Caged

by Shanna Ehrlich

  “Hi. Thanks.” He looked uncomfortable standing in the doorway, unsure where to go and too timid to ask.

  “You can have a seat on the couch if you’d like,” she said while walking forward, leading him to a plush, beige sofa. He sat down and she took a seat in a wingback chair across from him. “Would you like a water?”

  “No thanks, I’m okay.”

  “Alright, well if you change your mind let me know.”

  Jason nodded passively and Annie began straight in with their session.

  “How have things been since you were let out on bail. Keith told me you’re having a hard time getting back into the swing of things.”

  He shrugged before answering. “It’s better than jail.”

  “Of course, but how are things in comparison to before? Have you gone back to school yet?”

  “No.”

  “What about work?”

  “I don’t have a job.”

  “So what have you been doing? Anything specific to cope? To get your mind off things?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Can you go a little deeper with your answer Jason? Even if it’s just hiding out in the house watching TV. That’s okay. I just want to get to know you a little bit.”

  “Yeah TV,” he divulged. “Anita brought me the first three seasons of Game of Thrones.”

  “Anita? Who’s she?”

  “My assistant.”

  “Oh. That’s nice. Good. Has she been with you long or is she a new hire?”

  “She’s been my nanny since I was born. I just don’t like to refer to her as that anymore. I’m a grown man. I shouldn’t need a nanny, but apparently I do, so that’s that.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about having her around.”

  “I’m happy,” he stopped to scratch an itch on his side and readjusted himself on the couch. “Happy to have her that is. It’s just frustrating given the circumstances.”

  “Can you explain a bit more? Why’s it frustrating?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just, I was finally gone from my parent’s house. I had my own place. I was doing fine. Now I’m back to needing someone to take care of me because I obviously can’t take care of myself or I wouldn’t have ended up in this shit.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. You didn’t do anything a normal twenty-year-old wouldn’t. We’ve all been there. Parties. Drinking. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t take care of yourself. Sometimes bad things happen to good people and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “You sound like Melanie. That’s something she would have said if she were here.” Tears formed in his eyes at the mention of his recently deceased girlfriend.

  “I know this is going to be hard, but can we talk about her? When did you meet her?” Annie was trying to start off the topic light.

  “Last year. We had economics together. She sat next to me one day and asked to borrow my notes from a class she missed. When I got them back her number was at the top.”

  “That’s cute. What happened next? You called her I assume?”

  “Yes. That night. We went to The Vine near campus. She lived in one of the dorms so it was easier to go there instead of somewhere near my place.”

  Slowly, but surly Jason’s answers were getting more in-depth. He was opening up further and further with each question Annie asked. “And what did you think of her? Did the date go well? Did you hit it off right away?”

  “Yes. She was the coolest girl I’d ever met.” Jason leaned back into the couch and sighed. Annie almost asked another question, but then he spoke up again. “She was so pretty. Not my usual type, but there was something about her. I just wanted to stare at her all night.”

  “Why wasn’t she your type? Because she was African American?”

  “You can say it. She was black. Well half black. And yes, that’s why she wasn’t my type. I’d never dated a black girl before. To be honest, I never found them that attractive, but that wasn’t the case with Melanie. We had a connection the instant she sat down in class. And then on our date,” he chuckled lightly, “she was something else.”

  “How so?”

  “She was just so outspoken. Honest. A little weird too, but it made me even more attracted to her.”

  This time Annie didn’t have to push him into continuing. She widened her eyes and he continued all on his own.

  “I ordered a basket of onion rings and when they arrived I offered her some, but she told me no, said onions gave her gas.” He smiled and it was his first positive expression of the session. “That’s how she was. A girl who didn’t give a damn and cut right through the bullshit. It was so refreshing.”

  “She sounds like a unique girl. Did she come from a family like yours?”

  “What do you mean? Like did she come from money?”

  Annie nodded.

  “No. Not at all. Her family wasn’t rich or well off by any means. She was at ASU on a scholarship.”

  Annie read through the court documents preparing for their session and knew that was going to be his answer. Melanie came from a single parent household where her mother worked as a waitress to support her and her two younger brothers. In homicidal crimes where one party is wealthy and the other is not, the DA always tries to use that as an angle for motive. Sometimes it is. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d heard of a man killing his girlfriend over money extortion. She wanted to get Jason’s take on the situation. Feel him out to see if money was ever a problem for them.

  “Did that bother you? That she wasn’t wealthy.”

  “No. I didn’t care. She never wanted me for my money. Even on our first date she insisted on paying her half of the bill. Said she didn’t like feeling indebted to anyone. Even someone she was planning to go home with. Those were her words, not mine.”

  “Were you in love with her?”

  “Of course,” he answered without missing a beat. “I was planning to marry her. Not now. After college. We’d never talked about it or anything, but I’d thought about it. Several times.”

  “And your parents? What’d they think of her?”

