Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Katherine walked through the dimly lit jails. She had seen pictures of the inside, of Sarah Jacobs. Oh God. Sarah Jacobs was in the same building as her. Sarah Jacobs, who was a star, Sarah Jacobs who was everything Katherine wished to be. Sarah was the famed Vaudeville actress who had been pinned as responsible for her both for the death of her husband and sister. Sarah Jacobs was in the jail with her. Katherine smiled.

Katherine was greeted by a women who shook her hand and told her to call her Mama. She looked “mama” up and down. She didn’t seem too threatening, Katherine figured it’d be pretty easy to convince Mama to help her. Katherine pouted and leaned on the wall.
“Mama, will you help a girl out? I wanna meet the other girls.”
“Oh honey, that’s my job.” Mama walked out and Katherine followed slowly.
They stopped at one cell where a girl with a eyepatch was sitting on a bed, braiding her hair. Katherine tried not to show her disgust. She was really in a prison with some girl with ratty hair and an eyepatch?
“What’d she do?” Katherine asked, not even hiding her disgust.
“She has ears,” answered the girl. “Call me Blink honey. My hubby Mush, well he really liked to chew gum!” she laughed. “And I came home from work, like normal, but this was a real bad day, honey, you don’t understand. You know what Mushie was doing? Do ya?” She laughed again. “He was chewing his precious gum! No. He was popping that damn gun. And I told him, I told him that if he didn’t stop popping that gum, he would get it. And he did!” Blink started laughing even hard. “So I took the shotgun off the wall and I fired two warning shots! Into his head!”

Katherine blinked. This girl was surely insane, from the way she twirled her hair to how she was still giggling about her husband’s death. Mama lead her to the next jail cell, were there was a tiny brown haired girl sitting on her bed hugging her knees. The girl looked up at Katherine, her hazel eyes looked her up and down. Katherine immediately felt bad for her.

“You wanna know what I did, huh? My name’s Elsie. I was real close to my girlfriend Alice. We met at one of them parties. She was real sweet and charmed right into her bed and into her house. She had this real pretty red hair too. I used to make her drinks, and she said she loved them. She said she loved me too! We lived together for six whole months. She had told me she was single and we, we were more than friends, but Alice, she had hooked up with six other ladies while I was working my ass off for our shitty apartment!” The small girl’s eyes lit up with rage. She no longer looked fragile, she looked, for lack of better word, pissed. “As soon as I found out, I went home. I fixed her a drink, as usual. You know, some gals just can’t hold their arsenic.”

Katherine stared at Elsie. Katherine had messed around with girls enough to know she liked them just as well as men. Maybe even a little better. But the way Elsie spoke so openly about liking girls worried Katherine just a little bit. She looked at mama to see her reaction but Mama didn’t look like she cared. They carried onto the next cell.

Chapter Text

A girl was laying on the bed smiled at her. It was the first time anyone in the damn place had seemed like an actual normal human. Elsie may have looked cute when she was looking at her up and down, but she still seemed crazy. A pair of wooden crutches leaned on the girls bed, and when the girl got up, she grabbed them and went to the bars of the cell. The girl’s light brown hair was cut in a fashionable bob, and it looked as if she still had the remains of makeup on her face.
“Hello! I’m Crutchie!” The girl, Crutchie, said.
“I’m Katherine. What’d you do?”
“I was making dinner one day, carving the chicken, as you do, and in storms my husband, Finch, in a jealous rage. ‘You’ve been fucking the milkman’ He yelled. He was crazy! He kept screaming, ‘You’ve been fucking the milkman!” And then. He ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times!”
Katherine stepped back.
“So what’d you do?” Crutchie asked, seeming unsettled by Katherine’s surprise.
“I shot my lover, Fred Casely, he was walkin’ out on me.” Katherine answered. Crutchie nodded and looked Katherine over.
“Welcome to the Cook County Jail.”

The occupant of the next cell almost scared her. It really did. If Katherine had to look at a row of pictures and pick out who looked the least likely to commit murder, this girl would be her first pick. She was tall and skinny. As soon as she had seen her, the girl stood up shakily and grabbed the bars and peered at her curiously. Katherine looked the girl up and down. Her dress was starting to tear and her face was surrounded by a mass of messy and dirty light brown curls. As soon as the girl spoke, in a language not familiar to Katherine , Katherine felt such pity for the girl, she stepped forward and offered her a hand.
“Did you do it?” Katherine asked quietly as the girl shook her hand.
“Uh uh. Not guilty.” Her pronunciation was off and her vowels stretched, but Katherine believed 200% that the girl who stood in front of her was innocent.
“What’s your name?” Katherine asked, “I’m Katherine .” She pointed to herself, in case the girl didn’t understand.
“Kath-rine?” The girl pointed at Katherine . She pointed to herself. “Sibella.”
Katherine nodded. “Katherine ,” she pointed to herself. “Sibella.” She pointed to Sibella.
Sibella beamed. “Sibella.” She pointed to herself, “Kath-rine,” She pointed to Katherine .

