by Margot Hunt
Surrounding the pod, like spokes on a wheel, were the prisoners’ sleeping quarters, each of which were large enough to house two inmates. The deputy escorting me led me to my room, which consisted of a set of metal bunk beds, a toilet and a tiny corner metal sink. The bottom bunk bed in this quarter had clearly been taken, while the top bunk had a bedroll and pillow. My stomach turned again. I had a roommate.
“This is yours,” the deputy said, handing me a flimsy plastic sleeve that contained a toothbrush, a travel-size tube of toothpaste and a bar of soap.
Something about these spare toiletries caused me to panic.
“Wait!” I pleaded just as the deputy was turning to leave.
She turned to look back at me. She had a plain, fleshy face devoid of makeup and wore her hair in a long braid down her back. “What?”
“You can’t just leave me here,” I said. “I need to see a lawyer! I have rights!”
She actually smiled. “That’s what every first timer says.” She turned to leave.
I was left alone, standing in my cell. Just outside, past the open sliding door, were a few dozen criminals. Although I was pretty sure that they were, like me, pretrial detainees. I knew from somewhere—Political Science 101?—that they weren’t allowed to house pretrial detainees with convicted felons. And, I thought, the pretrial detainees were probably somewhat safer to be around. Surely they wouldn’t want to make things worse for themselves before they went to trial.
The full realization that I was trapped here, locked up like a criminal, suddenly hit me.
They were keeping me away from my children. Liam and Bridget needed me. I couldn’t stay here.
But I couldn’t leave.
My breath shortened and my heart began to pound so quickly that I could hear the blood thrumming in my ears. My chest began to hurt. I wondered if it was possible that I was having a heart attack.
“My God,” I whispered. “What’s happening?”
I realized distantly that I was probably having a panic attack. Bridget suffered from them occasionally, and her doctor had taught us how to cope with them. I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a deep breath, hold the air in my chest for a few beats, then slowly exhale through my mouth. I repeated this several times while trying to picture the ocean on a calm day. The water lapping serenely...a lone pelican gliding low over the waves...the warmth of the sand under my bare feet.
My heart rate slowed, and fear began to recede, retracting its twisting, barbed tentacles.
Once the panic attack had subsided, I decided that the only way I would get through this would be to break down everything into manageable tasks.
First I would make up my bed. I had to perch on the metal edge of the bottom bed frame to reach it. But the extended time I was spending in the sleeping quarters had apparently piqued my new roommate’s curiosity.
“What the fuck you doing?” a voice said from the doorway.
I smoothed the blanket over my bunk, then stepped down and turned to meet my roommate. She was a scrawny woman with short, spiky peroxide-blond hair showing black roots and a truly impressive number of tattoos. She had a vine of flowers sprouting from one foot and extending all the way up to her neck, and a series of words and symbols inked on both her arms.
“I’m Alice.”
“Okay, Alice,” she repeated, nodding, “what the fuck you doing?”
* * *
My roommate’s name was Kayla. She had been arrested on drug charges, but other than insisting that the charges were “fucking bullshit” and that she’d been “set up by a fucking whacked-out meth-head whore,” she said she didn’t want to talk about it. At least, not for the first five minutes of our acquaintance. After that, it was all she wanted to talk about.
“I didn’t even buy the drugs,” Kayla complained. We had moved out to the common room and were sitting together on hard plastic chairs. “I mean, I gave Spring my money, but I was arrested before I got the Oxy. So if I never had it, how can I be guilty of buying it? It’s like you go into Best Buy to get a fucking TV or whatever, you haven’t actually bought it until you check out and leave with your merchandise, right?”
“Who’s Spring?” I asked.
Kayla snorted and rolled her eyes. “She’s a fucking bitch, that’s who she is. She used to be, like, my ‘best friend.’” Kayla made quotation marks with her fingers. “But then she got busted for possession, and if she’d just shut the fuck up, they wouldn’t have known about me. But, no, she was whacked out and started running her mouth. Shit. Now I’m here.”
“The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” I said.
Kayla squinted at me. When she frowned, her eyebrows, which had been plucked into thin lines, formed a startling V shape.
“Huh?”
“It’s a famous logic puzzle.” I waved a hand. “Never mind. It’s not important.”
“I like puzzles,” Kayla said. “When I was a kid, I used to do those puzzles where you find the words hidden in a square of letters. I was good at them, too.”
“This is a different kind of puzzle.”
But Kayla wasn’t ready to give up. She nodded her chin at me. “Tell me, but don’t give me the answer. I want to see if I can figure it out on my own.”
“Okay.” I swallowed a sigh. After all, there wasn’t anything better to do. The television show currently playing at a too-loud volume was some sort of talk show on which people yelled and swore at one another, their nonstop expletives bleeped out. It was impossible to understand what any of them were saying, and listening to it was giving me a headache. “The Prisoner’s Dilemma involves two people who have been arrested for committing a burglary.”
