Takeover

by Diana Dwayne

  I tell her everything that happened. It’s actually not that much of a story, given what’s at stake, but at least it’s the truth. She hears me out and probes for anything else and, when I’ve finally finished, she leans forward.

  “Do you have anything that puts you away from your boss’s office when the crime occurred? Does your office have security tapes or anything like that?”

  “No,” I say. “Other than my phone call to James, I can’t think of anything. Mr. McDaniel was a bit paranoid when it came to any kind of recording equipment in the office. I’m sure the camera in the lobby picked me up, but I don’t know exactly when it all happened, so I don’t know if that’ll be helpful or—”

  “Paranoid,” Jillian says, looking off to the side as if I’ve just given her the key to the whole ordeal. “You know what that tells me?” she asks.

  “That he was a whacko?” I ask.

  She sighs melodramatically and says, “No. That tells me that he had something to hide. I mean,” she pulls out another cigarette, not quite having finished her first and lights it with the glowing remnant of the still-burning cylinder, “what kind of a CEO wouldn’t want at least the outer office to be under constant surveillance? Guys like that are usually more scared of the people who work for them than their competitors. This,” she tells me, tapping the desk with the two fingers holding the new cigarette, dropping snowflakes of ash onto the table, “this tells me that he had something to hide from everyone, and that means...” she moves her hands over one another in a circular motion, trying to get me to finish the sentence.

  “That means that it might have been something worth killing for?” I ask, somewhat nervous to see my usually calm and collected sister-in-law with such a crazed look in her eye.

  “Exactly,” she says. “I, well, we just need to figure out what it is. We figure out what he was hiding—”

  “—and we figure out who would want it badly enough to stab him.”

  She points and clicks her tongue at me, and I’m starting to think that my brother, Andrew, may be a little out of his mind for marrying a woman like this.

  “How was he killed?” I ask. “I mean, I know that he was stabbed, but what was he stabbed with?”

  “Don’t know,” Jillian says. “They’re still trying to find the murder weapon, but it looks like it was something small and circular. Whatever it was came to a fine point, but it tore up the vein, like it had been stuck in his neck and moved around enough to obscure the exact type of weapon used. It was small though, something like—”

  “Like an icepick?” I ask.

  She eyes me suspiciously for a moment. “Yeah,” she says, “like an icepick.”

  “How many times?”

  She seems to relax a little bit. “Just once, actually. It seems that whoever did this knew exactly how to puncture the jugular. An icepick though,” she taps the table again, depositing another small pile of ash, “that really takes some talent.”

  I feel a little awkward about the word “talent” being used in this context, but I suppose it applies well enough. “All we need to do is find the icepick?”

  “Yep,” she says. “Although,” she leans forward, her face a little too close to mine, “I’m not sure that we ever will.”

  “Are you okay?” I ask. “You seem a little...” the phrase I want to use is “out of your mind,” but I let the sentence hang.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she says. “I live for this stuff.”

  I’m not quite sure what to do with the phrase, but I guess having a lawyer that’s this in love with what she does isn’t a bad thing.

  There’s a knock on the door.

  “All right,” she says. “They’re going to try to get you to confess to something, but you’re innocent. Don’t speak unless I tell you to, got it?”

  “Got it,” I say, and I can’t help but feel that taking up smoking might not be a bad thing after all.

  Chapter Five

  Lockup

  The interview with the Detective was even stranger than the one with Jillian. For the first ten minutes, he didn’t say a word. He just kept spinning a pen in his hand. It’s too bad for him that I don’t have a guilty conscience; otherwise I would have spilled the beans just to get him to say something.

  He finally asked me a few general questions about work, my boss and our interaction, but nothing that seemed in any way too specific to the case.

  Then he left.

  Jillian assured me that she would get me out as soon as she could, but walking toward my cell right now has a sense of finality to it. I know that I couldn’t have done something like this, but still: here I am.

