Between Worlds (Pendant Series Book 3) (11 page)

Chapter 14

Come Undone

I sat numbly at the stone cold, steel table.

My arms had goose bumps on my pale flesh that had not seen the sun for two days. The authorities had not provided jackets for jailbirds nor did they bother to turn up the heat. I’m pretty sure these conditions were done on purpose to teach us newbie lawbreakers a lesson and make sure that when we were released we’d never return.

Or, at least for those of us that would eventually have a chance to leave.

Some of us would have to board that white bus and take a one-way trip to our final destination, also known as the penitentiary. After all, I was arrested for murder. I wouldn’t be incarcerated in a county jail.

When I was a kid I would hear stories about the vicious girls in “The Pen,” and the brutality they imposed on new inmates. I sure hoped these were just tales for my sake.

I shivered at the thought, which had turned my pale flesh into the clone of a plucked chicken. I hoped the women in prison only listened to rap music and had no idea who the hell Ray Ryker was.

So far I hadn’t seen another inmate since I’d been here. I was kept in a single cell and taken out for a few minutes in the evening to stretch my legs and walk a short distance with a guard. But even on those walks I never saw another prisoner. I began to wonder if I was being kept in my own private facility. A jail constructed just for me.

Maybe Ray’s record label funded it.

In addition to people, I also hadn’t seen the sun in days and I desperately missed those warm rays basting my skin. I didn’t even feel like the same person these days. I was more like an empty shell of a human being with all of my emotions frozen in time.

It was the only way to make it through all this. I was now in survival mode.

I stared across the table at the empty chair that stood in front of me.

Someone obviously had requested a visit with me today and I could only think of one person. I hadn’t heard boo from Chrissy, but I could only hope that she at least honored my last request and called Adrian. It was the least she could do for me after sending me to this God awful place. I had killed no one. I didn’t belong here.

This was the first time I had seen any part of the general population but I was too entwined in my own feelings to care about them now. I scanned the giant room full of visitors looking for that mass of black hair but couldn’t seem to find him.

Initially I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about him coming here but now as my anxiety began to rise I realized that I did, in fact, want to see him.

I needed to see him.

He was the only person that ever understood me and right now, I didn’t even understand myself. Plus, I needed to convince him to tell the truth about what had really happened that night in the mausoleum.

Getting more frantic with every passing second, I stood up and leaned over the table, stretching my neck to get a better view of the crowd.

He has to be here.

My rising panic was interrupted when an older woman wearing a beige dress suit stood in front of the table, coughing loudly to get my attention. “Are you expecting someone, Miss Sinclair?” the woman asked.

She definitely looked as if she was lost, she couldn’t possibly be here for me.

But how did she know my name? Our shirts had
numbers
stitched on the front of them, not names.

She had short rusty hair that was worn in tight curls with glasses that matched her tresses. The glasses rested at the tip of her long thin nose as she glanced over them at me. She kind of reminded me of P.L. Travers and I smirked at the thought of the Mary Poppins author visiting me in jail.

She clutched a clipboard with a thick manila folder held close to her thin, frail chest.

“No, I uh… w-was just,” I stuttered, thinking of something to say that would get her to leave me alone. Instead, she set the folder down on the table and read a name off her clipboard.

“Adrian, maybe? Adrian McAllister. He’s your boyfriend, right?”

Now she had my full attention as I slowly turned my eyes toward her, drinking in every detail of this woman. I re-evaluated this intruder with a different perspective now. I knew exactly why she was here. She wasn’t lost; she had intentionally come here looking for me. She requested this visit. Not Adrian.

I sat back in the chair and folded my arms across my chest in defiance. I could see right through her pathetic attempts of intimacy. She was obviously reading notes from my personal file pretending to know me.

She knew nothing about me. Nothing about my life. I resented her.

“I’m Dr. Scott,” she said, stretching her thin, manicured hand out toward me. I remained as still as a statue, making no attempt at civility. “May I take a seat?”

I shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll take it whether I grant you permission or not.”

