Closer Than You Know

by Brad Parks

  “Damn, yo, we just having some fun,” Dudley said. But then she sulked off, taking her friends with her.

  Once they were out of earshot, the officer said, “Sorry about that.”

  “That’s okay. Thanks for helping me out, Officer. I’m just trying to mind my own business here.”

  I gave her a quick smile, thinking that was the end of our exchange. But she stayed where she was, looking down at me with this strange countenance.

  “You don’t remember me, do you,” she said quietly.

  Startled, I studied her face, which I was reasonably certain I had never seen before.

  “Ah . . . sorry, I . . .”

  I glanced at her name tag, which read BROWN. Had we been coworkers at Starbucks? Gone to school together? I’m reasonably certain I would have remembered a woman of her stature. Nothing was coming to me.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

  I wanted to ask her the whens, hows, and whats of any relationship we might have had. I could surely use a friend in here.

  But I already had the sense this wasn’t the time. It certainly wasn’t the place. Officer Brown wouldn’t want to risk other inmates overhearing.

  “Thanks again for helping me out,” I said, nodding in the direction of the women who had already sat down.

  “Oh, don’t worry about them. They’re harmless,” she said. “Some of the other women aren’t, though. Best to stay out of their way.”

  “Got it.”

  “You take care of yourself,” she said. “I’ll see you around.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I kept my head down for the rest of the morning. Knowing I would soon be appearing before a judge, I attempted to make myself look less like a bedraggled inmate and more like a woman who didn’t really belong in her current circumstance.

  But the orange jumper doesn’t exactly help in that regard. And it’s hard to do much to your hair without a comb.

  Not long after lunch, I was led to a room with six other inmates—two women, one of them pregnant; four men—and told to sit quietly on a bench and wait. It was time for our bond hearings.

  It seemed strange to me they had a judge come out to the jail. Didn’t inmates go to judges, not the other way around?

  Either way, my nerves had really started kicking in. I felt like I was waiting to go into the principal’s office, only the consequences were considerably higher.

  One by one, my fellow inmates were summoned. When they were finished, they exited quietly. Well, except for the pregnant woman. She was crying.

  When it was my turn, I was escorted into a spare concrete room. There was no judge, just an older-model flat-screen television. On top of the TV, there was a camera. It pointed down at a chair that was backed up against the wall.

  It was justice via teleconference. So much for the human element.

  I settled into the chair. On the television screen, the judge sat in what appeared to be a drab, cramped courtroom. Through reading glasses, he studied something on his desk.

  In the upper right-hand corner of the screen, there was a small picture-in-picture cutout of me, looking small in my orange jumper, backed up against that concrete wall. I assumed that was the image of me being beamed back to the courthouse.

  I couldn’t see much besides the judge and the few feet in front of his desk, so I couldn’t tell if there was anyone in the gallery. I wondered if Ben was there, offering silent support. He had a section of a large intro class that he TAed for Professor Kremer, his thesis adviser, on Thursday afternoons. But his wife’s court appearance took precedence over that, right? Or could he not bring himself to tell Professor Kremer he was married to a cop batterer?

  The judge looked up, taking off his glasses.

  “Melanie Anne Barrick?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ms. Barrick, you are charged with misdemeanor disturbing the peace and resisting arrest, and with assaulting an officer, which is a Class Six felony, punishable by one to five years in prison. Do you understand the charges against you?”

  One to five years? For a scratch? Was he kidding?

  “No . . . not, not really.”

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “I . . . I barely touched him. And it was only because he was—”

  “Ms. Barrick,” he said, holding up a hand like he was already out of patience with me. “We’re not here to argue your case today. I just need to know that the words I’m using make sense to you and that you don’t need a translator. Do you understand the charges against you? It’s a pretty simple yes or no question.”

  To him, I was just another rumple-haired woman in an orange jumpsuit who apparently lacked the intelligence to comprehend his big, fancy words.

  “Yes,” I said, with what little dignity I could muster.

  “Thank you. This is an offense that, if you are convicted, could result in your incarceration. You are therefore entitled to be represented by an attorney. If you cannot afford one, the court will appoint one for you without charge. Would you like me to appoint an attorney?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Raise your right hand.”

  I did.

  “Do you swear or affirm the evidence you’re about to give is the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ms. Barrick, do you have a job?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your rate of pay?”

  “Eighteen dollars an hour.”

  “And how many hours a week do you work?”

  “Forty.”

  “Are there people living in your residence who rely on you for support?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I have a son. And my husband is still a student.”

  The judge looked at the clerk for a moment. She nodded at him.

  “Okay, Ms. Barrick. As I understand it, Mr. Honeywell is representing you on your Social Services case, is that right?”

  “Uh, actually, I don’t know anything about that.”

  The judge didn’t seem fazed by this. “Then let me be the first to tell you. Ordinarily, I’d appoint someone from the Public Defender’s Office to represent you. But since Mr. Honeywell is already going to be working with you on this other matter, I’m going to appoint him to represent you here as well. Is that acceptable?”