  I don’t know what I’m expecting when I get to my cell door, but it’s not what I see. I still had the impression of jails having bars, but this is just a small room with a thick door and a bunk.

  When I first walk in, the two women in the tiny room don’t say a word; they just take a second to size me up. Apparently, they’re not too impressed because they go right back to the conversation that my arrival has apparently interrupted.

  “So then, bitch tells me to stay the hell away from her man, and I ain’t about to take none of some white girl’s shit,” the woman says, her head tilting either consciously or unconsciously in my direction. I consider asking the girl why she would be upset by taking some “white girl’s shit” when the woman she’s talking to is paler than me, but I think better of it.

  “So,” the other woman asks, no longer recognizing my presence, still at the entrance of the cell, “what’d you do?”

  “Shit,” the first woman says, “I put that bitch down.”

  “You killed someone?” I ask, realizing the moment that the words are out of my mouth that I’ve just made a huge mistake.

  The two women look over at me. At first, they seem annoyed at my second interruption, but a moment later, they’re both laughing gregariously and I just want to go home.

  “Ain’t you a sweet thing,” the first woman says. She holds out her hand, and I shake it. I make sure not to wipe what I’m hoping is sweat off of my hand. I’m not sure what’ll set these people off. “I’m Sam. Never call me Samantha, and I’ll never have to popsicle you with a plunger, capice?”

  The other woman lifts her chin at me and says, “I’m Nicolette, but everyone calls me Nicole. I don’t think it’s a nickname, I just think nobody can say a proper lady’s name right, you know what I mean?”

  I really want to say “no,” because I have absolutely no idea what she means, but I feel it somehow safer to say, “Totally. It’s nice to meet you, Nicolette. Capisco, Sam,” I respond.

  “Damn, girl,” Sam says, laughing. “Where’d you learn that? Wait,” she says, “let me guess. You went slumming with a sexy, tan-skinned man back in your college days, and he taught you a bit of the mother tongue while he was bangin’ you rotten, right?”

  “No,” I say, “I took Italian in college.” I can’t seem to open my mouth without making myself seem less threatening. It’s somewhere around this time that I start really asking myself why I hadn’t stayed in school long enough to get my doctorate. Maybe then I never would have been a secretary and I never would have ended up here.

  “Oh,” Sam says, seemingly disappointed.

  “Perché siete qui?” I ask.

  “I have,” Sam takes a second to laugh as Nicolette gives her a look that I can’t begin to understand or describe, “absolutely no idea what you just said to me.” Her face gets really serious, really quickly. “You better not have been talkin’ shit,” she says. Sam looks at Nicolette again and busts up laughing.

  “No, I was just asking why you’re in here. Is that rude of me?” Neither of the women answers. They seem far too preoccupied by how hilarious I apparently am to them. I take a moment while being openly laughed at to take another look at the room. There’s a toilet in what I can’t quite call a corner, a sink and what I guess is a mirror but is, in actuality, just a thin piece of plastic, with a semi-ref
lective coating. I guess it’s not so bad; that is, if I can figure out a way to not get murdered while I’m stuck in here.

  “It ain’t rude,” Sam says. “It’s an ice-breaker ‘round here,” she says. “You walked in on why I’m here. I beat some bitch to the ground, ‘cause she wouldn’t lay off me about hittin’ it with her man.”

  For god’s sake, Rose, don’t ask why she would beat up a woman whose “man” she was sleeping with.

  Nicolette chimes in, “Drugs.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Apparently that was the wrong response. Nicolette is on her feet and in my face before I can even react. “What you sorry for, bitch?”

  “I just meant,” I stammer, “I’m sorry that you got arrested.”

  “You know what?” Nicolette asks, her face so close that I can feel the heat coming off of her skin. She pushes me playfully and says, “We gonna have way too much fun fucking wit’ you.”

  I laugh nervously as Nicolette erupts behind Sam who obviously thinks this is the funniest thing in the world.

