Criminal Page 8

  “Didn’t think so.”

  She led me down another hall to a lobby where three other people I’d been in the drunk tank with were sitting. Hands on knees, heads down. She told everyone to stand up, follow her, because it was time to ride over to the jail. Two other officers walked behind us as we moved in a line behind her. There was a gray door, beyond which I could hear an engine running. She told us to line up against the wall and then took the first woman through. The rest of us waited, even the officers seeming a little bored and tired.

  Standing there in that ugly hallway, tired and scared, it hit me that nobody knew where I was—not Bird, not Dee, not even Cherry. I was going to jail, and for the first time in my life, I was going to be totally, utterly alone.

  STRIP SEARCHED.

  Yes, I had to bend over and—

  Then a shower. No door on the stall, two officers watching.

  Another search. It would’ve been funny to say to Bird, What did they think I’d hide in there, the cheap-ass soap? but I wasn’t sure anything would be funny again.

  The jumpsuit they gave me was orange and scratchy. White T-shirt. A sports bra. Grandma underwear. Flip-flops with thin soles that were hard to keep on my feet while I walked. I didn’t know where they took my other clothes.

  Handcuffed. This time with a chain around my waist too. And cuffs around my ankles.

  Shuffling, following.

  The key in the lock. Two beds—the shadow of someone else in the lower one. I realized it was late, though I didn’t know what time it was. Guards telling the woman in the bed—I didn’t try to see her face—that she had company. Me, climbing up, curling in the middle of the top bunk. The cell door slamming. The woman saying sleepily that her name was Priscilla, and wake up was six a.m. I guess I told her my name too. But mostly I was too scared to move. Or even cry.

  IT WASN’T SLEEP, EXACTLY. MORE A NUMBING CLOUD OF shock, enfolded in memories and half dreams and awake thoughts all shifting places with each other until the lights were on and the guards were calling everyone to wake up. I blinked at the ceiling, listening, expecting them to be mean and yelling. Surprised that they weren’t. There were just loud calls of, “Good morning, ladies,” and, “Time to wake up,” and noises of groaning, coming-to-life people. Prisoners. And I was one of them.

  “Six a.m., every morning including Sunday,” Priscilla said from the bunk underneath me. “Clean up the bunk, then breakfast,” she went on. “Better get moving.”

  I sat up and looked over the edge of my narrow bed. All I could see below me were her knees in orange pants like mine, and her wrists and hands dangling over those. In the curve between her thumb and index finger on her right hand, she had a tattoo—cursive writing of some kind—though I couldn’t read it from up here.

  “You showing her the ropes, LaSalle?” a heavyset blond guy in scrubs said outside our bars. He was leaning over one of those carts you see maids with in hotels.

  “I got it, Archie,” she told him.

  “Better get moving, then. Breakfast’s in twenty.”

  He slid open the cell door, and Priscilla stood up to take the rags and small bucket of ammonia-smelling water he was handing to her. She moved like you would imagine a boxer would move, and she had the same Mexican bronze skin as Dee. His skin I would maybe never touch again, never feel against my—

  My stomach cramped. Priscilla was waving to the guy with the cart and turning back into the cell, her features calm. How could anyone be normal in here? Act like things were fine? Her long jet-black hair was thick and wavy, matted some in the back but basically the kind of hair you didn’t have to do a thing to—hardly even wash—for it to be beautiful. It was surprising someone so pretty could ever be in jail.

  “Come on, Dougherty,” the guy outside—Archie—called to me before he moved on. “I know it’s your first day, but you might as well get used to it.”

  I was amazed he knew my name, let alone that this was my first morning. When he’d wheeled down to the next cell, Priscilla started talking again.

  “Archie’s okay,” she said. “Little too friendly for my taste, chatty I mean, but his wife’s been in the hospital and I think he’s just lonely and scared.”

