Four
“Is there anything you want to add to his tirade?” She asked Monica curtly, but the woman produced a legal size document and continued to talk before she could reply. “Now, if he would have let me speak to begin with, he would have seen this.” She put the document down on the table then pushed it to Monica after turning it around to face her.
“This was signed by a federal judge this morning. It authorizes me to handle your interrogation as if you, your husband and your lawyer are domestic terrorists.” The woman’s face was empty of emotion.
“What?” Monica retorted with increased vigor. “That’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m not a terrorist! Who are you anyway?”
“Oh my goodness; my apologies!” Now her face held a wicked smile to accompany her insincere worry over her lack of manners. “My name is Rebecca Corrigan, I am the Louisiana Deputy Director for the Office of Homeland Security, and you, my dear, seem to be in a terrible amount of trouble.”
Well this is it, then? Whatever has gone wrong has done it so thoroughly that I’m never going to get out of here. Alisha is going to be so upset. Monica’s inner monologue was not helping her mind’s fight with complete resignation.
“Ma’am, can you please tell me what’s going on?” Monica could hear the begging in her own voice. “And, can you please get him some help? I’m sure he learned his lesson.”
Rebecca gestured towards one the larger guards who then grabbed Scott by his hands and dragged him out of the room on his back. The man didn’t seem strong enough to lift the wounded man’s head completely and they morbidly left a wide trail of bright red blood across the floor.
“Bring him to the detainee infirmary.” Rebecca said, addressing the guard. “Keep him under lock and key until you hear otherwise.”
She then looked back at Monica with a very serious face and continued: “This is part of our little meeting where you listen to me with your undivided attention. You will give me concise and objective answers whenever I ask you questions. You will not speak until I direct you to. This is not some simple local yokel sheriff’s department interview using word play to squeeze a confession out of you. I am the only person in the world who has the power to help you, so your best path will be the one with the most honest answers.”
“Do you understand me?” Monica was crying again, and trying to digest what the woman was saying.
“Do you understand me?” She asked louder.
“Yes!” Monica barked back. “Just get on with it!”
“Okay Mrs Weathers, you understand that we are being recorded, both audibly and visually?”
“Yes.”
“Now, what I want you to do first; describe what happened the morning this started for you.” Rebecca had a set of reading glasses on now. They rested low on her nose, so her eyes looked over them as she spoke to Monica. She was taking notes on a yellow legal pad and was poised to write with an elegant looking black pen.
“I woke up when I heard a loud bang in the living room. By the time I could look around there were people in our bedroom holding guns.” Monica was almost relieved to be finally able to tell her story to someone.
“What was your husband doing?” Rebecca asked.
“He must have been startled by the same noise because he was sitting up when the men came in.”
“What happened after all of the agents were in your room?” This time she began scribbling notes onto her legal pad.
“Tim was grabbing me really hard and someone pissed the bed, I’m almost certain it was him. Two more men walked into the room and one of them started talking. I’m sorry; I don’t remember what he said.” Monica was feeling disappointed at her memory gaps.
“It’s okay, keep going.” Becca urged her.
“The man that was talking got interrupted by a loud noise. It sounded like a gunshot!”
“Did you see or feel your husband move before you heard the sound like a gunshot?” Becca asked.
“He started jerking.” Monica delivered with mixed feelings. “He was holding me, and I think he was trembling, but I’m not sure. Then I heard the loud gun noise. When he started jerking; I thought they shot him!”
“So, he never stopped holding you until after you heard the shot?” Monica’s interviewer seemed very intrigued by this revelation. She removed her glasses and asked again. “You’re sure you remember it that way? Did he have both of his arms around you until he started jerking?”
“Yes! I told you that!” Her patience was wearing thin, but damned if she would lose her temper. This new woman in her life was cold and possessed a meanness that Isa Gonzales could only someday hope to achieve. “Ma’am, that’s all I know. I heard a gun and Tim started to shake and jerk. The room smelled like someone was burning pennies and I think that’s when I must have fainted. I woke up in a car next to Isa who injected me with something that put me back to sleep.”
“Okay Mrs Weathers, do you have any idea why the DEA was storming your house that morning?”
“No!” Monica wailed through tears that were stinging her eyes. “I don’t know what the hell is going on! All I want to do is see my daughter! Have you seen her? Is she okay?”