  “What are you in for?” Nicolette asks when she finally stops clutching her sides.

  “It’s a mistake,” I start. “They think I killed my boss, but I didn’t.”

  Both of the women’s mouths drop. Nicolette is the first to speak, “Oh shit, you’re the one that stabbed that Daniel dude in the fuckin’ neck!”

  “That’s some cold shit,” Sam chuckles.

  “I didn’t actually do it,” I say, then remember reading enough crime dramas to know that everyone denies having done anything wrong. Luckily, this seems to be the one thing that these two women aren’t going to tease me about. “How did you even hear about that, I mean...”

  I trail off, but Sam finishes the sentence for me, “being in jail and all?” She laughs. “Girl, you ain’t never heard more shit in your life about everyone else’s business than you do in the joint.”

  Nicolette starts laughing, seemingly out of context. “Did you actually just call it ‘the joint’?”

  Sam returns with, “Bitch, fuck you,” and I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to laugh or not. “I’m just tryin’ to tell my girl how it go down, so why don’t you clip them thin ass white lips and let me talk to the girl, capice?”

  It’s going to be really difficult for me to not try to speak Italian to Sam. One of the problems with feeling so out of place for so much of my life is that I tend to latch on whenever there seems to be some sort of commonality between me and someone else. In this case, the repeated use of the word “capice” still has my insecure brain thinking that her mother tongue might be a way to connect with her. The fact that her mother tongue is obviously not Italian doesn’t make that urge go away.

  “So,” Sam says, turning back to me, “you tell the po-lice and the lawyers and the judge whatever you want, but a nice little thing like you—you gonna need something to make you look hard, else these girls in here’ll end up ruining that pretty face of yours. Know what I mean? They need to think that you killed that fucker with yo’ two hands if you gonna make it when they send you to gen-pop.”

  “General population, you mean prison?” I ask.

  “Shit,” Nicolette says, scoffing and walking back to the bunk, sitting back down next to Sam.

  “I don’t mean to sound crass, but,” I’ve really got to pick up a different vernacular if I’m going to be in here for very long, “where am I supposed to sleep?”

  Nicolette swings her foot beneath the bunk and slides out what looks like the thin plastic bottom half of a coffin and says, “You’re the newbie. You get to sleep in the canoe until one of us gets moved on outta here.”

  “The canoe?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Nicolette says. “It ain’t so bad once you get used to it.”

  “How long will that take?” I ask, nervously, only now becoming aware of the fact that I’m still clutching my bedding and the cheap toiletries that I was given before I was marched to my cell.

  “You find out,” Nicolette says, “you let us know.”

  “What’s your name, boss killa?” Sam asks, and I’m hoping that the moniker doesn’t stick.

  “Rose,” I say, nervously setting the bedding into the canoe. “Rose Pearson.”

  The two look at each other and, with that, I come to the conclusion that these girls laugh way too often. God, I just want to get out of here.

  * * *

  The first night in jail isn’t so bad, I guess. I mean, sure, the food tastes almost as sulfuric as the water does, but maybe there’s some sort of health benefit to that. I can’t begin to speculate. Sam and Nicolette talked about all sorts of puffed-up nonsense until lights out, and now I’m kind of missing the chatter. It’s not so much that I want to listen to two women make up stories about how badass they are until the sun comes up; I guess I just haven’t had a chance to feel lonely until now. It’s a feeling that I can hardly believe hasn’t always been there, just waiting in the dark for the proper moment to reassert its dominance.

  I can’t sleep.

  The lights have been out for hours now, and I can’t stop thinking about Mr. McDaniel. It’s not necessarily that I miss him, or even that I’m sad that he’s gone; I’ve just grown accustomed to seeing that vein in his forehead bulging multiple times every hour. It may not be the most pleasant or inspiring memory, but it’s about all I’ve got.

