Accused Criminal

She would run from the crime scene feeling guiltless. Heading towards the train station once again, she planned to follow her previous plan of action. If she could get out of the state, she had a chance to survive.

Numb, emotionally and physically, Lana moved quickly. Her old injured seemed to be a ghost of the past, hardly bothering her as she walked.

Lips pressed in a grim line she cleared her mind, no guilt to be found. Slowly, her face worked into a smile. Howard was dead, the terror of her life gone now that no one would be trying to kill her. She almost missed the chase, but it was done now.

Turning down the street she nodded to another person out walking in the cold weather.

It wasn’t until she was a block from the station that she heard the sirens. They had been to her house, she suspected, and they had seen the dead bodies. The cars, all five of them, rushed by.

Lana let out a long breath, the cold air wrapping a tight grip around her. Her feet kept moving as he mind slipped away. Old memories rushed to her, and Lana wondered why she had never seen it, her daughter turning into a monster. That was the real tragedy here- not that they were both dead, but that she could have probably saved her daughter if she hadn’t been so blind before. When Lana was just six she was very attached to her father and would sometimes go into work with him. One day she came home with a cut on her arm and Howard had said it was from walking into his desk. Her daughter had said something much different, but she kept going back into the office. That was when her husband started getting more expensive taste. His daughter was showered with gifts and began drifting away from Lana. There had been signs all along that the hunger for power and money had been passed from father to daughter.

Stopping at the doors, she saw her fate. The police were already waiting. Foolish to think she could have gotten away. Yet, there wasn’t a worry within her or a care. Fear had finally left her and she was filled only with the cold numbness of white winter snow.

When the cuffs snapped onto her wrists, they read her rights and pushed her into the back of the car. Funny, her husband had been the best defense lawyer. Now she’d turn to his old competitors for help.

Staring out the window she watched the snow fall in a haze. Her mind heard the blare of sirens, but she was once more pulled into the past. She was hardly aware that they reached the police station and were pulling her up stairs past the flashing lights of cameras. The news must have broken already to the public. Flash, flash, questions being yelled and she just moved forward with nimble limbs. They pushed her down halls, took down her information and threw her into a room with nothing more than four walls, a metal table and two unstable looking chairs.

Slowly, she sat and folded her hands on the table top. The metal was cold to her skin, but she ignored this. Lana would wait and then make a call to her lawyer, and she was sure he she would accept the offer to represent Lana, after all money talked. A laugh rattled her chest and then broke into the room, spilling over her dry lips and echoing around her. It had been about money all along. She laughed more, hair bouncing around as her head fell back and hands wrapped around her chest.

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On the other side of the room, behind a one way mirror the officers watched her laugh. It turned their stomachs the way her face lifted in a manic state and the eerie sound falling out of her open mouth was unnatural. Already they had called for a psychologist, anticipating a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The DA was with them, drinking his hot coffee slowly and watching her with hard blue eyes. They’d had little time to pull together a profile of Lana Andrews. Wealthy, married to the best defense attorney the mob had ever happened upon, one daughter who was as ambitious as her father had been at her young age, Mrs. Andrews had lived a life of luxury until her mysterious disappearance. While the cop work done on her investigation pointed towards Mrs. Andrews as the suspect in a brutal torture and death, all logic said otherwise. The file for her previously reported attack sat on the table Mr. DA leaned against. He would read it again soon, and then they would begin the investigation into the two detectives who had done the shitty work.

“Who do you think will represent her, Malcom?” cop number one asked. Mr. DA never bothered with their names, just calling them Officer and Officer.

“Janet. That was her husband’s biggest competitor, and she can afford her. Big name case like this, Janet would be a fool to turn her down.” Malcom walked to the window and smiled. “Why don’t you keep her company.” Mrs. Andrews had stopped laughing and her vacant eyes stared straight ahead at the glass window, looking right at him he would say. “I’m sure she would like her phone call.”

Turning away from the window officer one frowned. He had paled since bringing the woman inside, and it looked like he might be sick. Officer two was more stable, but seemed angry. If he had to take a guess, neither of them was fond of killers. They took the file with him, but that was fine. It sometimes helped during conversations to have a file to point to, a fancy paper here and a report or photo there and some people spilled their guts. Unlikely to work with Mr. Lana Andrews.

They fled the room and soon were on the other side of the glass, tossing the file down.

“I want my phone call,” Lana smiled, but her eyes remained empty.

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“I want my phone call,” she repeated, tilting her head to the side and spilling hair over her face. The officers looked the same to her, and she didn’t bother looking at them, she knew they weren’t important. Words came from her, but she didn’t consider them either. She just looked ahead and allowed her mind to empty, to feel nothing and know nothing. There was nothing there left for her to feel and she didn’t want to think about the dead bodies she had created. Blinking, she wondered when she had stood and entered a hallway.

Before she knew it, she was back in that uncomfortable chair, staring at the mirror again and the officers were talking to someone. Tilting her head, she smiled at Janet. Money worked wonders.