“What are their names?” Kayla asked.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s call them Bert and Ernie.”
“You mean like from Sesame Street? No, my daughter hates that show.”
“You have a daughter?” I asked, surprised. Kayla was very young, probably no older than twenty. “What’s her name?”
“Beyoncé,” Kayla said proudly.
“Oh, that’s very—” I hesitated “—original.”
“I know, right? Anyway, Bey thinks Sesame Street is stupid. I don’t blame her. That little Elmo is annoying as fuck,” she said.
“What show does she like?”
“I guess Dora the Explorer. That’s her favorite.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, we’ll call our two suspects Dora and Diego.”
“Yeah, I like that better. Dora and Diego.” Kayla laughed. “That’s funny as shit. Anyway, go ahead.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. “The police believe that Dora and Diego committed a burglary, but they don’t have any evidence to prove it. So in order to make a case, they need Dora and Diego to testify against each other. They put each suspect into a separate interrogation room, then ask them to testify against the other.”
“Why would they rat on each other?” Kayla interrupted. “No one does that, other than meth-head whores like Spring.”
“They’re offered an incentive to talk,” I said. “The police give both suspects the same deal—if you testify against the other, you’ll walk free, and your accomplice will spend ten years in jail.”
“So what’s the catch?”
“The catch is that if neither one of them testifies against the other, they both walk free. But if they both agree to testify against each other, they’ll both have to serve five-year jail sentences. So without speaking to one another, Dora and Diego have to decide what to do. If you agree to testify, you’ll either walk free or, at worst, serve five years in jail. But if you remain silent and your accomplice testifies against you, you’ll go to jail for ten years.”
Kayla was silent for a minute, considering this.
“That’s fucked up,” she finally said.
I
shrugged. “That’s the problem. It’s a game of trust. What would you do?”
“I don’t know. If I’m Dora, then Diego’s my homey,” Kayla said. “I wouldn’t want to betray him and shit. Like Spring did to me, that little bitch.”
“Okay, so imagine Diego’s not your friend. You’d never met him before the night of the burglary.”
“I don’t know. I guess you sort of have to do the testify thing, right?” Kayla said. “Because that way you might go to jail, but it wouldn’t be for no ten years.”
“That’s exactly right,” I said. “Anyone acting in their own self-interest will always choose to testify.”
Kayla grinned broadly. “So I got it right? Really?”
“You got it right.”
She let out a whoop and thrust a fist in the air. “I told you I was good at puzzles!”
“So is that what happened with you and your friend?” I asked.
“Who, Spring?” When I nodded, Kayla shrugged and said, “Nah, it wasn’t anything like that. The police popped her for buying Oxy, and so she became a narc for them. She brings in enough people for them to arrest, she gets off.”
“And she gave them you? Her best friend?”
“I told you, she’s a fucking bitch.” I knew Kayla was trying to sound tough, but the betrayal was clearly hurtful. She ran one hand through her spiky hair while the other tapped out a beat against her leg. Tap-tap-TAP. Tap-tap-TAP.
“I’m sorry she did that to you,” I said. “She wasn’t a very good friend.”
Kayla shrugged, looked down at her tapping hand.
What are you going to do? that shrug seemed to say. There’s no true loyalty in the world.
I knew how she felt.
“Alice Campbell? Your lawyer’s here,” one of the officers called out.
24
The guard led me through a sliding metal door out of the pod, then down a short linoleum-floored hallway through yet another sliding door. The doors opened and shut with thunderous clangs, the noise echoing off the cinder block walls. I had been hearing the doors slam shut all day, the noise competing with the inmates’ shrieks and laughter for which could be the loudest. I hoped the arrival of my attorney meant I was getting out of jail immediately. I couldn’t imagine ever falling asleep in this place.
The guard ushered me into a room, larger than I had expected, with four round tables, each surrounded by chairs. A woman dressed in a severe gray pantsuit was sitting at one of them.
“Alice Campbell?” She stood and held out her hand. “I’m Grace Williams. Your husband hired me to represent you.”
Grace Williams was almost absurdly pretty. She had large green eyes, shoulder-length blond hair and fine, symmetrical features. She wore chunky tortoiseshell-framed glasses in what was probably a failed attempt to detract from her model good looks.
“Thank you for coming, Ms. Williams,” I said, shaking her hand. Her grip was firm and cool.
“Please, call me Grace. We’re going to be spending quite a bit of time together, so there’s no need for formalities.”
The guard left, and Grace gestured for me to sit.
“Your husband filled me in on the basics, and I have to say, I’m surprised the state has brought charges against you. They don’t have much to go on,” Grace said. “But before we get started on that, do you have any questions for me?”
“How soon can I get out of here?”
“You’ll have a hearing tomorrow morning in front of Judge Wilkinson, where we’ll argue for bail. You have no priors and you have substantial ties to the community, so despite the severity of the charge, I imagine you will get bail,” Grace said.
