by Cal, Sarah
"You'll be on trial this morning. I'm going to let you out and you need to follow me, okay?"
She nodded her agreement, doing it slowly so as not to aggravate her headache. She stood back as he opened the cell for her, co-operating as he waited for her to get out. She waited for him to close the doors then went after him as he left the room. At least he trusted her not to be at her back, and she felt a loosening of some of the tension in her body.
Emma wondered where this 'trial' was going to take place, and she felt the stirring of cautious curiosity. He led her to the sheriff's office, and when he opened the door for her to go ahead, she realized why. A makeshift courtroom had been made in the office, and the room was somewhat big enough to admit a few people inside. They hadn't done much with the room, there just seemed to be an invisible divide, a desk against one wall, and directly opposite it seats had been placed in three rows where the other people sat.
She was pleased to see that Chase was present, sitting on the side of the room with the seats arranged. When he saw her, he nodded and smiled to her encouragingly. She tried to smile back, but it was only a curl at the edge of her lips on her uninjured side. That he could still smile at her made her feel better and more prepared for her 'trial.'
Emma didn’t bother to look at anyone else in the room, keeping her eyes on Chase. She had no idea how bad this was going to be, but she was a little relieved it wasn’t going to be like the interrogation from before, where it was just her and an officer she didn’t know locked in a smaller room. There were quite a few people around already and Emma wondered if they had all been called, or if they brought themselves.
It made her wonder just how far the story of her getting locked up had gotten. Without the easy communication, unless someone went out blabbing, it shouldn’t have gotten too far. Did it reach her neighborhood? Because if it did, it was going to cause her problems when she went back. Would this be the situation that put her family on the spotlight? Because they didn’t need it, not with everything else happening.
But she couldn’t let that distract her. Not now, when she was expected to fight for her freedom. She was pretty sure this 'trial' wouldn’t be like the usual, with no lawyers and no judge or jury, unless that was what the audience was there to act as, though she didn’t think that was it.
As she crossed the room, she noticed there were a couple police officers sitting in that side of the room as well, not any that she knew, though she did recognize one as her interrogator from before. She let her eyes pass over him, not wanting to see his hard, serious eyes again. He was just too intimidating.
After moving where she was asked to, one of the police officers brought in the woman that Emma shot at, a few more people following behind them. She ran a critical eye over the other woman. She certainly looked better than she had when Emma first met her.
Her hair was combed back. She must have gone through some effort to clean it and make herself presentable, because Emma could tell her hair was blonde when she'd thought it was dark before. The woman was dressed conservatively in a dress that had fill sleeves, a modest neckline that was cut above her collarbones, and a hem line that fell to her knees, with official looking flat pumps, the whole outfit in a dark grey. She looked like she'd been getting ready for a day at the office.
Save for the bandages on her arms, she looked absolutely fine. She didn’t have any make-up on her face, but she didn’t need it. Looking at her, acting so calm, almost serene, it was hard to believe it was even the same woman. Even though, after she got injured and sat down, then started with the stream of apologies, she had seemed docile. This wasn’t even quite that. The madness Emma had imagined in her eyes wasn’t there. For a second, she wondered if there had been a mistake somewhere, but the bandages wrapped around her upper left arm told her there couldn’t be.
This... is bad.
The woman before her wasn’t one that could be accused of petty theft while carrying a metal bat. She looked too calm and composed to be the crazy looking woman Emma had met. If she brought up her argument, with this woman acting the way she was, Emma would get shot down quickly. She could already feel the despair start to curl in her chest, wondering how long she would stay locked up in that cell.
But then the woman saw her. Her eyes widened, before narrowing as her face twisted in anger. Emma felt her own eyes widen in surprise at the sudden change as the woman snarled and tried to attack her. This... looked more like the woman she'd faced, crazed and so mad at everything around her, as if she was the only one in a bad spot and everyone else lived in luxury. Like she was entitled to the food she was about to steal, so why should anyone stop her? Why would she stop, just because someone was telling her to?
It made Emma's heart pause then beat a little faster in remembered anxiety, from the first time they met.
But her face hardened, and Emma stood firm. She wasn’t going to react like before and worsen her situation over this woman, not even moving to retaliate as the woman was restrained, though she couldn’t help tensing her shoulders at the unexpected lunge. It took a while for the cop restraining her to get the woman to calm down.
A few more people walked into the room before the door was closed. She and the other woman were on the other side of the room from Chase, standing across from each other with the desk between them. Emma just watched, keeping her expression bland as the other woman sneered at her. She didn’t seem to realize she'd effectively shot herself in the foot with her display earlier, and Emma wasn’t going to be the one to enlighten her.
Another police officer stepped forward, keeping a wary eye on the woman, and started to explain the situation.
"Since we can't run a real trial, due to lack of resources and wanting this process to go as quickly as possible, we will be working with the information that we have. I ask that both the accuser and the accused each give a statement in your defense. Deliberations will be made after we hear you both out."
