by Joel Goldman
“Why you talk to me like that? You my lawyer. Ain’t s’posed to matter what I done. If you ain’t on my side, who gonna be on my side? You gotta represent me and get me off like you did with Wilfred.”
“Why? So I can spend the rest of my life seeing that family in my dreams? Tell me why I should do that, Dwayne, you murdering, vile monster!”
“’Cause it’s your job. It’s what you do. Said so yourself.”
She had said that to Dwayne. She’d believed it then and was struggling to still believe it. If she lost her belief, what would she do? Walk away? Quit? Become an ambulance-chasing lawyer advertising on late-night television? Or would she take Judge West’s advice and do her job a different way and make sure Dwayne never saw the streets again? She knew what the questions were, but that didn’t get her any closer to the answers.
Odyessy Shelburne had offered to testify that Dwayne had been home with her, mother and son popping popcorn and watching a movie, when Wilfred Donaire was killed. Alex had pushed her on the alibi, turned her down when Odyessy kept changing her story, finally asking Alex to just tell her what to say.
Odyessy’s willingness to lie to save her son didn’t mean that Dwayne had killed Wilfred Donaire, but it had made it harder for Alex to believe he was innocent. Knowing that Dwayne was guilty and that Odyessy had lied to her stoked her rage and sorrow over what had happened to the Henderson family and made Odyessy’s house the first place she went to look for Dwayne.
She pulled up in front of the house just as Tommy Bradshaw crossed the threshold, her eyes red and puffy, her face splotchy from crying, her gut still quivering. She waited until Bradshaw was inside before following him, stopping in the front hall and listening to him, Rossi, and Kirk, staying out of sight.
Hearing Bradshaw say that he wanted the death penalty for Dwayne before Rossi had even questioned him was enough to stifle her emotions and jar her back to her duty. She stepped out of the shadows and into the room.
“Tommy, you’re going to need a lot more than a burnt offering to get the death penalty. And, Detective Rossi, nobody talks to my client unless I’m present, and I’d advise you not to waste your breath, because he’s not talking.”
They turned toward her in unison, wide eyes and open mouths registering their surprise.
“This is a crime scene, Alex,” Bradshaw said. “Who let you in?”
“Really? What crime was committed here?”
Bradshaw didn’t answer, fuming and turning red instead.
“That’s what I thought,” Alex said. “I hope you’ve got a warrant that covers the ashes in the fireplace. Why is my client getting sewn up?”
“He tore his leg on the backyard fence trying to elude arrest,” Rossi said.
“I assume you identified yourself as a police officer and told him he was under arrest. Or did he just see you, remember how you’d rousted him on a bogus murder charge, and decide to run so you wouldn’t harass him again?”
Bradshaw held up his hand. “Okay, Alex. I get it. But we’re not in court, Rossi isn’t under oath, and you haven’t been appointed to represent Dwayne Reed.”
“I’m still his lawyer in the Donaire case. That’s good enough for now. Tell me what happened here, Tommy.”
Bradshaw hesitated.
“Like you said, by the numbers,” Rossi whispered to him, Bradshaw nodding, Rossi speaking up. “I came here to question Dwayne about the murders. When he saw me, he ran. I chased him into the backyard and he got hung up on the fence. That’s when Odyessy pulled a gun on me. I took it away from her. There was a fire in the fireplace, which I thought was unusual on a summer day, so I asked CSI to check it out. And that’s it.”
“Satisfied?” Bradshaw asked.
“I will be when you release my client from custody. There’s nothing in that story that gives you the right to hold him.”
Rossi’s phone rang. He opened it and listened, then closed the phone. “Maybe not for murder, but one of the uniforms found enough crack in his jeans pocket to charge him with possession with the intent to sell.”
Bradshaw beamed. “Well, that’s a start. See you in court, Alex,” he said and left.
Alex’s emotions welled up again, unbidden and unwelcome, making her faint. She pressed her hand against the wall.
Rossi crossed the room to her, one hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”
She took a breath. “No, but I will be. Give me a minute.”
