Chapter 13 - The Arrest at O Street
While the city lay quiet beneath the gathering blizzard, the consequences of Christmas Eve were descending upon 1422 O Street with the unyielding force of the law.
Before heading to Ashworth & Sterling, Rachel had made one official notification to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s Special Victims Unit.
At ten o’clock on Christmas night, two marked MPD cruisers and an unmarked black Ford Explorer pulled up to the curb outside the dark, silent Georgetown townhouse. The snow had covered the tire tracks left by the two commercial moving trucks from the night before, leaving the cobblestones pristine and undisturbed.
Inside the dark house, illuminated only by the faint amber glow of the municipal streetlights filtering through bare, curtainless windows, Margaret Prescott was sitting on an upturned wooden crate in the center of the stripped drawing room.
She was shivering violently. She wore three coats—an old mink from the 1980s that smelled of mothballs, a stained wool cardigan, and a dirty down jacket she had retrieved from the basement storage closet. Her manicured hands were tucked deep into her armpits. Beside her, curled on a pile of gray packing blankets on the bare, splintered pine floor, lay Jillian.
Jillian’s eyes were swollen, red-rimmed from crying and three-quarters of a bottle of cheap cooking sherry she had found behind the stripped kitchen pantry.
"Mother," Jillian groaned, her voice thick and raspy. "My head is pounding. Can’t you turn the heat on? It’s below freezing in here."
"The thermostat is digital, Jillian," Margaret snapped through chattering teeth, her voice brittle with rage. "That peasant turned off the master power grid before she left. The water is off. The gas is off. Derek will be here any minute with Victoria. Victoria will fix this. Victoria has a key to the Ashworth family townhouse on N Street. We will go there. We will sleep in heated beds, and tomorrow we will have Vanessa arrested for grand larceny."
"She took everything, Mother," Jillian whimpered, pulling the rough moving blanket tighter around her shoulders. "She took the rugs. She took the paintings. She even took the dining room chandelier. How did she do that in two hours?"
"Because she is a common laborer," Margaret hissed, her venom keeping her warm when the blankets failed. "She has the mind of a moving foreman. She thinks stripping furniture makes her powerful. She doesn't understand that the Prescott name cannot be removed by moving men. When the gala guests arrived tonight, they saw our dignity. They saw that we were victims of an unhinged, lower-class lunatic."
Before Jillian could respond, heavy, authoritative pounding hammered against the solid oak front door.
*BAM. BAM. BAM.*
Margaret jumped up from the crate, a triumphant, spiteful smile cracking her pale, chapped lips.
"You see?" Margaret cried, smoothing the front of her dirty mink coat with trembling fingers. "That will be Victoria's private driver! Or Derek! I told you, Jillian! A Prescott never stays down!"
Margaret hurried through the echoing, empty entrance hall, her leather heels clicking hollowly on the bare hardwood. She reached the front door, unlocked the deadbolt, and yanked it open.
"It’s about time!" Margaret began, her aristocratic scowl firmly in place. "We have been freezing in this house for twenty-four hours while that little—"
She stopped dead.
Standing on the snow-covered stoop were three uniformed police officers and a plainclothes detective wearing a gold shield on her belt. Behind them, the red and blue emergency beacons of two patrol cars painted the snowy facades of O Street in pulsing, rhythmic flashes of crimson and cobalt.
Across the street, curtains twitched in the windows of three multi-million-dollar townhouses. The neighbors—the very neighbors Margaret had spent thirty years cultivating, the ones she had snubbed when their daughters didn't make the junior league—were watching.
"Margaret Prescott?" the female detective asked, holding up an open leather credential case. "Detective Harris, Youth and Family Services Division, Metropolitan Police Department."
Margaret’s face tightened into an expression of sheer outrage. "What is the meaning of this? If this is about the utilities, I have already informed the city that my daughter-in-law committed criminal vandalism—"
"Ma'am, we’re not here about the utilities," Detective Harris interrupted, her voice entirely devoid of deference. "We have an active arrest warrant issued by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for Jillian Prescott."
Inside the hallway, Jillian froze. The blanket slipped from her hands, pooling on the floorboards.
"A warrant?" Margaret shrieked, stepping forward to block the doorway. "For what? This is absurd! My daughter is a Prescott! Her grandfather was a federal circuit judge! You cannot simply march onto private property on Christmas night and—"
"The charge is felony child abuse and third-degree assault on a minor," Detective Harris said, pulling a folded legal document from her coat pocket. "The warrant was signed by Magistrate Judge Thorne at three o’clock this afternoon. Jillian Prescott, step out onto the porch with your hands visible."
