Condemned

by Soosie E Nova

  Roman lifted his head, pushing his hair back from his face.

  Shit.

  Fuck and shit.

  Shoot me now.

  My whole world crashed. I was eighteen years old again, weak, innocent, my whole life ahead of me, balanced on the cusp of disaster.

  His emerald eyes locked onto me. Everyone turned to me, following his intense gaze. I felt the color drain from my cheeks. The heavy silence dragged on and on. Seconds passed like minutes. This had to be a mistake.

  “Detectives,” Leo half-smiled, the confidence he’d had all those years ago worn down by years of depressing, soul destroying isolation. Polunsky had the well-deserved reputation of being the worst prison in the US. It showed in his face. He’d aged more than a decade, those emerald eyes that once shone with life and hope, gazed at me, empty and dead.

  “Thank you for agreeing to look into this for me,” Leo said quietly.

  I was frozen, my feet heavy as concrete blocks, an overwhelming urge to run ate away at me. The thick walls pressed in on me, squeezing the air from the room. He kept me going during the darkest days, the thought of seeing him again kept my spirit alive. I’d fallen in love with a child killer, held onto that love for over a decade. His heinous, unforgivable crime tainted the only good thing in my life. For that I hated him.

  “Detectives Schilling and Milano,” Schilling hissed through gritted teeth, shoving me towards the desk, inching me closer to the only part of my past I hadn’t fought to forget.

  “I remember you, Detective Schilling, from the original case. Detective Milano, I’d shake your hand…” he lifted his shackled wrists, shrugging his broad shoulders. Shoulders I'd cried on.

  My mind raced as Schilling ran through the original case. I couldn’t focus. The air weighed heavy, I struggled to breathe. Schilling rested a hand on my thigh, stilling my frantically tapping foot. I wanted to tear his face off for touching me.

  “Excuse me,” he said to Leo, yanking our seats back from the table. He spun me to face him, his face so close to mine, the stench of stale coffee and donuts smacked into my nose.

  “You okay, Milano?”

  “Huh? Yeah, sorry, he just, he looks like someone I used to know. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. I’m fine.”

  Jesus, Dani, pull yourself together. Just breathe Goddamnit. You can do this. I couldn’t do this. If he was gonna expose me, he’d have done it by now. Perhaps he didn’t recognise me.

  The interview moved to the imaginary girlfriend. I dreaded what was coming.

  “I’m not understanding what connection this holiday fling, four years previous, has to do with the crimes you are convicted of?” Schilling said.

  “She wasn’t a holiday fling,” Leo growled, showing the first sign of passion since we’d walked in here. His eyes glittered with unspoken hurt and fury. His cuffed hands balled into fists on the desk.

  “She?” Schilling pressed.

  “Yes, she. She was female.”

  “And does she have a name yet?”

  “Dani, she told me she was called Dani. Her birthday is the 31st of August 1989. She’s Mexican, utterly stunning and afraid of her father. He was some kind of gangster. She went missing on the 1st of September 2007, between the hours of 6am and 8 pm in the Mexican tourist resort of Playa Del Secreto. Her last known location was building eleven, first floor, Valentin Imperial Maya. I reported it to the Mexican police on the 2nd of September, 2007, after becoming concerned that her father hadn’t. He seemed the type of man who would want to deal with things in-house, if you know what I mean? It’s all there in my file.”

  “Right,” Schilling sighed. “And how she is related to the crimes you are convicted of?”

  “I told you this last time,” Leo spat, tears welling in his eyes. “After she was taken I spent three years looking for her, travelling to Mexico whenever I could. About a year into my investigation, an American tourist told me she looked like someone in a skin flick he’d watched. I started to believe a sex trafficking ring kidnapped her, some kind of sick vengeance against her father. I was looking into them when Maia and her mom were murdered. My guess? The questions I asked had them sweating, so they eliminated me in the sickest way possible.”

  “But you never learned her name?”

  “No. She lied about her first name, I didn’t bother asking her last name.”

  “Can I see the email?”

