Downfall

  “Emily.”

  Emily shook out of her thoughts and looked at Kent, his image blurry through her tears. He came close, taking her face gently in his hands. Her tears rolled out and slid down her face. “Emily,” he whispered, “this may be a rough night. You may have to spend a night in jail. But I’m doing everything I can to prove you’re not involved in this. I need for you to trust God and trust me.”

  She blinked back her tears and lifted her chin. “I know.”

  “No, Kent!” Barbara cried. “They can’t put her in jail for something she didn’t do. You have to stop this!”

  Kent let Emily go, turned to Barbara, and looked hard into her eyes. “Calm down, babe. I’ve got this.”

  “She’s going to jail!” she shouted.

  Lance tried to cut in now. “Mom, we’ll follow Kent in your car.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m riding with them. You bring the car and meet me there.”

  “Barbara, it’s probably not a good idea for you to ride with us.”

  “Kent, I’m going with my daughter! Period!” She grabbed a tissue out of the box on the end table and wiped her eyes. “I don’t understand why they’d come after her! Are they crazy? Why would she go kill a woman she hardly even knows? She didn’t start this! She called the police. She did everything right!”

  Emily wanted to tell her mother to calm down, but she focused all her energy on holding herself together. She had been through this before. The humiliating march into the police station, the booking, the search . . .

  She lifted her chin higher. She wouldn’t die. She had survived this before. She wiped the tears off of her face. “I’m ready to go,” she muttered.

  Kent walked her out to his car. Emily saw the neighbors standing clustered in their yards. Would they realize she’d been arrested, or would they just think she, Kent, and her mother were going somewhere together? Maybe it looked like a family outing.

  An outing where her mother was hysterical and ranting, and police followed behind them.

  She supposed she was destined to attract negative attention, no matter how long she was sober. All the hard work, all the right decisions, had done little good. Why had she agreed to move to Atlanta, where her drama had unfolded two years ago? She should have gone someplace new, someplace where they had never heard of her.

  She got into the backseat, and her mother climbed in next to her. “Mom, sit up front. The neighbors won’t think anything’s wrong if you’re in the front. I don’t want to look like a convict.”

  Barbara only then seemed to notice the neighbors watching them. She got out and slid into the front as Kent got behind the wheel. Was this how her mother had felt when Emily was arrested before? Always before, she’d been too loaded to care.

  “Don’t let the police talk to her,” Barbara told Kent as he backed out of the driveway. “I’m getting an attorney.”

  “Barbara, I am the police. And Emily has to be the one to ask for the attorney. It’s not like it was with Lance. She’s not a minor. You won’t have any rights here.”

  “Then you have to protect her, Kent! You’re the one who’ll be interviewing her.”

  Kent was quiet for a moment. “Not when they transport her to Birmingham.”

  Barbara seemed to break down then. Emily saw her mother cover her face, her shoulders shaking. Finally, she spoke again. “Kent, please don’t let them keep her. Please. She has to get out tonight.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Emily closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the seat. Jail. The first time she’d spent a night in jail had been a terrible experience, but this would be even worse, because she hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

  Her mother drew in a deep, wet breath and took out her phone. “Kent, who should I call? I don’t know any attorneys here. Is there someone at church? Someone I could trust?”

  He was silent for a moment, and Emily expected him to say that it was a conflict of interest for him to give her the name of an attorney. Instead he said, “She’ll need one licensed in Alabama for tomorrow. Call John Stead for tonight, and he can advise her about talking to us. But we’ve already got her story on record, so I’m not sure he can help.”

  “I wouldn’t have let her talk to you if I’d known she was going to be considered a suspect!” Barbara’s voice was filled with contempt and accusation. “I feel tricked.”

  “Mom, that’s not fair,” Emily said. “I called him.”

  Emily heard Kent sigh. “You think I tricked her? That I was scheming to implicate Emily?”

  “You can stop this,” Barbara bit out.

  “I’m a cop, not a judge,” he returned. “I know Emily didn’t kill anybody, but the police in Birmingham don’t.”

  Emily felt the dam break, and her tightly held emotions broke free. This was her fault. All her fault. And already she could see the fallout. “I’m sorry I went there, Kent,” she said. “You were right. You warned me to leave and come home, but I went ahead and confronted her. Mom, don’t blame him. He’s helping me.”

  Silence overtook the car as Kent drove. Emily heard her mother’s sobbing breaths in the front seat, saw the muscle in Kent’s jaw popping in and out. Could they overcome this, or would her mother keep holding it against him?

  Emily closed her eyes and prayed silently as they drove to the police station. She couldn’t lose it now. She had to get a grip. Had to take these panicked thoughts captive.

  She racked her mind for something to hang onto, something that had calmed her before.

  When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your love, oh Lord, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.

  Since getting out of rehab, she’d used that verse like a constant prayer, and God had always proved it true. She breathed it in, held it ballooned in her lungs, then let it flow out — the words of Scripture. More peace washed over her, and strength filtered through her body and mind.

  She clung to it as they pulled up to the police station.

