“Better every day, Mr. Glass.” Hermes glanced over his shoulder to the little room where Nikolas did his work. “He’s at the computer again. So that’s good. He says to ask you if you need anything.”
“I’m good for now.” I placed a few dollars in the tip jar, then picked up the two steaming cups of coffee.
“Emma working out OK?”
“You already know the answer to that.” I walked over to a little table with sugar and cream and started to prepare the drinks. “Emma’s been great.”
Hermes nodded. “She was a good lawyer.”
I stopped. Emma’s a lawyer. I knew she was more than just a quick learner. Now it made sense.
“Back home,” Hermes clarified. “In Bosnia, she was a well-known lawyer. Women’s rights. Human rights. My cousin, she was the first that had to leave when the troubles started.”
“Emma never told me.” I felt bad, when I also realized that I’d never asked.
“She doesn’t talk about what happened to her.” He paused. “Makes her sad. Makes me sad.” He shook his head. “Nobody recognizes any of our degrees here, but . . .” Hermes went a little distant again and stopped talking, then shrugged. “We’re alive.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“Suppose I shouldn’t have,” he said. “It’s not good to brag, but if you can’t brag on family . . . who to brag on?”
“Exactly.” I picked up the cups of coffee and took them back to the table. I put one down in front of Schmitty and sat down across from him. “See anything?”
“A little.” He pushed the papers aside and looked up. “More interested in what you see.”
“Well I’ve interviewed about thirty families. There are more, but we prioritized.”
Schmitty grinned. “Meaning that you focused on the ones who could pay.”
“Of course.” I smiled. “But if the family was associated with one of the kids identified and found in the woods, we interviewed those folks, regardless.” I leaned across the table. I found the one-page summary sheet with a star drawn in the corner. “This is the one that just has the information about the known Lost Boys. The ones we know were found with Devon in the woods.”
Schmitty looked at it.
“See something in common?” I pointed at the last column on the sheet that identified the boys’ probation officers.
“Six out of nine.” Schmitty thought for a moment. “Don’t know what the caseloads are like.” He rubbed his chin. “Could be a coincidence. Could be some other explanation, geographic assignment or something.”
“Could be.” I leaned back. “Or maybe not.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Schmitty set up the meeting for eleven o’clock at Kendrick’s Chili on Broadway. I wasn’t expecting much, but I was curious. I hadn’t ever met someone who was so universally hated.
According to Schmitty, Jimmy Poles was a wiseass, but not the funny kind. His face rested in a snarl. He was always on high alert to snap out an insult or release a high-pitched whine when asked to do his job or otherwise exert energy.
Poles was never asked to go out for a beer after work or invited to lunch by the other probation officers, yet he somehow found out about any such gathering and weaseled his way to the table. That was Jimmy Poles. People couldn’t say his name without shaking their head in dismay.
He was, however, union. Poles couldn’t get fired for annoying the hell out of everybody. The best his supervisors could do was keep a calendar. The calendar counted down the days until his retirement: 8,478 on the day that I met him.
Some of my families had never seen or heard of Poles, even though their missing sons were supposed be on intensive supervised probation with him. A high-risk juvenile was to be seen by their probation officer at least once a week. Poles fell far short of that standard.
To the family members who had actually spoken with him or met him, most didn’t know his name. He was simply a skinny white dude with a crew cut and an attitude.
One mother had told me, “He walked up in here like he was the master. Didn’t matter that it was my damn house.”
Twenty minutes late, Poles walked in the door. I recognized him immediately from the descriptions I had heard during the interviews.
I raised my hand, and he shot me a look. Poles made it clear that his presence was not voluntary. His supervisor had forced him to come, after the supervisor’s supervisor got the call from above.
He came over to the table and then folded his long body into the chair.
I held out my hand to introduce myself. “Justin Glass. Thanks for coming.”
He hesitated, staring at my hand for a moment. I could tell that he was contemplating whether he should touch it at all. He decided to shake my hand and said, “I know who you are.”
Smiling, I tried to soften the mood. “Could be good or could be bad, depending on what you know.”
His eyes narrowed, and then he looked off to the side with a smirk. Whatever he was thinking, he didn’t share it with me.
We sat for a moment in silence. Poles drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Then he said, “Well let’s get on with it.” He looked at me flat. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about yourself.”
Poles didn’t say anything, and then he barked, “We on a date?”
“No, but right now I think you know some things about all these missing kids.” I leaned forward, holding his stare. “So I’m hoping you can help me out. Being a prick isn’t really going to benefit you much in this situation.”
Poles lifted his hand, making it clear that I should stop talking. “I’m here because my boss told me I had to come.” He shrugged. “Didn’t say anything about talking about my life or being Mr. Warm and Fuzzy.”
“Wasn’t expecting Mr. Warm and Fuzzy.” I leaned back. “Just hoping for smart.” I signaled to the waitress from across the room. She came over and I ordered a chili dog, a bag of chips, and a Diet Coke. She turned to Poles, and he shook his head, refusing to order. Then she walked away.
“So”—I turned back to Poles—“you want to talk about these kids, or let me assume the worst about you?”
I opened my folder and then pushed the photographs of all the young men who had been assigned to Poles and were now missing.
Poles quickly flipped through the stack. “Don’t have much to say,” he said. “I got a big caseload, and they all pretty much look the same. Don’t leave much of an impression, you know, other than they’re a waste of everybody’s time.”
“Lost causes?”
Poles laughed. “Beyond lost causes.” He pointed at me, getting angry. “You all expect us to be miracle workers. We’re not. None of these kids want to change. None of their families want to change.”
“None?” I raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying there’s never been a kid who wanted a better life.”
Poles got silent. Then he said, “No.” He shook his head. “Not that I met. Not really.”