Captured By The Warriors

by Daniella Wright

  The cute officer is holding the door open while talking to the security guards. I don’t know if he wants me to hear them on purpose, or he just doesn’t care. I hear them talking about taking me down to the station with a copy of their report so that they can take my official statement.

  I start to shake nervously. I’ve never been in this situation and honestly it is a bit surprising. I have literally spit in an officer’s face before. It was during a peace rally in Cuba and that guy was holding a rifle. Somehow I did not get arrested for that. But now I am where I never thought I would be and I am faced with the decision to be the law-biding citizen or my free-spirited fuck-authority self.

  The cute officer steps into the room and closes the door behind him, leaving the young one behind to get a copy of the guard’s report. He looks at me.

  “Eva Jones?”

  I look up at him and nod.

  “I’m Officer Penobscot and we’re going to take you down to the station to get your statement, okay?”

  My immediate reaction would have been to spit in his face and shout something about my freedoms or something like that. Instead I just nod and start to cry again. The usual fire that I have in my chest at the rallies is but an ember, hiding from the harsh winds outside.

  He helps me up out of the uncomfortable chair and knocks on the door. His young partner comes in and grabs my belongings. They guide me out to the patrol car which is rather difficult for me. Through blurry eyes the floor is hard to see and the stockings on my feet are not meant for grip. I slide a few times but am kept stable by Officer Penobscot.

  We get outside and he places his hand on the back of my head just like I have seen in the shows and movies. He gets me inside the car and his partner gets into the passenger seat, carrying my things on his lap. He gets into the driver’s seat and nudges his partner in the arm with his elbow.

  The young lad perks up, “Oh!” Then he recites me my rights with a few minor stumbles. “Do you understand your rights as I have read them to you?”

  I nod my head and cry. I don’t know if they can see me but I can’t manage words.

  The ride to the station is at least not more unpleasant than the current situation. There are no harsh bumps or crazy dips. The plastic seat itself is uncomfortable but that is to be expected. I sniffle and try to get things under control before we actually get to the station. I feel the car come to a stop and make final sniffle.

  The officers exit the vehicle and Officer Penobscot opens the door. He helps me out and I see my pumps sitting on the ground in front of me. I slip my shoes on with his help and they escort me inside the station.

  We pass lines of people waiting to file something with the front desk where an older man and an older woman are slowly typing in the complaints. They seem to purposely be doing things slowly, like the DMV. Officer Penobscot brings me around all that, through some doors into a back area where officers are sitting at desks doing paperwork. He then takes me farther back to a room marked “INTERROGATION”.

  I bite my lip to keep from crying as he opens the door. He sits me down in the room and removes the cuffs. I immediately wipe my eyes and try to get the eye liner and mascara lines off my face. He hands me a tissue which is much appreciated.

  His young sidekick set my things on the table in front of me and they both leave the room. I grab my purse and rummage through it until I find my compact. I flip it open and get myself cleaned up a little using the tiny mirror. Then I find my grocery bag and look through it. Most of my items are there although some have been crushed or squished.

  Officer Penobscot comes back into the room and startles me. I quickly close my bag and look at him as though I were a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. He smiles and slides a cup of coffee towards me then sits down and takes out a small pad of paper and a pen.

  I take the hot cup and take a sip. After the initial sip I realize just how hungry I am. My stomach growls and the officer obviously heard it. My cheeks go red and I stare into the coffee, trying to avoid eye contact.

  “So, Ms. Jones. Can you tell me what happened today?”

  I tell him that I work as an office assistant in the building next to the mall and went over on my lunch break to refill my snack drawer. I see him smile at the mention of my snack drawer. Then I tell him what I did, which stores I went into, and even which windows I was longingly looking at. I even go as far as to tell him which package I was considering at the travel agency’s window when I heard the alarm go off.

  “Okay. So you heard the alarm go off. What did you do?”

  “I thought that someone must have a gun or something so I ran to the nearest exit.”

  “Then what.”

  “That’s when the security guard tackled me. I thought he was a bad guy or something.” I can’t believe how cooperative I’m being. My stomach growls again.

  “Well thank you for your statement.”

  He gets up and leaves the room. I sigh in relief and sip the coffee. Then I pull the bag of broken snacks towards me and look through it to see what survived.

  There is one unopened bag of shrimp crisps left, although the one remaining is mostly dust now. There were two sweet buns, now there is one flattened like a pancake. I had grabbed three boxes of dipped cookies, now there was one that was broken open and the cookies were now dust. It made me sad to look through my bag of what used to be happy snacks.

  I hear the door open again and Officer Penobscot is there holding a sandwich and smiling. I smile up at him and he sits down across from me. He slides the sandwich towards me and places his own sandwich on the table.

  “It may not be Japanese but it’s free and they never skimp on the meat.”

  My small smile grows a bit with a small giggle. I grab the sandwich and unwrap the layers or plastic wrap holding it together. “Thank you, Officer.”

  “Oh, please. Just call me Nick.”

  I take a bite of the sandwich and look up at him. “But you arrested me. So, shouldn’t I call you Officer?”

