You're the One I Want (31 page)

Ain't nobody ask you nothin', Sherlock-fucking-Holmes.

“D, chill, you're scaring Bree,” Kashawn said.

“No, he's right,” Bree said. “The cops, the judge, that prosecutor, they don't care if I rot in prison. To them, I'm just another hood rat. That judge didn't look at me once the whole time I was in the courthouse. I could get the lethal injection and she couldn't even take the time to look up to see who was standing up there in front of her uppity-ass.”

“Baby, try to calm down,” Kashawn said.

“You ain't never lied,” Yvonne added.

“I gotta get proof.”

“What?” I said.

“What are you talking about, get proof?” Kashawn asked.

“I have to prove that I didn't kill Katiesha.”

“Bree, what are you saying?” Kashawn asked.

“How do you plan on doing that?” I asked.

“The only way is to find the person who did it, who actually had reason to kill Katiesha.”

“Bree, you're not serious,” Kashawn said.

“Baby, what are you talking about doing?” Mama Liz asked.

“I gotta go back to Pepper Drive, talk to people, and ask if they saw anybody that night.”

“Girl, are you crazy?” I asked.

“No, she's not, because she's not going back to that neighborhood,” Kashawn argued.

“Kashawn, I—”

“No!” Everyone quieted down when Kashawn yelled, “Do you know how dangerous that neighborhood is?”

“I know more than anybody sitting in here how dangerous it is.”

“Bree, you need to let Kent handle this. Girl, listen to Kashawn. Going to Pepper Drive is only going to make matters worse,” I said.

“And what if I go to court and a jury finds me guilty, Tangela, what then?”

“I would rather we take our chances in court with a jury, than for you to go back to that neighborhood and risk you ending up like Katiesha,” Kashawn said.

“Somebody saw something that night. Somebody was at Katiesha's house before I got there. Somebody had to have seen someone enter and leave her house.”

“Even if someone did see something, what do you think they're going to do? March to the cops and say, ‘Hey, I saw that stripper get killed the other night'?” I asked.

“Tangela's right,” said Kashawn. “People who live in places like Pepper Drive don't like strangers snooping around, asking questions.”

“I hear they got a gang in that neighborhood,” Yvonne said.

“More than one, from what I'm told,” I said, attempting to discourage her from going back to Katiesha's house.

“Y'all are not the ones who could be facing death row. I am. My freedom is on the line, not yours.”

“Okay, so you go back there and start asking people questions about that night and somebody says they saw someone. Your chances of getting them to go to the cops and telling them what or who they saw is slim at best,” Kashawn said.

“I gotta do something. I can't sit around and wait for them to build a case against me.”

The last thing I needed was for Bree to go poking her ass around, asking a bunch of damn questions. I knew that look in her light-brown eyes all too well. It meant that once she got an idea in that stubborn head of hers to do something, there was no stopping her. And with murder being her case, she was going to keep on digging until some shit came to the surface. I knew then that I would have to get to that house before her. If Bree found something to tie me to being there the night I killed Katiesha, she would no doubt snitch on me to the cops if it meant keeping her ass out of prison.

“Bree, let Kent handle this. He's the best criminal lawyer in North Florida. Let him do his job. This is what he's getting paid to do.” Kashawn took Bree's right hand into his. “I want you to promise me that you won't do anything crazy.” Bree glanced at Kashawn, speechless. “Baby, I'm serious. I don't know what I'll do if something happened to you.”

“Kashawn is right,” I said. “It's too dangerous and I don't want to think about what the cops will do to you if you went back to Katiesha's.”

“Throw you back in jail, that's what they would do,” said Mama Liz.

“Okay, fine, I won't go back.”

“Or to Katiesha's house,” Kashawn said.

“I won't go back to the house.”

