Conviction

by Julia Dahl

  “Did you know DeShawn?”

  “She kept him away from us. She was worried I’d snitch on her.”

  “You woulda,” says a voice behind me. Toya. She’s taller than her sister, and thinner. There are freckles across her cheeks and nose, and her hair is in a messy, slept-on ponytail. Beneath her eyes are the most intense circles I’ve ever seen. Four shades darker than the rest of her face and ashy, like powdered cocoa. She is otherwise quite beautiful. Strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, amber eyes.

  I stand up. “Hi. I’m sorry I woke you up. If it’s better for me to come back…” I trail off; Toya doesn’t respond. She rubs her eyes and plops on the sofa next to her sister.

  “You writing about DeShawn?” she says.

  “Yeah. Are you guys in touch?”

  She shakes her head.

  “He says he was with you the night his family died. Is that true?”

  LaToya nods.

  “But he still got convicted.”

  She shrugs. It’s a gesture of resignation, not indifference.

  “Did the jury not believe you?”

  “I didn’t go to the trial.”

  “You didn’t testify?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Why not?”

  LaToya bends forward, looks at her sister.

  “I just turned fifteen. I wasn’t supposed to be with DeShawn. We spent the night together at this kid’s apartment. His mama nannied for a family in Manhattan and on weekends they kept her overnight a lot. People went there to drink and mess around. It wasn’t a big deal. Some weed, but nothing crazy. Anyway, when the cops first asked I said we weren’t together. Then later they didn’t believe me when I said we were. They had me all confused. The detective kept asking, are you sure he never left? How could you be sure, you were asleep? And he said DeShawn confessed. He said somebody saw him. That got me doubting. I mean, I was asleep part of the night. What if he did do it? What if he murdered three people and then crawled back in bed with me? How did I not know?

  “I was really scared. And Mama and Winston were pissed. They sent me down to Atlanta for the next school year. Winston was on and on about how I had to concentrate and that I’d blow my scholarship chances if I was distracted and no college would want me if they knew I was mixed up with a murderer.”

  She rubs her eyes and pulls her legs up, tucks her long feet beneath her.

  “I blew it anyway. There wasn’t no Facebook or whatever but people found out why I’d moved down there and they looked at me funny. I was a good girl, okay? I mean, me and DeShawn had sex once. For real. One time. And then all of a sudden I’m this girl whose boyfriend is a killer. Anyway, I wanted to fit in and I got drunk one night and fell down some stairs at somebody’s apartment. Broke my foot. I couldn’t run that year and I just kinda gave up. Got into drugs. Ended up dropping out. It was all shit from there. I finally got locked up for bad checks and got clean inside, got my GED and a certificate in Exercise Science. But when I got out they told me I couldn’t coach kids ’cause of my record.”

  “It’s not like she’s a fucking child molester or some shit,” says her sister.

  “That sucks,” I say.

  Toya raises her eyebrows, picks up a magazine and fans herself.

  “And you never heard from any of DeShawn’s lawyers or anything?” I ask.

  Toya shakes her head.

  “So, like I told your sister, DeShawn wrote me a letter. He says he’s innocent.”

  I wait for a response, but don’t get one.

  “What do you think? Do you think he did it?”

  Toya shakes her head. “I thought maybe for a while. But he was with me all night. I’m sure of it. He just … he wasn’t that kind of person. I mean he acted tough sometimes, but when you got him alone he was really sweet. He would have done anything for me. He didn’t care if he looked cool or not. I know he fought with his foster parents, but he loved them. I remember once I was telling him how our bathroom sink was all backed up and we’d been waiting days for somebody to come fix it. He said his dad could probably do it. He was, like, Malcolm—that was his name, right?”

  I nod.

