Chapter 4

The following character appears in the following chapters:

Samuel Albright

Hollie’s lawyer, expensive suit and shoes. average height and weight, 36 years old, good haircut

I sat in jail for 12 days. There was no lawyer and no arraignment. They didn’t even read me my rights. On the second day, I was moved downtown to the local jail. Everyday, I was grilled, at first by the local cops, then by people from the DA’s office, the State Police, and finally by a guy from the FBI. They all asked the same questions, and none of them believed what I said.

I kept to my story and kept asking about Hollie. I got no answers about her or a lawyer, and I wasn’t arraigned, or even read my rights.

During those 12 days, I saw drug dealers, murders, and other assorted lowlifes come and go. They got lawyers. They got arraigned, or they got sprung. I didn’t get shit. The guards would laugh and joke with them, but all I got was the silent treatment. The only good thing was that I was in a cell by myself. It seemed that if you were guilty of something there were plenty of laws and regulations to protect you, but if you were innocent, you didn’t have shit for protection.

Finally after 12 days of nothing but worry about Hollie, a lawyer came to see me. He was a fairly young guy, maybe 36 or 37 years old, average height, a good hair cut, and had on an expensive suit and shoes. I mean a really expensive custom tailored suit and shoes.

“Jacob Rust?” he asked, as the guard shoved me into the room where he waited.

“Yes,” was all that I said.

“Mr. Rust, I’m Samuel Albright of Albright, Albright, and Morgan. I’m Hollie’s attorney,” he told me.

“Hollie’s attorney!?” I said in shock. “She has an attorney and I don’t?” I demanded in an indigent voice. He ignored my outburst.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Rust, and I will explain things. I know that you are upset, but please listen, and things will become much clearer. You will be able to leave here shortly after we finish,” he informed me. I slid into the chair opposite him, and he started the explanation.

“I’m sorry that it has taken this long to arrange things, but there were a number of complications. All of this started several months ago when Hollie’s paternal grandmother passed away. In her Will, she left all of her considerable fortune to Hollie with the stipulation that if her granddaughter was not found within four months of the reading of the Will, all of the money would go to charity. As you might imagine, this caused Hollie’s parents great concern,” he told me.

“Yeah, I guess so. They never tried to find her in the eight years that she stayed with me. Just how much money are we talking about?” I asked.

“After taxes and expenses, $197 million dollars,” he said ever so casually. My breath went out of me I was so shocked.

“Damn, how wealthy was her family?” I asked on recovering somewhat.

“Her parents are nearly penniless having spent nearly all of both of their trust funds. Because of this, they were very eager to find Hollie to be able to get their hands on some of that money. They hired a private detective to locate her. It seems that he had little trouble finding her, as Hollie isn’t all that popular a first name.

“You needn’t worry about them spending all of Hollie’s money. That isn’t going to happen, as the Will is very specific about how the money will be spent, and just who can spend it until she reaches her majority, or 18 years of age. Hollie’s grandmother was a very wise woman,” he told me.

“How ... how is Hollie? They wouldn’t allow me to see her, or even talk to her. Is she all right?” I asked in a concerned voice.

“Hollie is just fine. She does miss you, however, there are additional stipulations and instructions in the Will. They deal with the distribution of the money, and also with who she is able to see or even talk to. Specifically, she is prohibited from seeing or contacting whoever she was staying with while she was missing. This prohibition will end when she has reached her 18th birthday. Until then, you may not see her or speak to her. Doing so would forfeit all of the remaining money which would go to charity,” he told me. I just stared at him in stunned silence for a time.

“Hollie was ready to give everything up early last week. She cares for you that much. Fortunately, cooler heads convinced her that she would be much better off, if she waited until she was eighteen to see you. Also, there were the charges that had been leveled against you. She engaged our firm to ensure that all of the charges against you were dropped and that you were free to go,” he continued after a pause.

“We submitted her sworn statement to the court explaining that she had run away on her own, as she couldn’t stand living with her parents anymore. Also, that you had rescued her from some pimp and had raised her as your daughter from a former marriage. We had used the statement route as she is still a minor, and didn’t need to sit through days of testimony and questioning in court.

“The court was somewhat dubious about the statement, but we were able to produce enough creditable witnesses who corroborated her story that the court eventually accepted it, and ruled that all charges against you be dropped,” he said with a smile.

“She has also sent you this check for $50,000. It’s the maximum that she is allowed to spend at one time. She is very sorry that this happened, and would really like to see you, but the cost would be just too great,” Lawyer Albright told me, handing me the check for $50,000.

“I will be staying in touch with you, and will advise you of anything that may change. She was very insistent about that,” he added.

“Tell Hollie that I love her and miss her,” I told him, all choked up.

