Right To Remain Silent

I don’t know why, but when Officer Daniels said, ‘Amanda, this is Richard, have you two met?’, I shook my head and utter the word, “No.”

Without hesitation, Richard gave me a curt nod, extended his right hand, and said, “Richard Graves.   Pleased to meet you, Amanda…?”

I stood there for a beat too long, brow furrowed, hands at my sides, staring into Richard Graves’ dark eyes. 

Officer Daniels’ expression remained neutral and she kept her eyes fixed on the door behind us, making it seem that her attention had drifted away, like she was hardly aware of our presence.  As we

three stood there, waiting for me to respond, Richard’s right eye twitched.  We can’t control our tics, I guess, but he might as well have pasted a GUILTY sign on his shirt.  I noticed that tic the first time we met, and I’m not the most observant person on the planet. I suspect Officer Daniels is more attuned to human foibles than I am, so it’s not a stretch to suspect the man’s eye twitch was noted and catalogued.

Graves cleared his throat, not subtle, but effective. “Wilson,” I stammered. “Amanda Wilson.”  

I stuck out my now clammy hand and gave Richard’s a quick shake. 

I doubt Officer Daniels missed the flicker of aversion on Richard’s face the instant before my palm slipped into and back out of his. I was nervous, the first time I met Richard Graves and he made no secret of his disgust as he flicked a handkerchief from his pocket and dried his hand, wrist to fingertips, telling me in a clipped tone that the job required a “professional”.

“Hyperhidrosis is a physical condition,” I said, defensively.  “I sweat,” I added, working to soften my response to his over-the-top reaction to such minimal contact with one of the least offensive fluids produced by the human body. “Sweating doesn’t make me unprofessional.”

He’d studied me for a moment and then shrugged.  “You understand and agree to the terms?” he asked. “Once begun there’s no turning back.”

“You want me to lie,” I said, keeping my tone flat and judgement free. “I’m an actor. Lying is my vocation.”

He frowned, and my heart sank. I was sure the audition was going to turn into another in a long line of rejections.  I was desperate for work, desperate enough to convince myself that lying to the police was no different than lying to a paying theatre audience. 

“You supply the script, I’ll deliver the lines,” I said, with more conviction than I felt.

Graves shrugged and told me where and when to meet him for our single rehearsal. The place he named was remote and rightly raised concern. He grimaced and waved my hesitation away saying

his wife’s intense jealousy forced him to take unusual precautions. That, for the sake of his marriage, he could not afford to be seen in public with a woman, any woman. He could have saved his breath. I was scared, but I was taking the job and the money, no matter what was required. Desperation and caution

do not co-exist.   

I studied my lines like my life depended on it because, in truth, it did. I had my part down cold, and my performance was no award winner, but it was convincing enough to satisfy him.

Graves delivered half the payment at the end of rehearsal. Honestly, I’d half expected him to pull out a knife and slit my throat when he reached into his jacket, but he pulled out an envelope, fat

with cash and handed it over. Given his aversion to sweat I suppose it was ridiculous to imagine he would risk contact with my blood. 

 He came straight here from rehearsal. I took a detour to my place to stash my cash and then followed him. I believed I was ready, but when it came time to deliver, I choked. In fairness, it wasn’t entirely my fault. For one, I didn’t expect to run into him. I thought he’d have finished his part and left before I arrived. It was admittedly poor planning on our part, but our relationship was not discussed so, when Officer Daniels asked the question, I didn’t know how to respond. 

Flubbing my line right at the start threw me into a tailspin. I am a professional. I don’t miss lines. It felt like omen and I wanted to call the whole thing off, say I was mistaken, say I was sorry to have troubled anyone. What stopped me was knowing that Richard Graves would be pissed if I backed out. I believed this guy murdered someone or had them murdered. If he could do it once…

Officer Daniels was the picture of professionalism with her neutral expression and calm demeanor which, under other circumstances, would have calmed my nerves. But I couldn’t afford to look too calm. After all, I’d come to do my civic duty and report witnessing a crime. Looking too calm would have raised as much suspicion as looking like the nervous wreck I was. Anyway, I wasn’t acting. I’d gotten myself into a fix and all I wanted was to finish and leave. I suppose I could have thrown myself on her mercy, but in truth, through no fault of hers, I took an instant dislike to her.

“Richard, you arrived first.  Ms. Wilson won’t mind having a seat while we chat," Officer Daniels said.

Chat? Graves was here to give a statement about the crime he…we witnessed. He hadn’t come to 'chat'. 

“Is there someone else I can talk to?” I asked, sounding every bit as anxious as I felt.

