Conviction

by Julia Dahl

  “So the Davises had three foster children? The little girl…”

  “Kenya. They’d just taken her around Christmas. Poor bird was born addicted to crack. She’s little for her age.” She drained the rest of the vodka glass.

  “Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt them? Anyone who might have a grudge against them?”

  “No one,” she said.

  “What about the parents of the children? Was there any trouble there?”

  “Not that they mentioned.”

  “What sort of work did they do?”

  “Malcolm works at the YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He runs athletic programs and after-school. Sabrina works for the city. Secretarial. She’s very organized. She helps me with my taxes every year.”

  “Do you know if they were involved in drugs?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Saul knew she wouldn’t necessarily know, or say, but his first read of her response was that she was telling the truth as she understood it.

  “What about their relationship? Did you know about any problems?”

  Mrs. Treble shook her head. “No. They love each other. They were a team.” Saul noticed that Mrs. Treble vacillated between referring to her neighbors in the past and present tense.

  “Most marriages have some troubles,” said Saul.

  “Of course. Lord knows. But nothing out of the ordinary. I never heard them arguing, if that’s what you mean. Only time I ever heard shouting was between Malcolm and DeShawn.”

  “They argued?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever see him act out? Or get violent?”

  “DeShawn? Oh, no, no, nothing like that.” She looked at Saul. “You don’t think he could have done this? He’s practically a child!”

  “I’m just gathering information, ma’am,” said Saul. “Just asking questions.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine that. He was going through a difficult period, but so many are now. It’s hard to be a young man today. So much violence. Drugs everywhere. It wasn’t always like this. Well, you must know. Did you grow up in Crown Heights?”

  “Borough Park,” said Saul.

  “You know, you are the first Jewish police officer I’ve ever met. I remember when our folks used to get along just fine. My husband worked for a Jew once and he was good to him. Always paid on time. It’s too bad the way things are now.”

  Saul nodded. That was putting it mildly.

  “Have you seen anyone strange hanging around lately?” he asked. “Any strange cars?”

  Mrs. Treble shook her head. Saul didn’t think she would notice either way. Downstairs, he heard bootsteps and voices. He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket. Saul didn’t have his own cards—even detectives routinely waited years for cards with their personal information on them; the card listed the phone number and address for the precinct. Saul wrote his name on the back.

  “Please call me if you think of anything else, or if you have any trouble at all. Until we find out who did this, you should keep your doors locked. Be on the lookout.”

  Mrs. Treble almost smiled. She tipped the vodka bottle and poured another drink. She hadn’t touched the water. “In this neighborhood, I’m always on the lookout.”

  Saul showed himself out. Two uniforms were unrolling yellow crime-scene tape across the front porch, and neighbors were starting to gawk. Olivetti was on the porch, instructing two more uniforms to check the perimeter of the house and start talking to neighbors.

  “There’s an older son,” said Saul, once the officers were off. “DeShawn Perkins. Sixteen. Been in some trouble before, apparently. We should pull his sheet.”

  Olivetti nodded. “Looks like the back door was locked, but one of the bedroom windows was open. The one with the bunk beds. And the screen was popped out. Certain kind of people, living on the ground floor in this neighborhood without bars on the window.”

  Saul relayed what Mrs. Treble told him about the Davises.

  “They had straight jobs,” he said. “Probably worth checking those out. If the husband worked with troubled kids he might have pissed somebody off.”

  “We need to talk to the little boy,” said Olivetti. “I doubt he’s going to be much help, but he might know where the brother is. Why don’t you head back to the station and do that. I’ll watch the techs and call if the uniforms pick up anything on the canvas. You want one of them to drive you?”

  “I’ll walk,” said Saul. The precinct was eleven blocks away, and Saul tried to walk fifty blocks each day. It wasn’t scenic, by any means—past piles of garbage baking in the sun, past men and women nodding against buildings and sleeping half naked on benches, past empty storefronts with torn, faded canvas awnings advertising shops and restaurants gone for years. He walked over broken sidewalks, dodging gum and glass and all other manner of human and animal discharge. Saul didn’t want to stop being appalled at the condition of the neighborhood he policed; if he wasn’t angry he wouldn’t work as hard to save it.

