by Ninie Hammon
A sob escaped that she couldn’t hold on to, and it brought all its friends with it. Her shoulders began to shake, and she put her head in her hands and let go.
She’d been in the cell for long enough to have a good cry and get it out of her system when the door at the end of the hallway opened and one of the police officers who’d brought her in returned. Behind him strode a man so smooth he made Teflon look lumpy. His shoes must have cost more than Theresa got in Social Security for a year. Shoot, his suit probably cost more than her house was worth. Though his nose was red and swollen, like maybe somebody’d popped him one in the face, he had a kind of presence, which meant they was either locking him up in the other cell ’cause he was a crook or he was a lawyer.
“I’m Jeff Kendrick, Mrs. Washington,” he said. “Call me Jeff. I’ll be representing you.”
“You come to get me out of here?”
“I’ll have it all arranged to get you out on bail after your arraignment in the morning.”
“What’s an arraign—”
“Arraignment. On a charge as serious as murder, you—”
Then it hit her. In the morning!
“You mean I got to stay here all night?”
“No, not here…”
They hauled her off to the Webster County Jail in Cincinnati trussed up in handcuffs like she was Al Capone. Soon as they took her into the building, she started shaking. She scolded herself for it—wasn’t nothing bad gone happen to her here. But she was wrong about that part.
She and two other women prisoners was taken into a room with half a dozen guards where orange jumpsuits hung on pegs all around the walls.
“Ok, ladies,” said a big guard by the door. Theresa supposed she was a woman ’cause all the other guards was—but it coulda gone either way. “You know the drill—strip.”
“I got to take my clothes off?” Theresa blurted out, stunned.
“How many things can ‘strip’ mean?” said the guard. She had a black nightstick in her hand and was rhythmically slapping the end of it into her palm as she began to chant a singsong mantra she’d probably said hundreds, maybe thousands of times, her voice too loud, like maybe they was all deaf.
“Remove your outer garments and place them in the numbered metal baskets provided for that purpose against the far wall, socks and shoes on the bottom. Take off your bra and panties and hold them in your hand as you will be putting those back on when you are issued a jumpsuit. Any contraband recovered during this search will be seized and you will be charged...”
She kept talking while Theresa looked around the room. Wasn’t no dressing rooms she could see.
“Where we s’posed to change?” she asked. She knew, of course, just couldn’t make herself face the fact of it.
“Where do you think?”
“Right here in front of ever’body?”
Two of the guards laughed, but the guard with the nightstick didn’t, just poked Theresa in the side with it.
“Get a move on, fatso,” she said. “Big as you are, this could take a while.”
“Just do it,” urged one of the prisoners who’d come in with her. The woman was already down to her bra and panties.
“Yeah,” said the other prisoner. “They gotta make sure you ain’t got a bazooka in your armpit.”
Theresa stood, frozen.
“Don’t make them force you,” warned the first prisoner.
Theresa was wearing a bright print blouse over black slacks. She reached up and began mechanically to unbutton the blouse. She wasn’t aware of crying but could feel big tears streaming down her cheeks. Her movements slowed as she got near the bottom and when the blouse was unbuttoned, she made no move to take it off.
The other prisoners were already naked, standing as directed with their arms out to their sides while guards wearing plastic gloves poked and examined them. On command, they both spread they feet out and bent over at the waist for a “cavity” search.
Theresa couldn’t seem to get a breath. Wasn’t no air in the room.
The big guard ran out of patience and gestured toward Theresa with her nightstick and a little redheaded guard stepped in front of her and began to yank her blouse off. Theresa reflexively pushed the guard’s hands away. That’s all it took.
It happened fast. The big guard stepped to Theresa and whacked her hard on the side of the leg with the nightstick, on her thigh a couple of inches above the knee. That leg collapsed, folded up like a broken twig, and Theresa fell to the concrete floor. Then they was all over her. Three or four guards, she couldn’t tell how many, snatching and grabbing and her trying to make them stop. She didn’t intend to fight them, but it was like a reflex, like you push somebody away when they’s trying to tickle you.
