I stood and paced the cell. I remembered a story that Steven had told me when he came home from Afghanistan. While visiting a prison, he noticed an isolated cell at the end of a dank hallway. He looked through the tiny hole in the door and saw a young girl, maybe thirteen years old, lying in a heap facing the door with a blank stare, nothing else in the cell but a cot. No sink or toilet. He asked his interpreter to ask the warden what she was in jail for. The warden explained that her father had brought her there because she’d run away with her boyfriend and their families caught them, and then they ran away again. Steven asked why she had no water and why she was kept so isolated — wasn’t that cruel? The warden said yes, he felt bad for her, but he had no female prison guards to take care of her. The girl was going crazy from this, Steven could see; he reported it to the US embassy, and they eventually negotiated her release.
It was quiet now; the women’s argument about the phone had stopped. No COs were present. I was in the Tombs — buried alive.
This night would either dismantle me or show me what I was made of. Another person might find herself galvanized by the extremity of the situation, find herself searching for what she might have missed that led to one cop’s death and another’s mauling. Go over every opportunity to have stopped Billie, to have prevented the carnage. But that would not change what had happened.
I sat on the floor, leaning against a wall, and the first lines of an Emily Dickinson poem came to me: “After great pain, a formal feeling comes— / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—” Of course that was why it came to me there.
That was the last thought I had until I was awakened by the sound of keys, and a CO saying, “When I call your name, step out, shut up. You’re going into court. Don’t say a word. Don’t motion to anyone in the court. Just sit, look straight ahead, until they call your name.”
Half a dozen names were called, but not mine.
Two cops came for me about ten minutes later. My wrists were handcuffed and secured to a belt around my waist. I was driven to the Criminal Courthouse, less than a hundred yards away, for the traditional “perp walk” up the granite steps.
Once the squad car pulled up, a swarm of reporters with cameras and microphones were waiting for me. I was led past the press into the courthouse. I was taken on an elevator up to the fourth floor, to a small booth off a holding cell where Steven was waiting. The cops left me alone with my brother.
“Fucking unbelievable.” Steven hugged me and kissed my forehead.
At his touch, I started to cry. “What happens now?”
“They’re going to charge you with murder. Of a cop.”
“But the dogs were Billie’s. I was the target, not the cop.”
“Listen, we only have a few minutes. I’m going to ask for bail, but we can’t count on it.”
“What about the second cop? Is he going to be okay?”
“He’s in ICU at Columbia Presbyterian. He’s expected to survive.”
“Not to sound self-serving, but will he be able to talk soon? Maybe he saw what really happened.”
“You’ll know when I know.”
“Is that where Billie is?”
“She was released this morning. It was just a flesh wound. Her grandmother took her home.”
“But her dogs killed a cop.”
“She told the police that you let the dogs loose from their cages. What do you know about those dogs?”
“Billie gave them commands in German. They were attack-trained.”
“Jesus.”
I told him I knew how suspected cop killers were treated. I’d read Mumia Abu-Jamal’s book, Live from Death Row. I had seen the infamous video of Esteban Carpio, beaten unrecognizable and made to wear a Hannibal Lecter — like mask, escorted to his arraignment for killing a cop. I told Steven that if convicted, I would spend twenty-three hours a day in complete isolation.
An officer unlocked the holding cell and told Steven to wrap it up. Steven told me he’d see me in the courtroom in a couple of minutes.
The courtroom was right next door. The officer led me in and sat me at the defense table. To my right, a door opened, and a group of women wearing orange jumpsuits and handcuffs were directed into the jury box. Talk about a jury of your peers.
Steven entered the courtroom through the public entrance and joined me at the table.
The judge read the charges. Steven indicated the moment when I was to declare myself “not guilty.” It was over in less than half an hour. Bail denied.
30
The only way I could tell the time was by the arrival of meals, not that I could eat. The smell of urine and feces was constant. I didn’t want to lie down on the bench; I tried to touch as few surfaces as possible. My breath was sour from vomiting the night before. My clothes were rank. The itching had subsided, but the welts remained. Anxiety had mutated to dread — of the next ten minutes, and the rest of my life.
Shortly after lunch — a bologna sandwich and a small carton of milk — which I didn’t touch, a CO collected me, again in handcuffs, and walked me around the corner to a tiny office where McKenzie was waiting.
“You can take the cuffs off her,” McKenzie said, standing.
“You sure?” the CO said.
McKenzie waved him off and waited while the CO unlocked me. When we were alone, McKenzie pulled me into a hug and held me for a long time. Of all the things I should have been worrying about, I worried about the way I looked and smelled.
“You know Billie did this, right?”
“I’ve already been to the shelter and checked the intake records. They show that the Dogos were surrendered by ‘Morgan Prager.’ ” He watched for my reaction.
“Of course.”
“Steven told me they were attack-trained. I checked with all the training schools in the tristate, and no one has worked with Dogos in the last couple of years. Which means that she had them trained somewhere else, or she trained them herself. Do you have any idea where she might have kept them?”
“I never went to her home.”
“Neither did I.” My gratitude for what he had just told me must have been evident, because he repeated what he had just said. “And the address she gave when she worked for me was fake.”
“Her grandmother has a horse farm in Connecticut.”
“The family’s lawyer told me I’ll need a court order to search the property.”
“Wherever she kept them, she’s had them for six months at least.” I asked what the press was doing with the story.
“They’ll be on to something else tomorrow.”
“I hope it’s the murders of Susan Rorke, Pat Loewi, and Samantha Couper.”
“I got it all from Steven.”
“She wouldn’t be the first person to get away with murder,” I said.
“People slip up, even someone like Billie.”
“Unless they don’t.”
“Steven’s lining up a criminal defense attorney right now. Carol Anders will be here in the morning. She’s first-rate; she was in practice with my wife.
“And now that that’s out of the way, I can tell you I met with Billie before she was released from the hospital. Her grandmother was in the room — this was early this morning. With no reason to believe she would, I went there to try to get her to cooperate, to tell the truth. I asked where she had kept the Dogos. Her grandmother told me not to bother her, and Billie suggested her grandmother go down to the cafeteria for coffee while we talked.
“She became furious, but in this quiet, icy way. She couldn’t risk drawing the attention of medical staff, so she kept her voice down, but the rage in her eyes was absolute. She knew I believed you and not her. And she saw she couldn’t control me.”