“Misty, time’s up,” Agent Sims had said, his handcuffs dangling in front of him.
“No.” I shook my head as tears sprang to my eyes. “I have to make sure my mother is okay. I can’t just leave her like this.”
“We’ll take care of her. But, right now . . . ‘You have the right to remain silent. Should you give up that right, anything you say can and will be held against you . . .’ ”
I opened my eyes after replaying one of the worst days of my life. My chest heaved and the air around me felt heavy. I felt like my body would collapse, just like my whole world had days before Agent Sims had taken me down and handed me over to the local cops for my ex-boyfriend Terrell’s murder. On one hand, I was grateful that Sims had saved me from being taken by mafia guys that wanted to kill me, but on the other hand, facing down a long prison sentence wasn’t ideal.
Damn! I had fucked everything up. Everything about my life had gone in a totally opposite direction than what I had planned. One seemingly foolproof plan to steal drugs had sent my entire life on a crash course with disaster. Murder, mayhem, and now my arrest had been the result of my plan, instead of making money and getting rich quick. Call it karma, or just straight bad luck—whatever it was, I was knee-deep in it now.
Goose bumps cropped up all over my body as I thought back to watching my mother scramble for her life. Knowing that it was all my fault she’d been kidnapped and held hostage made it even worse to bear. My whole plan to trade my life for my mother’s had fallen apart, even though a small part of me knew that Ahmad, the bastard that had held my mother hostage, wasn’t going to trade my life for hers as easily as he’d made it seem. Ahmad was ruthless and he was out to avenge the savage killing of his family, which he blamed on me.
I swear, this wasn’t how my life was supposed to end. And now I was sitting in lockup, waiting to be arraigned for murder. Murder! Me, a murderer? I had worked so hard in school and struggled in life to be successful. And all for what? To end up in jail facing a real-life prison term.
I’d been racking my brain thinking of all sorts of ways I could get out of this situation. But Agent Sims had warned me that the local detectives had clear and convincing evidence against me. I was officially doomed. When I get convicted, because I am sure it will happen, I know that I will probably spend the rest of my life in prison while my mother is out on the streets alone. Who would protect her now? I was locked up. Carl was dead. My grandmother and cousin Jillian were gone. My mother was alone with a bag of money and an entire organized crime family out to get her so they could exact revenge against me. My mother’s safety preoccupied most of my thoughts.
I had bitten my fingernails down to the quick and could barely keep still. I hadn’t eaten since I’d been arrested. Sleep was a thing of the past; I hadn’t gotten one solid hour. Every time I closed my eyes, all of the craziness played out in my mind’s eye, over and over. My life had turned into a real-time nightmare. One thing after another had me wanting to end it all, again. I thought about it and could actually see myself going through with it, all over again, but the thought that my mother would really be left with no one in life kept me from doing it. I let the tears that I’d been hiding run down my face this time.
As different officers moved me through the process, my head pounded with all sorts of thoughts. I had had enough of hurting people that I love and getting hurt as well. At one point, I even wanted to die myself. The whole plan was to trade my life for my mother’s, but then that plan blew up in my face. I mean, I can’t win for losing. Nothing I do ever comes to fruition. Ugh!
The time came for me to be moved from the holding cell in the precinct, where those backstabbing detectives dropped me off, to the county jail until my initial appearance and arraignment could finally be scheduled. When the police officer pulled me from the cell, he escorted me down to the first floor, where the inmates were processed in and out to be transported to jail. He handed me over to a white man and white woman dressed in regular clothing and a dark blue jacket, which told me right away that my case had been turned over to state authorities. I was handed a brown paper bag, escorted to a back room and was told to change. Without saying a word, I took the brown paper bag, which contained my belongings, and went about changing. Immediately after I finished, both feds, the man and the woman, handcuffed my wrists and placed shackles around my ankles.
“Ouch!” I bellowed as I looked down at the cuffs around my ankles.
“Are the cuffs too tight?” the female asked.