“Look, we both knew this could happen,” he said, “no matter how many times you drove down Henderson’s block.”
“So now it’s not my fault for getting him off?”
“I know I came down hard on your client after the trial, but that was because I was pissed. Guys like Dwayne Reed don’t belong on the streets. But the system doesn’t always work. Nothing you could have done about that or this. Both of us were just doing our jobs. I didn’t get it done but you did. Can’t unring that bell.”
She was starting to hate the just-doing-your-job mantra. It sounded more and more like an excuse for the inexcusable.
“Why this sudden outburst of compassion from a guy who hates defense lawyers?”
Rossi sighed. “You got me there.” He stepped back half a step, thinking. “Maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to find the bodies. That’s a helluva thing, a lot more real than looking at pictures in the courtroom. Something like that can change a person forever.”
“And you don’t want me to change?”
“Hadn’t thought about it. All I know is that nobody stays the same after the first time they find dead bodies.”
She stared at him for a moment, nodded, turned around, and walked out the way she came.
“See, that’s what I mean about you,” Lena said, one hand on her hip.
“What?”
“Your vibe. The do’s and the don’ts. She gets you on cross, she’ll come at you hammer and tongs and do everything she can to make you look like the worst cop that ever wore the badge, and in spite of that, you just did a very nice thing. Keep that up and I may have to forget about the crazy.”
“And that,” he said, grinning, “would make you the crazy one.”
Chapter Fourteen
TRUMAN MEDICAL WAS A Level 1 Trauma Center, meaning that victims of every manner of mayhem, recklessness, and stupidity imaginable rolled into its emergency room so often that the doctors and nurses were immune to surprise. Patching up gunshot and knife wounds was as familiar as brushing teeth, setting broken bones as routine as changing lightbulbs, and a code blue scarcely enough to get their hearts beating faster.
Dr. Bonnie Long had treated the mangled, maimed, and fevered in the Truman ER since her residency a dozen years ago. After her first night she knew she’d found a home. The immediacy and fury of trauma cases was intoxicating, the more catastrophic the better, though none of those bloody shifts prepared her for what she found when she stepped into an exam room, picked up the patient’s chart, and saw his name—Dwayne Reed.
She stood at the foot of his bed, mouth agape, head swirling. Not because Dwayne was a drug dealer and accused murderer. Truman was located on the city’s violence-prone east side. Many of its patients were victims, perpetrators, or both. And not because his left wrist was handcuffed to the bed rail and two uniformed cops—Evans and Minor, according to their name tags—both black, one on each side of the bed, were standing guard. Criminals, murderers included, bled like everyone else.
But the shock of finding the man who had so frightened Alex lying on a bed in her ER, wounded and shackled, brought her to a standstill, a fantasy flashing through her mind. It would be easy enough to save Alex and the Henderson family, if they needed saving. Direct the cops out of the room. Inject Dwayne with something to stop his heart, something an overworked coroner might miss at autopsy, and never look back. She banished the fantasy as quickly as it had come, angry that she could even have such thoughts, reminding herself that she saved lives. She didn’t judge them.
Dwa
yne picked up on her reaction.
“What’s the matter wit’ you, bitch? Ain’t you never seen a half-naked black man?”
Officer Evans smacked him on the head. “Mind your manners, asshole.”
“Why you do a brother like that?” Dwayne asked him.
“Not about you being a brother,” Evans said. “It’s about you being an asshole. Sorry, Doc. We’ve been waiting a couple of hours and he’s a little anxious.”
She wasn’t offended. She’d been called worse. It went with the territory. In an odd way, Dwayne’s insult restored her equilibrium, bringing her back to business as usual, ready to give as good as she got.
“Actually, Dwayne, we get a lot of half-naked black men in the ER. Naked ones, too.”
Dwayne rose onto his elbows, dropping his eyelids halfway, giving her a serpentine smile. “You ain’t seen none as fine as me. I get outta these cuffs,” he said, rattling them, “I come back and show you. Give you somethin’ to remember me by. Bet you like it rough. Don’t matter to me if you do, ’cause I give it to you rough. Make you like it.”
