Takeover (7 page)

“You do realize that this is arraignment, counsellor,” the judge says in the same monotone that he’s said everything else, ”the people will generally want to have enough evidence for a grand jury, or at least to make an arrest. I can only assume that you’re aware of this.”

“I apologize, Your Honor,” Eckhart says, a bead of sweat forming on his brow. “Certain evidence has just been found to be unreliable.”

“Well,” the judge sighs, “in that case, I have no choice but to order that the defendant, one Rose Pearson be released immediately. Now, Ms. Pearson,” the judge says, looking at me, his bottom lip hanging down a little as he talks, “I would like to inform you that double jeopardy does not yet apply. The people may refile charges if new evidence is discovered, do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I respond, just after Jillian’s elbow finds that same spot right between my ribs.

“Well then, Miss Pearson, you’re free to go. The bailiff will take you back.”

“Take me back?” I ask incredulously. “Why would they be taking me back? I didn’t do anything!”

Jillian just rolls her eyes and lets out a deep, I-told-you-to-keep-your-damn-mouth-shut sigh.

“So you can be processed out, Miss Pearson,” the judge says, his voice almost reflecting some sort of emotion, but not quite.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and quickly shuffle my way toward the bailiff who’s trying to keep her own eyes facing toward me rather than searching for an explanation for my behavior in the heavens like everyone else seems to be doing.

I don’t know whether it’s the fact that I’m going home, that they have no evidence or if it’s just that someone actually believes the possibility that I had nothing to do with the death of my boss, but I can’t remember ever feeling so relieved in my life. I had always thought of “relief” as being an absence of pressure or pain, but it’s all I can do to keep from beaming all the way back to jail.

When I finally arrive at the big house, they have me go in and grab my bedding. I’m not entirely sure why, but it feels really important to me that I take a memento of the occasion. I’m not exactly in the mood to put something inside of me just so I can have a keepsake “on the outside,” so I just decide to keep my socks on. It’ll be the most freedom that they’ve ever seen.

“They’re letting you out?” Sam asks as I gather my bedding and anything else that might be considered “my stuff.”

“Yep,” I say, finally letting my smile through. “The prosecution didn’t have any evidence, so I’m free as a bird.”

“Well isn’t that spectacular,” Nicolette says. “I have one little run-in with lady law, and I’m going to be stuck in here for god-knows how long, while they just going to let someone who killed a guy back on the streets.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I say, but still couldn’t chisel the smile from my face if I tried. “I would never hurt anyone like that.”

“What?” Sam asks. “You think you better than me?”

“Us,” Nicolette chimes in.

I don’t know if they’re joking or whether they’re really trying to start something, but I just walk over to the bunk and hug both of my cellmates in their turn. “Believe it or not,” I say, “I’m going to miss you. I hope things work out well for both of you.”

That’s what I say, at least. In truth, I’m barely done with the sentence before I’m headed back toward the door. I pick up my bedding, and am almost out when a voice makes me stop in my tracks.

“Hey Pearson,” Sam says a little too loudly.

I turn around. I’d been wondering when I’d get shivved. “Yeah?” I ask nervously.

She walks up to me with that enigmatic look of hers that is either hiding laughter or contempt. We just stand there for a moment, facing each other, and I’m trying to remember what to do when attacked by a convict. I’m sure I’ve read about it somewhere. I’m not supposed to play dead, am I? No, that’s bears. I’m finding myself a little underqualified for something so brutish as a prison fight, so I just wait for her to make the first move. She does.

Sam throws her arms around me and pulls me as close as she can with the pile of jail bedding in my arms. “I’m really happy for you. Hey,” she says, “I know we didn’t know each other that long, but you was pretty cool, ya know? Maybe drop me a line sometime.”

“Us,” Nicolette interjects again.

“Yeah,” Sam says, “whatever.”

I smile as she pulls away. “I’ll do that.” I’m not sure if I mean it or not, but I’ll figure it out eventually.

“Now get on outta here, ‘fore they change they minds,” she says.

