Smart, But Dead (An Aggie Mundeen Mystery Book 3)

by Nancy G. West

  “Okay. So you’ll get another one.” He clicked the camera. With my sour expression and smeared face, I probably looked like some loser on a wanted poster.

  He motioned to a female officer. “Take her to holding.”

  “How long…” I started.

  “Might be a while. We book sixty to eighty people on weekdays. This weekend, we’ll have eighty to one hundred and twenty coming through intake. We’ll call you. Next.”

  Thirty-Nine

  The female officer took my elbow and steered me toward a side room partitioned with glass so booking officers could see inside. She nudged me through the door into a room three-quarters full of miserable-looking women. Rank body odors of every variety assaulted my nose. Hygiene wasn’t a big consideration for people hauled to jail. I longed to shower and to escape to clean air.

  Women crouched in corners or bunched in groups, trying to get as far away as they could from the entry door, like rats shying from light. Some looked sick and held their heads in their hands. From the stench, I thought several had been sick. Some had passed out against the wall. Others gazed into space, oblivious.

  I moved gingerly toward the corner closest to the booking area and pretended I was invisible. A rotund woman sidled up.

  “What you in here for, honey?” Her hair was stringy and her dark eyes were inscrutable. A cut oozed by the purple bruise on her temple.

  “Burglary…maybe breaking and entering.”

  “B and E? That could be just trespass. No big deal. Burglary’s worse. Is that why you’re dressed in black with that stuff smeared on your face?”

  I nodded.

  “You don’t look much like a burglar. This your first time?”

  I nodded. She seemed to feel sorry for me—the first person to express a modicum of sympathy during this whole horrible ordeal. I felt my eyes mist.

  “How about you?” I gurgled.

  “I’m here for stealing. My husband beats me up.” She pointed to bruises on her face. “He almost broke my arm. He was so drunk, he finally passed out. I called the cops to pick him up and took my kids to a cousin’s farm out of town. Then I came back to town, stole something and made sure a cop saw it so I could get in here for protection. Real ‘protective custody’ inmates are charged with crimes against children or ex-gang members wanting protection. I just don’t want to be at home when my husband gets out. The cops say they can’t do nothin’ unless he kills me. If I file charges, he’ll be waiting when I get out and beat me up worse. At least I can sleep here and get a few meals and good showers. Get these cuts on my face doctored.”

  “Can’t you run away? Go to a relative’s house?”

  “He knows the places I’d go to. I hope he doesn’t remember that cousin’s place out of town. If I’m in town, he’ll find me.”

  “What if you go to another city…get a job?”

  “Doin’ what? I barely got out of sixth grade. Washin’ dishes don’t pay the rent.”

  “There must be something…”

  “Yeah. Workin’ the streets. Johns beat you up, too. And you got druggies and gangs to deal with.”

  “There’s a battered women’s shelter.”

  “Been thinkin’ about that. I’d have to leave when he’s working, which ain’t very often, and take the kids. If he found us, he’d take it out on them. ”

  “I hear the shelter protects their clients.”

  “Yeah.” She smirked. “If they can.”

  She didn’t seem to have any other options. I wished I could help her.

  I glanced around. “What crimes are people here for?”

  “DUIs, drugs, child support, B and E, rape, murder. They’ve put the ones charged with murder someplace else.”

  “I saw a man shackled down the hall in a red suit. What do you think he did?” I asked.

  “He’s some kind of badass. They put ’em in red suits. Men in the general inmate population wear orange suits. He might’ve killed somebody. Could be a gang member, freaked out on drugs, be an out-of-control mental case or some kinda repeat criminal. They put him in cool-down for twenty-four hours. Then in lockdown. That’s where all the gang members go.”

  “You sure know a lot about jail.”

  “I know a lot of people who’ve been in here. People talk.”

  A tough-looking woman sitting on the floor across the cell snapped menacing eyes on my companion.

  “What’s it like in lockdown?” I asked.

  “It’s got cells about six feet square. They lock ’em in twenty-three hours a day.”

  Being claustrophobic, I couldn’t imagine it. “Must be horrible.”

  “And they don’t know how long they’ll be there. Could be twenty-four hours, could be a month. If they make trouble, it’ll be longer. Sometimes they start yelling they can’t breathe.”

  “From the shock of being confined?”

  “Yeah. They can’t see outside the cells. They yell, curse, bang the doors. Officers lift up peephole covers to see inside the cell and put food trays through slots in the door.”

  “Why would somebody do something to get themselves brought here and put into lockdown?”

  She shrugged. “Bad choices. I’m Laney, by the way.”

  “Aggie.” Guilty of bad choices.

  Forty

  A female officer called through the bars of our holding cell. “Mundeen!” I jumped three inches off the floor. Throaty laughs rumbled from around the room.

  She motioned me to the door and pulled me into the booking area.

  “Desk Number Three.” She pointed. “Medical.”

  I shuffled toward the desk. Officer Michael McMullen confirmed my name and asked about my fainting at the magistrate’s office.

