Shards (26 page)

I would probably still be there, not moving even an inch forward in my life, if MPD hadn't come after me.

The day I was arrested
, a man walked all the way down our driveway to give my mom a flyer for the hot dog stand on the corner.

“Now, why would he do that?” my mom asked me. “We pass that place every single day.”

“Don't ask me,” I said. My mom had been outside sweeping the walk while I was inside, lying on the couch, as usual. I didn't know anything about the outside world.

My mom frowned at me. “Honey, why are you back in your pajamas?”

“More comfortable,” I said, shrugging.

That morning, at my mom's insistence, I had gone for an assessment at Pathways, a government-run program that helps addicts get back on their feet through funded therapy sessions and voucher programs for food and rent. I knew we needed the financial help, and so I had managed to put on clothes to leave the house for the
appointment. Once I got home, I immediately returned to my normal attire. Pajama bottoms ripped at the thigh and duct-taped back together. A huge sweatshirt that went down to my knees. Tennis shoes without the laces.

“Why don't you get dressed and come with me to Lotaburger for a hamburger?” my mom asked.

“Nah,” I said, “but you can bring me something back.”

“Come with me,” she said. “Come on, I'm taking Bella. You don't even need to get out of the car.”

I sighed. I had had enough of the world for that day. Plus I hadn't showered in three or four days, and I smelled. I hated the shower, hated going into the bathroom. Too many triggers in there. Normally I would have continued to say no, but I wanted to appease my mom, who had been pressuring me to do something, to get a job and move on in my life. It had been five months since I'd planted myself in Mimi's back house, and I was going nowhere, physically
or
psychologically.

“Okay,” I said, “but I'm not getting dressed, and I'm definitely not getting out of the car.”

“Fine.”

My mom drove, as usual. I sat in the passenger seat and Bella slept in the back. As soon as we backed out of the drive, I saw a cop pull behind us.

“They're coming to arrest me,” I said.

“Don't be so paranoid, Alli,” my mom said. “MPD would let us know if anything was going to happen.”

“I'm not being paranoid,” I said.

“It's been months. If they were going to do something, they would have done it by now. It's probably just a traffic cop.” I saw her glance at the speedometer.

The patrol car followed us for about two miles. I knew they were looking for a safe place to stop us, one where I wouldn't be able to run. About ten minutes passed and they lit us up. My mom carefully pulled over.

“I don't think I was going too fast,” she said. “Must be a brake light out or something.”

“Trust me, Mom, they're here for me.”

An officer approached the car, a female patrol cop. Then I absolutely knew it was for me—they would need a female to pat me down.

The cop motioned for my mom to open the window.

“We'd like to see your ID,” she said. My mom fumbled with her purse.

“Not yours,” the officer said, pointing to me. “Hers.”

“I don't have any ID on me,” I said.

At that time, about five unmarked patrol cars surrounded us. I suppose they thought I was going to flee, but there I was in my pajamas.

My mom's look of fear imprinted on my brain. I vowed,
I will never hurt her like this again.

Meanwhile, the cop was eyeing Bella in the backseat. “Is that dog dangerous?” she asked.

“No, she's fine,” I said, and looked back at Bella, still sound asleep through all the commotion.

Five plainclothes officers in tactical gear approached the car. Did they think I was going to be armed? Although they didn't draw down on me, they were obviously expecting the worst.

“Step out of the car, Miss Moore,” one of the plainclothes cops said, a huge guy, very intimidating.

I did, feeling strangely calm. My mom was on the verge of tears,
but I guess my cop skills of calm under duress were in full effect.

“We're placing you under arrest,” he said, and read me my rights. “Do you know what you're getting arrested for?”

“I'm sure it's drug-related,” I said.

The female cop patted me down and placed me in the back of her patrol car. I was numb. I didn't cry, but I felt terrible for my mom. They asked her to leave the scene, and she did.

The big guy who had asked me to step out of the car came and sat with me in the back of the patrol car.

