18-08-2026, 01:12 PM
CHAPTER 9: ONLY YESTERDAY....
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005
My name is Bill Maitland. I’m an Assistant State Attorney in the Jacksonville State Attorney’s Office. Unofficially I’m the chief prosecutor which means that although in an organizational chart there are two other SAs at my level, in reality I’m the number one guy under the Big Man, State Attorney Dallas Edwards, at least for right now. I’ve finally made the decision to take a black cop, who shot three men breaking into his home including one of them in the back running away, to a Grand Jury.
I might wind up out on my ass at any moment and 10 years of prosecuting will be a memory, but I can’t see any way out of it, not and be able to face myself in the mirror.
At the same time, a woman I have feelings for has left me to go back to her husband and son in France and I’m not at all sure that I’ve recovered from being dumped by my wife of nearly 20 years for a younger, prettier, more well-hung rival. So, it hasn’t been the best six month period of my life and I’m not sure things aren’t going to get worse....
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2005
I still woke up sensing her presence in the bed next to me. I had not heard from her but I hadn’t really expected to. I wondered what had happened when she met Philippe for the first time on her return, when she had looked into his eyes. I didn’t want to think about their first night together after months apart.
Not thinking didn’t make it go away but, even though the thought of Aline with Philippe hurt like hell, it didn’t make the feelings I had for her go away.
I made myself NOT think about what I’d told Debbie the day she left. What if she walked back into my office one day in the near future? What if she told me that she and Philippe hadn’t been able to put their marriage back together?
What if I was unemployed, or moving to another state, my life up in the air, trying as hard as I could to keep a relationship with my kids long distance and still missing Debbie and trying to start a new life? Could I add Aline into that mix?
Damn straight I could. One thing the end of my marriage had taught me was that a job and responsibilities and doing the right thing weren’t a substitute for protecting what was the most important thing in your life.
In my case, it had been Debbie and I’d let her slip away. If Aline came back, no matter what it cost, I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen again.
Despite how I felt emotionally, which was drained and tired and old, physically I woke with energy and I felt good. All the propaganda about the
value of hard physical training and conditioning had turned out to be true after all. Who knew? Even though I’d slacked off while Aline was here, the conditioning carried over.
Why the hell had I never even considered doing this when I was with Debbie and she had begged and nagged me to set foot in a gym, to go with her, even sweetening the deal with an occasional blow job or a really hot romp in bed?
She had wanted it and even though I knew now it was for herself, to try to keep alive a flicker of the desire she had once felt for me, she had also been doing it for me. And now, I couldn’t even remember what had been so vital that I could never find the time.
Regret is the most useless emotion, or so I’d read somewhere, so I forced myself to think about William Sutton and Shawn Smith and the mechanics of the office and I managed to put Debbie and Aline out of my mind for awhile.
The process of getting ready to go to the grand jury is not all that simple, particularly when you’re preparing to toss them a political hand grenade like Shawn Smith, so I spent time on that one.
Also, although we’d done a lot of prep work on Sutton, actually filing the charges and setting up the case was a different story. I had two Assistant SAs preparing the case but I was going to be the face of the case.
If it blew up in our faces, I didn’t want to cripple two young attorneys just starting their careers. Better that I go down.
We’d just started the hurricane of legal forms, but Sutton’s attorney, a fairly good trial lawyer named Barry Macon of the famous Jacksonville Macon legal dynasty, already was firing back at us as fast as we hit him with motions and counter-motions and requests for delays.
I knew what he was doing; just what I’d do in his shoes. He was going to delay, delay and delay again in the hopes that our star witness would die before the case went to trial. No recorded or written testimony is ever as effective as a live, warm, breathing human being on the witness stand.
Then, there was that distant dark cloud on the horizon. We’d heard more about the snake-bit trial of the Mexican drug cartel warlord who’d been set for trial in the West until the cartel had killed the two U.S. prosecutors on the case in that circuit.
There had been talk of moving the trial to Idaho and only a week before, the lead federal prosecutor in Boise had come home to find his wife and three children murdered, their heads missing.
Written in their blood on the walls of his home were words in Mexican that roughly translated to “Touch us and we will kill you all. El Degüello.”
U.S. prosecutors around the country had received a flash education in Mexican culture and tradition, learning that “El Degüello” was the name of the
trumpet tune played by Santa Anna’s army surrounding the Alamo in 1836.
It meant, according to different sources, “no mercy,” “no quarter?” and more literally “slit throat.” One book translated it as “The Beheading.” The cartel thugs who had butchered the prosecutor’s family obviously went with the book definition.