“Yes, but you already know that because y’all do this type of stuff on purpose,” I answered with an attitude.
She didn’t get rude back; she just smirked like she knew that I was going to have many more complaints ahead. Once she loosened up the cuffs, she stood straight up and placed her hand around my arm. She waited for her partner to give her the signal that they could head out.
“We’re ready for the other inmate,” the male fed told the precinct officer.
That alarmed me a little bit, because I thought I’d be in the black jail van alone. I’d heard horror stories about inmates assaulting others in those van rides. My stomach cramped up. This was going to be the worst part of my life; I could already tell. I had done a lot of things, but I was not cut out for the prison system.
“Opening doors!” the officer yelled out, and then the metal door let out a loud buzzing sound and the lock on the door clicked.
“Step out into the hallway,” the officer instructed. I couldn’t see who he was talking to, but I was still nervous. I heard chains slide across the floor as the other female inmate made her way out of the holding cell. And when she appeared from behind the beige painted metal door, I immediately looked at her from head to toe. She looked completely out of place. I had to admit she was pretty with delicate features and looked more like a celebrity than a prisoner. She didn’t look like she belonged there at all. I could see the male officers ogling her, and I can’t lie, it made me a bit jealous that none of them had had that reaction to me when I was brought out.
The male officer instructed the pretty female inmate to walk toward us. The second she got within arm’s reach of us, she was told to walk side by side with me and follow the lead of the female state officer that was about to transport us down to county. This is what they meant by chain of custody. Even though the agents had taken me to the local precinct, as feds, they were still responsible for turning me over to county. Chances are I wouldn’t stay in county. I was facing down state time, for sure.
While the female officer led the way down the corridor, all three of us followed. We went through several metal doors, and when one closed shut, we had to wait for the other door to open. The security at this place was in full force. I couldn’t see anyone escaping if they wanted to. Trust me, I thought about all types of ways I could get out of there.
After the last metal door opened and closed, we ended up in an underground garage. While I was being escorted to a black van with darkly tinted and caged windows, I saw two uniformed police officers escorting a young guy toward the door we had just exited. He looked like he had been roughed up, given the fact that he had a black eye and blood all down the front of his shirt. I winced just looking at him. These officers didn’t care. Police brutality was an issue in our area, for sure, and I was seeing it firsthand. That’s exactly what I was afraid of too.
The guy they were moving whistled and catcalled us when he saw the other female inmate I was with. The officers holding him yanked him by the handcuffs and told him to shut his mouth. The guy laughed like he didn’t even care. It was obvious he had given up after being beaten and held. He probably knew his life was over, just like how I felt.
Both of the cops that were moving us along chuckled at how rough the officer was with the guy. I personally didn’t think that shit was funny or amusing. Like I said, police brutality was an issue, and I was praying I didn’t have to endure any of it.
“I see you got yourself a fake thug with a big mouth,” the male cop with us called to the other officers.
“You’re right about the ‘big mouth’ part, but we busted his stupid ass on weapons charges, so you might be making a trip back this way to pick him up too,” the same officer said.
The male cop looked at his female partner and smiled. “The more the merrier. These people keep us gainfully employed with their stupid behavior,” he replied, and then laughed.
He meant it too. The more black people they locked up, the more money they made off of cheap labor and off of their jobs. Locking people up was the new form of slavery, I was convinced. I knew all about it, which is why I’d always tried to keep my ass out of jail or prison.
Right after, the male cop with us turned his attention back toward me and the other female inmate with me. He opened up the side door to the van, grabbed a footstool from underneath the seat, and then told us both to climb inside. He didn’t give us a bit of help and it took me a few times to get up into the van, since the handcuffs kept me from having good balance.
“Sit on either side and not together.” The female cop droned her instruction like she had said that same line a thousand times a day.
After we both struggled into the van, we took our seats and were strapped down with seat belts. The male officer hit the side of the van to signal to the female cop that we’d been strapped. “Animals ready for transport,” he said. I was screaming in my head, Who the hell you calling an animal, you racist! But I didn’t dare say anything at all.
