She hoped.
However, Black played by a different set of rules than everyone else. There was no telling what was going through his mind. Getting some revenge might have felt good to him, but getting more may have felt even better.
Netta understood his mindset, so she prepared herself for the worst. She trained her mind to expect the unexpected. Planning to defend herself was one thing, but the reality could be a whole lot different.
Just as Netta tried to soothe her mind with some positive thoughts, two well built, Caucasian, plain-clothes police officers entered her room. The two silver police badges that swung from their necks announced who they were before they had a chance to speak.
One police officer began. “Sorry to disturb you, Miss Jackson. We’ll try to be as brief as possible. I’m Police Officer Jason Campbell and this is my partner, Police Officer John Hastings. We’re with the Baltimore Police Department’s Anti-Crime Division. It’s come to our attention that you were badly beaten in a downtown hotel by an unknown assailant. Well, we were able to lift some fingerprints from that hotel room and we brought along a few photos of some suspects. If you would be so kind as to take a look at them and......”
“I can’t help you. I didn’t see the person who did this,” Netta said, cutting the cop off.
“Would you at least take a look before you jump to that conclusion. There could be a face in there that might jar your memory,” Officer Campbell suggested.
“I already told you. I didn’t see a thing,” she spoke defiantly.
The cops weren’t buying Netta’s story one bit. They didn’t believe anything she said. They knew that Netta could indeed identify her attacker. They knew she knew him personally. They knew more about the situation than they were letting on. Quickly they changed their tactics, becoming more confrontational.
“Listen, Miss Jackson, you’re not fooling anyone over here. You expect us to believe that? That you were just strolling down the street and then suddenly you were kidnapped, blindfolded, driven to a hotel where you registered for the hotel room under your name. And you don’t know the person responsible for doing this to you? You must be nuts,” Officer Campbell explained.
“Maybe I am. But the fact of the matter is this, you can believe what you want to believe. I ain’t got nuttin’ to say. Case closed,” Netta said.
To her last dying breath, Netta was sticking to the code of the streets. She was playing the game the way she was taught that it should be played. See no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil. If she was a civilian and Black had committed this atrocity to her, then that would have been different. Netta wouldn’t be held responsible to uphold the code of the streets. But as it stood now, that was not the case.
She thought, that’s what was wrong with the game now. There were too many so- called hustlers, drug dealers, thugs and killers that were turning into snitches. They were too weak to deal with their own street situation so they turned to the law to take out their opposition. They get charged in a criminal case, so they turned confidential informant to save their own skin or to get less time. They committed the crime, but all of a sudden they don’t want to do the time.
Snitching to Netta was a choice. A choice she wouldn’t make. That stigma would never be attached to her name, not if she could help it.
Netta had never cooperated with the police before and she wouldn’t do so now.
“So that’s your story and you sticking to it, huh?” Officer Hastings inquired, as if he were giving her one last chance to come clean.
“That’s what I’m sayin’,” she declared adamantly.
“Well, hypothetically speaking, let’s say this guy, who you say you don’t know, comes after you again. And you do know that that’s a real possibility, right? Especially since you refuse to ID the perp. He is still out there and free as a bird. We know you and Dashaun Williams, aka Black, were in that room having sex when things, for whatever reason, turned ugly. You made him pretty angry at you. He did a number on you as a result of that. He damn near killed you. Only by luck, fate, chance or whatever you wanna call it, are you still breathing. This guy is the real deal, a killer without a conscious. He has no problem killing people. He’s done it before. So just know, if he ever lay eyes on you again, your luck just may run out. Ms. Jackson, be smart, we’re begging you to point this guy out. And I promise you we’ll take care of the rest. We’ll see that this guy is put back away for a very long time.”
Netta stood silent. Instead of speaking she let her defiant stare do all the talking. She was seemingly unfazed by his big bad boogieman story.
“I wish I could help you officer, but I can’t,” she said coolly. “As I said before, I don’t know who did it. I don’t know what he looks like. And for the record, I don’t know no Dashaun Williams, Black, or whatever his name is.”
“Oh you know!” Officer Hastings interjected. “You know more than what you’re willing to say. We know that at one time you guys were romantically involved. Right before he did that stretch in the pen.”
Tempers were beginning to flair quickly, so his partner intervened.
“Listen, honey, take my card just in case you have a change of heart or you begin to remember faces again.
