A Course of Passion

29: Haunting Lies

When we get back to the precinct, Barba is already there and the team is waiting on us to go over everything we have, "so there is a home visit report on the Ozunas dated two weeks ago?" He asks, looking at all the papers.

"There is." Sonny confirms.

"That doesn't mean he was there." Finn adds on.

"If I had to guess, he hasn't seen the Ozunas for at least four months." Amanda tells Barba her thoughts.

"Four months? How do we know?" He questions.

She explains, "I ran a statement analysis on a year's worth of his home visit reports. Detail in his earlier reports compared to the latest... it's night and day."

"Walk me through this." He tells us.

All of us turn to the screen as she starts explaining, pulling up reports, "all right. Keith inherits the Ozuna case last November when his co-worker starts maternity leave. Now that jumps his caseload from 30 to 47."

"Even so, there's extensive handwritten notes on each field visit, and his typed reports are one, two, three pages, scanned in in a timely manner." Sonny elaborates

Amanda goes on, "yeah, and at this point, Keith's logging 16, 17-hour days, but with the court hearings and the family visits" she pauses.

"It's a losing battle." Fin finishes her statement.

"By April, no more handwritten notes." I finish his.

Barba then asks, "and after April?"

"No reports on the Ozunas were scanned in at all until the morning after Keisha died." Finn tells him.

"He goes in, and he backdates nine reports." Amanda adds.

Sonny goes further, putting the nail in the casket, "and all these cases take place at the same time that his calendar has him in court or visiting other clients miles away."

"His supervisor signed off on these? " Barba asks, finally agreeing to see it our way.

"Yep, even the ones scanned in eight hours after Keisha's death." I confirm.

"Okay, copy that." We hear Sonny say breaking the few moments of silence that followed. He tells us, "that was the sarge. She just got called down to 1PP by Dodds. They want a briefing on all the stuff we found at DCS."

"That's not good." Finn comments.

"No, it's not." Barba agree's, "why don't I walk down there. Pay my respects." He leaves the precinct with determination and the four of us share knowing glares.

We arrest Keith, Jeanette and Matt 2 days later. Although we officially dropped the case, Barba did not. He televised what happened, giving as much detail as he could, and made it clear that the city will not allow this kind of behavior. After arraignment, Barba was confronted outside the courthouse and he told us to get some kind of leverage so we can plead this out. Olivia and I head to the hospital the next day to talk to Keisha's mom, "Ms. Ozuna's agreed to talk with you, but she has a request. Do you think you could ask the judge to let me out for Keisha's funeral?" Her lawyer asks us as we enter the hospital room.

She lies on the bed cuffed, tears rolling down her face, "uh, yeah, we'll see about that." I say to her.

"Just help us understand something. How did it get so bad, Manuela?" Olivia asks her, "your caseworker's report said that you were clean and sober and both of your kids were okay."

She responds, "I was... until Filipe got released."

"Filipe?" I question the name.

"Bruno's dad." She clarifies, "after his bid in May, he moved back in with us."

"May?" I say, then turning to Olivia, "the home report didn't mention him."

"When was the last time you saw your caseworker?" Olivia asks her.

"I haven't seen a caseworker since Easter." She tells us flatly.

I exhale, but give her a prompt to continue with, "okay, so when Filipe moved back in, you guys started partying.."

"We weren't junkies. We were having fun. Drinking. Barbecuing." She tries to explain, "the two of us and Bruno, we were a family again."

"What about Keisha?" I ask defensively, putting a hand to my stomach.

"Felipe wasn't Keisha's dad." She answers back. Olivia puts her hand on my shoulder and I release the breathe I was holding in, "she didn't like us partying. She mouthed off to him, and I told her to keep her mouth shut, but she wouldn't listen. So Felipe got a cage."

Olivia asks the obvious, "and where's Felipe now?"

She informs us, "he got shot 4th of July weekend. Bled out on the ground." The tears start to come back to her eyes again, "I fell apart after that." She stares off past us and mutters, "Oh, my God. What have I done?"

Olivia and I share a glare and leave the room. Before I exit, I turn and tell her, "we'll see about getting you out of here for Keisha's funeral." The team meets at the precinct and we go over everything we have, making sure everything is in place and that we don't miss anything. As we start to discuss the other reports scanned in, Dodd's comes into the office and pulls Olivia aside. Amanda and I share a glare. It's known that I'm pregnant, but we all kept it quiet that Amanda was. Olivia is about to have two officers on, "desk duty" and the timing couldn't be worse. Sonny takes a call and I work on my paperwork from my meeting with Keisha's mom, when he hangs up, he tells us that Keith wants to talk and he's heading back up to the penitentiary. I decide to go with him, knowing my job duties outside these walls will be scarce as soon as Dodd's leaves Olivia's office.

Barba, Sonny and I are on one side of the small room while Keith and his lawyer sit at the table. Barba takes a seat,"tell us what happened." Barba directs him.

Keith spills, "Jeanette was breathing down my neck about the paperwork. She told me to stop coddling my clients."

"Meaning what?" Barba questions.

"Meaning stop taking their phone calls. Stop counseling." He tells us, "she would say, "This is casework, not social work."

"She told you this explicitly?" Our ADA asks him.

"Absolutely." He returns. Sonny and Barba share a knowing glare. Keith goes on, "Jeanette and Matt even said that I didn't have to make all my visits as long as there was some sort of record that I had."

"So when we found Keisha, you hadn't seen her for months, but Jeanette and Matt told you to report that you had." Sonny makes sure he gets what he's saying.

His lawyer jumps in, "this is where I say that my client has information that could prove very helpful in bolstering your case."

"Depending on what we hear, we could downgrade from manslaughter to criminally negligent homicide." Barba offers.

"Which is still a felony. We'll stop here then." Barba stands up, ready to walk, "not another word, Keith."

His own lawyer stands up but Keith stops us all, "no, look, wait. I don't care. I mean, they have to know." We all stare at him, waiting for him to go on, "Jeanette, so she calls me that Saturday, and she orders me to come into the office, and it's closed, but— Jeanette and Matt stand over me and make me file false reports saying that I had visited Keisha's home and noticed nothing was wrong."

"There were lots of reports filed that day, Keith. Were other caseworkers there?" I ask him, wanting to get as much as we can on those two that we can.

He answers, "no." I can see the regret in his eyes "I mean, we stayed there all day. We stayed there into the night filing lies for half the staff."

"And you're willing to testify to that?" Barba asks.

"Yes." He says. Dropping his head, "Keisha died on my watch. It's going to haunt me for the rest of my life." Jeanette ends up having a break down in court as Barba cross examines her. She is sent to Bellevue where she accepts the plea. Matt is going to do a year in jail and the the case is closed by the weekend.