“I will inform her of that. The guards will be here shortly, and you will be released. I’ll remain here until you are free and will give you a ride home,” he informed me. The guard soon returned, and I was out of there in half an hour. The lawyer’s car was a new luxury model, and I was soon home. That, of course, was when the real shit hit the fan.

It started with my neighbors. They called me a lot of things and had spray-painted things on my house. “Kidnapper” and “Child Abuser” were the kindest ones. Some were even uglier like “Rapist” and “Child Molester”, but where they got the idea that I had done those things from I had no idea.

Next was my boss. I went into work to talk to him after seeing how my neighbors were treating me.

“What the hell are you doing here, jailbird?” he demanded on seeing me.

“I came to see you because I am innocent of the things they said about me. Hollie’s lawyers finally convinced the court that she hadn’t been kidnapped by anyone. She had run away from her parents. I found her in a back alley one night. Some pimp was trying to peddle her eight-year old ass. I punched him out, and wound up taking care of her for the next eight years.

“Her parents wanted her back then because her grandmother had left her a lot of money. They hired some skip-tracer to find her and made up all of the charges. I never did any of the things they accused me of,” I finished but was ready to bust someone in the chops. I was being treated like a criminal, when all of the real criminals were treated like they were innocent.

“Be that as may, Rust, you can’t work here any longer. The presumption is that you are guilty, and that isn’t going to change any time soon. Get your stuff and get out. You’re fired,” he told me. I was ready to level him, but it wouldn’t have done any good and would have only gotten me in trouble with the police again.

The next one to get on me was Father Rayon. He came to my house the next day. He appeared very disturbed.

“You lied to us, Jacob,” he said in a disappointed voice.

“Only for the best of reasons, Father,” I told him before explaining the entire story again, only leaving out certain embarrassing details.

“What else was I to do, Father? You have read about the things that have happened to many of those that the state was supposed to be taking care of. There have certainly been enough stories recently in the newspapers and on the news. Could I have allowed any of those things to happen to Hollie? It would have been kinder to have left her with the pimp,” I finished. Father exhaled heavily.

“It was a difficult decision, I will admit. Still you could have taken me into your confidence. Something could have been worked out. You are right though, Hollie would have never been happy in the state’s hands. She would have probably run away again,” he told me, before changing the topic to a more comfortable one.

“You don’t know how smart she is, Jacob. She was the best student our school ever had. She was head and shoulders above the other students. She was an A+ student the entire 6 years that she was with us. She was very modest though and never showed off. She was always the first one to help any of the other students who were having a hard time or didn’t understand something. She is an amazing young woman, and now you tell me she has inherited a lot of money. Will that change her?” he asked going from exuberant to doubtful. I didn’t have an answer for him, but I didn’t think it would change Hollie.

“Be in church on Sunday,” he told me before leaving.

Sunday in church, Father Rayon preached a powerful sermon on the fallacy of accepting allegations and hearsay without proof. He specifically used Hollie and me as examples. He shamed those who had accepted rumors of my guilt without any evidence. It helped somewhat. Several of my neighbors apologized to me, and others were less antagonistic. It took repeating the facts many times to many different people before enough minds and hearts were changed. I did not get my job back, however. Fortunately, I had the check for $50,000 and could live on that for a long while.

I also found a civil rights attorney who was interested in my case. We sued the city and the state for violating my civil rights by locking me up for 12 days without a lawyer, or even being read my rights, in addition to not being arraigned. The case dragged along for nearly a year, but in the end, the city and the state settled out of court for $1.5 million dollars. My attorney got a good chunk of that, but that was okay as he did most of the work on the case.

One day about five weeks after being released from jail, I stopped into Birdy’s for my regular dinner and got a surprise.

“Jake,” Birdy said as I took a seat, “a man came in today and gave me a check for $50,000 dollars. He said it was to buy new stoves, refrigerators, and freezers with. He also said that it was from Hollie, but I wasn’t to tell anyone that,” she finished in a whisper.

“Yes, that was from Hollie. She sent me the same kind of check. She is very generous,” I told her. Of course, Birdy and the ladies working for her knew all about how I had found Hollie and some of the things that we had done. I had never had a problem there after being released from jail, as they knew the entire story.

Two weeks or so after Birdy received her check, I received a call from Samuel Albright.

“Mr. Rust, this is Samuel Albright. I’m calling you from a neighbor’s phone. Be at room 612 of the hotel on 24th Street at 5:00 PM tomorrow afternoon. Come alone and don’t tell anyone where you are going or what you are doing. Dress well.” That was the entire message before the phone line went dead.

“What the hell could he want?” I wondered. “What could be so secret?” followed that. I had no answer but followed his instructions to the letter.