Bree was the kind who would say one thing and do another. There
was no way I could risk her finding out what really happened that night, and I damn sho' wasn't going to go to jail for her ass. I would do whatever I had to do to keep Bree off my ass. Damn! None of this would be happening if she hadn't gotten so damn greedy. Trust, I'd take her ass out just like I took out Katiesha. Bree and Deanthony. Fuck a friendship.

I
was about to fall asleep when I heard my phone ring. I thought to let it ring, figuring that it was Tangela. She was the last bitch I wanted to talk to. I clicked on the nightstand light and studied the number. It was Bree.

“Hello.”

“Hey, I need you to come pick me up.”

“What? Pick you up from where?”

“My house.”

“Why, what's up?” I said, straining my eyes against the lamp's light.

“I want you to take me to Pepper Drive.”

“Bree, you told Kashawn that you weren't going back there, and I agree with him. It's too dangerous.”

“I have never known you to run away from trouble, but run straight into it. What the fuck happened to you?”

“You should know where trouble gets you when you go looking for that shit.”

“Deanthony, are you going to give me a lecture or help me? Either way, I'm going and I'm going tonight.”

“What about Kashawn?”

“He'll understand.”

“No the hell he won't.”

“I want to go back there, see if maybe the cops left something behind.”

“Like what?”

“Hell, I don't know. Maybe there was something they forgot.”

“Kashawn would have my ass if I let something happen to you.”

“Just let me worry about him. Are you coming or not?”

“Give me ten minutes,” I told her.

“Don't come to the house. Pull up at the front gates. I don't want you to wake up Kashawn.”

I got out of bed and dressed, slipping into a pair of jeans, a wifebeater, and boots. “What the fuck am I doing?” I quietly reached inside the nightstand and fished out the semiautomatic Kashawn had bought to protect the house. It felt cold against my stomach when I stuffed it in the waistband of my jeans. I hoped that I wouldn't have to use it, but if I had to, shit, I had to. Place like Pepper Drive, I wasn't about to roll up in that shit with a damn plastic butter knife.

When I reached the gates of Ox Bottom Manor where Bree said to meet her, she was standing outside, wearing jeans and a
Menace II Society
T-shirt, something that fit the mood of what we were about to do.

“Hey,” she said as she climbed into my whip.

“You know this shit is crazy, right? Did Kashawn wake up?”

“Hell no. You know how he snores.”

“What if he wakes up and finds out you done dipped?”

“Not a chance. I ground up three sleeping pills and put them in his soda at dinner. He's out of it.”

“Bree, this is crazy.”

“I called you because, despite everything, I knew I could count on you. Don't make me regret it.”

“If you find any proof to show that you didn't kill Katiesha, then I'm down.”

“I know someone had to have seen something. You don't live in a neighborhood like that and not see shit.”

“What were you doing there that night by yourself anyway, knowing how dangerous it would be?”

“Tangela said she would go with me that night to go find Katiesha.”

“Tangela?”

“She was supposed to meet me at Risqué, but she never showed up. I tried calling her, but her damn phone kept going to voicemail. So when she didn't show, I was like, fuck it, I'll go at it by myself.”

“You should have called me. I would have gone in with you.”

“People need to stop treating me like I'm some fragile china doll. I might live in a nice house, but I grew up on streets just like this.”

“So did Tangela ever tell you why she didn't show up at Risqué that night?”

“With all this shit that's been happening, I never thought to ask her why she was a no-show. I didn't really need her. Katiesha wasn't working that night anyway.”

“Did you call Tangela after you left the club?”

“No, I was too busy trying to get up out of that cesspool. I went to Katiesha's after that. Her Cutlass was in the yard and the light in the front room was on, so I knew she was home, probably getting high or some shit, knowing her. Why you got this concern for Tangela suddenly?”

“I'm just trying to piece all this shit together.”

When we got to Pepper Drive, it was dark as fuck. The bulbs in the streetlights had been busted out. The one streetlight that was working wasn't worth a damn.

“I can't believe you rolled up in this shit by yourself,” Bree said.

“What, you scared or something?”

