by Debbi Mack
As we crossed the lot, the candy-apple red Corvette pulled into the driveway. Billy Ray and his cohorts making a return appearance.
“Oh, fuck!” I muttered, between gritted teeth.
“Ignore them,” Jamila said, as we proceeded to the car.
Instead of pulling all the way into the lot, the Corvette stopped in the entrance.
Billy Ray leaned out the window. “Hey, you guys going somewhere?”
Well, duh! “We can’t go much of anywhere if you don’t move your car.”
“You really shouldn’t have called the cops on us,” Billy Ray goaded.
And you should shut your fucking mouth and leave us alone. God, I was dying to say it.
Billy Ray opened the door, unfolded himself from the car and began walking toward us.
“I realize niggers can be slow, but you gals really need to understand your place here.” He swaggered as he spoke.
“That’s it!” I pulled out my cell phone and hit 911.
“Whatta you think you’re doing?” Billy Ray asked.
“Calling the cops, shithead. You’re blocking a public thoroughfare. I’m sure there’s a ticket in it for you somewhere.”
Billy Ray ignored me and swaggered right up to Jamila, who looked frozen in place. I noticed his gang huddled in the car, watching.
“Well, don’t you look nice?” he said, grinning in her face.
Jamila merely stared back, eyes blank.
I knew what she was up to. Jamila refused to sink to the level of other people’s ignorance. She was playing Jackie Robinson to Billy Ray’s Ty Cobb. The rest of us were like spectators to a Mexican standoff.
“Still, I liked your hair better when it was down.” Billy’s arm shot out like a sideways jack-in-the-box. He snatched at her hair. The other arm followed and repeated the exercise, over and over. Jamila raised her hands to fight him off, but he kept evading them. He must have pulled a couple of combs and a barrette from her hair before she finally hauled off and slapped him.
“Nine-one-one. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
The phone. “I’d like to report an assault and battery,” I said. “I’d also like to bring false arrest charges—”
“Yes, ma’am.” She cut me off. “I’ll need your address.”
“Fifty-five three seventeen Bayview Avenue. And please hurry.”
CHAPTER FOUR
By the time the cruiser arrived, Billy Ray and his zombie brigade were gone. The cop who responded looked to be about sixteen. He and Billy Ray could have attended high school together. Maybe sat in the same homeroom. Compared notes on the same girls.
The kid—the cop, that is—walked up to us, a quizzical look in his baby blues.
“Did one of you call about a disturbance?”
I raised a hand. “I did. The disturbers have hit the frickin’ bricks.”
Jamila counted her barrettes and combs, shaking her head. “One’s missing.” She squatted to peer beneath the cars again.
The cop’s brow furrowed. He scratched it with his pen. “I can file a report, if you’d like.” His tone suggested, “Why bother?”
“I think we should,” I told Jamila.
“Why?” She squat-stepped sideways, ducking her head and doing another visual sweep. Finally, she straightened and added, sounding annoyed, “What good will it do? We don’t even know his full name?”
“Ah, but I got his tag number.”
Jamila did a double-take and smiled. “Quick thinking, Sam. Way to go.”
I hoped that my quick thinking would help make up for the inadvertent damage to her music box. I didn’t realize it would just lead to more trouble.
Who knew that Billy Ray, aka William Raymond Wesley, would end up knifed in the gut while passed out on the downstairs porch that night? Or that someone would plant Jamila’s comb near his body?
Filing the report provided more evidence of animosity between Jamila and the deceased. Surely, not enough for her to commit murder, I argued to the cops. My words fell on deaf ears. Before I knew it, they’d arranged a lineup. A witness fingered Jamila as the one he’d seen at the scene of the crime hours earlier. As they led my friend away to be fingerprinted, I realized we needed local counsel. We were both outsiders and city slickers. Neither of us knew the local ropes or had the proper connections to handle this.
*****
A couple of hours after they’d taken her, I was allowed to see Jamila. In the visiting room, it felt more than a bit peculiar to see her in an orange jumpsuit seated on the wrong side of the table.
“I’ve called Rudy and my parents.” Jamila sounded tired.
“I can only imagine how they must feel.”
Jamila blew out a breath. Her shoulders sagged, her body deflated. “Not good. Rudy hasn’t told the kids.”
“Hopefully, he won’t have to. You realize, of course, we’ve got to hire a local attorney.”
