Hero

by J. F. Gonzalez; Wrath James White

  She heard Tonya yell, heard a grunt of pain as a blow was struck. Natsinet screamed. There was a thud as one of them struck the floor.

  Adelle didn’t hear the knife clatter to the floor, but she heard the fight that followed. She couldn’t see what was going on because her view was blocked by the sofa in front of her, but she could hear it. She heard a crash and one of her picture frames landed beside her, its edge coated with blood. It was the same one she’d been planning on braining Natsinet with for the past two weeks. She only hoped that the blood on it was from Natsinet and not Tonya.

  She tried to hoist herself up, wished she weren’t so helpless now. Amid the struggle, punctuated by yells and the sound of fists striking flesh, Tonya’s voice was clearly audible.

  “You fucking bitch, I’m gonna fuck you up!”

  “No!” Natsinet yelled.

  Frenzied struggle.

  Adelle gathered her remaining ounce of strength. If she could only move an arm, pick something up, she could lend her hand in this battle over her life and the life of her daughter and end this once and for all.

  Adelle’s fingers trembled as they closed around the Desert Eagle. Her arm was too weak to raise the weapon so she slid it along the carpet until it was pointing underneath the sofa on the other side of which Natsinet and Tonya continued to battle. She squinted through the dust bunnies and misplaced cups and knickknacks beneath the old couch, trying to see the two women on the other side. All she could make out was a tangle of arms and legs. She could hear the sound of flesh smacking against flesh. Hear the grunts, curses, and heavy breaths as they struggled. She knew that Natsinet was wearing a white shirt and Tonya had been wearing something yellow, so she tried to distinguish the two colors and aim at the first flash of white she saw.

  “Goddamn bitch!”

  It was hard to tell if that was Natsinet or Tonya.

  Then, “Noooo!”

  Adelle fired.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The first thing she was aware of was the pain.

  She hurt everywhere. Her mind felt cloudy again, this time from soreness and fatigue, swimming to the surface in a sea of pain that enveloped her from head to toe. The worst of it was in her head, which rang as if it were a bell that had been clanged in a church tower. She didn’t even try opening her eyes. To do so would let the light in, causing more sparks of pain to shoot inside her head.

  She remained lying down, becoming gradually aware of her surroundings as her body and mind slowly woke up.

  Voices from close by. Male. “…lucky she’s alive…”

  She felt herself sink into unconsciousness again, slipping back into that black sea. She stared at the IV hooked to her arm, watching it drip slowly as her vision blurred and fell asleep once again.

  When she came back up again, not knowing she’d even gone under, the voices were still conversing. “…has been convicted of aggravated assault and robbery…served five years of a twenty year sentence and…”

  “…just don’t believe that he’d…”

  “…I know…I know…”

  “....I’ve been trying to pin him to something for awhile now…I have it on good authority that he’s killed…”

  “…on life support now…”

  “…well, she’s a hero for what she did…”

  “…the family’s been contacted…didn’t tell them how she was killed…”

  She slipped back into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  She didn’t realize she was talking until she heard her voice. How long she’d been carrying on a conversation with whoever was talking to her, she had no idea. She blinked, the room becoming more focused and she saw she was in a hospital. A middle-aged Black man in a suit was sitting in a chair by the bed. Two other men, both White and dressed in suits, were standing near the doorway to the room, looking at her.

  “…I just…reacted…and I…I…” She blinked, suddenly aware of where she was.

  The men were silent, waiting for her to continue. The man sitting beside her bed nodded at her.

  “Go on, ma’am.”

  She took a deep breath. Collected her thoughts. What had she told them?

  A tear slipped down her cheek.

  “Mrs. Smith…is she okay? Is she alive?”

  “Adelle Smith?” The man by her bed asked. “You mean…”

  “She’s alive,” the White man standing by the door said. “She’s in ICU.”

  She wet her lips; her mouth was suddenly very dry. Her heart pounded.

  “And…the others?”

  They said nothing. The man by her bed traded a glance with the other two standing by the door. It was obvious to her now that they were cops. Detectives.