  Dorothy Norris and the boy were sitting together in the lobby. When Saul entered, Dorothy stood up; her eyes searched Saul’s face for a glint of good news. He squinted at her, drew a shallow breath.

  “May I speak to you a minute, Mrs. Norris,” asked Saul.

  Dorothy tucked her purse beneath her arm. She put her hand on Ontario’s shoulder and said, “I’ll be right back, honey.”

  Saul motioned to the officer behind the reception desk. “Keep an eye on him.” The officer looked up at Saul and nodded, looked at the boy, then looked back down, flipped a page on the New York Tribune in front of him.

  Saul took Dorothy into a small hallway off the main lobby, and then into an interrogation room.

  “Were you close with the Davises?”

  Dorothy nodded.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you that they’ve been killed.”

  “Malcolm and Sabrina?”

  “And the little girl.”

  “Sweet Jesus.” Dorothy made a fist and clutched the neck of her dress. She shook her head no. “What happened?”

  “They were all shot.”

  Dorothy kept shaking her head.

  “Do you have any idea who could have done this? Anyone who didn’t like the Davises?”

  More shaking. Her eyes began to turn red.

  “I’m told the Davises had an older son. DeShawn? Do you know where I might find him?”

  “No,” she said. “Oh, Jesus, those poor boys.”

  “Do you know if the Davises have family in Brooklyn?”

  “Sabrina’s parents are dead. I think Malcolm’s mother is still in Harlem where he grew up, but I don’t think she’s capable of taking care of two boys.…”

  “We need to find DeShawn,” said Saul. “And I need to interview Ontario.”

  “I’m not sure Ontario is going to be able to help you much,” said Dorothy. “He hasn’t said a word since I found him.”

  “We’re going to need to take his clothing as evidence. Do you think you might be able to find a change for him?”

  “I have two girls. But if I can use your phone, I’ll call Pastor Green and have him bring something.”

  “Thank you,” said Saul. “The Davises were fostering Ontario, am I correct?” Dorothy nodded. “I’ll contact CPS about another placement. If you, or someone from the church, is willing … it might keep him from having to go to a group home.”

  “My husband and I will take him. At least for now. I don’t know about DeShawn, though. With my two girls…” She trailed off, realizing belatedly, perhaps, that she didn’t want to actually speak what she was thinking.

  “I understand. What can you tell me about DeShawn?”

  “Well, he’s been hard lately. Sabrina told me she caught him stealing from her purse near the end of the school year. Malcolm wanted to file a police report but she begged him not to. He had some trouble this spring, and she didn’t want him to get in any more. DeShawn has been with them since he was younger th
an Ontario. He’s never been easy, but none of them are.”

  “Do you think he could have killed them?”

  Dorothy shook her head. “I don’t think so. He’s never been violent, that I know. Just … restless. Angry. I really can’t imagine him…” She squeezed the fabric of her dress again, making a fist so tight Saul saw the muscles in her arm tense. “Shooting his parents. Shooting that baby girl.”

  “You don’t think he’s the type?”

  “Lord, I don’t know. I just don’t know! I can’t believe this is happening. I just don’t know!”

  “Do you have any idea where we might find him?”

  Dorothy furrowed her brow. “Maybe St. John’s Park,” she said. “I think he plays basketball there sometimes.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I call in for my shift Monday, and while I’m waiting for an assignment, I e-mail the library and ask them to run checks on LaToya Marshall, the girl DeShawn claims was with him the night of the murders, and Henrietta Eubanks, the eyewitness who picked him out of a lineup. The library is one of the perks of working at the Trib. They’ll run a backgrounder on anyone and the information they get is vast: phone numbers and street addresses going back decades, criminal records, liens, even contact information for relatives and “possible” relatives. I also ask them to pull articles mentioning DeShawn Perkins and anything on the murders.