“Monica, you’re going to have to calm down. I need to get to the bottom of this whole charade, and to do that; I need you to talk and listen.” Becca had her glasses back on and took more notes. She then pulled a small remote control from her attaché and clicked what could only be a power button for the screen that was now descending from the ceiling to Monica’s left.
Normally Monica was very adept at not allowing anyone to see when something disturbed or hurt her. After spending so much emotion over the course of the last few days, though, she had very little skill in reserve to mask this next wave of torment. She very visibly and very audibly winced when she saw large, but simple, burnt orange letters that read ‘Bruce’. It was just a simple loading screen that every computer in the world used, but this pain was excruciating for her. She knew he was successful with a few things, but she never really looked into what he was doing. It was a weight she couldn’t bear. He was, quite literally, everywhere. Monica Weathers, who had the world completely figured out, had completely missed his infection of this industry. The industry that now held her life in its grasp.
“You really didn’t know your ex-husband was this successful in law enforcement, did you?” Becca’s wicked smile was back. “That’s almost sad, Mrs Weathers. Although, I have to give it to him; he’s made his fortune in an industry that you were completely oblivious to. I see ‘Bruce’ everywhere, everyday. This whole experience must make your life’s decisions feel worth it. Oh, and that was bleeding edge sarcasm, in case you missed it.”
“Don’t mock me, James was a loser. I left to better myself! I wasn’t happy!” Monica did not like this woman at all, but unlike Isa, who simply got mad and hurt people; she didn’t seem able to be angered.
“How is that working for you, Mrs Weathers?” Monica was wrong about her capacity for anger. She took her glasses off and placed them down in one hurried, but smooth stroke. “No. Really. Tell me. How did that plan work out for you and your daughter?”
Monica noticed that the computer screen had finished its booting sequence and now displayed a utilitarian login screen, but her captor was none the wiser.
“I’m going to tell you a quick story, Mrs. Weathers. I’ve read your history with your ex. I know everything about you – things you don’t even know yourself!”
“Once there was a ten year old little girl…”
*****
Becca was in her room listening to what she thought was a normal thing.
It was late and her mother had just gotten home from work. Becca never really questioned why her mom seemed to work all day sometimes, but her daddy was upset again about it. He already had cooked dinner for them and had her take a bath and get into her night clothes, but she was afraid of not getting to see her mom before she went to sleep so after finishing her homework, she tried to stay awake as long as she could.
Then she heard something that made her jump out of bed and run over to her closed door to listen.
“That’s it! I’ve had enough of you!” It was her mother’s voice and it sounded mad.
“Jessica? What do you mean?” He responded with the sounds of choked back tears.
“I mean I want this marriage to be over! I’m sick and tired of you always asking me where I’ve been! I’m just not happy, Michael. I know I can’t make you happy either!” Becca heard her mother’s words as she frantically opened her door and ran into the living room.
“Mom! Daddy! What’s going on?” She asked the room.
“Becca, go back to your room baby. Please, just for a little while.” Her daddy asked her.
“But Daddy… Wha-”. Becca tried to start, but was interrupted by her mother; “go to your room now Rebecca!” The overwhelming authority of her mother’s words forced her to turn around and sprint back into her room where she buried her face into her pillow and cried as though the world were ending because to her – it was. Becca knew other kids whose parents were divorced. She knew what was going to happen and she didn’t want to have to live away from either of her parents.
She heaved and cried to the shouting in the background until she fell asleep curled into a little ball.
Becca woke the next morning beside her daddy in her parent’s bed. He was asleep, but she knew enough about people to know that he had been crying a lot. When the memory hit her, she quickly jumped out of the bed and ran down the hallway screaming for her mother.
“She’s not here pumpkin.” It was her daddy’s voice coming from his bedroom.
“Where did she go?” Becca asked.
“I don’t know, baby doll. I’m sorry, but your mother and I aren’t going to be married anymore.” He was crying again as she made her way back into his room. In whatever number of years she could remember since she was old enough to remember things; Becca had never once seen her daddy cry. He was crying now and called for her to come to him with both of his hands. Once she got over to where he was, he hugged her in the warmest embrace she will ever know. She cried with him as he stroked her hair and repeated “I’m so sorry; I don’t want this for you”.
Time passed and Becca was being passed back and forth between her parents every couple of days. It was nice because she didn’t have to go long missing either one before she saw them again. One day though, when it was time to go to her daddy her mother stopped her and said “you’re not going to your daddy today”.
“When then?” Becca asked.
