Shards (27 page)

“Look,” I said quietly, “I get that you hate me.”

“You're crazy!” she said. “You're a liar. That abortion is a lie!”

I couldn't believe it. Keawe was still denying our affair to his wife.

“Why don't you check the court records?” I asked.

That took her aback. She paused for a moment and then said, “You leave us alone, you bitch. You're a stalker.”

Someone I worked with came up, and Colleen left angrily, but my managers put me on leave. They were understanding, but they couldn't have displays like that going on in the store. It looked like I was going to be fired, but my probation officer was supportive, and the attorneys contacted MPD. The end result was that I still had a job, and Keawe was told to keep his wife away from me.

I was taken off the floor. I started working after hours, revamping and stocking, and that was better for me. I was grateful that I didn't have to see any customers. No men except for my supervisor, and he was a gay Asian man. I was okay with Asian men, Hawaiian men, African-American men, but every time I walked by a white middle-aged man, I would think about stabbing him or setting him on fire.

Every day was a complete and utter struggle not to use. The nights were worse. I could never sleep, and the flashbacks tormented me. Some nights I felt sure I would hurl myself off the lanai onto the asphalt fourteen stories below. I started to open up to my mom a little bit about the flashbacks, the dealer. Because we were living in such close quarters, I couldn't hide anything from her. It was time for her to know, and she deserved to know. Bit by bit, I began to tell her some of what the dealer had done to me.

“My God, Alli, that man is still out there,” she said. “We need to press charges. We need to make sure he's not doing this to someone else. We need to—”

I stopped her. I knew how the law worked. “It's my word against his, Mom,” I said, “and I'm an addict facing felony charges. Who's going to believe me? There's no evidence.”

“But they can get evidence. If they get a warrant, they'll find the drugs and all those cameras and—”

“They can't get a warrant on my word alone. You can't just accuse someone of doing drugs or some other crime and obtain a warrant.”

“But your testimony—”

“My testimony?” I felt anger coursing through my body. Anger not at my mom but at the situation the dealer had put me in. “My testimony? Even if they could somehow obtain a warrant and recover the evidence, who would actually be on trial? Me, Mom. I'm a discredited witness.”

“That man needs to be punished for what he's done,” my mom said.

“You're too naïve, Mom. It doesn't work that way. It's about evidence and the law. Of all people, I know that best.”

“I know, sweetie,” my mom said, backing off. “You've just been through so much.”

My mom was my rock during this time. When I couldn't stay sober for myself, I stayed sober for her. She held up well, she was strong. She had to be. She felt she was responsible for keeping me alive.

My mom was a beautiful, amazing woman who deserved better. The life she lived belonged to another. She deserved a better husband, a better daughter, more loving parents. She deserved to wear better shoes. Yes, shoes. Everything she was, had, and could ever possibly be had been given away to friends and family. Her shoes were always worn and old. Never name-brand. She had carried me, and other friends and family, on her shoulders. I could see that in her shoes.

I broke this woman, I hurt her so deeply, so painfully. She would never admit it, or even face the truth about my horrendous actions against her, but it's the truth. I knew how she would die, and my sister agreed. My mother would die from a broken heart. My father cracked it, I shattered it, and my sister was forever trying to fix it. I knew one day that heart would stop, and when it did, I would lose all that was good in my life.

I knew I couldn't survive without my mother. My main motivation was to turn into the daughter she believed I was, to salvage the time I had left with her, to find a way to someday laugh with her and take care of her, emotionally and financially.

One of the therapists I was seeing in Oahu called it “a fucking wonderment” that I had remained sober this long. I began to think
it was my survival instinct—the instinct that made me a good cop, the instinct that got me out of that house—because I knew the only way to survive was to stay sober. If I used again, I would die.

•  •  •

In August, I decided to change my plea from not guilty to guilty. I had wanted to plead guilty right from the beginning, and now my lawyers agreed. I knew I couldn't live through a trial, and I wanted to own up to what I had done, to make amends. After that, I waited for my sentencing date. Waited to see if I would go to prison. Waited to see if I could stay sober through all of it.

And then finally the waiting was over. I had a sentencing date of October 29. We had to fly to Maui for it, and the night before we left, my mom and I made dinner and sat on the lanai, watching the sunset. I didn't know if I would be coming back to this apartment. If I got probation, I would have to stay in Maui until the terms were worked out. If I was sentenced to time, I would be sent straight to jail.

I stared down at the canal below, at the people who drifted by in the early evening. Even from this far up, I could easily identify the drug dealers who passed by below.

I watched one man, a middle-aged white man, waiting for two tiny pretty Asian women to cross the street to him. They were agitated and fluttery, and he was loudly angry about something. He was dressed in black, with cheap chains dangling from his soft hips and a too-tight shirt open low. He was sleazy, a wannabe bad boy like he'd seen in MTV videos. I instantly hated him and worried for the girls. If I had a firearm, I would have taken aim at him from above.

In my other life, my life as a cop, I could have done something to defuse the situation. But now I was helpless. I could only look
down, see him for the power he had, and feel angry that the girls wouldn't get away from him.

But they needed him. They needed his drugs.

He had them, and he knew it.

•  •  •

I worried that Keawe's wife might show up at my sentencing hearing. I also secretly hoped Keawe would be there.

But on the day of my sentencing, no one at all was there. Just my mom and the lawyers and a couple of reporters.

My lawyer argued that the PTSD, the addiction, and the lifelong loss of my shield should be taken into account when sentencing me—that, in effect, I was already being punished enough. I was hoping for probation only; the prosecutor was angling for five years in prison.

I barely made it through my prepared statement, which was a heartfelt apology to my friends, my family, the MPD, and the county of Maui in general.

