Anonymous Tip: Chinese Worry Balls

A Review Series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris

Pp. 200-207

Today shit starts getting freaky at the CPS headquarters. But first we have to endure Wally Elrod delivering legal documents again. It’s Monday afternoon, if you remember, and Wally had just finished delivering summonses and complaints for the day when he noticed some new documents had come in, including one for Rita. Even though Farris tells us Wally never went out for a second round of deliveries and even though it was nearly four o’clock. Wally decided to make the delivery so he could have a chance to make another jab at Rita.

He laughed to himself thinking about Coballo’s comments at their last interaction.

Oh yes, so funny. Here’s what happened last time:

She did not resent being served, but when Elrod made the mistake of asking if she was Mrs. Coballo, her feminist ideology took over.

“I’ll thank you for leaving your sexist titles to yourself. It’s Ms. Coballo, if you don’t mind,” she fumed.

Elroy raised his eyebrows and said, “Hope your broom is working well to fly you to court on Tuesday.” He was two months from retirement and simply didn’t care anymore.

Ha ha ha. Funny. Gag.

Anyway, Wally goes to the CPS office and goes first to Blackburn’s office and gives him the summons and complaint. Blackburn asks what they are, but Wally interjects—“Don’t explain ’em, just serve ’em.” Wally next asks for Donna and Rita. Blackburn phones Donna and Rita and they both come in. It’s lucky one or both aren’t out in the field, but then I’m starting to think Casey’s is the only case they’re handling in the moment. Donna rolls her eyes when Wally gives her her papers. She starts to leave, but Blackburn tells her to stay. “I want to discuss this so-called lawsuit after this man leaves,” he says.

When Wally gives Rita her papers it goes like this:

“Mrs. Coballo, here are some more legal papers for you.”

“You sexist pig,” Coballo said.

Blackburn shot her an angry look.

Elrod fined a shocked expression and turned to face Blackburn. I deserve an Academy Award for this performance, he thought to himself.

“He did this same sexist bit the last time he served me a subpoena,” Coballo said to Blackburn, ignoring everyone else in the room. “He also called me a witch.”

“Officer, I will thank you to not harass my staff when you are serving papers,” Blackburn said, glaring at Elrod. “I’ll have your job if you ever do this again.”

Wally tells Blackburn he’s going to need a second job to pay for the damages Peter Barron is asking for, and that “in just three weeks, I’m retiring, so I’d be glad to see you get my job, mister.”

The really perverse thing about this entire section is that I can just feel Farris chuckling while writing it. Haha, so funny, feminists are so easy to rile up! But frankly, that moment when Blackburn orders Wally to stop harassing his staff is the first moment I’ve actually liked Blackburn. It’s probably also the first thing he’s done what a boss is actually supposed to do, as opposed to leading his employees into unethical behavior.

Blackburn tells Donna and Rita to go “get busy on this case” and then calls Donna back after a half hour to discuss it. We’re supposed to know he’s worried because he’s playing with Chinese worry balls when Donna enters.

“I assume you have read this lawsuit that you have brought on this department,” Blackburn said.

Okay, good feelings for Blackburn are officially over. He’s the one who invented “Code B” and he’s the one who approved her using it in this case and he’s the boss, which means he’s supposed to take the fall.

“It is your responsibility to get them off our trail.”

“I don’t know how to get them off the trail. I mean, I did go into that house without a warrant. I can’t do anything about that,” Corliss said.

“Oh yes you can, but that is secondary. Let me make one thing perfectly clear—if our Code B operation is exposed in this case, you will regret the day you ever suggested that you use Code B in the Landis case.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Corliss countered.

Blackburn stopped his whirling of the Chinese worry balls in his hand. In a quiet but menacing voice he said, “The price of failure will be extraordinarily high. Extraordinarily high.”

Corliss thought her heart was about to stop. She could feel the tears welling up. “Uh . . . uh . . . OK,” she stammered.

Um. That sounds like a threat. And Donna’s kind of stuck in this spot because she can’t exactly go to HR about this without admitting her involvement in Code B. Donna asks for Blackburn’s help and says she doesn’t know what to do, and he says “If I had known you were such a rookie I would never have let you employ Code B.” It’s definitely try that Donna isn’t living up to her first-rate investigator reputation here, but then again, her boss did just threaten her, so her state of mine is probably not the most level.

Anyway, Blackburn explains that the complaint claims that the tip was anonymous and that they did not have exigent circumstances (i.e. reason to believe there was immediate danger to Casey). The tip being anonymous is relevant because anonymous tips are given less weight than those given under a person’s name. But you know what’s odd here? Peter has no reason to think either that the tip was anonymous or that they didn’t have exigent circumstances—well actually, on that last one, Donna did wait a whole day to come back to Gwen’s home after she initially denied her entry, so he could argue that’s evidence that there weren’t exigent circumstances. But on the anonymous tip, he literally does not know either way.