It didn’t take them guards long to overpower her. Before she knew it, Theresa was lying naked on the floor, spread-eagled, with a guard holding each leg and arm. The guard with the nightstick stepped in between her legs.
“You should have listened to your friends,” she said and gestured with the nightstick toward the two other prisoners standing by the wall dressed in orange jumpsuits.
Then the guard snapped on plastic gloves and done the exam personally, done it rough as she possibly could for payback. Touching Theresa, jabbing and poking her, deliberately hurting her in her private places, but Theresa bit her lip and didn’t cry out. Just lay there and felt the hot tears run down the side of her head and into her hair.
Then they took her in her orange jumpsuit and shoved her into a cage with five other women. It was a cage, too, lined up with other cages like the monkey house at the zoo.
Theresa had smelled it out in the hall before they even got to the cells. But here, the demon stink was overwhelming—rot and decay, the reek of moldering corpses. And the demon wailing numbed her heart—eerie, high-pitched screams, otherworldly and utterly desolate, sounds like the shrieks of ravaged souls writhing in agony or the keening cry of lost children wandering alone in the dark.
Could have been prisoners, could have been guards. She didn’t know which, couldn’t single out any one demon ’cause she couldn’t see them like Becca could. No wonder that child couldn’t be locked up! And this was just jail. What must prison be like?
The world grayed out after that under the combined effect of what them guards had done to her and so much evil close by. But she was aware of some things.
Heat. Lazy fans moved hot air around sweating bodies.
Filth. Ground-in grime slathered everything she touched.
Noise. The squeak of the fans, the clang of cell doors, the babble of conversations, voices raised in anger, crying, even singing formed a mindless cacophony that assaulted her senses.
All painted on the backdrop of the evil Theresa didn’t need ears to hear or a nose to smell.
That night, Theresa tried not to see or hear what two of them women was doing while the others watched and laughed. Then she lay on a bottom bunk—a little white girl traded it to her for the top bunk, said she didn’t want a “fat nigger woman” to come crashing down on her in the middle of the night. Theresa cried then, hard but quiet. Wouldn’t do to let them others know how scared she was.
As she lay in the dark cage, wondering if the sun had yet come up out there in the real world, she recognized how cunning was the evil that had put her here. She’d much rather Chapman Whitworth had hacked her to death than live the rest of her life locked away in a place like this. And he knew that.
The next morning, they took her to a courtroom somewhere and Jeff Kendrick was waiting for her. She was so exhausted and traumatized she was only vaguely aware that she was standing with him in front of a judge on a raised dais.
“Theresa Maxine Washington, you have been accused of two counts of aggravated murder. The state of Ohio charges that on or about September 22, 2011, with prior calculation and design, you caused the deaths of Minerva Lucille Cohen and Gerald Alexander Cohen. How do you plead?”
Images blew through her mind, a whir
lwind of thoughts. Trying to grab one and hold on long enough to think it was like trying to pick out a single bird when a whole flock took flight.
Miss Minnie with the hand-painted ornament she’d given Theresa for Christmas.
The smell of the pineapple upside down cake fresh out of the oven they’d brought to the house when Bishop died.
Mr. Gerald lying on the floor with an ax stuck in his chest.
“Not guilty.” Jeff was whispering in her ear. “You need to say—”
“Not guilty,” she said. “I wouldn’t never hurt them sweet old people.”
Half an hour later, she was standing with Jeff on the steps in front of the building—hot asphalt and exhaust fumes smelling like roses in her nostrils.
“Do you understand what has happened, Mrs. Washington?” he asked, as the cab he’d called to take her home pulled up to the curb.
“It’s Theresa,” she said. “And I understand all I need to.” She took in a deep, trembling breath and let it out slowly and deliberately. She’d made her peace with it sometime in the middle of the night. “I understand that what happens to me ain’t gone be decided by no judge and jury.”
