Stark Raving Mad

by Knight, Vanessa

  “So, do you remember the conversation we had…?” Brook started to ask, but was interrupted for the… who knew how many times.

  “No.” Don spun the gray chair around, his blond hair swinging.

  Would it be wrong for her to stop the chair by yanking the off-white tips of that stupid mane? Just a quick yank. Her fingers curved just visualizing it. “I didn’t even specify which conversation.” Brook brought her legal pad and pen closer, hoping its proximity would encourage him to answer one of her questions satisfactorily. Just one.

  “I don’t remember any of them.”

  Seriously? “Do you remember talking to me at all, ever?” All morning. This meeting had gone like this all morning. “Vaguely.”

  Vaguely. Brook’s head throbbed. “So what happened the night you were taken into police custody?”

  “Which night?”

  “The night the cops arrested you for prostitution. Do you remember that?” “I don’t recall.”

  Brook rolled her eyes, and turned to his mother, who was sitting next to him. This was ridiculous. What was the point of sitting here dealing with this teenage bullshit?

  “Honey, you need to answer Ms. Southby’s questions.” Don’s mother laid a well-manicured hand on the demon spawn’s arm. Her perfectly-feathered blonde hair hung down her chest, bracketing her newly-acquired assets.

  “Fine.” He pulled away and feigned concentration. Although his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

  Arrogant little…Professional. She needed to stay professional.

  “What happened the night you were arrested for prostitution?”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.” His head tilted to one side as he threw up his hands and then dropped them back down on the arms of the chair.

  “What doesn’t make sense? Arrested? Or prostitution? Which word is confusing?” Somehow she managed to keep a rein on the condescending tone she wanted to use. It was a loose rein, though, that could snap at any moment.

  Don took a glass from the center of the table and filled it with water from the pitcher. He emptied the glass and then stared at it, frowning slightly.

  “Mister Ryder, I need an answer.” Why the hell couldn’t he just answer a damn question? What was wrong with this little shit? “Mister Ryder. You need to answer me—and understand, the prosecution is going to be asking a lot harder questions. And you better know the answer, or they will throw you in jail. Is that what you want?”

  Mrs. Ryder’s folded hands whitened as she forced a smile that looked about as genuine as her new assets. “I assure you, my son doesn’t want go to jail…”

  “I’m asking Don. I need him to answer.” Brook threw her pen on the table and stood, leaning on the table across from half of the Ryder clan. “The prosecution will expect you to answer. They will expect you to tell your side of the story so they can poke as many holes as possible into your testimony. You need to be prepared.”

  “Isn’t that why my dad pays you a butt-load of money? Do your job.” He went back to spinning his chair.

  Dear Lord grant me the serenity to accept that if I beat the crap out of this kid, I will go to jail, the courage to bite my tongue, no matter how bloody it might get, and the wisdom to step back before I lose my job.

  “I am doing my job” you little twerp, “but I can’t answer the questions for you.”

  He sighed and kicked the empty chair next to him, and it bounced back so he could kick it again and again.

  Brook sat and picked up her pen. “Did you offer to perform fellatio on Detective Peter Steeling in exchange for five hundred dollars?”

  “No.”

  An answer. A miracle. “Did you offer to perform any manner of sexual favors for Detective Steeling in exchange for money?”

  “I object,” he whispered, his eyes roaming the table.

  She objected, too. To this meeting, to this stupidity, to this whole damn thing. “To what do you object?”

  “This…Are we done yet?” He waved his arms in frustration. “I ask the questions.”

  “Your questions suck.”

  “Would you like to ask the questions?” She leaned back in her chair. She might as well get comfortable—not a damn thing was happening here. Well, except for the ulcer that was probably growing inside her, eating at the walls of her stomach.

  “No, but you gotta ask the right ones. The cops are framing me.”