“We’re going to the judge in a week; we’ll see what he says.” Her mother told her.
Becca couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wanted to see her daddy! Doing what was becoming a regular thing for her, she stormed into the room she had her things in and cried.
That night would later prove to be very significant for Rebecca Corrigan.
Her daddy pulled into her grandparent’s driveway after dark and started blowing the horn for her to come out. Elated, Becca started running for the doorway but was stopped short by her grandmother.
“Let me go!” She screamed.
“You don’t talk to your elders that way child!” Her grandmother said as she slapped her hard across her cheek.
“I want to see my daddy!” Becca was undeterred and pulled both of them to the nearest window where she would see her father for the last time.
“Get off my property!” Her grandfather yelled at him.
“Just let my daughter go and we will leave.” He yelled back.
“You don’t have a daughter anymore! Get off my property; you’re not even a man!” Her grandfather probably had more to say, but he wasn’t given the chance because her daddy hit him hard in the face and both men started to wrestle around in the grass lawn.
She knew things were bad when she saw the flashing blue lights. The two policemen lifted her daddy and threw him onto the concrete driveway face first. She could see him still moving and started a silent prayer as they put him in handcuffs. He looked up and screamed “I love you Becca!”
“I love you too Daddy!” She screamed as she tried to run to the door. Her mother was there this time to pick her up and carry her to her room. Once locked away in her room, Becca did the only thing she had the power to do. She cried and cried until she was certain she wouldn’t remember how to be happy.
“Well, the judge says you’re going to live with me. Your daddy is just too dangerous.”
“What? He was just trying to see me! Gran’pa told him he didn’t have a daughter. That would make me mad too!” It had been weeks since her daddy had tried to get her. She tried doing everything she could to see him, but she was only ten.
A week later ten year old Rebecca Corrigan found out that her daddy was killed driving home from work by a drunk driver.
*****
At the halfway point of her face’s journey to the floor, Monica figured out that her interviewer had finished the story. It was the sudden shock of cold pain from the tile floor that reminded her why she found herself there to begin with. Rebecca Corrigan had finished her memory in a blind rage and hit Monica viciously with the back of her right hand.
“Pick her up!” She screeched at Samera.
“Can you hear me Mrs Weathers?” Monica could hear her. Unconsciousness was a blessing, but the angel tasked with administering it was a right fickle bitch by her reckoning. New tears were streaming their way down her bright red cheek. Like small tributaries finding their way to a larger body, they pooled themselves into a small puddle as Monica lie still on the floor in the same position she landed.
“I said pick her up!” Rebecca screamed again.
Monica did not like this woman. Her attack happened so fast that she didn’t even have time to turn her head, and still being handcuffed meant that she couldn’t protect her head and face from the floor as she was flung from her chair. At that moment, Monica couldn’t quite describe her mental state as completely lucid, but she also knew that the bliss of unconsciousness would not be in her near future. Well, unless she got hit again. Which itself was an event that seemed to have an ever growing likelihood of happening.
Pain was her constant companion now. It never abandoned her, and now as she opened eyes that were somehow raining tears without her even sobbing; pain let its ever vigilant presence be known with magnificent glory. Monica could feel everything. She could feel the bruised bone above her right eye ignite as she lifted her head from its landing zone, but she found it odd that the red hot pain from Rebecca’s blow was also radiating from the right side of her face. I guess I spun in the air, was the all too lucid thought that formed in a mind desperately hoping for blackness.
Then she felt a strong hand wrap its slender fingers around her bicep. The unknown force lifted her until she was able to support herself by her knees, albeit very wobbly so. Once there, Samera kneeled beside her and retrieved a small cloth from a pocket on her belt.
“C’mon ma’am, you have to get up.” Samera told her as she gently wiped the blood and tears from her face.
“Don’t treat her like a child!” Becca fumed. “Mrs Weathers is a big girl. You’ve got this under control don’t you Monica? You can control everything, right?” Rebecca’s face had transformed from pure blind hatred to a calculating evil that made Monica long for a time when all she had to worry about was a now tame by comparison, Isa Gonzales.
With Samera’s considerable help; Monica was able to get herself back into the chair. She had to pick it up first, of course, and absolutely could not have done so on her own. In all of the excitement, there was one small blessing to be had. Monica noticed, and was extremely pleased to boot, that her tumble missed Scott’s trail of blood completely.
Being happy was all about measuring the good things among the bad.
