Prickly Pear #29, Sour Grape #28
Author: winebabe
Title: You Must Know (You Are Doing the Right Thing)
Story: The Gemini Occurrence ( Kingdom of Second Chances #2)
Rating: PG-13
Flavor(s): Prickly Pear #29: rank & file; Sour Grape #28: if it's not one thing, it's another
Topping(s): Caramel, Sprinkles
Word Count: 2464
Summary: November, 2028. Open-and-shut cases aren't necessarily the easy ones.
Notes: Mona Lively, Detective Noel Reyes, Detective Katherine Chastain, ADA Laurent Marion, Captain Charles Meyer. (I'm trying to write every day in September; we'll see how this goes!)
They could throw her into a holding cell and hope that the stark reality of jail time will shake the truth out of her, but one look at Kat's face in the car tells Noel he'd better not. And the young woman curled up in the back of their police cruiser, bruised and bloodied, looks like she's had just about enough bad luck for one lifetime.
They fished an ID out of her pocket before they put her in the back of the car, and Kat is still stunned at how young the woman is. Ramona Lively, 24 years old, still carrying a Maryland license listing her as a Baltimore resident. Noel wants to remind her that, just because she's past the big 3-0, doesn't make 24 all that young. She's mid-twenties, old enough to make her own choices, not a child anymore. But Kat has never met a young woman she hasn't felt for, and Noel can tell the sympathy is just overflowing for Ramona.
"I don't like this," Kat whispers. Ramona can probably hear them if she listens hard enough, but Kat doesn't seem to care. "Putting this girl away for felony possession? She sure doesn't look like some drug smuggler."
"I don't know what to tell you, Kat," Noel replies. "We caught her, red-handed. She had the drugs. She had them in her lap."
Kat rolls her eyes. "Yeah, and she's beat up! The other guests said they heard a man shouting, and I guarantee you, he had to have been the one to drop off those drugs."
"And if she doesn't give him up," he reminds her, "then there's nothing we can do. We have a solid case here. This was a good bust."
"No," she argues, "it wasn't. It was anything but. That girl is a victim."
"I'm gonna tell you what Marion would tell you," Noel says, and hesitates briefly after catching sight of the tense expression on Kat's face. "--prove it."
Kat bites her tongue, because she knows he's right. It doesn't matter what her gut tells her, because the evidence is telling them otherwise. They don't make the cases, either; they just bring them together. If she wants to help the girl, she has to find something that'll prove her theory, or she'll have to get Ramona talking. Neither option sounds easy.
At the station, they put Ramona into an interrogation room and let her sit for a while. Noel heads off to brief their captain on the bust, and the fact that they're bringing in noteworthy amounts of cocaine and heroin, and Kat goes back to her desk to look up everything she can find on Ramona Lively.
Kat runs her name through the system, and doesn't find anything for a Ramona Lively, but there are a few arrests for a man named Brendan Lively, though nothing in the last 25 years. Most of the arrests are either drug, alcohol, or domestic charges, which would make for a pretty easy pattern if the two of them are related, Kat figures. She goes through the case reports, out of curiosity and a vague notion that he must be related to Ramona somehow, but doesn't find anything worth noting.
A simple Google search doesn't bring up too much on Ramona, but on the second page of search results, Kat finds an obituary that seems promising.
Cassandra J. Lively, 43, passed away in her home on October 12, 2020. She is survived by her son, Devyn, and her daughter, Ramona. She is preceded in death by her husband, Brendan; her parents, Alexander and Charlotte Meadows...
From the date on Ramona's license, Kat figures she must have been just barely 16 years old at the time of her mother's death, and her father had died even earlier on. "Not an easy life for the kid," she mutters, and a hand on her shoulder makes her jump. "Jesus Christ!" she shouts, whipping around to face her assailant.
"Hey," Assistant District Attorney Laurent Marion grins from beside her. "What're you up to?"
"Case work, Counselor," Kat grumbles. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Uh, your captain called," Laurent says, taking a seat on the edge of Kat's desk. "He said you had a big drug bust? And apparently I'm going to "lose my shit" when I see who you've arrested--the words of Detective Reyes."
"Yeah, well, Noel is probably right. And I'm about to lose it with him, because I don't want to charge the person we arrested!"