Jamila raised her index finger. “I used one of my calls to reach my father. He recommended someone he worked with here years ago.”
Sounded hopeful. Jamila’s father was an attorney at one of D.C.’s biggest firms. “Who?”
“His name is Edward G. Mulrooney.”
“If he’s as impressive as his name, he should be good.”
*****
I called Mulrooney. Jamila’s father had already hired him to cover her bail hearing later that morning. With that out of the way, I arranged in the wee hours to move into temporary quarters since our condo was still off-limits and crawling with crime techs. I scrounged up a motel on Coastal Highway near the Delaware line. It was late (or early) and vacancies were few and far between, so I took the room without close inspection. I stumbled through the door, threw myself on one of two double beds, and drifted off for a few hours. I woke up in a musty, oversized closet passing itself off as a room.
I heaved myself off the bed with a grunt and trudged to the window. A peek through the curtains revealed a canal lined with a chain link fence and scrubby grass. The stagnant waters reflected the murky dark sky.
“Charming.” My voice sounded like the bottom of a shoe scraping against a curb.
Splashing water on my face, I rinsed out my mouth and tried to tidy up before heading downtown to attend the bail hearing.
*****
Things went about as well as could be expected. Bail was set at $5 million—a heart-stopping figure, but not for Jamila’s parents. They’d probably manage to cover the bond.
Mulrooney arranged to see Jamila after the hearing. When she insisted I sit in on the meeting, Mulrooney wasn’t thrilled. However, she persuaded him to take me on as pro bono co-counsel to cover confidentiality concerns. I also made it clear I had no desire to steal Mulrooney’s thunder. For my own part, I was glad to let him take the lead and play second fiddle.
We met in a visiting room painted in soothing shades of doody-diaper green and furnished with the latest in institutional gray metal table and chairs.
Mulrooney was a country lawyer straight from Central Casting. White hair, wire-rimmed glasses, seersucker suit, pleasant demeanor with a glint in his eyes that suggested intelligence buried beneath the country corn.
“Your father,” Mulrooney said to Jamila. “That man could pick crabs like no one else.”
“God, yes. He loves crabs,” Jamila said. “Oysters and rockfish, too.”
“And ribs?” Mulrooney tilted his head back, letting his jaw drop. A raucous laugh echoed through the visiting room. “That man could suck every last piece of meat off a rib. Or a chicken wing, for that matter.”
Jamila smiled politely. I checked my watch. It had been nearly ten minutes of chitchat. How long were we going to discuss Jamila’s dad and his dietary habits? Would we move onto his bathroom habits next?
“Now.” The sound of the word ricocheted around the room like a rifle shot. Mulrooney’s gaze bored into Jamila over his wire-rims. “Let’s talk about your case.�
�
“So soon?” I muttered.
I didn’t think I’d been audible, but Jamila threw me a look. Mulrooney either didn’t hear or chose to ignore me.
“The police have shared some of the evidence they’ve turned up with me. Unfortunately, there is an eyewitness—”
Jamila shook her head. “Does this witness claim he saw me kill the victim?”
Mulrooney held up a hand. “Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we?”
He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, as he spoke. “The body was discovered at approximately 11:30 P.M. on the front porch of the condo beneath yours. According to his friends, they’d been having a party. Wesley had so much to drink that when the others decided to get something to eat, he could barely walk. Apparently, they left him passed out on the porch in a lounge chair.
“Now.” He nearly shouted the word again and paused before continuing. “According to these friends, they left around 10:30 and didn’t return for about an hour. That’s when they found him. He was in a lounge chair, bleeding from his gut. A gruesome death.” He shook his head. “A horrible crime.”
I yawned deliberately. “Boo hoo.”
Mulrooney swiveled his laser gaze toward me. “You should have more respect for the dead, Ms. McRae.”
“And the dead should have had more respect for my friend. Could we possibly—” I made circles with my finger in a speed-it-up gesture.
Mulrooney’s look never wavered. “Respect. It’s an important thing to remember here. People respect Wesley’s family. That will be a factor.”
Rather than ask, I gave an inward sigh and awaited his explanation.
He turned back to Jamila. “As I was saying, the friends called the police upon finding the deceased. After the cops arrived, a passerby on a bicycle approached them. He claimed he’d seen someone coming down the stairs and slipping into the shadows on the front porch. This witness also thought it appeared to be a tall, slender woman. Dark complexion. That was the sum and substance of the description. When he picked you out of the lineup, that’s when they decided to go for the arrest.”