  “It was probably from lack of food.” I didn’t mention being angry and in a state of terror. “What if I get really sick?”

  “You’ll go to Medical at the annex.”

  “The annex?”

  “All female inmates go there. It’s across the street.”

  “I’ll have a room…cell?”

  “What are you charged with?”

  “Burglary. You haven’t read the police reports?”

  “We don’t get them. They go to the magistrate. We’re a holding facility. You’ll be housed at the annex in a large room like a dormitory—open bay unit.”

  “Does the annex have lockdown cells?”

  “Twenty for women.”

  I swallowed, feeling shaky and feverish. “Who will see me if I’m sick?”

  “University Health System docs from the medical school.”

  Everything was intertwined: the university, medical school, jail. It all depended on which route you took. How did I get so far off track? I held my forehead. How could I prove I didn’t kill Eric Lager from here?

  “You’ve never been in jail before, have you?”

  I looked up with wet eyes. “No, sir.”

  “You get to make two free calls from booking.”

  “I called my friend from the magistrate’s office.”

  “Okay. Then maybe you won’t be here long.”

  “I could be a murder suspect.” His eyes opened wider. “I was looking around in this lab, you see, because another man had died, and I was looking for clues. It was dark, and I tripped on him…the dead man.”

  He shook his head. “I thought I’d heard everything.” He mumbled to himself. “Medium-high risk.” He squinted up at me. “You gave your belongings to Banking?

  “I didn’t have anything. The police took everything.”

  My baby’s bracelet was probably rotting on the campus lawn. While I rotted in jail.

  A female officer took me back to the smelly holding cell.

  “You can wait here until the
van loads to go to the annex.”

  Laney was still there, slumped against the wall with her eyes closed. I slid down beside her.

  “Laney, what’s medium-high risk?”

  “Anybody charged with a felony. Assault, sexual or otherwise. Battery, with or without a weapon. Burglary.”

  “Murder?”

  “No. They put murder suspects in lockdown until they’re convicted. Then they go to prison.”

  I shuddered.

  Two officers entered our cell with bags of food. “Chow time,” they said. My bag contained a sandwich and two cookies. I was starving. I inhaled the food and began to feel almost human.

  The tough woman who’d given Laney a dirty look pulled her muscled body off the floor and swaggered over, tattooed arms swinging in full view. I stuffed the other cookie in my mouth before she could confiscate it.

  “Back already, sweetie?” Her cold eyes bored through mine. “Where you goin’? Low-risk five-star hotel?” She sneered.

  I hoped she wasn’t going wherever I was going. When I didn’t answer quickly enough, she narrowed her eyes and growled, “What are you in for?”

  I swallowed my cookie and made my voice as deep as I could. “Murder.”

  Laney turned toward me, brows raised.

  “Hmph,” the toughie said. She shrugged, swaggered back to her space and slithered to the floor.

  I put my hand in front of my mouth and whispered to Laney, “I didn’t kill anybody. I thought that might make her leave us alone.”

  Laney covered the lower half of her face to hide her smile. “That ought to do it.”

  I must have dozed off. A crackling voice startled me awake.

  “Anderson! Celaya! Jacoby! Mundeen!”

  “That’s us. Hurry up.” Laney and I struggled to stand each other up and wobbled toward the door where the officer stood.

  She pulled us out and pointed to the vestibule. “Van’s waiting.”

  This was it, then. Meredith wasn’t coming. Sam wasn’t coming. No lawyer was asking to see me. Nobody was bailing me out. There was no way I could figure out who killed Kermit Carmody or Eric Lager. I’d been booked into jail.

  Forty-One

  Nobody talked on the short drive to the annex. I steeled myself for the next horrible event.

  From the annex intake desk, they escorted us one by one to a clothing room.

  The “clothing tech” inventoried our old clothes, looked for contraband and handed us blue scrub suits like the orange ones men wore at the main jail. I felt like an inmate.

  Laney and I grabbed each other’s hands for good luck. Then she shuffled off to her housing unit accompanied by an officer. Laney might be one of the few people happy to be here.

  She looked back. “Laney Celaya,” she said.

  “Aggie Mundeen,” I called, wondering if I’d ever see her again.

  An officer escorted me to an elevator, up one floor and into a hall. In a large dormitory-like space, separated in the center by a Plexiglas wall, two dozen women meandered on each side of the partition.

  Two-tiered bunks covered with army-like blankets were lined up in neat rows toward the rear. Metal tables with attached metal seats occupied the front of the rooms.

  The center dividing wall ended at a half-circular surveillance room that backed up to the hall.

  The officer inside, with her back to us, sealed off from both sections of the divided room, had a computer and extra screens to monitor every inch of both areas.

  The inmates stopped to look at the new arrival in the hall. Me.

  “You’ll be on the right side,” my escort said. “Medium-high risk.”

  The thought of milling among them terrified me. I thought I was going to faint.