“Mrs Weathers, do you know that my father could not have been at my grandparent’s house for any longer than a couple of minutes?” Rebecca continued her oral drama without even registering Monica’s difficulties. Either she didn’t notice, or she didn’t care. It didn’t truly matter that much to Monica though, either way.
“So either the little backwater town I grew up in has the world’s fastest police response time, or my loving mother and grandparents set the whole thing up to catch his raw emotion and use it against him. Now, you wouldn’t know anything about that kind of thing, would you?”
She was looking at Monica with an insulting fake innocence as if waiting for a response. Monica would not respond though. This woman was obviously unstable, and she now linked Monica with the mother she blamed for her father’s death. Saying anything at all was likely to vex this volatile person even more.
Sure their custody fight got nasty and ugly, but James was going to mess up sooner or later. Monica just made sure his few emotional mistakes were well documented. Who wouldn’t? Besides, she was the best person to raise Alisha anyway.
“What do you know about your husband’s business dealings?” Rebecca asked the question using such skill in extreme subject changing that Monica had to take a couple of heartbeats to make sure the woman had actually spoken to her.
“He’s a civil engineer.” Monica replied, silently cursing the obvious fact that she could indeed speak.
“No, Mrs Weathers, his real business.” Rebecca said with a bored sigh.
“What do you mean?” Monica asked. “We work at the same firm, it’s how we met.”
“Monica, I know when you met, I know when you first fucked the sorry piece of shit.” Rebecca leaned over the table and continued; “I know the night you snuck away to ride the divine cock of Bruce one last time after you were engaged. I know everything, Mrs Weathers, so please do us both a favor and stop filling this fucking room with bullshit!”
As with anyone, Monica was beginning to learn her facial expressions. So far she had counted three; boredom, rage, and morbidly terrifying. At that point, Monica very desperately wished to see bored or enraged because the expression on Rebecca’s face only promised the most blood curdling horrors that Monica’s shattered imagination could create.
“I’m telling you he’s a civil engineer! We both are! I don’t know what I can do to make you believe me!”
“There’s nothing you can do, Mrs Weathers. What I’m about to show you is evidence collected by the DEA spanning the last thirteen months.” With that she pressed a few buttons on the small remote and produced an image on the wall monitor. It was a mugshot of someone Monica had never seen.
“Do you know this person, Mrs Weathers?” It was a black and white image of a skinny black man with a big ball of hair surrounding his head. It was typical of the type of picture taken when a person was arrested with a white background and black horizontal lines marking the man’s height.
“No, I’ve never seen him before.” Monica said.
“What about this one?” Becca asked before clicking a button to change the image. It was a similar mugshot, but with a fatter white man who had a shaved head covered with indecipherable tattoos. He had a wicked goatee beard and was actually trying to glow with a fake smile. Like one would do in a mall photo booth.
“No ma’am, I don’t know him either.” Monica had never seen the two men before, but they were nearly equally frightening to her.
Rebecca switched the image back to the first and said; “this is Jeremy Drehr, although he prefers being addressed by his idiotic nickname of ‘Shrap’. Apparently he got hit with debris when an aerosol can exploded in a fire when he was a kid. Charming place to grow up, for sure.”
She had her reading glasses back on and started reading from a thick binder open to a page sharing the same black and white image on the room’s monitor. “He was picked up in Atlanta for distribution and promised leniency if he gave up his supplier. Of course he swore the moon once the idea of hard time started to sink in through all that hair.”
“This is what the agents found after letting him out with surveillance.” Becca finished and clicked another button. What the display showed was almost beyond Monica’s ability to comprehend.
Her husband was standing on the outside of their luxury SUV with the hatch open. Next to him, and handing him an envelope, was the black man from the picture. Both men were wearing sunglasses and their nervous postures secured Monica’s realization that she now had no one. Her husband’s betrayal caused new and more exciting pain to fill her abdomen. Its sharp tentacles reached their way up her spine and brought her even more tears.
“And, there’s this one.” Becca said at last. “Derrick March was arrested in Biloxi; he too agreed to hand over his supplier.”
Eerily similar to the first, this image housed much the same. Only it was the bald white man standing near Timothy behind their car.
“What do you want me to do?” Monica shrieked with the kind of defeated rage she often heard from her daughter. “I don’t know anything about this!”
“I want you to tell me where your husband is, Mrs Weathers. How did he acquire nano-technology capable of fooling trained guards? How did he kill a federal agent without leaving a murder weapon?”