“Never that, baby boy. I got this right here.” Bree pulled the burner out of her waistband to show me what was up.

“Where the fuck did you get a piece from?”

“I wasn't going to come up out here with a box of damn Girl Scout cookies.”

“Girl, give me that before you hurt somebody.” Bree hesitantly handed me the burner. I pushed the gun down into the waist of my jeans.
Crazy-ass black women,
I thought.

I drove slowly around the neighborhood until Bree pointed out Katiesha's crib.

“Stop, that's it, that brick house right there with the white swing on the porch.” A string of yellow crime tape ran around the perimeter of the house.

“Hold up, let me get somewhere out the way.” I parked between some bushes. Nobody would see my whip with how dark it was.

“You got a flashlight?” Bree asked.

The back side of my hand grazed against her knee when I opened the glove box. “It's one somewhere in…hold up.” I felt on the floor behind the passenger seat. “Here it is,” I said, showing Bree the black heavy-duty flashlight. She grabbed it out of my hand like that shit was the key to the city.

“Let's do this.”

After we got out, I locked the doors. Like my ride being locked in that neighborhood mattered. It was a little past three in the morning and other than a few cars whooshing by on one of the main streets, it was quiet as hell. My hand rested on the gun like it was my dick. Bree ducked under the crime scene tape like it wasn't nothing.

“Slow up. You can't be bopping around here like you're at a playground. This ain't Chuck E. Cheese.” There was crime scene tape everywhere. Bree stepped up on the porch. She jiggled the handle of the front door, but it was locked. “Come on,” I said, “Let's check around back.” The back sliding-glass door was locked, too. Any other time, I would have busted it out, but I didn't want to risk bringing attention to ourselves.

“There has to be a window or something open,” Bree said. She
went around the right side of the house to try one of the windows there. She tried lifting it. “Damn, shit is jammed.”

“Here, move,” I demanded.

“Be careful.” Bree stepped out of the way behind me, flashing the light on my hands. The window gave.

“I'll go in first to check it out.”

“Hurry up.”

I checked the hallways and kitchen. I saw in the living room where there was all this blood on the sofa, floor, and some on the walls. “Damn, what the hell did they do to her?” The house reeked of death.

“Deanthony, come help me up.”

“Oh, my bad.”

Bree reached in with her arms through the window. With all her weight, she was heavy as hell. “Hurry up, pull me in.”

I worked to pull her big breasts and ass into the window. Bree stumbled in on her knees in the hall as I worked her through.

“Let's get this over with,” she said, like this was all my idea. “Let's start in the living room.”

“Place is a mess. I doubt we'll find anything in here.”

“I've watched enough
First 48
to know that they always leave something behind. Look for something, anything out of the ordinary.”

“I'll start in her bedroom,” I said.

“Come back out here when you're done.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Pearls and necklaces hung around one of the bedposts of the big king-sized bed that sat against the wall. Posters of Drake, Jay-Z, and Young Jeezy were thumbtacked on the blue-painted walls. There were dirty clothes everywhere. This picture of Katiesha in a bikini with a pink feather boa wrapped around her neck sat in the frame of the dresser mirror. I recognized one of the girls in
the picture. Josette from Risqué. The other girls I think I'd seen once or twice at the club. As I walked around, my feet kicked something on the floor. I picked it up and opened it to a page that was bookmarked with a pink Post-It strip. There were a number of things listed:

*Check-into-rehab

*pay-off-debts

*down-payment-on-car

*plane-ticket-to-New York

*presents-for-the-girls

The bottom of the page was torn off after the last thing listed. “Bree, I got something.”

“What did you find?” She came into Kateisha's room.

“It looks like some kind of to-do list.” I showed it to her.

“She couldn't afford any of this on a stripper salary when she had a thousand-dollar-a-day drug habit.”

“The first one says
check into rehab,
so maybe she was going to check herself in to get clean.”

“It says ‘plane ticket to New York' on here,” Bree said.