Vivian sat in the room with her hands on the big brown table. The room was painted all white. A seventy inches wide glass was six yards ahead of her, behind the other chair across the table.
They were watching her from there, she knew. She couldn't see them, but they were looking at her. She was certain they could hear even a whisper from her in that room.
She had agitated the detective that had come to get words from her so they could nail her for good. She had done exactly what she was told to do— request for a lawyer and go mute after that. The Chief of Detectives had also come to talk to her, but he had more important cases to work on than an abductor who didn't want to talk. He left after half of an hour of pointless interrogating.
They had tried it the hard way, talked to her violently— told her things that would cause adrenaline. It had more or less hadn't worked. She remained calm on the outside. Scared on the inside. Then they had done it the soft way, talked to her nicely— told her things that would make her trust them, things that would make her believe they cared about her and was on her side. That had more or less hadn't worked either. But she stayed calm; kept requesting her lawyer.
They had all given up. Now they were using another method— isolation. They thought that keeping her in a room for an hour all by herself was going to get her shaken up and start talking, start confessing to the crime. That also hadn't more or less worked. She had been there for more than one hour thirty minutes.
Vivian figured they had delayed the lawyer. They at first didn't want her to talk to her lawyer, but allowed her to when they weren't getting shit from her. She had called him, as he had instructed her to, a long time ago, but nobody had shown up.
She remained calm.
Vivian kept contemplating, kept weighing the actions she wanted to take. The risk. She could tell the cops that she was being used by someone she didn't know. Someone she hadn't seen. That was a stupid story. They wouldn't start to hug her with sympathy then let her walk out that door. They would call her story a bullshit, a big, fat lie. She would still go to jail.
She would go to jail if he had decided to ditch her. He could let her rot in prison as punishment. But she couldn't allow herself to rot in prison. She had a mission. She had to appease her sister's soul. She had been working for six years to do that.
Vivian was deep in her thoughts when the door opened an inch, the opened completely. She looked at the bald white man wearing an almost faded gray coat. He was perhaps in his fifties. He carried a black briefcase in his hand. He was followed by one of the police men who had Kendrick on his name tag.
The lawyer.
She didn't need to hear his voice to know if it was him who she had been working for, or he was just doing the job. He looked and would definitely sound older. She predicted the person she was working for was the same age as she was.
But what if he was one of them? She recalled he always used the pronouns 'us and we'. She didn't know how any of them looked, with the exception of the lawyer standing before her— if he was one then— or sounded.
He couldn't be one. She had to erase it out of her memory those smart people would send one of their own members to come get her out. They seemed, too, smart to do something that idiotic.
The police walked out of the room when the lawyer gave him the look that said "I need to have a word with my client". He understood the expression perfectly.
"Did he send you?" Vivian asked him, looking straight into lawyer's green eyes. He looked like an Americo Liberian. One of his parents had to be an American. One a Liberian. "Did he send you?" She asked as the man lazily sat in the chair opposite hers.
"Yes," he replied, placing his briefcase on the table. It made a loud noise that echoed when it touched the surface of the table. "It's a good thing you haven't said a damn thing to any of them. You did well on that."
So nodded her head. Thanks to the man she was forcefully working for. It occurred to her that he knew the whole system.
"I'll get you out of her in few minutes, OK?" His voice sounded older than he looked. It was deep, strong. But weak somehow. He sounded like a man who worked in line with the black ink on the white paper. He obeyed the books. He was educated.
"How can you do that? It's Saturday," she said, reminding him incase he had lost track of the day of the week.
"Exactly," he said, looking into her eyes. "It's Saturday. It's a no-working day for all governmental agencies. No work today. You shouldn't be here."
She didn't understand what he was saying. But she thought she understood something. "Wait." She put it all together, settling in the chair properly. "Do you mean they shouldn't have arrested me Saturday? That it's unethical."
He looked at her and shook his head. "Yes they should've. They can arrest you anytime. Saturday. Sunday. Any day. But you shouldn't be at the station house here undergoing investigation. You should be at division in the detention cell. No investigator is working today," he explained to her. Now he was making little sense to her.
"But the chief of detectives was here. I saw him. He talked to me," Vivian said.
The man chuckled. "That's exactly what's going to get you out."
"How is talking to the chief of detectives going to get me out? Do you have personal connections with him?" She asked him.
"That wasn't the chief of detectives. That was a cop impersonating the chief of detectives."
"How did you know?"
"You told me. You said the Chief of Detectives talked to you. And the chief of detectives is at his house right now working his ass on papers, and drinking coffee." He intertwined his fingers. "You see...the system is very corrupt. The government doesn't have enough paper cash to pay these officers, so they find a way to get money. They are people. They have a family. They have to live. And they need money to live, right?" He waited for her to agree with him. "Whosoever that reported you had definitely bribed them to bring you here and make sure you attest to the crime. They needed the money, so they brought you here instead of taking you to division to wait for Monday before trial."
"How did you know all of this, smart guy?" She was intrigued. He sounded very smart to her. How did he know all that?
"This isn't the first time I've gotten a call on a Saturday to come get a client from here, Miss. It happens everyday— Saturdays and Sunday. Only few elementary lawyers fall for this scam."
Vivian was glad that she didn't have much more time to spend in the goddamn room. She was going to be out soon.
"I'm glad. But please, Sir, get me out of here. I hate it. I'll pay back whatsoever you give to them, and also pay for your service."
"Trust me, you won't pay a dime to those people. They already got enough money for the day. I will make sure they never do such stupid thing again. Or they'll lose their job." He got up and walked out of the room.
"Go get those pussies," she said to herself when the man was out of the room. She looked at the glass in front her and showed her two middle fingers to them. She was sure they were watching her.
He was taking a little, too, long. Vivian was anxious to get out of the room. She was very tired. She hadn't had a perfect bed rest since the day before. She needed to take her shower and have a hot bath. Maybe sex too.
People say sex takes away stress, is that right?
She was pacing from one corner to another when the lawyer came back into the room with Kendrick having on a straight face. Kendrick placed her things on the table and held the door for her to get out.
Vivian walked to the door, stood before Kendrick and give him two of her middle fingers again. "I'll definitely sue you for keeping me in here." She rolled her eyes and walked past him.
"He's waiting for you at the receptionist desk," the old Lawyer said as they walked in the hallway that had only beaming, white, lights.
"Who?" Vivian asked.
"The man who hired me to free you, Mr. Blade," he retorted, walking, not sparing her a glance. He was taller than her; fatter than her.
Vivian took hurried steps to reach to the receptionist desk when the message had been delivered. He had finally decided to show himself to her, so she wasn't going to let it slide.
An officer open the iron metal gate from his small office at the side of the gate when they reached the gate. The gate made an electronic noise then slid open. The damn gate had taken so long to open.
Vivian stepped out into the receptionist area and stood still when she saw him sitting down in one of the chairs. He was looking straight into her eyes.