one of those holding twenty different suites with twenty different practices. Sam hadn't been specific about which floor. As soon as Caleb parked, though, a wide hand rapped knuckles on his car window. Sam.
    "Hey," Caleb signed.
    "Hey. And thanks." Because Sam lost his hearing later in life, his speech was remarkably clear. He worked with a speech therapist to keep it that way.
    "So why are we here?" Caleb signed. "Broken tooth? Mammogram? Hemorrhoids?"
    "Not exactly." Sam pushed forward, checking his watch.
    Caleb tapped his shoulder. "We're not late yet."
    "I know. I just . . . Come on."
    "Okay then," Caleb said to his brother's back, wondering what had his brother in such a hurry. They entered a crowded elevator and Sam pushed the button for the eleventh floor. Caleb stayed close, watching him. Sam was the larger, more handsome of the two: Chiseled features. Thick waves of brown hair. Even thicker wallet. Annoying bastard.
    But now there was that tension knotting his jawbone and Caleb started to feel a tinge of worry.
    They entered the door marked "Palmetto Orthopedic Associates" and Caleb relaxed a little. Sam's back was probably acting up again because the damn fool refused to take better care of it. Since he'd been working on larger scale works of sculpture, he'd haul massive hunks of wood up ladders without asking for help or using proper equipment. Maybe Caleb could talk the doctor into giving Sam the lecture he was tired of giving. Sam was two years older than Caleb—almost fifty. Time to take better care of his body.
    Sam checked in and pointed to two chairs in the waiting area. He sat forward, elbows on knees, his eyes on the door to the examining area.
    Caleb tapped his knee. "Your back bothering you?"
    Sam squinted at him, then smiled. "Just a little."
    "Yeah. Right."
    Sam leaned back, studying Caleb. "When we go in there, I need you to be an interpreter. Not a meddling brother. Okay?"
    Sam must have figured out Caleb's lecture plans. "Okay," Caleb signed.
    "I mean it. This may . . . get complicated. I hope it won't, but it might."
    "I get it. Don't worry, Sam. I'll save the brothering for when we leave."
    Sam's answering smile had an edge of sadness to it and Caleb's tinge of worry amped up.
    A nurse came for them and Caleb liked how she walked right up to Sam rather than beckoning from the door which is meaningless for a deaf person. They went to an exam room, and the nurse sat Sam on a gurney to take his vitals, which were, as always, disgustingly strong.
    When Dr. Gabrick entered, he motioned for Sam to get off the table and sit in a chair. He rolled a stool over close to him.
    "You're the interpreter?" he asked Caleb.
    "Caleb Knowles," Caleb held out a hand, which the doctor shook.
    "Knowles?"
    "My brother," Sam said quietly.
    Gabrick nodded. He looked to be about forty, small-framed, with short dark hair and close-set, hawk-like eyes. "How are you feeling, Sam? Any pain?" he asked, and Caleb signed.
    "Just a little."
    "Good. Can I take a look?"
    Sam rolled up his right pantleg, which confused the hell out of Caleb. His leg and his back were hurting?
    Gabrick ran a hand along the back of his calf. "Looks like the incision is healing nicely."
    Incision?
    Sam cleared his throat and Caleb remembered to sign for him.
    The doctor lifted an iPad and swiped the screen. "Sam, I wish I had better news for you."
    "It's . . . cancer?" Sam whispered.
    "The mass—lump, as you call it—it is a soft tissue sarcoma as we feared."
    "What?" Caleb asked.
    Gabrick showed him the screen. "A large cancerous mass on the calf muscle here."
    Caleb blinked. Cancerous? Cancer? Sam had cancer?
    Sam gripped his still hands. "Caleb! You've stopped signing."
    "I can start over," Gabrick said.
    "It's okay. I got it." Caleb drew in a deep, calming breath and willed his hands to speak. He letter-signed "cancer" and "sarcoma" words he had never wanted in their vocabulary.
    Sam nodded slowly, his face going a little pale.
    "I'm referring you to an oncologist, Dr. Pamela Simm."
    Oncologist was another word Caleb hated to finger-spell. Crap. This was bad.
    "I suspect she'll want to take the tumor out, but she may want to treat it first. She's the best in the business, Sam. She'll take very good care of you."
    "Treat it?" Sam asked aloud.
    "To shrink the mass."
    "Do you think it's spread? I mean, beyond the lump?" Sam asked, and the fear in his voice nearly broke Caleb's heart.
    Gabrick gave him a sad smile. "I wish I could tell you something definitive. That the cancer was completely contained and would be gone with surgery. But honestly, I don't know. That's for Pamela to determine."
    Caleb didn't mean for his hands to shake as he signed this. He wanted to be strong. Steady. Whatever his brother needed him to be.
    "Do we call to set up an appointment?" Caleb asked the doctor.
    "I've already done that. She's working you in tomorrow at ten a.m." He handed Sam an appointment card.
    Sam studied it. "I'm supposed to meet with the installation committee at ten."
    "What?" Caleb asked. "The installation committee? Christ, Sam. That can wait." His brother had been working like a fiend with another artist on a sculpture to honor the memory of a state senator who'd been assassinated. That had to take a backseat to this new reality.
    "Sam," Dr. Gabrick tapped Sam's knee. "This is a lot to take in, I know. But seeing Dr. Simm tomorrow is important. Dealing with this tumor as soon as possible needs to be your priority." He glanced over at Caleb as though making sure he'd signed every word.
    "He'll get there." Caleb turned to Sam and signed: "We'll get there, right?"
    "Yeah." Sam pocketed the card and stood.
    Gabrick stopped him at the door. "You're going to be tempted to get on your laptop and google the hell out of 'soft tissue sarcoma.' My advice? Don't. But if you must, stay with these websites." He handed Sam a sheet of paper with five website addresses. "These are reputable and might even be helpful. But the real answers will come from Pamela. Good luck, Sam. And reach out if you need anything from me."
    Caleb followed Sam to his pickup, wishing his brother would say something. Sam fished out his keys and unlocked the door. Caleb lingered as Sam climbed in, then tapped his shoulder. "Where are you going?" he signed.
    "Home."
    "I'll follow you."
    "Not now, Caleb. I need some time."
    Caleb didn't like it but expected it. Sam tended to pull inside himself when things got tough. He'd give him some alone time, then check on him later. In the meantime, he had his own research to do.
    He held up his phone and wagged it at Sam. "You stay in touch with me."
    Sam reached for Caleb and pulled him into a quick, unexpected hug. "Thanks for coming today."
    Caleb backed away as Sam started the truck. Thanks for coming? Where else on God's green earth would he be when his brother needed him?
    And it looked like Sam needed him now more than ever.

copyright ©2023 Carla Damron

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