“And no one stopped you guys?”
I look up with an expression that I hope accurately embodies my opinion of their intelligence. Brenda laughs. “Okay, ignore that. So this helpful black stranger shows up, carts away this body, and takes your cash. Then what?”
When I come to, the apartment is dark and I am on the floor.
“Then I went home and went to bed.”
“Why’d you let him live?” David pulls out the ignored second chair and sits down.
“I didn’t know he was alive. I stabbed until he stopped moving, then stopped.” A rookie mistake I would never make. Or did I?
Brenda moves her chest off of Jeremy’s face and sits back. Taps her pen tip against the desk in an irritating fashion. “Anything else?”
I look at the photos. “Not that I can think of.”
“So we can go ahead,” she says slowly, “and charge you with the attempted murder of Jeremy Pacer?”
I lift my wrists and put my hands on the desk, the cuffs clanking loudly in the now-quiet room. “Go for it.”
Jeremy deserves better. He deserves life. A life away from me. I deserve punishment.
I killed him. Or rather, I attempted to. I pushed him to his death from my window. I stabbed him six times in the chest with my favorite knife. I dragged his body behind the Quik Mart’s Dumpster and left it there. Then I washed down my apartment with bleach to hide any evidence.
I understand that I have broken the law.
I have not, nor have I ever been, mentally unstable. I was acting on my own accord and had full knowledge of my actions.
Statement: Deanna Matilda Madden
I sign the bottom, above my name, the pen biting into the cheap white paper. Then, I look up into Detective Boles’s face.
She smiles. I don’t. I may never smile again.
CHAPTER 60
Present
I ASSUMED, WITH a verbal and written confession, that the judicial process was, for the most part, over. That there will be some minor sentencing hearing, where the judge will pass over my sentence, then I will start my jail time.
I am wrong.
The process, explained to me by a large, dark woman who smells of lilacs, is for me to be booked first. A prosecutor will, within the next three days, decide what charges will be filed against me. Then I’ll have an arraignment in court, where I will have the chance to plead guilty or not guilty. At the arraignment, my bail will be set or denied. I nod as she speaks, sign and initial when requested, and assist as best I can during the fingerprinting process. She asks me to step up to a black background and look at the camera. I stare into its eye, such a familiar eye, and wonder, in the second before the flash hits, when I will next cam. The possibility suddenly strikes that I may never cam again. I stare into its dark center. A Canon. I have a Canon. I had a Canon. In low light, when I moved quickly, it sometimes blurred. I am not in low lighting now. And I am still. Very still. Does one smile in their mug shot? I feel suddenly like Ben Affleck in Gone Girl, the desire to produce a crooked smile maddeningly irresistible.
“Sit down on the chair and remove those shoes.”
And my photo time is over. I sit down and stare at the black backdrop. Black draws light. Before I got ten thousand watts pumping in my apartment, I had black sheets on my pink bed. It lit my body, brightened my screen, almost better than the bulbs. I wonder if my skin glowed in the mug shot, if the black drew in the flash and distracted the viewer from my flaws. I may never again see my lights, my bulbs, my room. I may never again see my fans, my clients, my world. I may never again be Jess Reilly.
I sit down. Lean forward and pull at the laces of my tennis shoes. Pick at a knot, my mind going white and blank. Forget the pink bedroom. Forget my online world. This is the first step of the rest of my life. This is my new reality, and it is good and just. I think of the first crime scene photo, the reflective sheen, Jeremy’s eyes closed. I shouldn’t have called the hospital. I didn’t deserve an update; I didn’t deserve to introduce myself to his sister and to know about his status. I tugged the tongue of my sneaker out and worked the Nike over my heel, pulling my foot free and setting the shoe down, moving to the second. It comes quicker, and I scoop up them both and set them on my knees, looking up.
The woman holds out a hand, her nails long and bright blue against her chocolate skin. I pass over the shoes and she tilts her head. Studies me for a long beat. “You scared, honey?”
“At what?”
She chortles. “Jail. Prison. Loss of Freedom.”