  “You need your rest,” the detective sitting beside her said. He stood up. “We’ll come back later.”

  “No…please!”

  The three detectives left the hospital room and closed the door behind them.

  Leaving her wondering…

  * * *

  “Something doesn’t seem right,” Detective Carl Hendrix said. The three of them were standing together near the nurses’ station in the ICU wing of Philadelphia General Hospital.

  “I agree,” Detective Robert Lennon said. He traded a glance with his partner, Brian Swinson. Robert and Brian had observed the interrogation from the doorway and Robert could tell from his partner’s troubled features that what they’d heard just didn’t add up.

  It should have been open and shut. Noted civil rights activist and a hero to many of the people in the North Philadelphia neighborhood she lived in suffered a stroke. Her daughter, Tonya Brown, arranges for home care nursing. Hospice Nursing in Philadelphia sends two of their best, Natsinet Zenawi and Rachael Williams. At some point during the two plus weeks Mrs. Smith is receiving in-home care and rehabilitation Mike Simmons, a notorious crime figure in the neighborhood who’d once served time for aggravated assault and was a known drug dealer and criminal, broke into the apartment and repeatedly raped Rachael Williams and Adelle Smith, carrying on a three day session of torture and abuse towards both women before finally killing the nurse and dismembering her. When Natsinet arrived at her scheduled time she walked into a house of horrors; during the ensuing fight with Mike Simmons, she suffered serious injuries and managed to wound Mike with several stab wounds. Tonya Brown arrived soon after and that’s when all hell broke loose.

  “Any word on Tonya’s condition?” Detective Swinson asked one of the nurses manning the ICU desk.

  “She’s in a coma. Critical condition,” the nurse answered.

  “And Mike Simmons?”

  “Still unconscious.”

  “So what about her?” Detective Swinson asked, jerking a thumb back in the direction of the room they’d just exited.

  “She took a fifty caliber bullet in the hip. It looks like she’d been strangled as well. There were large contusions around her neck. Someone beat her up pretty good. She’s lost a lot of blood. She may not walk again if the doctor can’t reconstruct her hip bone. Even then it’s going to require months of physical therapy.”

  “Damn, that’s terrible. Thank you, nurse.” Detective Swinson turned back to his partner and Detective Hendrix.

  “So let’s get this mess straight for the report.”

  Swinson pulled out a small spiral notepad and flipped to a blank page as he removed a pen from his shirt pocket. He began flipping back and forth between the notes he’d written down earlier while jotting down more notes, trying to fill in the blanks.

  “According to the first officers on the scene, Mrs. Smith had the pistol in her hand when they arrived. They think she may have shot Ms. Zenawi accidentally while trying to protect her daughter. Simmons must have dropped the gun during his fight with the nurse and Mrs. Smith was trying to pick it up when the gun went off.” Hendrix began, while flipping through his own notes.

  “Damn. She must feel terrible. I mean, if that’s really how it happened.”

  “Yeah, if
.”

  “So Michael Simmons was the one who killed Rachael Williams, cut her up, and stuck her in the refrigerator?” Swinson asked.

  “And the freezer.”

  “Then he beats the hell out of that African nurse, Zenawi or whatever her name is, and tries to strangle her to death?”

  “That’s how it appears.”

  “He’d also been abusing Adelle Smith for two or three days?”

  “As far as we can tell.”

  “But yet she has bruises on her that look like they’re at least a week old as well as burn marks that have almost entirely healed?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out myself. Maybe Simmons had been sneaking into the apartment and torturing her for a couple of weeks and no one noticed? Maybe that’s why he started torturing Rachael Williams? Maybe she caught him in the act?”

  “Uh-huh. So then Tonya comes home and he starts beating her up too, but somehow the nurse manages to wake up after being choked unconscious and beaten half to death by a guy who outweighs her by more than a hundred and fifty pounds, stabs him twice in the abdomen and in the process accidentally stabs Tonya Brown in the chest, then gets shot accidentally by Adelle Smith who is lying on the floor and can barely move? Yeah, something definitely does not sound right about that story. Too much accidental shit going on there. I suggest you wait until one of the other victims wakes up before putting that garbage in a report.”