  I nodded, not sure what to say, and stepped down to the first rung of the two-rung ladder between my bunk and hers. I followed what Priscilla was doing and pulled the bottom sheet of my bunk straight, stretched the blanket over that as best I could. I pounded the pillow twice with my fist, knowing that no amount of pounding was going to ever make that pillow fluffy. Not fluffy enough to make me forget Dee’s head wasn’t on another one, next to mine. I thought of my bed at Cherry’s house, with five pillows and a down blanket as thick as my bicep. A bed I had thought before was cold and unkind.

  Priscilla reached over my head. “Doesn’t make sense to have a sloppy place,” she said, pulling things military straight in just a few seconds. “Not a lot of space here. Need to keep it nice. Here—” She handed me the small plastic bucket and a clean but worn-thin rag. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, I just give things a general wipe down—walls, the floor. Toilet, of course.”

  I looked over at the shiny metal pot in the corner opposite our beds. There was a narrow table that served as a desk, with a row of books along the back, and this provided a small amount of shield between the toilet and the open bars of our cell, but I still couldn’t picture myself using it, even with my morning urge to pee coming on. I just couldn’t do it—not with someone else so close in here. I went ahead and wiped it down before she could even ask me, though. Gary had told me a long time ago that the best way to make it inside was to be accommodating, but not scared. Confident, but not cocky. At the time I’d thought, Some kind of life lessons to give your stepdaughter, but now I was scrambling to remember anything else he told me.

  We got the cell in good enough shape, I guess, before it was time for breakfast, though I still hadn’t finished with my half of the floor when Archie came back with his cart, collecting our rags and buckets.

  “The grits are just as nasty as they look,” Priscilla murmured behind me as we moved down the hall in line behind the others. “And at lunch, make sure to get pickles if they have them. May be the only vegetable you see for a while.”

  The cafeteria was like a cafeteria at school, for the most part: a line where you got your food spooned onto a divided plastic tray and then lines of picnic-style tables, with benches bolted to the floor instead of chairs. Every eight feet or so a guard stood, watching everyone. But just like a school cafeteria, the place was full of chatter. Our block, Priscilla told me, was all girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, and it definitely sounded like it. Black girls and Asian girls and Latino girls and white girls, fat girls and skinny girls, girls with tattoos and scars, girls with skin smooth as a makeup ad. All of them—or enough of them, at least—talking together. Gossiping about boyfriends and family, what was on TV yesterday, who’d been visited by who. I don’t know what I’d expected—fighting and meanness, like in the movies. I didn’t know whether to be glad and relieved by how regular things seemed or to feel even more horrified. Was I going to get so used to being in jail that it became a social hour for me too? So much so that I’d forget dinners at Bird’s, with Jamelee? That I would forget Dee?

  Dee. I pictured him as I tried to cut the cardboard-tasting hash browns with the edge of my plastic spoon—the only utensil they gave us. Where was he now? Had he really made it out of the state? Or had they found him anyway because of what I’d said? I didn’t want to be here—didn’t want any of this to have happened—and I certainly didn’t want to be in jail while Dee ran around free. At the same time I knew, if they caught him, it would be much worse for him. And I didn’t want that either. I really didn’t.

  An unexpected wave of anger took over me then. Toward Bird. For making me leave her house and for making me tell. For never, never once giving Dee a chance. At first it felt strange to blame Bird, but the more I thought about her, the righter
it became. She was always so convinced she was the only one who knew anything. She never even tried to understand. When she got high and mighty, there wasn’t even a shred of kindness or mercy in her. It was her way and her way only, and it made a person feel more than small. Worthless underneath her judgment. Her bossiness. Her needing to do things so holy. If Bird had just left things alone, trusted me even a little, none of this would have happened. It would’ve blown over, like Dee said. It didn’t have to be any of her business. But she had to be the boss of everything, had to make everyone hold to her strict standards. She could never accept anyone for just what they were. She could never really just let me be me. With her, I always had to be more than that. I couldn’t just exist, the way I did with Dee. Instead I always had to be the me she wanted. The one who fit her requirements. And she’d push me toward it over and over, no matter how clear it was to both of us that I was always going to be too weak and too stupid to come anywhere close to being like her.

