Free Jane Doe January by Emily Winslow

away with. When my parents left me for a couple weeks at seventeen, I adopted a kitten. Bill was naughtier, throwing crazy parties while his parents were gone. He steam-cleaned the house before they got home, to the delight of his doting Italian mom and the justified suspicion of his cop dad.
    His wife says to me, right in the middle of other things, “I want you to know that I’m okay with this.” She means that she doesn’t mind Bill caring about me and helping me. I’m glad that she doesn’t mind, because I need him tomorrow. Every time he’s said that he can be with me for this part or for that, I’ve looked down at my lap and said “Yes, please” or “Good” or, once, “I need you to stay for the whole time. I need you to not leave.” I think he feelsthat need, too. When he talked about how “some cases stay with you,” his eyes had gotten shiny.
    When we get our coats, while we wind scarves around our necks and tug on gloves for the brief dash across the street back to the hotel, I thank him again for prioritizing the hearing over a university event that he’s supposed to attend at the same time. I’m just relieved that the hearing didn’t fall a few weeks later, when he’ll be representing the university in Prague and China. He says, without hesitation, “I would have changed the trip if it did.”
    I wake up early, because of the time difference, and find a marathon of Law & Order reruns on the hotel room TV. The pattern of each episode is familiar and comforting as it hums in the background, driving toward a resolution every hour. It’s what I would watch anyway, even if I weren’t going to court, but being headed to court makes watching it seem funny. I drink an entire pot of room-service decaf. I get my shoes shined. I have till noon, when Bill and I will walk to court together, through the blade-cold winter air. England doesn’t typically get to these temperatures, and the chill feels like childhood to me.
    The hearing is not in the historic courthouse near the hotel. It’s a few blocks away, in the municipal court, a run-down building awkwardly shaped to look like a police badge from above. Bill and I have been instructed to meet the other detectives in front of the “broken elevators.” They’re easy to find once we’re through the oversensitive metal detector and past the chipper, already bored security lady; there are no working elevators to trick us.
    Everyone knows Bill. He’s greeted by passing uniformed cops, security, and press. Newspaper journalists are there, and TV cameras. They’re only allowed to film my feet. I’m glad for the whim that had led me to use the hotel’s shoe-polishing service.
    The unpleasant building is pretty much just rooms off a singlelong hallway, a corridor that’s quickly filled by the line for today’s hearings. Everyone is scheduled for a twelve thirty start and will just wait their turn. Accusers, accused, and witnesses for lesser cases all stand together in that line. For us, a more sensitive case, Fryar is in a holding pen. Dan Honan and Aprill Campbell arrive and we go upstairs to meet the assistant district attorney (ADA) from the Crimes Against Persons Unit (shortened in conversation to “Crimes Persons”) who’ll be prosecuting our case. His name is Kevin. I’m told that this case was fought over in the DA’s office. Everyone wanted it.
    On our way up the stairs, the detectives tell me that “Georgia” is already here. I figure out that they mean the other victim, from November the same year as me. It’s the first time I’ve heard her name. She’s with her husband, and two women: we’ve each been assigned an advocate from Pittsburgh Action Against Rape.
    Georgia has the first prep session with the prosecutor, so Bill, Dan, my advocate, and I continue to hang out in the hallway.