"No!" Margaret screamed, throwing her arms wide across the doorframe. "This is a fabrication! Vanessa is doing this! That little country tramp is trying to destroy our family! Jillian didn't touch that child! The girl was being insolent, she slipped on the rug, it was an accident!"
"Ma'am, step aside," one of the uniformed officers commanded, his hand resting firmly on the grip of his utility belt. "If you interfere with the execution of a felony arrest warrant, you will be taken into custody for obstruction of justice."
"How dare you!" Margaret roared, her voice cracking into high-pitched hysteria that echoed down the quiet Georgetown street. "Do you know who I am? Do you know who my husband was? I will have your badges by morning! I will call the Chief of Police! I will call Senator Sterling!"
"Senator Sterling was here two hours ago for dinner, ma'am," the officer replied deadpan. "He left."
Detective Harris bypassed Margaret with practiced efficiency, stepping into the barren foyer.
Jillian backed away, her hands trembling, knocking into the bare baseboard where Derek’s safe had been ripped from the wall. "Mother! Don't let them touch me! Mother!"
"Jillian Prescott, you are under arrest," Detective Harris said, taking Jillian’s wrist, twisting her arm behind her back, and snapping a cold steel cuff over her bone.
"Get off me! You’re hurting me! Mother!" Jillian wailed, thrashing wildly.
The second officer moved in, securing her other arm. The double-click of the handcuffs echoed through the hollow house like the closing of a tomb.
"You monsters!" Margaret shrieked, lunging at Detective Harris. "Take your hands off my daughter! Take your hands off her!"
The third officer caught Margaret by the shoulders, shoving her firmly backward against the doorframe. "Ma'am! Back up! Right now!"
Across the street, doors were opening. Mrs. Kensington, wearing a silk dressing gown, stepped onto her porch to watch. Two doors down, the French ambassador's chief of staff stood on his steps, holding a phone, recording the entire spectacle.
Jillian was dragged down the stone steps in her bare feet, her gray socks soaking through instantly as they hit the freezing slush of the sidewalk. Her hair was matted, her face smeared with mascara, screaming obscenities into the falling snow as Detective Harris pushed her into the back of the patrol cruiser.
Margaret stumbled out onto the stoop, clutching the railing, her old mink coat flapping open in the winter wind.
"Jillian!" Margaret screamed, tears cutting white streaks through the makeup caked on her shivering face. "Jillian, don't say anything! Victoria will fix this! Victoria will save us!"
Detective Harris walked back up the steps, holding a second legal document bearing a bright red wax seal.
"Margaret Prescott?" Detective Harris asked.
"What?" Margaret gasped, clutching her chest, her breathing coming in violent, ragged wheezes. "What else could you possibly want from me?"
"This is an emergency order of structural eviction and civil trespass, issued by the Superior Court at the request of the deed holder, Mercer Crest Holdings, LLC," Detective Harris stated, slapping the document firmly onto the front door with heavy adhesive tape. "You have sixty seconds to retrieve your coat and leave this property. As of ten-fifteen tonight, anyone found inside 1422 O Street who is not an authorized representative of Mercer Crest will be arrested for criminal trespass."
Margaret stared at the red notice. Her name was nowhere on it. Only *Mercer Crest Holdings, LLC* in bold, black legal typography.
"Leave?" Margaret whispered, her voice finally breaking into pure, unadulterated terror. "Leave? Where am I supposed to go? This is my home! Arthur bought this house in nineteen seventy-eight! Everything I have is in this house!"
"There’s nothing in this house, ma'am," Detective Harris said, looking past her into the barren, hollow rooms stripped clean down to the baseboards. "It’s empty. Step off the property."
Two officers took Margaret by the elbows and guided her down the slippery stone steps.
She did not have a purse. She did not have her keys. She had only the dirty mink coat on her back and the freezing snow soaking through her thin Italian loafers.
The patrol cruisers pulled away from the curb, their sirens giving a short, mocking yelp as they turned the corner onto Wisconsin Avenue, taking Jillian Prescott into the central holding facility to join her brother.
May you like
Margaret Prescott was left standing entirely alone on the sidewalk in front of 1422 O Street, shivering in the dark, while the neighbors she had spent a lifetime looking down upon watched her from behind warm, glowing windows.
***