  The guards called for cleanup, and breakfast was over. I hadn’t talked to anyone, though I was aware of Priscilla trying to include me a little in her conversation with the other girls at our table. As they stood up around me, getting ready for whatever was next, I looked at my plate.

  My hash browns were severed into tiny bits.

  THEY DON’T TELL YOU THAT JAIL IS BORING. ALL MORNING after breakfast I was on edge, watching, afraid something was going to happen. That someone would pick on me or there’d be some kind of trouble. But all that happened was we got taken into the common area, and right away five or six girls started in on some card game tournament. Four other girls parked in front of the TV, two of them taking turns with the remote every hour, in some kind of system. It was annoying shows, and the girls controlling the remote mostly talked to the TV the whole time, but nobody else said anything about it, so I didn’t either. Priscilla was reading a book most of the morning, until she got a visitor and came back with four days’ worth of crossword puzzles from the paper. She sat there with her pencil and her glasses, looking more like some kind of nerd college kid than a woman in jail.

  I tried to read too. Some beat-up romance paperback. But almost every page made me think of Dee, and eventually I pressed my head on the table and my thighs together, trembling with want. How—how?—was I going to get through day after day without him if I could barely make it an hour?

  Lunch was worse than breakfast. Priscilla had been right about pickles being almost the only vegetable, besides some sorry too-old lettuce if you dared a baloney sandwich. I struggled with some soup that had a few bits of chicken floating in it, but that made me think of making soup for Bird and Jamelee and eventually I shoved it away. I was both hungry and not. We’d be given commissary rights tomorrow, where you could get some better food. But I didn’t have any money. Not more than the maybe fifteen dollars I’d had in my purse when I came in. And I wasn’t sure they were going to credit me that anyway. If they did, I was going to need a few sundries before I even thought about chips. But I didn’t know if I’d be able to eat those either.

  A couple of hours after lunch, one of the guards hollered, “Dougherty,” over by the main desk and the phone. “Lawyer here to see you.”

  Lawyer. I’d forgotten that I’d get one. But then suddenly it was frustrating they’d taken so long to get me one. That I’d had to sleep here first.

  A series of buzzes and lights and I was led down another hall into a side room with little in it but a table and two chairs. A youngish guy in a too-big suit stood in front of one of them. A briefcase was on the table.

  “Miss Dougherty,” he said, all official. He nodded to the guard, and she left the room, standing outside but watching through the glass window in the door.

  “Hello, Nikki,” he said to me when the door was shut.

  I didn’t know what else to say but hello.

  “Have a seat, please. I’m Doug Jacobsen. They’ve appointed me as your lawyer.”

  I sat, waiting for him to keep talking.

  “They treating you all right? You doing okay?”

  I shrugged. How was I supposed to answer? They were treating me all right. But I would never be okay.

  He smoothed his hands over the top of his briefcase before opening it and taking out a folder. “Well, Nikki—please call me Doug—since you cannot provide your own legal counsel, the court has appointed me to represent you.” I waited for him to go on. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do—what I could do. But it seemed like he wanted me to say something first.

  “I’ve reviewed your case,” he said after a long pause. “What’s here, at least, and I have to tell you that the charges against you are pretty serious. You do understand that you have, by this statement, essentially confessed to being party to murder? Of a county deputy? Which means they are essentially charging you with murder.”

  “But I didn’t kill anybody.”

  He looked at me. I looked at him back.

  “I know that,” he finally said. “But with this confession that you made—if I’m correct, voluntarily—it may be difficult, to say the least, to arrange a case that will result in less than—”

  “I didn’t shoot anybody.” I could hear the little girl sound of my voice, but it was the truth. “I just drove. I didn’t even really see what happened.”

  “So, were you forced against your will to drive?”