“So, you're being arrested for multiple crimes,” he said. “You look like a nice girl. How did this all happen?”

I gave him one word: “Meth.”

He nodded and got out of the car, and then another guy, a vice cop, came in, interrogating me about drugs in Albuquerque. I don't know what MPD had told these guys, or what they thought about my drug connections, but they seemed to think I had information on the cartels there.

“Listen,” I said, “I've been sober for six months. I have no clue about the smallest amount of drug running in New Mexico.”

“You aren't using anymore?” he asked, sounding disappointed.

I shook my head. They had expected me to be tied into the rough West Central drug scene, but instead they found a sober girl in her pajamas being dragged out for lunch with her mom.

I wanted to be helpful, so I said, “When I was using, the way I found drugs in Washington was through Craigslist. The dealers advertise. If you want to start a new and different investigation, you should utilize the Internet.”

He nodded, and then it was time to go. They transported me to the Albuquerque metro station downtown, where I was put in a holding cell.

Minutes later, I was on a transport bus with five other girls. The
van was small and had no air conditioning; the girls were rowdy and defiant, all misdemeanor women claiming they were innocent and APD was corrupt. They were ghetto, and I fit in just fine. I was still in my duct-taped pajamas and not looking very good.

One of the girls said, “What smells?”

“Me,” I said.

After that, the girls left me alone as we traveled to the Metropolitan Detention Center, the county jail thirty minutes outside Albuquerque. When we got there, we were strip-searched and showered. I really did smell, so the shower was a good thing.

In my first orange jumpsuit, I was able to call my mom from the intake waiting area. I told her what I had been told: my charges were in warrant form, and we would be able to see them soon. And one more thing: my bail was set for $150,000.

I was glad I didn't have to see her face when I delivered that number to her. She had spent all her savings and then some on rehab. There was no money left for bail.

I stayed in the Albuquerque prison for two weeks, waiting for MPD to come get me. Like all cops in prison, I was put in protective custody to keep me from the regular inmates. I held up pretty well, except that for the first several days, I had no meds. I had been skeptical about my antihallucinogenic drugs up to that point, but after my first night without them I realized that they really did work.

MPD had investigated me deeply. My police report was more than eight hundred pages long. There were copies of emails between the dealer and me, and between Keawe and me; there were phone records, medical records, a report all the way back to my abortion two and a half years earlier.

I was facing twenty-five felony counts. Many were drug possession and evidence tampering; some were forgery; others were re
lated to claiming sick leave through the leave-sharing program, and monetary benefits. Erin's fund-raiser. Many of the counts ended with the words “by deception.”

While I sat in jail, my mom arranged everything. A lawyer in Maui. A temporary place to live. A bail bondsman for the $150,000, which she could only get by putting up Mimi's house as collateral. I felt horrible about that, but it was all that was left.

My mom believed I could not remain sober on my own, so without even discussing it with me, she made plans to go to Hawaii with me. For as long as it took. She flew over before I did to arrange bail.

I was transported to Maui in handcuffs and leg irons on a commercial flight. Detective Keopu and another detective I had once worked with, Sergeant Lloyd, accompanied me. They were courteous and respectful, trying to give me words of encouragement along the way, but I was so ashamed I could barely look at them.

When I stepped off the plane in Maui, two officers I didn't know were waiting for me. Everyone in the airport stared. I felt like a freak show, like Hannibal Lecter.

I was crying so hard I couldn't see. I put my head down and tried to take one step after another. Keopu and Lloyd were on either side of me, guiding me, holding me up. My impulse was flight—but the leg irons and cuffs made that impossible. I had to face these officers, and they took me directly to the station.

I was momentarily comforted by the smell of the station. It was so familiar, homelike, but then I faced the mirrored glass of the receiving desk. I felt like the entire station was behind the glass watching me, all my brothers and sisters in blue looking at me with hate in their eyes, judging me, and having every right to do so. Was Keawe there? Erin? I had no idea who or how many people were behind the glass or watching from dispatch or seeing me on the cameras, but in my mind I was facing all of them. My physical anxiety,
fear, shame, guilt, and remorse rose and filled all the available space. It hit me for the first time: the gravity of what I had done and the hurt I had inflicted on the whole department. The whole island.

