Stone Cold (6 page)

After six weeks, she had picked up the rhythm of the neighborhood. She knew whose kids played in the street, which women tended their gardens, and which old men whiled away the last days of summer rocking on their porches. And she recognized the young toughs, drug dealers who prowled the neighborhood, doing business on street corners, using kids as lookouts and runners.

In all that time, she never saw Mary Henderson carrying groceries into the house. Nor did she see Jameer Henderson cutting the grass, which had grown to half a foot or more, or trimming the shrubs, which were inching up to meet the windows.

On Saturday of the sixth week, she went to Henderson’s barbershop again, this time getting out of her car and going to the door, which that had been propped open to catch the afternoon breeze. Two men were waiting to get their hair cut. Another man was in the chair, a barber running a clipper across the back of his head. None of them was Jameer Henderson. They squinted at her, puzzled at what a white woman was doing in a black man’s barbershop.

“Is this Jameer Henderson’s shop?” she asked.

The barber, gray haired, with a close-cut silver beard that hugged his coal-black jaw, looked up from his customer and turned his clippers off.

“Yeah.”

“Is Jameer in?”

The barber narrowed his eyes and looked at her over glasses that were halfway down his nose.

“You see him?”

Heat rose in the back of her neck, the question making her feel as stupid as she must have sounded.

“When will he be back?”

“Don’t know.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Been awhile,” he said, turning his clippers back on, dismissing her.

The other men turned away. She stood in the doorway for a long moment before walking slowly back to her car. Sitting behind the wheel, she thought about what Bonnie had said, that she was becoming obsessed. She conceded that she was, at the very least, preoccupied with the Henderson family.
With good reason,
she told herself.

Dwayne Reed was a killer, and the code of the street demanded that he kill Jameer Henderson and Kyrie Chapman. In that moment, she knew that Bonnie had been right. Kyrie’s life had to count just as much as Jameer’s. Ashamed for having dismissed his fate so casually, she went back into the barbershop.

“Kyrie Chapman,” she said. “Where can I find him?”

The barber looked up from his customer.

“You ain’t much for hello and good-bye, are you?”

Alex conceded the point. “Sorry. Hello. Where can I find Kyrie Chapman?”

“County morgue, I ’spect. Heard he got hisself killed last night.”

Alex ran for her car and gunned the engine, kicking up dust and laying down rubber as she sped away. Three minutes later she skidded to a stop in front of Jameer Henderson’s house, bolted from the car, and raced up the walk, arm raised and fist balled, poised to pound on the front door.

But the door was open, not all the way, just enough for her to gag at the coppery smell of blood coming from inside and to expose Mary Henderson’s body lying on the floor, bra twisted around her neck, naked and bloody from the waist down.

Hand over her mouth, she eased the door open until she could see the rest of the front room where Mary’s body lay. Her children, LaRhonda and Cletus, lay on the floor not far from her, arms and legs bound, their heads caved in, skull fragments scattered around them like broken porcelain. Jameer Henderson was tied to a chair in the corner of the room, his eyes open, a bullet in his forehead, blood and brains on the wall behind him.

Alex backed away, digging in her pocket for her cell phone, punching in 911.

“What is your emergency?” the operator asked.

“They’re all dead,” Alex said.

“Who’s dead?”

Alex shook her head, too stunned to answer.

“Ma’am? Are you there? Who’s dead?”

She took a deep breath and recited the names and address. “And call Detective Hank Rossi,” she added, closing her phone.

Alex gazed up and down the street. The sun was shining, the temperature warm, an idyllic late summer afternoon, a perfect day to be outside. But the block was empty and silent. No kids playing. No women tending their gardens. No men rocking on their porches. No business being done on the corner. They knew, she realized. They all knew. She sat on a bench on the front porch and cried.

Chapter Eleven

HANK ROSSI ESCORTED ALEX away from the Henderson crime scene, across the street to her car, asking if she was okay. He got the basics from her and turned her over to another detective to take her statement before going after Dwayne Reed.

Reed didn’t have a permanent address, preferring to flop with friends or hang at Odyessy Shelburne’s house. Odyessy was Reed’s mother, fifteen years older than her son, crackhead skinny, and mean from a lifetime of trading sex for dope. Rossi banged on her front door an hour after Alex discovered the bodies of the Henderson family.

