“I hear that. You going to have a talk with Dwayne outside the presence of his counsel?”
“Thought I might.”
“Thought you would.”
“Later,” Rossi said and closed his phone.
After he put Dwayne in jail on Saturday, Rossi had been assigned first to the canvass of the Hendersons’ neighborhood and then to reconstructing the family’s movements in the twenty-four hours preceding the murders and then to interviewing the Hendersons’ friends and relatives. It was one piece of the broader by-the-book investigation and it had yielded nothing.
He’d established that Jameer had gone to his shop that morning but went home when the handful of customers said they preferred to wait for the other barber to cut their hair. It had been like that since the Wilfred Donaire trial.
Everyone in the neighborhood knew that Jameer had testified against Dwayne. Snitching, even under duress, had made him and his family outcasts. They were better off being seen with Dwayne than with Jameer. No one had seen the Hendersons that day at the grocery, gas station, or cleaners, or at church or out in the yard. No one had seen them anywhere at all.
Rossi had been at the Henderson crime scene a short time on Saturday, long enough to see the aftermath of the slaughter and escort Alex to her car before going after Dwayne, and he hadn’t been back since. Even though experienced homicide detectives and a thorough CSI crew had inspected it down to the dust motes and all the useful physical evidence had been removed, he wanted to see the crime scene again.
Not because he thought he’d find the case-breaking evidence that the others had missed. He just wanted to get a feel for the murders that he couldn’t get by reading another detective’s report or by studying one-dimensional photographs. He wanted to see the scene from the both the killer’s and the victims’ perspectives. That would give him more to work with when he caught up with Dwayne.
Rossi ducked under the crime scene tape strung across the front door. The murders had taken place in the living room, which was in the front of the house to the left of the narrow entry hall. That’s where he’d finish his tour. He turned to his right, crossing through a small dining room furnished with an oak table buffed to a high sheen and adorned with a pair of brass candlesticks. A breakfront made of the same oak and filled with china and porcelain dolls crowded the small room.
He continued through the dining room and into the kitchen, then out into the center hallway and up the stairs, where there were three bedrooms and one bath. Like the dining room, the rest of the house was clean, neat, and orderly yet had the lived-in feel of a family that took pride in what it had, no matter how modest.
The living room was different. Upturned furniture left as it had been found, a big-screen television facedown and shattered, newspapers and magazines scattered like a strong wind had blown through the room. And there was blood. Some splattered on the walls and carpet, some soaked into the carpet, some silhouetting where bodies had lain on the floor.
When the house was finally released as a crime scene, it would be scrubbed clean. The next owner, if there was one, would rip out the carpet and paint the walls, but none of that would change what had happened in that room.
Rossi pictured the sequence. There were no signs of forced entry, which meant someone let the killer into the house, maybe because the Hendersons knew him or because he showed them his gun.
The killer rounded the family up in the living room, forcing Mary to tie Jameer to the chair before binding her children’s wrists and ankles. Rossi could hear her pleading.
And he did take her. On the floor with the handle of a baseball bat and in front of her husband and children, strangling her when he was finished. The kids had to have been next. Bat to their heads. Probably the boy’s bat, a gift from his father, a weapon of brutal convenience. That left Jameer, made to suffer through his family’s suffering, killed with a bullet to his brain. Swift death. Small mercy.
Rossi had seen enough. He left, their imagined cries echoing in his head. Grim faced, he started his car and went hunting for Dwayne Reed, choosing Odyessy Shelburne’s house as his first stop.
A car was parked in the driveway when he pulled up to the house. He recognized it as the same kind of car he’d seen Alex Stone driving up and down the Hendersons’ street.
“Shit,” he said.
Rossi got out and walked to the car, peering into the driver’s window for anything that might confirm whether it was her car. If it was hers, he’d move his car far enough away so that he could watch the house without being noticed until she left. If the car wasn’t hers, he’d knock, hoping to find someone who might know something useful. All he had to do was run the license plate.
Before he could call it in, gunfire erupted from inside the house-two quick shots, a brief pause, and then a third shot followed by the sound of a woman screaming. He ran up the walk, kicking the front door open, gripping his gun with both hands, lowering it when he saw Dwayne Reed lying on the floor in a pool of blood, a gun at his side, and Alex Stone standing nearby holding a gun, its barrel still smoking. Odyessy Shelburne knelt next to her son, moaning, cupping his lifeless face with her hands and looking up at Rossi.
“My baby! My baby! She killed my baby!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alex was deaf except for the ringing in her ears, her mind fogged as the sound of gunshots reverberated and faded. Everything around her had slowed to a crawl, Odyessy laboring to raise Dwayne’s head to her bosom as if she was immersed in glue, her mother’s cry drawn out and distorted.
She gazed at Dwayne’s bloody body, blinking to convince herself that he was dead, that she had fired the fatal shots, bending her arm toward her face, staring at the gun in her hand, weapon and appendage both foreign and unreal. Another voice broke through her sound barrier, her hearing restored.
“I said put the gun down, Counselor! Don’t make me tell you again!”
Alex turned toward the voice, furrowing her brow when she saw Rossi, struggling to understand why he was aiming his gun at her. Was he friend or foe? Was this kill or be killed?
She took a sharp, quick breath, tightening her grip on the gun for an instant, her brain shouting at her,
“That’s good, Counselor. Now step away from the gun.”
Alex nodded again, dropping her chin to her chest, backing up until she bumped into the wall, as Odyessy dove for her gun, grabbing it and aiming at Alex’s heart. Rossi bolted at Odyessy, crashing into her as she pulled the trigger, the bullet grazing Alex’s left shoulder.
He grabbed Odyessy’s wrist, slamming it onto the floor and knocking the gun loose, sending it skidding across the floor. Screaming, Odyessy tried to claw his face. Rossi flipped her onto her stomach, yanked her arms behind her back, and bound her wrists with plastic handcuffs. Dragging her by her shirt collar, he put her in a corner, face to the wall.
“Move and I’ll shoot you,” he told her.
“Fuck you!”
“Not today, Odyessy.”
“That bitch kilt my boy! I saw her do it. Whyn’t you put some cuffs on her?”
“Hold that thought. You’ll get a chance to tell your story, but for now, shut your mouth.”
“I ain’t gonna shut nuthin’!”
Rossi leaned toward her, his hand on her back, whispering, “Listen to me. You want Alex to hear your story before I have a chance to question her? All you’ll do is give her a chance to come up with a different version that puts it all on you. So if you want to help your son, shut the fuck up. Okay?”
Odyessy shook his hand off her. “Okay, but you don’t get that bitch, I will!”
Rossi turned toward Alex, who was slumped on the floor, back against the wall, legs extended. There was a
