Stone Cold

Chapter Ten

Alex ignored Bonnie’s plea and Rossi’s warning, though she was afraid of Dwayne, as much because of what he’d done as because of the cavalier and menacing way he’d confessed to her. He had her in a box, but the box was her shield. As long as she kept her mouth shut and as long as he believed that he might one day again need her courtroom prowess, she would be safe. She hoped to leverage her silence and his belief in her skill to persuade him to spare the Hendersons.

After six weeks, she had picked up the rhythm of the neighborhood. She knew whose kids played in the street, which women tended their gardens, and which old men whiled away the last days of summer rocking on their porches. And she recognized the young toughs, drug dealers who prowled the neighborhood, doing business on street corners, using kids as lookouts and runners.

In all that time, she never saw Mary Henderson carrying groceries into the house. Nor did she see Jameer Henderson cutting the grass, which had grown to half a foot or more, or trimming the shrubs, which were inching up to meet the windows.

On Saturday of the sixth week, she went to Henderson’s barbershop again, this time getting out of her car and going to the door, which that had been propped open to catch the afternoon breeze. Two men were waiting to get their hair cut. Another man was in the chair, a barber running a clipper across the back of his head. None of them was Jameer Henderson. They squinted at her, puzzled at what a white woman was doing in a black man’s barbershop.

“Is this Jameer Henderson’s shop?” she asked.

The barber, gray haired, with a close-cut silver beard that hugged his coal-black jaw, looked up from his customer and turned his clippers off.

“Yeah.”

“Is Jameer in?”

The barber narrowed his eyes and looked at her over glasses that were halfway down his nose.

“You see him?”

Heat rose in the back of her neck, the question making her feel as stupid as she must have sounded.

“When will he be back?”

“Don’t know.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Been awhile,” he said, turning his clippers back on, dismissing her.

The other men turned away. She stood in the doorway for a long moment before walking slowly back to her car. Sitting behind the wheel, she thought about what Bonnie had said, that she was becoming obsessed. She conceded that she was, at the very least, preoccupied with the Henderson family. With good reason, she told herself.

Dwayne Reed was a killer, and the code of the street demanded that he kill Jameer Henderson and Kyrie Chapman. In that moment, she knew that Bonnie had been right. Kyrie’s life had to count just as much as Jameer’s. Ashamed for having dismissed his fate so casually, she went back into the barbershop.

“Kyrie Chapman,” she said. “Where can I find him?”

The barber looked up from his customer.

“You ain’t much for hello and good-bye, are you?”

Alex conceded the point. “Sorry. Hello. Where can I find Kyrie Chapman?”

“County morgue, I ’spect. Heard he got hisself killed last night.”

Alex ran for her car and gunned the engine, kicking up dust and laying down rubber as she sped away. Three minutes later she skidded to a stop in front of Jameer Henderson’s house, bolted from the car, and raced up the walk, arm raised and fist balled, poised to pound on the front door.

But the door was open, not all the way, just enough for her to gag at the coppery smell of blood coming from inside and to expose Mary Henderson’s body lying on the floor, bra twisted around her neck, naked and bloody from the waist down.

Hand over her mouth, she eased the door open until she could see the rest of the front room where Mary’s body lay. Her children, LaRhonda and Cletus, lay on the floor not far from her, arms and legs bound, their heads caved in, skull fragments scattered around them like broken porcelain. Jameer Henderson was tied to a chair in the corner of the room, his eyes open, a bullet in his forehead, blood and brains on the wall behind him.

Alex backed away, digging in her pocket for her cell phone, punching in 911.

“What is your emergency?” the operator asked.

“They’re all dead,” Alex said.

“Who’s dead?”

Alex shook her head, too stunned to answer.

“Ma’am? Are you there? Who’s dead?”

She took a deep breath and recited the names and address. “And call Detective Hank Rossi,” she added, closing her phone.

Alex gazed up and down the street. The sun was shining, the temperature warm, an idyllic late summer afternoon, a perfect day to be outside. But the block was empty and silent. No kids playing. No women tending their gardens. No men rocking on their porches. No business being done on the corner. They knew, she realized. They all knew. She sat on a bench on the front porch and cried.