  The lawyer peeled a crisp white sheet off her pile of papers, slipping it across the table. Sent from a throwaway email address, Resvue mne is all it said.

  “We believe it was sent from a bar in Pasadena. Unfortunately, they have no working cameras but a barman remembered a very slim, attractive latina woman drinking to excess, crying, playing with a cell phone the night the email was sent. We’re waiting on him meeting with a forensic artist,” the lawyer explained.

  Jesus, no. That can never happen. I can’t be dragged into this, paraded like a circus freak in front of the media. My father would find me for sure.

  “Did she type it with her head?” Schilling grinned, raising a bushy dark eyebrow.

  “Like I said, we believe she was drunk at the time of writing it. The barman said she was alone. It’s possible she got away from the traffickers and is in hiding, seeking help.”

  Drunk. That’s the understatement of the century. She was so drunk, she can’t remember sending the email. I remember being in the bar. It was the day I decided to hand in my notice in Pasadena, take the promotion in Houston. I remember typing out email after email, begging him to help me deal with the nightmares and the staring and whispering. All of them deleted, unsent. Somewhere between downing the best part of a bottle of vodka and being dragged home by my ex-partner, I’d sent that email. Resvue mne.

  “And how did your client receive this email? As far as I know, death row inmates don’t have access to Gmail.”

  “My cousin Carly checks that email every day for me, in case I hear anything from Dani. She passed it on to me last month.”

  “Will you be looking into this Detective?” The lawyer asked.

  “Doubt it,” Schilling said, “I’ll pass it on to my supervisor, but as far as I can see, it changes nothing. Say this girl did exist, it doesn’t change the fact all the evidence tells us only three people were ever inside your client's apartment. Two of those people are now dead. We were never investigating a sex ring. This is a murder investigation. You’ve given us nothing that casts doubt on your client’s guilt.”

  Schilling finished up the interview.

  “Detective Milano?” Leo asked as I slid my chair back, desperate to escape these painted, green concrete walls.

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think she wanted rescuing from?”

  Life.

  “I wouldn’t know."

  “There are people there for her. If she still needs help. I’d be there but…” He raised his shackled hands again. “I just want her happy and safe. That’s all. Is she?”

  “No.”

  Her entire life is one long, maddening shitshow that gets worse by the day.

  “I’m innocent, Detective, I want you to know that.”

  Schilling propelled me from the room before he could say any more.

  The drive back to Houston passed in silence. Schilling side-eyed me anytime we hit traffic.

  Paranoia crept into my bones back at the station. My co-workers, all strangers to me, their eyes drilled into my skull, crawled over my skin. They knew. All of it, who my father was, the darkness I was running from. The videos. They’d watched them, witnessed my debasement. Crowded around a grainy police issued TV screen and gazed on as I was abused, dehumanised in the worst possible ways. They knew I was broken.

  It was too crowded, too cramped, the air too hot.

  “Hello? Earth to Milano? We need to update the chief,” Schilling’s hand waved in front of me, snapping me back to reality.

  “I have to go, I’m… sick.”

  He had no time to reply. I race
d from the imposing office block. I had to get home, I had to think. Leo’s lawyer will have called the station by now, told them who I was. It was only a matter of time before my life here was over.

  Chapter Two

  Danica

  I sat staring down a bottle of vodka, my tipple of choice when things got hard. My mind replayed the interview with deafening volume. The throwaway phone I’d emailed from laid in my lap, the email app open. Three unread emails filled the Inbox, all from the same email address. Reports on Leo's crimes littered my web browser.

  Fuck.

  A man’s life hangs in the balance, if his appeal fails, his execution date will be set. I have information, information Schilling says won’t help him. Information I know won’t help him. He killed those people. That poor child and her mother suffered at his hand. Evidence doesn't lie. He couldn’t have made it any easier for us if he’d brutalised them on stage, filming the whole thing in front of a live audience of cops.

