Kinitra?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Calvin retorted. “Not a one of you believed him just now when he swore he was innocent. Not you, Jamella. Not you, Rondell. You all thought he did it. Hell, these police people were ready to take him away in cuffs until that crazy old man showed up with his mouthy friend.”
“He’s not crazy,” Mitch said indignantly. “And I’m not mouthy. I choose my words very carefully. Force of habit. The first magazine I ever worked for only gave me fifty words to dissect an entire movie. Why, I could barely even-”
Des said, “Mitch…”
He moved it along. “I simply like to get to the bottom of things. Like, for instance, how long have you been raping your own daughter, Calvin?”
“I never touched a hair on my beautiful Kinitra’s head.”
“Try again,” Mitch urged him. “And I’d be a bit more careful about how you answer. Rondell’s hand is getting kind of twitchy. Rondell, we’re making excellent progress here. Sure you don’t want to put that thing down and have a seat?”
“Positive,” he replied between gritted teeth.
Jamella’s shiny eyes searched her father’s face. “Is it true, Popsy? Did you… do those things to her?”
“Naw, girl,” Calvin said reassuringly. “You know me.”
She flared at him suddenly. “Yeah, I know you. I know that after I got to be twelve years old you started looking at me up, down and sideways, licking your chops. That’s why Mama threw you out, wasn’t it? Because she knew you.”
Tyrone began breathing in and out very hard. And that vein was throbbing in his forehead now. “Did he ever come near you?”
“No, never,” she replied. “Mama made sure he never got the chance. He was out of our lives for years. And he’s been nothing but decent since you invited him to move in with us. Sure, I’ve seen him flirting with the pretty young girls by the pool. But he never got out of line. He was strictly being playful. Chantal gets upset about him watching his porn. But there isn’t a man in America who doesn’t watch porn. He’s been a good father to Kinitra and me since he moved in. Or so I thought.” She glared at Calvin. “I should have known the real deal.”
“Which is what?” Rondell demanded, blinking at her.
“That I’m not Daddy’s little girl anymore,” Jamella said bitterly. “I’m Tyrone’s. Huge with his child. But Kinitra’s still young and sweet and innocent. So he went after her.” She glowered at her father accusingly. “You forced yourself on my baby sister. You’ve been forcing yourself on her ever since Tyrone was kind enough to give you a nice home with us. And this is how you repay him-by trying to make him out to be a murderer a-and rapist. I’m the fool here. I kept telling myself you’d turned over a new leaf. That you weren’t the same awful scum Mama said you were. I should have known better.”
“I should have known better, too,” Des said, glancing over at the Deacon. “You said something to me earlier today that should have set off alarm bells in my head. Only it didn’t-not until we were sitting down to dinner.”
The Deacon frowned at her. “What did I say?”
“That men don’t change. That they are who they are.” She looked back at Calvin. “You are a low-life street hustler who only looks out for himself-even when you’re living large in a waterfront mansion. You have no moral code and zero conscience. You helped yourself to your own daughter because you felt like it. And when things started to go south, you tried to push the blame off on the son-in-law who took you in. You’re sly and you’re devious, Calvin. But you’re not smart. The state can’t bring Tyrone to trial on the rape charge unless Kinitra swears out a criminal complaint against him. And she’d be compelled to give up a sample of her baby’s DNA-which would prove that you are the father, not Tyrone. There was no way in hell you were ever going to get away with this. Don’t you see?”
“Wasn’t thinking that far into the future,” Calvin grumbled. “I was strictly thinking survival. Get the other cat before he gets you. I’ve spent half my life in a cage. I live by the code that I learned there, thanks to y’all. You’re the ones put me in there. You made me the man I am today.”
“So these murders are our fault,” the Deacon said to him.
“Absolutely.”
Rondell’s finger tightened on the trigger. “And what about Kinitra?” he cried out, trembling with rage. “Whose fault is that?”
“I got me a likeness for the young girls. I ain’t proud about it. But it is what it is. And I take what I want. That’s what a man does. He don’t ask for permission. He takes.”
“She’s your own daughter, you filthy bastard!”
“Kinitra is one fine-looking young girl. And once my blood gets to boiling, there ain’t much I can do to stop myself. The good Lord knows that. He’s always testing me. Sometimes I fail.”
“You will die for this!” Rondell snarled.
“We all die,” Calvin said with a shrug.
“And we all know the truth now,” Des said. “You’ve forced it out of him, Rondell. Good job. Why don’t you let us take it from here? Just put that gun down. It’s over now.”
“It’s not over,” Rondell said with chilling certainty.
“You folks don’t have to worry yourselves none,” Calvin said, sneering at Rondell. “He don’t have the balls to pull that trigger. I can tell from a man’s eyes if he’s got ’em. This one’s just a little bitch.”
“You shut up!” Rondell screamed at him.
“Don’t do it, little brother,” Tyrone said pleadingly. “You’ll mess up your whole life.”
“I-I have no life,” Rondell sputtered at him. “Don’t you get it? I loved her. And he destroyed her. She’s gone!”
“She’s not gone, Rondell,” Jamella spoke up. “She’ll be home from the hospital tomorrow. And she’ll need you now more than ever.”
“Son, I want you to listen to me,” the Deacon said. “I’ve been around a lot longer than you and I know a few things. I know that right now you can’t see how you will ever deal with your pain. But you will deal with it, I promise you-provided that you act like the responsible man you are and put down your gun. You did what needed doing just now for the girl who you love. Now let us prosecute Calvin through the proper channels. Believe me, he will pay.”
Rondell kept the Glock pressed to Calvin’s head. “Yes, he will. He will pay right now. On your feet, Calvin.”
Calvin’s eyes widened. “Why, what are you-?”
“On your feet!” Rondell ordered him.
Calvin got slowly to his feet. Rondell used the Glock to prod him over to the edge of the sofa so that he could get right behind him, his left forearm wrapped around Calvin’s throat. He was using the bigger man as a shield.
“He will pay right now,” Rondell repeated, backing the two of them toward the rain-spattered French doors that Mitch and Winston had come through. “He will pay.” When they reached the doors, Rondell groped around with his left hand for the wall switch, flicking off the outdoor floodlights. He and Calvin were no longer backlit. There was only darkness behind them. “He will pay.”
Rondell paused there for a brief moment now with his Glock against Calvin’s head, the two men lit from above by the beams of the ceiling track lights. There was an incredible intensity to that light. An incredible intensity to that moment. Neither man moved. Not one person in the whole room moved. Time seemed to stop. Everyone was frozen there in place, their eyes gleaming, faces drawn tight, bodies poised for action. For an eerie instant, Des felt as if they were all living inside “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt.
But this was no painting.
And Rondell’s finger on the Glock’s trigger began to move now. Not at normal speed. In slow motion. It all seemed to go down in slow motion… The shift in Calvin’s posture as he waited for the fatal shot, expecting it, resigned to it. His eyes closing one last time as Rondell fired off the round that blew away the side of Calvin’s head. Calvin sagging to the gleaming hardwood floor, a lifeless sack of meat and bone… Until suddenly everything returned to normal speed and Rondell was dropping the gun and running out of the French doors and into the pouring rain, Monique shrieking in horror from the sofa.
Toni was the first one out the door after him, flicking on the floodlights as she ran by, her SIG drawn.