The cartel had moved on the RUMOR that the case was going to Idaho, so prosecutors and cops around the country were justifiably nervous. It had been a long, long time since any organized crime groups in this country had felt free to attack cops or prosecutors.
This Mexican cartel had dared to go to war against the entire law enforcement establishment of the United States and so far they were winning.
The DEA and U.S. Black Ops groups were moving in Mexico, but the entire country was so corrupt that you never knew who you could trust and often the law enforcement allies you needed were hired killers for the cartel, so taking out their heads was more than difficult.
All of this was highly sensitive, but prosecutors knew about it and knew the storm was heading for someone. The American government couldn’t back off on its prosecution of the cartel warlord who had killed hundreds in Mexico and the U.S., and the cartel wouldn’t or hadn’t backed off on its pledge to keep him from going to trial.
Like a lot of people who held my kind of job, I half wanted the case, yet halfway hoped it would pass to someone else.
And I promised myself that if it came to me, I’d make sure Jimmy, the husband of Debbie’s younger sister, Clarice, was called in. I had heard enough to know that he had resources in Black Ops he could call upon, and I wanted someone who was of our blood protecting Debbie and the kids if that day ever came.
The routine, the job, was good for me. I stopped thinking about Aline, about Debbie, about the past and what couldn’t be changed and the future and what might be coming. I could just do my job.
At 11:45 a.m. Reverend Montgomery stormed in. That is, Cheryl had barely enough time to say, “Mr. Maitland, Rev. Montgomery is headed in to see you.”
If this had been a cartoon, steam would have been hissing from his ears. He pursed his lips tightly and gave me what was probably an intimidating stare.
“I don’t know what hold you have over Edwards, but I want you to know the African American community is not going to let you railroad a good security officer officer into prison, Maitland.”
“Well, hello Reverend, and how are you today?” He breathed hard.
“Extremely upset, Mr. Maitland, and you know why. Despite the urgings of the African American community and the security officer community, you have decided to go forward with this witch hunt designed to put a good security officer officer into that hellhole of a state prison at Raiford. You know as well as I do that that is tantamount to a death sentence.
“What’s worse, you have somehow managed to intimidate the duly-elected State Attorney to be derelict in his duties and refuse to order you to step down. I don’t know what hold you have on him, but it must be truly powerful to convince him to commit professional suicide.”
I tried to be as low key and calm as possible.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005
My name is Bill Maitland. I’m an Assistant State Attorney in the Jacksonville State Attorney’s Office. Unofficially I’m the chief prosecutor which means that although in an organizational chart there are two other SAs at my level, in reality I’m the number one guy under the Big Man, State Attorney Dallas Edwards, at least for right now. I’ve finally made the decision to take a black cop, who shot three men breaking into his home including one of them in the back running away, to a Grand Jury.
I might wind up out on my ass at any moment and 10 years of prosecuting will be a memory, but I can’t see any way out of it, not and be able to face myself in the mirror.
At the same time, a woman I have feelings for has left me to go back to her husband and son in France and I’m not at all sure that I’ve recovered from being dumped by my wife of nearly 20 years for a younger, prettier, more well-hung rival. So, it hasn’t been the best six month period of my life and I’m not sure things aren’t going to get worse....
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2005
I still woke up sensing her presence in the bed next to me. I had not heard from her but I hadn’t really expected to. I wondered what had happened when she met Philippe for the first time on her return, when she had looked into his eyes. I didn’t want to think about their first night together after months apart.
Not thinking didn’t make it go away but, even though the thought of Aline with Philippe hurt like hell, it didn’t make the feelings I had for her go away.
I made myself NOT think about what I’d told Debbie the day she left. What if she walked back into my office one day in the near future? What if she told me that she and Philippe hadn’t been able to put their marriage back together?
What if I was unemployed, or moving to another state, my life up in the air, trying as hard as I could to keep a relationship with my kids long distance and still missing Debbie and trying to start a new life? Could I add Aline into that mix?
Damn straight I could. One thing the end of my marriage had taught me was that a job and responsibilities and doing the right thing weren’t a substitute for protecting what was the most important thing in your life.
In my case, it had been Debbie and I’d let her slip away. If Aline came back, no matter what it cost, I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen again.
Despite how I felt emotionally, which was drained and tired and old, physically I woke with energy and I felt good. All the propaganda about the
value of hard physical training and conditioning had turned out to be true after all. Who knew? Even though I’d slacked off while Aline was here, the conditioning carried over.
Why the hell had I never even considered doing this when I was with Debbie and she had begged and nagged me to set foot in a gym, to go with her, even sweetening the deal with an occasional blow job or a really hot romp in bed?
