Criminal (11 page)

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 drove 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.

I tried to focus on what the newscaster was saying: “. . . still unclear what led to this important breakthrough yesterday, but county police are saying that the arrest of suspect Denarius Pavon is a ‘huge milestone' in the case regarding the murder of Deputy Palmer on August twenty-forth. Currently Pavon is being held at the county jail and awaits determination of his bond. A trial date is yet to be set, and investigators tell us they are still compiling evidence in this controversial and very disturbing case. For now, I'm Kelly Douglas, for Channel Two Action News.”

I had my hand to my mouth. I only knew it when Priscilla put her own hand on my wrist, urging me to bring it down.

“Killing a cop,” she said, calm, “is serious. Everyone's seeing that now.”

I knew what she meant. She meant the girls in here but also
the other guys in jail with him now. Some of them proud, sure. Glad the cop was dead. Some of them scared of what he might do. But some of them—maybe most of them—willing to squeal to make things worse.

Suddenly I was filled up again. Filled up to the very edges of everything.

With fear. For Dee.

THE NEXT DAY WAS EVEN HARDER TO GET THROUGH.
Harder to get away from all the thoughts.

Bird, turning away from me.

Dee getting put in that cop car.

My own hand, tossing those guns in the glove box.

Doug telling me I was guilty.

Dee's mouth all over my body, unable to get enough.

Cherry in the doorway, leering, glassy eyed.

Jamelee, so proud of herself, bouncing in that swing.

My own voice, pleading with Dee in the parking lot at his gym.

The blue rest stop sign, moving toward us so fast.

Detective DuPree, writing down everything I said.

That terrible letter, wilted and worn in the plastic bag.

Dee's face—in pleasure. And scowling, too.

Wiping down the inside of Bird's car, so careful.

Kenyetta in the kitchen. And pushing me across the yard.

Dee, smoking a cigarette. Dee, smiling down at me at the fair. Dee, telling me to shut up, lie down, do what he said. Telling me that he loved me.

Dee.

Dee.

Dee.

Dee.

• •

They were calling my name. From under a deep curtain of sleep I heard it,
Nicola Dougherty
. My eyes yanked open. For a minute I thought it was all already over—they were taking me to prison forever. Maybe they'd even kill me. I wondered if I'd already gone to trial and had sleepwalked through the whole thing.

But it wasn't that. It was only the beginning.

In the bunk below, Priscilla shifted but stayed silent. They were calling other names, other girls in the block who had arraignments today too. One of the guards appeared in front of our cell.

“Come on, Nikki. Time to load up.”

I didn't know what time it was, but it was earlier than regular wake up. The guard told me to put my hands through the bars
so he could cuff me. The metal around my wrists was heavy in an already-familiar way, and I wondered how many more times I was going to be feeling it.

He unlocked the door and slid it open, and I moved out into the hall, where there were four more girls from our block, waiting. Everyone was tired and sleepy, not talking or looking at each other. Serious.

We were led through a series of locked hallways and then out into the yard. It was cooler outside than I expected, and goose bumps leapt along my arms. I hadn't been outside since I got here, and I wasn't sure, feeling the big open air around me—even in this fenced-in space—if I liked it. It was open, but not. Outside, but not. Even the dawning sky looked grim.

We waited. A few other women were led out. It was strange to see people so much older than the rest of us. One of them started talking to a girl from my block. They knew each other. From outside. They were bawdy and laughing, and we could hear everything they said, gossiping about friends who had called in from the outside. It was like they were in the salon instead of jail.

“Ladies, we ain't going nowhere until you all quiet down,” the guard said, though more in a reminding way than a mean one.

Another couple of women were brought out, and then a tall, thin guard with a shiny bald head nodded to everyone, and we were told to line up against the wall. I got separated from the
others from my block and found myself next to a woman I was surprised to see was pregnant. She saw me glance down at her belly, and she patted it.