  Forced. Against my will. Was I? Of course not. All of this was too crazy. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, what I felt. We were together, and I was happy, and we went on a drive. And then it was scary and he was wild. There was shooting, and then we were together again. He promised all I had to do was hang on. And now this.

  The lawyer’s hands spread toward me on the table, reaching. Maybe offering something. I didn’t know.

  “Let me say this a different way. Are you telling me that you felt coerced into what was happening that day? Did he hit you? Threaten you? If Mr. Pavon forced you into this situation, we might—”

  I thought. I tried to picture. But mostly I remembered Dee’s face in my neck, after. How proud he was. Of himself. And me.

  “I was scared, but he didn’t . . .” His hand squeezing my arm. His face in my face. But he hadn’t made me do anything. So did that mean I was guilty? Just because I didn’t go straight to the police? And instead went wherever Dee said, did what he told me. Willingly. Happily. Wantingly.

  “I just didn’t know.” I heard my voice collapse. “I didn’t know any of what he was going to do.”

  “All right.” Doug was nodding, slow, like I’d made some kind of suggestion and he was accepting it. “Well, we’ll do our best here. I still need to review all the evidence against you. But if anything comes to mind—anything at all—that you feel I need to know about that day or about what you told the police, you can call me at any time. The guards know that. In the meantime, your arraignment’s been set for Thursday. You’ll be brought to the courthouse, you’ll make your plea, and your bail will be reset. I’ll be there, of course. But because of what you’ve said to the police, if I were you, I’d go ahead and plead guilty.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” I told him again. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t happen. Jail even one day was awful. Being without Dee—probably forever—was a torture I could barely face. But a murder charge? Guilty? Then I might as well not even live. Not when I had not one single person left to turn to. Not a single one.

  “How can you ask me to tell a court that I did when I didn’t?” I cried. “I’m telling you I didn’t do anything!”

  My fists were against the table. I was sweating, though the room had a chill.

  His face softened for just a moment. “I really think it would be the easier route, Nikki. It’ll most likely result in a lesser sentence. And you won’t have to go to trial. Trial would be, believe me, an even bigger mess.”

  “But I can’t plead guilty when I didn’t do anything. I dr
ove where he said. That’s all I did. I didn’t even drive us home. I didn’t know what he was going to do. I didn’t even see much of anything. I didn’t know any of this. I just wanted to—”

  He got sterner. “But you did drive there, and you didn’t try to stop him or get away yourself. You helped him leave the scene. And you lied to the police about it. It’s all right here. It took you over a week to come forward about what really happened, and in my opinion, you’re still hiding things. A jury isn’t going to be very forgiving about any of that, which is why I’m advising you the way I am. Believe me, I’m on your side.”

  I started to cry. It was like a bright, terrifying light had spread over everything. Doug was right. I had done those things. I had. It wouldn’t matter to anyone that I’d done it for someone I loved. Only that I’d done it at all.

  He sighed. “Have you got any family that you want me to notify? About Thursday?”

  I thought of Grandma, dead. Of Dee, gone too, though I didn’t know where. Bird with no idea. Cherry ignorant and not even caring.

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll come see you tomorrow.” He nodded with finality. “In the meantime, just think about what I said, and that day, and if there’s anything else you might remember that—”

  But he stopped there. Because we both knew. We knew there was nothing I could say that would make any of this less bad.

  • • • •

  When I got to the common room, it was like everything inside me had been squeezed out. And I had absolutely nothing to fill myself back up with. I never would. I could hardly see in front of me. The guards were talking, barely paying attention, and everyone else focused on the TV even if they didn’t want to be. The early evening news was all there was, but I didn’t care much either way. I was nothing.

  Until they showed him on the screen.

  I realized I must’ve made a noise—surprise, I guess, and horror, and delight too, in just seeing his face—when Priscilla came over by me. For a moment my skin buzzed, like his energy was coming through the TV, fueling me. The picture of him was a mug shot, but there was also footage from the police. They were bringing him out of his house and into a police car, his mother in the doorway with her hands over her face.