Exposure (30 page)

“The preparation charge is self-explanatory, and a misdemeanor. ‘Obscene literature and exhibitions’ means, in this case, distribution of pornography, generally. The photos of Miss Wilkes—who is under age eighteen—constitute child porn, hence the ‘Second degree exploitation of a minor’ charge and possession of child porn. Those are felonies,” the attorney explained, “as you are now all too aware.”

It was four
P.M.
, and he’d just been released from his pen at the jail, thanks to his mother promising away the equity in her house in order to post his bond, an arduous process of gathering paperwork, lining up an appraiser, getting the appraisal done, making sure the home’s value exceeded the bond debt by twenty thousand dollars, minimum, and then filing more forms with various offices and waiting for approval—she’d told him all the details on their way here. It wasn’t a happy story, but he preferred it to what he’d
been
hearing. For the better part of three days he’d been locked up, alone, in a small cell, listening to the trash talk of the inmates around him who, like him, claimed to have landed there on all completely bogus charges. He hadn’t slept much on the understuffed bunk mattress, and now fought exhaustion and anger and a gnawing in his gut that had begun in the middle of his first night in jail, shortly after the man in the cell across from his informed him that if he didn’t plead out and be done with it, it could take a year for his case to be tried. A year, maybe longer, and judges got cranky with self-righteous perps who wouldn’t plead—he’d get the maximum sentence, that’s how it worked.

A
year
. He was supposed to be well into his freshman year at college by then, waking up every day to see Amelia’s long lashes resting against her cheeks, being greeted by her sleepy smile, cooking her eggs—over
gently
, that’s how she liked them, for breakfast, and at the end of the day, tucking into bed and pulling her into his arms and breathing in the
Amelia
scent of her, rose petals and jasmine and her warm, smooth skin. He was not supposed to be hanging around Raleigh in limbo, waiting to see whether twelve of his fellow citizens would decide that he was, in fact, a reprobate, a perverted sex offender, a danger to society who ought to be punished accordingly.

Three days without a shower—he’d heard too many stories about what went on in jail to take the guards up on that offer. Three days wearing a demeaning Day-Glo orange and white striped jumpsuit. Three days without music, without a decent book. Another three goddamn days without Amelia.

“Felony,” his mother repeated, as if learning a new word. He watched her face fall with the import of it, and fall further when Ms. Davis said, “Yes. The possession charge is class 1, which
could
mean a year’s prison time.”

“You’re not serious,” his mother said. “Prison?”

“I’m
not
going to prison,” he said.

“But it wouldn’t be a year, in this case,” the attorney assured them. “Anthony has no priors, and it’s not a violent crime.” Anthony watched his mother rub her mouth as she processed this, while Ms. Davis continued, “The other charge, First degree exploitation of a minor, is class C, twelve years, max—though there’s no judge in his right mind who’d impose the maximum. I have to doubt prison would be in the picture at all … but honestly, I don’t know. We’re on uncharted ground here.”

His mother’s hand stopped and her eyes grew as wide as he’d ever seen them. His had widened, too—he could feel his eyebrows practically at his hairline. Twelve?
Twelve
? The words that had followed could not compete with the impact of
twelve years
.

His mother said, “You say that, but no
prosecutor
in his right mind would consider what Anthony’s done an actual crime, either. I’m not terribly reassured.”

“Twelve
years
?” Anthony said, still stunned, while his mother wrapped her arms around her middle and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, he saw something unfamiliar to him: fear. Seeing this in a woman who had never, to his knowledge, panicked about anything, made him flush with fear himself.

Ms. Davis said, “Only for repeat offenders, and particularly egregious situations. Don’t worry.”

Anthony snapped, “Oh, okay, right, ‘don’t worry’—for me it’d only be, what, ten years?”

“Anthony,” his mother said, putting her hand on his. “Stop.”

