Far more damning than the Evelyn W. video, or my knowledge of insulin, was Jesula’s testimony. What she told them hurt me emotionally, and legally, and the worst part was I hadn’t seen it coming. I had known her since I was fifteen years old, and I considered her both my friend as well as a sort of maternal figure.
I’d thought she cared about me. I’d thought she liked me, at the very least. She would often remind me to bring a sweater when I went out, since I got chilled inside movie theaters and malls and especially grocery stores. When she saw I was stressed about work and too busy to eat a proper lunch, she would hand me a banana and a handful of almonds and make sure I finished the small snack before rushing out into the world. She knew about so much of my life, from my party days as a teen, to my sober days, to my breakup with Seth, to my move in with Jason. She knew exactly how I liked my grandmother’s tiny antique clocks to be arranged, and when she dusted them, she placed them back just right. And it didn’t go only one way. I knew about her extended family still in Haiti. And I helped get her shy, sweet twelve-year-old son into a thriving charter school, which was much better than the barely accredited school he had been attending. Which was also how I would have known how to contact him, should Roman’s advice not have stopped me.
But underneath that closeness there was still a divide. There was still my privilege. And when I read her testimony, it hit me. The truth was Jesula cleaned the bathrooms where I shit. Maybe it was never a real friendship. Maybe this was her chance to have power over someone she felt had all the power all along. Perhaps she had resented me this entire time, since the moment I walked into that Kremlin club bathroom and bought lollipops. This realization mortified me. Could I have been so bad at reading people that I invited someone into my home twice a week who secretly hated me?
The tone in her testimony came through clearly. She seemed not reluctant but excited to report to the grand jury, detailing every single fight she had ever overheard between me and Jason. She was in our house for countless days. She saw us getting ready for work in the morning. Saw us grieving over Kangaroo. She heard us talking to each other on the phone while one of us was working late and the other one was pacing in the kitchen. She listened in when we discussed having children someday, and she let me know she would be our nanny if we needed extra help.
She was there for little moments that happen in every marriage, voices raised, frustrations coming to a head. In her testimony, she remembered and recounted every harsh word we had said to each other like she had been taking notes all along, waiting for this moment to help bring me down. She testified to my anger problem, citing that she once saw me give Jason the middle finger. That I stomped into the bedroom all sulky and did it through the bedroom wall. Jesula took only the worst bits and pieces and edited my happy marriage to Jason to create a mosaic of hostility and abuse. Her testimony made it seem like it was probable that I did want to kill my husband. And as type A as I was, that want probably led me to actually do it. In fact, she was happy to report, I was so type A I was accepted into an actual scientific study about goal-oriented people.
All of this was a horrible disfiguring of the facts, like a Picasso painting, but none of it was actually a lie. And then I read on. She had a lot to say about my grieving process. She told the grand jury that when my dog died I hung on to and cherished her every toy. I wouldn’t even let Jesula clean the floor because I didn’t want all her fur to be swept away forever. The dog’s water bowl sat out for months, without being emptied. Eventually the water evaporated. But the dog beds and dog treats and leashes stayed put. None of this was that weird, Jesula explained. Except then, when my husband died, I threw out all his belongings within a day. Closets were emptied. Surfboards given away. His favorite diet soda glasses boxed up and donated. Jesula was horrified by how differently I acted after my dog died versus after my husband died. It was unnatural, she said.
This was an absolute lie. Jesula was there for both deaths. There to see and know that I had the exact same coping mechanism of getting rid of anything that physically reminded me of my dearly departed. She crossed all lines to sabotage me and make sure I seemed guilty of murdering Jason. Simply, if all the prosecutor had before was straws, Jesula was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And as Roman predicted, after three weeks of testimony and one day of deliberation, I was indicted for murdering Jason.
CHAPTER 43
CUFFS
Gabrielle was very angry with me. I could see it all over her pale face. She was sitting on the merlot love seat, scowling. Because my suggestion that she track down the friends and family of the man who saved her life turned out to be a very bad one. It seemed there was no record of a Derrick Roberts anywhere. The shooting was reported by the Miami Herald, his name was printed, but no funeral information was given, and there were no follow-up articles. The perpetrator apparently was never caught. Derrick had no Facebook page, no Twitter, no Instagram, no online presence at all.
I asked, “Did you check LinkedIn? Even people who never even sign up seem to be on it.”
I could see her frustration. She barked, “You think I didn’t already think of that? He’s not even on LinkedIn!”
Gabrielle told me she dug and dug and couldn’t find a record of him anywhere. No driver’s license, no birth certificate, no high school transcripts, no insurance. She could never even get to any of his kin or cohorts because it’s like he was a ghost before he was a ghost. She asked, desperately, “Did he even exist at all? Was I hallucinating the whole thing? Was he an angel? Am I crazy? Now I’m more obsessed than ever.”
This was painful to watch. Our many inroads were being covered up by a blizzard of doubt and lack of facts. She was sliding back to the days when I first met her. I took stock of the situation. We had a lot of work ahead of us, but I knew we could get there. I knew I could help her not feel crazy. Because she wasn’t crazy. I was about to say all this when we heard a hostile knock knock knock on my office door. The loud noise made her jump a little since usually this space was serene; the only sound was the occasional whirr of the air conditioner clicking on and off to maintain a perfect seventy-three degrees.
I said to her quietly, “Sorry about this.” Then I turned my head toward the door and yelled, “I’m in session!” But I knew who was knocking. No one else would have marched through the waiting room. And I was not sure why I was delaying the inevitable. Knock knock knock again. I was delaying the inevitable because I was scared.
A booming voice came from behind the thin wood door. “Open up or we kick it in.”
I wanted to assure Gabrielle that everything would be okay. I wanted to do my job. But I couldn’t in this moment. I could only stand and open the door. Two uniformed cops and Detective Jackson walked in. Detective Jackson did the talking.
“Ruby Simon, you are under arrest for the murder of Jason Hollander.”
Gabrielle was horrified. She looked at me, confused, then hurt, like I had somehow betrayed her. I could see in her eyes that the mere fact that I was being arrested made her immediately believe I might actually be guilty of the crime.