When I got back from court, Christi had another voicemail from Margaret waiting for me. I was glad she didn’t know my mobile number. It was the third one I’d received since this morning.
“You’re going to have to call her back eventually,” Christi said without looking at me. She was filing her fingernails from behind the reception desk at the front of the office suite. “Why don’t you just get it over with?”
I knew I was being ridiculous, but somehow the thought of talking to JJ’s mother took me back to my childhood in the trailer park. The people living there hadn’t been what you would call “cosmopolitan” in their attitudes, and I had learned at an early age to keep most of my questions and thoughts for the local public library, rather than face what would, at best, be the vacuous stares of most of our neighbors. They weren’t bad people. They obeyed the law and held steady employment, but they seemed… limited in the range and scope of their thinking.
This caused me to develop a slightly withdrawn nature that I didn’t really get away from until sometime during college, probably before law school, although I can’t exactly pinpoint when I started to change. Even now I can revert back to that old habit at times, especially when I encounter people from my childhood.
I had made the conscious decision when I went away to college to sever all ties with the people in that trailer park, especially JJ. I had wanted nothing to do with that life or the road that I had sensed he was headed down. The only person I still voluntarily saw from my childhood was my “big sister”, Christi.
I walked back to the 250 square foot room that I rented as an office, closed the door, took a deep breath, and asked my computer to dial Margaret’s number. She picked up on the first ring.
“Robbie!” she said with her raspy smoker’s voice. “I’m so glad you called me back! It’s about JJ.”
I was afraid she was going to say that.
She quickly continued on: “He needs your help.”
#
I gazed out on downtown from the reception area of the Foundation for Prison Reform. About ten stories directly below the window was Congress Avenue. My eyes followed the road north towards the State Capitol Building. Another skyscraper was going up a few blocks away from it.
“Nice view?” a reserved female voice said from behind me.
I turned around to see a young woman in her early twenties holding out her hand. Thick wavy dark locks terminated in curls around her shoulders. Her skin was slightly olive in complexion. I am about average height, but I was at least a foot taller than her, so her head was tilted back as she looked up at me through thick-rimmed glasses that were perched atop her pretty button nose. The thickness of the lenses amplified the size of her intelligent brown eyes. She wore a white blouse and blue skirt, and a slim silver chain hung around her neck, weighted with a turquoise pendant sitting atop her buxom physique.
“I’m Val Martinez.”
“Robert Daniel,” I responded as I shook her hand.
I was pleased when she said: “I’m going to be your liaison with the Foundation during the litigation.”
She led me down a hall to her office. I was impressed by its immaculate appearance and modern furniture. A painting of the Dallas skyline adorned one of the walls.
“You’re from Dallas?” I asked as I sat down.
“Yes,” she said as she walked behind her desk. She gestured towards the painting. “A friend painted that for me when I moved here to attend the University. Where are you from?”
“Houston.”
“What brought you here to practice law?”
“There are too many memories in Houston, so I resolved never to live there when I graduated from high school. After law school, I got a deal on office space at the place my cousin, Christi, manages here in town. I also wanted to be close to her and her son, because she was like a sister growing up, and they’re the only family I’ve got left.”
“And Margaret Johnson told me that you were childhood friends with JJ?”
“That’s right.” I said, keeping my tone as flat and professional as I could. “We lost touch after I left for Texas State, but we grew up together, and went to the same high school, at least until he dropped out. Up until a week ago, the last thing I had heard about him was when Christi told me in college that he had been arrested for armed robbery. Then, his mother called me out of the blue last Tuesday and told me he had been released from prison for about a year and a half, thanks to your pilot program, but the state legislature had decided to pull the plug due to political pressure. Now, he is back in prison.”
“Yes, unfortunately, that is the situation. Did Mrs. Johnson explain our program to you?”
“Just the bare details. Something about remote electronic monitoring of convicts so that incarceration is unnecessary?”
“That’s it in a nutshell. JJ volunteered to have certain devices surgically implanted that allow us to monitor everything he sees and hears at all times. Another implanted device allows us to keep track of his location down to a square meter, anywhere on the face of the planet.”
Read the rest at Smashwords.com or Amazon.com:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1120616
https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Scope-Other-Stories-Speculative-Fiction/dp/1549874942/