by B. M. Hardin
Did she know about the detective?
Did she know what I was up to all along?
Did she have a plan?
But whether she did or not, today, her ass was going to jail.
Seconds later, there they were.
The maids on duty, on the thirteenth floor, came out in handcuffs.
Most of them were wearing bed sheets.
They could have at least allowed them to put on some clothes.
After a few more minutes, Detective Wiley finally made his exit and it was as if he’d spotted me immediately.
The look on his face said that he was upset that I disobeyed his orders, but he turned his back to me and stood directly in front of me as though he was trying to ensure that Carmen or any of the others didn’t get a view of me.
Soon after, and though I had to move around and hide behind a few people, Carmen came out.
Strangely she was smiling as the crowd grew louder and everyone started to ask questions.
She was smiling as though she’d won some type of award or something.
They led her to a patrol car and put her inside.
I watched the officers as they spoke briefly to Detective Wiley and then they finally headed back to their cars and at the same time, all of the police cars with the maids and Carmen inside of them, pulled off and started down the road.
I watched the car that Carmen was in and just as it was passing by, Carmen turned, looked directly at me and winked.
What the hell!
She knew!
As soon as they were out of sight, Detective Wiley turned around and spotted me.
He walked over to me as though he was a parent about to discipline their child.
“I told you to stay at home.”
“I know, I just wanted to see the look on her face. She was smiling, did you see that?”
He nodded.
The smiling made me wonder but the wink had me freaked out.
But for some reason, I didn’t mention it to the detective.
“We have officers heading to pick up all of the folks that we could locate from the paperwork. We will be making a lot of arrests,” Detective Wiley said.
I was still stuck on Carmen and her actions.
Something just didn’t sit right with me.
“Why was she smiling?” I asked aloud again, although I meant to ask myself the question internally.
Something told me that she was up to something.
I just knew that she was up to something.
“She won’t be smiling for long. I finally got her. I told her that I was going to get her and I finally got her,” he said.
What?
What the hell was he talking about?
So he knew Carmen?
And he told her that he was going to catch her?
Huh?
I knew that something wasn’t right about him and this case!
I knew it!
“What are you talking about? I knew that you were too attached to this case. I knew that there was a reason that you wanted to bring down the operation so badly. Why?”
He looked at me.
He was hesitant at first, but then he spoke.
“My best friend, and partner when I was just a cop, had an affair on his wife with Carmen. It was a while ago. Their relationship wasn’t hotel related but he’d snooped through her phone a time or two while she was sleeping and found out that the hotel had other business that she was a part of. Anyway, whatever they had was just sex. I didn’t judge because it wasn’t my business. His personal life wasn’t my business. The fact that he was cheating on his pregnant wife, wasn’t my business. He complained that his wife was fat and pregnant and she didn’t want to have sex as often as he did, so he had Carmen to take care of those needs. He promised that once the baby was born, that things between them would be over.”
He paused for a second to answer the phone.
As soon as he hung up, he continued.
“But as the story goes, he and his wife had been intimate just a few times during her pregnancy. I guess whenever Carmen was unavailable. But it wasn’t until the baby was born that she found out that both of them were HIV positive. Carmen had given him HIV and he’d taken it home to his wife and son. Though his wife had been tested a few times during pregnancy, it hadn’t shown up until after delivery. My best friend, Jay, tested positive too. He knew that he had only been with one other woman and that was Carmen. He went to her and told her the news and when he told her, he said…she laughed. He said she laughed in his face. He’d said that she laughed so hard that tears came out of her eyes and then she’d said…that she already knew. Can you believe that? She knew she’d ruined his life and she even knew that he had a pregnant wife at home but she hadn’t cared. She hadn’t cared. She’d given him the disease and blamed him for being a cheating husband. So, Jay had to tell his wife about his transgressions and being that she said she was leaving him and that she would never forgive him and because he couldn’t forgive himself, he committed suicide. Just like that he was gone. But on the day of his funeral, I told her, Jay’s wife, my godson’s mother, that if it was the last thing I do, I was going to get her. I told her that I was going to get Carmen in any way that I could and that she was going to pay for what she had done. You don’t just ruin people life because you feel like it. Jay wasn’t exactly in the right either but what Carmen had done was just unspeakable and I dedicated myself to putting her behind bars. So, I’d tried to hit her with an attempted murder charge since she’d known that she was sick and passed it on, but no one would file the charges. It seemed as if the entire police department was afraid to make a move on her. I mean it was as though they were terrified or all being paid to let her do as she pleased. I was just a cop back then but I vowed that I was going to get her. And I knew that I was going to have to go after the hotel to do it. So, once I was promoted to detective and after finally getting some people to have my back on this, I got to work. And I did it,” he said.
