“What’s it look like?” Jake said.
“We’re arresting her for the murder of her natural daughter, Nicole Ann Caldwell,” Daniels said. “She-”
“Didn’t do it,” I said. “Don’t-”
“I told you to stay the hell out of my way, boy,” Daniels said, but Dad stopped what he was doing and looked over at me, eye brows raised.
“I’m telling you,” I said. “She didn’t do it.”
He nodded, his expression signifying his trust in me.
“Well, one of them did,” Daniels said. “And-”
“No,” I said. “They didn’t.”
“No one else could have,” he said. “Hell, I’ll arrest them both and let the courts decide-”
“And I guarantee my testimony would create enough reasonable doubt so they’d be acquitted.”
As Daniels began to protest, Dad started taking the cuffs off Bunny.
“What the hell are you doin’?” Daniels yelled at him.
“Thank you,” Bunny said to me.
“Yeah, thanks,” Bobby Earl said.
“He’s the one you need to arrest,” I said, nodding toward DeAndré Stone. “He’s the one behind virtually every crime the Caldwells have been accused of.”
As if untouchable, DeAndré let out a little laugh, but his eyes remained hard and flat as a shark’s.
“Aside from all his criminal activity in New Orleans and the abuse Bunny has suffered from him, he’s been supplying the inmate population with drugs.”
Bobby Earl put his arm around Bunny protectively.
A smile spread across DeAndré’s face, but didn’t reach his eyes. “I’d like to see you try to prove that,” he said.
I turned to Daniels, Pete, and Dad. “Inmates send money to a post office box in New Orleans-supposedly to one of Bobby Earl’s ministries, but it really goes to DeAndré for the drugs he brings in. That’s why it’s sent prior to Bobby Earl’s coming in and not afterwards like all the others.”
Though obviously still feeling invincible, DeAndré’s smile begin to fade a little, the first cracks in the seemingly secure foundation of his crime fortress beginning to show.
“The two condoms we found with saliva and vomitus on them were not from someone having oral sex, but from DeAndré muling the drugs in to Officer Whitfield. He puts the drugs in the condoms and swallows them, then vomits them up once he’s in the chapel. That’s what he was doing with Whitfield in the bathroom the night of the murder.”
Bobby Earl looked at DeAndré with contempt and disbelief, saying his name the way people have said that of Judas for the past two millennia.
The cold, hard, blank expression on DeAndré’s face didn’t change, his emotionless affect revealing the years of repression and hardening that had resulted in his current soullessness.
“The money found in here that night was Whitfield’s cut,” I continued. “For helping with distribution, he gets a shiny new sports car and stacks of tax-free contributions. Between the prints on the money and the DNA of the saliva on the condoms, there should be enough to bring charges, but in case they aren’t, I had Pete arrest Whitfield ahead of time so he couldn’t be here to receive the delivery. DeAndré’s probably got a couple of condoms full of crack or heroin inside him right now.”
Turning toward DeAndré, Jake started reaching for his cuffs, but before he could get them out, DeAndré pulled a 9mm from beneath his coat and pressed the barrel to Jake’s forehead.
Dropping the cuffs, Jake raised his hands. “It’s cool, man,” he said, though his voice told a different story. “Just relax.”
Having checked their weapons at the control station, Dad and Jake weren’t armed. In fact, except for the shotguns in the towers and the weapons locked in the arsenal, DeAndré Stone had the only firearm inside the prison.
“DeAndré,” Bobby Earl said, “don’t-”
“Shut your stupid mouth, Bobby Earl,” he said.
“But-” Bobby Earl began, then suddenly stopped as DeAndré pointed the pistol at him.
“I’m ‘bout to walk outta this motherfucker,” DeAndré said. “Any y’all follow me gonna get capped.”
He eased out of the door into the hallway, turned to head out of the chapel, and saw Merrill coming in, 38 drawn. Before Merrill could say or do anything, DeAndré fired a round, missing Merrill and shattering the glass of the outer chapel doors, then ran into the sanctuary.
“Figured we might need this,” Merrill said, holding up the revolver as we met in the hall.
Still shaken, Jake had yet to move, but Dad and Daniels weren’t far behind behind us as Merrill and I rushed toward the sanctuary.
CHAPTER 51
“Black men not dying fast enough for you?” Merrill yelled to Stone.
DeAndré fired a round toward the back of the sanctuary for his response.
“I guess it’s unthinkable for the control room to pat down the warden’s nephew when he come in,” Merrill said, as we ran toward the sanctuary doors.
A few inmates who had been hanging around after the service began pouring out of the doors in a panic and suddenly Merrill and I were running upstream.
We each pulled open one of the double doors, ducked in the sanctuary, and crouched behind the back pew.
“Don’t fuck with me,” DeAndré shouted from the front of the sanctuary.
I dropped all the way down to the floor and looked beneath the pews. I could see the black pant legs of his suit and the expensive black shoes beneath them, but I also saw another pair of legs on which were blue pants above inmate boots.
I edged to the end of the pew and glanced down the center aisle. DeAndré was holding Dexter Freeman in front of him, his gun jammed against Dexter’s right temple.
“Come out where I can see you right now,” DeAndré said, “or I’ll splatter this nigga’s brains all over the frontta your church house.”
All I could think about was Dexter’s family, of how Trish, Moriah, and Dexter Jr. were just about to get him back. I recalled his son’s little navy-blue suit, his daughter’s white lace collar and imagined seeing them wearing them again for their father’s funeral.
When we didn’t get up, DeAndré yelled, “NOW, GOD DAMMIT.”
I glanced back at Merrill, and when I did, I saw Daniels edging toward the sanctuary door. As he stepped inside the sanctuary, a round fired from DeAndré’s gun shattered the glass of the door beside him and he jumped back into the hall.
“I got nothing to lose,” DeAndré said. “I’m probably gonna die anyway, so whoever gets close to me is going with me. Get my uncle in here.”
Standing up very slowly, I walked over to the center aisle and faced DeAndré.
“What the fuck you doin’?” Merrill asked.
Dexter’s eyes were wide with fright and moist with tears. The tendons in his neck were stretched taut under his shiny, sweat-covered skin, and when he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rose and fell slowly.
As Merrill stood up, DeAndré loosened his grip on Dexter and turned his gun toward him. When he did, I took several running steps and dove, tackling both men to the ground.
As we went down, DeAndré fired his gun and I took a bullet in the right shoulder. My skin and muscle felt as though they had been branded, a searing pain arcing out in every direction like the phosphorescent tails of Fourth of July fireworks.
