SHARIECE
When I stepped past the double-glass tinted doors of the Tallahassee Police Station, I felt like the last woman walking toward death row with the uniformed cop holding my left arm and Detective Newburn holding my right. I knew I would be able to hold it together as long as Emjay was by my side. He beat us to the station, but they wouldn’t let him follow to wherever they were taking me.
“What are you doing? I’m going in with her.”
“I’m sorry, I’m Mr. Fox, but you’re going to have to wait out here while we speak with Ms. Mills.”
“No, fuck that, I’m going in with her.” I could tell that he was getting irate and trying the detective’s patience.
“Emjay, stop, it’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine. You’ve come down here voluntarily and we want to know what’s going on.”
“We only want to ask Ms. Mills some follow-up questions, son, that’s all.”
“Emjay, please let these officers do their job.” He looked puzzled like he wasn’t sure what to do. “If you would like, you can watch us in the room opposite this one to see what’s happening.” Emjay looked at me, searching my eyes for answers.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
We walked down a hallway of shiny purple-and-white checkered linoleum where both sides of the walls were decorated with pictures of police officers who were awarded for either their heroism or their time protecting and serving. We stopped at a black door where Detective Newburn used a key card to gain access. The room was cold with a table, two chairs and a flat-screen TV that hung in one of the top-right corners. My heart was beating so crazy I thought it was going to explode. If I could snap my fingers to disappear, I damn sho’ would have. “Have a seat, Ms. Mills. I need to get something from my office.”
I had no idea why I had been dragged down to the station. Detective Newburn had finally returned thirty minutes later armed with a folder and a legal pad, the kind that guilty people scribble confessions on. The chill in the room was enough to make my nipples hard. I folded my arms across my chest to keep warm. “Okay, let’s get started. Where were you between the hours of nine and ten p.m. on Tuesday, November 18th?”
“I was home grading papers.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
“Emjay was at my place that night watching TV.”
“What was he watching?”
“What was he watching? I don’t know. It was some cop show.”
Detective Newburn gave me this look like he disapproved of my answer. “Okay, Ms. Mills, I’m going to be frank with you here. We found Mr. Jackson dead in his apartment last night.”
“Wait, what?”
“It appears that his throat was cut.”
“And you all think that I had something to do with his murder?”
Detective Newburn took the remote that was sitting on the table and aimed it at the TV that hung in the top right-hand corner of the meat locker-cold room. “While we were collecting evidence, we found a video camera tucked away between some books on a shelf in Mr. Jackson’s apartment. This is what we found.” My heart skipped triple beats when I saw myself fighting with Deandre. The scene of me slashing him across his chest with the stem of the wineglass startled me. Minutes later, the video faded to static. “This was taken between nine o’clock and ten the night of the murder, so would you like to start over or do you want to play this the hard way?”
I stared long at Detective Newburn deciding that it was in my best interest to come clean about everything. “Okay, I was there, but I swear to you Deandre was alive when I left.”
“Tell me what happened that night.”
I tucked my hands under my arms and began to tell my side of the story as to what had happened that night. “Deandre was blackmailing me. He had taken a video of me in a compromising position with one of my students. He sent me an email with the video attached and told me that he wouldn’t send a copy of it to my boss if I did what he wanted.”
“What did he want?”
“Deandre said if I wrote him a recommendation letter for film school and had sex with him, he would give me all the copies of the video, and I would never have to see him again.”
“Who is the student you were sleeping with?”
I paused for a bit, hesitant to answer. “What difference does that make?”
“Was it with Mr. Fox?” I didn’t admit that it was Emjay but didn’t deny it either. “So you met Mr. Jackson at his apartment?”
“I was only going over there to talk to him about giving me the flash drive with the video on it. I gave him the letter, but when I told Deandre that I had no intention of having sex with him, he got mad and forced himself on me. There was a struggle, he fell on the floor, and I guess he knocked the glasses over. I was too busy trying to stop him from raping me. He wouldn’t get off me so I grabbed a piece of the broken glass, and cut him.”
“Did he ever give you the flash drive that the video was on?”
“No, but I found about four or five of them in his bookbag. I didn’t know which one had the video on it, so I took all of them.”
“And then what happened?”
“I got the hell out of there. I swear Deandre was alive when I left. He was cursing and yelling at me as I made my way down the stairs of his apartment complex.”
“We did, and everyone is claiming that they didn’t see anything, which isn’t surprising. In a neighborhood like that, no one sees, says or hears anything.”
“Detective Newburn, you have to believe me. Deandre was alive when I left there.”
“Where are the flash drives that you took from his apartment?”
“I burned them.”
“You’re not lying to me, are you, Ms. Mills?”
“No, I’m not lying. I found the one that had the video on it and burned it.”
“We collected evidence from Mr. Jackson’s bedroom and discovered several shoeboxes filled with videos dating all the way back to 2009. Apparently, you were not the only woman he had done this to.”
“Oh my God, what?”
“Okay, just hang tight for me for a minute here,” Detective Newburn said as he tucked the legal pad inside the folder and exited what was obviously an interrogation room. I couldn’t say that I wasn’t surprised by the news that there were other tapes of women, victims of Deandre’s nasty perversion. I may not have killed him, but he damn sure had it coming. After hearing the news about the other tapes, anyone could have killed him. Detective Newburn returned five minutes later, this time with the tall, Larry Bird look-a-like behind him. I called Emjay to let him know what was happening. “Ms. Mills, please stand up,” Detective Newburn said in a demanding tone.
I was so shaken, I wasn’t sure I could stand. “What’s going on?”
“Shariece Mills, you have the right to remain silent...”
“What? You’re arresting me?” The detective didn’t utter a word as he stood there with his hands in his pockets as the uniformed officer slapped handcuffs on me and escorted me to booking.
“Emjay, what are they—” I couldn’t speak. The rest of my words caught like fish bones in my throat before I began to cry.
“Baby, I’m going to get you a lawyer. Don’t tell them nothing, baby. I’m going to get you out of here.”
The cuffs ate into the skin of my wrists as I was carried away; the words of you’re under arrest for the murder of Deandre Jackson beat against my brain.
“I promise, Shariece, I’m going to get you out,” were the last words I heard from Emjay as I disappeared behind another black door.