  “Don, honey.” Mrs. Ryder leaned forward and rested a hand on her son’s arm. Her eyes pleaded, her lip quivered. She was finally scared. Maybe a bit of that concern and fear would wash off onto her offspring. “I need you to work with Brook. She’s here to fix this whole situation.”

  “Fix what? I didn’t do nothing wrong. I was hanging with my friends, and this guy asked me if I wanted to party. I said yes and did some blow. That’s it. Next thing I know, I’m being arrested.”

  “So, you never tried to pull his pants down saying, ‘Five hundred dollars and I’ll do you good’?”

  “I didn’t offer him no money.”

  Brook stared at him. She’d worked with this kid enough to know when he was gaming the system or lying. He wasn’t. He honestly doesn’t remember offering money. So the question was, was he too drugged to remember or could the cop have gotten it wrong?

  “Are you—are you gay?” His mom sniffled, and worried a tissue from the box in the center of the table. “Is that why you offered to perform oral sex on that man?”

  “No, Mom. I was high. Just tell them that and this will be over.”

  “Yeah, that’s a great idea. Let’s tell him my sixteen-year-old client was doing cocaine and didn’t realize he was soliciting for prostitution.” Brook rubbed her temples.

  “Can’t we settle?” Mrs. Ryder dabbed at her eyes. Even after her breakdown, not one smudge marred her perfectly made-up face.

  “I can try, but there could still be jail time.” “No jail!” his mother wailed.

  “But…”

  “No jail.” She hit the table, a frantic gleam in her eyes. Even she could see the truth. Her precious little bundle of pain was going to jail if she didn’t pay this thing away. “Find a way. We’ll donate money, build a building, whatever.”

  “Why are we paying?”

  “Hush, Don.”

  “But why?” His voice raised an octave. Jail didn’t faze him, but heaven forbid they touch the funding from his cash cow.

  “Because it’s the only chance you have,” Brook explained. Patiently. “We have two stories. One is from a decorated police officer. A fifteen-year veteran with commendations. The guy has been late for work once. Once. That is the extent of his dubious behavior. He’s a family man and good cop. The other story is from you. An established troublemaker who has longstanding issues with the law. Who has not only admitted to being coked up during the alleged incident, but can’t seem to answer a question without his eyes bobbing all over the room. You act guilty. You look guilty.”

  “I’m not guilty.” Tears, actual tears, pooled in his eyes. If it wasn’t for the fear in the brown depths, she might have thought he faked the waterworks. “Mommm…”

  She was starting to think he honestly believed he did nothing wrong. Maybe he was high and had no clue what he was doing.

  It didn’t make it right, but it made it more understandable.

  Scary and sad, but understandable.

  “We’ll do whatever we have to.” Mom got up and led her clueless miscreant out the door.

  Silence.

  Brook sat in the quiet room and stared at the empty pages in front of her. Thud! She dropped her head to the table. Her resting brain soaked up the calm, the peace. The pain from the belligerent teen swirled in her empty psyche. Her rigid muscles released as her jaw unclenched.

  “Everything okay?”

  Brook lifted her head as Joe walked into the conference room. He dropped into the chair across from her. It must have been hard to stand outside the conference room for the past three hours with nothing to do. It
hadn’t been all that great inside the conference room, either.

  “So how’d it go?”

  “As well as could be expected.”

  “These walls are pretty thin.” So he knew how well it went.

  “Why didn’t you tell that kid where to shove it?”

  She had dreamed about it, for the past couple weeks. But that wasn’t her style. “Because, Joe, even the incredibly stupid deserve the right to be heard. Sometimes they’re the ones that need it the most.”

  “How…profound.”

  “Is that another word for naive?” She gathered her paperwork together and stuffed it in her briefcase. “No.”

  “Well, people do dumb things. Some things are dumber than others. Some get caught. We’ve all been there. We’ve all done stupid things.”

  “True.”

  “What’s your stupid thing?” She looked up from her paperwork. He raised his eyebrows. “Besides my Italian Horn tattoo?”