“It’s been known to happen,” Nicolette says, still sitting on her bunk.

“Thanks,” I say.

With that, I’m quickly out the door and on my way to freedom. It’s the most beautiful moment of my life.

*                    *                    *

J
ames is there when I walk out, but Jillian insists that I ride with her. It’s hard to think that it’s been less than twenty-four hours. I’m sure I’m just being melodramatic, but it really does feel like things have changed since I was put in jail. Hopefully, the hard part is over.

“You got lucky,” Jillian says as we pull away from the jail. “I mean,
really
lucky.”

“I had the truth on my side,” I say, joyfully looking out the window as the jail fades into the distance. “I don’t think that luck had anything to do with it.”

“Usually it’s the ones who are telling the truth that end up getting the worst of it,” Jillian says and lights up a cigarette. She glances over at me. “For your sake though,” she says, “I’m glad things turned out the way that they did.”

“Thanks,” I say. We come out of the DMZ and are finally back in civilization. Something’s bothering me though. “What happened? I mean, they had Melissa’s testimony that I had gone back into the office—which I never did, by the way.”

“Yeah,” Jillian says, flicking her cigarette into the half-full ashtray, “turns out she has a history of telling stories.”

“Telling stories?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

“She’s a Munchausen’s case,” Jillian says. “I mean, that sort of thing only really has to do with medical issues, but I guess your coworker went a little crazy with it after they locked you up.”

“How so?” I ask, not sure why I’m trying to be sneaky as I start inching my fingers toward Jillian’s cigarettes.

She notices what I’m doing without so much as glancing away from the road. She swiftly slaps my wrist, saying, “You’re not a smoker, and I’ll be damned if I let your brother know that you started because I wasn’t policing my pack.”

“Ow,” I say, pulling my hand back. “I’m not planning on making a habit of it, I’m just glad to be free, you know?”

“I don’t think anyone ever picks up their first cigarette and says, ‘I’m going to make a habit of this.’ It’s a drug, Rose. The shit’s more addictive than heroin.”

“Is that true?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve heard reports both ways.”

“What did Melissa say that made them stop trusting her?”

“It started out with a few embellishments,” Jillian says, blowing the smoke out of the corner of her mouth while she’s talking. It’s quite possibly the most fascinating action that I’ve ever seen.

“Like what?” I ask, wondering why I’m being made to pry this information out of my own lawyer.

“Well,” she says, ashing again, “at first, she said that you just went into the office for a minute, then came back out and walked to the elevator. Then she said that when you were walking to the elevator, you seemed really upset about something.
Then
she said that you walked into the office carrying a knife in your hand.
Then
she started saying that she could have sworn that she heard you yelling while you were in there.”

“A knife? Wow—” I start to respond, but Jillian continues.

“
Then
she said that she saw blood on your hands after you came out.” She snuffs out her cigarette, but it’s still smoking. It makes me a little nervous, but doesn’t seem to bother Jillian in the slightest as she lights up another one. “I think the one that finally did it was when she called the detective and told him that you came to her desk right before you went in there, saying that he had to pay for treating you that way, then took a knife from your purse and only
then
went into the office to do the deed.”

“Is she okay?”

Jillian glances at me. “The woman put you in jail,” she says. “What do you care?”

“She’s obviously very ill,” I respond, glad to see that my time on the inside hasn’t changed my disposition that much. “I just hope that she can get the help that she needs, that’s all.”

“I think that just might happen,” Jillian says, turning onto my street. It’s funny. I had never realized that James lives so close to the jail. I mean, it’s about ten miles, but still.

“What do you mean?”

“When the detective intimated that he didn’t believe her, she went down to the station.”

“Oh jeez,” I say.

Jillian chortles smoke through her nostrils and mutters, “Girl wants to steal one of
my
cigarettes and can’t even use a proper expletive.” She parks in front of the house as James pulls into the driveway. I don’t really know why, but I had kind of expected there to be camera crews or something on my lawn. “She went down there and started screaming at the detective,” she says as she puts the car into park. “I guess it was about the time that she started saying that she saw you do it that the detective really felt the need to look into her credibility as a witness. Apparently, she has none.”

