Quiet As It's Kept

by Monique Miller

  “Yeah, because I have my own charges I want to file against her,” Will said.

  “Will, man, hold on. Let me give my lawyer a call. You don’t have to go with them,” Phillip said.

  “No, enough is enough. Morgan isn’t going to continue to ruin my life. It all has to end at some point,” Will said.

  “I’m just saying, man. You don’t know what Morgan—or Ci Ci, or whatever her name is—could have said to these officers,” Phillip said.

  Shelby cocked her head to the side, looking at her husband. “Who is Ci Ci?”

  Both Phillip and Will looked at her. “Long story, baby,” Phillip said.

  “Yeah, long story. Phillip can fill you in on all the craziness that has been going on,” Will said to Shelby, and then looked to Phillip. “Yeah, Phillip, please call your lawyer for me. And if he can, maybe he can meet me down at the station. I want to go ahead and tell these officers what has been going on and file my own charges.”

  “I’ll call him, but I really wish you’d wait until I talk to him. Or at least not say anything to the officers until you’ve got the lawyer with you,” Phillip said.

  Shelby nodded in agreement.

  “It is all going to be okay. I have absolutely nothing to hide, unlike my wife. I am surprised she had the nerve to call you all with all the stuff she’s been keeping secret,” Will said to the officers.

  “Well, your wife looked pretty bad when we saw her,” one of the officers said.

  “I am sure she did. She was pretty mad when I left her,” Will said.

  “She looked hurt to us,” the same officer said.

  “She’s hurt? Ha. Now I know that’s got to be the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.”

  “Mr. Tracy.” The officer gestured for Will to follow him to the car.

  Will stepped out the front door and headed to the police cruiser. He looked back at Phillip and Shelby. “Can you guys take care of Isaiah until I get back? The rest of his formula and diapers are in the car.”

  “Isaiah is in good hands. Don’t worry about him,” Shelby assured her husband’s best friend.

  “I’ll go ahead and call my lawyer,” Phillip said. “Try to wait until he gets there before you say anything.”

  Will said nothing else as the officer opened the door for him to sit in the back seat. Unlike what he had seen in the movies, the cops didn’t have their lights on. So unless the neighbors happened to be already looking out of their windows or happened to be outside, they were none the wiser that the cops were even in the neighborhood. They hadn’t handcuffed him and pushed him into the back seat by the top of his head, but he had nonetheless ended up in the back of a police cruiser.

  The three-mile ride he took to the police station seemed to take forever. With each car they passed on the road, he felt as if the passengers were trying to look in the back seat to see who the convict was; wondering what drug crime or murder the person in the back seat had committed.

  Will was tired from the emotional stress he had been going through over the past few weeks of knowing his wife was trying to get rid of him. He was also tired from the mental stress of finding out about the skeletons his wife was hiding in her closet. Now he had to contend with being sought out by the law. And the changes his life was enduring were stemming from one source—his wife, Morgan.

  He started to wonder if God had been the one to send Morgan to him. He’d always thought from that first day he saw her at the church that she had literally been the answer to the prayer he had been praying the day he saw her. He’d always thought she was the woman of his dreams and prayers, but now he had to rethink the situation. Maybe it was the devil who had sent Morgan, because he knew the Lord wouldn’t have put the mess together that he was going through.

  Will had been glad to finally get to the police station and out of the back seat of the car. Now he was sitting in an interrogation room, waiting for an officer to come back and talk to him. The room was cold and he wished he’d worn long sleeves that day. Whenever the officer came back, he’d ask for a cup of coffee.

  It felt like over thirty minutes had passed before the officer returned to the room. By then Will had been freezing and was starting to get mad. They had come to pick him up to ask questions, but all he had done was wait in a freezing room.

  “Mr. Tracy, sorry to have kept you so long. I am Detective Pierce and I have a few questions for you in light of some complaints your wife, Morgan Tracy, has.”

  “Detective Pierce, Morgan isn’t even her name. And I have a few complaints of my own.” Will shivered. “It’s freezing in here. Can I get a cup of coffee while we talk?”

  The detective looked up toward a two-way mirror and said, “Yeah, we can get you a cup of coffee in just a few minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Will said.

  “But first we need to address the complaints your wife has about your beating her.”

  Will sat back in his chair and stared at the detective in disbelief. “Beating her? I didn’t beat my wife.”

  “That’s not what your wife said. And from the looks of it, she was beat pretty bad.”

  “I didn’t lay a hand on my wife.”

  “She says that you pushed her down and then beat her,” Detective Pierce said.

  “Okay, I did touch her shoulder, only so I could walk by her. She was standing in my way, and when I touched her shoulder to move past her she fell on the floor, acting like I’d knocked her down or something. And when I basically ignored her she got right back up,” Will said.

  There was a knock at the interrogation room door.

  Will wondered why Morgan would lie and say that he had beaten her. He figured it was her way of getting back at him for leaving. It made him hot to think that she would even do such a thing, and he wondered when it would all stop.

  Another officer stepped into the room, holding an envelope and a cup of coffee. “Here they are.” The officer handed Detective Pierce the envelope and set the cup of coffee down in front of Will.