Laurent cocks an eyebrow. "Excuse me? Care to elaborate on that?"
Kat is silent for a moment, staring at her computer screen. "You know what?" she says, smacking her hands down onto the top of her desk and pushing herself out of her chair. "Why don't I just show you?"
"How dramatic," he comments dryly as he follows Kat through the station. "As much as I appreciate the extra effort, Katharine, all I needed was a few sentences. Just a simple explanation."
"A 'simple explanation' wouldn't do the situation justice, Laurent," Kat replies, and has to turn away from him once he starts smiling. "Don't give me that look."
"What look, Detective?" Laurent asks, feigning innocence, but Kat doesn't answer before she pushes her way through the door and stops in front of the one-way mirror. He steps up to the glass and looks inside, watching Ramona pacing inside the interrogation room. She stops, facing the mirror, just long enough for him to catch sight of her bruised, bloody face. "Oh."
"Laurent," Kat starts, but they're interrupted by Noel and Captain Charles Meyer. Laurent takes a step away from her, and Captain Meyer steps into the space between them.
"Counselor," he says and nods at Laurent, and then turns to Kat. "Now that I'm up to speed, I think you and Reyes should get into that interrogation room. Don't let her sit too long. This is an open and shut case, Kat."
"Yeah, I know," she tells him. Noel is waiting for her by the door, and she bumps her shoulder with his so that she can lean in and whisper, "Don't go hard on her."
Noel just sighs and pushes open the door to the interrogation room.
However panicked Ramona must feel, she keeps it together in the interrogation room. Her story remains the same: the drugs aren't hers, she doesn't know who they belong to, and she just woke up in the hotel room with the drugs in her lap and the police pounding on the door. In fact, the story remains so unchanged that Kat is certain she's decided on it while sitting alone in the room, waiting for them to come in. When questioned about other, minute details, she can't recall anything--not whether she heard people walking outside the hotel room door at any point, whether she paid for the hotel room or not, what she planned to do in the hotel.
The only part of her story that seems to hold even an ounce of truth was her protest that the drugs weren't hers. Kat doesn't believe for a second, though, that she had no idea how the drugs got there or who brought them. It could have been her pimp, her boyfriend, whatever gang she was running with. Just because she's a little white girl, it didn't make it completely unlikely that she could be in some dangerous places. She doesn't look like she has money, but she doesn't look like she's living in squalor, either; her hair is clean, she has what looks like was nice makeup on before she was smacked around, and her clothes aren't dirty, faded, or ripped up. Maybe she can hold her own, or maybe she's protecting the one person who is taking care of her.
If it's the latter, Kat knows it will be that much harder to get the truth out of her.
"I need some coffee," Noel announces finally, standing up from the table. "You want some?" he asks Kat.
"Yeah, sure."
Noel turns his attention back to Ramona. "How about you?"
"Is this a trick?" she asks, and Noel laughs.
"No, it's not a trick. Do you want some coffee?"
She hesitates a moment, and then nods.
"Okay. I'll be right back." Noel pats Kat on the shoulder once, before turning and heading out of the room. Captain Meyer and Laurent Marion are still standing on the other side of the glass, and Laurent fixes him with a disappointed look.
"I'm not prosecuting this girl," he says.
Captain Meyer looks equally frustrated, but echoes the Assistant District Attorney's sentiment. "Marion seems to think that a jury will be too sympathetic to Miss Lively's story, and we'll come out looking like the bad guys."
"She certainly doesn't look like a drug dealer," Laurent adds.
"So, what, we just cut her loose? Captain, you saw all the drugs we brought in! She's part of some bigger operation, and if we just let her go--"
"So hold her," Captain Meyer interrupts. "Keep talking to her and see if you can get anything. Otherwise, yeah, we're gonna cut her loose."
"I'm going back to my office," Laurent announces. "Good luck, with all of this." He winks at Noel before making his exit, and the remaining two men watch him weave through the desks in the station.
"That guy gets on my nerves sometimes," Noel admits.
Captain Meyer sighs. "Reyes, get to work."
