by Brian Parker
“What do they want?”
“To talk to you, Zach.”
“Fuck. Open the intercom.”
I went to take a piss while Andi explained that she was my assistant. Over the speakers, I heard the man in the hallway say, “I don’t give a shit if he’s indisposed. Open the door.”
“Hold on, I’m putting on some pants,” I yelled at the microphone in the closet.
“Don’t try anything, Forrest. We know you’re armed, open the door and come along peacefully.”
“What? Jesus, hold on.”
I buttoned my pants while I walked from the bedroom to the living room. The toilet computer droned on about my urine in the background.
“Okay, open the door, Andi.”
The locks disengaged and the door swung open. I’d seen the guy in the suit before, some detective from somewhere here in New Orleans, but I didn’t know his name. The uniformed cops had their weapons out and pointed at me.
“Get on the floor!” one of them shouted, advancing toward me.
“Whoa, what the fuck?”
“Get on the floor!” he repeated.
“What the fuck is going on?” I said with my hands up.
The uniforms rushed over and one of them started to punch me in the gut. I reacted, smacking his hand away and shoving him, allowing his momentum to carry him past me.
“Quit resisting and get on the floor!” the detective ordered.
“I’m not resisting. That fucker tried to punch me. What am I being charged with?”
He put his hands on his hips and motioned with his head for the others to back off. “Zachary Forrest, you’re under arrest for the rape and murder of Jacqueline Wolfe and the murder of Ericka Martinez.”
My hands slowly lowered. “What are you talking about? They were dead when I got there.”
“Let’s go downtown and talk about it down there.”
“There’s a mistake. I administered CPR to Mrs. Wolfe.”
“Put your hands behind your back,” the uniformed cop who’d yelled earlier directed. I complied and the one I’d deflected came up behind me, locking my wrists in cuffs.
“Forrest, there was DNA evidence linking you to the murder.”
“Yeah, I gave her CPR for fifteen minutes,” I countered. “Of course my saliva was on her mouth and my skin cells were all over her upper body.”
“Is that how your semen ended up inside of her vagina, you stupid fuck?” the detective sneered. “For a homicide dick, that’s got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.”
“What?” I asked in shock
“Save it,” he answered. “You have the right to remain silent…”
I heard his voice, but I couldn’t quite make out the words. Instead, a deep buzzing sound permeated everything, confusing my thoughts. I didn’t know what the detective was talking about, but I was in deep shit, that’s for sure.
“For the tenth time, Doug, I don’t know what happened prior to my arrival at the hobby shop. I was in Read Boulevard East at my friend’s house that was shot up in a drive-by shooting earlier in the day while I was out at the Easytown Dockyards. Check the rental car’s logs for Christ’s sake.”
“We’ve already done that, Forrest,” Doug Sanders, the detective who’d arrested me this morning, stated. “The travel records for the car indicate that you arrived at the scene of the incident sixteen minutes before you called the emergency services line.”
“I— The phone call! Paxton Himura, a witness in an ongoing murder investigation, called me and we talked for about ten minutes while I sat in the parking lot.”
“Seems like a convenient attempt at creating an alibi,” Detective Sanders retorted. “We’ll check into it.”
“Why are you being such a dick?” I asked. “I haven’t done anything. I’ve been a cop in New Orleans for twelve years…”
“And how many of those have you been a rapist?”
“Once I’m released, we’re gonna have some words, Sanders,” I threatened.
“Forrest, calm down,” Chief Brubaker said as he entered the holding room. “I got here as fast as I could. Tell me it isn’t true.”
“It’s not true, Chief. I swear. I went out to Wolfe’s World of Gaming in Leonidas last night to ask Jacqueline Wolfe about the fifty thousand dollar deposit to her bank account. It came within forty-eight hours of her husband’s death and wasn’t from an insurance company. I took a phone call from Paxton Himura—”
“The droid?” he interrupted.
