Janelle was given her "arrangement" in print the following morning and brought to the local jail. She was exhausted, having barely slept a wink throughout the night. It felt like two people were living inside her head, arguing back and forth, and all she could do was listen and try to guess which one was right.
One voice warned her that she was being tricked, that she'd have to complete her remaining probation along with whatever they tacked on for absconding. There was also the fear that she'd go down for beating up Deanna and Ramona.
Various signs—or at least things she thought were signs—suggested she was being played. The way Boris acted. Some of the things she'd overheard. The way the detective who offered to take her in didn't seem very friendly. The introduction almost seemed staged and forced after she questioned why she hadn't met the woman earlier.
Then there was a faint flash of a memory—or was it really just a dream?—where she swore her ankle had been cuffed to the bed, and they were in a frenzied hurry to remove it once they realized she was waking up.
But then there was the voice that told her she was simply being paranoid and to just relax and give people a chance to make good on their word.
But the first voice returned, asking when the last time was that she ever heard of witnesses being protected in jail. She'd heard of informants posing as inmates but never of those in protective custody being placed in jail.
In the end, Janelle feared the first voice but chose to listen to the second. She was still a little weak, and with all the people around, there wasn't much she could do about it at the moment. She would do what she had to do to escape if she found she was being lied to, and little did anyone know at the time that her intense rage would give her the power to do just that.
And so Janelle was discharged bright and early in the morning, without the flurry of heartfelt goodbyes she expected from some of the staff. She was snuck out the back entrance and whisked into a police car.
"Why a cruiser and not just any vehicle?" Janelle asked.
Boris seemed almost annoyed by the question as he quickly turned away, as he often did when she asked similar questions, which heightened her suspicions. He climbed into the seat next to her, behind the driver. Before Rick got into the front passenger seat, he said, "Well, don't you think any potential troublemakers who might think of messing with you would be more intimidated by a marked vehicle as opposed to an unmarked one?"
"Yeah, I suppose," Janelle said, remaining quiet throughout most of the quick trip to the jail. The others spoke, but not about anything that pertained to her.
They pulled into a large garage, and Janelle weakly limped out of the cruiser. She thought it a bit strange that the police officer who had been driving didn't speak to her, but Rick spoke before she could consider the possible reasons. "You okay?" he asked.
Janelle nodded. "Yeah, just a little weak still." Her heart hammered in her chest as a large metal door swung open, and they entered the jail. Again, she had to keep telling herself not to get all paranoid, and that if worst came to worst, she would bust out of there and take care of those who had screwed her over. Enough with people thinking they could bullshit her, shoot at her, and do whatever they wanted without any consequences while she had to pay for minor infractions.
"This isn't an inmate but the witness that we talked about before, who was to arrive today," Rick told a heavyset guard with beautifully French-braided hair.
"Oh, yeah, we got you some simple T-shirt dresses because we didn't know your exact size."
“Thank you," Janelle said with a smile.
"Okay, Janelle, we'll see you at the trial," said Rick.
Janelle turned to thank him and found that Boris was already retreating toward the door without a word. Janelle was then brought to a pod containing about half a dozen cells and placed in one of them, already dismayed and annoyed by the noise and questions she was getting from inmates standing at their doors, watching her through the small square windows as she was brought into the cell.
"What are you in for?" a young, skinny Black girl asked.
"Oh, I'm just here as a witness."
"A witness?"
Janelle nodded.
"What do you mean by a witness?" the persistent, nosy inmate asked as the guard unlocked the cell door.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss anything. Sorry."
"Let's go," the guard snapped.
Janelle gave her a "what the hell was that about" look as she stepped into the cell, not at all feeling welcomed but more like an inmate.
"Do you really think you're just a witness?" asked one of the guards about a week later in a tone that suggested she should be smart enough to know better.
Janelle felt a wave of butterflies in the pit of her stomach. "What do you mean? Are you saying I'm being lied to?"
The officer simply shrugged, but it was enough to rekindle Janelle's suspicions.
So much so that she wrote a few letters of complaint along the way about how she wasn't let outside every day as promised, was fed the same food as the others, and was seriously considering revoking her testimony unless better living conditions were provided for her.
"I'm not the criminal here but the victim. So then why am I being treated like a criminal and made to suffer more than I already have?" she whined in her statement. "If things don't change, I'm dropping testimony and leaving."
Boris was damn near rolling on the floor with laughter when he read a copy of the complaint. "Yeah, Janelle, you just check yourself on out of jail anytime you like."
Little did they know that's exactly what would happen, and many people wondered if they would joke about such a thing if they knew it would become a reality.
Until then, Janelle gave her testimony little by little, with both Rick and Boris looking on. Boris hoped his presence would rattle Janelle, but instead, she seemed to take it as a show of support. Still, that wasn't going to stop him from the curiosity that came from watching the proceedings along with what would be his eventual testimony when the gig was up, and it was time to remind Janelle that she was still very much a criminal as well as a victim and witness.
"What's wrong with your voice?" the prosecutor asked her at one point.
"I'm exhausted," Janelle answered in a hoarse and crackly voice. "I can't get any sleep, and I've been treated much like an inmate instead of a witness and victim, supposedly because it's safer for me here."
Then came the questions that shocked and confused Janelle into silence. Questions about her past troubles with the law. She stared the prosecutor down, a mixture of resentment and confusion written all over her face.
"Answer the question, please," the prosecutor demanded. "This isn’t a trick question."
"I don't understand," she finally said. "What do things that supposedly happened in the past have anything to do with this case?"
The prosecutor then said, "Judge, permission to declare the witness hostile?"
"Wait a minute," Janelle interjected. "I'm not trying to be hostile, I'm—"
"Do not speak unless spoken to, Miss Stone," the judge barked at her. "Now answer the question you were asked."
"I still don't understand what you want me to say. I've been accused of things I haven't done, and I've had charges that were trumped up and exaggerated in the name of revenge, power, and control."
"Were you or were you not involved in a case involving the assault of a pregnant woman, which resulted in her losing the child?"
"I was found not guilty of that because it was self-defense," Janelle said. She had been warned that the prosecutor would try to discredit her. She had been warned that it would be through digging up old issues from the past that shouldn't have anything to do with the present case.
"You weren’t acquitted," the prosecutor countered. "You were let go due to lack of sufficient evidence. Now, what about the child you were convicted of abusing and then gave up for adoption, claiming you were too sick to care for it?"
Again, Janelle was stunned into silence. She was also embarrassed and becoming very frustrated and angry. Her eyes darkened as she glared at the prosecutor, then at the judge helplessly. "I still don't see what this has to do with being kidnapped and—"
"I have nothing further, Your Honor."
"The witness may step down," the judge told her with a condescending look, making Janelle feel like a punished teenager being grounded.
After a few weeks of going back and forth between testifying about the horrible ordeal she went through and what she witnessed others go through, and being cross-examined about things Janelle would rather not rehash, she was brought into the judge’s chamber, where the presiding judge, Boris, and Rick all waited to spill the beans on her.
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