While Noel leaves to get the coffee, Kat decides she's going to take a different approach with Ramona. The girl looks like she could use a friend, and Kat's tired of pushing the whole bad-cop routine. If the threat of a third of her life in prison doesn't scare Ramona into talking, nothing will. Noel may hold a different viewpoint, but Kat thinks the whole thing is useless. "Your license says you live in Baltimore," she says, and Ramona looks up, bewildered.
"Yeah, so?"
"So what are you doing out here? Are you visiting friends, or on vacation, or?"
Ramona sighs. "No, I just--I left. I've gone a couple places, but I ended up here."
"Are you running from something? Somebody? Ramona, we can protect you--"
"Protect me?" she says and laughs. "A few minutes ago, you and your partner were telling me how many years I was going to spend in federal prison! And now you want to protect me?"
"I believe you, Ramona, I--"
"Mona," she interrupts. "Don't call me Ramona. No one calls me Ramona."
"Okay," Kat starts again, "Mona, I believe you. I don't believe those drugs are yours, and I believe that whoever beat you up left those drugs in that room with you."
She drops her gaze to the table and won't meet Kat's eyes.
"I'm right, aren't I? Mona, you don't need to protect whoever hurt you. They don't deserve that, and they don't deserve to let you take the fall for them."
Mona swallows hard, and when she looks back up at Kat, there are tears in her eyes. "He beat me because I threatened to go to the cops. He wanted me to move those drugs by tomorrow, and I told him I couldn't, and I said if I got caught I'd tell the police they were his--I didn't mean it, I just wanted him to change his mind! God, I thought he was going to kill me. He wrapped his hand around my throat, and he--"
Kat reaches across the table to take Mona's hand in hers. "It's okay, Mona. He can't hurt you here. I won't let him hurt you again."
"You can't promise me that," Mona cries. "I have to do this on my own, I have to--"
The door opens and Noel freezes in the doorway, balancing three cups of coffee in his hands. "Oh, uh, everything okay in here?"
Kat gives Mona's hand a squeeze. "It's fine. Mona, do you mind if Detective Reyes sits in? It can be just the two of us if you'd be more comfortable."
Mona shakes her head. "No, it's fine. I'm sorry." She pulls her hand away from Kat and wipes her eyes. "I'm just...emotional."
"You're having a bad night. You're allowed to be emotional," Noel says, keeping his tone gentle, and sets a cup of coffee in front of her. "I put cream and sugar in it, I hope that's okay."
Mona cups her hands around the coffee and laughs. "Yeah. Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you."
As Noel sets a cup of coffee in front of Kat, he leans down to whisper into her ear. "Marion won't prosecute."
Kat breathes a sigh of relief and watches Mona gingerly sipping her coffee. It'll be nice to tell the poor girl she's free to go, but they're so close, she thinks. They're so close to finding out who the real criminal is, and there's a part of her that worries about letting Mona back out into that world. She won't be safe.
"Who hurt you, Mona?" Kat tries again. "We can protect you. We'll put him away for a long time."
"I can't tell you," Mona says. "He'll kill me."
"Lots of people threaten that. It doesn't mean anything," Noel tells her, and she fixes him with a glare.
"Well, if it doesn't mean anything, I guess him choking me out earlier didn't mean anything, either!"
Kat elbows Noel to shut him up. "Mona, look at me. I won't let that happen again. I promise you, if you tell us who he is, you'll never be alone with him again. He'll never be able to hurt you."
Mona looks down into her coffee cup and falls silent. "My brother and his girlfriend still live in Baltimore," she whispers. "I haven't spoken to him in over a year. I don't even know where he is now." She looks up and locks watery eyes with Kat. "If I tell you, will you help me find him? I want to go home."
Kat nods. "We'll help you get home, Mona." She's not sure if it's a promise she can make, but Mona looks so young, so vulnerable, and she genuinely does want to help her get home--whatever the cost.
She takes a deep, shaky breath, holding onto her coffee cup like it's her only support. "My boyfriend brought the drugs. I sell them for him sometimes, so he can keep me in line. You know, if I'm doing something illegal, too, I'm not gonna turn on him. That kinda thing." Mona sighs and bites her lower lip. "They're his drugs. And he beat me up when I said I couldn't move everything. It was too much."
"What's his name, Mona?" Noel asks.
Mona looks at Noel first, and then turns to Kat. "Mario Pierce."