  At nine thirty, Mike calls and tells me to go to Kendra Yaris’s house in Crown Heights.

  “Al Sharpton’s supposed to be meeting with the mom before the march against police violence in Union Square tonight. Ask him what he’ll do if they don’t indict Womack.”

  “What time?”

  “Afternoon. But go there now. We can’t miss it.”

  I take my time in the cool shower, and after drying off I apply baby powder over the skin on my thighs that rubbed together all yesterday beneath my sundress, trying to soothe the raw bumps of a heat rash. I don’t complain about the heat because I like it a lot better than the cold, but damn, summer in the city ain’t pretty. Before I moved here, I basically lived my entire life in air conditioning. School, car, home, work—I don’t think I was ever without central air in Florida. Here, I work outside half the time, and although we got a unit at Lowe’s in June, lugging it up three flights of stairs and installing it, precariously, in our living room window, was so harrowing we haven’t been able to bring ourselves to repeat the endeavor for our bedrooms. So, we sweat.

  I’m waiting for an iced coffee at the bodega above my subway station when I get an e-mail from Jim, the librarian on duty:

  LaToya’s address is in Crown Heights. Got some clips on her being All-American in track in the early 90s, too. Found a criminal record for Henrietta Eubanks going back to 1982—drugs, prostitution, theft—the last address is from 1999. The articles I pulled mentioned a survivor, kid named Ontario Amos. He’s in his 20s now, address in Bed-Stuy.

  Attached is a document with contact information for LaToya, Henrietta, and Ontario, as well as five Trib articles: DeShawn’s arrest on July 6, 1992 (“Psycho Son: Cops Nab Foster Kid in Brutal Triple Murder”); the Davises’ funeral three days later (“Slain Family Mourned”); a fund-raiser for Ontario Amos (“Crown Heights Supports Survivor of Family Massacre”); DeShawn’s conviction on October 19, 1992 (“2 Hours to Guilty! Jury Convicts Teen Murderer in Record Time”); and, in early 1993, DeShawn is the anecdotal lede in a story about new protocols for screening violent youth in the city’s foster care system (“CPS Tries to Spot Killer Kids”). Then twenty years of nothing.

  I decide to door-knock at LaToya’s before heading to wait for Al Sharpton at the Yaris family home. Her address is in the Albany Houses, a collection of six fourteen-story brick buildings on a plot of grassy park that’s slightly elevated from the street. I’m often self-conscious walking into public housing. There must be white people who live there, but I never seem to encounter them, and as much as I try to walk with purpose, I feel like an intruder.

  The entryway door is propped open and a handwritten paper sign taped to the elevator reads Broke. Others have scribbled beside it:… ass nigga! and Fuck deBlasio. Two pieces of gum are also stuck to the sign. LaToya lives on the twelfth floor. I start the climb and am immediately overwhelmed by the smell of urine. There are no windows in the stairwell, and the overhead bulbs are either burnt out or flickering a weak orange. I try not to look in the corners, but there are definitely puddles. The Trib has done articles about how dangerous the stairwells in public housing are, and by the fifth floor I’m thinking that I should have at least called LaToya’s number to make sure someone was at home. I pause at the landing of the ninth floor and text Iris:

  I’m door-knocking in the Albany Houses. If you don’t hear from me in two hours, call the cops ☺

  On the eleventh-floor landing, Iris calls.

  “What the fuck?” she says.

  “It just occurred to me I should leave a record of where I am.”

  “Dude, why doesn’t the Trib send a photog with you to places like that?”

  “I’m here for that wrongful conviction story I’m researching for the Center.”

  “You’re killing me, Roberts. I’m going to text you every ten minutes. I’m calling the cops if you don’t text back.”

  “Give me an hour. I will definitely text you in an hour.”

  “Sixty-one minutes and I call the cops.”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re a fucking nutball.”

  I knock at the door of 12G and after about thirty seconds someone comes to the peephole.