He didn’t comment, only said they needed to talk and told her to call his office and make an appointment with his secretary.
“Maybe me and Daniel could come see you together. We got different problems, but they both come from the same source.”
The man’s face tightened. “You need to know that Daniel isn’t…thrilled to have me as his lawyer. He made that clear Saturday.” The attorney reached up and touched his swollen nose. “But the man who hired me is used to getting what he wants and apparently, he…made Daniel an offer he couldn’t refuse this morning.”
“Why don’t Daniel want you on the case?”
“That’s a question you’ll have to ask Daniel.”
CHAPTER 19
2011
Jack was on a split shift and didn’t come to work until noon, and by then, Theresa was already gone. When he heard she’d been arrested and taken to the county jail in Cincinnati, he went straight to Crock’s office, stormed in without knocking and then paced back and forth in front of Crock’s desk, so angry he didn’t dare speak.
Crocker leaned his chair back on two legs and reached into his pocket for a cinnamon toothpick. He’d just quit smoking and said chewing on toothpicks helped with his “oral fixation.” On a bad day, Jack had seen him gnaw down a whole box of them.
“Guess I should have called you when they brought Theresa in,” Crock said. “But what could you have done if you’d known?”
Nothing. That was the sticking point. There was nothing Jack could do, nothing anybody could do. Whitworth was holding all the cards—five aces.
“She’s being railroaded.”
“Who’s driving the train?”
Jack knew none of it would make any sense unless he tied it all together with the story of Chapman Whitworth—and if he did that, he’d have to take the major on a journey he couldn’t come back from.
“You waiting for a drum roll?” Crock asked.
“Chapman Whitworth.”
“You should have waited for the drum roll.”
“He’s been nursing a grudge against us for twenty-six years. We…know something about him, and he wants to keep us too busy to rain on his Supreme Court parade.”
“And what you know is …?”
“The part I can’t tell you.”
Crocker dropped the front legs of his chair back onto the floor with a thud.
“Aw, come on, Jack. How do you expect me to help?”
“You don’t have to know that part to help me.”
Crocker looked at him hard, studied him. “And if I say I want to know that part?”
The man had no idea how that would rock his world, and Jack felt a sudden need to protect him from it. To keep him in—well, if not blissful ignorance, at least comfortable ignorance.
The problem was, it was true. That was the whole problem—it was true. Jack sighed.
“In that case, I’d say pizza’s in order.”
“Make mine pepperoni with extra cheese.”
“Tomorrow night at Theresa’s. Say…seven o’clock.”
“How do you know she’s having pizza tomorrow night?”
“Because that sweet old woman is going to need her friends around her after”—Jack ground his teeth—"spending the night in jail! So I’m going to tell her she’s having a party. You got a preference, Domino's or Papa John’s?”
“They’ll both keep me up all night.”
The group gathered around the big table in Theresa’s kitchen Tuesday night was anything but festive. Daniel and Andi had arrived the same time Jack did.
“Uncle Jack,” Andi cried, “Daddy said Miss Theresa has a dog!” Her grin planted dimples in her cheeks deep enough to eat pudding out of. Then she ran ahead of them into the house.
Daniel watched her go with a sour look on his face.
“Somebody pee in your Cheerios?” Jack asked.
“I woke up this morning with a dead horse’s head in my bed—metaphorically speaking,” Daniel said, then strode silent and fuming into the house.
Jack would find out what that meant later.
Theresa did, indeed, have a dog, a brown mutt so happy to greet every new guest it hopped up and down and ran around in circles, tail wagging. Jack figured it was going to wet itself any minute.
Theresa looked completely spent. Her vibrant brown eyes, always as bright as twin pilot lights, were cloudy, with a haunted look he’d never seen there before. Her whole countenance had changed. She seemed to be hunkered down, tensed for a blow.