Ha. Scared? That thought hasn’t even crossed my mind. Stir crazy? Probably. “No.” How sweet of her to ask.
“You know, you’re not like most of the girls in there.” She tosses her head back, in the general direction of the jail. I shrug. Fitting in hasn’t exactly been a concern of late.
She leans forward, lowering her voice. “Want some advice?” I don’t. “Don’t stick out. Cute little white girl like you will attract attention. You’re going to have to deal with some roughhousing. Just keep your head down and color, you got me?”
I lean in, matching her pose, our two heads almost touching over the counter. “I gotcha,” I whisper.
She sits back like she doesn’t want to swap spit with a prisoner, swiveling her large body left and groaning as she bends at the waist and shoves to her feet. She moves to the door and waves at me. “Come on.” I rise and follow, my socks hitting the smooth floor. Thank God I wore socks. She points to a white door. “In there.”
Come on.
In there.
I come. I go in. She follows me into the room and shuts the door. “There’s a camera up there.” She points to the ceiling and I glance up, into a black curved piece of glass. “I got to search you now,” her mouth turns down at the edges. “Everywhere. You understand?”
I nod. I understand. I pull Marilyn off my torso and unclip my bra, letting it fall down my arms. I unbuckle my jeans and sit on a plastic chair, working them over my hips and down my thighs. The room is quiet, the woman’s breath soft, my own silent. Just the sounds of approaching nudity. No one has ever touched my skin, save Jeremy. I glance at the woman and her eyes are kind. She thinks the nudity bothers me. Ha.
I pull down my underwear and pull off my socks. Stand before her and spread my arms. “Go for it.”
She is brisk and efficient, her latex-gloved hands skimming over my arms, shoulders, breasts. She picks through my hair, checks my ears, mouth, and throat. She asks me to lift one leg and I do. She pushes two fingers inside and I close my eyes. Turn around and feel the spread of my cheeks. I’d have let her fist it if she’d ended the exam with a hug. That was what, right now, I really wanted. A hug. She had asked me if I was scared. I am not scared; there is nothing inside of these walls that can hurt me. I am more afraid of what is in me that can hurt others.
She steps away and I lose the connection. Turns her back and I hear the snap of her gloves being pulled off. “You’re clean. You can get dressed.”
I look at my collapsed pile of clothes. “Back in those?”
“Yep. You’ll stay in those until after the arraignment.” The arraignment isn’t until Tuesday. A long time to wear used underwear. I reach for the bra and T-shirt. Slide quick legs through the panties and jeans and pull them on. I take the shoes she passes me and sit in the chair.
“Anything in your pockets?”
I move forward and slide my hand into my back pocket. These jeans. I used to wear them once a week. Ice cream and lotto. That was when I was being stupid, when I thought I could rule the world because I was happy and in love. I pull out the last thing I put in there. A lotto ticket and my change. Funny that I never pulled them out, never washed these jeans. They’ve sat, folded in my closet, like a dead child’s preserved room, a memory of a life past lived. I look at the date of the ticket, almost five months old. Has it really been five months since I jogged down those stairs and crossed the street? Five months since I pushed on that door and had an interacti
on with the cashier? I pull the change out and count the bills. I’d supercharged the ticket, upping it from one dollar to two, wild woman that I was. And I must have, on that day, skipped ice cream, because eighteen dollars even unfolds. I skipped ice cream. That thought hits hard. I hadn’t known that it would be my last night, hadn’t known that Mike would call and things would go to hell and I’d have a lot bigger thing on my plate than cold delicacies. I hadn’t known that, after that weekend, I’d change my habits completely. Withdraw. Put FtypeBaby in park and leave her alone. Settle into a cocoon of myself and hope the wrap of thin fibers kept me still. After that weekend, I hadn’t allowed myself to leave the house. Not until that run last week. That grocery store trip. Then my drive to Jeremy’s house. And look, now he’s almost dead and I’m in a police station. So there. My cautiousness, my rules, my boundaries: justified. And it only took Jeremy dying to get me here. Almost dying. Not yet dead.