“Yeah, same one. When I went inside, the customer area of the store was empty, so I used the bell on the counter, that’s when I heard activity in the back, like a door slamming. I went back there and found the two bodies. The mom was clearly dead, but the daughter’s leg was still moving, so I began administering CPR. That’s how my DNA got on her. I don’t know what these guys are talking about my semen inside of her.”
“I believe you, son. But that’s pretty damning evidence against you.” Brubaker glanced down at a piece of paper he held. “Mainframe’s analysis is ninety-nine point three percent positive that the semen taken from inside the corpse’s vagina is yours.”
“I don’t know how, Chief. I swear to God, I didn’t have sex—or rape,” I amended as I shot Sanders a venomous look, “that woman. She’d already been violated when I got there.”
“Then how do you explain the semen, Forrest? Your little swimmers don’t simply jump out of your body while you’re performing CPR and then find their way into the corpse of a woman who’s been raped and violently murdered.”
“I— Chief, I’ve got no answer for you.” I laughed bitterly. “Fuck, the last person I had sex with was Pax— No…”
“What is it?” Chief Brubaker asked.
“That fucking robot.”
“The one that drugged you?”
“Yes, sir.” I searched my hazy memories. We’d had sex several times that night and once in the morning; plenty of time for the droid to collect as much semen as she needed.
“It’s the murderer, Chief. He used Paxton to collect my semen to frame me and get me out of the picture.”
“Explain,” he ordered.
“The killer is using the droids. That’s why there’s no evidence on the scenes, the robots use their self-cleaning feature to absorb the blood and then walk out of the room, no big deal. That’s why there’s the missing time in the videos. The robots do the killing, clean themselves up and leave.
“Paxton and I had sex, she collected the semen up inside of her, then—”
“Did you just admit that you had sex with a droid?” Sanders asked.
“It’s under investigation,” Brubaker stated. “Continue.”
“Paxton collected my semen and either killed Jacqueline Wolfe herself or transferred it to that missing male robot from The Stud Farm—the one Simmons told us about on Monday—and he raped and murdered Jacqueline. Somebody was definitely there…” Another thought hit me.
“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled.
“What else?”
I looked up into the chief’s eyes. “Paxton Himura called me as I sat in the parking lot at the hobby shop. We talked for about ten or fifteen minutes. She was a distraction so the other robot could kill the two of them once I was on site.”
“Why not just kill you? The female robot could have easily done it in your sleep, or the male could have jumped you at any time.”
I shook my head, trying to puzzle through it. He’d tried to kill me in the Jeep already, so he wasn’t above the outright murder of a cop. Why would he go through all the hassle and effort to frame me? Then it hit me.
“Chief, look at all the resources that are pulled away from regular police work right now. If I’d simply been killed, maybe people would have shed a tear, but ultimately, they would have gone back to doing their jobs. You would have assigned Cruz or Drake the case and business would have proceeded as normal. This way, everyone is distracted, wondering if they’d somehow missed the sign
s of my risky behavior. Look at you, Chief; you’re downtown, not in the Easytown station.”
“I’ll have to think this through. Talk to the commissioner about what he wants to do,” Brubaker replied. “Everything you’re saying makes sense, Forrest. The problem is I want this to be a mistake. I want you to be innocent. But, the investigation isn’t in my hands, so that’s a good thing. Regular, solid police work will see us through this. If you’re innocent, then you’ll be free to go. If not, well, you know the deal.”
“Yeah, I know. So, what’s next, Sabatier?”
Chief Brubaker nodded. “That’s the next stop for anyone held more than twelve hours.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
FOURTEEN: THURSDAY
I eyed the big guy up and down, unintimidated by his size. I’d studied Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense program, for fifteen years. I started it as an elective in college my junior year and kept it up ever since. It saved my ass on the streets more than a few times and helped give me the self-confidence to know that I could handle myself in almost any situation.