“Who is it?” Odyessy said from behind the door.

Rossi had first met her when he arrested Reed for the murder of Wilfred Donaire. She had spat on him as he cuffed Reed and hustled him out of her house.

“It’s Detective Rossi, Odyessy. Open up.”

“For what? I ain’t done nuthin’.”

“And I didn’t say you did. I’m looking for Dwayne.”

Odyessy opened the door a few inches, peeking out, her eyes darting back and forth like bugs skittering across the water, her next fix past due.

“What you want wit’ Dwayne?”

“That’s between him and me. Is he here?”

“Nah, and I ain’t seen him.”

She stepped outside, pulling the door closed behind her, one hand on her bony hip, wearing jeans and a blouse unbuttoned to her waist, not caring that she was exposing her bare breasts, the way she got what she needed. Rossi kept his eyes on hers.

“Button up, Odyessy. I’m a cop, not one of your johns. If I find out you’re lying to me, you’ll go down for obstructing justice, harboring a fugitive, and being an accessory after the fact.”

“That so, Detective?”

She tilted her head to one side, trying for sexy, but she was too used up to make it work, coming across instead as desperate.

“That’s so. Shake your tits all you want, but you’re still going down.”

She bunched her shirt, tying the ends in a knot, yanking it hard, defiant.

“You wanna arrest me, go on ahead and arrest me. I ain’t seen my boy. You find him, tell him I say come home and pay me what he owe me.”

Rossi pushed the door open. The house reeked of body odor, spoiled food, and decay, the paint chipped and peeling, electrical wires poking out of bare sockets, fast-food wrappers strewn across the floor like dead leaves. The only light came from a few floor lamps.

There was another smell, something burning. He looked beyond Odyessy, down the center hallway that led to the kitchen at the back of the house, then into the front room on his left. Ashes were piled in the fireplace, a few embers still smoldering.

A T-shirt identical to one Reed had been wearing when Rossi arrested him after the Donaire murder trial was draped across the sofa in the front room, a pair of men’s sneakers on the floor, a bowl of cereal and an open carton of milk on the coffee table. A cat jumped onto the table, knocking the milk carton over, as a toilet flushed and a door at the end of the narrow hall opened. Reed stepped out, locking eyes with Rossi before darting out the back door.

“Hey! Dwayne!” Rossi yelled.

Rossi started after Reed but Odyessy jumped on him, digging her fingernails into his shoulders, wrapping her legs around his middle. He jammed his thumbs into her armpits, squeezing until she yelped and let loose. Shoving her onto the porch, he bolted down the hall, catching a glimpse of Reed through the kitchen window, barefoot and shirtless, climbing the six-foot chain-link fence in the backyard.

Rossi shouldered through the back door and ran after him, stopping when Reed caught his foot in the fence and fell over onto the other side, arms outstretched, his thigh impaled on the spikes of the top rung, blood gushing down his leg as he flailed against the fence and screamed.

“Goddamn muthafucker!”

Rossi patted him on the rump.

“Hey, Dwayne. How’s it hangin’?”

“Fuck you, muthafucker! Get me offa this goddamn fence!”

Dwayne was upside down, dripping blood and writhing with pain. Rossi crouched so that he could look him in the eye.

“You ever see one of those Freddy Krueger slasher flicks where Freddy is supposed to be dead only he’s never really dead?”

“No, man! Why you axin’ me ’bout that shit?”

“Cause you kinda look like one of Freddy’s victims, you know, the one who tries to run away but can’t make it over the fence in time, ends up getting clawed to death.”

“C’mon, man! Get me offa this damn fence! I’m dyin’ here!”

“I don’t think you want me to do that.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because if I do it wrong, you might bleed out. You’d be better off waiting for the paramedics.” He tugged on Dwayne’s ankle and Dwayne screamed. “See what I mean? The slightest wrong movement and who knows what that would do to you.”

Dwayne groaned. “Oh, man! My leg is killin’ me! How soon the paramedics gonna be here?”

“Well, I gotta call them first.”

Dwayne’s eyes popped. “Then, call ’em! What the fuck you waitin’ for?”

“I thought we might have a little chat first.”

“’Bout what?”

“About where you’ve been since, say, I don’t know, around six o’clock last night. And when was the last time you saw Kyrie Chapman or Jameer Henderson.”

