“I didn’t think you ate anything more than air,” Valerie Dodds said while walking into my office. I didn’t think I’d heard a knock. Maybe she thought that because it was Saturday, normal workplace habits could be relaxed. Maybe I should have closed my door all the way. I shuddered at the thought of being hotboxed in a haze of fast-food odors.
“Oh, I didn’t think anyone was here,” I said trying to chew and swallow the food already in my mouth, and keep it down.
After Pope’s little stunt of giving me a drink followed immediately by ordering a breathalyzer, I was going cold turkey. I mean I’d had a drink immediately after the breath test. But I knew my continued drinking was unsustainable. Pope would catch me sooner or later. I wouldn’t get a warning the next time.
These first forty-eight hours were killing me, though. Sitting at home would have me adding bourbon to my coffee. I’d decided to go to work where there wasn’t a hot and cold running supply of liquor. I’d stopped at a drive-through because my sudden carb craving came over me like a fog. Seeing her look askance at my food, I flipped the Styrofoam container closed flashing the golden arches.
“McDonald’s food passing your lips seems well out of character,” Dodds added.
It was out of character. I think I hadn’t eaten at the fast-food joint since I’d gotten some fries at a drive-through with friends after an alcohol-infused prom. My mother had brought me up to live on air or as close to it as I could manage with indulgences to be saved for when men were around.
“Came in to do some work and got hungry along the way is all,” I said as I pushed aside the Styrofoam container with the remains of the Big Breakfast I’d ordered from my car. There’s no way Dodds would understand that filling up with carbs was the only thing standing between me and a drink.
Dodds’ head tilted like a curious cat.
“Are you okay?”
I was until…I wasn’t. Up in a flash, I started running down the hall toward the bathroom. I took off the blue spiral band at my wrist and jiggled the key in the lock all the while trying to swallow down the breakfast that was about to come back up. No matter how many times I twisted the brass, it wouldn’t catch.
Dodds was somehow behind me. She snatched the key from my hand and got the door to open. Before I could thank her, I ran in to a stall, not bothering to shut it behind me. In a moment the hotcakes and sausage and bacon and hashbrowns were all over the toilet and seat and floor. Dodds handed me a damp paper towel, then took my hair out of my hand, held the long strands away from contamination.
With the damp paper towels, I wiped my mouth and the seat as best I could before I stood. The automatic toilet flush echoed.
Dodds let go of my hair and I went to the sink. Used about a dozen more towels to clean myself off. Rinsed my mouth several times so it didn’t taste like bile and bacon.
“You need to go home,” Dodds said.
My hand shook. I took one with the other to hold it still.
“I have work to do,” I said. “Grand jury this week.”
Dodds’ head moved slowly from side to side.
“We control the grand jury, not the other way around. You’re coming with me.” She put her hand on my back and steered me from the lavatory and back into my office.
“Pack up your stuff,” she ordered while pointing to my open bag and the files spilled out on my desk.
“Seriously?”
“I’m taking you home.”
“Why?” It wasn’t my real question, but it was the only one I was comfortable asking.
“We have to flee the scene of the crime.” Dodds’ voice was conspiratorial. “If the janitors see us here, they’ll be talking about us until the end of time. I don’t want anyone assuming I was the drunk one.”
Disappointment sagged my shoulders. For one long minute, I’d thought she was going to take me up on my offer from a year ago to be friends, or at least to be something more than colleagues. In the end, she was like everyone else—protecting herself.
I let her pack up my stuff. Put my bag on one shoulder, the one she’d brought she picked up from my chair and added it to her other shoulder.
“I’m not drunk,” I insisted because for once it was the truth. “I can—”
“Hungover, then. You overdid the carb cure.”
“Actually, I’m clean, for real.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Two days clean, then.” At this moment, I was the most honest I’d ever been. “This is what withdrawal looks like.”
“Shit. Seriously?” Dodds looked around with furtive glances. Her voice was a whisper. “Let’s get out of here. I know it’s the weekend, but these walls have ears.”