Officer Daniels cocked her head in a way that sent my heart aflutter. That voice in my head that tells me when I’m venturing into troubled waters, whispered a warning but I silenced it. A job is a job and this one was only marginally worse than some things I’d done to pay the bills.

“I’m afraid we’re short-handed, today.” Officer Daniels said, pointing to a row of nasty looking plastic chairs.  “Have a seat. We won’t be long.”

There was a small smudge of nude lipstick on the Officer’s straight, white teeth and her hair was pulled back in a tight bun that did not flatter her age softened features. I enjoyed a moment of smug satisfaction, knowing she had chosen a profession that required unflattering conformity. I turned away without signaling her about the lipstick smudge.

Two of the seats in the row were occupied; a man dressed in filthy, ill-fitting garments slumped in the seat farthest from the door.  I recognized a kindred spirit who suffered food and shelter insecurity when I saw one.  But that is where our kinship ended. However dire my circumstance, I’ve never let myself get ragged or stinky.

A large woman reading a paperback book sat nearest the door. Her clothes were inexpensive but clean and if she smelled, I guessed it would be of cheap perfume and bargain bin shampoo.   I

craned my neck, for a look at the book title, but she held the book in her lap making the title impossible to read.  I felt a small surge of annoyance wash over me. Hiding the book title felt like an affront. I

closed my eyes and imagined striding over, plucking the book from that selfish woman’s hands and tossing it into the trash.

There must have been something in my expression, some slippage of my social mask, because I felt someone watching me. I opened my eyes and looked around to find Officer Daniels staring at me in frank and unsettling way cops do, with Graves standing beside her, complacent as a lamb, looking at everything but me.

Officer Daniels waited a beat before turning from me. “This way, Richard.” 

Worry niggled at me. Why did this woman keep calling him Richard? Did she know him? Had I been set up?  Was this a sting of some kind?  I tamped out the negative energy, extinguishing it like an unwanted cigarette. I was being ridiculous.  She had called me Amanda even though we’d never met before.  Being friendly was probably a tactic she used aimed to put interviewees at ease. Besides, the police did not go out looking for people to entrap and arrest.  Did they?

Graves ducked his head and fell in beside Officer Daniels without so much as a backward glance. The heels of her pumps tapped smartly on the tile floor, punctuated the squeak of Richard’s

sneakers as he moved beside her and, for a few seconds, I had to work to breathe around the lump in my throat.

I hadn’t wanted him to look at me, hadn’t wanted him to telegraph information we agreed not to share inside ground zero, but we were off script and I was feeling vulnerable. It would have been nice…it would have been comforting, to have connected with him, just once more, before leaving me alone with Stinky and Selfish.

I moved forward thinking I might ease one of the chairs out of line and place it nearer the entrance, farther from the repugnant man, but realized that the row of chairs was bolted to the cinder

block wall. I considered standing near the door but thought it might antagonize Officer Daniels. She told me to have a seat and I had a feeling that failure to comply could cause my stay here to be more unpleasant, somehow.  I took a seat nearer the woman, who did not stink than the man, who did.

I reached for my phone and had a bad moment before I remembered that I’d left it at home.  Graves said that bringing our phones into the police station might lead to complications.   No phone meant no photos or recordings of the crime we had come to report. There would be no forgotten text messages to thumb through, no contact list to copy, no questionable calendar entries to peruse.   

I want to be clear here, I was told a crime was committed, beyond that I knew nothing. I did not know who had been murdered, how or why and I certainly did not know by whom.  My hands were…are clean.  I did nothing wrong. I responded to an ad, accepted an acting job, and was paid for the work.  Nothing to fear. Right?  Except, anyone with access to the internet knows what can happen to innocent people when perfectly normal activities are twisted into nefarious deeds and presented, like, a banquet of depravity to juries hungry for a pound of flesh.

I looked around hoping to find something to distract me from my nervous imagination and noted, with irritation, there was nothing to occupy my time.  Police stations, apparently, do not provide patrons with reading material unless WANTED posters Emergency Exit diagrams count. There was no television to offer distraction and conversation with Stinky or Selfish was out of the question. I was left to sit and wait and think.

I adjusted my bottom on the plastic seat, trying not to think about the many, many other bottoms that had rested there before me and worked on finding a plausible excuse for having denied

knowing Richard Graves.

I could say I misunderstood the question.  I could, but a reasonable person hearing that excuse would ask why Graves pretended not to know me and, pulling that thread further, why I went along with his deception.

 I shrugged and shook my head, drawing a scowl from the book hoarder. 

I smirked at her, feeling out of sorts and glad for a target. 

She tutted, adjusted the book in her lap and continued reading.

I let my tongue poke out, just enough to moisten my lips, and allowed myself a private laugh knowing what my tongue was really doing out and pointed in her direction.

