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In the next chamber over, another convict groaned and clutched his abdomen before complaining about a stomachache. I turned my head aside on the cot where I lay flat on my back and watched him from my one good eye.
Yeah, just when one eye had healed from Melody’s boyfriend, the other one got jacked with. Karma hated me, apparently.
But karma didn’t seem to favor this dude either. His face was pale, and sweat poured from his temples. He actually looked like he really did hurt as he started to complain loudly, demanding help, before he was harshly told to zip it.
I returned my attention back to the gray concrete ceiling and tried to make myself picture some pleasant images swimming around up there, except my mind conjured nothing, just cold, lifeless gray concrete. But no one was kicking me in the ribs or bashing my skull against the floor, so it wasn’t too bad.
I smiled at that, then winced as I drew in too deep of a breath, making my chest fill with fire and pressure. I quickly exhaled and concentrated on shortening each breath. The grumbling by my neighbor began to grow monotonous until it became almost a rhythmic kind of background chatter and began to lull me into sleep. As soon as my eyes grew heavy and my head became muzzy, however, someone pounded on the bars a foot from my face, jarring me awake.
“Hey, Hilliard.”
My one working eye flew open and my startled heart slammed itself against my ribcage, making me gasp as my entire chest constricted.
“Your lawyer’s here. He’s coming in there with you, so don’t try any funny business, okay?”
I have no idea what business they thought I could even attempt in this condition that was remotely humorous, but I lifted my arm from the bed just enough to give the guard a thumb’s up. I wasn’t exactly planning on preforming any stand-up comedy, so all was good.
“He’s pretty much out of it,” the guard told someone next to him as he unlocked my cage and swung the door open. “Hasn’t said a word since they brought him in here half dead yesterday afternoon except to answer direct questions.”
“Thank you, Harold,” the guy next to him answered before I heard his footsteps echo across the floor as he entered my cell and then my line of sight. My lawyer looked young, like rookie young, or maybe he just had one of those pudgy baby faces and he was really fifty-five or something. I don’t know. But he seemed nervous as he eyed me, swinging his briefcase around like a shield to hold in between me and him.
I guess being beat half to death the day before made me look pretty badass, I don’t know, but my appearance sure seemed to intimidate the hell out of him.
“H-hey, Beckett,” he started haltingly as he latched his fingers around the back of the chair that was sitting at my bedside and then dragged it another five feet away from me before taking a seat in it and settling his briefcase on this lap.
“Hey,” I rasped back, my voice nothing short of a hoarse whisper. I cleared it before motioning to my bedside table. “I’d offer you a drink, but they only gave me one cup.”
The man let out a nervous chuckle as he glanced around my sparse cell.
“This is a first for me,” he admitted. “And definitely the most unorthodox visit I’ve ever paid one of my clients, but they assured me it was safe.”
I blinked, not sure how to take that. It was so bizarre for anyone to think of me as dangerous in the first place, but even doubly so because of the state I was in. The worst damage I could do right now was bleed on him.
Life had turned so strange in the past few days. This whole new world was foreign.
Instead of reassuring him, though, that I wasn’t a serial killer and wanted to eat his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti, I asked, “You my lawyer?”
“Oh!” He jolted, and his face brightened as if embarrassed. “Yes, sorry. I’m Ron Stempy. I work for the state’s legal defense, and I’ve been assigned to your case.”
“This your first case?” I guessed.
He blinked, appearing surprised by the question. “It’s my seventh, actually.”
“Oh. Good,” I rasped, giving him a thumbs up. “You’re an old pro then,” while inside, I wept.
They’d sent a damn rookie to defend me? I was so fucked.
Stempy seemed encouraged by my sarcasm though. Maybe it’d sounded genuine to him. I’m not sure, but it made him shed some of his tension and reservations as he snapped open his briefcase and began to extract papers. “I’ve been going over your testimony and that of the victim, and I have a few more questions if that’s okay.”
I wanted to argue that Melody wasn’t exactly what I’d call a victim, but I still felt sluggish from the sleep that had just tried to claim me. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to argue about shit. So I slurred, “Sure, I’d love to answer questions.” Not like I had much else to do. The gray ceiling I’d been so busy staring at wasn’t going anywhere.
Stempy’s smile looked forced. “Okay, then.” He drew in a deep breath. “Let’s start from the beginning. The room you and Miss Fairfield were found in together; it wasn’t yours. Was that her brother’s room? Did you follow her in there?”
“No.” I shook my head and winced when pain reverberated through my skull, like an echo of the way it had rung yesterday when they’d slammed me face first into the floor. “I don’t know whose room it was. And I didn’t follow her. She followed me.”
Stempy flipped through the report he was perusing before looking up and lifting a surprised eyebrow. “She followed you into the room?” He scratched out a quick note. “Then why did you go into that room to begin with if you didn’t even know whose room it was?”
“Thought I was following the girl with the rainbow hair.”