I hadn't cried when I was arrested or when I was in general population at Metro, but now I began to weep hysterically. The tears were uncontrollable, and there was no one to comfort me, nowhere even to turn my head. It was one of the worst moments of my life.

I wanted to plead guilty immediately, to tell everyone, “Yes, yes, I did these terrible things,” and be put away forever. The lawyers advised me differently. They wanted a not-guilty plea first.

I only spent one night in jail in Maui. My mom posted bail, and I entered my plea the next day. I wasn't allowed to leave the state of Hawaii, but they did let me transfer from Maui to Oahu to await trial and sentencing. I was grateful for that. Having to stay on Maui and risk seeing all the people I had hurt would have been unbearable. It was bad enough seeing my picture in the newspapers and on the nightly news. Because I was a cop, mine was a high-profile case.

My mom had rented an apartment on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise building in Honolulu. Knowing my fear of footsteps above me, my mom had tried to get the top floor but settled for an apartment with an empty unit above it. Often I walked up and down the fourteen flights of stairs because I was afraid to be in an elevator with a man.

The apartment building had an enormous mural of a whale on the side and overlooked the Ala Wai Canal. I picked up smoking for a while and often sat on the lanai with a cigarette, watching people go up and down the canal or walk along the sidewalks on either side of it. I settled into a routine of waiting—for pretrial hearings that got postponed, for meetings with lawyers that always left me in tears. Waiting. Just waiting.

Much as I wanted to, in Oahu there was no way I could continue to hide from life. My bail conditions demanded that I do many things that kept me in the real world. First and foremost, I had to find a job. My bail bondsman thought he could get me work in his office, but that didn't pan out. I couldn't face waitressing, so I turned to retail. I put in applications everywhere, but it was difficult to find work because I had to disclose my arrest status. I did manage to get interviews at Pier 1 and Victoria's Secret, and Victoria's Secret hired me. As a salesperson I was supposed to increase women's self-esteem, and yet I myself had none. It felt cruel and almost comical to be hired by a store whose purpose was to make women feel good about their bodies while I felt like dirt.

Ironically, rehab had left me
with no self-knowledge at all—just more avoidance—but being arrested pointed me in the direction of the understanding I needed. When I thought about what I had done to all my colleagues, I was filled with remorse. I had been afraid to face them, but suddenly I craved the opportunity to look them in the eyes and say I was sorry. I started writing out my thoughts, recording what I would say at my sentencing. I just wanted something good to come out of a terrible, terrible situation.

Meanwhile, I was struggling with my job at Victoria's Secret. I liked helping women find what they needed—it was gratifying—but the constant contact with the public made me uneasy. One day a woman approached the cash register, and when I asked, “Can I help you with anything?” she looked at me with suddenly furious eyes.

“You have some nerve,” she said.

“I'm sorry? I—”

“Yeah, you are,” she said. “You're a very
sorry
person.” She launched into a verbal attack, berating me loudly, causing a scene, and I realized from what she was saying that she was an MPD dispatcher. I didn't recognize her—we never saw the dispatchers. They're cop groupies and love cops, except for the female ones.

If this woman I didn't even know hated me so much, what must my former friends think of me?

I was finally able to gather myself and walk away. But the scene with the dispatcher caused a ruckus, and my managers took notice.

Apparently, word spread through MPD, and just a week later, Keawe's wife came into the store. Of course I recognized her instantly.

“Who do you think you are?” she asked me. “You say you're an addict, but I don't believe it. I've seen addicts before and they never did anything like this. You're a sociopath. Do you know you're going to prison for years and years? I hope you do!” She stood inches away from me, screaming at me in the middle of the store.