  “Is that what that is? I was wondering, but we were too busy for me to ask.” Red crept up her neck. They were too busy and it broke her heart that they’d never be busy like that again.

  But she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t respect her, someone who thought she was naïve and incapable, no matter how good the sex might be.

  “I sold porn when I was in fifth grade.” He tilted his chair back and set his feet on the table.

  “Porn?” That was surprising. Brook stopped playing with the papers and watched him laugh. A deep laugh that made her want to jump him right here. But no, never again. She needed to remember that.

  “I took my grandpa’s girly magazines, and ripped out the pages and sold them to the guys at school. Until my mom found out. She was so pissed. I had to go to every students’ parent and buy each page back. Then I had to write a report apologizing to my grandpa. Which I had to read at the next family gathering.”

  “Devastating.”

  “It was horrible. My aunts and uncles were relentless. For years they called me Little Hef. When my mom wasn’t around.”

  “I bet that ended your porn distribution career.”

  “Yeah, it was a short career.” His smile was addictive. “How about you? What stupid thing did you do?”

  Stupid things. There were so many. From the guys she dated, to the pixie haircut she got in the third grade. Her senile neighbor was convinced she was a boy for months after that fiasco. Thankfully, they moved a lot, and shortly after that she was able to put Washington DC in her rearview mirror along with Mister Schmidt’s daily greeting of “Good morning, son.” Then there was the big one. The big mistake. The thing she’d never told anyone, not even Allison. Especially not Allison. Her sister would never understand. She snatched up her briefcase and walked toward the door. “I killed my parents.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I killed my parents. Joe couldn’t believe she dropped a bomb like that and just walked out the door. Granted, he had no idea what to say to that. But he wasn’t really given a chance, not while they walked the halls of Brook’s law firm.

  She killed her parents? She’d been sixteen years old, and from what Adam had said, they’d died in a car accident. How could she have killed them?

  They left her office and walked to the Joe’s truck in silence. Rain sprinkled on the roof as they left the garage and Joe drove toward the precinct.

  He had to know. “What happened with your parents?”

  A loud sigh escaped her lips as she dropped back into the seat. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time.” His car idled in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. Rush hour. Hah, there was no rushing—even without the rain, there was only waiting and inching down the busy streets. They had plenty of time for a story, especially one that started with “I killed my parents.”

  Joe sat at the red light waiting. Waiting for once upon a time, or long, long ago, anything indicating she was going to answer his question. He turned to watch her. Brook played with the strap of the purse sitting in her lap, her head angled toward her lap, her focus clamped on her trembling hands. He could practically see the war waging in her mind. She’d opened this can of snakes. It was natural he’d have a few questions.

  Finally, she lifted her head. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just…it was so hard. Nothing I ever did was good enough. And when Allison left for college, I lost her as a buffer. She was the golden child, she did everything right. My dad hovering and puppeteering everything she did… Then she was gone and he tried to dictate everything I did. But I wouldn’t let him. Then…” She took in a gulp of air. “…then a few friends and I were caught drinking beer in the girls’ bathroom. I was suspended from school. My parents flipped out. Well, my mom just sat there. My dad yelled and asked rhetorical question after rhetorical question.”

  She cringed, lost somewhere in her thoughts. “You know the type where they ask a question and don’t wait for an answer. ‘What is wrong with you?’ ‘Why are you so stupid?’ ‘Can’t you do anything right?’ That last one apparently wasn’t rhetorical.”

  Air rushed through her lips in a humorless laugh. “I didn’t realize the rules had changed, so I just sat there. There was finally silence, but it only seemed to make him angrier. So…he looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘Don’t you have anything to say?’ Of course, what I said didn’t make it better. I was a young and dumb, so I said, ‘Oh, is it my turn to talk?’” A tear slid from her eye as she rested a hand on her cheek. “It was the first time he ever hit me, and the only time.”