He gestured to Emma as he moved back to lean on a patch of wall. Emma took a deep breath as she stepped up first, not looking directly at anyone in the room as she explained truthfully the whole ordeal.
"It was late evening, it hadn't gone dark yet, and I was out on patrol. I saw her trying to break into a shop to steal, she had a bat with her that she was trying to break through the glass with. I told her to stop and go home and she didn’t, even though she saw I was armed. I had the gun in my hand, and I shot at her by accident when she tried to come at me. I didn’t mean to take the shot, I just panicked in the moment and pulled the trigger. It hit the glass behind her and her arm got cut. When I saw she was injured, I wrapped her arm and told her to get back home."
Just a quick story with bare facts. After she said everything she felt she needed to, she shot a defiant look at the woman, who was glaring at her angrily.
"Liar! I was just an innocent civilian walking the streets, I didn’t even have anything on me!"
Emma narrowed her eyes at the other woman. She remembered now that she had taken the bat home with her and Merry, and half regretted it. It wouldn’t have been better to leave the woman with it, but if she just said she had the bat at her place, the woman would likely claim Emma was trying to frame her for something she didn’t do. Emma couldn’t prove who owned the bat, and since the officer had said there was a lack of resources, Emma knew she couldn’t even count on forensic evidence.
She couldn’t just keep quiet, though. She wanted to retaliate, and she opened her mouth to say something even as alarm bells rang in her mind. She should know to keep her mouth shut by now, she just wouldn’t learn. It was just so unfair when she was the only one watching her words.
But then someone from the other side of the room—essentially the audience and, perhaps, the jury—stood up and distracted her. Emma was shocked to realize it was Carol, having not noticed she was there before.
"I just have a few questions," the older woman said, almost pleasantly, but Emma could tell by the hard look in her dark eyes th
at it was just an act. When no one refused her, she nodded and spoke. "First off, if you were just an innocent civilian, then why were you breaking curfew? Patrols only start at curfew, so if the young lady over here was walking around before she saw you, then you were out late, weren't you?"
Emma watched the other woman when Carol stopped, seeing her looked nonplussed. There was a low murmur that crossed the room before dying out. There were fifteen people in the room, total, most of them cops, and when Emma looked around, she could see the doubt crossing a few of their faces.
"Secondly, if you were just out, innocently, for a stroll, why were you carrying a baseball bat? Now, you can argue there was no bat, because no one found it, but she had a gun, lying by saying you had a bat wouldn’t make things any better for her, and I believe her when she says she saw you with it."
There was a short silence, for about five seconds, and then everyone in the 'court room' started muttering to each other. The woman didn’t argue or defend herself, looking unsure of what to say as her eyes started flitting around the room. She didn’t refuse, or try to say that she didn’t have a bat, and the noise only grew in the room.
I might actually make it out of this, Emma thought, feeling awe grow in her chest. She turned to Carol, wishing she could thank her for her contribution. But she was still on trial, and even though it was unofficial, she didn’t think that was allowed.
"Moreover," Carol went on to say, and the room going quiet again as everyone refocused on her. "Emma showed up at the hospital a while back as a volunteer helper. She helped me out there, and I don’t believe it would be in her nature to shoot someone maliciously. I can recall an incident with a woman that was brought in that day, with severe injuries and fearing for her children. She asked to die, and Emma was loathe to end her life. I just don’t see someone who wouldn’t kill to end someone's obvious misery shooting at an 'innocent civilian' such as yourself."
The woman looked a little more desperate as the noise again grew in the room. She opened and closed her mouth, floundering for something to say but unable to find the words. No one waited for her to get her thoughts in order, though Emma could admit to being curious about what she had planned to say.
The police officers looked at each other, sharing a few looks between them, before the one that spoke before stepped forward and sent Carol a nod.
"Thank you for your input, ma'am, I think we've heard enough. We will come to a decision overnight as to how to punish both women for their crimes."
Chapter 13
Emma couldn’t sleep overnight.
It wasn’t just that the room was cold, or that the bench was uncomfortable and she no longer felt so tired she would black out as soon as she lay down in spite of the conditions. Right then, she was too worried about the outcome of her trial to let sleep take her as usual.
She spent the night sitting, or lying down, or standing up to pace around the small cell. It was dark, so she couldn’t see much, but her eyes adjusted enough for her not to knock into anything as she moved around the small space. Whatever light came through the small barred window wasn’t enough for anything, but she was glad to have it anyway, or it would have been pitch black.
Something in her chest quailed at being so confined. If she had to stay here another day she felt she would drive herself mad. At least they weren’t letting her starve, although the potions she was getting were almost too little to appease her stomach, and the best they could get was a meal a day and some water. No one had come to see her after she got locked back in, aside from the person that brought her the food and water, and she was starting to feel the isolation.
Emma didn’t like it. She preferred solitude, but this was a lot different. She couldn’t survive like this, not for very long, so she kept hoping that they would release her soon. She hadn't gotten any word ever since the final comment of the trial.