Though banged up and bound, he oozed menace. An unnerving shiver raced through Bonnie, their banter too close to the bone, his promise too easy to believe. Evans smacked him again and grabbed him by the shoulders, shoving him into the mattress, his predatory grin unshaken.
“Zip it, asshole, before I zip it for you! Sorry, Doc.”
Bonnie turned away. Taking a steadying breath, she cut through the bandage and peeled back the dressing the paramedics had applied. The gash in his thigh was a jagged five inches long, deep enough to require stitches but not surgery, painful enough to be remembered but not to be incapacitating.
She took a closer look, the tissue pinkish red and bloody. Impulsively, she tugged at his torn skin with one hand, probing deeply and roughly into his wound with the other. She knew she was hurting him, but in that furious and fear-driven instant, she didn’t care. She only wanted to strike back and punish him.
“Shit!” Dwayne said through clenched teeth.
Bonnie looked at him, her face and tone flat, detached and unapologetic, seeking courage in professional distance as she baited him. “It’s just a laceration. I can give you something for the pain if you can’t take it.”
He glared at her. “Give me somethin’ for the pain? Like I can’t handle it? You callin’ me a pussy? Bitch, you is fucked! I gonna look you up, you can count on that shit happenin’ for real. Just sew me up so I can get the fuck outta here.”
His eyes, dark, dead, and certain, melted her bravado. She clenched her jaw to keep from shaking and pointed at the cops.
“I wouldn’t be in such a hurry if I were you.”
“They ain’t got nuthin’ on me. I be home ’fore you, that’s for damn sure. And when you get home, I be waitin’ and then we gonna find out who can take what.”
She looked at the cops, who shook their heads in unison, their reassurance no match for her anxiety and no antidote for the shame she felt for what she’d done. She hated thinking she was better than that only to find that she wasn’t.
She cleaned and stitched Dwayne’s laceration without looking at him. Finished, she nodded at the cops and walked out of the room, her heart racing, and banged into Alex, who was coming her way, head down and texting.
“What the—,” Alex began, looking up and seeing Bonnie. “Well, that’s one way to get ahold of you. You can ignore my text.”
Trembling, Bonnie forced a smile.
“You okay?” Alex asked.
Bonnie dodged the question, embarrassed to tell Alex what she’d done, taking advantage of Alex’s disheveled appearance—hair matted, eyes puffy and red—to change the subject.
“You look hungover. What’s going on?”
Alex let out a long breath, her eyes filling, voice breaking, hands fluttering. “I stopped by the Hendersons’ to check on them. They were all dead. Slaughtered. Mary was strangled and probably raped, the kids beaten to death. Jameer had been shot between the eyes, probably after he was forced to watch his wife and kids die.”
Bonnie covered her heart with both hands. “Oh, my God!” She reached for Alex, pulling her close. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
Alex clung to her, both of them letting loose, their tears mixing together. They stood like that for a moment until their hearts settled, wiping each other’s cheeks and then leaning inward, their foreheads touching.
“I’m sorry you had to find them. Are you okay?” Bonnie asked.
“It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll never forget it. Never.”
“I can only imagine. I’m glad you came to see me.”
Alex stepped back, shaking her head. “Sorry. That’s not why I’m here. I got so caught up in what happened that I forgot you were working today. But I really needed that hug.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Looking for Dwayne Reed. Detective Rossi likes him for the murders and went after him. Dwayne ran, tried to jump a fence but didn’t make it, and tore his leg on the chain-link. Paramedics brought him here.”
Bonnie nodded, swallowing hard. “Did he do it? Did he kill those people?”
“Rossi thinks so. For now, they’re charging him with drug possession. That’s enough to hold him while they see if they can make the murder case against him. Can you find out which room he’s in?”
“This one,” Bonnie said, pointing over her shoulder. “I just sewed him up.”
Alex’s breath caught in her throat. “You?”
