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.
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.”
Chapter Eight
Police Headquarters was located at Eleventh and Locust in a square-cut limestone building erected as part of the same Depression-era public works project that had produced the courthouse. It was one block from Alex’s office on Oak.
A desk sergeant looked up from his newspaper long enough to grunt and point her to the stairs leading to the second floor, home to the Homicide Unit. Homicide was organized into three squads, 1010, 1020, and 1030, all sharing the same cramped bullpen, battered desks shoved against one another and stacked with open cases, some of them hot, some of them cold.
Detective Hank Rossi was waiting for her, nursing a cup of coffee, the only one in the bullpen. Tall, rangy, and dark eyed, he was rumored to have a drinking problem. Whether it was true or not, he kept up a perpetual head of steam. In twenty years as a homicide detective, he’d skated past accusations that he’d planted evidence and strong-armed confessions. Quick to use his gun, he’d been involved in more shootings than most detectives over their entire careers, killing four suspects and wounding six others, the prosecuting attorney ruling that each shooting was justified. Criminals were his least favorite people, but defense counsel ran a close second, a status he relished making clear.
“You’re looking particularly rugged this morning, Counselor,” Rossi said. “Must drive the ladies crazy.”
Alex neither hid nor broadcast that she was gay and didn’t care who knew or didn’t know. She just lived her life. She didn’t keep her hair short, choose clothes that were more masculine than feminine, and avoid wearing makeup as a gay badge of courage. That’s what she liked, plain and simple, but it made her an easy target for men like Rossi, who were okay with lesbians only as long as they could watch them have sex in a porn movie. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of letting him piss her off.
“Something to think about the next time you polish your pistol. Where’s my client?”
“Interrogation two.”
“He’s only been out twelve hours. Who’s he supposed to have killed?”
“Jermaine Jones,” he said, pointing to a file on his desk bearing the
“A cold case? You’re joking. How cold is it?”
“It’s got some hair on it. Jones was a drug dealer in Reed’s neighborhood. They came up together. Could be they had a beef, things got out of hand.”
Alex shook her head. “Is that all you’ve got? I expected more out of you, like maybe some newly discovered evidence you just planted or a confession you beat out of him.”
Rossi shrugged. “It’s early in the investigation. Could be something will turn up.”
“Which means you don’t have anything to hold him on and you’re just jerking him around because you’re pissed off that he was acquitted. You ought to be harassing the jury instead of my client.”
Rossi stood and squared his shoulders, crowding her. “Wilfred Donaire was my case. I worked it from day one. I know more about it than you could ever hope to know, and I know that your client is guilty. He’s got no business being back on the street.”
Alex stood her ground. “So the jury hurt your feelings. He was acquitted. Get over it. It’s still an open case. Pretend you’re O.J. and find the real killer. Arresting Dwayne on a bogus murder charge you know you can’t make stick isn’t going to change that.”
“Maybe not, but it’ll send him a message.”
“Yeah. What message? That cops like you can harass him whenever they feel like it? I think he’s gotten that message his whole life.”
“The message is that this isn’t over. That I’m going to be on him from now until his luck runs out, and when it does, I’m going to be right there to take him down.”
“Well, bully for you, Dirty Harry. In the meantime, I suggest you cut him loose before I make you famous.”
“Famous? How are you going to make me famous?”
“I’ll start by calling a press conference on the courthouse steps to announce the lawsuit I’m filing against you for violating my client’s civil rights and anything else I can think of.”
Rossi glared at her before walking away, muttering, “Goddamn defense whores.”
He returned a moment later, shoving Dwayne Reed ahead of him, Dwayne stumbling and sporting a rising welt under his left eye to go along with a split lip.
“What happened to you?” Alex asked him.
Dwayne’s face hardened. “Slipped and fell takin’ a piss.”
Alex looked at Rossi, raised eyebrows asking the obvious question.
“Like he said,” Rossi answered, “he slipped and fell. Happens all the time.”
“I bet it does. Let’s get out of here, Dwayne, before you have another accident.”
Alex waited until they were on the street. “I can file a complaint against Rossi, but it will be his word against yours.”
Dwayne shook his head. “It between him and me.”
Alex knew that. She also knew that Dwayne believed that relying on the system to protect him would make him a chump and that he would get his payback in his own way and in his own time.
“Don’t be stupid, Dwayne. You got off this time. Next time you may not be so lucky.”
He tapped her on the arm. “Girl, luck got nuthin’ to do wit’ it. I had you. That’s all I needed. I do it again, I give you a call, for real.”