Anyway, Donna says this:

“But we go into homes all the time on anonymous tips, and we go in whether or not there is an immediate threat. All we require is a report of child abuse and we go in—period.”

“Of course we do. But it is far better if we cover our backsides by pleading that we had information suggesting an emergency, and I want us to be able to say we were acting on the tip of a known, reliable source.”

This is at the heart of Farris’s critique in this book. Legally, CPS may only enter a home without permission if they have a warrant or exigent circumstances. Without one of these things, if a parent denies them entry, they cannot enter. Farris has built a big part of his career on enforcing this standard, and has taken cases through the court system where CPS brought police with them and bullied their way in—which is what happened here. In having Donna and Blackburn say what they do here, he is suggesting to his readers that is common practice for CPS workers to ignore the law. I don’t know enough about how CPS operates either today or in the mid-1990s to be able to speak to the legitimacy of this claim, but it is central to Farris’s fear mongering both in this book and in other forums.

Anyway, Donna objects, saying the hotline records will prove they’re lying if they say the tip wasn’t anonymous, or that it was an emergency. Blackburn tells her to go change the hotline records quickly, before they are subject to a subpoena. He tells her not to tell Rita or Stephen (her boyfriend) about what she’s doing.

It was well after five as she walked down the corridor to her office. She saw and heard no one. The tears started to flow as she walked hurriedly down the hall. She did not want to be seen. She entered her small windowless office and shut the door. Since it did not have a lock, she move da chair agains the door and piled some books on it. It would do nothing to stop a real intruder, but somehow it make it easier to cry.

Is Farris trying to write Donna compassionately now? This is confusing! Where is the devious hard-as-flint Donna we met at the beginning of the book?

Anyway, she logs into the hotline reporter database and pulls up the entry. Farris explains that it was possible to change the records so that a clerical error or incorrectly entered address could be fixed, and that a note is supposed to be added stating what was changed. Donna changed three things in the report—(1) the date of the report, so that it would look like she responded to it immediately when first visiting Gwen’s home, rather than five days later; (2) the nature of the reported injuries, from “unknown” to “severe bruising reported”; and (3) the level of the report, from Code 1 to Code 2 priority.

Of course, Donna still needed to change the name of the person making the report from “anonymous” to an actual name, and one that would be trusted and respected. For this she drove “north across the Spokane River on Washington Street” and “up the first few blocks of South Hill” to Sacred Heart Hospital. She went in and went to the cafeteria, where she got close enough to a nurse to read her name badge—Nanette Gray, “a fortyish woman with flecks of silver in her hair.” She bought a newspaper and then walked back to her car, throwing the newspaper away on the way out the door.

She was careful to obey all the speed limits as she retraced her route back to her office across the core of downtown Spokane. She thought if she was caught for speeding, somehow a policeman would figure out what she was doing and expose her.

 The paranoia is kicking in.

When she got back to the office she logged back into the system and pulled the record up for editing, zeroing in on the name of the complaint maker.

She knew whatever name was put there, it would never be revealed. A general description might be disclosed. But, never, ever would the name of the actual person be disclosed.

Donna entered “Nanette Gray, R.N., Sacred Heart Hospital.” And you know what? This whole episode would have been waaaaay easier with the internet. That whole driving to the hospital to read someone’s name badge thing threw me until I remembered it was 1996. Proof that the internet saves us in gas money, I suppose.

“It’s perfect,” Corliss said out loud. “Co-worker and a medical professional. She’s absolutely perfect.”

This done, Donna pulled up her notes and read through all of them to make sure they matched the new report. Farris tells us that she “also deleted all references to the Code B procedures,” which makes me wonder about her confidence, but he explains that “her internal notes had never been revealed in any prior case.” This time, “no chances could be taken.” All finished, she went home to find that Stephen wasn’t home yet.

She opened her first bottle and proceeded to drown her fear of the Washington State Top Child Advocate of 1993 in a cheap California wine.

The next morning (Tuesday) Donna brought the “new and improved” documents to Blackburn, who was rapidly working his Chinese worry balls. He tells her she did excellently, and especially compliments her choice of a nurse. He asks if she’s real and she says yes, that she visited the hospital and read her badge. Blackburn says he went over McGuire’s “sanitized” report the night before and was pleased with the result.

“He only made one stray reference to our arrangement, but it was in code and he had a brilliant explanation for it. I think everything is going to be fine. Just fine.”

Myself, I’m not so sure. Points to whoever can remember what Aaron does for a living! Regardless, this has become less a book about CPS overreach and more a book about whether a corrupt bureaucratic agency can successfully pull off a coverup without an intrepid and dashing lawyer revealing it. But then that’s probably what Farris thinks CPS overreach is, and somehow, that’s not all that scary. It’s a story we all know, and a story in which we all know who to route for. A story that reveals structural flaws in CPS policies and workings that result in the pitting of good parents against honest and well-meaning social workers and CPS staff? That would have the potential to be scary.

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