I thought about the two floors of pods. “So most of this place is empty?”
“Yes. And we haven’t seen any real uptick in crime. The media doesn’t report that or make it seem that way, but that’s what the actual data tells us,” said Judge Bryce. “And it’s the same thing at all the JDAI sites throughout the country.”
After the tour was done, Judge Bryce led me out of the detention facility. I was once again given the clipboard, this time to sign out, and once again I slid it back through the slot.
Judge Bryce checked his watch. “Well that’s kind of the end of the tour.”
I nodded. “Thank you.” Then I thought about Isaac Turner and what he’d seen the night that his brother disappeared. “How do they transport the kids here or send them out to placement?”
Judge Bryce thought for a minute. “Oh . . .” He walked to a window at the end of the hallway. He pointed down at a little parking lot behind the JDC. “We got these vans. They’re down there. Want to see them?”
I nodded. “A closer look would be great.”
Judge Bryce hesitated. “It’s getting late.”
“Please.” I smiled, keeping it light.
“OK.” Judge Bryce caved pretty easily. He was a social guy, and I could tell that sitting alone in his chambers was killing him. He liked talking to people.
Judge Bryce led me back toward the main entrance, then back to the administrative offices, where he held his identification card up to the magnetic reader. The door clicked open, and we entered an area where clerks pushed and sorted the massive amount of paperwork that flowed through the juvenile and family court system. Unlike the adult criminal cases that had been converted to electronic files, juvenile and family courts still conducted business the old-fashioned way.
Judge Bryce greeted all the staff by name as he led me to another elevator. “This is the secret one,” he said. “It allows us to go from our cars up to our chambers without ever going in the public common area.” He pressed a button. A few seconds later, a bell dinged and the doors slid open.
We got in the elevator, and Judge Bryce pressed the button labeled with a capital B for basement. The elevator brought us down a level.
“Not the nicest place in the world, but the parking is free, and it’s convenient.” Judge Bryce led me out into the little parking garage. It was the basement of the Juvenile Justice Center. There were no windows. It was all concrete with large columns that supported the building above us.
Judge Bryce kept walking, and I followed as he made conversation. “Not too many people get to park under here—there’s the judges, and then the managers of the juvenile courts and the probation supervisors.” We walked a little farther toward a large metal garage door. “Of course the probation officers are always trying to park down here during the off hours, but they really shouldn’t.”
As we got closer to the garage door, Judge Bryce pointed to a rack of keys. “So here are the keys. Then when a PO—I mean, probation officer—wants to pick up a kid for court, he grabs a key and takes a van. Same goes for anyone who has to transport a kid to a placement somewhere. They grab a key and take a van.”
“No sign-out or anything.”
“There’s supposed to be, but we don’t have one. You know Saint Louis. A little weird like that—a big city that acts like a small town sometimes.” Judge Bryce pushed a button, and the garage door rolled open with a clatter. The noise echoed off the garage’s concrete walls. “Why’re you interested in all this?”
As we walked out into the parking lot behind the detention center, I said, “We had a kid who says he saw his brother being taken. The brother—he’s one of the Lost Boys I represent.” I pointed at the row of blue vans. “Says the guy who took him was driving one of these.”
Judge Bryce took in the information. Then he nodded. “That explains the whispers I’ve heard about Jimmy Poles.”
When we got back to the elevator, Judge Bryce and I took a ride back up to the main level. I could tell that he wanted to say something more, but not in the building. We walked out the front door together, and then I pointed at my rusted Honda in the corner of the lot. “That’s me.”
He nodded, and then, when we got to my car, Judge Bryce said, “Thank you for coming to see me today.”
“I should be thanking you.”
“No.” Judge Bryce shook his head. “What you’re doing for these missing kids is important. If this was helpful at all, I’m glad I could do it.”
“No problem.” I turned and unlocked my car. I was about to get inside when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I stopped. “Something the matter, Judge?”
“Maybe.”
I turned back around so that I could face him. “What is it?”
“I was thinking,” he said. “You should go public with this.”
“With what?”
“With what you know,” Judge Bryce said. “The van, the probation officer, maybe even identify Jimmy Poles . . . I don’t know. Just letting these families tell their stories from their perspective.” He shook his head darkly. “Good God. You go public, you’ll get people to come forward. There’d be outrage. It’s the only way that the investigation is going to move forward. They may say that they won’t treat Poles differently—because he isn’t a real cop, just probation—but he’s part of the system, and the system protects its own. It’s called the blue line, and nobody wants to cross it.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re working on it.”
Judge Bryce shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Suppose Sergeant Schmidt told you that.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
I had hoped that the momentum would continue, but it didn’t. Judge Bryce was right. The investigation had stalled.
There wasn’t enough. The fact that Jimmy Poles was the probation officer for most of the Lost Boys and that Isaac Turner had seen his brother getting into a probation van on the night he disappeared hadn’t resulted in any arrest. If the JJC had kept a record of who took the vans out and when they were returned, then there’d be something, but there were no records.
When I talked with Schmitty and told him what Judge Bryce had said about going public with Jimmy Poles, he told me that he’d think about it, but I knew that he didn’t like the idea. Maybe Schmitty was protecting the system, maybe he wasn’t.
The second interviews were over. The files had been read and reread. The spreadsheet was done, and I couldn’t think of anything more to do. I wondered whether anything would happen, and then I remembered what the police chief had warned me about when we had met at Castlewood State Park. He had told me that it was a “tense time.”
Anything could happen, he said, and it turned out the police chief was right.