  “My partner is collecting the video footage from the security cameras. I’m on break.” He smiles, “I’m Nick.”

  Chapter 5

  The sandwich is delicious and gone in as few bites as possible. I know I’m still in the interrogation room but at least Nick is nice to me. Between bites of his sandwich he tries to strike up conversation with me which I’m not sure he’s doing to play as the good cop, or he legitimately wants to know.

  “What do you do in the office building?”

  “I fill out forms for merchandise. Like where they should go, how much we have, who gets first dibs. Stuff like that.”

  “You said you were looking at a Europe package? Ever been?”

  “No,” I smile thinking about the places I have been.

  “I myself have been to Mexico. That’s the extent of my travels.”

  “I’ve been all over, just not Europe.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He seems sincere enough. It has been a long time since I have really told someone about my adventures abroad, at least someone new. Those initial reactions from people when you tell them about all the adventures you have had is really something to behold. Usually they have one of three reactions; star struck in awe, complete jealousy with green skin included, or the “I can top that” attitude.

  “What do you want to know?” I start, testing the waters.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  I swallow my last bit of sandwich, wipe my mouth on my napkin, take a deep breath, and say “I’ve been to Cuba, the Philippines, India, Japan, and Australia.”

  By the time I finished Nick’s eyes were huge and he almost choked on his coffee.

  “You’ve been to all those places?”

  “Yup!”

  He looks me up and down as though sizing me up. “How old are you?! I mean I know it’s something you never ask a woman, but damn.”

  “I’m twenty-six. I spent a lot of time traveling after I got my degree. The
n I came back and had to get a job because unlike those countries it’s harder to just live off the land.”

  He continues to stare at me with a mixture of both amazement and sheer confusion. There’s a quick knock on the door and the young officer steps in. He shows Nick some papers and whispers something to him.

  They whisper to one another and I ignore it. I could listen to their conversation but I don’t really care at this point. I pull my purse closer to me and realize my phone isn’t in its little pocket. I rummage around, getting more flustered with every second. It’s gone. Along with about half of my snacks, my phone is gone.

  Someone probably snatched it up from the floor of the mall and it will just be gone to world. I’ll have to get a new one. But that means that I can’t call my boss and tell him why I didn’t come back after lunch and why I’m not coming back for a few days.

  I guess my rummaging wasn’t as stealthy as I had thought because Nick pulled me back into reality.

  “Everything okay, Ms. Jones?”

  I shake my head and can feel myself getting flustered. “I guess in the commotion, I must have dropped my phone.”

  Nick turns back to his partner and the young man leaves the room. Nick looks at me and reaches out, placing his firm yet calming hand on mine.

  “I’ll have my partner go back to the mall and see if the security guards picked anything up. Good news is, you are free to go. The camera footage showed a blonde woman dressed in black heading in the complete opposite direction. And she was much older.” He pauses for a moment, “And not a natural blonde.”

  I give him a half-assed chuckle as a response. The kind of chuckle that says “Well that’s just dandy that the security guard tackled me instead then”. It’s what I really wanted to say but I figured I’ve said enough and I just want to go home.

  He seemed to get the hint. “Would you like me to take you back to your office?”

  “Can I borrow your phone, or someone’s phone?”

  “Sure,” he says, pulling his cell phone out from a latched pocket on his belt.

  He hands me the device and I dial my boss’s number. Luckily it is one of the few numbers I actually have committed to memory. It rings for a while and my boss finally picks up. He starts yelling and quickly changes his tone when I explain what happened when I went to the mall.

  My boss cools his jets and apologizes for what happened. Before I could even ask, he offers to give me the next few days off. I accept his gracious offer and we end our conversation. I hand the phone back to Nick and thank him.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I’ll have the next few days off, I guess.”

  “That’s good. Do you need a ride to your car?”

  “I took a bus today.”

  “Would you like a ride home?”

  I look up at him and our eyes meet. He smiles, I smile, and I accept his ride. He takes me out of the station and back to his car, not the squad car, his actual car.

  His car is a simple four-door that is clean but still a man’s car. It’s got a few scuffs and dings here and there. The inside is fairly clean though. He gets in and unlocks the door for me. Before I sit down he tosses a gym bag into the back seat.

  I get in and we go on a very quiet trip to my apartment. The only sounds are the car and my occasional quick direction. When we get to front of my apartment building we both pause for a second.

  He is cute, but wouldn’t it be awkward to hug the guy that arrested me? But he did just drive me home, in his own car. He’s pausing just as much. Is he thinking the same thing or just wondering why this weird suspect isn’t getting out of his car?

  “So, uh, sorry about the inconvenience today. I know a ride home and a sandwich aren’t much compensation but, hopefully it’s something.”

  “Yeah. Thanks Nick.”

  We pause for a second again then I get out of the car and wave at him as he drives off. Luckily I still have me keys even if I don’t have my phone.

  Chapter 6

  It’s hard to sleep. All I can do is toss and turn thinking about everything that happened today. I roll around, trying every possible sleeping position. None of them work. I fluff my pillow, flatten it out, hug it, lay it under my head, on top of my head, and nothing.