Her tight glossed lips stretched into a smile. “Smart girl,” she complimented me as she sat in the empty chair across from me. The seconds stretched into minutes and finally I couldn’t take her probing eyes any longer. I decided to break the awkward silence between us. “He is my friend.”

“Pardon?”

I swallowed hard. “You asked if I was waiting for my boyfriend, Adrian. He’s not my boyfriend. He was just a friend.”

With this new piece of information, Dr. Scott opened the thick folder and began scribbling into it. Without looking up from her work, she asked, “Any reason you referred to your friendship with Adrian in the past tense the second time?” she asked.

I blinked at her in confusion.

She set down her pen and stared at me through her thick lenses, “Originally, you said he
is
your friend. The second time you said
was
. Any reason?”

My walls began to rise up again. This strange woman was asking too many questions. And they were too technical. Who cares if said is or was? Was she trying to psycho-analyze me?

I confronted her. “Why are you here, lady? Who are you?”

“I was appointed by the court to evaluate your mental competency and determine if you can stand trial or not.”

“Because they still think I killed Ray,” I concluded.

Now the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place.

“Did you?” she asked.

“Of course not!”

I noticed the doctor had stopped writing in her folder. It kind of bothered me. Shouldn’t she be writing that I did not kill Ray? That seemed like a fairly important piece of information, here.

She had a follow-up question. “Do you know who’s responsible?”

I crossed my arms in defiance again. I no longer wanted to speak with Dr. Scott.

“Sidney, I’m not here to judge. Only God can do that. I’m only here to gather the truth.”

I was exasperated. “What if there is no God? Who judges us then?” I countered, angry that she would even discuss God. What gave her the right to just assume that I believed He existed? She had no idea about my religious beliefs or if I found her words offensive. She had no idea how complex things became over the past 48 hours. That it wasn’t that simple anymore to just believe or not believe.

I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

“You must believe in
some
Higher Power,” she pressed, her pen in hand like a loaded gun.

“Adrian told me there was no God. We won’t be judged because there’s no worse place to go. This is hell.”

I gritted through my teeth, stabbing my index finger several times onto the metal table. I looked up to meet her solemn gaze and noticed that my actions must have frightened her a bit, for she was pressed against her chair, keeping a safe distance from me.

“It’s why we’re all so sad and miserable,” I concluded in a softer tone.

“Are you sad and miserable?” she asked as she wrote again. She wrote a lot this time. It was as if she were never going to stop writing. I sat patiently, trying to catch a glimpse of what she was placing on the paper but her notes just looked like chicken scratches to me.

Finally, she stopped writing and looked up at me and repeated a portion of her question. “Are you?”

“Yes, I was. For a long time. But then I met Adrian and we were happy until…until…”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it and so I skipped over the hard part and concluded with mine and Adrian’s status. “We were best friends.”

“You used past tense again.”

I didn’t answer her. Instead I concentrated on keeping the dam of tears building up behind my eyes in check. I could feel the oceans of water behind them threatening to pour out.

She pressed me, “Are you still friends with Adrian?”

I shook my head in confusion. “I don’t know,” I answered, as the tears streamed down my face. “I don’t know if I can forgive him. I don’t know if I’ll even get the chance. I haven’t seen him since that night.”

She closed her folder and abruptly stood up. “I think that’s enough for one day.”

“Wait!” I began to stand up but the guard shot me a nasty look, so I sat back down in my chair.

I felt strange. At first I wanted nothing to do with this woman, but now I didn’t want her to leave. She was the only one I had spoken to in so long. Nobody verbally engaged in this place, even the guards were ordered to ignore all of my questions. I raised my voice before she left the room, “You said the court sent you here to mentally evaluate me? So they still think I’m guilty?”

“Yes,” she answered flatly as she smoothed out the wrinkles from her brown skirt.

“But they also think I might be crazy?”

“They just need to rule out that possibility before they can proceed with a trial. It’s a legality issue.”

Finally, I just came out with the core of my question, “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“I haven’t had enough sessions with you to make that determination this early in the process, Sidney.”

“Do you think that I kill—” I still couldn’t bring myself to say it. It was like if we didn’t speak of it then it never happened.

I rephrased my question. “Do you think I’m guilty?”