  “Yeah, I remember. He was, like, Malcolm can fix anything. He said he put in a whole new shower—or maybe it was something in the kitchen? Anyway, he admired him. They fought and shit, sure, but we was teenagers. And the mom. He was all proud that she taught him to cook. I remember he came over one night when we knew Mama and Winston was gonna be out. He made this fancy pasta thing with some special cheese. And bread and salad and everything. That was the night we had sex. I was all bragging to people, like, my boyfriend is so sweet.…” She almost smiles, then looks at the ceiling, and I can see she’s trying to roll back tears. “Ain’t no man every cooked for me since.”

  For a few moments, none of us speak. LaToya’s sister stares at the floor, her hands folded between her legs. I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing I am, which is that no man has ever cooked for me. Toya was just fifteen, but she had something lovely. Something special. Until it was gone.

  “Is Toya gonna be in the paper?” asks her sister, finally.

  “Maybe,” I say, looking at Toya to gauge her reaction. I haven’t been writing anything down. “I’m only starting to look into the case. I mean, would you be willing to be quoted saying he was with you?”

  “Yeah,” says Toya. “But they didn’t believe me then. Why they gonna believe me now?”

  * * *

  Before she was shot on her way home from work, Kendra Yaris lived with her mom and two siblings on the second floor of a brick house just off the Nostrand stop in Crown Heights, about a twenty-minute walk from LaToya’s. I can see the signs on the lawn and the crowd on the sidewalk from a block away. I spot a reporter from the Ledger, a guy named Sebastian, and wave.

  “You here for Sharpton?” he asks me.

  “Yeah. Did I miss him?” It’s just after noon.

  “I don’t think he’s coming. Somebody inside said he canceled last minute.”

  “How come you’re still here?”

  “My desk wants me to follow the family to the march.”

  “I guess I better go knock,” I say.

  The front door on the side of the house where the Yarises live is open, just a screen door separating inside from out. I press the buzzer marked #2 and after a moment a male voice calls out, “Who is it?”

  “My name’s Rebekah,” I say into the empty hall. “I’m a reporter for the Trib.”

  The man appears at the top of the stairs.

  “You looking for Sharpton?”

  “We were told he was going to be visiting before the march.”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “Did he cancel?”

  “So what? Why everybody so worried about Sharpton? This ain’t about him. This about Kendra. And the fucking NYPD.”

  I scribble what he’s said into my notebook.

  “Do you think they’ll indict Womack?” I ask.

  “They better or we gonna shut this city down! My niece ain’t even got a record. Fucking killer cops got to be stopped.”

  “You’re Kendra’s uncle?”

  “Her mama’s my half sister.”

  I get his name and call Mike from outside.

  “‘We’re gonna shut this city down.’ Great shit,” he says. “Stick around in case Sharpton shows.”

  I sit on a curb across the street and Google Ontario Amos, who, I discover, is the sous chef at a new restaurant in Clinton Hill. Eater described it as “an inventive mix of Afro-Caribbean flavors expertly curated for new Brooklyn’s tastes.” A New York Times profile of his boss, a Haitian native and James Beard Award nominee named Jean-Phillippe Dade, mentions Ontario by name, saying that Dade passed over applicants who’d soused for Marcus Samuelsson and Dan Barber for the unknown whose food he tasted at a Village Voice showcase.

  “I have never met anyone with a palate as refined as Ontario’s,” Dade told the Times. “His ideas are reflected
in every dish at Dade.”

  At three thirty, Mike calls to tell me Sharpton is doing a live spot on CNN and I can cut out for the day. I hop on the B43 bus up Kingston Avenue to Bed-Stuy and knock at the address the library gave me for Ontario. From the landing, I can hear children. After about a minute, a woman opens the door. She is barefoot, wearing a jersey sundress that looks like it accidentally got thrown in the wash with some bleach. There is food—possibly banana—in her hair.

  “Hi,” I say. “I’m looking for Ontario Amos.”

  “He’s at work.”

  “Oh, okay,” I say. “Do you know when might be a good time to find him?”

  “What you want?”

  “I’m a reporter,” I say, “from the Trib.”

  “You gonna do another story about how great J. P. Dade is? How about you do a story about how he work his people so hard they don’t see their families no more? How about that?”