  It wasn’t. I knew about the kind of lawyers who were appointed in Social Services cases. With a few exceptions, they were the bottom feeders of the legal swamp. I can remember one of them telling my mother the reason he hadn’t returned her phone calls was that the court was only paying him $100 to represent her and that didn’t buy such personalized service. “You’re lucky I even get out of bed for a hundred dollars,” he said.

  That was twenty years ago. I couldn’t imagine the pay rate for court-appointed attorneys had improved much. I would get exactly what I paid for with this Honeywell guy: nothing. But at the moment, he was my only option.

  “Okay,” I said.

  The lower-left side of the screen was now filled with a short, round, gray-haired man in a rumpled gray suit. His tie was too long for him. There were heavy bags under his eyes, which protruded out unnaturally far.

  He looked like he already understood I was disappointed this was the best representation I could get.

  “Ms. Barrick, can you see me all right?” he asked in a lugubrious, marble-mouthed Southern accent.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have a report here from Blue Ridge,” he said, waving it in his right hand, and then proceeded to make me repeat most of the things I had already told the court services officer that morning.

  He finished by saying, “Your Honor, Blue Ridge has recommended a two-thousand-dollar unsecured bond. But under the circumstances, I think we can give Ms. Barrick a PR bond. She doesn’t have a record, so sh
e’s never had to appear in court before. But if she’s been working at the same place for four years, we know she’s pretty good at showing up for things.”

  The judge turned to his left and asked, “Does the Commonwealth have any thoughts on the matter?”

  And then, in the lower-right corner, the prosecutor appeared. I recognized her as the woman who had interviewed me after my assault. I couldn’t recall her name and I wondered if she remembered me. I couldn’t imagine there were that many rapes in Augusta County.

  If she did, there was no sign of it. She was staring straight ahead at the judge.

  “We do, Your Honor. Ms. Barrick seems to have recently developed a talent for getting in trouble with the law. In addition to these charges, the Sheriff’s Office recently executed a warrant on her home, where they found a significant amount of cocaine.”

  This was the first time anyone in an official capacity had said it was cocaine they had found. Teddy’s tastes must have shifted. He used to be a heroin user.

  The judge’s head swiveled toward me.

  I couldn’t believe the prosecutor was going to be able to use those damn drugs—the same drugs that had been the justification for taking my child from me—to make it even more difficult to get my child back. I could scarcely make the argument to Social Services that I was a fit mother when I was rotting in jail.

  Desperate, I leaned toward the camera. “That wasn’t mine, Your Honor. It belonged to my brother.”

  “Ms. Barrick,” the judge said sharply, “you’ll know when I want to hear from you, because I will have asked you a question. Otherwise, I need you to keep your mouth closed. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I said.

  “Good. Now, this cocaine, how much are we talking about here?”

  “Nearly half a kilo,” the prosecutor said. “And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but the sentencing guideline for that amount is more than five years, Your Honor. That’s a factor that would make her a flight risk.”

  I didn’t know which to be more stunned by: the length of the potential prison sentences I was facing or the amount of drugs they had dragged out of my home.

  Five years.

  Half a kilo.

  Holy hell. I had been around Teddy long enough to know that was a huge amount, enough to keep a small army of addicts high for a month. Where had he possibly come across that much coke? He must have been dealing again, and at a volume way beyond what he had ever done before.

  “And has she been arrested on those charges?”

  “Not yet, Your Honor. In the meantime, her violent behavior toward Officer Martin shows she’s dangerous. And such a large amount of drugs is clearly a threat to the community. We feel like the sooner that threat is removed, the better.

  “In addition, we know that people who deal drugs in such large quantities often have resources and contacts outside the community. Those are other factors that make her a flight risk. The Sheriff’s Office found close to four thousand dollars in cash when they executed their search warrant, but she certainly could have more hidden somewhere else. The Commonwealth would like to see that taken into consideration.”

  “So what’s your recommendation, Counselor?

  “I honestly think you should deny bail, Your Honor. It’ll save us the time of going through this again after she’s indicted on the drug charges.”

  It was all I could do to keep from screaming. If the judge hadn’t already admonished me, I would have.

  The judge leaned back, picked up his reading glasses, and twirled them by the stem.

  “Mr. Honeywell, do you have anything to say on your client’s behalf?”

  Mr. Honeywell had been standing there like a lump the whole time. I tried to mind control my good-for-nothing lawyer into saying something that might stop this ridiculousness.

  “Well,” he said as he thought it over. His Southern accent made it sound like he was saying “whale.” Then he came up with: “Your Honor, my client and I haven’t really had a chance to talk yet, as you know, so I haven’t heard the facts of the assault case from her perspective. But she hasn’t been convicted of anything yet. I’d just ask you to keep that in mind.”

