Officer Gilbert, Officer Cole, Officer Walker, Boris Brownly, and a few others burst out in rowdy laughter. Gilbert, struggling to catch her breath, laughed. “So I have a great body according to Stone, but my face is boring?”
Boris, also laughing, said, “That’s what you get for staring at her so critically.” A new round of laughter broke out among the group, and Boris added, “Gotta at least love her for her candidness.”
The group laughed so hard their stomachs almost hurt. But that laughter would abruptly be cut short soon enough.
That evening, Janelle was in bed, trying to ignore Officer Gilbert’s invasive stare boring into her back by facing the window in the opposite direction.
Gilbert got up and opened the vertical blinds.
“Why are you opening the blinds now when it's nighttime?” asked Janelle.
“Well,” said Gilbert, choosing her words carefully, “You always want them open in the daytime. So this way, when you get up in the morning, they'll already be open.”
Janelle suspected the real reason was so they could see each other's reflection in the glass, forcing Janelle to have to see her no matter which side she lay on. Finally, she said, “Do you still like me? I mean, are you sure about how you feel?”
Gilbert hesitated, again choosing her words carefully. “Sure,” was all she decided to say.
“If it’s true, I’m flattered.”
A man in an expensive suit carrying a briefcase entered the room before Janelle could say anything else and said, “Are you Officer Lauren Gilbert?”
“I am,” Gilbert said, pissed that her first name had been given away to the delusional monster she almost wished she hadn’t pretended to like. The suspected serial killer’s subtle yet obvious flirting made her feel rather uncomfortable.
“May I have a word with you out in the hall, please?”
Gilbert was tempted to ask who the man was, but decided to get out of the room before he could say anything else she didn’t want Stone knowing.
Janelle watched through the window as she talked to the man and sensed that the officer wasn’t liking what she was hearing. Her mannerisms became stiff, impatient, and irritated. At one point, she shook her head hard enough that her shoulder-length hair bounced as if a heavy wind was blowing through it.
After a few moments, Janelle saw Gilbert step up to the elevator and jab a button. The door then opened, and the officer stepped into the elevator, at which time she locked eyes with Janelle. Janelle was confused, though she noted the angry and almost hateful look on the officer’s face. Janelle turned her palms up as if to ask what was going on. Officer Gilbert angrily punched a button inside the elevator, and then Janelle Stone learned why the officer had left so angrily.
An hour later, Janelle lay in her hospital bed in shock—but this shock was a very different kind than when she learned her parents died. Very different indeed. All law enforcement personnel had been ordered to keep away from her because they had broken all kinds of laws and rules and trampled on her rights. She had been right to be suspicious after all. And no, Officer Gilbert did not like her at all, just as she suspected.
First, they broke the law by not telling her she was in custody. She should have been given legal representation and Mirandaized. Therefore, “deal” wasn’t allowed to be made, false or not. Of course, Janelle hadn’t known at the time that those connected to crimes—and in custody with new charges supposedly pending—wouldn’t be allowed to testify anyway.
Boris had hoped to secure an assault charge on Stone for pushing him off the ward, but couldn't do so because she was unaware that she was in custody at that time, or at least it couldn't be proven that she knew she was. Suspecting she was being lied to at times wasn't enough. So in the eyes of the law, she was being harassed by someone she asked to get out of her personal space, who refused to do so, and had acted accordingly.
9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvNQqqaXt4G
Next up was confirmation of Boris Brownly’s obsession with her. The obsession began out of sheer hatred for her racist and belligerent attitude. The more Janelle resisted and rebelled, the more he hated her, because he was just that kind of guy who liked to be in control and liked those he controlled to be a little more subservient. His best friend was Black, and he knew the kind of shit he faced from certain haters. This made him despise Stone even more. The final straw was when she killed his other friend at the courthouse. Even so, he was out of line and definitely out of jurisdiction by being in her face as often as he could. Janelle was right to think it weird that a supposedly former probation officer would be present so much of the time and away from his clients simply because he had been the one she called.
It was deemed that Officer Gilbert and some others also acted unprofessionally. Gilbert claimed she only went along with Janelle’s sudden “suspicion” that she liked her to see if she would confess to any crimes they either didn’t know about or at least suspected she had something to do with.
Also, there was the fact that while they could think what they wanted, they couldn’t actually prove that Janelle had absconded. Nor could they prove that she hadn’t known of her murdered friend’s record or that she’d had anything to do with the death of her family members, no matter how much it was suspected.
The judge sympathized and sided with Janelle Stone, citing the many lives she’d saved by reaching out to Boris in the first place. He felt her past sentences were much harsher than they should have been, and reminded people that rumors and suspicions were one thing. Cold, hard proof was another.
“If you can prove she's guilty of murder, bring me the proof, and I'll happily lock her up and throw away the key myself,” the judge had added. “Meanwhile, I think this woman has been through enough. Regardless of why, she's going through a divorce, she was held hostage and saw her friend killed, and then she lost her parents after doing more time than rapists typically do. Enough is enough!”
What really pissed Boris and the others off was that Janelle wouldn’t be charged with the punching death of his friend, all caught on camera. But the prosecutor and the judge deemed his death avoidable—had he not gotten in Stone’s face. Furthermore, Stone had taken a random punch and immediately walked on without looking back, as the video showed. She had no idea the guy had died until the man in the fancy suit with the briefcase told her. The judge insisted that Janelle Stone had simply been defending herself and batting away a human fly that had gotten in her face, without intending to do anything in particular other than to free herself of it and walk away.
This description of how her acts were supposedly similar to batting away an annoying fly, understandably, made Boris’s blood boil. He promised himself and his dead friend that he would avenge his death and get his revenge. Yeah, he was obsessed with the psycho alright, but he didn’t give a shit, and he didn’t give a shit what others thought about it either. He would get the bitch somehow, some way, someday if it was the last thing he ever did.
Janelle Stone wanted revenge, too. Even though she would be awarded millions of dollars for what the police had done, that wasn’t enough. She wanted them to pay. She wanted them to know how they had made her feel. She didn’t know how or when, but she wanted their asses for the lies she took very personally, for the sleep they robbed her of, for the way they humiliated and angered her at a time in life when she needed love and support.
Now a rich woman who had gotten away with so much, she looked around her now quiet and empty hospital room. It felt so weird after having it filled with so many officers so much of the time.
She quietly lay back against the pillow, looking forward to her discharge in a few days, and began hatching a plan in her mind.
THE END...for now.
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