Title: You Must Know (You Are Doing the Right Thing)
Story: The Gemini Occurrence ( Kingdom of Second Chances #2)
Rating: PG-13
Flavor(s): Prickly Pear #29: rank & file; Sour Grape #28: if it's not one thing, it's another
Topping(s): Caramel, Sprinkles
Word Count: 2464
Summary: November, 2028. Open-and-shut cases aren't necessarily the easy ones.
Notes: Mona Lively, Detective Noel Reyes, Detective Katherine Chastain, ADA Laurent Marion, Captain Charles Meyer. (I'm trying to write every day in September; we'll see how this goes!)
They could throw her into a holding cell and hope that the stark reality of jail time will shake the truth out of her, but one look at Kat's face in the car tells Noel he'd better not. And the young woman curled up in the back of their police cruiser, bruised and bloodied, looks like she's had just about enough bad luck for one lifetime.
They fished an ID out of her pocket before they put her in the back of the car, and Kat is still stunned at how young the woman is. Ramona Lively, 24 years old, still carrying a Maryland license listing her as a Baltimore resident. Noel wants to remind her that, just because she's past the big 3-0, doesn't make 24 all that young. She's mid-twenties, old enough to make her own choices, not a child anymore. But Kat has never met a young woman she hasn't felt for, and Noel can tell the sympathy is just overflowing for Ramona.
"I don't like this," Kat whispers. Ramona can probably hear them if she listens hard enough, but Kat doesn't seem to care. "Putting this girl away for felony possession? She sure doesn't look like some drug smuggler."
"I don't know what to tell you, Kat," Noel replies. "We caught her, red-handed. She had the drugs. She had them in her lap."
Kat rolls her eyes. "Yeah, and she's beat up! The other guests said they heard a man shouting, and I guarantee you, he had to have been the one to drop off those drugs."
"And if she doesn't give him up," he reminds her, "then there's nothing we can do. We have a solid case here. This was a good bust."
"No," she argues, "it wasn't. It was anything but. That girl is a victim."
"I'm gonna tell you what Marion would tell you," Noel says, and hesitates briefly after catching sight of the tense expression on Kat's face. "--prove it."
Kat bites her tongue, because she knows he's right. It doesn't matter what her gut tells her, because the evidence is telling them otherwise. They don't make the cases, either; they just bring them together. If she wants to help the girl, she has to find something that'll prove her theory, or she'll have to get Ramona talking. Neither option sounds easy.
At the station, they put Ramona into an interrogation room and let her sit for a while. Noel heads off to brief their captain on the bust, and the fact that they're bringing in noteworthy amounts of cocaine and heroin, and Kat goes back to her desk to look up everything she can find on Ramona Lively.
Kat runs her name through the system, and doesn't find anything for a Ramona Lively, but there are a few arrests for a man named Brendan Lively, though nothing in the last 25 years. Most of the arrests are either drug, alcohol, or domestic charges, which would make for a pretty easy pattern if the two of them are related, Kat figures. She goes through the case reports, out of curiosity and a vague notion that he must be related to Ramona somehow, but doesn't find anything worth noting.
A simple Google search doesn't bring up too much on Ramona, but on the second page of search results, Kat finds an obituary that seems promising.
Cassandra J. Lively, 43, passed away in her home on October 12, 2020. She is survived by her son, Devyn, and her daughter, Ramona. She is preceded in death by her husband, Brendan; her parents, Alexander and Charlotte Meadows...
From the date on Ramona's license, Kat figures she must have been just barely 16 years old at the time of her mother's death, and her father had died even earlier on. "Not an easy life for the kid," she mutters, and a hand on her shoulder makes her jump. "Jesus Christ!" she shouts, whipping around to face her assailant.
"Hey," Assistant District Attorney Laurent Marion grins from beside her. "What're you up to?"
"Case work, Counselor," Kat grumbles. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Uh, your captain called," Laurent says, taking a seat on the edge of Kat's desk. "He said you had a big drug bust? And apparently I'm going to "lose my shit" when I see who you've arrested--the words of Detective Reyes."
"Yeah, well, Noel is probably right. And I'm about to lose it with him, because I don't want to charge the person we arrested!"