Becca looked…now that was hard to say. If you meant comparatively, just “clean” was a huge improvement over the last time he’d seen her. But objectively, she was hollow-eyed and frail, with a fearful, hunted look that never left her face, even when she was listening attentively to Andi’s babble.
The only time she’d brightened was when she saw Daniel. He’d given her a big hug, held her out at arm’s length and gave her another, long and affectionate. If he was taken aback in any way by her appearance or demeanor, he showed no sign of it, appeared genuinely delighted to see her. Clearly, she was equally delighted to see him.
For a moment that bothered Jack. Why? Well, duh, he’d spent his whole childhood, at least the part of it he could remember, being jealous of Becca and Daniel. And he learned later that Daniel had been equally jealous of him and Becca. Now, here they were twenty-six years later, still playing the parts they’d played as children. Some things never changed.
Theresa told him she’d filled Becca in on the little kids in Bradford’s Ridge who had set spiders loose in a Sunday school class and pulled up rose bushes with their bare hands. And about the attacks of the now-adult Bad Kids three months ago—who’d been searching for her. Then he understood why Becca looked so frightened.
The grown-ups kept up a facade of lighthearted banter until Andi was ensconced in a beanbag chair in the den, her arm around her new best friend Biscuit the dog, with idiot sea creatures cavorting around the screen in front of her. Theresa set a bowl of popcorn beside her, came back into the kitchen and sat ponderously down in her chair.
“I spent last night in jail,” she said. There was wonder mixed with horror in her voice. “I got photographed and fingerprinted—good thing I’m black ’cause that ink don’t come off, don’t know how white folks…” She trailed off. When she spoke again, her voice was clotted with unshed tears, barely above a whisper. “I can’t be locked up in a cage like that with the stink and the wailing.” He could hear the terror in the words. “We got to do something ’cause I can’t—” She stopped herself, looked around, cleared her throat, then turned to Crock. “I understand you interested in knowing what’s really goin’ on here,” she said.
“Jack says I’m not going to like it.”
“He tell you you ain’t gonna b’lieve it once you do hear it? Most folks
don’t, anyway.”
“I’m not most people.”
“How so?”
He looked at Jack as she had looked at him. “I’ve seen…things I haven’t told Jack about.”
“What things?” Jack asked.
“You show me yours and then I’ll show you mine,” Crock said.
Jack took a deep breath. “Once upon a time,” he said, “there were three musketeers—Becca, Daniel and Jack…”
******
1985
Ella Fletcher was secretly flattered when people said she looked like Tweetie Bird’s grandmother. Small and round, her gray hair pulled back in a bagel-sized bun at her neck, with plump rosy cheeks and rimless glasses perched on her nose, the resemblance was striking. She liked Tweetie Bird and goodness knows she qualified for the grandmother designation. Fourteen so far, and Mary Jane had looked like she was ready to pop any minute when Ella saw her at church on Sunday. And those didn’t even count the ones born to all her other children, those she’d had in classes during thirty-two years as a third grade teacher. Count them, and you’d be up in the hundreds, maybe thousands.
The sun was already coming up, which meant Ella’d slept late. She slipped quietly out of bed so as not to wake Harold. He needed his rest. The doctor’d said he’d get to feeling better real soon after his heart surgery, but he was still listless and grumpy, and Ella was worried about him.
Soon as she fed Jelly, she’d make herself a cup of coffee. Jelly’s complete name was Jelly Belly, a cocker spaniel whose big brown eyes had melted even Harold’s heart—and he didn’t much fancy dogs. Ella would find him snoozing in front of the door in the kitchen where a doggie flap allowed him access to the backyard, so he could do his business without her having to let him in and out all the time.
She flipped on the kitchen light. Jelly wasn’t on the rug where he slept. Must be out watering the rose bushes. She filled his dish with doggie chow and gave him fresh water in his bowl—though it was almost full. He usually had it licked dry in the morning from lapping at it all night.