“We can discuss this further soon. Can I see you tomorrow, same time?”

I rolled my eyes at her tasteless joke. As if there’s anywhere else I can be. I’ve been in this jail for the last two days and it didn’t look like I’d be leaving anytime soon.

But the bars trapping me inside my soul were even worse.

Chapter 15

Personal Jesus

That night, as I lay in my cell, I realized I was actually excited to see Dr. Scott again. I mean, I’d much rather see and speak with Adrian, but at this point, I’d pretty much take anyone I could get.

A visitor is a visitor, I reasoned.

And from the looks of it, I may never see Adrian again. It seemed that he was going to sit back in the shadows and allow me to take the fall for his heinous crime.

It may have seemed crazy that I would even want to see Adrian after what he’d done to my life, but in all honesty I still felt as if I needed him. Maybe those dreams were right after all. Maybe we really were soul mates. But if that were true, then where was he?

He told me he wouldn’t leave without me. Of course I freaked out when he told me that but now I was almost willing to accept it. At this point, I would go anywhere Adrian wanted to take me. It had to be better than the alternative, which seemed to be three cement walls and a set of steel bars.

Did I still miss Ray? Of course I did.

But the truth was that Ray was gone and I really didn’t feel any different because I had always missed him. There was no difference from him being dead or alive, because either way he was still out of my reach. He was always out of my reach. I was just too stubborn to see it.

But Adrian, on the other hand, I missed terribly. He was always there when I needed him. He was always so easily accessible and ready to understand me. The fact of the matter was that Ray was gone and there was no way to bring him back. No matter how hard I cried, pleaded, or begged. But Adrian is here. Or at least he was.

I began to doze off when I was startled by the sound of keys clanking against metal. I sat up, startled, as I looked to see one of the guards unlocking my cell. Behind him, I saw the familiar face of Detective Albright.

The gate opened and the guard glared at me. “You’ve got five minutes. Not a minute longer.” He turned around and gave the detective a much softer look. “Next time come during visiting hours. I could lose my job over this.”

Albright nodded his head. “Thanks again for doing this for me, Gonzalez. I owe you.”

The two men shook hands and then Gonzalez left us alone.

I sat in bed, staring at the detective in bewilderment as he greeted me with a warm smile. I couldn’t return his smile. It seemed my face no longer knew how to make that expression.

Instead, I just gaped. I was emotionally numb and wondering what Detective Albright was doing here.

“Have you gotten yourself a lawyer yet, Miss Sinclair?”

I shook my head no as I pushed a loose strand of hair back behind my ear. “You heard me ask Chrissy to contact Adrian about an attorney. I’m assuming she didn’t since I still haven’t heard from him.”

Just mentioning my best friend’s name was causing my hands to shake with anger. Or, it could have been the lack of pills my body so desperately craved. Whatever the cause, my trembling fingers would not let up as my mind angrily doted on Christine Simpson Kyle, my best friend and most insidious deceiver wrapped into one. I had called her daily but she refused to accept my collect calls.

Adrian was my worst enemy but still a better friend than Chrissy, given the circumstances.

The detective stood silent for a few seconds while he sensed my internal struggle. He seemed to be structuring his next sentence to me, carefully choosing the words he would use to communicate his point. He took a deep breath and began straightening his beige tie. The tie was an inappropriate accessory, being the same color as his shirt, which gave it a sort of washed out and unappealing appearance. In addition, his pants had a couple of coffee stains on them and I had a feeling that this guy was not married, because if he was, I’m sure his wife would have dressed him better before she let him out of the house.

Men, the clueless gender.

“Are you sure that the firm’s name was Adley and Ayers?” he asked. “You’re certain that’s where your friend Adrian works?”

I nodded my head as I watched intently, trying to read the detective’s face. He looked like he knew something I didn’t and he was preparing to release a giant secret.

I held my breath in anticipation.

He took a step closer into the room and nodded toward the corner of the bed. “May I?”

I nodded and the detective took a seat. The springs screamed in protest as his weight sunk them down to the floor. He looked extremely tired, as if he hadn’t gotten any sleep since my arrest. For a brief moment, I almost stood up and asked if he wanted to take a quick nap while I sat in the corner and wrote Chrissy a telegram or something to jolt her into helping me.

