Chapter 12 - The Solitary Cell
The concrete holding block of the Frederick County Detention Center was kept at an intentional, unrelenting sixty-two degrees.
Claire Brooks sat on the narrow steel bunk, her knees pulled tight against her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins.
Her orange jumpsuit was stiff, smelling of industrial bleach and institutional misery. Her feet were clad in thin canvas slip-on shoes with no laces. The toilet in the corner of the cell had no seat and flushed with an ear-splitting roar every forty minutes on an automated maintenance cycle.
The heavy steel door slid open with a hydraulic groan.
A female correctional officer with a buzz cut and a heavy utility belt stepped into the doorway.
"Brooks. Legal visit."
Claire scrambled to her feet so fast that her head spun. "Richard? Is it Richard?"
The officer didn't answer. She simply pointed down the corridor. "Hands behind your back. Palms out."
Claire complied immediately, her defiance completely broken by four days of solitary confinement. The handcuffs clicked onto her wrists, and the officer led her down the yellow-painted cinderblock hallway to Consultation Room B.
Claire stepped through the door, expecting to see Richard Caldwell’s tailored suit and leather briefcase.
Instead, sitting at the small steel table behind a partition of reinforced plexiglass, was a young woman in an inexpensive gray polyester suit with a badge clipped to her lapel: *Public Defender’s Office.*
Claire froze. "Where is Richard?"
The woman adjusted her glasses and gestured to the plastic chair on Claire’s side of the glass. "Sit down, Miss Brooks. My name is Sarah Jenkins. I’ve been appointed by the court to represent you."
Claire dropped into the chair, her voice rising in shrill panic. "Appointed?! I don't want a public defender! My mother hired Richard Caldwell! He’s the top lawyer in the county!"
"Mr. Caldwell filed a formal motion to withdraw as your counsel yesterday afternoon," Jenkins said flatly. "Citing non-payment of retainer and the total freezing of your family’s financial assets by the federal court."
"Freezing... what?!"
"Your mother’s bank accounts are gone, Miss Brooks," Jenkins said, opening a thin cardboard folder. "She was arrested yesterday at a storage facility in Frederick. She is currently being held at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup on federal mail fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft charges."
Claire stared at her, the words failing to process in her mind. "My... my mom is in jail?"
"And your father has been released on personal recognizance under federal monitoring," Jenkins added. "He has no access to any funds. He is currently staying at a local church shelter."
"A church shelter?!" Claire’s voice cracked into a breathless, hysterical wail. "What about my BMW?! What about my apartment in Bethesda?!"
Jenkins looked at her with the weary, unsympathetic gaze of a public servant who spent sixty hours a week dealing with real tragedy.
"Your vehicle was seized under an asset forfeiture warrant," Jenkins said. "Your apartment lease was co-signed by an LLC that has been dissolved by the State of Maryland. You have no car. You have no apartment. And unless we reach a plea agreement with the State’s Attorney, you are facing a mandatory minimum of seven years in the Maryland Department of Corrections for First-Degree Aggravated Assault and Witness Intimidation."
Claire grabbed the edge of the plexiglass partition with both handcuffed hands, her knuckles turning white.
"No... no! Tell Hannah! Call Hannah!" she screamed, tears streaming down her face, snot running over her upper lip. "She’s my sister! She wouldn't do this to me! Tell her I’m sorry! I’ll apologize! I’ll get on my knees and beg if she wants! Just tell her to stop this!"
Jenkins closed the folder.
"Miss Brooks," Jenkins said, her voice quiet and brutal. "Staff Sergeant Brooks didn't do this to you. You did this to yourself when you kicked a woman who was already on the floor. And under the terms of your protective order, if I so much as mention your name to her outside of an official plea proffer, I can be sanctioned by the bar."
Jenkins stood up, picked up her legal pad, and knocked on the steel door for the guard.
"Think about the plea offer, Claire," Jenkins said without looking back. "Because if that doorbell video goes before a Frederick County jury... you won't see the outside of a fence until you’re thirty-two years old."
The steel door opened, and Jenkins walked out.
May you like
Claire sat alone in the sterile room, her handcuffed hands resting against the cold glass, listening to the automated toilet in the cell block roar in the distance.
***