  Will took a sip. It was lukewarm and nasty. “This coffee isn’t hot and it’s nasty.”

  “We drink it all the time. I didn’t say it would be good, and we can’t have you drinking coffee that is too hot. What would happen if you spilled it, or it somehow got splashed on one of us, for instance?” Detective Pierce said.

  Will had to remember where he was. He was at the police station being interrogated by the police. These people were not his friends. They had an agenda, and that agenda was to charge him with something and lock him up.

  “Mr. Tracy, this is Detective Adams,” Detective Pierce said.

  Will’s eyes glanced from the other detective to the envelope the man had just handed Detective Pierce.

  Detective Pierce pulled out a stack of instant pictures. “What can you tell me about these pictures, Mr. Tracy?”

  The detective handed the pictures over to Will. When he saw the first one he was perplexed. And as he continued to look at each of the pictures, his bewilderment increased even more.

  “What are these?” Will asked.

  “We’re the ones asking the questions right now, Mr. Tracy,” Detective Pierce said.

  Will looked at the officers with a blank expression.

  Detective Adams looked at his watch. “Look, Mr. Tracy, we can save a whole lot of time if you’ll just admit to beating your wife. We have the proof right here.”

  Will looked down at the pictures before him—pictures of Morgan that looked as if she had been beaten to a pulp. Her left eye was swollen shut and she had a fat bottom lip that looked as if it had swollen blood in the corner of her mouth. The pictures showed what looked like flesh wounds on her arms, legs, and her rib cage. There were also pictures of their den that looked worse than he remembered it looking when he’d left. Things had been strewn around and nothing was left on the bookshelf.

  Will shook his head. “I didn’t do this. You have to believe me.”

  “Mr. Tracy, as you can plainly see, these pictures
show how badly you tore up your house when you were beating your wife.”

  “I can explain that. I left my wife today because of some lies she had been telling me. The place got a little disheveled as I was packing things, throwing them into bags. I was trying to get out of my house before she got home.”

  The detectives stared at Will with disbelief.

  “Like I said when the officers first came to my friend’s house, I have some complaints of my own. You see, I found out earlier today that my wife isn’t who she says she is. She’s been lying to me about what her real name is and I also found out that she has a history of sleeping around with various men. I found out that her dead mother isn’t even dead, not to mention the fact that she had children before we got married. And all this time, I thought she was a virgin before we got married.” Will spoke in what he knew was a jumble of possibly incoherent words. But he felt he needed to plead his case and plead it quickly, because it was all getting out of hand. He was starting to look like the bad guy.

  “So what you are saying is you found all this stuff out and all you did was go home and calmly pack your things to leave your wife? Do you expect us to believe that you weren’t angry about everything you’d found out and didn’t take it out on your wife?” Detective Pierce asked.

  “I had an idea that she was up to no good. She’s been trying to kill me, so I’ve been trying to watch my back over the last few weeks. Everything I found out today was just the icing on top of everything else,” Will said. “My only focus this evening was to pack some things up for my baby and me, and get out of that house before she did succeed in getting rid of me for the insurance money.”

  The detectives looked at each other in utter disbelief.

  “You say your wife has been trying to kill you?” Detective Adams asked.

  “Yes, she has,” Will said.

  “Are you trying to say you’ve never laid a hand on your wife? Because she told us this isn’t the first time you’ve tried to hurt her,” Detective Pierce said.

  Will thought about the one time he’d grabbed Morgan’s arm so tightly that he’d wanted to almost break it. “I’ve only touched my wife in a harmful way once, and I vowed never to do it again, and I haven’t,” Will admitted.

  Both detectives looked at each other. Detective Adams smirked.

  Will realized that the detectives didn’t believe a word he was saying, and he was the bad guy in their eyes. He should have listened to Phillip and waited for a lawyer, but the events that were unfolding were the last thing that he had ever expected to happen.

  His mind raced as he sat there under the disbelieving eyes of the detectives. Then he had a thought. “Is Officer Chrispin working tonight?”

  “Officer Chrispin is here. Why?”

  “I’d like to see him,” Will requested.

  “We need to finish up things here first,” Detective Pierce said.

  “I will not say anything else unless it is to Officer Chrispin, or to my lawyer.” Will folded his arms and sat back in his chair again.

  The officers took heed and both stood, gathering the pictures and envelope. “We’ll see if Officer Chrispin can come in here,” Detective Pierce said.

  “You do that,” Will replied.

  “No promises.”

  A few moments later, Officer Chrispin came into the room. Will told him what was going on and that he was being accused of beating his wife. He stressed to the man that he had not put a hand on his wife to hurt her.

  “Mr. Tracy, you are going to need a lawyer. Do you have one?” Detective Chrispin said.

  “No, but my friend is calling his lawyer.”

  “Good. Do not say anything else to anyone else here until the lawyer arrives. Not even to me. The walls have ears and eyes.”

  Will nodded.

  “Mr. Tracy, there is help and support. And the brotherhood will be notified as to what is going on,” Officer Chrispin said.