  Chapter 28

  Lance followed Kent in his mother’s car, a million surreal thoughts racing through his mind. So his sister had problems. She had overcome them. She wasn’t a killer.

  He tried to think like a cop. Were these cops good at what they did, like most of the police he’d known, or were they inept? How good could they be if they thought Emily was the killer?

  His stomach felt sour, and his head was beginning to throb. It had already been a long day.

  He thought of April and the plans they’d had tonight. He should call her, let her know what was happening.

  He hit a red light and dialed April’s number. No answer. Maybe she was in another room of her house, away from her phone. She only lived a few blocks from here. He could swing by, let her know he couldn’t go out tonight. Maybe she’d bail on Tyson. He rehearsed what to tell her. This would all be cleared up soon, and Emily would be out. The last thing she needed was talk of another murder adding to the reputation she already had.

  If he were Emily, he’d take off to college in North Dakota or somewhere, where nobody had a clue who she was. He supposed even there they might recognize her, since she had been on the national news for a number of days. But it couldn’t be as bad as Atlanta, where she went missing and everybody and his dog had been looking for her.

  He turned right toward April’s house, losing sight of Kent’s car. He hoped his mom didn’t notice and freak out more.

  April’s mother came to the door. “Hey, Lance,” she said with Georgia sweetness, though she looked like she’d been crying. April had said her mother cried a lot over her marriage problems. “April didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  “She didn’t know. I just tried to call her, but she didn’t answer.”

  “I think she was on with someone else,” she said.

  Great, Lance thought. Probably talking to Tyson.

  “Come on in. I’ll get her.”

  He stepped in and fidgete
d in the doorway. Finally April came, the phone still to her ear. Covering it with her hand, she whispered, “What are you doing here?”

  He didn’t want to tell her anything with Tyson on the phone. “I have to tell you something, but I can wait until you get off.”

  “Okay, just a minute,” she whispered. “It’s Tyson. Come sit down.”

  He dropped onto her couch, and she sat next to him, her feet under her. She was so pretty. He hated the way her face lit up when she talked to that guy. Sometimes it lit up that way when she talked to him, too. But maybe he’d waited too long to do anything about it.

  “Listen,” she said into the phone, “let me call you right back.”

  Lance breathed relief as she hung up. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “No. Something really bad has happened to my sister, but I can’t go into it.”

  “Is she all right? Is she hurt?”

  “No. She just got blamed for something she didn’t do.” He told her what he knew. “You can’t tell a soul. Not your mom, not Tyson, not anybody.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “But I can’t go tonight. I have to help my mom.”

  “Okay, of course.”

  He lingered there. “But I don’t want you to go, either.”

  April seemed amused. “I’m not a little kid, Lance. I can hold my own with Tyson.”

  He doubted that was true. “I really don’t want you to go.”

  “That’s silly. It’s no big deal.”

  He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, looked at the ceiling. “Okay . . . if he’s wired, if his pupils are tight . . . or if they’re dilated . . . just, anything weird, don’t go with him. It’s not worth it, okay?”

  “Lance, you act like a big brother. I like it.”

  Fan stinkin’ tastic, he thought. The last thing he wanted to be was April’s big brother. “I just don’t want you to get caught in anything you can’t handle. That guy is bad, bad news.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “Anything happens, call me. I’ll come get you somehow.”

  “In what?”

  “In my mother’s car. How do you think I got here?”

  “Okay. I’ll call. I hope your sister will be all right.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure we’ll get it all cleared up.” Even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t likely. Cassandra Price would have to wake up from the dead. Or the killer would come out of the shadows and confess like in one of those old detective flicks.

  Like that was gonna happen.

  She walked him out to the car, stood there watching as he drove away. She was going to go out with Tyson, and Lance couldn’t stop it. But too much was out of his control tonight. He sure hoped God was paying attention.

  Chapter 29

  It was a different thing, being arrested and thrown into jail for something she didn’t do. But no one at the jail gave Emily the benefit of the doubt. The guards treated her like a criminal.

  If she couldn’t prove her innocence, she might end up in prison for years. Maybe the rest of her life. Both Georgia and Alabama had a death penalty for murder.

  The six-inch pad on the top bunk was a huge step down from her comfortable mattress and comforter at home.

  Her cellmate, a thirty-something woman named Hattie, was suffering through withdrawal from painkillers — with fever, nausea, and other flu-like symptoms. Jail was the worst place to detox from a drug like that. In hospitals, they gave you meds to keep you from having seizures, and the nausea and intense flu-like symptoms were more bearable if you knew your caretakers wouldn’t let you die. But here, no one cared how lousy you felt.

  Hattie retched into the toilet. Emily slid off her bed and touched the woman’s back. When she didn’t recoil, she bent over and pulled Hattie’s dirty hair back from her face. She’d been through this herself, detoxing in a prison of sorts, with no one to help her through it. She didn’t know what Hattie had done to get herself put in jail, but it probably had its roots in drug abuse. Most of the people in jail committed crimes for the same reason.

  Finally, Hattie stopped retching and sat back on the concrete floor. Emily got a paper towel, wet it, and put it on the back of Hattie’s neck. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. For now.”