Laurent cocks an eyebrow. "Excuse me? Care to elaborate on that?"
Kat is silent for a moment, staring at her computer screen. "You know what?" she says, smacking her hands down onto the top of her desk and pushing herself out of her chair. "Why don't I just show you?"
"How dramatic," he comments dryly as he follows Kat through the station. "As much as I appreciate the extra effort, Katharine, all I needed was a few sentences. Just a simple explanation."
"A 'simple explanation' wouldn't do the situation justice, Laurent," Kat replies, and has to turn away from him once he starts smiling. "Don't give me that look."
"What look, Detective?" Laurent asks, feigning innocence, but Kat doesn't answer before she pushes her way through the door and stops in front of the one-way mirror. He steps up to the glass and looks inside, watching Ramona pacing inside the interrogation room. She stops, facing the mirror, just long enough for him to catch sight of her bruised, bloody face. "Oh."
"Laurent," Kat starts, but they're interrupted by Noel and Captain Charles Meyer. Laurent takes a step away from her, and Captain Meyer steps into the space between them.
"Counselor," he says and nods at Laurent, and then turns to Kat. "Now that I'm up to speed, I think you and Reyes should get into that interrogation room. Don't let her sit too long. This is an open and shut case, Kat."
"Yeah, I know," she tells him. Noel is waiting for her by the door, and she bumps her shoulder with his so that she can lean in and whisper, "Don't go hard on her."
Noel just sighs and pushes open the door to the interrogation room.
However panicked Ramona must feel, she keeps it together in the interrogation room. Her story remains the same: the drugs aren't hers, she doesn't know who they belong to, and she just woke up in the hotel room with the drugs in her lap and the police pounding on the door. In fact, the story remains so unchanged that Kat is certain she's decided on it while sitting alone in the room, waiting for them to come in. When questioned about other, minute details, she can't recall anything--not whether she heard people walking outside the hotel room door at any point, whether she paid for the hotel room or not, what she planned to do in the hotel.
The only part of her story that seems to hold even an ounce of truth was her protest that the drugs weren't hers. Kat doesn't believe for a second, though, that she had no idea how the drugs got there or who brought them. It could have been her pimp, her boyfriend, whatever gang she was running with. Just because she's a little white girl, it didn't make it completely unlikely that she could be in some dangerous places. She doesn't look like she has money, but she doesn't look like she's living in squalor, either; her hair is clean, she has what looks like was nice makeup on before she was smacked around, and her clothes aren't dirty, faded, or ripped up. Maybe she can hold her own, or maybe she's protecting the one person who is taking care of her.
If it's the latter, Kat knows it will be that much harder to get the truth out of her.
"I need some coffee," Noel announces finally, standing up from the table. "You want some?" he asks Kat.
"Yeah, sure."
Noel turns his attention back to Ramona. "How about you?"
"Is this a trick?" she asks, and Noel laughs.
"No, it's not a trick. Do you want some coffee?"
She hesitates a moment, and then nods.
"Okay. I'll be right back." Noel pats Kat on the shoulder once, before turning and heading out of the room. Captain Meyer and Laurent Marion are still standing on the other side of the glass, and Laurent fixes him with a disappointed look.
"I'm not prosecuting this girl," he says.
Captain Meyer looks equally frustrated, but echoes the Assistant District Attorney's sentiment. "Marion seems to think that a jury will be too sympathetic to Miss Lively's story, and we'll come out looking like the bad guys."
"She certainly doesn't look like a drug dealer," Laurent adds.
"So, what, we just cut her loose? Captain, you saw all the drugs we brought in! She's part of some bigger operation, and if we just let her go--"
"So hold her," Captain Meyer interrupts. "Keep talking to her and see if you can get anything. Otherwise, yeah, we're gonna cut her loose."
"I'm going back to my office," Laurent announces. "Good luck, with all of this." He winks at Noel before making his exit, and the remaining two men watch him weave through the desks in the station.
"That guy gets on my nerves sometimes," Noel admits.
Captain Meyer sighs. "Reyes, get to work."