“Huh,” I say. I want to elucidate the monosyllabic utterance, but there’s nothing else that I can think to follow it.

“Yep,” Jillian says. “So, I think you were really unlucky to have her as a coworker, but really lucky that she was so close to cracking as it was that it only took a little bit of disbelief on the part of the detective to make her unravel.”

“Huh,” I say again, and I swear there are more words to my vernacular; they just seem to be eluding me at the moment. “How’s James?” I ask, not so much because I’m expecting an answer, more than anything, I’m asking Jillian’s permission to go to him.

She smiles. “Why don’t you go ask him yourself,” she says, flicking her cigarette into the ash tray as I open my car door.

Home Again

––––––––

I
t’s barely after noon, but I’m already starting to feel tired again. I don’t know if it’s the stress of the whole ordeal or what, but James is very understanding when I ask if I can take a nap in his bed.

By the time I wake up, it’s nearly dark. I walk downstairs to find not only James, but every one of my siblings in the front room.

“There she is,” Andrew says, lifting up a glass filled with what, from the looks of it, can’t be his first beer of the evening.

My brothers are, in descending order of age, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Andrew and Simon. The fact that I’ve chosen a man named James only helps to round out the apostle theme that my parents had apparently gone for. The funny thing—well, apart from the fact that my brothers are named after biblical characters, and I’m named after a role that Betty White played—something I’ve always found a little curious is that my parents are about the least religious people that I know. I once asked them why they named all of my brothers after apostles, and they didn’t seem to realize that they had done it. My dad simply said, “We just liked the names.”

They’re all here. Well, my brothers, their spouses and my parents, anyway. Usually, I’m more than a little ill-at-ease when I’m around my whole family, but right now, I’m just happy to see all of them.

James comes in from the kitchen, obviously a little stressed at having to cook for so many people and having no cooking skills to call upon whatsoever. “Does anyone know how to braise something?” he asks, then follows the gaze of everyone else in the room. “Rose!” he calls and runs up to the landing where I’m standing. “How are you feeling?”

“You know,” I say, “I’m feeling all right.”

The evening is filled with talking and babies crying and I can’t get enough of it. For a while there, I was really starting to think that I would never see any of these people again without a sheet of bulletproof glass between us. That thought feels a little melodramatic, but the fact of the matter is: I
was
arrested for murder yesterday.

The kitchen is a chaotic mess when I follow James in to see what he’s fixing up for dinner. He tells me that he’s okay, that he’s not overwhelmed and that he’s certain that he can handle cooking for so many people. The problem is that I didn’t ask. So, after I finally take over the chore of cooking for what amounts to fifteen hungry people, things go a lot more smoothly.

The menu is simple, but there’s more than enough food to feed the mob. It’s the Pearson way of cooking. “Other families may serve fancier dinners,” my mother always used to say, “but they don’t have seven kids and a husband to feed every night.” It’s about an hour of stress and delegation before dinner is finally ready. As I start bringing out plate after plate of grilled chicken, salad, potatoes, green beans and bread, I start to feel bad for my mother. The poor woman had to do this for years.

We finally gather around the table which, at the moment, is little more than the serving area as there are nowhere near enough seats for everyone. I find a spot on one of the steps leading from the upstairs to the living room, and everyone else somehow finds a place to be. Maybe they’re not all sitting, but that’s nothing unusual.

“So,” Luke says through a mouth half-full of chicken, “did you make any friends in jail?”

“Luke!” my mom, Darla, scolds.

He holds up his hands and is already laughing at what he’s about to say. “I was just wondering if she could tell us all whether she met any nice people in there.” He sighs, trying to keep a straight face. “I hear they have wicked pillow fights in the joint.”

Most of my family just ignores him. He kind of has that effect on people. It’s not that he can’t take anything seriously; it’s more that he knowingly and willingly refuses to. “No,” I respond, “I did not have a pillow fight in jail. Could you pass the beans?”