No, I did it.
He didn’t do a darn thing.
But I couldn’t believe all of the things that he’d just said.
A lot of it left me speechless, but for the most part, I just hoped that Carmen got what she deserved.
Carmen was low down and dirty and she deserved to pay.
And she was HIV positive?
Never!
Ninety-five percent of the time she looked amazing, stunning, and far from dealing with something of that nature.
But looks could be deceiving.
Of course she had the money and the means to get nothing but the best treatment so I was sure that she kept up with her medication I suppose.
I mean seriously, that was just something that you would have never been able to tell unless she told you.
And that was something that she’d definitely kept to herself.
Now the question was, where had she gotten it from and how long had she had it?
Immediately I thought about Silas but I’d been tested plenty of times since I’d been at the hotel, since it was a requirement, so I knew that my health was intact; which in turn meant that Silas was fine too.
And then again, HIV was known to lay dormant in some cases…
No, I wasn’t even going to allow myself to think about anything like that.
I was fine and so was my health.
I hated that the wife and the child had to suffer because of the actions of Carmen and her husband, but I was learning daily that every action came with a consequence…even when it came to a few actions of my own.
“So, you used me?”
“I helped you. Whether it was you or another one of the maids, either way, I wouldn’t have stopped until Carmen was in my custody. Are you sure you don’t want witness protection?” Wiley asked.
I shook my head no.
Hopefully I was making the right decision.
“Envy?”
I looked at him as to ask what.
But he s
hook his head.
“Never mind. Thank you,” he said.
“And thank you. I’m free,” I said and turned away from him, making my way to the car.
I didn’t pull off right away.
I was so emotional.
That could have been me coming out of there in handcuffs.
That could have been me going to jail along with the rest of them.
I was so grateful that I couldn’t even express my gratitude if I tried.
I hadn’t gone down with the Hush Hotel and even though I should have, it was in the divine plan that I didn’t.
So though I’d made an awful choice, I was now able to start fresh.
And that Carmen, well, she was even crazier than I’d thought that she was, but she would have years to think about the decisions that she’d made and hopefully she would release whatever it was that made her so damn evil.
She was just pure damn evil.
I wondered how many other men she’d done something like that to and how many other families she’d destroyed.
But who was I to even go there.
Hell, I’d ruined families and marriages too.
I sat there for a while longer and watched the crowd as they either walked away or made their way back inside the hotel.
I was surprised that they hadn’t shut the entire thing down, but I was sure that it was coming soon.
The streets were clear, so finally I decided to head home.
I had a long drive so I planned to use it to really get my thoughts together.
My mind was racing and my heart was pounding so fast that I thought that it was literally going to beat me to death.
It was so much to take in and what happened at the hotel wasn’t even the half of it.
Thoughts filled every empty space of my head and I tried to get my mind together.
I couldn’t wait to get home to Silas.
I pulled up to my house and before the car was even fully in park, I was out of the car heading for the front door.
Silas was sitting on the couch and immediately stood as he read my body language.
I walked over to him and hugged him.
“What’s wrong?”
What isn’t was the question.
“Is everything okay?”
I shook my head.
I reached into my purse and handed him a few papers that I hadn’t turned in to the detective.
Silas looked at me.
And I looked at him.
“So should I call you Silas, baby…or Boss?” I asked him.
Yep that’s right.
Silas was one of the top dogs of the thirteenth floor and had been the whole time.
Ain’t that a bitch!
Oh, but it gets worse.
Silas was at the top, but there was someone bigger.
And it wasn’t Carmen.
The big Boss of the whole operation was…
To be continued…
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