  Anger streamed through him as he thought about a young Brook getting hit by her own father. He didn’t care what teenage attitude she’d thrown his way, hitting a woman was never the answer. He reached across the center console and slipped his fingers through hers.

  Surprisingly, she let him in, let him touch her.

  “He screamed about me being a felon, and he walked me upstairs to my room, twisting my arm up behind my shoulders. He said that if I wanted to drink beer so much, he’d get me beer. ‘You’ll drink so much damn beer, then we’ll see how you like it.’ He locked me in and then he and my mom went out and got in the car. That was last time I saw them alive.” Just talking about this seemed to drain her of that spark, that fight he loved.

  Loved? Crap. He didn’t have time to deal with poor internal word choices at the moment. Thank goodness. “That must have been hard for you.”

  “For me? It took me a while to get the door open—I had practice—but that whole time, I waited, praying they wouldn’t come back. Praying Allison would come home. Praying I’d get new parents.” She wiped the tears from her face “Well, two out of three ain’t bad, right? I got what I wanted.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” His thumb rubbed small circles on her hand.

  “Really? He was driving in a rage—that I put him in—to pick up beer to teach me a lesson. And then he was hit by a drunk driver. If he hadn’t been so distracted, he might have seen the car coming. He might have swerved. And while they were in that car…I sat there and prayed for them to die.”

  “Everyone does that.” Joe wrapped a hand around hers. “I wished my dad harm so many times when I was a kid. But he’s still around—well maybe not around, but alive and well.”

  “Yeah, but not everyone gets everything they want handed to them. My parents gone, Allie back. My selfish wish came true, and who was hurt? Allie. She lost everything. She had to quit school, get a job and raise a teenager when she was barely still a teenager herself.”

  “You lost, too. And how is it your fault and not Allison’s? She went off to college.” Ridiculous to blame a girl going off to college for her parent’s death? Yes. Any less ridiculous than blaming a teenager for being a teenager? No.

  “Allison did nothing wrong.” Fire built in her eyes. Good. She was still in there. That woman who didn’t take shit was still lurking. She turned and looked out the car window. The pitter-patter of rain was the only sound. “Where are we going?”


  “I have to qualify today.” “Qualify?”

  “A couple times a year we have to take a test for proficiency with our firearm.

  You know, make sure we can hit what we’re aiming at. So, today is the last day, and I have to qualify to carry my weapon or I’ll be using a slingshot for the next few months.” “Okay.” Her attention kept drifting out the window. She’d had a long day, between junior dipshit and her parent-revelation. She deserved a night of reality TV and wine.

  “I’ll see if Shay or Adam can drive you home when we get there.”

  “That would be great. Thanks.” She’d shut him out, keeping her distance, staring out the windshield. The wipers did their thing as the conversation hit a lull. Brook’s gaze didn’t leave the window, and there was no way Joe was going to interrupt her. She was the strongest woman he’d ever met, despite her misguided blame from her parents’ death. Hell, maybe it was because of it.

  Either way, he hoped the wait to shoot was short. He didn’t have time to bullshit or watch the usual show-offs. He just wanted to get it over with and get his butt back to Shay’s. Back to Brook.

  * * *

  Nothing ever worked out as planned. Apparently everyone had waited till the last day to qualify this time around. The sign-in list was over seventy-five deep. Joe would be lucky to get out of here in two hours. Crap!

  Damn qualifications. Not that he didn’t see the value of verifying that cops could shoot straight, it was just screwing with his life at the moment.

  He went back to his desk and found Brook playing on her phone, her hair hanging over her shoulder, her face lost in concentration. The sadness was still visible around the edges, but she’d bounced back from their conversation earlier. What a screwed-up situation.

  He needed to get it through her beautiful head that her parents’ death wasn’t her fault. She shouldn’t have to live with that sadness or guilt. She also shouldn’t have to live another evening at the Chicago PD.