Close to the Victim

Chapter Three: Legally Raven

Emma Gordon

Someone should really decorate these holding cells. She wasn't expecting a celebrity holding cell because she was a part of the detective force, but at least one pillow mint might have been nice. Again, Emma sat on her hands to stop them from shaking but they hardly stilled.

What worried Emma wasn't her fate though, it was the fact she couldn't find out what really happened to Charlie from here. Not with this one bed, one bathroom apartment four by four that she'd accidentally upgraded to after trying to scratch out her past.

To be completely honest, it did occur to her maybe her husband committed suicide.

Some huge part of Emma wanted to rationalize his death but she knew she couldn't. Someone killed him. It wouldn't be easier to absorb the shame that he jumped out of that high rise. None of this was ever supposed to be easy.

Emma tried to think of anything to keep her strong. Charlie's death weakened her spirit even more so. All she could think of was how Bash tried to stand up to Hale. Emma wished he'd fought harder but she understood why he couldn't. It was the Captain after all.

The worst part of all this is that she was guilty. She disposed of that goddamn car because she couldn't stand to see it parked outside their penthouse apartment anymore. Emma was less angry about the affair than she was ashamed Charlie had to look elsewhere for love than her.

She was the wife. As all the television shows pointed out to her lately, she was supposed to want kids and bring casseroles over to new neighbors. When she took a pregnancy test and showed it to Charlie last Thursday, Emma thought that was it. Maybe she was finally a worthy wife.

Well, that was all nullified by the doctor giving her the bad news and then Charlie's death.

Emma didn't know what box to put these feelings in. Relieved? Remorseful? How about still missing the man who broke your heart in a million pieces? Yeah, those feelings didn't even make it into separate boxes, they just entered the void that was now her heart.

That sounded dramatic and in most ways this whole thing was some high school drama that graduated to the adult world. My best friend stole my boyfriend, or right now dead husband. No, Emma threaded her hands through her curly brown tresses, this was far more complicated.

Emma waited for the emerald tears to crack the clouds of her water-proof makeup.

But before she could wear away at the numbness she felt, the cell opened and a guard told her that her lawyer wanted to meet her. "What lawyer? Do you mean public defender?"

The guard shook his head no and then returned to a stoic stone statue of a man who was leading her to a small room for visitors. Emma had thought it was worse waiting in that holding cell, but in this open room her gut chewed her resilience and spat it back out through a straw.

After a few moments a woman with jet black hair and hazel eyes cradled a suspicious air of resentment and irritability. She hesitated to place down her cherry purse and quickly rummaged through it to find a sanitizer to cleanse the gray table. Emma dawned a phantom of a smile.

Emma didn't want to offer pleasantries to this obviously overbearing warhorse of a woman.

She knew this lawyer's type just by the way she sat down. She obviously had won many cases but likely not of this nature. She's driven, probably thinks she's a feminist icon instead of a annoying lawyer with less persuasion skills than a Legally Blonde reboot with raven hair.

Legally Raven cleared her throat. "Before I tell you that I don't want to do this...you need to know my brother sent me to help you. None of this was ever...and will ever be of my accord."