  Pathetic. The man was absolutely pathetic.

  “Okay, Mr. Honeywell, I hear you on that,” the judge said, then gave his glasses another twirl. “I have to say, I understand the Commonwealth’s concerns, but I think denying bail outright seems a little extreme at this juncture. Let’s just take things one step at a time here and see what the grand jury has to say. In the meantime, I’m going to come up with a nice, meaningful amount. Let’s call it twenty thousand dollars, secured. Ms. Barrick, if you choose to work with a bail bondsman, you’ll have to come up with ten percent of that.”

  I slumped, shrinking further into my orange jumpsuit. Two thousand dollars might as well have been two million. I hadn’t seen that kind of number in my checking account since we bought the house.

  “Thank you, Judge,” Mr. Honeywell said, as if I had somehow been done a massive favor.

  He turned to me. “Ms. Barrick, do you have someone who might be able to bail you out? A family member? Your husband, perhaps?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t think so. We don’t really have that kind of money.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, then turned back to the judge. “Your Honor, under the circumstances, we’ll waive the preliminary hearing and go straight for trial. I don’t think Ms. Barrick wants to be at Middle River any longer than is absolutely necessary.”

  The judge was again looking at something on his desk.

  “Okay. How is May eighteenth for trial?”

  May 18? So I was going to be in jail until May 18? Mr. Honeywell disappeared from the screen for a moment. When he came back, he said, “That’s fine, Your Honor.”

  “Okay, then I think we’re set,” the judge said. “Ms. Barrick, you’ll be in Circuit Court on May eighteenth. You’ll have to talk with your attorney to prepare for trial. He’ll be able to advise you on that. In the meantime, do you have any questions?”

  Tons. But none he was likely to answer for me.

  “No, Your Honor,” I said.

  “All right. Good luck to you, ma’am. Mr. Honeywell, do you have anything else for your client?”

  “I’ll pay you a visit sometime next week so we can talk things over,” he said. “It’s likely I’ll be appointed to represent you on the drug charges too, so we’ll probably have lots to talk about.”

  “Can you . . . can you stop them from indicting me on the drug charges?”

  “Not really, Ms. Barrick. I’m sorry. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “But those drugs aren’t mine,” I said, again.

  But this fact—which seemed rather significant to me—seemed to have no impact on him.

  He had heard it all before.

  FIFTEEN

  As I shuffled back to the general population, the reality of my situation started to settle over me like a dense, demoralizing fog.

  May 18 was more than two months away. By then, Alex would be five months old—and so, so different from what he was now. I had seen it with my friends’ children. Babies undergo a metamorphosis during the fourth and fifth months, shedding the last bits of that newborn strangeness and transforming into the little people they are fast becoming.

  Two months from now, I would have missed out on nearly half his life. And that was assuming I’d be able to clear up the assault charges, the drug charges, and this absurdity about wanting to sell my child—all of which would be very difficult to do from a jail cell.

  I was barely keeping my composure as I rejoined the other inmates. To deflect attention from myself, I found a book, a Nora Roberts paperback, and buried myself in a corner, shoving my face into it like it was the second coming of To Kill a Mockingbird.
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br />   Maybe an hour later, I was still hiding there, lost in my own misery. I didn’t even understand what was happening when one of the guards approached me.

  “Barrick?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me.”

  “What . . . where are we going?” I asked, braced for more bad news—that I had been put in segregation, that I had been randomly selected for another strip search, that I was being sent to a prison far away.

  “You got bailed out,” he said, opening a door for me and letting me shuffle past him. “Come on.”

  In short order, I signed a property form that said I had received all my possessions—which, in this case, consisted only of a ripped dress and the shoes I had been wearing. I changed in a bathroom, eagerly peeling off the dreaded orange jumper.

  Soon, I was led into the visitors’ waiting room—a free woman, apparently—where Teddy, of all people, was waiting for me. He stood up and came over toward me, looking broad-shouldered and handsome, as usual.

  I didn’t know whether to be furious or perplexed.

  “What . . . what are you doing here?” I asked. “Where’s Ben?”

  “He had class. I told him I could handle this.”

  Any gratitude I felt toward him for bailing me out was swamped by the fact that I wanted to pummel the life out of him. I wouldn’t have been in there in the first place if it weren’t for him.

  “Besides, after all the times you did this for me? I wouldn’t want to miss my one chance to spring my big sis from jail,” he added, his handsome grin a little crooked.

  “But where did you get two thousand dollars?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, casting his eyes about at an elderly couple that was waiting for its own newly freed criminal. “Let’s go. This place sucks.”

  “No, Teddy, I’m serious. Where did you get that money?”

  “I’ve been saving up,” he said. “It’s no big deal. Come on.”

  He crossed the waiting room toward the front door, then disappeared through it. I stayed rooted where I was, my fists jammed in my hips. I didn’t want to follow him. I was too furious at him.