He pushed his chair back from the conference table and stood up. “I just want to know exactly, specifically, how fucked up this is getting. And don’t ask me to apologize for the language,” he added, going to the window, which overlooked most of Raleigh’s pale, ordinary office buildings, all of them grayish under an overcast, pewter sky. “I think I’m entitled.”

“Six,” Ms. Davis told him. “No more than that—assuming the Feds don’t bring charges, and I have to say, it’s hard to think they would.”

“Oh, only six.” He turned to face them again. “Six years ago I was a twelve-year-old. I barely
remember
six years ago. That’s a third of my life. Six
years
,” he said in disgust. “Six years—from whenever I actually get sentenced—is when I’m planning to be writing and acting in plays, and taking the subway to the Met, and listening to Amelia sing, I don’t know, ‘Thank You for the Music,’ maybe, eight shows a week.” With his words came a memory of her singing this while they walked along the street from Cameron’s house to the park and playground nearby. She had the perfect balance of sweetness and soulfulness in her voice, and hearing her sing opened his heart, splayed it so that he was helpless to resist her. He could not spend six years away from that, from her.

His mother said, “Am I completely dense? Because I just don’t understand how his having pictures of a seventeen-year-old who is his girlfriend can be considered ‘child pornography.’ She’s not a twelve-year-old, for God’s sake, and he’s not exploiting her. No one else ever saw the photos.”

Ms. Davis said, “The law requires that a person be eighteen or older to view or be represented in images considered to be overtly sexual. Period.”

“Eighteen,” his mother said, “when they can legally be having sex at sixteen. They can get
married
at that age, if a parent allows it, and at
fourteen
if they have a court’s consent, isn’t that right?” She rubbed her mouth again, then went on, “ ‘Sexual exploitation’? Come on. I’m not saying that what they did was the smartest thing, but please,” she urged, “tell me how this makes any sense at all.”

“Ms. Winter, if I let those kinds of questions bind me up, I’d never be able to do my job. For our purposes, we need to stay focused on what to do about the charges so that your son gets the best deal possible.”

“Deal?” his mother said. “Do you mean as in plea bargain? What happened to dismissal?”

“Felony charges resulting from irrefutable evidence, that’s what happened. I spoke with the prosecutor on the case several times this week, and there’s no question that Liles, the DA, is gunning for incarceration—so unless a judge is inclined to cut Liles off at the knees, which we shouldn’t hope for, the realistic scenario is that Anthony pleads to the most minimal charge I can get away with.”

“How do you know it’s ‘irrefutable’? What if there’s been, I don’t know, evidence tampering, or … or there’s some loophole or technicality—”

“Ms. Winter, look, I realize that kind of thing happens a lot on TV. I enjoy a ninth-inning save as much as the next person. And I’ll be seeking out every possible route to that result. My job, though, is to help Anthony, and you, get real about the situation we’re facing. Given that he admitted to some of it already—”

“But wait,” his mother said, sitting up eagerly, “he said those things before they read him his rights, so doesn’t that make it inadmissible?”

Ms. Davis shook her head. “He wasn’t being arrested at that point. They asked him questions, and he chose to answer them. He didn’t have to.” She tapped her pen on the table and looked at Anthony. “Never tell the police anything.”

“You’ve said. I was trying to be cooperative.”

“Well, stop it,” she said, smiling slightly.

“I didn’t know what we did was a crime.”

“It shouldn’t be. But, strictly speaking, it is, so we have to react accordingly. The question, however, is why the DA got his shorts in a twist about two teenagers who are in a consensual relationship. It’s got to be a political ploy.…” Her voice trailed off for a moment, then she added, “And while you also won’t want to hear this, I need to tell you that defending you against the new charges means an increase in my fees. We have a great deal more work to do than if this had remained … contained, let’s call it.”

“I understand,” his mother said, in a voice strangled by the tightening grip of his stupidity. “We’ll manage.”

Anthony leaned against the wall and said, “How much?”

“Honey,” his mother said, that awful expression of fear still in her eyes, “it doesn’t matter.”