The problem wasn’t the big guy, it was the thirty others standing around us in a circle anticipating a show. This had the potential to get out of hand quickly.
The NOPD didn’t separate the real convicts from the perps awaiting trial out on Sabatier Island; it was just easier for us and worked great as a deterrent for the normal street thug. The problem was that cops don’t usually fare well in the general population.
“It’ll take ‘em a bit to get down here,” the behemoth in front of me grinned and flashed a sharpened metal object down by his beltline. “By then, you’ll be whistling every time you fart, cop.”
Jeers and catcalls answered his threat to me.
“Are we really gonna do this here too?” I sighed.
“Shit on my dick or blood on my knife. Which one’s it gonna be?”
“I guess so,” I stated, not acknowledging the man’s question. “Alright, let’s do this then.”
He came at me with his arms wide, intent on wrapping me up and then possibly stabbing me in the back. It was a stupid move by an untrained fighter. I ducked under his arm and punched him in the side of the cheek, directly between his jaw and temple. His head snapped to the side and he dropped like a stone, hitting the floor as alarm bells began to ring.
The ring of thugs scurried away like roaches when the lights came on and I stood over my opponent. His back rose and fell slightly. He was breathing, but unconscious. The trigeminal nerve runs along the front portion of the jaw, up the cheek and plunges below the temple into the brain. The punch hit that nerve and jarred the big guy’s brain, causing him to black out. He’d be fine in a few minutes, but he’d have a raging headache.
It wouldn’t teach him any lessons but maybe it’d make all of the prisoners in the pod think twice before trying to fuck with me next time. Or, they’d gang up on me and pummel the shit out of me.
I knelt beside the prone giant and placed my hands on the back of my head. Booted feet pounded down the stairs from the watch positions above and I waited for them to come.
“Come on, Forrest,” one of the guards shouted. “It’s been less than an hour. How’d you pick a fight with the pod leader already?”
“My charming personality; I’m irresistible,” I replied as I relaxed my shoulder muscles so my joints wouldn’t be wrenched out of socket when the guards put me back in handcuffs.
The metal bracelets encircled my wrists and two guards lifted me to my feet by my armpits. “Let’s go. You can’t stay in this pod.”
“There’s a knife in his hand,” I tilted my head toward the unconscious man.
“I’ll call it in to Central,” their sergeant said. “Let them know that we’re transferring him to Alpha Pod.”
“They ain’t gonna like that, Sarge. It’ll be his third one in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Well, we can’t leave him here. He’s gonna kill somebody. I sure as heck can’t take that kind of stress.”
“So long, fellas,” I called to the faces peering out of their rooms at the procession of guards. “Maybe you should buy me dinner before you try to fuck me next time. It might go better for you.”
“Shut up,” the sergeant ordered. “There’s a strict no cursing rule in Cellblock Three.”
“Well, fuck me. How the fuck do you run a prison without allowing a shit ton of cursing and jokes about dicks?”
“Keep it up, Forrest. I’ll put you back in there and we may have a power failure in the pod. No power, no lights. You know what gangs of prisoners like to do in the dark when nobody’s watching.”
They pulled me up the stairs to the landing that led out of Delta Pod and swiped me through into a secure corridor where more guards watched me through ballistic glass. They weren’t scared of me, but I could tell that the ones who met my eyes were impressed. In the two general population pods they’d put me into, I’d defended myself against the biggest guys without getting touched.
“What’s your deal, man?” the sergeant asked. “Why can’t you get along with anyone?”
I jerked my head toward the door behind me. “Come on, Sergeant. You saw what happened, I was sitting there, minding my own business when that big fucker came up and picked a fight with me. I don’t take kindly to anyone threatening to rape me.”
“Tell that to your victim.”
“I didn’t do it, you goddamned rent-a-cop.”
“Language, please.”
“Whatever. I was framed. As soon as my AI can verify my locations, they’ll release me.”