“This is all very fascinating,” I interrupted. “But what about the forensics? What about all the blood? If Jamila had done this, wouldn’t there be evidence of blood in the condo? Or on her clothes?”
“Ah.” Mulrooney held up a didactic finger. “The police found bloody clothing.”
“They did?” This was news.
“After the lineup, they asked Jamila to identify some clothing they’d found near the crime scene.”
Jamila shook her head. “I told them, they could be anyone’s and wouldn’t say more without legal counsel.”
“A wise move,” Mulrooney observed, nodding her way. To me, he said, “They found a pair of women’s jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes, along with the knife in the dumpster next door. There was blood all over them.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Big deal,” I said. “So they found some bloody clothing and a knife next door from where he died. How does this prove anything against Jamila?”
Mulrooney turned toward me and raised his finger—his index finger, for the record—again. “Patience.”
I bit my tongue and exercised all the patience I could muster.
“Now,” Mulrooney stated with irritating repetition. “Naturally, they’re testing to make sure the blood matches that of the victim. Those results may take a couple of days. Assuming the blood matches, they may want hair samples for DNA testing. That kind of testing doesn’t come cheap. However, in this case, they may find the cost justified. It’ll depend on how strong the other evidence is. For instance, when the police searched the condo you’re renting, they noticed a knife missing from the butcher block.” His look bored into Jamila. “Did you realize that?”
Jamila shook her head. “I never noticed. Sam?”
I spread my hands, feeling helpless. “Are you kidding? I barely noticed the kitchen.” As Jamila knew, I’m hardly the domestic sort. My idea of cooking is heating frozen entrees or leftover Chinese.
“Unfortunately, the knife appears to be part of the set in your kitchen.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
I cleared my throat. “Do you know how many similar sets of cutlery could be out there? How do they know it’s from our set?”
“The fact that the knife is missing doesn’t help.”
“Oh, come on.” I lost it at this point. “The killer could have broken in and stolen it. If it was one of the victim’s friends, they saw what happened between Jamila and that racist son of a bitch. In fact, the victim’s stepfather owns the place. The killer could have filched a key from him.”
I paused to gather my thoughts. My words were making me sound like a conspiracy theorist and I wasn’t sure if Mulrooney was buying.
“Apart from speculating about the knife and clothes, is there anything linking the murder directly to Jamila?” I asked. “Any forensic evidence?”
“Here’s where it gets a little interesting.”
As if it weren’t already.
“The police not only found her comb near the body, but they found traces of blood on the front porch of your condo. Again, they’re awaiting the test results, but if it’s the victim’s blood …”
Jamila and I both fell quiet.
“Wait a second,” I said. “If Jamila threw out the bloody clothing, how could she leave traces of blood on the porch? Someone is obviously setting her up.”
Mulrooney sighed. “I, for one, am willing to believe you. However, others will be more difficult to convince. They will likely argue that blood got on her hands as she was removing her clothes.”
“Sure, they will probably argue that, but she could be looking at first-degree murder. Now what would be her motive? And don’t say racism. Jamila wouldn’t go to such lengths to kill a man simply because he was a racist, would she?”
Mulrooney fixed me with a thoughtful look. He leaned toward Jamila. “Can you think of a motive?”
Jamila started to speak, then stopped. She avoided eye contact.
“Yes.” Mulrooney agreed, but I had no idea what he was agreeing to.
“What is it?” I asked.
Mulrooney looked at our client—my friend. Jamila didn’t answer.
*****
Before we finished, Mulrooney said he’d arrange to hire a local investigator. He said he knew just the man: Ellis Conroy. If anyone could find evidence to poke holes in the prosecution’s case, it would be Conroy. Before we left, I made sure to get Conroy’s number. I couldn’t help but feel panicked. I had to do something. I couldn’t simply sit back and wait for Conroy to work his magic. On top of that, Jamila had never answered my question. What could she be withholding?
“Let’s keep in touch.” Mulrooney tossed the suggestion out as he strolled to his car, a blue Caddy with all the trimmings. He threw his briefcase onto the passenger seat and walked around to the driver’s side. “I’m heading to a meeting, but I’ll get on the phone with her father right now and arrange for her bail. I’m sure he can cover it.”
“I’ll call Conroy,” I said. “Perhaps I can help.” