by Radclyffe
“Good. That sounds…best.” Randy was finally going to get the help he resisted but so desperately needed, as long as she didn’t mention he and his girlfriend had actually stolen the Hummer.
“I assumed you would agree. Have they charged you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have to tell you not to give any kind of statement. Jeremy Carver will be along to take care of things.”
“Thanks,” Kip said softly as her father said good-bye and rang off. She settled the phone back in the cradle and stared at the dull wall a foot away. He hadn’t asked her if she was hurt or told her he knew she was innocent. He must know that, but then, Randy was the one who needed protecting. Not her.
She rose, turned, and nodded curtly to the guard. “I’m done.”
He lifted a shoulder. “You got two more coming.”
She had no one else to call. “No, thanks.”
“Your decision.” He pushed away, rapped on the door, and someone opened it.
Back in the cell a few minutes later, she stretched out and closed her eyes, hoping to sleep a little like most of her neighbors. She dozed for an hour, maybe a little more, she couldn’t be sure, when the clang of the bars woke her. She was usually good with time, often didn’t need her watch to know the precise time within a minute, but time had twisted since they’d put her in the back of the patrol car, slowed somehow. Everything was just a little skewed, as if the entire world had tilted beneath her and she couldn’t quite get her balance.
They took her to a cubicle not much more than six by six—practically a booth—with a narrow table and a chair on each side. No windows, no TV, no posters on the wall. Blank, like her mind tried to be. Jeremy Carver came in a few minutes later dressed in a navy suit and tie with thin gray pinstripes. His light brown hair was trimmed close on the sides and longer on the top so it slanted just enough across his forehead to look windblown but not messy. His dark brown eyes were bright and intelligent, his face clean-shaven, lightly tanned even though spring had barely arrived, and his expression concerned and businesslike. He held a cardboard cup of coffee in his hand.
“Catherine,” Jeremy said, sliding the coffee across the table to her and propping his briefcase open onto the table. He sat across from her. “Do you have any injuries—anything untoward happen during the detention process? Do you require medical attention?”
“No. Thanks for the coffee.” Kip grasped the cup and sipped despite the steaming temperature. A little life returned with the first scalding swallow. Her brain started to move again like a sluggish river breaking free of an ice floe in the last days of winter. She didn’t know Jeremy well, but his presence felt like a lifeline. “And thanks for coming.”
Jeremy nodded. “Of course. We only have a few minutes before you’re moved to central booking and arraignment is set. I’m going to push for a DAT but—”
“Wait, slow down—translate that.”
“Depending on the arresting officer’s report and the judge’s assessment of the charges, we may be able to get you released tonight, prior to arraignment.”
“I wouldn’t have to spend another night here.” Hope flickered, a flame banishing the cold gripping her insides.
His expression flattened. “I’m afraid it could be a bit longer than that if we can’t get you released.”
“Right. Okay. We’ll hope for option one, then.” Kip took a breath. “Then what?”
“Then we go before the judge and enter our plea.” He smiled thinly. “Want to tell me what happened?”
“My brother wasn’t charged?”
He regarded her steadily. “Not as far as I know. How did you come to be driving a stolen Hummer?”
Kip hesitated. Randy’d had the keys to the Hummer. She’d assumed the vehicle was Lindsay’s. Wrong assumption. “I’d rather not say.”
“You’d rather not say.” He blew out a breath. “The Hummer belongs to Robert Ingram, who happens to live in Lindsay Montgomery’s building. You know him?”
“No.”
“You’ve been to the building?”
“Yes, for a party now and then.”
“And she’s your brother Randy’s girlfriend.”
“I guess you’d have to ask him that.”
“Were you driving it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know it was stolen?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Where were you going?”
Kip didn’t see any reason not to answer as much as she could, short of dragging Randy back into the middle. He was on his way to rehab, which was what he needed—not a year or more in jail. “I was taking Lindsay home.”
“And the vehicle?”
“I was planning to leave it there.”
“You had no intention of disposing of stolen property?”
“None.”
As she talked, he tapped into his tablet.
“What were you doing tonight, before they stopped you?”
“I had a date. I was out most of the evening.”
“Your date’s name?”
“Why is that important?”
“We need to establish whether you had access to the vehicle earlier in the evening.”
Kip sighed. “Julie Rothstein.”
“Number?” he asked without looking up.
She told him, wondering how pissed Julie really was over the way the evening ended. Hopefully not enough to forget the details of when and where they spent the night.
“Okay, what time did the two of you part?”
“A little while after midnight.”
“And then where did you go?”
“The Oasis.”
“What time?”
“Right about one.”
“Why did you decide to leave your date and go to a club?”
“I got a call that Randy was there, and I went to get him.”
“How did you get there?”
“Uber.”
“How did you get the Hummer?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Look, Kip, I know you didn’t steal it, and we can argue you had every intention of returning it. But you can do jail time if we let things stand.”
Cold slithered down her spine. “How much?”
“Given the nonviolent nature of the crime and the fact that you’re a first offender, probably the minimum, which still might be a year.”
She swallowed against a surge of bile. With Randy’s record, he wouldn’t get such an easy sentence. “I was driving. I can’t change that.”
He set his tablet down and leaned back in the chair. “If you plead guilty, I can probably get the charges reduced and some kind of probation. We’ll avoid a trial and any further investigation of the actual theft.”
Translated as, Randy’s part in all of it would not come to light.
“I’ll plead guilty.”
“You do understand there’s no guarantee. Are you really willing to risk going to jail for your brother?”
Kip pushed the cardboard cup across the table toward him. “You think I could get another cup of coffee?”
Chapter Three
Jordan heard the rooster crowing as soon as she got out of her truck. She hurried to the back gate, unlocked the padlock, and pushed through the wooden door, the newly oiled hinges soundless as it swung closed behind her. She noted the broccoli needed cutting as she angled through the narrow dirt aisles to the plywood and chain-link enclosure tucked under the eve of the big metal garden shed in the right rear corner of the reclaimed lot.
“Hush,” she said as she got closer. “I know I’m a few minutes late, but the damn truck wouldn’t start again. And you’re supposed to be quiet.”
The rooster, a brilliantly plumed dandy with green and purple highlights adorning his wings and tail, paced arrogantly around the six- by six-foot enclosure, his more conservatively hued brown and tan hens milling about in a patch of early morning sunlight, waiting to start their assault on the various and abundant inse
cts populating the nascent garden.
“Just because we don’t have any neighbors close enough to hear you doesn’t mean you can make a ruckus.” Jordan unlatched the door and the flock scampered out single file, the rooster, of course, in the lead. She paused a moment, smiling as always at their comical gaits and energetic busyness. The rooster ignored her, as usual, but at least he stopped crowing.
“It’s not my fault the city has an ordinance against roosters. If you guys weren’t so noisy and didn’t have to announce just exactly how important you were every morning before dawn, we probably wouldn’t have to worry about you getting evicted.” She restocked their pellets, replaced their water with fresh, and checked the half dozen nesting boxes for eggs. Happily, the hens recognized spring had arrived and were starting to lay. Using the tail of her checked cotton button-down as a makeshift apron, she collected the eggs in the fold of fabric and carefully picked her way between wheelbarrows, tools, bags of topsoil, and loops of hose to the refurbished seventeen-foot egg-shaped canary-yellow RV she used as an office. She got them safely into the minifridge tucked under the door balanced on two stacks of crates she used as a desk without losing any along the way. They’d be able to start selling them in quantity soon, and every penny would be welcome. Although just who they’d get to deliver them was a question she didn’t want to ponder so early in the day.
Chickens and eggs secured, she checked the day’s agenda. She needed to make a trip to the nursery for fertilizer, peat moss, and the tomato seedlings but the truck needed gas, probably oil, and possibly divine intervention. Tomorrow would be soon enough for that trip. The nights were still cool enough they had a little window of time to get the ground ready for the tomatoes. She had an eleven o’clock phone appointment with a new restaurant in Soho that was looking for locally sourced vegetables, and another with a caterer on the East Side in the early afternoon. Their list of customers for locally sourced eggs and produce was growing, but it needed to get a lot longer if they were going to be self-sufficient by the end of the summer. Her grant money from the New York Community Reclamation Project was going to run out well before that, and she needed to demonstrate this location could generate income before the funding would be renewed for the next year. She leaned back and rubbed her eyes, columns of numbers sliding across the surface of her closed lids. No matter how she added them up, the bottom line still looked red.
“Morning,” a lilting Jamaican-accented voice called from the open trailer door.
“Tya, hi!” Jordan swiveled in her chair, relieved to be free of her mental calculations and glad for the company. “You’re early.”
The petite woman in denim shorts and a sleeveless navy top nodded, her deep brown eyes shimmering with warmth and perpetual hope, or so it seemed to Jordan. She envied her that optimism, especially on days like this one. Tya passed Jordan a take-out cup of coffee. “Field trip—the kids needed to be dropped off an hour early today.”
“Ah, thanks.” Jordan pried off the lid and took a deep breath of dark-roasted beans and vanilla undertones. “Where are they off to?”
“The Space Museum. Henry isn’t so sure how he feels about that, but Amalia is delighted.”
“She’s still planning to be a pilot someday?”
Tya laughed. “Absolutely. Henry changes his mind along with his T-shirts, but she never loses her focus.” She shook her head, her expression a mixture of pride and wonder. “He can’t wait for summer vacation, and she’s already mourning losing time at school. If I didn’t know they were twins, I’d wonder that they were even related.”
“What are they planning for the summer?”
The gleam in Tya’s eyes dimmed and she pulled her lip between her teeth. “The summer program at school doesn’t really interest either of them, and I don’t really blame them. They’re both too advanced for the classes being offered. My mother offered to watch them for part of the day, but she’s slowing down and though she says she doesn’t mind, it’s hardly fair. She did so much when they were babies, and she deserves a rest.”
