The Patrolman - 28

28.

June Hartsfield forced herself to stay awake. She needed to be ready for whatever came next. She had to make her phone call. The other prisoners slept. Her cellmate wasn't drooling this time. She paced around her cell, trying to pump blood around her body. She did anything to keep awake. She did push-ups and sit-ups. Her mistake had been sleeping earlier. Now her body wanted more. She hadn't slept much all weekend. When the exhaustion settled in, she sat on the floor. Not the bench. That was where the cell was coldest. She slipped off her heels and pressed her feet to the concrete. It hurt. She bench-dipped until her shoulders burned. Panting, she stretched out on the bench. Hartsfield figured she still had a few more hours until morning.

She thought about everything. What lengths would Jackson go to? She wondered what Brenda was doing about it. She wondered what Moreau and the watch commander were arguing about. That look on his face. It was solemn like he'd resigned himself to something he couldn't change. If Moreau was going to get her in here, he'd have at least two dozen witnesses. Who was she kidding? These guys were the system. They could game it. They would do anything to keep on Brenda's payroll.

Hartsfield chain-smoked until her mouth was as dry as the Los Angeles River. She needed water. She ran her mouth under the basin and smoked another cigarette. What she needed was coffee. But the watch commander wasn't coming down any time soon. She dropped her cigarette butt in the toilet and stood again. Her legs were like Jell-O. She grabbed the bars and pressed her forehead to the cold metal. She closed her eyes for a second. Listening to the rhythmic drip of a leaky pipe, steady as a metronome. She wished it was dripping coffee.

Her cellmate's chest rose and fell. The mouth hung open, but she wasn't snoring. She wasn't drooling like before. Her breaths were shallow, almost too quiet. It felt wrong. She tried to shake it off. She was looking for patterns where there weren't any to find.

The seconds, minutes, and hours dragged on. What did the watch commander know that she didn't? She let herself sink onto the bench. Just for a second, she told herself. She fought to keep her eyes open, but exhaustion was pulling her down. The last thing she remembered was the drip-drip, drip-drip.

She felt herself getting moved. Something pressing down on her chest. Her arms, her shoulders. A dead weight was pinning her down. Her eyes shot open and there were hands around her throat.

Her cellmate's eyes were wide and bloodshot. Focused.

'Let it happen.'

Panic settled in. June Hartsfield clawed at her hands. She gasped for air. She kicked out and stubbed her toe on the iron bars. There had to be at least 200lbs pinning her down. She didn't have long before she would lose consciousness. The woman was relentless. Her nails bit into Hartsfield's skin and the grip around her throat got tighter. She managed to suck in some air and think. The woman was sitting on her chest, leaving her legs exposed. Kicking was out. She could drive her knee into the woman's back but what good would that do? She'd lose all momentum the moment her leg left the bench. Gravity didn't work to her advantage, or did it? Her hips were free. Hartsfield bent her knee and put her left foot flat on the bench. Gray spots clouded her vision. She used all her might and bucked the woman off. Sending them both rolling and crashing to the floor.

They lay there, sprawled out, a mesh of limbs, panting. Now she'd knocked the oxygen out of the other woman's lungs with the fall. Hartsfield figured she had the upper hand. She coughed and spluttered, drawing in air.

She scrambled back until her shoulders hit the iron bars. Her cellmate reached the wall. They both sat there, gasping. Then they used the walls to push themselves up onto their feet. The woman could've been King Kong's twin. Hartsfield was Hartsfield was 5'6". The woman was around an inch or two shorter. Hartsfield was 145lbs. The woman was well over 200. She would demolish her. The woman put her head down and started to charge. There was nowhere to run, nobody to help. So Hartsfield stepped the other way. Toward the rushing woman. She squared up. She waited until she was ready to demolish her. So the woman was in line with the iron bars. Then Hartsfield sprang onto the bench. The woman had plenty of momentum. Enough to carry her straight through the jail and into the parking lot. When the woman made contact, her arms flung out. It was an instinctive response. An attempt to soften the blow. Which it did in the short term. But it broke both her arms. It caused her to bounce off the bars and onto the floor. She landed in a solid heap.

The jump had bruised Hartsfield's knees and knocked the breath in her lungs right back out. She was full of adrenalin now. She wasn't going to take another chance.

'Please,' the woman cried.

Hartsfield pulled the woman up onto her knees by her hair. Yes, her arms had broken on impact. She couldn't save herself. Hartsfield got behind her and smashed her face into the bars. Four, five, six times. When she finished, there wasn't much of a face left. June Hartsfield looked into it and felt her breath. Then she dropped the woman and got back on her bench.

She lay there a moment. The other women had woken up and started jeering again. She could hear boots pounding down the stairs. Sleep was no longer an option.

© J. A. Stapleton 2025 - Image Source: Wikimedia Commons