  His ever so present shrug occurred again. “They thought she was weird. Just someone I was having a good time with. They never took our relationship seriously. Mom always called her my friend,” he over annunciated. “We had family dinner every Sunday and mom would call and ask if my friend Melanie would be joining us.”

  “Not to be rude or presumptuous, but do you think her race had anything to do with it?”

  “No. My parents might be a bit snobby, but they were never ones to play the race card. Dad always told me when I was in high school I could bring home anyone I wanted. White, black, purple or green, it didn’t matter just as long as it was a girl.”

  “What did your dad say when you brought home Melanie? Did he think she was just a friend too?”

  “Dad was always too busy working to notice I had a girlfriend. Or if he did, he didn’t seem to care one way or the other.”

  “And how’d that make you feel?”

  “I don’t know. At the time I didn’t care. I didn’t want them in my business anyway.”

  “Can we fast forward to a few months ago? Were you and Melanie still doing good? No relationship problems?”

  “Why? Why does that matter,” Jason asked defensively. “You want to find out if I had a reason to kill her?”

  “No. No of course not,” she assured him. “I’m wondering if someone else did. Someone who might have wanted Melanie out of the picture. That must be a question going through your mind. If you didn’t do what the police are accusing you of, then who did? I want to help you work through that. Maybe spark some memories.”

  Jason inhaled deep, an attempt to calm his recent outburst of anger and sat forward, resting his forearms on his knees while interlocking his fingers. “I don’t know who could have done it. Melanie and I were great. We were like the perfect couple. We hardly ever even argued. I mean sometimes she would get pissed if I spen
t too much time with my friend Chris, but that’s not that big of a deal. She’d be over it by the next morning. And what girl doesn’t get upset when her boyfriend hangs out with his friend and comes home to her drunk at four in the morning. Fuck,” he chocked up and dropped his head in his hand, wiping his eyes as he looked back up. “I should have been better to her. She didn’t even want to go to that party. I did. Chris told me he’d been to the house for parties before and they were always ragers.” A sob escaped his mouth as he continued. “We got in a fight before we left. I told her she was being uptight and accused her of not being fun anymore. I basically forced her there.”

  “No you didn’t,” she interrupted, but Jason kept on with the story.

  “She didn’t even drink. I don’t remember most of it, but I remember getting there and handing her a cup of beer from the keg. When she thought I had my back turned she would poor it out. A little here and there until it was all gone. It made me angry, you know? Like why the hell couldn’t she just relax and chill? Where was my fun loving girlfriend who was always down for a good time? It was the first time I remember ever being really angry with her and it was all over a damn beer. I should have left. Right then. I knew it was going to be a bad night. No way were we going to have fun if she was acting like that, but I was too strong headed to give in. I told Chris to go pour me a shot of Everclear and that’s the last thing I remember. Taking that shot and then waking up in jail.”

  Jason wiped the tears from his eyes, but no matter how often he brushed them away they still kept flowing. Annie had the urge to reach out a hand, tell him everything would be okay, but she wasn’t sure it would. There was a lot going against him. There were three witnesses who saw Jason go upstairs with Melanie, a couple more who saw them arguing throughout the night. When the homeowner tried to wake them the next morning, he found Melanie in the bed, strangled to death, and Jason lying on the floor of the bathroom, vomit in a pool around him. There were traces of vomit in the bed as well, as if he had been there first with her and then moved to the bathroom. Melanie also had scratches down her left arm, consistent with the skin cells found under Jason’s nails, like he had possibly struggled to hold her down. At least that was how the DA was forming their story, and without Jason’s side it was hard to fight back.

  Annie sat back and let Jason have his moment, crying like the young kid he was. Even if he got through this, his life would never be the same.

  “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. If I wouldn’t have went to that party in the first place this never would have happened.”

  “This isn’t your fault Jason and you can’t keep blaming yourself. Even if you didn’t go to the party or left early, who’s to say this wouldn’t have happened another time? Someone went in that room and did this to her. Maybe you already protected her from it once, maybe several times, this time it just caught up to you. You never know.”

  Annie tried to stay away from the thought that it very likely could have been him who killed her. He was drunk and tested positive for heroin. Drinking and drugs together can make you do crazy things, can turn you into something you’re not. That aside, her gut told her he was innocent. It’s what she would tell Keith, not that her opinion mattered to the case. Legally she couldn’t go on record, being married to the defendant’s lawyer would make her testimony inadmissible in court, but at least it would give Keith a direction to go, and would also give him confidence on the outcome of another therapist’s opinion on Jason.

  “Jason,” she prompted. He was still crying, could barely catch his breath. “I think we should end our session for today. We’re almost out of time, but I would like to see you again, would that be okay?”

  He sniffed and took exaggerated breaths while nodding his head yes.

  “Okay good.”

  Jason stepped up from the couch and she reached out a hand to help him walk out, let it lay on his upper back, patting several times in an effort to console. They reached the door and she opened it for him.

  “Are you going to be okay to get home? I can take you if you’d like. Or maybe you have a friend you might want to call?”

