The Aftermath

by Shelia M. Goss

  “Not a thing. So either the laptop got burned to pieces or he didn’t have it here.”

  “That’s odd. Because most people carry their laptops everywhere they go,” Lovie said.

  “True. Do you know where else he would have kept it?” I asked.

  “His car. If he didn’t have it in the house, he would have kept it in his car.”

  “Hold on, Lovie.” My phone beeped. I answered and then returned to the other line. “I got a call. His car is still in the garage. I’ll check it later. It’s not going anywhere.”

  It sounded like I heard Lovie’s car screech. I didn’t have time to figure it out. I had a call from my partner and needed to get back to the office.

  It was close to midnight before my day ended. Charity greeted me at her front door before I could knock.

  “You look tired,” she commented, after we hugged.

  “All I want right now is a long hot bath,” I said.

  “Already got that covered. Follow me.”

  I grabbed her hand and followed her to the bathroom. I noticed the bathtub filled with bubbles.

  “Everything you need is right here,” she said.

  Less than an hour later, I was lying next to Charity in her bed. “You’re so good to me. I don’t know what I did to be blessed with you,” I said as I hugged her around her waist and inhaled the strawberry scent of her hair.

  “You must have been real good,” she teased.

  “I talked to your brother,” I said.

  “Glad one of us did. I hadn’t talked to him since he left my house earlier. He was supposed to be following up on something, but he never got back to me about it.”

  “He’s looking for your uncle Jason’s laptop. I plan on going back to the house and looking in the garage in his car to see if it’s there.”

  “Why wait? Let’s go now,” she said.

  “Baby, it’s after one in the morning. If it’s been there all of this time, it’ll still be there.”

  “If Lovie is looking for the laptop, it must be important. I won’t be able to sleep knowing it might be there.”

  “I’ll go first thing in the morning.”

  “But, baby. Please. For me. I’ll go with you. I can hold your flashlight.”

  “Oh, no. I don’t want you anywhere near his house. I’ll go by myself.” I got up and got dressed.

  Charity ignored my request. She got dressed, too. “I’m going and there’s nothing you can say to change my mind.”

  “Come on, Bonnie.”

  “That’s right. I’m Bonnie to your Clyde, so let’s ride,” she commanded.

  “Oh, now you want to be a rapper.”

  I drove over to Jason’s house. “Stay in the car. Do not get out. Is that understood,” I said to Charity when I pulled up in his driveway.

  “I can hold the light,” she insisted.

  Charity was so stubborn. That was probably her only fault. “Fine. Come on,” I said. “But be quiet. We don’t want to alert the neighbors.”

  I held on to one flashlight and handed her another small flashlight I kept for backup. “Stay close behind me,” I said.

  We made our way into the garage. The car had received some smoke damage. Some of the metal had melted but didn’t harm the contents of the car. Looked like the car had been rummaged through. Could have been done by our forensics team.

  Charity held the flashlight while I looked in the front and back seats. I had to use force to open up the trunk but didn’t locate a laptop.

  “Nothing’s here. It’s possible that the laptop burned up,” I said to Charity.

  “Let’s look one last time,” she said.

  Against my better judgment, to appease her, I looked again.

  I heard sirens. “Charity, I need you to go out back. If you can, meet me in the alleyway. I don’t need the officers to see you here with me.”

  “I’m not going to leave you by yourself. What if they mistake you for a burglar and shoot you. You’ll need me here as a witness.”

  I retrieved my badge from my pocket. “I’ve got my ID right here. Now go, baby. I would follow you, but my car is parked in the driveway.”

  I led her to the back door and watched her go out the back gate.

  I went back inside and out the front door. I was greeted by two uniformed police officers. “Hold your hands up where we can see them!”

  I went through the motions. After they saw my identification, they let me go. I rode around toward the alleyway and picked up Charity.

  Charity wrapped her arm around my neck. “I’ve lost my dad. I can’t lose you too,” she said.

  “Baby, you’ll never lose me,” I assured her as I drove back to her place.

  CHAPTER 19

  Lexi

  It’d been two months and two days since the ill-fated day Royce had been arrested. Sleep was no longer my friend. I rarely got a full night’s sleep. Whenever I could sleep, I welcomed it. I’d dozed off on the couch. When my eyes opened, I didn’t expect to see my son, Lovie, asleep in his father’s La-Z-Boy.

  “Lovie, baby, what are you doing here?”

  He yawned. “I came over last night, but you were sleeping so good, I didn’t want to wake you. I decided to chill.”

  “You could’ve slept in your old bedroom,” I said. “You didn’t have to stay down here with me.”

  “I thought it was best,” he declared.

  “I’m going to go take a shower and cook us some breakfast.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to.”

  “I feel like cooking and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  Two hours later, we were seated across from each other at the kitchen table eating sausage, grits, eggs and toast.

  “Aren’t you glad I decided to cook?” I asked Lovie.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Now that we’re both full, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on? You left your sisters’ house and I didn’t hear from you before falling asleep.”