Out of options, I followed her to the parking lot. She walked right past my 3 Series BMW to a white Honda Accord.
“What about my car?” My luxury car was still a bit of an anomaly in Cleveland. Made a lot of different people feel some type of way. I liked to keep a close eye on it.
“No cop who ever wants or needs a favor is going to allow a tow of a prosecutor’s car from the Justice Center parking lot. They have our make, model, and plates. Get in.”
Valerie Dodds drove west toward Lakewood like it was a job. Cars held her rapt attention. She signaled. She followed laws I didn’t even know existed. Eventually, I directed her to one of my two parking spots under the building, then took the elevator from its depths all the way to my floor.
“You live on the thirteenth floor?” she asked after I pushed the number.
“Good thing I’m not superstitious,” I said. I didn’t tell her that I’d already been so unlucky in life that a little thing like triskaidekaphobia wasn’t going to trip me up.
“Did you get a discount?” Her smirk was near enough to a smile that my cold heart melted a little bit. I was struck with a strong pang of longing. That little bit of warmth from a woman reminded me of my first days at Mount Holyoke, when we first-years stopped circling each other like feral cats and established trust.
All those other girls became each other’s best friends. Back then, I wasn’t yet in a place where I could trust anyone after everyone I’d ever loved had betrayed me. I wish something had been different all those years ago, could be different now. With all the warmth I could muster, I answered her question. Maybe these little confidences could put us on the path to friendship.
“I didn’t negotiate a phobia discount. But the prices in Cleveland weren’t too bad.” I lived in one of two thirty-story apartment towers near the water, so it wasn’t exactly cheap real estate, but it wasn’t a brick suburban with a white picket fence that seemed to be the norm around here either. I didn’t have a problem with a key this time. My door swung open after the lock turned smoothly.
It took Dodds a full thirty seconds to pick her jaw up from the floor
“I knew you were rich, but I didn’t expect this. Though I probably should have. Underestimating people is a huge problem that I have. Overestimating too.” She shook her head, then walked across the room to the wall of windows in my living room. “You have Lake Erie views for days.”
“I have to sit down,” I said as I dropped my bags on the floor, then myself onto the couch. My head was spinning, my stomach was roiling, and my heart was beating like I’d run a race.
“Where are they?” Dodds’ voice had turned serious in an instant.
“Where are what?” I looked around as if bogeymen were going to jump from the built-in shelves under the windows.
“The bottles.” Dodds’ voice was dead serious. No awe at my view. No humor at our narrow escape from my bathroom shenanigans. No smile for superstition. I looked around, confused.
“I don’t understa—”
“Look, I don’t have the energy for bullshit. So just point me.”
I got it then.
The jig was up.
Really up.
Holding my hair and giving me a ride had come with a price. The bill was about to come due.
“Cabinet over the microwave.” I sighed, waited for her to go to the kitchen. Her stare was glacial. “Freezer,” I added.
I couldn’t watch good booze go to waste. I went to one of the built-in storage cabinets under the plate glass windows and got a hand-knit blanket I’d picked up at some artist festival on the east side.
Wrapped the chunky wool around me and looked at the “great view” that had sold me on this condo. I heard Dodds banging around the kitchen. There weren’t any sounds of liquid pouring down the sink, so she was doing something else entirely.
Cooking.
She was using the pots and pans for their intended purpose.
In about ten minutes, my house smelled like my family’s lifelong housekeeper—and biological mother—Aubrey was there. In another ten minutes, Dodds came into the room with a tray in hand. She slid it on the coffee table. A steaming bowl of grits stared at me with a soft-boiled egg, split with golden yolk exposed, on top. Next to it was what looked like a mug of herbal tea.
“I don’t have anything red like this in my kitchen,” I said looking down at the liquid in the cup.
“Rooibos tea. Supposed to be good for you. I carry bags in my purse. Drink it. This will be better for you than that fast-food crap.”
Blinking away tears, I bent my head down and ate the hominy grits that tasted like Metairie. I even choked down the tea that tasted like boiled tree bark.