  Will was glad to know that the Secret Brotherhood would be aware of what was going on. And he knew that the Secret Brotherhood would help in whatever way possible, especially praying for him during his ordeal.

  There was another knock on the door. It was Detective Pierce. “Mr. Tracy’s lawyer is here.”

  Detective Pierce led a tall, lanky African American man into the room.

  “My client and I need to talk in privacy.” The lawyer directed his words to both Detective Pierce and Officer Chrispin.

  Officer Chrispin firmly placed his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Be strong, my brother.” Then he left Will in the room.

  Will was going to try to be strong, but he knew that his strength would only take him so far. He needed the Lord to not only be with him but to carry him.

  Chapter 25

  “Here you are,” the police room attendant said as she handed Will an envelope with his belongings, which consisted only of his watch, wedding ring, and wallet.

  Will took the envelope and mumbled a thank you to the attendant. Then he turned his attention back to Phillip.

  “Thanks for bailing me out and picking me up.”

  “Not a problem. I just hate it that you had to spend the whole night in jail while the red tape was being taken care of,” Phillip said.

  “I don’t ever want to spend another night in jail for the rest of my life.”

  “What happened? Did they treat you bad?”

  “Yeah, the service, if that’s what you want to call it, wasn’t up to par. But, I mean, what’s awful is the feeling of being enclosed in a space that you can’t leave, no matter how badly you want to. Especially when you want to leave because you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Will followed Phillip out to the parking lot and to his SUV.

  Once they started driving, Phillip asked, “So was my lawyer able to help you?”

  “I hope he can help me out of the hole I dug for myself. I should have listened to you and Shelby and kept my mouth shut.”

  “You didn’t say anything too bad, did you?”

  “Did I? Name something.” Will’s shoulders slumped. “They accused me of beating on Morgan.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As serious as a heart attack.”

  “Now that’s crazy.”

  “No, what is crazy is that they have evidence of my beating her,” Will said.

  Will could feel the deceleration of the truck as Phillip let off of the gas pedal.

  “You didn’t hit Morgan, did you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think you’d hit her, but she has put you under a great deal of stress over the past couple of months,” Phillip said.

  “No, P.T., I did not hit my wife. And I said they had evidence of me beating her, not merely hitting her once or twice.”

  “What kind of evidence, and what are you talking about?”

  “P.T., they had instant pictures of Morgan that showed bruises that looked like Muhammad Ali had had a couple of rounds practicing with her. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if they hadn’t shown me the pictures.”

  “Well, what happened, then?”

  “Good question, because I swear to you that when I left Morgan at home she was perfectly fine. She was in the garage watching me drive away.”

  “What on earth is going on? How did she go from being perfectly fine to being somebody’s punching bag?”

  “I have no idea. That’s all I thought about all last night,” Will said.

  “It does sound pretty bad on your part. I mean, you are my friend and I know you as well as I know myself, so I know you wouldn’t hurt Morgan. But, man, to tell you the truth, if I were on the outside looking in, then I might think differently.”

  “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

  “I’m just saying. It sounds pretty bad. But my lawyer is one of the best.”

  “I hope so, because I don’t know if he can dig me out of the hole I’ve dug myself into.”

  “Like you said, you didn’t hit her.”
<
br />   “No, but I ran my mouth talking to those cops, trying to get them to believe I didn’t beat her. But by the time I finished talking, I was pretty sure they didn’t believe a word I said. I tried to tell them about the attempts by Morgan to kill me, and that Morgan is not her real name and that I found out she slept around with a bunch of men. It came out in a jumble of words. I think in their minds they feel I let my temper get the best of me and I just beat the mess out of her.”

  “Wow, I don’t know what to say,” Phillip said.

  “Man, I don’t know what to say either. And I think I am going to need a miracle to get me out of this mess,” Will said.

  “Thank you, Officer,” Will said to the officer who was escorting him to his home in order to retrieve some more of his things. Morgan had gotten a restraining order for him to stay away from her. Will had no intention of going anywhere near Morgan, and he felt like she had wasted her time even filling out the paperwork.

  As far as he knew, Morgan was at work. When he opened the garage he saw that her car was not there, so he felt pretty confident that he would be able to get his things without any incident. He had the police officer with him as a safety measure just in case Morgan did show up. At least this time he would have a witness who could actually speak full sentences to vouch for his actions.

  He had emptied both of his duffle bags and brought them with him. He packed one bag with toiletry items he’d forgotten to pack, like his toothbrush, shaving cream, and razor. The day he packed he thought he’d packed enough clothing for both himself and Isaiah, but realized he’d only packed a few pair of underwear and only a couple of sleepers for the baby.

  Downstairs, Will picked up the files in which he kept all his copies of job search information, and retrieved his laptop and all the other accessories that accompanied it. The computer had been his since before they got married, and he would dare Morgan to say that it was hers. Unlike Morgan, who seemed to have come out of the middle of nowhere, Will had a paper trail of all his purchases that dated back for years.

  Once he had all that he needed for the time being, since both of his duffle bags were full, Will decided to leave. The very last thing he wanted was for Morgan to come home with some more fabrications about what Will was doing. Will thanked the officer and got back into his car.