  I cleaned up the kitchen as he talked. I listened to him recount the events of the previous night.

  “After Omar couldn’t find the laptop in Uncle Jason’s car, I went back. Something told me to look under the floor boards to see if there was a hidden compartment and there was one in the trunk. Fortunately, the police hadn’t looked there.”

  “So what made you think to look for his laptop?” I asked.

  “When Hope brought the video camera, it made me remember Uncle Jason mentioning he had home surveillance set up so he could watch his house when he was at the office.”

  “I don’t recall seeing any cameras,” I said. I was washing dishes by hand. I could have used the dishwasher, but washing manually seemed to calm my nerves.

  “Me neither, but I recalled him telling Dad that once. I even stopped by his office one day and saw him looking at the monitor from this device.”

  I listened to Lovie tell me what had happened the day before at Jason’s office.

  “You should’ve told me, at least, where you were going. What if the security guard would’ve caught you? Then I would have to deal with you being locked up too.”

  “Mom, I was careful. I’m here talking to you now, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Let’s not go there. I need to show you something. I’ll be right back.”

  I finished cleaning up the kitchen as I waited for Lovie to return. He returned with a little laptop computer. I watched as he turned it on and hit a few keys on the keyboard.

  “There’s no audio on this video, but watch this.”

  I took a seat and placed it close to Lovie’s. The video footage showed Jason going to his door. It showed him talking to someone, but the face of the person couldn’t be seen from the angle of the camera. Whomever Jason had been talking to made him ups
et.

  He came back inside, kicking and hitting stuff.

  “Keep watching,” Lovie said. He pressed a button. The video fast-forwarded.

  Someone dressed in all black with a black skullcap covering their face pulled a body into the living room. The person pulled out a gun from their back pocket and then shot the body in the head.

  “So he was dead before his body was placed in the living room.”

  “Exactly,” Lovie said. “The person left the room. And then that’s when I showed up.”

  I saw Lovie on the screen. I saw the shock and horror on his face at discovering Jason’s body. I watched Royce and I burst through the front door. Although there was no audio, I knew what had taken place next. That’s when we all decided to leave and act like we’d never seen anything.

  “The person in the black was still in the house when we were there,” I said. “And they knew there were cameras because look at them.”

  “Yes. Whomever it was knew Uncle Jason. Knew him well enough to know he had hidden cameras and knew exactly where they were all located. Because what’s not shown is them starting the fire,” Lovie said.

  “What we need to find out is who that is in the black. I need to call Mitch and see if he can do anything with this footage,” I said.

  “No, Mom, you can’t. If you do that, then you and I could also be arrested. You can’t show this to Mitch.”

  “Who said anything about showing him the entire video? Just enough to show what happened.”

  “But Mom… Still. He’s going to want to know where we got it. How we got it.”

  “Leave Mitch up to me. Make me a video showing the other part. Maybe if I show him that, he’ll see for himself Royce had nothing to do with it, and it’ll put some fire up under him to do something. Because quite frankly, so far, I’m not satisfied on how he’s been handling your father’s case.”

  Later on that day, Lovie dropped off the altered video. “Mom, I hope this helps.”

  “I hope so too,” I agreed. “In the meantime, we also need to figure out who this mysterious person is in the black.”

  “I’m on it,” Lovie declared.

  “I didn’t bother to tell Hope or Charity what we’ve found yet. I don’t want to chance Charity saying anything to Omar about this,” I confessed to Lovie.

  “So you don’t really trust him either?” Lovie asked.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust Omar. I don’t know him well enough. This is my husband’s life on the line, and I don’t trust anyone but you kids when it comes to his freedom.”

  Lovie left me alone with my thoughts and the video. I dialed Mitch’s number. “Mitch. I have something for you. Can you stop by the house?”

  “I’m out of town right now, but will stop by as soon as I get back.”

  “Out of town? You shouldn’t be taking leisure trips while my husband is locked up. What are we paying you for?”

  “Lexi, calm down. Royce is my number one client, but I had to do something for another client. I’ll be back in the morning and will make sure I stop by there before going home or to the office.”

  “Fine,” I snapped, but wasn’t too happy to hear of Mitch’s location.

  Something was telling me I would need more than this video to free my man. I had to think of something and quick.

  CHAPTER 20

  Royce

  Mitch was seated in the room when the guard let me inside. “I hope you have some good news for me,” I blurted. I didn’t have time for pleasantries. After being locked up for two months, I was long past small talk.

  “Have a seat, Royce; we have a lot to discuss.” Mitch opened up his briefcase and took out sheets of paper. “I saw Lexi yesterday.”

  “How’s my wife doing?”

  “I thought she was bossy before.” He sighed. “Since you’ve been locked up, she’s been relentless. She’ll call me until I pick up so I try to answer the first time.”

  I laughed. “That’s my Lexi.”

  “Lexi showed me a video. The footage shows the real killer pulling Jason’s body into the room and then shooting him. I’m obligated by law to show this to the police. I do have a dilemma. If I show it, they’ll want to know how I got it and I don’t want to pull Lexi into this.”