“You’re really good at this,” I complimented Dodds.
“What? Taking care of drinkers. Yes, I am. It’s one thing I really wish I wasn’t good at.”
“Sorry.”
“For what? Drinking too much? That’s all on you. Nothing to apologize to me for. Probably a lot of other people though.”
Dodds wasn’t exactly shooting daggers at me, but the warmth from earlier had all but disappeared. If there was one thing I didn’t want to have to think about…it was all those other people who’d been disappointed.
“For having to clean up after me. I feel bad for whoever’s on Monday morning bathroom cleanup at the Justice Center.”
She shrugged with the nonchalance of the privileged.
“I’m gonna guess this isn’t their first rodeo either.”
“Who did you have to manage?” I asked. It was a pretty personal question for a coworker, and my subordinate, but I thought we’d long passed pretending the superficial was our relationship.
“Mike Betancourt.” I nearly dropped the bowl and spoon in my hand at the mention of the former prosecutor I’d hoped to make my boyfriend.
“You told me he didn’t want to date me because I drank too much.” She’d said to me as much a year and a half ago when I’d accused her of breaking the girl code.
“It triggered him. You triggered him. He thought you’d push him out of sobriety.”
“You never mentioned he was an addict,” I said as I had to sort and recharacterize all the memories I’d cast in one light.
“It wasn’t my secret to tell, I guess.”
“Why now?”
“You asked. This time, it’s my story to tell.”
“So did he start drinking again?” I tried to imagine the in-control lawyer I knew, losing control to a substance. My brain couldn’t quite put the puzzle pieces together. He’d seemed like the kind of person without a single demon that needed alcohol to keep it at bay.
Dodds nodded. “He was always looking for some better situation. Something that didn’t make him stressed or anxious. In the legal profession of all places. When he didn’t find it in Cleveland or in D.C., he got solace from a bottle. I didn’t wait around for him to fix himself or figure it out.”
I guess that was the other half of the story. She’d said that Pope had recruited her here for optics, to have a high-ranking black face on the team. I’d never shared my background with Pope, so she’d never considered that a reason for keeping me around. Sadly, I couldn’t see any upside to telling most people about my true heritage. Now I wondered if I could have used that to my advantage. That was the problem with decisions. They couldn’t be unmade.
“So why are you here?” I was feeling better, so my question was sharp, pointed. “You were very clear that we’re not friends.”
“I’m not here to be your friend. That black-girl code you were spouting on about. Consider this your onetime pass. Even if your demise would help my career, I’m not that interested in you flaming out publicly. Suddenly the papers might find out you’re a member of the tribe, as it were, and I’d spend the rest of my time here trying to make excuses.”
“I’m not sure you can save me. I think my demise is inevitable.”
It was the first time I’d uttered the truth out loud. What I really believed. I’d always assumed one day my fuckup would be too big, and I’d get fired. It was then, I guessed, I’d have to get my life in order. Until that happened, I’d kind of planned to cruise along hoping I’d have an epiphany.
“Look, Alcoholics Anonymous isn’t for everyone.” She pointed toward that million-dollar view I had never really enjoyed. “You look like you could afford some serious rehab, therapy, all that stuff to get your demons sorted.”
“I thought my job would do that.” My demons were bad men who did bad things. I’d always thought putting bad men who did bad things behind bars was sorting the demons.
“There’s nothing external that can fix anyone’s life. Except for money. That helps…a lot. But beyond money? It’s an inside job,” Dodds said. She was starting to sound like the magical black character who appeared in movies to drop some knowledge before the hero got back to figuring out stuff. That wasn’t going to work here.
I needed her to understand why I was spiraling. I didn’t have time for all this philosophical stuff. I got up, got myself a glass of water from the fridge dispenser, drank it down, then came back to the couch. She was sitting across from me, perched on a side chair I’d never used.