  As Hattie sat back on the floor, Emily lowered to the cement facing her, leaning back against the wall next to the toilet. Dark circles hung under Hattie’s eyes. “Been there, done that,” Emily said. “It gets better, but in the beginning it’s no fun.”

  “I shoulda gone to treatment last time,” Hattie said. “Stupid, holding up a convenience store.”

  Emily winced. “Armed robbery?”

  “Yeah.” The girl’s face was ashen, as if her heart couldn’t pump blood all the way to her face. “Man, this ain’t me. This ain’t how I was raised.”

  “I know,” Emily said.

  “No, I mean really. I grew up in church, walkin’ the straight and narrow. Used to sing in the choir. Solos, even.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she took the paper towel out of Emily’s hand and wiped her mouth. “I was really a good singer.”

  “I understand. I was raised that way, too. I bet you’re still a good singer.”

  The woman looked at the wet paper towel. “And then I was in a car accident, broke my back. Doctors got me started on Oxycontin for the pain. Before I knew it, I was dependent. Needed more and more to fight the pain.”

  Emily couldn’t imagine dealing with severe back pain in a place like this. Hattie was going to have a tough time. “Did you tell your doctor you were getting dependent?”

  “He knew. He warned me. And at first I was real careful. But then . . .”

  Emily knew the drill. At first the pills deadened the pain — physical and emotional. Then your body built a tolerance, and you needed more to get the same effect. Then came the day when you knew that if you got one more bottle and raised the dose another time, you’d be in total bondage. And your life would be about drugs and nothing else.

  And she understood making the decision to go on using.

  She fully understood being desperate enough to hold up a convenience store for drug money. “If you can talk to your lawyer, have him ask the judge to send you to treatment. He might. A lot of judges are pro-recovery.”

  “No, he done that once already. I jumped bond, didn’t go to treatment, violated probation. And now here I am. Still gotta live with the pain, but I gotta do it here.”

  Emily didn’t know what to say. Being without hope was even worse than drug detox. She took Hattie’s hand. “Can I pray for you?”

  The woman’s face twisted, and color seeped back into her cheeks. “Yes,” she whispered.

  Emily scooted closer and put her arms around her, pressed her head against Hattie’s, and asked God to help with Hattie’s withdrawals, with her physical pain, and with her legal problems. Then she asked him to give her peace. Before she ended the prayer, Hattie interjected her own sorrow at what she’d done, and asked God to forgive her. They both wept as they brought the prayer to an end.

  When it was over, Hattie hugged Emily back. “You’re a blessing,” she told her. “Never thought I’d find a Christian in here. Do you think I could really be a child of God and do the things I done?”

  Emily drew in a deep breath. “I guess it doesn’t really matter what we were before . . . what matters is what we are now. We’re supposed to move forward from wherever we are, and not look back.”

  “Gon’ be hard to do in here.”

  “I don’t know. There are a lot of people here who need him.”

  “I’d rather they heard about him from somebody else.”

  Suddenly they were laughing, wiping tears. “Yeah, me too,” Emily said. “When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a ballerina or a rock star. Never thought I’d be sitting in jail. Somehow I don’t think this is what God wanted for us.”

  “Nope. It ain’t.”

  “But he does have a way of using even the ba
d things. I was scared when I got arrested. Thought I’d be in here with a three-hundred-pound bully who hated blondes.”

  Hattie laughed again. “Instead you got a hundred-pound loser puking her guts out.”

  “Hey, that’s better than the alternatives. You puke away, girl. We’re good.”

  Later that night, when Hattie’s stomach settled, she curled up in pain on her bunk and slept in a fetal position, shivering yet drenched with sweat. Emily gave her her own thin blanket to help with her chills. It was freezing in their cell from the overzealous use of air conditioning, but Emily could take it.

  She lay on the top bunk, arms inside her brown jail shirt to keep warm. Outside the cell, she heard the occasional fight break out, profanity flying, and voices echoing over the stone walls in this circle of cells. It was a little taste of hell. Why didn’t people take that concept more seriously? Who would want to spend an eternity like this?

  Or even another day.

  How could she have been so stupid? Why hadn’t it even occurred to her that her behavior today looked suspicious?

  I was trying to live with integrity, Lord. I was trying to do the Next Right Thing. I promised I would. Why would you let me end up here?

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to remember Scripture she’d learned at New Day Treatment Center, where she’d spent a year.

  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Did that include suffering for a murder someone else had committed?

  Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

  Man, if that wasn’t the truth. Her adversary had done this to her. She had been thoroughly devoured, then spat out to be devoured again.

  So either Bo or Carter was to blame for this. Which one would have taken things this far?

  She closed her eyes and replayed the afternoon the residents of Haven House had watched the movie. At first, others had been watching, too. Jack, the guy she didn’t like because he was constantly stirring up trouble, and Jeffrey, the banker, who sat on the couch fidgeting. Eventually they’d both gotten bored. Analee and Scarlet had watched for the first ten minutes or so, but the need for nicotine and rehab romance had called them back outside.