“Ms. Davis?” he demanded. It did matter. He was already the cause of a burden his mother shouldn’t be shouldering—though if he understood the bond process, she wouldn’t actually lose any of her equity in the house as long as he remained in town and showed up for any and all court dates. She’d written the lawyer a check for five thousand dollars already; he was not going to let her carry the rest of the expenses, too. It mattered because he needed to figure out how much, beyond his college savings, he’d need to raise—and how to do it.

“Double the misdemeanor fee,” Ms. Davis said, “so ten thousand to start, but there will be other costs, too, especially if we end up in front of a jury. The psychologist can run two to three thousand—unless your health insurance covers it?”

His mother said, “Not likely, but I’ll check.”

“And I strongly suggest you retain my private investigator—he’s a pro, I’ve worked with him for more than five years. We’ll need to talk to her teachers, neighbors, friends—”

“Whose?” his mother said.

“The girl’s. Miss Wilkes’s.”

Anthony pushed away from the wall, newly alert. “Why would we need to do that?”

“For this to not be your fault, we’ll need to show that it’s all her doing. You were coerced. She enticed you with, what might we say, promises of access? Young men are too easily influenced by aggressive young women. You had no idea that what you were being led to do was illegal.”

He shook his head. “That last part is right, but I’m not going to lie about Amelia to save my own skin. Find some other strategy.”

“I can make peripheral arguments in hopes of reducing the charges, but if we have to go to trial—and we need to be prepared for that possibility—that’s
the
strategy. I told you it’d come to this. If the jury sees you as a victim, they won’t convict you as a perpetrator. And trust me, she’ll be using the same strategy in her own defense.”

Anthony heard the words
in her own defense
, but couldn’t make sense of them. “What do you mean? Defense against what?”

His mother looked at the attorney first, then at him, then back at her and said, “I didn’t tell him yet.”

He said, “Tell me what?”

“Listen, Anthony, sweetheart … I didn’t want to trouble you with this until … Well, I don’t know,” she said, “I didn’t want to tell you at all. Not that I wouldn’t have. Amelia … Amelia was arrested Monday night, too.”

“What are you talking about? Who told you that?”

“The news is everywhere. The DA has charged you both.”

“Same charges, more or less,” Ms. Davis added.

Anthony gaped at her. “Same charges? How?”

“She took and sent photos of herself, right? Thus, she was preparing and distributing pornography. Child pornography, because she’s a minor.”

“That’s insane—and ‘exploitation’? A person can exploit
herself
?”

“The law doesn’t differentiate. The only reason they didn’t peg
you
with this the first time around is because you’re eighteen.”

“When I called you, why didn’t you tell me this could happen?”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything. Given the DA’s actions, it appears that whatever they found in your computer and such got Liles thinking he had something more to work with. He must’ve had a sense that he would to begin with, or he’d never have bothered with the search warrant.”

“So I guess Wilkes didn’t sic them on me.” This was what he’d imagined had been the case, until hearing this, about Amelia.

“Mr. Wilkes is, I expect, tying himself in knots right now, given his original involvement—and, I’m sure, writing out a very large check to counsel whose fees make me look cheap. And speaking of which,” she said, closing the notebook in which she’d made her notes, “I’m going to need another check from you, and then I’ll get started trying to untangle yours.”

20

ALEIGH
, N
ORTH
C
AROLINA, AND ITS METRO NEIGHBORS OF
Durham and Chapel Hill, known together as “The Triangle,” was home to nearly two million people on that mid-November Thursday evening, the evening of Anthony Winter’s release, when one of the leading television news stations made Amelia and Anthony the subject of a community-interest series. One of the station’s producers had, perhaps without thinking, titled it “The Terrible Teens,” not intending to label the couple who’d inspired it as “terrible,” but referring instead to the teenage years and the dangerous behaviors of teens. “The Terrible Teens” series would span three evenings and feature a different “expert” each time.