She was glad for that one thing. She would get punished, it was only what she deserved. But she was happy that the other woman would get punished as well, so it wasn’t just her. She did hope that their punishment didn’t mean keeping them locked up in the same cell, she could only shudder as she thought of being locked up in such a confined space with that insane woman for any length of time.
They wouldn’t do that, though, or so she hoped. Not after they saw how that woman reacted to just seeing Emma. If she hadn't been restrained, she would have attacked Emma. And if that was how the woman would always react to Emma's presence, she was going to have to do her best to make sure they never cross paths again, or it would get dangerous, and she might not be armed the next time. Emma didn’t get into fights, so if that happened, she was pretty sure she would be taken down.
Don’t think about it.
She was only making herself more restless, though it wasn’t like she had any thoughts that would calm her down. She was home. But she hadn't seen her family since before she left for the trip, and it had been almost a week since she left home. She hadn't been away from her family this long and it made her anxious. She had forgotten all about asking Chase how they were doing at home, since he had at least been there. But since that one time he visited her, and she had been too distraught to bring up the questions, there hadn't been any other chances. At the moment, if she really wanted to see her family, she had to hope that the cops would decide she didn’t need to stay n confinement.
All she could do was hope, but that didn’t quell the anxiety keeping her up.
What had Chase told Janice and Merry about her absence? Were they worried about her? How had they been with Emma being away for the longest she ever had before? She thought it a bit self-serving to assume they hadn't been okay without her there. But there should have been some adverse reactions, form Merry at least. More than anything, Emma missed them, even with all the problems that came as a part of them. Emma wondered if they had missed her, too.
She even thought about Brian, since she hadn't seen him after she got arrested, did he find a way to talk Kellen to letting him stay at home? Or was he still sleeping outside? She worried about him, about something happening to him out there. That he had been doing it for days when she was unaware of it made him stronger than she had thought. It wasn’t that she looked down on him for being the house maker while his wife worked, but Brian was used to being a kept man, in his own way. She hadn't really seen the best in him, before or during their affair, but she was starting to realize he actually had depths she had never seen before. He genuinely cared about his children, and she hoped Kellen at least let him in to see them, because she was sure they missed him just as badly.
All these thoughts kept running around in her mind with no rhyme or reason. She'd be thinking of one thing, and in the next moment she would jump to a different thought. But every time her mind would circle back to the trial, and she would be back to worrying herself sick about what the police would decide to do with her. A few times in the night, she almost broke down crying because of the thoughts going round and round in her head, imagining all the things that could go wrong.
She wondered if what she did made her a bad person. Even though what was happening was an epic disaster, she reflected on how much better she felt now that the truth was out. Holding it in had been giving her so much trouble emotionally, and if not for the anxiety brought on from being locked up, she would have been relieved to have it out. She wondered if she would serve jail time, or whether there would be an alternative fit for their new world.
She wondered how Chase would react once she was out of prison. He hadn't talked to her about it. He had been pained and angry on her behalf when he saw her in her cell, but would he really not care that she had nearly killed someone? The shot hadn't been off by much, if her aim hadn't gone lax in her surprise, when the woman goaded her on instead of backing down in the face of a gun, she would have been dead.
Emma shuddered just imagining it.
It didn’t happen, though.
Right. No one would be calling her a murderer. Becau
se it was an accident, Chase would sweep the whole thing under the rug, because he would trust whatever she said on the matter.
The next morning another officer came to collect Emma. She hadn't slept at all and her head felt cottony because of it, her head throbbed and her eyes ached. She was exhausted, but she was wide awake as they let her out of the cell. Hope and anxiety warred in her chest. If they were done with the deliberations, then she would find out what they planned to do to her. She couldn’t help thinking of the worst case scenario, even though it only made her more anxious.
She was taken back to the court room, this time without that woman present. There were two other officers in the room, one of them, thankfully, a woman. It didn’t automatically mean she could trust her, but it did make her relax just slightly that she wasn’t in a room full of men she didn’t know. She still would have preferred Chase was there, or even Carol, as she moved to sit down where she was directed and waited for the rest of them to settle, then begin.
"We've come to a decision," one of the officers told her as soon as they were all seated. "You won't serve jail time. Even if we could lock you up, it would have to be here at the station, since we don’t have the resources to get you to a prison, but that would be too inconvenient for everyone involved. I apologize for the mistreatment you faced while locked up, I assure you that the officer was punished accordingly."
She nodded. She was calm now that she knew they weren’t going to keep her locked up. She was also satisfied the cop that belittled her got some punishment. She was tempted to ask for details, but it wasn’t her place. And there were much more important things she was still waiting to hear.
The other officer spoke up.
"We've talked to some other officers and learned that you've been helping out, volunteering services for the town, and that does lend some weight to keeping you out of prison. You won't be locked up, but rather you'll have to do some community service as punishment, because we can't completely let you off. As much as you felt you were doing your part as a volunteer, harming people isn’t something we can just let go. It is more or less what you've been doing so it shouldn’t be too difficult for you."