  “Then don’t share it with them.”

  “It can prove that you didn’t do it,” Mitch said.

  “I don’t want to chance it. I’d rather face the jury without it than have it end up causing legal problems for Lexi.”

  Mitch slid a brown envelope toward me.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “The results you’ve been waiting on.”

  The DNA results were back. My hand shook a little as I held the envelope. I got a paper cut trying to tear it open. I said a silent prayer and pulled the short white sheet of paper out of it.

  Tears flowed down my face. The answer I’d been waiting on since finding out Jason had slept with Lexi stared me in the face. There was no more denying the facts.

  “Are you okay?” Mitch asked.

  I handed him the paper. “Can you arrange a special meeting with Lexi and Lovie? Something like this so I can share this with them in person without the glass dividing us.”

  Mitch reviewed the results. “I will see what I can do. In the meantime, please reconsider the video. This could really help you.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Mitch left and I was returned to my cell. I had plenty of time to think about the test results. My mind drifted off until I was in a deep sleep. One of the guards came to my cell. He yelled out my name.

  “Jones. God must be smiling down on you because you’ve got a special visit.”

  I had to pinch myself to prove I wasn’t dreaming. I had just spoken to Mitch that morning, so I didn’t expect him to get the visitation set up quickly.

  “Are you coming or what? This doesn’t happen too often so I suggest you hurry it up,” the guard said.

  He didn’t have to tell me again. I jumped off the bunk and followed him to the room where I’d seen Mitch earlier. I inhaled and exhaled a few times. The guard opened the door. Mitch was seated at the table and right next to him were Lexi and Lovie.

  Mitch addressed the guard. “I promise you nothing inappropriate will happen. Can you leave us alone for a few minutes?”

  “I’m not supposed to. But I can make this exception for Mr. Jones.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  As soon as the door was shut, Lexi hopped out of her chair and we hugged. I hugged her so tightly I didn’t want to let her go. I inhaled the mixture of the fruity and floral scent of her perfume. I ran my fingers through her hair. I hadn’t touched her hair in over two months. I kissed her lips. I felt the softness of her big brown lips on mine. I’d dreamed of those lips every night. I held her in my arms and squeezed her, never wanting to let go.

  Tears flowed down Lexi’s face. I wiped her face with one of my hands. “Ooh girl, I’ve missed you,” I said to Lexi.

  “I’ve missed you too, Royce. If you only knew how much.”

  “I know, baby. Believe me, I know.”

  Up until this point, no one else had said anything. For a moment, I forgot Lovie and Mitch were in the room.

  “Lovie, come give me a hug, son.”

  Lovie seemed hesitant at first, but obliged me. I hugged him tight too.

  Mitch said, “Let’s sit before the guard comes back.”

  I sat down across from Lexi. We held hands. I rubbed her soft hands, loving the feel of hers in mine. “I’m surprised Mitch was able to set this up so fast.”

  “Someone owed me a favor,” Mitch said.

  “Thank God for favors.” I looked at Lovie and then at Lexi. I pulled out the sheet of paper that held the key to our past and future. “I’m not sure if Mitch told you t
he DNA test results were back.”

  Lexi frowned. “No, he did not.”

  I squeezed her hand. The guard came back in and stood by the door. I wished he would have remained outside a little longer, but I couldn’t prolong this another second. In prison, one of the things I’d gotten used to was the lack of privacy.

  “Lovie. Lexi, the results show there’s a ninety-nine-point-nine percent probability that Lovie—”

  “Royce, spill it out. The suspense is killing me,” Lexi blurted out.

  “Baby, I am.” I looked at Lovie. “Lovie, I told you before this test was done that I will always be your dad regardless, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” he responded.

  “Well, the test results show I am your father. So now we have proof that I’m your dad.”

  “Thank God!” Lexi shouted out.

  Lovie sighed heavily. It was as if he had been holding his breath the entire time.

  “Dad, you are my father.” Lovie got up.

  The guard said, “No physical contact.”

  Lovie sat back down. I placed my hand on top of his. “Son, I knew you were mine. I felt it in my heart. Even if the results had come back different, a piece of paper wouldn’t have changed that fact.”

  Although being behind bars wasn’t the ideal situation for me, at that moment in time, I felt joy. Joy that I had my wife and biological son sitting there with me. Love filled the room and filled my heart as I sat there and looked at their beautiful faces. Nothing else right then mattered.

  CHAPTER 21

  Charity

  I ended my phone call with Omar. I got out of my car and walked up the walkway to my parents’ house. Hope had ridden over with me, but she was already inside.

  “Glad you could finally join us,” Mom said as I greeted her and Lovie.

  I took a seat on the couch next to Hope.

  I saw smiles on their faces. Lovie said, “The DNA results came back and—”

  She interrupted Lovie. “Royce is Lovie’s father.”

  I jumped out of my seat and hugged Lovie. “I knew it. See, told you.”

  Hope hugged Lovie too. “I’m relieved. You would still be our brother, but I couldn’t imagine having Jason as a father.”