  “That nurse, Natsinet Zenawi, has already corroborated most of the story.”

  Detective Swinson rubbed his balding scalp and shook his head, squinting an eye at his partner before turning to look back at Detective Hendrix.

  “I’d wait to hear what Mrs. Smith has to say about it before turning that report in. You’re right. Something just doesn’t fit. When Tonya Brown wakes up from surgery she might be able to piece together a little more of the story.”

  “You don’t buy any of this shit do you?” Detective Carl Hendrix asked.

  “Not a single word.”

  “I hate to say this after all she’s gone through, getting beaten and choked unconscious, then getting shot and waking up in the hospital with a permanent limp if she’s lucky and isn’t stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.”

  “What are you thinking, Carl?”

  “I think Miss Zenawi is hiding something. Either she’s the victim she appears to be and she’s just in shock so her story isn’t making sense, or she’s somehow involved. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was fucking that drug dealer and they tortured Rachael Williams and Adelle Smith together.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened,” Detective Swinson added, “You know…a boyfriend and girlfriend team torturing and killing, even raping. There’ve been serial killers whose wives and girlfriends were in on it with them. This could be one of those deals.”

  “But then why would she stab him?” Detective Lennon asked.

  “Maybe she didn’t. Maybe it was Tonya Brown who stabbed him and then Natsinet took the knife from her and stabbed her in retaliation. Maybe she got jealous. Maybe Tonya Brown and Big Mike were having some kind of affair and so she stabbed them both in a jealous rage.”

  “That would explain why Mrs. Smith shot her.”

  “It makes a lot more sense than her story, actually.”

  “We’ll have to see what the lab comes back with on the fingerprints.”

  “Do you know what will happen to that neighborhood if we don’t get this all figured out and soon?”

  Brian huffed. “Riots and lawsuits and protesters marching on City Hall, Civil Rights leaders giving speeches about how the Philly P.D. is dragging its feet on the case because she’s Black. Conspiracy theorists will claim that we beat her up ourselves because of her protests against police brutality thirty-five years ago and are trying to cover it up and frame an innocent drug dealer.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Brian,” Hendrix said. ”They’ll blame it all on us even if we do solve the case.”

  The nurse came back into the room.

  “Mike Simmons is awake. He’s still pretty out of it. He just had a pretty large blood transfusion, but he asked to speak to you.”

  The detectives all turned to look at one another, stunned.

  “He asked to speak to the police?” Lennon asked.

  “He insisted, actually. Adelle Smith is awake as well.”

  “Can she talk?”

  “Her speech is still impaired from the stroke. She speaks really slowly and her words are a little slurred…but yeah, she can talk.”

  Detective Hendrix turned to the other two detectives.

  “You two take Simmons. I want to hear what Mrs. Smith has to say before I join you. We might just get out of this okay after all.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Adelle shook her head in exasperation. She was once again in a hospital. Yet, despite her ordeal, she felt better this time than she had the last time she’d been here after suffering that stroke. At least now she could talk again.

  “What’s your name young man?”

  Her voice was weak. Her speech sluggish. The detective had to lean in close to hear her.

  “Detective Hendrix, Carl Hendrix.”

  “Are you Black?”

  “My mother was Italian, but yes, I’m Black.”

  “That’s good to hear. I was afraid you were going to say no.”

  Adelle looked away from the detective and out the window at the sun dappling through the sheer curtains.

  “I didn’t think I was going to see the sun too many more times.”

  Adelle turned back to the detective.

  “Did I get her?”

  “What?”

  “Is Tonya okay? Did I shoot the right one?”

  “You mean you were trying to shoot your nurse?”

  “Who the hell else do you think I was aiming at? Did I get her?”

  Detective Hendrix’s eyebrows raised. He pulled out his notepad and pen and leaned forward.

  “I think maybe you should tell me exactly what happened in that apartment.”

  * * *

  “You’re saying it was the nurse who did all this? That pretty skinny little thing in there that you tried to strangle to death?”