“MPD gave me the opportunity to have an amazing career,” I told the judge, “and I provided far less than my best. The betrayal I have imposed upon them will forever haunt me. I know great shame. I am overcome with remorse, and a spoken apology seems frail compared to the gravity of my actions.”

I had worked on that statement for days and meant every word of it. I only wished the people who needed to hear it had been there.

The judge asked me what I thought my sentence should be.

“Probation,” I answered. “I think jail is the wrong place for addicts.” From what I'd seen from my time in jail in Albuquerque, I knew how available drugs were. I was worried for myself in that environment. Worried for any addict.

“And whom do you think jails are for, Miss Moore?” the judge said.

“Violent offenders, Your Honor.”

He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. I had no idea what he was going to say. Then he started talking.

“The defendant was a con artist,” he said. “She perpetrated a scam. She had a reason for her scam: she wanted drugs. She wanted to continue using drugs. She didn't want to give up her job, didn't want to ask for help from her family, who all appear quite willing and able to help.”

As he talked about what he viewed as my calculated actions, my deceptions, I started to feel like I couldn't breathe.

He continued, “Miss Moore is such a convincing storyteller that the court can't tell if today is a continuation of that scam. Which Allison Moore is before us in court today? The Allison Moore that worked vice undercover, that was able to arrest and investigate drug dealers, or the other Allison Moore? The court understands the difficulty that vice officers have in having to live a double life, but at some point you went over and never came back.”

Then, most painfully, he referred to a letter Erin Doyle had written against me. He said, “Miss Moore fooled an entire police department, as Miss Doyle says. She had every single person fooled. Eighty-eight officers donated their leave and time. Miss Doyle wrote a very strong letter detailing all the opportunities Miss Moore had to come clean to the person who was her confidant.” I hadn't read the letter, but it wasn't hard to imagine how much Erin hated me. She had taken me in, taken care of me, and I had spit in her face.

Then he read the entire list of people who demanded restitution from me and the amounts I owed them.

I owed Officer Keawe Davis more than a thousand dollars.

The judge sentenced me to one year in prison and five years probation, beginning immediately.

I turned around, searching for my mom. She was right behind me, putting on a brave face, trying not to cry.

I knew what she was thinking. How could she keep me safe and sober while I was in prison?

Moana grew up in the
projects on Oahu. Exposed to narcotics from birth, she was raised to believe in three kinds of law enforcement: police officers, cops, and pigs.
Police officers
were the heroes that pulled you from a burning vehicle.
Cops
were the ones that responded to 911 calls. And
pigs
, which included the majority of law enforcement, were those that slapped you around, “taxed” you, and took your dope.

“You never, ever talk to or run to any of the three,” she told me.

Moana, a Samoan, was one of the girls in the Federal Detention Center on Oahu. Her sentencing date was coming up, and I was helping her write a letter to her judge.

“I still can't believe I'm talking to a cop,” she told me.

At first, I had been worried about what the women in prison would think of me. Like Moana, many of them were raised to fear
and hate the police, and even though I was an inmate just like them, no one could ever forget I was also a cop.

As a former cop, a former
vice
cop, a
haole
female who not only broke the law but also hurt the people she loved in the most heinous way, I felt I should be getting my ass kicked in prison on a daily basis. I should have been in the hole because general population was too dangerous for me. I should have gotten no support from the guards or compassion from the staff. That was how prison should be for cops, a consequence of abusing the responsibility and trust given to them.

But that's not how it was for me. The girls accepted me and treated me well. I liked them. The majority of the women in the FDC were bright and articulate. It was easy for me to forget I was housed with some very seasoned manipulators, liars, and thieves. Even easier for me to forget that I was one of them.

One of the first friends I made in the FDC was Bets, a
tita
from Maui, in for selling drugs and stabbing her husband. On my third day there, she sat down to eat breakfast with me.

“You the Maui cop?” she asked. I could tell by her face she already knew that I was.

I nodded. I figured we'd get into a fight and I'd be sent to solitary. She was masculine with a football player's shoulders. She was going to destroy me.

Instead, she laughed. “I was one of Patrick's first informants on Molokai,” she said. “Way back when.”

“Really?” I said. “So you know all the vice guys.”

“I know 'em,” she said, and started rattling off names and details about a bunch of my old friends. She remembered a lot of them, even though she had already been in for eight years.

“You know I'm in the cell above you in three Alpha, right?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I didn't.”

“You woke me up last night,” she said accusingly.

“Oh,” I said. I had had a horrible flashback during the night and ran into my cell wall trying to get away from the dealer. “I'm sorry.”

“I heard a big crash,” she said.

“I ran into the wall.” I tried to be nonchalant. “Must have been a nightmare.”

“And you ran into a wall?”

“I guess I did.”

“Well, why'd you do that?” she laughed. “I'm gonna call you ‘Wally.' ”

I laughed. If a nickname was all I got from her, things were going to be okay.

“Why do you have your own cell anyway?” she asked.

“I'm not sure,” I said, though I knew. It was the PTSD, the flashbacks. They couldn't put me in with another inmate if I was going to be hallucinating and crashing into walls in the middle of the night. Too dangerous for both of us.

“Where they got you working?” Bets asked me.

“The kitchen.”

“Not bad, but they mix state and federal bodies there, and you gotta watch out for the state bodies.”

“So far I like it,” I said, but she was right. The state prisons were full, so many of the state criminals got sent to the FDC. It could get touchy with the state girls. They tended to be the low-level criminals, the fighters.

Things went fine for me in the kitchen for about a month. Then a new girl came in, a girl I had arrested for selling drugs a couple of years earlier in Lahaina. She recognized me immediately and came at me swinging. Luckily, the guard broke it up, and soon I had a new job as athletic director.