Jordan couldn’t imagine raising two kids alone. Tya didn’t need to say she didn’t have the means for any kind of private day camp program. “Why don’t you bring them here?”
“Oh.” Tya’s face lit up again. “You don’t think they’d be in the way?”
“I’m sure we can keep them busy. That is, if you don’t mind volunteering them.”
“Consider them volunteered.” Tya laughed. “That would be wonderful, and good for them too. Amalia spends way too much time in her room reading, and Henry spends his with video games.”
“It’s settled, then.” Tya’s twelve-year-olds would help counter their perpetual lack of help, plus they were great kids and they’d bring their boundless good spirits with them.
Tya sat down in the open trailer doorway and rested her back against the frame. “There’s going to be a lot of work to do here this summer, especially if we’re going to start making deliveries to the restaurants. Have you had any luck finding a driver yet?”
Jordan shook her head. “Unfortunately, what we can afford to pay is not very enticing for most people, especially with the kinds of hours they’ll have to keep.”
“Yeah, four a.m. deliveries don’t appeal to a lot of people.” Tya balanced her cup on her knee. “Once we get established, I’m sure we’ll get more volunteers.”
“We’ll manage somehow,” Jordan said, wondering if she could get by on yet less sleep and deliver their produce herself. She’d known it would take time to establish the community garden and draw in local volunteer help to supplement those she could pay.
“What are we going to do about the greenhouse?” Tya asked.
Jordan forced a smile she didn’t feel. Tya needed this job desperately, and she didn’t want to worry her with the financial concerns of keeping the project going. They’d become friends in the last three months, working side by side clearing the junk from the three-lot parcel just off Ninth Avenue the city had designated as a community garden project. They’d supervised the fence and coop construction and dug decades of rubble from the weed- and rock-infested ground. Now they had half a dozen raised beds, a space mapped out for the greenhouse, and plans to deliver their produce to local food pantries, restaurants, and hotels. But as much as they shared the dream and the labor, the responsibility of keeping the project afloat was hers, and she wasn’t going to let Tya know how tenuous their situation really was.
“We don’t need to worry about that until the end of the summer. We’ve got until frost to get the rest of the lot cleared and the greenhouse up. Then we’ll be able to get our greens and tomatoes ready for the winter. We’ll have plenty to do, don’t worry.”
“Another week we’ll be past a late spring frost, don’t you think?” Tya rose and dusted off the back of her khaki work pants.
“According to the almanac, but then you know how accurate that is.”
“Well, we can’t take any chances with our babies,” Tya said, looking toward the three long rows of fabric-covered greens and seedlings.
“We won’t.” Jordan looked out over the small oasis of life in an otherwise abandoned stretch of windowless buildings, boarded-up stores, and trash-strewn streets. No, she wasn’t going to let anything happen to this little glitter of hope in such a desolate land.
*
The overhead light came on, signaling something—dawn, the changing of the guard, the morning meal? As Kip’s fellow detainees stirred, the noise level in the cell block climbed with a jumbled chorus of coughs, curses, and surly snarls. Kip rose from her bunk where she’d been staring at the ceiling since Jeremy had left, and leaned against the bars, angling her head to see down the hall. Shadows writhed across the worn tile floor, shapeless, genderless forms that sent a twist of dread through her depths. How long did it take until the shadows crept beneath flesh and into bone, until all of them were reduced to ghosts, inside and out? Them. She was one of them now.
An officer approached
her cell, his features coming into focus as he neared. Youngish, multiracial, close-cropped military-style dark hair. She held her breath as he fit a key to the lock on her cell.
“You’re being released,” he said amiably. “You’ll get your belongings returned on your way out.”
“Thanks,” Kip said, her throat dry and scratchy. She hadn’t had anything to eat and nothing to drink since the last cup of acidic coffee Carver had gotten for her. Her stomach was queasy and her head throbbed, but she’d never felt quite so exhilarated in her life. The taste of freedom would be enough to sustain her for a lifetime at this point.
After she’d been handed the manila envelope and told to check her belongings and sign where indicated to confirm everything was there, she was directed to a plain windowless door marked Exit.
Exit. Could it be that easy? She could walk out, but she would never forget the helplessness. She forced herself to walk slowly—she would not become a cornered animal and run. She expected Carver to be waiting for her, but Savannah jumped up and rushed to her with a sharp cry.
“Oh my God, are you all right?” Her cousin grasped her shoulders and pulled her into a tight hug.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” Kip jolted at the foreign sensation of arms holding her tight, and the rigid control she’d marshaled the last few hours to keep from screaming began to crumble. She took a breath and gently tried to extract herself from Savannah’s embrace. “I must smell pretty bad, so you should probably let me go.”
“Not too bad.” Savannah laughed, her cheek against Kip’s. “Believe me, both of us have looked and probably smelled a lot worse after some of those keg parties.”
Kip tried to remember what it had been like to be younger and carefree, but at the moment, the specter of the bare cell and the stark bars was all she could envision. She finally pulled away. She missed the contact instantly but needed the distance. “Thanks for coming. You didn’t need to.”
“Of course I did.”