  Detectives Swinson and Lennon looked at each other and almost laughed, shaking their heads as if sharing a private joke.

  “She stabbed me twice. She killed that other nurse and chopped her up. She admitted it to me when I was trying to get Mrs. Smith out of the house. She’d been abusing Mrs. Smith too. Is she alright? Did I save her?”

  Lennon replied. “Who? Mrs. Smith? She’s fine. One of the other detectives is in her room with her right now. She’s telling him all about how it was you who killed that nurse. It was you who tortured her for weeks and it was you who beat and then stabbed her daughter!”

  “Tonya got stabbed? Is she okay?”

  Mike tried to sit up in bed, but he was still too weak. He winced as pain lanced through his abdomen then collapsed back onto the bed. The two detectives looked at each other. His reactions were all wrong. He wasn’t acting at all like a guilty man.

  “Relax before you bust your stitches,” Detective Swinson said. “Tonya Brown is in surgery right now, but the doctors think she’s going to be okay. The knife punctured a lung but it missed her heart.”

  “Good. That’s good. I don’t know what I’d do if she didn’t make it.”

  Detective Swinson rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Do you really think we’re buying this act of yours? This bullshit about that nurse being some kind of psycho when we both know what you are, a criminal, a drug pusher and a murderer? Just because you ain’t never been convicted for it doesn’t mean we don’t know all about the people you’ve killed. You’ve got one of the worst reputations on the street.”

  “You know what I think?” Detective Lennon spoke up as he sat down on the bed next to Mike Simmons. “I think maybe you were trying to sneak Mrs. Smith out of the ho
use and Ms Zenawi stabbed you to try to protect her employer.”

  “Or did it go down differently?” Swinson said. “Were you and Ms. Zenawi hooked up? You two have some kind of thing going on? Maybe you were torturing Mrs. Smith together to add a little spice to your sex life? Is that how you get it up? By taking a cattleprod to a sixty-seven year old woman? I think you both murdered Rachael Williams and then you attacked Tonya when she got suspicious. The only thing I can’t understand is why Natsinet would stab you.”

  “You guys are a bunch of idiots. What the hell you been smokin’? That nurse did this shit all by herself. I’d never do anything to hurt Mrs. Smith. The only reason I was even up in there was because I thought something about that half-White African bitch wasn’t right. Bitch acted creepy as hell from the first time I met her. Tonya asked me to check on her moms and when I went up in there the bitch stabbed me.”

  Detective Swinson smiled wide. He’d been trying to find a murder he could pin on the big ex-con for half a decade. Now, he was pretty sure he had him.

  “You go ahead and tell that story to a jury. With your record, they’ll have you on death row before you finish your last sentence.”

  “Man, fuck you! I don’t give a damn what you think. Just ask Mrs. Smith. I ain’t have shit to do with this. I tried to save her from that crazy bitch! Mrs. Smith is one of the only people in that neighborhood that gives a damn about me.”

  “We’re listening.”

  “True shit, man. When I was a kid she came over to my house once, when she heard that my Pops had beaten the hell out of my mom. See, he used to get real mean when he drank. He’d hit me and my moms with just about anything he could get his hands on. He’d put my mom in the hospital with a broken rib earlier that week and word had gotten back to Mrs. Smith about it. She walked right into my house and sat down at my kitchen table. She was pissed off. You could see it in her face. She pointed at my Dad and told him that it was his responsibility to raise me into a man, the kind of man that would help elevate our race, that would help eradicate the negative stereotypes the world has of Black men, that would ensure that our people continued to prosper and succeed. Then she asked him if he thought that his drinking, and runnin’ the streets with all kinds of different women, and beating up on his wife was going to set the kind of example I needed to become that type of man. My Pops looked like he was at school being chastised by the teacher. He broke down in tears and started apologizing and shit. He hugged me and my moms and told us both that he loved us. He never hit either one of us again. That’s the kind of woman Mrs. Smith is. Ain’t no way I would have hurt her. I’d give my life for that old woman.” He ran a hand over his bandaged stomach. “Shit, I damn near did.”