I could admit I’d been protecting Graves from his jealous wife. But, knowing about his wife’s jealousy would suggest a level of intimacy. Not an image I wanted to project.

I could bluster and say the question was irrelevant, that whether or how we knew one another was not pertinent; that our relationship was out business.  But, bluster did not seem advisable.

I screwed my mouth to one side and bit the inside of my cheek.

Admitting a willingness to protect Graves would likely work against me.

How to admit I’d lied without admitting I’d lied? 

Stinky leaned over and let loose a rat-a-tat string of farts that lasted longer than any series of farts I’d ever heard another human produce. The woman beside me tutted in disgust and, I must

admit, I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know I wore a similar expression.   The man sighed, unperturbed by his lack of social grace, settled back into his seat and closed his eyes.

I blew out a breath and tried to get back to the issue at hand. Graves had to be getting close to finishing his ‘chat’ with the officer. Daniels would be coming for me soon and I wanted to have an explanation ready in case Graves let slip that we were not complete strangers. 

I was overthinking the job. I took a breath and pushed back on my paranoia.  

Officer Daniels looked like the no-nonsense type. She looked like one of those people who said things like, ‘Just tell me what happened.  Don’t speculate. Tell me what you know, nothing more.’

I imagined Officer Daniels handed Graves a form, probably a long one, and a black pen and said, “I’m going down to grab a file from my desk.   Take your time. Write down only what you saw and heard yourself, in the sequence the events occurred.   Avoid hearsay. If we have questions, we’ll be in touch.”

I ran the imaginary encounter through my head; Richard Graves seated in a straight-backed chair, the ink from a cracked pen leaking onto his ring finger and him, so engrossed in transferring his script onto paper that he didn’t even notice leak. I was a little irritated by this vision of my employer. A man so bothered by a little sweat from me, didn’t flinch at an ink stain? 

I clenched my teeth. He knew I was waiting, knew I would be anxious to deliver my lines and move on.   Why was he taking so long? We rehearsed both our parts, not just mine, and his part was simple. A man had been murdered. It had been dark. He hadn’t seen much. 

I stood and started to pace.   

Would that obnoxious man who’d made such a big deal of wiping my sweat from his hand accept and use a leaking pen? Would he sit, for hours, behind a closed door not thinking to exercise his

constitutional rights, not thinking to insist that he be Mirandized or released. 

I reached into my bag for my own black ink pen. They couldn’t make me use a damaged government pen. Could they?   

Pacing was not making me feel better but sitting felt worse.

I glanced at the woman with the book, hoping to catch at least a portion of the title or the author’s name but she’d put the paperback away and was now sitting and staring into space.  

At the other end of the row of chairs, Stinky was snoring.

I looked at the doors at the front of the building – the ones I’d walked through what…thirty minutes earlier?  Those doors were not locked. I was not hauled here in handcuffs. I was not

charged with a crime.  I walked in freely, of my own accord, said I’d witnessed a crime and wanted to do my civic duty.

I could leave any time.  No one would stop me.  If Officer Daniels wanted to track me down, she could visit my home or my work. Though, work might be a little tricky since this was my only paying job at the moment.   Still.  She had my name. She could find me if she needed to. She could bring her forms and leaky pens with her and we could ‘chat’ in my comfort zone.

A tall, young man in a neat patrolman’s uniform stepped into the waiting area, his eyes traveling from Stinky, to me, to Selfish.  The officer brushed past me and approached the seated woman.

“Ms. Naomi,” he said. “Thank you for waiting. If you’ll come with me…”

The officer offered Ms. Naomi a hand and helped her to her feet. 

I watched them and felt a little stab of jealousy. I wondered if Officer Daniels would offer to help me to my feet. Before I could sit back down to test the theory, I heard heels tip tapping down the

hallway.  My heart raced and I chided myself for it. I was being ridiculous. Really, there was no reason…

“They're ready for you, Ms. Wilson,” Officer Daniels said.

“They?”

Officer Daniels gestured for me to precede her. I bit back the urge to remind her that she and Graves had walked together, side-by-side down the hallway which I noted, with some

trepidation was empty. I’d expected to pass Graves, had hoped to see a glint of reassurance in his eyes or a wink, confirming that we would meet later, and he would pay me in full.

“Where is Richard?” I asked.

“Richard?” Officer Daniels asked in a distracted tone. She was texting something.  I did not have her full attention.

“Richard Graves. My cli--” I stopped.  

“He’s my bo—”  I groped for the words. 

“He hired me.” I confessed.

“Mr. Graves is making a telephone call,” Officer Daniels said. “You’ll have the opportunity to make one yourself soon enough.”

I nodded. I had the right to remain silent.  Why I had not exercised that right, I’ll never know.

                                                               The End