“Lori Pope wants me to indict Tyisha Cooley,” I said to Dodds. She and I had been on the receiving end of the first directive to prosecute Cooley for the murder of the top prosecutor’s sister. We’d been unsuccessful. I’m not sure I’d ever believed Cooley was guilty. Pope had insisted on prosecuting her based on the letter of the law, but not the spirit, and certainly not the policy of noninterference with drug overdoses Cuyahoga County’s various law enforcement departments had adopted.
“For what this time?” Dodds asked. Outside of the office, her mask off, my colleague did nothing to hide her skepticism.
“The murder of Ja Roach.”
“Did she do it?”
“Probably not,” I said. I took a long pause. “Pope wants me to prosecute this other woman…Tia Wetzel for murder also.”
“Did Wetzel do it?” Dodds asked again. I think it was telling that probable guilt was under scrutiny. The base assumption of our job was that we only went after the guilty.
“She has an alibi, Wetzel,” I clarified. “Not bulletproof, but almost rock solid.”
Dodds looked at the lake. Only the movement of her closed, pursed lips let me know she was debating the dilemma.
“You could leave it to the grand jury.” Her shrug was halfhearted.
I gathered my hair and twisted it up into a bun. Snapped a crap scrunchie around it in response. “A good prosecutor can indict almost anyone,” I said.
“Except for cops accused of police brutality, apparently.”
I didn’t want to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. There was some truth to what she said, but we weren’t talking about peace officers here. I tried to think of how to get through to her through the cotton wool in my own head slowing down my brain.
“When you were down there in D.C.,” I started, “you worked as a public defender. You have to know that the promise of justice is a false one.” Surprised at what had come out of my mouth, I backpedaled. “I’m not saying that we haven’t put some bad guys away. I’m saying what we all know that the ‘system’ has biases that can be exploited by unscrupulous actors.”
“What’s going on for real?” Dodds leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She squinted at me as if trying to bring something into focus. “It’s like Pope is a record stuck on repeat.”
“I think Pope had these people killed in revenge.” My very short sobriety had weakened my filter.
Dodds went wide-eyed.
“Are you still drunk?”
I shook my head very slowly, very deliberately.
“I think the detectives on Roach and Wetzel are onto her. There’s one from Cleveland Heights that I think has been suspicious for a couple of years.” I left out the fact that I’d been the one to arouse Darlene Webb’s suspicions. “One in Cleveland who’s sniffing around.” There was something about Loren Logan that wasn’t easily swayed. Most detectives were happy to have a suspect and a ready-made case. He seemed to live for ambiguity.
“This is your evidence of Pope’s master plan?”
“She killed Sister Danica Lozano.” It was the first time I’d told that truth out loud. Admitted that we’d prosecuted a man guilty of many crimes, but innocent of that one.
“What the fuck? Did you add something to that rooibos? You sound batshit crazy.”
“I think I need to tell you some things,” I said. Then I explained the complicated history of Lori Pope. How I’d come upon her at the Lozano murder scene. All the things my boss had said implicating herself.
Dodds put her hands over her ears like a toddler.
“I didn’t want to know any of this. You’re telling me I quit my job defending the most vulnerable in one of the most prestigious offices in this country to come to corruption central. That I’m going to now be tied to a woman who’s going to bring us all down or die trying. I need to get home and update my résumé.”
Dodds actually stood up. Put on her red jacket, picked up her bag.
“You’re actually going to leave?”
“Sooner rather than later.”
“You just said in your grand exit speech that you had a job defending the most vulnerable. You should stay and help me do that.”
She looked at me like I’d really gone over the edge. The thing is, I was feeling saner and clearer than I had in many, many years.
“Help you do what?” Dodds asked as she fiddled with the car keys in her pocket.
“We can’t let Lori victimize more people.” I heard passion in my voice for the first time in a long time. “We could be the change from the inside. We could keep the wrong people out of jail.”
“Then what?” Dodds asked. I could see she needed an endgame. She wasn’t interested in setting herself on fire to keep anyone else warm. I didn’t have a plan…yet. I just knew I could no longer be a spectator to injustice.
“Then maybe we could put Pope where she needs to be.”