  The officer waited until I stabilized. If I acted like a wimp, I hated to think what might happen. I took a deep breath and nodded at her. She released my arm, and we entered the unit. Inmates closed around like predators stalking a kill. Some made comments under their breath.

  She walked me to a bunk and pointed to the top tier. It was located second row back in the center. I counted bunks to either side. I didn’t want to get into the wrong bed and give somebody an excuse to harass me. I hoped the occupant of the bottom bunk let me get up there.

  “Shower over there behind the wall,” she said. “Wash everything, including your hair. Inmates who don’t stay clean are disciplined. Don’t take all day.”

  Behind the wall were four shower heads with soap dispensers and enclosed toilets at one end. I chose a shower where I could see anybody coming before they got too close. It felt scrumptious scrubbing dirt from my hair and body and running my fingers through clean hair.

  When I peered around the wall, the inmates were watching for me to come out—a fresh specimen. The officer, still there, looked around.

  “No trouble here, understand? If the monitor sees anybody causing a problem, she’ll send you straight to solitary.”

  Taking a deep breath, I straightened to my full five-foot-four height. Head high and eyes straight ahead, I walked toward my bunk with my heart skipping beats. When I was almost there, my protector walked toward the exit. Some eyes followed her; others stayed glued to me. The metal door banged shut.

  As soon as she left, a tall, powerful-looking woman swaggered toward me, her swinging arms laced with tattoos—the same tough woman who’d confronted me in the holding cell.

  “So. Here’s our little murderer. You sure about that, cupcake? You don’t look like you could kill nothin’.”

  I stood as straight as I could.

  “I’m sure about that,” I stated. “This time they think they’ve got me.”

  “This time? Whoo-eee. How ’bout that. You one badass. I smacked my man with a tire iron, but it didn’t kill him. Too bad.”

  “Way to go, Thelma Louise,” her friend called out. “Maybe next time.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe next time. They nabbed me for assault and battery.” She turned heel and jiggled a happy dance back to the table where her friends waited.

  I exhaled and climbed up to my bunk, intending to stay there until they fed us. Incarceration was like being hospitalized, only we couldn’t get better, go AWOL, or investigate the crime of which we were accused.

  A young girl, fresh-scrubbed like me, came toward my perch.

  “I’m on the bottom bunk. We’re allowed to talk over there in the day room area.” She walked toward the round metal tables and chairs.

  She looked like a child. If she was brave enough to walk through the jungle, I could make it. I got down off the bunk, stood tall, looked straight ahead, walked toward the tables and sat.

  “You don’t look old enough to be here. What are you, eighteen?”

  “Yes. They have cells for seventeen-year-olds who commit felonies.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I needed money for food for my brothers. My parents are addicts. Most of the time they’re too high to function or in jail. My brothers and I get so hungry. I thought if I had a bike, I could throw a paper route along with waiting tables, but…”

  “You stole one. And the value of the bike made it a felony.”

  She hung her head. “I don’t know what my brothers are going to do. They’re eight and ten.”

  “Is there anybody to help them?”

  “My aunt takes them home when she can and feeds them. But she has five kids of her own.”

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “Court-appointed. He looked hungover when he came to see me.”

  “My friend’s trying to get me a lawyer. Maybe he can help you. What’s your name?”

  “Sylvia Curtis.” She told me her address, and I memorized it. This girl shouldn’t have been here.

  Forty-Two
>
  We heard commotion near the ancient television set and moved closer to see what was happening.

  “We’re sorry to report a terrible tragedy,” the newsman said. “Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in an underground traffic tunnel in Paris this morning just after midnight. She and the man she was dating, Dodi Fayed, were involved in a high-speed chase, allegedly pursued by paparazzi, when the car they were in crashed into a tunnel wall. Diana was rushed to a hospital with massive head injuries, which led to her heart attack and death. Diana, Princess of Wales, is dead at age thirty-six.”

  We froze with shock.

  I heard sniffles. As the station showed Diana’s photographs, my fellow inmates started weeping. The more her death sank in, the more we cried.

  “How could that happen?”

  “She was so young.”

  “She was a true princess. How could she be dead?”

  “She was so beautiful. So elegant. What will happen to her boys?”

  The women would leave to wipe their faces and eyes, then return to the television, mesmerized by the unbelievably horrible tragedy.

  Princess Diana was us. She was the little girl in each of us who played dress up in front of the mirror and dreamed of being a princess. Even the true Princess had suffered a catastrophe...like the unknown disaster we all feared.

  I was no longer afraid of these women. We were Diana.

  It grew quiet in Unit B. Women straggled to their bunks and cried, wrestling with Diana’s tragedy and their own. I wanted to help them, but I had to get out of jail to do anything.

  I heard clanking in the hall. A staffer and inmate rolled in food trays. After we’d finished our ten thirty a.m. lunch, an officer stuck her head in the door.

  “Agatha Mundeen? You have a visitor.”

  She accompanied me to the first floor of the annex and led me to a waiting room.

  Meredith sat there.