“Ready to get on the road?” the female called out.
“Ready,” he commented, and then he smirked at us and slammed the side door shut. He used a key to lock the outside of the door and then he climbed into the passenger side of the van. I could see the backs of their heads and out of the front windshield, but other than that, we couldn’t even see outside. I was hoping to see some trees and anything that might cheer me up.
I still couldn’t believe I was strapped down in a fucking jail transportation van with metal bars protecting the window, handcuffed and shackled like I was a part of a freaking chain gang. I was definitely out of my element. The girl that sat across from me seemed super calm. A little too calm, really, for my liking. I started thinking about the way I’d gotten here, and I just chuckled under my breath at how stupid I’d been.
With a look of aggression, the girl turned her focus on me. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
I stretched my eyes and looked over at her like she was crazy. “Nothing that has anything to do with you,” I came back. I don’t know who she thought she was with that question. I turned my focus to look out of the windshield as the van exited the precinct. I didn’t want any problems before I even officially got locked up.
I turned my thoughts to the day and what I might be doing if I wasn’t locked up. I thought about all of the people out in the world going about their daily routines. They were free to do whatever they wanted to do, and I envied them. Knowing that I may never be able to spread my wings again was a thought that began to cut me deep in my heart.
Thinking back to when I first fell into that trap of getting involved with the feds, and that prescription ring operated by my former boss at the pharmacy, brought tears to my eyes. I had had it good before that. My life had been turned upside down and now I had the very likely prospect of life imprisonment dangling over my head. I thought about how unfairly I would be treated once I went to trial. There was just no way I would get a fair trial based on the fact that the media had dragged my name through the mud as a killer. Terrell’s family had made sure of that, especially his mother.
While I was in deep thought, I noticed the girl across from me fidgeting with her handcuffs. She tried to do it discreetly, but my peripheral vision was working overtime. She was moving her cuffed hands up to her face and back down and she repeated it several times like it was a tic. I looked directly at her and she looked at me. She didn’t say anything at first, but I think she noticed that I was getting suspicious and might tell on her. Because of that, she started making small talk with me. I knew it was a distraction, but I went along with it.
“What’s your name?” she asked. Then she smiled.
I guess it was her way of changing how she approached me a few minutes earlier.
I gave her direct eye contact. “Misty,” I muttered, and quickly turned my eyes away and looked down at my hand.
“That’s it . . . just Misty?” she asked.
“You don’t need my whole government. You work for the FBI or something?” I asked, annoyed. I wasn’t no punk and she needed to know it. And besides, I had too much shit on my mind than to be answering a whole bunch of questions. And especially by a chick that’s in the same predicament as me.
“Nah, I’m just asking, that’s all,” she said.
“What’s your name?” I asked. I figured why should she only know my name.
“Shelby,” she answered.
“That’s it . . . just Shelby,” I came back at her with the same comment she’d given me. Touché.
Her eyes grew two inches wide at my little dig. “You don’t look like someone I’d expect to see locked up, Misty. I like that name, by the way,” she said, and then giggled.
Okay, this chick had to be high off something. I gave her an expression of disbelief. I know she wasn’t talking. She looked glamorous as hell even locked up. I could look at the nail tips on her hands and see that they were done at one of those high-class salons and not by the Vietnamese ones in the hood. Even Shelby’s eyelashes were the high-priced mink ones that were applied one hair at a time. Her hair extensions were laid so well they looked like they had grown out of her scalp. She was high-class, and there was no doubt about it. I knew a lot about how chicks looked when they had a little bit of money, and Shelby definitely had money.
“You talking? You look like you need to be in somebody’s magazine or walking a runway, so the feelings are mutual. I’m just as shocked as you are. There is no damn way I expected to see someone like you sitting up in here. You didn’t see how many men were staring at you as we got led out to this van? Shit, you could’ve probably got that guy up front there to set you free—he had so much lust in his eyes for you,” I said. “So now you tell me, what the heck is a fly chick like you doing locked up like an animal?”