Three or four of the guards laughed. I got the feeling they’d heard that line a thousand times. “No, I mean it. I really am innocent.”
“Write your congressman,” the sergeant jeered. “Come on, let’s go to Alpha Pod. Maybe this time, I’ll leave you in handcuffs, give the rest of the inmates a fighting chance.”
I trudged down the corridor between four guards and the sergeant until we came to a four-way intersection. Each corridor led to a different general population living area known as a pod. Inmates spent every hour of their lives inside the pod, only leaving to go to chow or the exercise yard.
So far, I’d been in two of them.
We turned left, following the signs for Alpha Pod. I didn’t want to fight and I certainly hadn’t sought it out in the other two pods, but I wasn’t about to let someone try to intimidate or harm me, so I stood my ground. I’ll do it again in Alpha Pod if someone threatens me.
The procession reached the door to the pod and the sergeant’s radio crackled to life. “Sergeant Jackson, this is Captain Spiels. I don’t want to take any more chances with Detective Forrest. He’s going to pick a fight with the wrong person and end up dead. That’s a lot of paperwork that I don’t want to deal with; put him in solitary.”
“Uh… Sir, Cellblock Three doesn’t have a solitary confinement area.”
“Just put him somewhere, I can’t risk putting him in with the convicts.”
I laughed at the ineptitude of the guards. Of course they couldn’t put a pre-trial confinement prisoner in with the convicted offenders, especially a cop. The media would have a field day with that. “I wasn’t aware that the prison’s guard force was a bunch of—” I stopped myself; goading the guards further didn’t serve any purpose. Besides, I might need them if a fight went bad. “You know what? It’s not worth it. You heard the man, Sergeant. Find me a place to stay.”
We walked back to the four-way intersection and the sergeant led me straight across. “You two, empty the closet.”
I watched the two men in front pick up their pace until they came to a doorway centered between the pod door ahead and the intersection behind us. They began pulling brooms and mop buckets out of the janitor’s closet, then took out the various chemicals and cleaners. Finally, they manhandled a large set of wire shelving out of the closet.
I peeked inside. “Oh, this is charming.”
“Well, you should
have behaved and not gotten into any fights, Forrest,” Sergeant Jackson retorted.
“I didn’t start either of those fights.”
“You sure as heck didn’t try to avoid them either,” he muttered and shoved me inside.
“Hey! Forgetting something?” I asked, lifting my handcuffed hands as far out as they’d go behind me.
“Oh, sorry,” the sergeant replied and keyed the cuffs.
One of the clasps opened and I rolled my shoulder, expecting him to take the other one off. “Turn around, Forrest.”
I complied and held out my shackled wrist for him to take them off. “Nope. Other hand.”
“Come on. Are you serious? What damage am I gonna do in a closet?”
“From what I’ve seen with the pod leaders, you’re gonna do whatever the heck you feel like. I ain’t gonna have that on my watch.” Jackson pointed toward my hand. “Other wrist.”
I sighed and held it out. “Can you at least use two pair; link them in the middle to give me a little bit of room to move?”
“No funny business?”
“I’m in a closet and I’m an innocent man. Do you think I want to screw up my chance of exoneration with an escape attempt? I just need a little extra room for my shoulders.”
“Fine, but first sign of anything out of the ordinary and you’re getting a full set of shackles.”
“Deal,” I agreed. “You don’t have anything to worry about with me.”
He put a second set of cuffs on my other wrist and linked them together in front of me, then backed out, closing me into the darkness of the closet. Only a little light seeped in underneath the heavy wooden door.
I sat down, leaning my back against the cool brick. “Well, this sure is a fucked up situation,” I told the sink before I closed my eyes.
I measured the days by bathroom breaks and meals. Forget showers, those didn’t happen. I was miserable in my closet and I even considered playing nice with the other inmates. Pride shot that idea down, so I stayed in the darkness, stinking up the small space.