Stone Cold

Chapter Seven

Alex’s cell phone rang at four o’clock the next morning. She flopped her hand across her nightstand, struggling to find her phone, eyes closed, hoping she was dreaming. When she found the phone, opened her eyes, and saw Kansas City Police Department displayed on the caller ID, she knew she wasn’t. Opening her phone, she padded out of the bedroom and into the hall to avoid disturbing Bonnie. Quincy, who had been sleeping at the foot of their bed, followed her.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“It’s me, Dwayne.”

“Dwayne? Dwayne Reed? Are you kidding me?”

She recognized his deep voice, but her brain didn’t want to admit it. Not at this hour.

“Shit, yeah, woman! How many clients you got named Dwayne?”

“Why are you calling me from the police department? You should have been released right after the jury came back.”

“They let me out, all right. That ain’t the problem.”

Alex leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. Quincy plopped down next to her, his head in her lap. “Christ, Dwayne! You couldn’t stay out of trouble for twenty-four hours?”

“You know how it is.”

“No, Dwayne. I don’t know how it is. What happened?”

“I ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ over the phone, ’specially when it’s five-0’s phone. Get on down here and you’ll see what’s what.”

She tilted her head to the ceiling, rubbing her temple with her free hand. She was still his lawyer, but only for the Wilfred Donaire case. Bradshaw could file a motion to set aside the jury verdict, which meant that the case wasn’t technically over. If Dwayne had been arrested on a new charge, someone from her office would be appointed to represent him. Until then, she couldn’t leave him there to be worked over by the cops. Too many people confessed to things they didn’t do when their lawyers weren’t there to protect them.

“What’s the charge?”

“Same bullshit as last time. Murder.”

Fully awake and focused, she shared his concern about who might be listening to their call.

“I’m on my way. Keep your mouth shut until I get there.”

She hung up and took a moment to rub Quincy behind his ears, stopping when she realized what Reed had left out. He hadn’t said he didn’t do it.

She and Bonnie lived in Crestwood, a middle-class midtown neighborhood a fifteen-minute drive from downtown. At that time of night, it was ten minutes, long enough for her to imagine whom Dwayne Reed could have murdered in the twelve hours since he became a free man. Of all the images that came to mind, the one that she couldn’t shake was of Jameer Henderson in the courtroom, holding his children in his lap and comforting his wife.

In a violent world where gangs were more heavily armed than police and teenage boys didn’t expect to live long enough to become old men and treated a stretch in prison as an inevitable rite of passage, revenge was both an ethic and a necessity to maintain street cred. Henderson had made himself and his family targets. That she had been complicit in exposing them to harm was a cruel irony that ate at Alex, her insistence to Judge West that their fate wasn’t her problem a boast she could no longer back up.

Her fear for the Henderson family was enough to make her detour to their house before going to police headquarters. They lived on the east side, a part of Kansas City where the name of one of the long-defunct homeowners associations, Forgotten Homes, told the story of too many people who lived there. The promises of generations of politicians to root out the crack houses, revitalize the economy, and protect the law-abiding citizens who got caught in the crossfire had been broken more often than they had been kept.

She drove east and north, passing rundown retail strips barricaded behind iron bars, untended and abandoned houses, and vacant lots choking with weeds and trash. The bright spots-well-tended homes, churches, schools, and businesses ready for the coming day-were muted in the darkness.

The closer she got, the more she heard Jameer Henderson’s plaintive question echoing in her head. What am I gonna do now? Her creeping sense of dread went viral, and by the time she turned onto his block, her chest was pounding and her heart was breaking.

When she didn’t see any squad cars or ambulances with flashing lights, she skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. There were no cops, crime scene investigators, or TV trucks set up for live remotes. If Dwayne Reed had murdered Jameer Henderson and his family, investigators would still be on the scene and neighbors would be holding a vigil. But there was none of that. There was only quiet.

She sat for a moment, letting her pulse slow, wiping off the thin sheen of sweat that had blossomed on her face. Resting her head on the steering wheel, she clasped her hands and said a prayer.

“Thank you, God.”