She let out a long sigh and hung her head a little bit. She knew damn well I was right. “Let’s just say, it’s complicated, and you probably wouldn’t believe my story even if I told it to you,” she replied with a forlorn look on her face.
“I’m sure. You’d probably feel the same way about my story because sometimes even I can’t believe it,” I replied.
“Well, it was nice meeting you, Misty,” she said as if she was about to go somewhere.
“Huh? What do you mean ‘was’?” I asked. “Looks to me like we going to the same place right about now . . . county lockup.”
“You’ll see,” she replied, and then she smiled once again, like she knew a secret I would never find out.
Then she did that weird thing again where she held up both of her hands with the handcuffs and put them to her mouth. It looked to me like she took something out of or put something in her mouth.
I crinkled my brows, but I didn’t dare ask her what she was doing. I just wanted to mind my damn business. I just wanted to go home, honestly.
“I’m glad you didn’t ask any questions,” Shelby said after a few long minutes.
“What you do is your business, I’m no snitch,” I said nonchalantly. I wasn’t about to let her drag me into anything illegal she was doing or about to do.
“Well, I appreciate that, and you’ll find out soon enough what’s going on,” Shelby said cryptically. “Just understand that I don’t have anything to lose. That’s all I’m going to say about it,” she said with a lot of mystery behind her words.
“What does that mean?” I asked. I wanted to know.
“I murdered my parents and I’d do it all over again,” she blurted, changing the subject.
“Oh my God! Are you serious?” I asked her, feeling my eyes go big. This bitch was crazy. I thought what I was in for was bad, but at least mine was self-defense. This was crazy. Who has the guts to kill their fucking parents? Well, unless they’re pedophiles or physically abusive. Other than that, you’ve got to be a very sick individual to commit a heinous crime such as that.
Instead of responding verbally, she nodded her head kind of somberly. Shit, she looked really sad, like her life was surely over, and I kind of agreed. I thought that murdering your own parents was as low as you could go. I immediately reflected on my crime and suddenly my whole mood changed.
“You all right?” she asked me in a weird tone.
I don’t know exactly how she wanted me to react to her telling me she had murdered her own parents. I turned my focus back to her and said, “Not really. I can’t imagine what would make someone kill their own parents. I’m in here dying to see my mother one last time, so I just can’t understand it. I know people with terrible parents, and they wouldn’t dare kill them. So . . . no . . . I’m not all right.”
“I guess you’d have to know my story before you could judge me, right?” she said, and then shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t care. “Every parent is not the same. I may look like I had it all, but you have no idea and neither do these people trying to keep me locked up for the rest of my life. I won’t let them do it. I’d rather die.”
I shook my head and then I turned my focus away from her. I was no longer in the mood to talk to her. I had enough problems of my own. And I had already made up in my mind that this chick, Shelby, was crazy as hell. The one thing I didn’t need to do was get into it with anyone crazy.
I could hear the two cops up front having a conversation, but I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying. Periodically I noticed the woman look at us through the rearview mirror like she was making sure we hadn’t jumped out, which would’ve been impossible, anyway.
After a long period of driving, I saw Shelby start to nod, her head jerking down and then back up. I just chalked it up to her being tired. I noticed that the van had slowed down. I leaned to my left and looked straight through the windshield and saw that we had come upon railroad tracks. The gates were down on both sides and the lights flashed on and off, but there was no train in sight.
I heard the female cop sigh really loudly while the male cop made a loud outburst. “Dammit, I thought we would make it around it. This could be like an hour sitting here,” he snapped.
“You think it takes that long?” the female cop asked him.
“Hell yeah,” he replied, annoyed.
As the van came to a complete stop at the railroad tracks, I went to say something to Shelby and noticed that she was hanging way over at the waist. . .
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