He dropped the bomb. “Your grandmother has been transferred back into the hospital.”

I jumped up, wondering what could have happened to Granny. Lilly said that Granny would be snapping out of her daze, so why was she now in the hospital?

“Calm down, Sidney. It’s a good thing. Her vitals are back up and the doctors seem to believe that she may be waking up soon. She’s in the hospital so they can monitor her and make sure they’re by her side when she comes to.”

I let out the breath that I was holding. “That’s great news. Thanks so much for telling me. Is that why you came here tonight?”

The detective shook his head. “Unfortunately not. After your arrest, Ms. Kyle had to gather all the legal paperwork to get your grandmother situated. While going through them, she found the legal document which had appointed you as your Granny’s executor of her will.”

The detective stopped speaking and looked at me. It looked as if he may have been gauging my reaction but I was lost here. I didn’t even know Granny needed an executor. I just figured the position was automatically appointed to me since there were no other family members to assume the responsibility.

Realizing I was not going to add any input, he continued. “The document was drawn up by a legal firm in Sacramento. Their name is Adley and Ayers. They apparently have been your grandmother’s attorneys for a very long time.”

“That’s weird,” I answered, struggling to understand why Adrian had left out such an important legal detail for me.

“Adley and Ayers specializes in family legal services. In fact, they actually handled the adoption paperwork for you after your mother passed and you went to live with your grandmother.”

I didn’t know what to think of the new information the detective brought to me. “So Adrian can’t help me because he specializes in family law and not criminal cases?”

The detective held my gaze as he spoke a bit harsher to me. “Adrian cannot help you because he does not work for Adley and Ayers.

I called the law firm and spoke to Charles Adley directly. He confirmed that he does not, and has never had, an Adrian McAllister employed in his office.”

That obviously was wrong. Adrian
did
work for Adley and Ayers. He told me so himself.

The detective continued what now seemed to be nothing less of an interrogation. “Don’t you think it’s a bit of coincidence that you believed your friend to be working for the same firm who had been deeply invested in your intimate family affairs your entire life?”

What was he getting at? I had no idea what legal firm handled my grandmother’s business. I was just a teenager too engulfed in my
own
life to worry about adult legal responsibilities.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Detective.”

Now, my entire body was shaking and I wished that I had my damn pills, or at the very least, one of Adrian’s cigarettes.

“Adrian does work for a lawyer’s office. It was just a temporary position, though. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t listed on their employee roster, because he’s an outside contractor or something. He has his own firm, a family business back in New Jersey. He was only working here for a short time until he could handle some personal business and then he was going back home.”

The detective’s gloomy expression did not change as his hard eyes pierced into mine, “Sidney. I’ve spent a lot of time chasing leads in the state of New Jersey trying to track down this Adrian McAllister character. They’ve all been dead ends. No one but you have seen this guy, I’m beginning to wonder if you made him up.”

Now my body was burning up. Up to this moment, the entire time I’d been locked in this cell, I had been freezing. Bone chilling, teeth chattering freezing, and now it felt as if someone had cranked the furnace up full blast. I wiped beads of sweat from my forehead.

“What?” I exclaimed. “Of course I didn’t make him up. Ray’s seen him. Ray punched him in his face outside the bar, remember?”

“Ray’s not here for me to confirm that story.”

I started searching my brain for anyone who could collaborate my story and, as I thought about it, I realized that no one else had ever seen Adrian. He always seemed to leave right before Chrissy ever came into the picture. Even though I had always intended to introduce the two, the time never came.

“Jenna!” I shouted out excitedly.

The detective took out his yellow notepad and got ready to write down his new lead. I repeated my source. “Jenna. She’s the bartender at The Watering Hole. The first night I met Adrian, I had Jenna send a drink to him on my behalf. She’ll remember. Check with Jenna, she’ll tell you that Adrian’s real.”

The detective scratched some notes on the pad just as Gonzalez approached the cell. “Time’s up, my man.”

The two men shook hands and the detective promised to check in with me tomorrow to report his progress.