  Eventually I walk a few laps around my apartment and turn on the television. I flip through the channels until I find one of those boring nature documentaries about ants. Who knew there were so many different kinds of ants? I guess now I do.

  I guess it was boring enough to fall asleep to because when I my alarm clock went off I woke up. I turn off the alarm and roll over to look at the ceiling. I could sleep in. I don’t have to go to work for a few days.

  There’s a knock at my door. I get myself up and run my fingers through my hair to straighten it out a bit. I open the door and there’s the young officer holding a plastic bag.

  “Something wrong Officer?”

  “No, no. Uh, Officer Penobscot had me go to the mall security office and pick up the rest of your belongings. So, here you go.”

  He thrust the bag at me as though he were giving a flower to his third grade crush. I take the bag from him and do a visual check of the contents. I see my phone and few non-crushed snacks.

  “Thank you Officer.”

  He smiles, nods, and goes on his way.

  I head back into my apartment and plop myself down on the couch, setting my bag down next to me. I pull the phone out and see I have a few missed calls from my boss from yesterday. After erasing them I start brewing my coffee.

  Not even ten minutes after sipping my first cup my phone begins to ring. It is one of my co-workers, probably calling to ask if it’s all true. She loves gossip. I answer reluctantly.

  “Oh my god! Eva!”

  “Hi Tina.”

  Eventually I manage to decipher her language of high pitched squeals and jumbled fast talk. She manages to ask what happened yesterday and I explain what happened. I can almost feel her enjoying this juicy bit of office gossip. It’s a little unnerving really.

  Almost immediately after that call ends, I get another.

  “Hi Frank.”

  “Eva you scoundrel!”

  He’s the office bad boy, or at least he wants to be. He is really more of a nerdy guy that wants to hang out with the jocks. I explain what happened yesterday and she almost gets upset by the fact that I didn’t actually steal anything.

  Call after call keeps coming in until I’ve told the story so many times that I feel like I’m an automated message. After the fifteenth call I just start ignoring them. I take a moment every now and then to check who is calling, then I hit the ignore option.

  My phone tells me I have about eight new messages. I might get to those later. I haven’t decided yet. I go on with my day and the calls get less frequent.

  After a few hours I turn on my music and start cleaning. It’s been a while since I’ve really cleaned. There’s dust on top of my fridge and behind my television. While I clean and try to move passed everything from yesterday I notice my phone ringing again. This time I don’t recognize the number. Maybe this time it is something important, or at least more interesting.

  “Hello?”

  “Eva Jones? This is Nick, from yesterday.”

  “Officer Penobscot? Um, hi.”

  “Sorry for calling you out of the blue like this. I got your number from the case file. I wanted to apologize for the way the security guards treated you yesterday, and for having to take you down to the station.”

  I want to be angry because that really did suck. All I was doing was refilling my snack drawer. But, once I heard him apologize like that, so sincerely, I wasn’t angry. I think I even smiled.

  “I also wanted to tell you that we managed to catch the woman who did rob the store. We caught her on other cameras entering the parking lot and traced her license plate. So, there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  “Thank you, Nick. Glad you caught her.”

  This is d
efinitely not how I thought cops were supposed to act. You see all of the horror in the news about police brutality and how they oppose people doing any type of protests. I thought when I was being taken down to the station that I was going to harassed into confessing to a crime that I clearly didn’t commit. Nick’s not what I thought.

  “Listen, I want to apologize again and words don’t really seem to cut it. I don’t usually do this, but can I offer you a drink or something this Friday?”

  I am completely caught off guard. I stumble over my own tongue trying to say anything to him.

  “Eva?”

  “Friday! Yes! Sounds good!”

  He chuckles and it sounds so light-hearted.

  We plan to meet up the day after tomorrow for a drink and hang up. This is definitely not what I was planning on doing this week.

  Chapter 7

  Friday has arrived and I am so not ready. I pace back and forth around my room picking out outfits and laying them on the bed. After the fifth outfit I stop and take a moment to look at them. They are all so drastically different that I really can’t decide. Is this a date? Is it casual?

  I arrange the outfits from the most casual to the most date-like. The first is a pair of jeans, some leather boots, and a t-shirt. Not too bad, but much too casual. The second set is a tighter pair of jeans, leather boots with two-inch heels, and a low cut shirt. Little casual, little sexy, not bad but maybe not right. The third is a knee length tie-dye dress that has an open back and a low cut front, left over from my travelling days. Not a bad choice I think. The fourth is a long flowing skirt and a silk scarf for holding the girls. A great conversation starter and very sexy. The last is a mini skirt and a corset-like top with no sleeves with some matching high heels. Too slutty I think.

  I toss the first and last options on the floor, go back to my closet, and pick out two more outfits to through into the ranks. I keep going through outfits. Some of them I pick up and stand in front of my mirror to size them up.

  This isn’t a date. He wants to apologize for the craziness at the mall. But he did ask me to call him Nick instead of Officer Penobscot. Plus he called me personally to make sure everything was okay. Although he pulled my number from the file, so maybe it was part of the job. But getting a drink with someone you technically arrested is not professional.