  “Who is it?” a woman asks.

  “My name’s Rebekah,” I say. “I’m a reporter. I’m looking for LaToya Marshall.”

  The woman flips the dead bolt and opens the door. She is wearing a scarf around her hair and a baggy T-shirt and workout shorts. Paper towels are woven between her toes: she’s giving herself a pedicure.

  “A reporter? Who you work for?”

  “Um, the Trib,” I say. I could have said I was from the Center, but it seemed like a shortcut to legitimacy to name a publication she was certain to recognize. It’s a decision that could backfire, though. New Yorkers have strong opinions about the Trib, and they aren’t always good. In April, I got sent to cover the opening night red carpet of the TriBeCa Film Festival, and one marginally famous actor (the ex-husband of a legitimately famous actress) saw my badge and refused to speak with me. “I don’t talk to the Trib,” he sneered.

  “What you looking for?” asks the woman at the door.

  “I’m researching a story about DeShawn Perkins.”

  “DeShawn? He out now?”

  “No. I’m looking into wrongful convictions.…”

  She puts a hand on her hip, raises a skeptical eyebrow. “That’s a long time ago.”

  “Right,” I say. “He just wrote me a letter, actually.”

  “Toya’s sleeping,” she says. “She works nights. I could see if she wants to get up.”

  “Yeah? That would be great.”

  “Come on back.”

  The woman walks on her heels down a narrow linoleum hallway, and I follow her, pulling out my phone to text Iris while her back is turned.

  all good

  We walk past two closed doors and a bathroom and into a back room that serves as a living room-laundry room-kitchen. Half-dry clothing is hanging over every chair and two foldout drying racks. There is a three-foot stack of magazines and newspapers in one corner and a pile of shoes in another. It is mercilessly hot inside. An elaborate series of fans keeps the air moving, although the one near the window is black with whatever it’s pulling from outside.

  The woman points to a piece of wicker porch furniture.

  “Move something if you want,” she says. “I’ll see if Toya wants to get up.”

  I take a pair of black pants off the seat and set it gently over the T-shirts, then sit down. As I wait, I try to identify the smell coming from the kitchen. Cheap cleaning liquid over very
spicy food, if I had to guess. I can’t imagine turning on the stove in this heat. Every square inch of my body is sweating. My skin is covered in a thick film, like the layer of grease raw chicken leaves on your fingers.

  “Sorry it’s so hot,” says the woman as she comes back into the main room. “You know they charge you for having AC?”

  “You mean Con Edison?”

  “No, NYCHA.” The New York City Housing Authority. “You gotta buy the thing, pay the electric, and pay them a couple hundred bucks for the right to put it in. And they strict, too. I seen a woman down there with a clipboard counting up all the ACs. They’ll fine your ass if you got one you didn’t tell them about.”

  “Wow,” I say, thinking, maybe that’s a story.

  “So, what’d DeShawn do?”

  “Nothing. I mean, he says he didn’t. He says he’s innocent. So I’m kind of looking into the case.”

  “Why?”

  Because I’m hoping to get a fellowship, seems crass. So I repeat: “He wrote me a letter.”

  “That shit messed Toya up bad,” she says.

  “Yeah? So, are you her…”

  “She’s my baby sister.”

  “You guys live together?”

  “I been here my whole life. Toya been back, like, ten years at least.”

  “She wasn’t here for a while?”

  “After DeShawn got arrested my mama sent Toya down to Atlanta. She stayed there for a while. Then Mama died and she came back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Lung cancer.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Runs in the family,” she says. I wait for her to explain, but she doesn’t.

  “So, LaToya was in Atlanta?”

  “With cousins, yeah. My mama wouldn’t have sent her there if it wasn’t for Winston. That was mama’s boyfriend back then. He was real strict with Toya. He tried to play like he was all watching out for her ’cause she was smart and she was good at running and wanted to go to college. But he wanted to fuck her. So there was no way she could have a boyfriend. Said she’d end up with a baby like Mama and me.”