  “I’m actually working on a story about Ontario’s foster brother.”

  “James?”

  “No,” I say. “DeShawn.”

  “DeShawn? Shit. What’d he do now?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “I’m just looking into a couple of old cases.”

  “Well, Ontario ain’t gonna want to talk about DeShawn. I don’t want him talking about DeShawn. You know he still won’t take the girls to the fireworks. It’s been twenty years. He won’t go. Stays home with his headphones on all night so he can’t hear nothing. Won’t take ’em off till the next day.”

  “So, he hasn’t been in touch with him all this time?”

  “Hell no,” she says.

  A little girl with half a dozen pigtails in her hair comes to hang on the woman’s leg. “Mommy, I want some ice cream.”

  “Not till you finish your fish sticks.”

  “I don’t want fish sticks!”

  “Then you don’t get ice cream.”

  “Nooooooooo!”

  “I’m not gonna say it again, Kenya,” says the woman. “If they’re not gone when I get back your sister gonna get ice cream and you’re not. I ain’t playing. Go!”

  The girl looks at me, then back at her mom, lip stuck out dramatically, arms crossed, and stomps away.

  “Mommy being mean,” I hear her say.

  The woman angles her voice back into the house. “You think I can’t hear you? You have three minutes. Three minutes. I’m counting.” She turns back to me.

  “Kenya,” I say. “Isn’t that the name…?”

  “I shoulda said no when he wanted to name her that.”

  “I’m Rebekah,” I say. But she doesn’t offer her name in return.

  “I gotta go,” she says.

  “I might try stopping by the restaurant.”

  “We really don’t need this shit right now. He working like a dog and we never see him. You go asking him about DeShawn and…” She sighs. “What’s he gonna help you with? He was just a little boy.”

  * * *

  Dade is a tiny sliver of a restaurant on Lafayette Avenue. There are no diners inside. Two men in chef whites and caps do a controlled dance in an open kitchen at the back of the dining room while a woman in a short black jumper folds napkins at the bar.

  I open the door and walk in. The woman turns, smiles, and slides off her barstool.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Hi,” I say. “I’m looking for Ontario Amos.”

  She turns to the men in white.

  “He must be out back. Can I ask your name?”

  “My name’s Rebekah. I’m a reporter from the Trib.”

  “Oh, cool! Are you guys gonna write about him?”

  I decide not to elaborate on the nature of my visit.

  “We might,” I say.

  “Hold on. I’ll get him.”

  She scurries off and returns a few minutes later with Ontario. He is six-foot-something and close to three hundred pounds.

  “Hi,” I say. “I’m sorry to bug you at work.” I wait for him to say something like, it’s okay, but he doesn’t. His wife, I’m guessing, has texted.

  “Do you have a minute? I promise not to take up too much time.”

  “Even Dade hasn’t been in the Trib,” says the woman. Her earrings are bronze knives hanging to her chin. “I think it’s great. Maybe more of the neighborhood people will get to know the place. Did you know we do BYOB? That really helps cut the price. Plus they’re working on a fifteen-dollar lunch special for the fall.”

  “She ain’t here to talk about food,” says Ontario.

  The woman looks at him, then me. She shrugs, and makes a face, like, sorry he’s so grumpy.

  “I got five minutes,” he says. “Then I gotta get back to prep.”

  I follow him outside and he lights up. He doesn’t offer me a smoke and he doesn’t look at me.

  “I guess your wife said I was by.”

  He nods, pulls off his white cap and stuffs it in the back pocket of his black-and-white–checked pants.

  “I’m looking into some old cases,” I say. “For a … project on wrongful convictions.” He doesn’t respond, so I prattle on, trying to connect. “Things were really different back then. Cops were, you know, really rushed and under the gun.…” Fuck. Wrong cliché. “And the standards of evidence were different. No DNA, that sort of thing. Plus now we know a lot more about how teenagers, like, sometimes make false confessions.”