Katherine grinned at the girl. Despite her clear lack of beauty and wealth, she seemed to be the only decent person in the jail. Mama started to move along and Katherine made it a goal to visit Sibella as much as she could.
“Mama, what’d she do?” Katherine quietly asked.
“They say she and her neighbor pinned her friend Spot down and chopped her head off.”
“They say? Mama, they think she, coulda killed someone?”
“Baby, no one understands her, and they looked into her and the girl’s files and they found out that she and Spot were in a relationship. They won’t let her go, even though she’s clearly innocent.”
“Oh…” Two girls, three, counting Katherine liked girls. Only one was being was screwed over and she barely even understood what was happening.

The next cell was empty. There was a bottle of perfume on the small desk. On the neatly made bed, there was a black lace dress. Katherine wondered who slept there for a moment before remembering. It must be Sarah Jacobs’ cell. No one else could have such a dress and perfume in jail other than Sarah Jacobs.

The last cell’s occupant was sitting on her bed, reading a book. She had dark brown hair that fell to her shoulders. It looked greasy, as if she hadn’t washed it in days.
“Hey. What’d you do?!” Katherine snapped. The girl hadn’t looked up her and she was shocked at the lack of attention from her. Besides, all these girls were insane, so it didn’t matter how they were talked to. They weren’t important. Except Sibella. But she didn’t do it. And whoever the hell was in the cell in front of her didn’t seem to care about her, so what’d it matter.
“I loved that Jack Kelly more than I could possibly say. He was sensitive, a painter. However, he was troubled. Each night he’d go out trying to find himself, and he eventually found himself. It only took Ruth, Gladys, Rosemary, and Irving. You could say we broke up because of artistic differences. He say himself as alive, and I saw him dead.”

Katherine raised an eyebrow. After deciding that the woman wasn’t worth conversing with and she turned to Mama.
“What now?” She asked, rather rudely.
“You go to your cell and as soon as Sarah gets back from the reporters, I’ll introduce you two. You’d like her.”
“Sarah, as in the Sarah Jacobs!?”
“Yes, the Sarah Jacobs.”
“What’s she like?” Katherine wanted to know what Sarah Jacobs was like, maybe if they were friends, Sarah could help her be a vaudeville star when they got out! But until then, Katherine was stuck in her jail cell with a bunch of crazy women with no manners. She sighed.

Chapter Text

A woman started to walk towards her and Mama. She was tall, and had her hair set into neat finger waves, her dress was black, and the fishnets the woman wore were in perfect condition. Katherine knew exactly who it she was. Sarah Jacobs. She was smoking a cigarette, and her blood red lipstick left traces onto it but her lipstick wasn’t smudged. Not even a little bit. Katherine smiled at Sarah Jacobs, and when Sarah Jacobs smiled back, Katherine’s knees almost buckled.
“Who are you?” Sarah Jacobs’ voice was low and flirtatious.
“Katherine Pulitzer. You’re Sarah Jacobs.” Katherine stated. Sarah offered Katherine her cigarette. Katherine took it and took a deep inhale.
“Who’d ya kill?”
Katherine gave Sarah her cigarette back.
“My lover, Fred Casely. He was walkin’ out on me.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you’re gonna say in court?”
“I dunno what else to say. What’s your defence?”
“I don’t remember a thing. I completely blacked out, but all I know is that I didn’t do it. I got the tenderest heart in the world, ain’t that right Mama?”
Mama smiled, “Betcha ass you do.”
Sarah Jacobs took a step towards Katherine. “Now listen here Kitty. The reporters don’t want the truth. They want what they can sell on the headlines, so you betta sell them the best goddamn tragedy you can. If you get the press on your side, ya set.”
Sarah Jacobs turned away from Katherine.
“Wait!”
Sarah looked back at Katherine. “Can you help me?”
“Depends. What for?”
“All my life I’ve wanted to be in vaudeville. Now I’ve got the papes talking about me, I was thinking you could help me.”
Sarah sighed. “First you need to work up a defence. But I think I’m better off working alone. No offence, but I don’t know you and you’ll just bring my performance down.”
Katherine scowled. “Fine.”
Mama locked Sarah back into her cell.

“So that’s Sarah Jacobs.” Katherine said bitterly as she and Mama were walking back to her cell.
“She’s quite a character, ain’t she? Wears nothing but lace and wears the most expensive perfumes she can get.” They were walking past Sibella’s cage again, and Katherine could hear Sibella calling her name. They stopped walking. “She doesn’t even make her own bed.”
“Why not?” Katherine asked.
“She pays me $5 dollars to do it and the Italian does it for her, and I pay her 50¢ to do it. Hey Sibella!”
Sibella looked up at Katherine and waved. Katherine waved back.
Mama said something in the language that Sibella spoke in earlier, which Katherine assumed to be Italian.
“Can’t you teach her English?” Katherine asked.
“We can try, but it’ll be pointless.”
Katherine felt her heart break for the girl. “What’s stopping us from trying?”