While Noel leaves to get the coffee, Kat decides she's going to take a different approach with Ramona. The girl looks like she could use a friend, and Kat's tired of pushing the whole bad-cop routine. If the threat of a third of her life in prison doesn't scare Ramona into talking, nothing will. Noel may hold a different viewpoint, but Kat thinks the whole thing is useless. "Your license says you live in Baltimore," she says, and Ramona looks up, bewildered.
"Yeah, so?"
"So what are you doing out here? Are you visiting friends, or on vacation, or?"
Ramona sighs. "No, I just--I left. I've gone a couple places, but I ended up here."
"Are you running from something? Somebody? Ramona, we can protect you--"
"Protect me?" she says and laughs. "A few minutes ago, you and your partner were telling me how many years I was going to spend in federal prison! And now you want to protect me?"
"I believe you, Ramona, I--"
"Mona," she interrupts. "Don't call me Ramona. No one calls me Ramona."
"Okay," Kat starts again, "Mona, I believe you. I don't believe those drugs are yours, and I believe that whoever beat you up left those drugs in that room with you."
She drops her gaze to the table and won't meet Kat's eyes.
"I'm right, aren't I? Mona, you don't need to protect whoever hurt you. They don't deserve that, and they don't deserve to let you take the fall for them."
Mona swallows hard, and when she looks back up at Kat, there are tears in her eyes. "He beat me because I threatened to go to the cops. He wanted me to move those drugs by tomorrow, and I told him I couldn't, and I said if I got caught I'd tell the police they were his--I didn't mean it, I just wanted him to change his mind! God, I thought he was going to kill me. He wrapped his hand around my throat, and he--"
Kat reaches across the table to take Mona's hand in hers. "It's okay, Mona. He can't hurt you here. I won't let him hurt you again."
"You can't promise me that," Mona cries. "I have to do this on my own, I have to--"
The door opens and Noel freezes in the doorway, balancing three cups of coffee in his hands. "Oh, uh, everything okay in here?"
Kat gives Mona's hand a squeeze. "It's fine. Mona, do you mind if Detective Reyes sits in? It can be just the two of us if you'd be more comfortable."
Mona shakes her head. "No, it's fine. I'm sorry." She pulls her hand away from Kat and wipes her eyes. "I'm just...emotional."
"You're having a bad night. You're allowed to be emotional," Noel says, keeping his tone gentle, and sets a cup of coffee in front of her. "I put cream and sugar in it, I hope that's okay."
Mona cups her hands around the coffee and laughs. "Yeah. Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you."
As Noel sets a cup of coffee in front of Kat, he leans down to whisper into her ear. "Marion won't prosecute."
Kat breathes a sigh of relief and watches Mona gingerly sipping her coffee. It'll be nice to tell the poor girl she's free to go, but they're so close, she thinks. They're so close to finding out who the real criminal is, and there's a part of her that worries about letting Mona back out into that world. She won't be safe.
"Who hurt you, Mona?" Kat tries again. "We can protect you. We'll put him away for a long time."
"I can't tell you," Mona says. "He'll kill me."
"Lots of people threaten that. It doesn't mean anything," Noel tells her, and she fixes him with a glare.
"Well, if it doesn't mean anything, I guess him choking me out earlier didn't mean anything, either!"
Kat elbows Noel to shut him up. "Mona, look at me. I won't let that happen again. I promise you, if you tell us who he is, you'll never be alone with him again. He'll never be able to hurt you."
Mona looks down into her coffee cup and falls silent. "My brother and his girlfriend still live in Baltimore," she whispers. "I haven't spoken to him in over a year. I don't even know where he is now." She looks up and locks watery eyes with Kat. "If I tell you, will you help me find him? I want to go home."
Kat nods. "We'll help you get home, Mona." She's not sure if it's a promise she can make, but Mona looks so young, so vulnerable, and she genuinely does want to help her get home--whatever the cost.
She takes a deep, shaky breath, holding onto her coffee cup like it's her only support. "My boyfriend brought the drugs. I sell them for him sometimes, so he can keep me in line. You know, if I'm doing something illegal, too, I'm not gonna turn on him. That kinda thing." Mona sighs and bites her lower lip. "They're his drugs. And he beat me up when I said I couldn't move everything. It was too much."
"What's his name, Mona?" Noel asks.
Mona looks at Noel first, and then turns to Kat. "Mario Pierce."