The woman’s nails rattle against the counter and I push the cash forward. She counts out the money, blue nails fanning through the air like rainbows. “Eighteen dollars,” she announces. “I’ll put it under your name; when you get transferred it’ll go in your canteen account.” Eighteen dollars sounds like a small amount. What will I be able to buy in prison with eighteen dollars? From her expression, not a lot. She stacks the bills and puts them into an envelope. “Next time you get a visitor, have them put more in your account.” She says the words matter-of-factly, like my stream of visitors will be frequent and may start any minute. I chew on my bottom lip, the fat muscle thick between my teeth, and say nothing. I will have no visitors. Of that, I’m certain.
CHAPTER 61
Present
I DON’T LIKE it.” Detective Brenda Boles sucks a sip of coffee between her teeth, the wet sound of it conjuring up an image of brown-stained dental diagrams. She sets down the cup. Damn her dentist and his posters, cheerfully tacked up on walls, like anyone really wants to stare at gingivitis when getting their incisors scraped.
“Don’t say that.” David leans back in his chair, the front foot of it lifting up.
“You agree. You know you do.” He better. Otherwise their whole camaraderie, the connection between them formed when two individuals share the same air for a decade, would be reduced to shit. Hell, a rookie could figure out right now that something smells wrong, the girl folding over so easily. Something changed in her eyes during the last hour, a glaze settling in at times, her mind taking her somewhere that was not the room, was not the questioning. Where had she gone? And what had she seen, in that place, to cause her to open her mouth and spew out that bullshit confession?
David’s phone rings and he shifts, reaching a hand into the front pocket. “Reuber,” he barks. She listens, his grunts and mutters the type that traditionally lead to answers.
When he hangs up, she pounces. “What?”
“Jeremy Pacer’s house exploded six months ago. He was supposed to still be in it. Barely escaped alive.”
“How are we just now finding out about this?”
“The house was in his grandmother’s name, over in Prestwick. He was looked at as more of a tenant; the case was determined, after speaking to Pacer, to be a home invasion gone wrong. They broke in, found nothing, and torched the place in retribution.”
“Home invasions hitting Prestwick now?” Brenda asks skeptically.
He shrugs. “Blanchard and Jones took it.” And that is all he needs to say. Two cops months from retirement. They probably didn’t even ride out to the scene. She stands.
“Wanting to talk to Tom now?” He looks at the clock.
“Might as well. Could be a second attempted murder tacked onto Madden.”
“Could be a coincidence.” He holds the door open for her and she pauses, looking into his face.
“It’s not a coincidence.”
“Then why are you scowling?”
“Because something is wrong. I just don’t know what it is.”
“You know that three hours ago you were gunning for this girl with everything you had, right?”
She steps into the hall and moves toward the DA’s office with purpose. “Yeah, well. Then she confessed.”
CHAPTER 62
Present
I AM PUT in a cell with four others. They are spread out over a room with six beds, two of them clearly unused, both top bunks. I guess there is a point in life when you quit fighting over the top bunk, and prison age seems to be it. I step inside the door, am asked to turn, provide my wrists, and they unlock my cuffs. Freedom. I rub my wrists and watch the door behind me slide shut. Not free. I put my hand on the metal and stare through the window. On the other side, the guard’s impassive face looks away, calls something to the other guard, and laughs. I take a step back and turn to the room.
All four faces stare at me, slack and expressionless, as if the prison walls have sucked out their souls.
I smile. No one returns the gesture.
My lack of interaction with the outside world has spoiled me to how annoying others are. Here, in a cell in booking, we are all waiting for our arraignment, or bail to post, or for a transport. A marathon before us of nothingness, no books, no magazines, no TV to break up the monotony. I lay in a top bunk against the wall and listen to things that annoy me.
The woman below me cracks her knuckles.
The woman standing paces, each step of her tennis shoes making a sucking sound that reminds me exactly how dirty this floor must be.
