“Not crazy, not high, more like I was talking to a demon.” I tried to slide sideways, but she snaked a hand around the bar to my left, and when I shifted to the right, she grabbed a bar on the other side. Well then, apparently, we were going to have a talk. I grimaced and looked at her. “Look, I didn’t kill anyone, certainly not my ex-husband. I’m going to be out of here in no time, so no need to make friends.”
I ducked under her arm, and she didn’t try to stop me.
“They think you killed your ex?” the woman from the floor said. “I would like to kill my ex. He was a tool.”
I blinked and looked away. “Maybe that’s not something you should say when you’re in jail and there are most likely cameras on us recording everything we say. Right?”
She shrugged. “I’m a druggie. They don’t believe us when we tell them the truth. And if we get hurt? We just got what was coming to us for being like this.” She waved a hand over her body. My eyes tracked the movement and found a path of bruises across her pale skin. Some were shaped like fingers and hands from where she’d been grabbed and squeezed.
A sharp pain spiked through my heart and my throat tightened. I was not the only one in trouble here. “I’m sorry they don’t believe you. I’m sorry they think you deserve to be hurt. You don’t.”
She rolled onto her belly and put her chin on her hands, for all the world like we were having a sleepover and were about to play a game of Truth or Dare. “Did you kill him?”
I cleared my throat and shook my head. “No, I did not.”
A sigh from the other side of the room. “I hit my ex in the head with a frying pan. It made a rather satisfying thud, both when I hit him and when he hit the floor. A double whammy, if you will.”
I turned to see the fluffy-haired old granny smiling at us, showing a perfect set of teeth that caught me off guard. I’d have guessed she was missing at least one tooth if you’d asked me to make a bet on it. She crinkled up her face and went on. “A drunk he was. And liked to use his fists on me. I beat him within an inch of his life with a frying pan. Course, the judge said I was in the wrong. My lawyer told them I was crazy. I got no time, but I was sent out into the world with nothing after the lawyer took his fees. Don’t matter, though, ’cause ain’t nobody going to tell me now what to do.”
Fancy Pants snorted lightly and rubbed at her nose. “Except here you are, locked up like the rest of us. And like they say in that movie about the guy and his friend in jail with the tree at the end, everybody in here is innocent. Course, you didn’t kill your husband. Just like I didn’t crash my car while driving drunk—” she pointed at the woman on the floor, “—and she didn’t break into a house to use the facilities while still higher than a kite from using drugs on the street corner after prostituting herself. All of us is clean, baby. All of us don’t deserve this place.”
I frowned. “Shawshank Redemption is the movie.”
“That’s all you got to say?” Fancy Pants shook her head. “They say you killed your ex-husband, and you think you’re getting out?” She broke into a fit of giggles that was picked up by the woman on the floor, who laughed until she was shrieking. The sounds faded when the intercom crackled to life.
“Shut your filthy mouths!”
Fancy Pants slapped a hand over her mouth, and the sounds of laughter faded quickly.
She stumbled toward me, pointing a shaking finger at me until she pressed it against the middle of my chest, her whole hand trembling with the DTs. “That’s not how it works, not for you, not for me, or any of us in here. You got a lawyer or something? No money, I’d bet, because money is what makes this place tick-tock-tick-tock.” She waggled her finger back and forth for good measure.
I tried not to breathe deeply with her in my face. I might stink, but so did she. Like a sour drunk. “No, but I have friends. I’m sure they are trying to figure out what’s going on.” I took a step back to put distance between us. The smell of alcohol was still strong on her breath and it curdled my own stomach, which was already twisted in knots.
I was holding it together on the outside—staying calm, not freaking out—but I was slowly losing my mind. I’d been in here for twelve hours with only these women as company, and I wouldn’t much call them company, and my own thoughts. Not even Officer Burke had come by. She was my one connection in the police force, and I’d thought she would have my back . . . or that she’d at least tell me what the hell was going on.
Before my arrest, I’d learned that my gran, my parents, and Alan had all been killed in the same gruesome way. Their necks torn open as if by an animal, their bodies left to bleed out and die. And they’d all been killed in New Orleans, a point not lost on me. Gran’s spirit had been taken by someone, and I figured my best shot of finding her was to figure out who’d killed those closest to me, and why. That had been the plan before I got stuck in here.
The police had other plans.
At first, I’d thought I’d be out in no time. I knew they had no proof, because of course, I hadn’t killed Alan.
But nothing had been done in the right order.
I went back through the list of all the things that should have happened since I’d been stuffed in here and hadn’t.
No phone call.
No visitors.
No formal charges.
It was almost as if I were being railroaded.
No, not almost, I was being railroaded. I could feel it as surely if I were tied to the tracks and could hear the blasting horn of the oncoming train.
I’d helped plenty of people out of jams. Where the hell was my hero? Yeah, don’t answer that. I had to get myself out of this mess.
A semi-transparent figure strode through the closed door down the hall. I made myself walk slowly to the bars to meet Alan. He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. Definitely not the hero I wanted or needed, but in that moment, he was all I had.
“It’s not good, Bree. I’m not your lawyer, obviously, but . . .” He frowned, pulled his cap off and rubbed his balding head before he put the hat back on. “The thing is I can see what kind of case they are building in there. They are . . .”
“They’re trying to lock me up for a long time?” I asked quietly, not really caring if the other women heard me. I mean, they were all half loopy, anyway, and the woman on the floor had gotten one thing right: no one would believe their stories.
Alan scrunched his eyes shut, and my heart sank. How could it be worse than years in lock up? Gawd, Gran would kill me when I got out. I mean, assuming she didn’t fade away. My heart clenched at the thought of losing her completely. “Alan. Tell me. I need to know what I’m up against so I can be ready to fight.”
He wouldn’t look at me, and for all that our marriage together had been a pile of shit sitting on a bunch of garbage, I knew him. And he was worried. Upset. Trying not to freak out.
“Bree . . . they’re pushing for capital punishment.”
Because I was so stressed, I didn’t fully understand what he was saying, not really, I blurted out, “They want to give me lashes? Like a spanking?”
A burst of tittering giggles erupted behind me, and one of the ladies mumbled, “I’d take a spanking from that silver fox I saw earlier. Yummy. He can spank me anytime.”