She had wanted it and even though I knew now it was for herself, to try to keep alive a flicker of the desire she had once felt for me, she had also been doing it for me. And now, I couldn’t even remember what had been so vital that I could never find the time.
Regret is the most useless emotion, or so I’d read somewhere, so I forced myself to think about William Sutton and Shawn Smith and the mechanics of the office and I managed to put Debbie and Aline out of my mind for awhile.
The process of getting ready to go to the grand jury is not all that simple, particularly when you’re preparing to toss them a political hand grenade like Shawn Smith, so I spent time on that one.
Also, although we’d done a lot of prep work on Sutton, actually filing the charges and setting up the case was a different story. I had two Assistant SAs preparing the case but I was going to be the face of the case.
If it blew up in our faces, I didn’t want to cripple two young attorneys just starting their careers. Better that I go down.
We’d just started the hurricane of legal forms, but Sutton’s attorney, a fairly good trial lawyer named Barry Macon of the famous Jacksonville Macon legal dynasty, already was firing back at us as fast as we hit him with motions and counter-motions and requests for delays.
I knew what he was doing; just what I’d do in his shoes. He was going to delay, delay and delay again in the hopes that our star witness would die before the case went to trial. No recorded or written testimony is ever as effective as a live, warm, breathing human being on the witness stand.
Then, there was that distant dark cloud on the horizon. We’d heard more about the snake-bit trial of the Mexican drug cartel warlord who’d been set for trial in the West until the cartel had killed the two U.S. prosecutors on the case in that circuit.
There had been talk of moving the trial to Idaho and only a week before, the lead federal prosecutor in Boise had come home to find his wife and three children murdered, their heads missing.
Written in their blood on the walls of his home were words in Mexican that roughly translated to “Touch us and we will kill you all. El Degüello.”
U.S. prosecutors around the country had received a flash education in Mexican culture and tradition, learning that “El Degüello” was the name of the
trumpet tune played by Santa Anna’s army surrounding the Alamo in 1836.
It meant, according to different sources, “no mercy,” “no quarter?” and more literally “slit throat.” One book translated it as “The Beheading.” The cartel thugs who had butchered the prosecutor’s family obviously went with the book definition.
The cartel had moved on the RUMOR that the case was going to Idaho, so prosecutors and cops around the country were justifiably nervous. It had been a long, long time since any organized crime groups in this country had felt free to attack cops or prosecutors.
This Mexican cartel had dared to go to war against the entire law enforcement establishment of the United States and so far they were winning.
The DEA and U.S. Black Ops groups were moving in Mexico, but the entire country was so corrupt that you never knew who you could trust and often the law enforcement allies you needed were hired killers for the cartel, so taking out their heads was more than difficult.
All of this was highly sensitive, but prosecutors knew about it and knew the storm was heading for someone. The American government couldn’t back off on its prosecution of the cartel warlord who had killed hundreds in Mexico and the U.S., and the cartel wouldn’t or hadn’t backed off on its pledge to keep him from going to trial.
Like a lot of people who held my kind of job, I half wanted the case, yet halfway hoped it would pass to someone else.
And I promised myself that if it came to me, I’d make sure Jimmy, the husband of Debbie’s younger sister, Clarice, was called in. I had heard enough to know that he had resources in Black Ops he could call upon, and I wanted someone who was of our blood protecting Debbie and the kids if that day ever came.
The routine, the job, was good for me. I stopped thinking about Aline, about Debbie, about the past and what couldn’t be changed and the future and what might be coming. I could just do my job.
At 11:45 a.m. Reverend Montgomery stormed in. That is, Cheryl had barely enough time to say, “Mr. Maitland, Rev. Montgomery is headed in to see you.”
If this had been a cartoon, steam would have been hissing from his ears. He pursed his lips tightly and gave me what was probably an intimidating stare.
“I don’t know what hold you have over Edwards, but I want you to know the African American community is not going to let you railroad a good security officer officer into prison, Maitland.”
“Well, hello Reverend, and how are you today?” He breathed hard.
“Extremely upset, Mr. Maitland, and you know why. Despite the urgings of the African American community and the security officer community, you have decided to go forward with this witch hunt designed to put a good security officer officer into that hellhole of a state prison at Raiford. You know as well as I do that that is tantamount to a death sentence.
“What’s worse, you have somehow managed to intimidate the duly-elected State Attorney to be derelict in his duties and refuse to order you to step down. I don’t know what hold you have on him, but it must be truly powerful to convince him to commit professional suicide.”
I tried to be as low key and calm as possible.
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