The woman in a chair, seated by the door, talks to anyone who will listen. She is here because some sumbitch at work jacked her wallet and got what he deserved. That confuses me, since in an earlier piece of the monologue, she rattled out that she works at her neighbor’s house and takes care of a bunch of asshole kids. I close my eyes and picture the scenario. Kids. Sumbitches. Getting what is deserved.
No one, other than the sumbitch-getting woman by the door, has said anything to me. Which is a good thing, since I am too brittle right now. I feel as if my life has worn through my skin, like the skin has gotten thin and deteriorated, my elbows and hips beginning to poke through, the entire experience of the last two days a pressure cooker on my body, the air getting hotter and hotter, Jeremy getting farther and farther, the skin cooking like bacon under the heat, those worn edges curling up, the surface one hard push away from breaking open, my soul easing out like red-hot lava. If you poke, I will break. If I break, hell will pour out and I will not be able to get it back in.
I am just four hours in and I hate this place. Which feels familiar. Which feels right.
“Here’s the key. Dumpster downstairs empties on Thursdays, and is normally filled by Tuesday, so get your trash down early. Mailman comes in the afternoon, if you got anything to go out, have it in the box by noon.” He rubbed at his nose, and a line of snot got smeared. I looked away. Trash? I hadn’t even thought about that. Mail? Would I need to mail something? How would I do that?
“The utilities are already hooked up?” I was beginning to panic, I could feel the push of anxious blood, moving to my head and starting a mosh pit there.
“Yeah. You know…” He smiled and I saw a piece of pepper stuck in his teeth. “I’m right downstairs. If you need anything, you just swing by.”
I nodded. I will not be swinging by. I will have to learn to not need anything. He had no idea, but this is the last time I intended on speaking to him.
He reached for the door and palmed the steel for a minute, testing it. When he turned back, he and the piece of pepper smiled at me again. “It was smart, getting a new door. You know I’ve been here three years and you’re the only one who’s had the door replaced? First off, I mean. Doors get broken all the time, need replacing. But no one ever uses a door like this.” He knocked on the surface. “This thing is serious. Who you trying to keep out?”
I met his curious gaze and shook my head. “No one.”
No one. Keeping out wasn’t the intent. The door was for one purpose. To keep myself in.
I shut the door behind him and palmed the key. Walked to the center of the empty apartment and looked around. Too big for me, it dwarfed the size of my dorm room. Yet, when I looked at the space and thought about FOREVER, it seemed entirely too small. One year, I decided. I would stay in this place for one year. By then I’d come to grips with who I was. By then I’d figure out whether I was crazy or going through a phase. By then I would find myself again, and she and I would move on to the next phase of our lives. A good plan. I just, looking at empty cabinets, a lone mattress on the floor, boxes stacked with a hundred cute outfits yet nothing helpful to a recluse… I just needed to learn how to live it. I pulled my laptop from my bag and sat on the floor. Logged in and found an unsecured Wi-Fi connection close by. Brought up my bank’s website and entered my credentials. Stared, for the hundredth time, at the low balance.
Correction: I need to learn how to live as a recluse and make money. Feed myself. Devise a way to keep myself inside no matter what.
It would be hard, I knew that. I’d be poor, I understood that. But, if this plan worked, at least I’d know that others were safe.
I stared at the door and already wanted to go out. One year. How would I ever make it?
I had moved into apartment 6E as such a confused girl. There had been early nights when I had scraped holes in plaster, had screamed myself to sleep, not necessarily from the crazy, but from the solitude. From the realization that I was stuck there, staring at those walls, all by myself. For a nineteen-year-old girl used to parties and normality, it was terrifying.
I stare at the ceiling now and think of the day I first logged on. When I first became Jess Reilly. Dr. Derek would have a field day with that transition. Would say I was sliding into the skin of my old life, playing house to fool my mind into thinking that everything was all right. And maybe that’s what I’ve been doing every day since. Maybe that’s why the thought of leaving camming, of leaving JessReilly19, is so terrifying. Maybe Jess Reilly has been the only thing keeping me sane this entire time.