Academy Murders: The Notion of Liberty

Her spider friend went back into his hole. Kin smirked. The purple writing encouraged her to decipher the latest anagram. “GUARD” sprang out almost immediately and she felt a pang of laughter bubble up in her throat that she had found out about the code so quickly.

“Guard!” It wasn’t a yelp but a beckoning for Goro.

“What do you want, Jergensen?”

“I wanted to know the process that it takes to evaluate the mail.”

Goro squinted his eyes a bit. “Okay….”

“I’m serious. About how long it takes and what procedures are involved.”

“You’re baiting me. Are you trying to delay something?”

Kim shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Just curiosity bit me.”

“You sure it wasn’t that spider.” The look on Kim’s face read wryness.

“Alright. What we do is we just sit down before a table and look for contraband. That’s it, though. We, as we have been doing, give you the letters and we can’t read the content without producing a warrant. Is that clear enough? Should I draw a diagram?”

“No, Officer Goro. That's what I needed to know.”

Goro walked back to his post with a bit of chip on his shoulder the size of the Rockies. The fact he could relate his profession to an ex-cop made him feel a bit like he was part of a bigger system. In his mind, he still felt like Kim was trying to run a game on him. He dismissed it entirely.

Emboldened, Kim sensed she could write anything, now. She let Yawquisha know that she didn’t have to write in code anymore. She had finally got the message. The purple writing against the yellow legal paper looked like royalty. Golden pages permitted her to realize the difference between what words to read and to fully soak up the young woman’s vocabulary.

She sketched out her outline for the letter she would send Yawquisha. After revising and editing her post, she made it clear that she would be out of this situation soon. That she would be addressing all of the parameters of what it meant to be free.

“Officer Goro!”

“What is it now….”

Kim stood gaunt against the bars and slipped the letter into Goro’s hands.

“Thanks, again,” Kim said.

“Whatever,” Goro replied with aimlessness.

The smile on Kim’s face stretched. It was like a slice in her face that yielded a stretched out “U.” What she had written would be the final statement on her case. She assured herself and her pen pal crawling on the wall that she would be out of this situation.

That next morning, she ate burnt toast and didn’t touch the watery eggs or the ham that looked too brown. She dumped the remaining contents in the toilet and then sent the platter clattering like bells that fell down a flight of cement stairs.

“Jergensen! C’mon with the noise. You know better ex-police,” Goro pointed out.

Kim just relaxed against her rack. She was ready to take her shower and found it to be more refreshing than at any point in her whole journey. The stinging transparent needles cleansed her body but also her mind. Just to sense the jet of water was like clearing her consciousness of all the debris that had accumulated in her life. The psyche that she had attached to her gave her the impetus to continue to be the nurturer of happy thoughts. Those thoughts would sustain her this entire time. She thought of him. The yearning to be part of his life and to rejigger her own existence propelled her to concern herself with the notion of liberty.