My entire body went cold. I looked down to see that my hands were shaking.
“So I am going to have to spend the night here,” I said, trying to sound calm, but failing. My voice was strangled somewhere low in my throat. I had hoped that the appearance of my attorney meant that the Sheriff’s deputy had been wrong, and that I would be released immediately.
Grace looked at me over the rim of her glasses. “I know it’s distressing, especially if you’ve never been in jail before. But look at it this way—it’s just one night. What we really need to focus on is keeping you out of jail for the next thirty years.”
She was right—this did put one night of jail into stark perspective—but it was hardly a calming thought. I could feel my heart rate accelerate again, the now familiar pounding filling my ears.
“Oh, God,” I whispered.
“Don’t panic,” Grace said, holding up a hand, her palm facing out.
I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down. Panicking was not going to help anything. I rolled my shoulders back, forcing the muscles to relax, and managed to get a grip on my emotions before they started to spiral.
“Do you know how much the bail will be?”
“Unfortunately, because of the severity of the crime you’ve been charged with, it will almost certainly be high. At least $100,000, and possibly as much as $600,000. But you won’t have to pay that out of pocket. I’ll put your husband in touch with a bail bondsman.”
I desperately wanted to return to the world I had lived in a few short weeks ago, one where I had blithely assumed that I’d never see the inside of a prison, or need the services of a bail bondsman.
“Before we begin discussing your case,” Grace continued, “know that anything you say to me is protected by attorney-client privilege. That means I will keep whatever you tell me confidential. However, you should also know that I’m bound by a series of ethical rules, so don’t tell me if you’re guilty. It could limit the type of defense I can put on for you.”
“But I’m not guilty!” I protested, fear turning my voice high and tinny.
“All right,” Grace said. Her smooth expression didn’t change. I wondered if she believed me. Maybe all her clients claimed they were innocent. “Please tell me what happened in as much detail as you can.”
I told Grace about Kat and Howard, and how I had come to know them, and what I knew about their marital problems and Howard’s alcoholism. I also recounted in depth my initial interview with Detective Demer and Sergeant Oliver and how at first I believed they were building a case against Kat. But then they arrested me.
“They said they had a photograph from a traffic camera that showed me heading toward Jupiter Island the night Howard died,” I told her. “And they told me they knew Kat had given me a large amount of money.”
Grace had been busy jotting down notes on a lined yellow notepad with a Montblanc pen. Now she glanced up at me.
“How much money?”
I hesitated. “Twenty thousand dollars. But it was a loan. Kat lent it to me over a year ago because we fell behind on our children’s school tuition. I didn’t want to accept it, even as a loan, but if I hadn’t, the children wouldn’t have been allowed to stay at their school.” I could feel myself flush with embarrassment. “The money had nothing to do with Howard or his death.”
“Who would have known that she gave you that money?”
“Lent, not gave. I’m not sure. My husband knew, of course, and since Kat made the check payable directly to the school, the bookkeeper there would have known.”
“What’s the bookkeeper’s name?”
“Patricia Davies. It was an unusually large check, even for the school, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she remembered it.”
“I’ll have my investigator speak to her. If the police did interview her, it may be helpful to know what they asked her,” Grace said, making a note. “And you said they had a traffic camera photo placing you near Jupiter Island on the night of Howard Grant’s death?”
“Yes,” I said. “But it was taken at an intersection several miles away from the Grants’ house. When the police first interviewed me, they asked me for an alibi for the evening Howard died. I tol
d them that Todd and I argued, and I left and went for a walk on the beach.”
“Why did you argue?”
“Is it important?”
Grace shrugged. “It could be.”
“My husband and I have had some financial difficulties over the past few years.”
“What sort of difficulties? Anything illegal? Drugs, that sort of thing?”
“Oh, no. God, no. But I found out that day my husband had gotten a new credit card without telling me and had run up a balance.” I sighed and pressed a finger to each temple. “Just garden-variety overspending. Living beyond our means. My husband, unfortunately, is a spendthrift. If he wants something, he buys it, even if it isn’t logical to do so at the time. It’s the cause of about ninety-five percent of our marital disagreements.”
“Okay. So you fought. Then what happened?”
“I left. I didn’t want our children, Liam and Bridget, to overhear us arguing. It upsets them, especially Bridget. She’s—” I stopped and inhaled deeply again. I hoped the extra oxygen would wake up my brain, which after four hours in prison felt like it was already atrophying. “She’s highly strung. So I drove around for a while, then decided I felt like going for a walk.”
“But why Jupiter Island? Why did you decide to go there?”
“I didn’t decide,” I said. “That’s just it. I was upset. I was driving aimlessly. I’m not sure why I headed toward the island. It was probably just mental muscle memory, since I’ve driven there so many times to see Kat. At the moment I decided I wanted to get out and walk, the Jupiter Island beach was the closest place to stop. There wasn’t anything nefarious about it. It’s just a horrible coincidence.”