Dwayne grimaced, crunching his eyes tight, his breath coming hard. “I ain’t tellin’ you nuthin’, muthafucker, till you get me offa this goddamn fence!”

Rossi shook his head. “And here I thought you and I were tight. You disappoint me, Dwayne.”

“Get the fuck away from my boy or I’m gonna blow your mutherfuckin’ head off!” Odyessy yelled.

She was standing on the back stoop aiming a gun at Rossi, shaking so badly she had to hold the gun with both hands. She was a good thirty feet away, far enough that there was little chance she could hit him. But the odds changed when she stepped off the stoop and walked toward him until the barrel of the gun was a foot from his chest.

“I tol’ you to get the fuck away from my boy.”

“Shoot him, Mama!” Dwayne yelled. “Shoot him ’fore I bleed to death!”

“You don’t want him to die,” Rossi said. “Let me use my belt as a tourniquet and stop his leg from bleeding. Then you can shoot me.”

Odyessy glanced back and forth from her son to Rossi, her mind struggling with the calculus, finally nodding.

“Go on, then.”

Rossi loosened his belt, slipped it out of his pants, not taking his eyes off Odyessy. He held the belt up for her to see.

“Okay?” he asked her.

“I said go on, didn’t I?”

Rossi turned his back to Odyessy, threaded the end of the belt through the buckle, and yanked on Dwayne’s pant leg. Dwayne screamed again and Odyessy cried out.

“Oh, my baby!”

Rossi spun around, swinging the belt buckle, catching Odyessy in the cheek as he grabbed the gun from her hand. She crumpled to the ground and he cuffed her.

“Hey!” Dwayne yelled. “Put that damn tourniquet on me ’fore I die!”

“You told your mother to shoot me and now you want me to save your life?”

“Hey, man. I wasn’t serious. You know that. No way my mama gonna shoot you. It’s the pain, man. Makin’ me fuckin’ crazy. Come on, man! You can’t let me die!”

Rossi looped his belt around Dwayne’s wounded thigh, cinching it tight, the blood flow slowing to a trickle.

“You’re not going to die. Not today, but I’m not making any promises about tomorrow.”

He opened his phone and called for an ambulance, a squad car, a CSI team, and a search warrant. Closing his phone, he gave Dwayne another pat on the rump.

“Hang tight,” he said.

Chapter Twelve

LENA KIRK LED THE CSI team. Willowy and dark haired, with café au lait skin, she had a beauty that crime scene gore couldn’t dull and Rossi couldn’t forget. She was intense, thorough, and immune to his perpetual efforts to elevate their relationship from dead bodies to each other’s bodies, something she explained to him after their last case when he asked her for the tenth time if she wanted to grab some dinner.

“The problem,” she said, “is that I get two vibes from you—do and don’t.”

“What’s the do?” he asked.

“Like I have to tell you.”

“Okay, what’s the don’t?”

“There are three things I want to know about a man right up front,” she said, ticking them off her fingers. “How’s your hygiene, what’s your credit score, and are you crazy.”

“I shower every day and my credit score is over eight hundred.”

“You left out crazy, and you’ve got a little too much of that for me,” Lena said.

“How can you say that?”

She cocked her head to one side, raising an eyebrow. “You’re forgetting that I’ve worked a lot of your crime scenes, including the ones when you were the shooter.”

“C’mon,” he teased. “A little crazy can be a good thing. We could be a good thing.”

She shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t do crazy.”

And that was the last time he hit on her until she was called out to Odyessy Shelburne’s house. Kneeling in front of the fireplace, she probed the smoldering ashes with a long-handled grabber, plucking out bits of fabric, tamping down any threads still burning before dropping them into a metal container.

“Tell me what I’m looking for,” she said to Rossi, who was watching over her shoulder.

“Clothes that Dwayne Reed was wearing.”

“Isn’t he the guy who walked on the Wilfred Donaire murder?”

“That’s him.”

“You still working that case?”

“It’s still open, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t found anyone I like for it better than Dwayne.”

“Why are you interested in his clothes?”

“Because I’m hoping you’ll find blood from one of the five people he killed last night.”

“That family over on Garfield? I was hoping to get called out on that one. Got stuck with this instead.”