  I’m not doing this. The man is guilty. For all I knew, he handed me to my kidnappers, starting my nightmare. He’d dragged me out, away from Angel, forced me to leave the room unsecured. His accomplices slipped through the window, overpowered Angel and lay in wait for him returning me. It was less nonsensical than his version of events. I was his first victim.

  The MO of the men who took me and the men they sold me to after my father refused to hand over the ransom, didn’t fit his fantastical tale. Most of the former were dead, died years before the murders of Stacey and Maia. Anyone involved met with the pointy end of Angel’s blade, anyone else, people who had knowledge of my whereabouts and refused to tell, died in tragic ‘accidents’. To the latter Stacey, and Maia especially, were too valuable to kill. They’d have killed Leo and taken the girls as property.

  He’s guilty. The only man I’ve ever loved, the knight in shining armour I’d dreamed of night after night throughout my living Hell was a paedophile and a murderer. I’d be damned if I was throwing away my career on that.

  If he talks, he talks. My past will become common knowledge once more. I’ll look for work elsewhere, maybe move out of state. I sure as Hell aren’t gonna throw myself under a bus for a monster.

  My resolve strengthened, I grabbed the vodka and phone.

  They both ended up in the barbeque with all the printouts of Leo’s case file I’d agonised over all evening. I lit the match and stepped back. Vodka makes a powerful fuel. Flames licked the phone, the melting tech fizzed and popped. It was time to stop looking back.

  Leo had been the anchor tethering me to my nightmares, the thought of tracking him down, running off into the sunset with him and living happily ever after trapped part of me in the past. No more.

  “Talk to me, Milano.”

  My body spiked, I swear I jumped a half a foot in the air, my hand reached instinctively for my gun. The crackle of the fire had drowned out Schilling’s footsteps, he’d ambushed me in my own back yard, caught me burning the evidence Leopold Roman would kill for. The cell phone the email had been sent from.

  “Christ, Schilling, you scared me half to death,” I spat, spinning to face him. He stood, his hands jammed in his beige pants, gazing passively at me.

  “I think Roman is one who has you jumpy, Dani.”

  “Danica, we established that this morning, my name is Danica. Detective Milano to you.”

  I turned my back on him, on the fire, striding to the safety of my rented house. Schilling blocked the door with his foot, forcing his way in behind me.

  “I’ve been a Detective since you were in diapers, kid. I saw the way you looked at him, the effect he had on you. And that little chat y’all had when we were leaving, that told me everything I needed to know. You’re Dani, Roman’s Dani. The holiday fling we all thought was a figment of his imagination.”

  “And? You said yourself, my case and his are unconnected. What happened to me, him looking for me, if he ever did, has nothing to do with the horrible things he’s guilty of.”

  “Too right, kid,” he grinned, “and don’t you forget it. Don’t let him snake his way into that fucked up head of yours. He’s no knight in shining armour, he’s not a Prince Charming sent to rescue you from the dragon. He’s a cold-blooded killer.”

  Schilling grabbed two beers from my chiller and made me talk. Tried to, anyway. I told him only what he needed to know, switching off emotionally as I spoke. I despised people seeing me as weak. Weak isn’t me, I’m not that person anymore.

  “It’s all gonna come back and haunt me again, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Schilling grinned, taking a long sip of his beer, “he’s withdrawn his appeal. The Chief told me right after you raced outta the office.”

  “What?”

  “I know, right? Musta been hit by a rush of conscience or something. Told his lawyer right after we left he wanted to end the appeals process.”

  “That makes no sense, he found me. The evidence he’d been searching for, sat right opposite him, interviewing him and he gives up now?”

  “Makes perfect sense, kid. If you’re there and you’re real and you’re alive, you got away, then why’d they frame him? They didn’t. He knows it, I know it, you know it, the appeals court would too. It’s over for him. That poor baby gets her justice and the world is down one monster. It’s a win-win, kid, don’t overthink it. If you ever need to talk, I’m here, confidential, of course.”

  “Thanks.”

  Schilling let himself out, leaving me absorbed in my past, my nightmares floating across my vision. The mercy of sleep refused to come. I spent the night on the sofa, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.

  Why? Why would he give up now?