  What I really miss right now is sleeping next to James. Tonight was supposed to be the night. To be honest, I’m not quite sure how he had done it: made it so long without pressuring me into sex. For a while there, I was beginning to have suspicions that he was cheating on me, but that was just my ten-years-later-and-still-a-teenager brain kicking in. We’ve slept together, but we haven’t slept together. You know what I mean.

  I’d give anything to be in his arms right now, assured that all of this mess was just an elaborate nightmare, and that everything in the world is going to be okay because he is him and I am me. That’s what I’m forcing into my mind at the moment anyway.

  The reality is that Sam snores, Nicolette won’t stop rolling over in her sleep and there’s a ventilation shaft that leads to the other cells, through which I can hear one of the inmates on the level below talking either to herself, to one of her cellmates or in her sleep. When I say ventilation shaft, of course I mean a few holes bored into the concrete walls, providing just enough air for the three of us to not suffocate. There’s not a drop of comfort anywhere in these pale walls, and I am seriously wondering if I’m going to end up like one of these inmate girls, driven mad by the realities of imprisonment.

  From what Sam and Nicolette were saying earlier, a lot of girls that “come in” for the first time are like me: timid, unsure, feeling like this is the last place that they belong. Then some time goes by, maybe the girl even gets let out, but there’s something about being stuck inside of these walls that breaks a person down. It’s like everything about this place is intended to breed criminality, psychosis even. I haven’t been in this cell for twelve hours, and I can already feel a part of myself starting to pick up the chains that I’m being told to wear for a lifetime.

  It’s not a pleasant feeling.

  Finally around—well, to be honest, I have no idea what time it is—I fall asleep, but my torment doesn’t let up for a minute. Whether a few hours or a few breaths have passed, the next thing that I know, I’m back in my chair, outside Mr. McDaniel’s office, and I’m just waiting for him to come out screaming, but he never does. I don’t know why that’s what’s making this a nightmare, but the silence on the other side of that door is more terrifying than any tirade he’s ever thrown on me.

  When I wake up, it’s still dark outside, but the lights in the cell are on. Sam tells me to get up, that it’s time for food, but I don’t want to eat. There’s something addictive in the food. I don’t know if it’s the unpalatable taste of sulfur in every bite and every drop of water, or if it’s some other chemical they’re putting in there, but I’m not the
least bit anxious to pump myself full of that crap.

  “You’d better eat somethin’,” Nicolette tells me. “If you don’t, they gonna put you on suicide watch like that guy Billy Sanders.”

  “Billy Sanders?” I ask.

  “You know... that Irish guy that was elected to their congress that they put in jail over there. He went on a hunger strike and died in prison.”

  “Bobby Sands,” I correct. “He was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and they were protesting the fact that they weren’t being treated as political prisoners. I’d go over the particulars of their demands, but really, I’m too tired at the moment. He was actually elected to their parliament while he was still incarcerated, but was—and probably still is—the only member of parliament who was ever elected and never saw the inside of Parliament itself, because he died during the hunger strike which he led in prison a month after his election.” At this point, I’m too tired and too stressed to care whether correcting my cellmates is going to get me shanked or shivved, or whatever these crazy kids are calling it nowadays.

  I’m not entirely sure what Nicolette’s response is, because I’m already halfway back to sleep. I can only assume that it’s some usage of the word “bitch.”

  When I finally wake up for good, the small amount of sunlight creeping through what I guess is still called a window has grown, giving the inside of the cell the appearance of heat.

  “Look who finally decided to wake up,” Nicolette says. “You missed your breakfast. That sort of thing’s going to get you in trouble, ya know?”

  “Why’s that?” I ask, shaking my head as if it’ll make my body less tense about being here. I’m pretty sure this is the same conversation that she was trying to have with me earlier, but I was too tired then to care.

  “Guards think you’re not eatin’, they gonna start thinkin’ you got a disorder or somethin’.”