  “I’ll be okay. I think I’d rather be alone. I could call Chris, but he’s in school. He’s a med student so he’s always really busy. I’ll be fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Stepping forward to leave, he stopped and bent down to pick up a white envelope sitting at the door step. He handed it to her and she automatically reached out, but didn’t care what the envelope held. She was worried about him. The right thing to do would be to drive him home, or call Keith to pick him up, but she also understood all too well about the desire to be alone. To let your mind work through the problems and figure things out on its own.

  “Drive safe,” she called out as he walked down the hall.

  Jason didn’t bother to reply.

  Walking back to the sitting room she collapsed on the couch. She needed to call Keith, tell him what happened, but her mind was still processing everything. She’d never seen anyone break down like that. In all her years as a psychologist, people had their moments, plenty of tears were spilt, but never as heartfelt as his. She felt sad for him. Wished there was something she could do to make him feel better. He was such a baby, a child. He didn’t deserve what was happening.

  Annie was still absentmindedly gripping the envelope, almost forgot she was holding it entirely. Flipping it over she saw it was addressed to her, Annabel Nichols, but there was no address, no return address either. Perhaps it was dropped off by a courier. That wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Whatever was inside the envelope was not a letter, but just as lightweight. She shook the package back and forth, listening to the sound of some sort of metal clanging around. Curiosity got the best of her and without bothering to get a letter opener she placed her finger inside the corner opening and tore through the seal, depositing the contents into her hand. A silver chain and two dog tags sat in her open palm. Lifting one of the tags she read it up close.

  Ferguson,

  William A.

  602-57-9341

  AB Negative

  No Pref

  The name was unfamiliar and she double-checked the envelope in an effort to make sure she wasn’t crazy and it was addressed to her. Not crazy. There it was in black sharpie script.

  Lying back on the couch she racked her brain for some sort of a revelation on the name, but nothing clicked. She knew a few men in the military, but the count was small and no one she knew would want to send her their dog tags. It didn’t make any sense.

  Swinging her legs off the couch, she stood and walked over to the desk in the corner and opened up an internet window on the computer. She typed in the name and began to search, opening each link one by one, trying to be as thorough as possible as not to miss anything. She noticed nothing of familiarity until she got to the bottom of the results page, an article from the New York Post. Her stomach churned as she opened the link. It was a recently dated piece about body dumping in the Lower Bay and the increased amount of discoveries due to changes in the tidal currents. Forty-two-year-old William Anthony Ferguson was the latest body, discovered by a fisherman out for his morning catch. The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head and it was reported that officials had no leads on the case.

  With shaky fingers Annie typed in the name once more, but added New York to the search. The top result was the news article, but beneath that was a Facebook page. She clicked on the link and was immediately overwhelmed with a bout of nausea. It was the guy from the park, the one she shot and killed. She’d never forget his face, no matter how hard she tried. Why the fuck was Brax sending her this guy’s dog tags? What was he trying to say? That he had the evidence to get her arrested? Well guess what buddy, she had evidence on him too. If she went down she was taking him with her, but Brax would know that. Unless his plan was for them to have their happily ever after somewhere in a prison together. Not likely. This didn’t make any
sense and now all she could think about was everything from that night she wanted to forget. The gun in her hand, the power she felt holding it, the strange satisfaction that came over her when the bullet pierced his head. She shuddered back the thoughts.

  Looking down at her desk the evidence of what she did was sitting right next to her. In a moment of disgust and panic over the thought of being caught, she chucked them across the room. Wanted them as far away from her as possible. This was it. She’d had it with his bullshit. She wasn’t going to let him keep terrorizing her.

  Reaching for her phone and without a second thought she found his name and connected the call. Her hand shook as she brought the phone to her ear, but she was no longer shaking in fear. She was angry. She just wanted him to leave her the hell alone.

  The phone rang twice before the sound of his voice washed over her entire body, sending chills down her neck.

  “Well well, look who’s finally calling. Annabel is it? Or just Annie? I’m a little confused these days.”

  She didn’t know how to respond. Hadn’t thought further than calling and bitching him out, but hearing his voice left her tongue-tied.

  “Are you going to talk to me B or are you just being your usual deceiving self?”

  “I’m going to talk,” she finally managed. “I just don’t know what to say.”

  “Well I see you got my present. I assume that’s why you’re calling.”

  “Yeah, fuck you for that.”

  “That can be arranged honey. Don’t tempt me.” His tone was light and joking and it made her fume.

  “You’re an asshole, you know that? Is this all really necessary? Switching out my phone, sending me his dog tags. What’s your plan Brax? What do you want from me? You want me to admit I fucked up? Fine I fucked up, okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay,” he yelled and then straightened his voice. “You promised. You told me to my face there was nothing else you lied about and then you left me to find out our whole relationship was a goddamn lie. Do you have any self-preservation whatsoever? I should beat the ever loving shit out of you until you’re never able to utter another lie again.”