  Fuck, I wished I hadn’t burned that phone. Christ only knows what the password to that email account was. I’d been half shot when I set the damn thing up.

  ◆◆◆

  My stomach growled unable to remember the last time I ate. I slumped over my desk, the first to arrive from day shift. I hadn’t been able to face another hour in that house, my mind dragging over my past, Leo’s emerald eyes dancing around my imagination.

  A brown, grease-sodden paper bag landed on my desk. Schilling scraped his grey plastic seat over the threadbare carpet, planting it in front of my desk. His elbows rested on my work space, he leant towards me, his bushy caterpillar brows joined together in the middle with a deep frown.

  “Eat. You’re too skinny.”

  “Whatever is in that bag, I’m not eating it.”

  The scent of the oil laden junk food turned my stomach.

  “You look like shit. Eat.”

  “I’m fine, rough night that’s all.”

  “Bullshit, Milano. He’s gotten to you.”

  “Detective Milano, I need to speak in my office,” Chief barked. “Alone,” he added as Schilling dragged his fat ass up.

  I followed my new boss to his office, my heart pounding through my ribs. He knew. Leo had told him everything.

  The Chief lowered himself into his worn, padded office seat, waving at me to take the seat opposite him.

  “You’re aware I know your past, of course? The trafficking, who your father is.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  My file followed me everywhere, detailing my entire life from the moment Las Vegas Vice rescued me from a seedy backstreet brothel to my arrival here and everything in between.

  “Leopold Roman withdrew his appeal yesterday, after speaking with you.”

  “Schilling told me.”

  “Right. It doesn’t take a Police Detective to work out your involvement with him.”

  Great, now my name was associated with a vicious cartel boss and a murderous paedophile as if it couldn’t be muddied any more.

  “I can’t give evidence, if my face ends up on the news…”

  “You don’t have to. Your case and Roman’s are both closed and unrelated as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Okay…”

  “He wants to see you again. Says he has info on anot
her case and he’ll only talk to you. Alone. Look, Milano, if I’d any idea you were involved with him, I’d never have sent you with Schilling yesterday. This info he has, I’m sure it’s a wild goose chase, if you don’t want to go, I’ll send Schilling.”

  “No. I’ll go.”

  I straightened in my seat, squaring my shoulders, my eyes hard. This wouldn’t beat me, wouldn't chase me from another town. And I had to know why he’d withdrawn his appeal, something about Schilling’s explanation didn’t sit right with me. I guess, if I was honest with myself, I wanted him to convince me he was innocent, or at least explain how he’d turned from the man I fell for into the monster he is today. I couldn’t accept that he’d always been that way. What would that make me? I’d loved him, waited for him to rescue me and then moved to Texas in the hope of bumping into him again, all the while he was raping a child.

  Schilling tried to come with me, giving up only when I agreed to eat the greasy egg and bacon sandwich he’d brought me. It sat on my stomach, weighing heavy, coating my insides with a layer of nauseating grey oil.

  The ninety-minute drive back to Livingston passed in a blink of the eye. My gut twisted, my feet burned, aching to run back to my car. I forced myself forward, pushing through to the reception. The same stony-faced guard greeted me.

  “Detective Danica Milano, here to see Leopold Roman.” I pressed my badge to the bullet proof screen separating us.

  A cold film of sweat coated my goosebumped skin. I was directed through the concrete corridors, to the visitation booths for death row. Two guards flanked Leo. Chains bound his hands, crossing around his waist. He shuffled towards the poured concrete box his side of the plexiglass, his ankles shackled in heavy metal, dressed in the white death row prison overalls. He flinched at the sound of the thick iron door behind him slamming closed, locking him into the claustrophobic space, like the animal he was.

  An uncertain, shy smile played on his lips, he reached for the plastic phone. I grabbed mine, lifting it slowly to my ear, my lips tight. Whatever reaction he wanted from me, he wouldn’t get it. I’d been to Hell, this was a walk in the park. My legs quivered below the desk, my foot tapped erratically at the cold, grey floor.