“I know,” Bonnie said, her confession tumbling out rapid-fire. “When I saw his name on the chart, I couldn’t believe it. All I could think of was how he’d frightened you and if he’d hurt the Hendersons he might hurt you. Obviously, I didn’t know what had happened, but I had this awful fantasy for a second where I killed him.”
“Get out! You fantasized that you killed Dwayne?”
Bonnie shrugged her shoulders, her face coloring. “Yeah, me. Florence Nightingale, of all people. In the fantasy I injected him with something to give him a heart attack. I was mad at myself for even thinking about doing that. But then he threatened to rape me and I was madder about that.”
Alex grabbed her arm. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. A couple of cops were guarding him and he was cuffed to the bed rail. He said when he got out of jail that he’d come back and give me something to remember him by. I was so scared and pissed that when I examined his laceration, I made sure it hurt.”
“That’s never going to happen,” Alex said. “I’ll make sure of that.”
Bonnie wiped her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. “I can’t believe I did that to him, but I was so mad, so frightened, I just did it without even thinking. And then I taunted him about taking something for the pain, like I was questioning his manhood. That’s when he threatened me again. He said the police had nothing on him and that he’d be waiting for me when I came home. That’s so not me, and I feel awful, except for one thing.”
“What?”
She pressed Alex’s hand against her heart. “So help me God, if that prick ever tried to hurt you, I’d rip his heart out and feed it to him.”
“Let me get this straight,” Alex said. “You’d kill him if he threatened me but you feel bad about fantasizing about killing him after he threatened to rape you?”
“Hey, babe. That’s true love.”
“Well, they’ve got him on possession, so he isn’t going anywhere for a while.”
“But what if you get him out of jail? Then what? Look what he did to that poor family.”
Alex wanted to make a speech about innocent until proven guilty but doubted Bonnie would hear her and was less sure that she would believe her if she did. Even more, Alex questioned her faith and certainty that the speech made sense anymore.
“How is he?”
“He’ll live.”
Alex nodded. “Then at least you did your job.”
Chapter Fifteen
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ALEX STEPPED INTO THE examination room. Dwayne propped himself up, smiling.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Officer Evans said. “This room is restricted. You’ll have to leave.”
“I agree. I’m Alex Stone from the public defender’s office and this man is my client. So until I’m done talking with him, this room is restricted. You’re the ones who have to leave.”
“We don’t know anything about that, ma’am,” Evans said.
“You know Detective Rossi, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. He sent us down here.”
“Then call him and tell him what I said.” Evans hesitated. “Go on. Call him unless you want me to file a complaint against you for denying me access to my client.”
Evans dipped his chin, speaking into the two-way radio strapped to his shoulder. “This is Officer Evans, East Patrol, badge number 1229. I’m at Truman with a prisoner and I’ve got a situation. I need to talk to Detective Rossi.”
“Can you believe this shit?” Dwayne said.
Alex raised her hand. “Not another word, Dwayne.”
They waited in silence for five minutes until Evans’s cell phone rang.
“Evans,” he said, listening. “Understood.” He closed the phone. “Detective Rossi is on his way.”
“When’s he supposed to get here?” Alex asked.
The door opened behind her. “Now,” Rossi said. “That soon enough for you?”
Alex turned around. Rossi stood in the doorway, Bonnie right behind him.
“Dr. Long, are you ready to discharge my prisoner?”
“Yes. He’s good to go.”
“Officers, take my prisoner downtown. Ms. Stone, you can drop by for a visit after we’re done booking your client.”
Alex knew there was no point in arguing. “Don’t say a word,” she instructed Dwayne. “And don’t question my client outside my presence. Understood, Detective?”
“No need to take me to school, Counselor. I graduated a long time ago.”
It was another three hours before Alex was able to see Dwayne, long enough for him to have been booked and transferred to the Jackson County jail, where he traded in his boxers for an orange jumpsuit. They met in the visitor area, separated by Plexiglas, talking over phones hung on either side of the divide. It was Saturday night, well outside visiting hours, and they had the room to themselves.