  “What you saying? You saying DeShawn didn’t do it?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “He wrote me a letter saying he didn’t.”

  “So? What else he got to do up in there?”

  “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “That he’s innocent? Not really. He was always mad at Malcolm and Sabrina. He stole from them. He used to sneak out of the house, smoke weed in the bathroom. It got worse when they brought Kenya home. We had our own rooms before but they thought since she was a girl—and none of us was really related—she should get one. That pissed him off. I know Malcolm and Sabrina talked about putting him back into the system. Maybe a group home.”

  “You remember that?”

  Ontario nods. “They should have. But they was good people. They didn’t think they had a psycho murderer in their house.”

  “Do you remember anything about that night?”

  “I remember hearing Kenya scream. But she screamed a lot. She had nightmares and she’d go into bed with them.”

  “What about the gunshots? Did you hear those?”

  He nods almost imperceptibly.

  “Did you think they were fireworks?”

  He shakes his head, flicks his cigarette into the street. Wipes his nose.

  “Did you hear anything else? Anybody coming or going?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  He’s already told me more than I expected he would. I’ve interviewed dozens, maybe even hundreds of people who’ve been victims—or survivors—of crime in the two years since starting as a stringer for the Trib, and it never fails to surprise me how bad I am at guessing who’s going to bury me in details and who’s going to slam the door in my face. It doesn’t break down by age or race or neighborhood or gender or religion or class. I once knocked on the door of a giant Frank Lloyd Wright rip-off in Westchester to try and get a quote from the daughter of a seventy-five-year-old who’d been arrested at JFK after getting drunk on a flight from Miami and screaming that the passenger sitting behind her, who happened to be wearing a hijab, was a terrorist. I figured the woman wouldn’t even come to the door, but she invited me in, gave me a photo of the old lady, and said she’d had enough and hoped this whole thing shamed her mom into finally going to AA.

  “Had DeShawn been with you guys that night?” I ask.

  “Nah. He wasn’t around much. And he definitely wasn’t doing family things like fireworks and picnics.”

  “He says he was with a girl all night.”

  Ontario shrugs. “What’s she say?”

  “She says she was with him. But tha
t nobody believed her.”

  This surprises Ontario, I think. He looks me in the eye for the first time since we’ve met.

  “Where did you go … after?” I ask.

  “You mean where’d I go live? I stayed with a church family for a little bit, then a group home in Brownsville. Then some different fosters. When I aged out, I moved in with some guys I knew from work. Me and Tammy been in Bed-Stuy a while now.”

  “Where’d you learn to cook?”

  “Sabrina. She didn’t cook fancy but she was real good at making cheap food taste great. Spices and stuff. She got me comfortable in the kitchen, and it was a good way to, like, get in with my other foster moms. They was always happy to have help. I got my first job at a takeout taco place when I was fifteen.”

  “I met one of your daughters,” I say. “Kenya.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe it was bad luck to name her that. I barely knew her. But she had no chance, you know? No life at all. I remember it felt cool to be a big brother. And I always thought about her after. I thought about her a lot. I thought about how if she’d come sleep with me when she got them nightmares she’d be alive. I’d wonder what she’d be doing now. Then when Tammy had a girl…” He rubs his eyes. “You really listening to DeShawn?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m trying to track down the witness who said she saw him leaving the house. Other than that—and the confession—it doesn’t seem like the police had much.” When I hear myself say it, I realize it sounds a little silly: just an eyewitness and a confession. Not exactly nothing. “These days, they’d need more to get a jury to convict, I think.”

  “That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. It wasn’t no robbery. Malcolm and Sabrina didn’t have nothing to steal. Everybody loved them.”

  “What about Kenya’s mom and dad? Or even yours? Might somebody have been mad they were raising their kids?”

  “I doubt it. Not my mama anyway. She gave me up when I was three. I don’t think she knew who my dad was.”

  “Oh,” I say, thinking, I wonder if it would have been better or worse if my mom had stuck around long enough for me to have a couple memories. “I’m sorry.”