He relieves the officer guarding her and takes up the position himself outside the holding cell. In a more ideal situation, he would take her to a conference room, offer her a cup of coffee, make her comfortable so that she'd be more likely to talk. But the court doesn't have a secure conference room, so this interview will have to be conducted on opposite sides of the bars.
Nina's hair is wild around her face; her eyes are so green they glow. On her arm are deep scratches; it looks as though she's done that to herself. Evan shakes his head. "Nina, I'm really sorry . . . but I have to charge you with the murder of Glen Szyszynski."
"I killed him?" she whispers.
"Yes."
She is transformed by the smile that unwinds across her face. "Can I see him, please?" she asks politely. "I promise I won't touch anything, but please, I have to see him."
"He's gone already, Nina. You can't see him."
"But I killed him?"
Evan exhales heavily. The last time he'd seen Nina Frost, she'd been arguing one of his own cases in court-a date rape. She had gotten up in front of the perp and wrung him dry on the witness stand. She had made him look the way she looks, right now. "Will you give me a statement, Nina?"
"No, I can't. I can't. I did what I had to do, I can't do any more."
He pulls out a Miranda form. "I need to read you your rights."
"I did what I had to do."
Evan has to raise his voice over hers. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right ..."
"I can't do any more. I did what I had to do," Nina babbles.
Finally Evan finishes reading. Through the bars he hands her a pen to sign the paper, but it drops from her fingers. She whispers, "I can't do any more."
"Come on, Nina," Evan says softly. He unlocks the holding cell, leads her through the hallways of the sheriff's office, and outside to a police cruiser. He opens the door for her and helps her inside. "We can't arraign you till tomorrow, so I've got to take you down to the jail overnight. You're gonna get your own cell, and I'll make sure they take care of you. Okay?"
But Nina Frost has curled up in a fetal position on the backseat of the cruiser and doesn't seem to hear him at all.
The correctional officer at the booking desk of the jail sucks on a Halls Mentho-Lyptus cough drop while he asks me to narrow my life down to the only things they need to know in a jail: name, date of birth, height, weight. Eye color, allergies, medications, regular physician. I answer softly, fascinated by the questions. I usually enter this play in the second act; to see it at its beginning is new for me.
A blast of medicinal mint comes my way, as the sergeant taps his pencil again. "Distinguishing characteristics?" he asks.
He means birthmarks, moles, tattoos. I have a scar, I think silently, on my heart.
But before I can answer, another correctional officer unzips my black purse and empties its contents on the desk. Chewing gum, three furry Life Savers, a checkbook, my wallet. The detritus of motherhood: photographs of Nathaniel from last year, a long-forgotten teething ring, a four-pack of crayons pinched from a Chili's restaurant. Two more rounds of ammunition for the handgun.
I grab my arms, suddenly shivering. "I can't do it. I can't do any more," I whisper, and try to curl into a ball.
"Well, we're not done yet," the correctional officer says. He rolls my fingers across an ink pad and makes three sets of prints. He props me up against a wall, hands me a placard. I follow his directions like a zombie; I do not meet his eyes. He doesn't tell me when the flash is going to go off; now I know why in every mug shot a criminal seems to have been caught unaware.
When my vision adjusts after the burst of light, a female guard is standing in front of me. She has one long eyebrow across her forehead and the build of a linebacker. I stumble in her wake into a room not much bigger than a closet, which holds shelves full of neatly folded hazard-orange jail scrubs. The Connecticut prisons had to sell all their brand-new forest-green jumpsuits, I suddenly remember, because the convicts kept escaping into the woods.
The guard hands me a pair of scrubs. "Get undressed," she orders.
/ have to do this, I think, as I hear her snap on the rubber gloves. / have to do whatever it takes to get out of here. So I force my mind to go blank, like a screen at the close of a movie. I feel the guard's fingers probe my mouth and my ears, my nostrils, my vagina, my anus. With a jolt, I think of my son.
When it is over, the guard takes my clothes, still damp with the blood of the priest, and bags them. I slowly put on the scrubs, tying them so tight at the waist that I find myself gasping for breath. My eyes dart back and forth as we walk back down the hall. The walls, they're watching me.
In the booking room at the front of the jail again, the female guard leaves me standing in front of a phone. "Go ahead," she instructs. "Make your call."
I have a constitutional right to a private phone call, but I can feel the weight of their stares. I pick up the receiver and play with it, stroking its long neck. I stare at it as if I have never seen a telephone before.
Whatever they hear, they won't admit to hearing. I have tried to pressure enough correctional officers to come testify, and they never will, because they have to go back and guard these prisoners every day.
For the first time, this works to my advantage.
