Nothing to Lose
Authors: Alex Flinn
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Themes, #Physical & Emotional Abuse, #Violence, #Runaways, #Social Issues
Alex Flinn
For my mother and grandmother
ARTICLE
Jury selection will begin in the case of a Miami woman accused of bludgeoning her husband to death last March.
Despite the intense publicity surrounding the case, Lisa Monroe’s defense attorneys failed in attempts to have the trial transferred from Miami.
Monroe, 35, a former legal secretary, is charged with murdering her husband, prominent local attorney and philanthropist Walker James Monroe, last March. Monroe plans to claim a battered-spouse-syndrome defense at trial. Her son, Michael Daye, now 17, has been missing since shortly before the alleged homicide took place.
See:
TRIAL
, Page 9A
Also:
BATTERED-SPOUSE-SYNDROME DEFENSE, 1B
I shouldn’t have come back to Miami.
The cop at the Whack-a-Mole game is a fat one. He dips his elephant ear into its cup of chocolate sauce like a blizzard with a tasty slice of roadkill. When his attention’s on that, I approach.
“Give it a try, Officer?”
I have to shout over the screams from the Tilt-a-Whirl. That makes it easier to keep my voice steady. I’ve been escaping cops’ notice for a year now—since I ran away. Secret is, don’t avoid them and act casual. I was always old-looking for my age. Now, with the beard I grew, you’d never guess I’m still a week from being seventeen. That, and the way my hair’s bleached white by the sun, conceals my identity. I’m no longer Michael Daye, high school athlete with a promising future. Now I look like someone with
no
future. I look like a carny.
That’s what the cop sees, standing there. A carny.
“Nah, I’m on duty.” He goes back to the elephant ear.
“Some other time, then.” I start toward the next mark.
“Hold on, kid!”
I turn. Another cop, a female one, has joined the elephant-ear cop.
“You know you want to play,” she says to him.
I stand, looking down, but not too far down, until the big cop waves me off again. I walk away, but I’m alert to their conversation even as the Tilt-a-Whirl starts. In my situation you can’t afford to let your guard down.
“Put the mole in the hole,” I call to the marks. “We’re looking for racers. We’re looking for Whack-a-Mole chasers.” Across from me at the basketball toss, a winning player tries to decide between posters of Elvis or Bart Simpson, Britney Spears or Jesus.
“You at the courthouse today?” the female officer asks the other one.
He laughs. “It’s a freakin’ sideshow. They don’t got sideshows at the carnival anymore—just the courthouse.”
“That bad?”
I go to help a mother and son. I take in the woman’s worn-down shoes and worn-out face and think of my own mother. She used to take me to the carnival too, Tuesdays like today, when they let you in cheap if you saved up bread wrappers. Mom and I always ate lots of toast the month the fair was in town.
I miss my mother. It’s been almost a year since I saw her. I can pretend to forget about her most of the time, but not here. Not in Miami.
“Just one.” The mom points to the kid.
I count out her change and lean down to the kid. “You know how to play, Champ?”
“
No problemo
. The moles come out of their holes, and you bash their brains in.”
“Actually,” I say, “it works better if you hit soft.”
Behind me the cops are still talking.
“So, lot of reporters there?” the female says.
“You name it—Court TV, all the locals. I think there was even a station from Cuba.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the big deal about this case?”
The fat cop snorts. “What you don’t get is a lot. You been on the force as long as I have, you know which cases’ll get the attention. This one’s got it all: a violent murder, a rich guy, and a beautiful woman who’s guilty as sin.”
I feel myself flinch, knowing for sure now. The woman they’re talking about is my mother.
“You think?” the female cop asks. “I’m not so sure.”
“What’s her defense?” the other cop says. “She brained him with a stinking fire poker.”
“She’s saying he beat her up.”
“That’s what they all say. If it was so bad, why didn’t she leave the poor slob? That’s what I want to know. Why didn’t she leave?”
I wait for him to answer his own question. He does.
“She’s a gold digger, that’s why. She married the old man for the cash. Then she got tired of hearing him snore, so she killed him.”
I make myself walk over to the game controls. I stand there one minute, hand on the switch, listening as one by one the sounds around me evaporate, and I hear instead the ocean outside my bedroom window. The old helplessness washes over me like a wave. I hadn’t stayed to protect her.
“Hey, kid!”
The cop’s voice penetrates my head’s silence.
“You! Game-op!”
I turn to face him. He’s finished his elephant ear and is checking his uniform for stains. He looks up, and I think I see a flash of recognition in his eyes. Then it’s gone.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ll take a chance.” He reaches for his pocket, real slow, knowing what I’ll say next.
I say it. “On the house, Officer.” I lean to check his station. Each board has a balloon that fills with air as you bash the mechanical moles. First one to pop a balloon is the winner.
“Wait a second, kid.”
I look up. His eyes search my face, and I fight the urge to glance away.
He says, “What’s your name?”
“Robert Frost.” The lie comes easy. I hope he won’t ask me for ID, but I hope my face shows I have it. “Like the poet.”
He doesn’t ask. “Sorry. Thought I knew you from … somewhere.”
I shrug. Then, with a hint of a southern accent no Miamian would recognize as fake, I say, “You have some chocolate on your badge.”
“Thanks.” He goes to wipe it, and I start to walk away.
His voice stops me.
“Kinda young, aren’t you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Runaway?”
“No, sir.” I smile and hitch my thumbs into my pockets. “Wanted to see the world. Took off after senior year and been to twenty-eight cities since then.”
I shouldn’t have come back to Miami.
“Where you from, Robert?”
“Lennox, Louisiana.”
Loosiana
. A lie. “The sticks.”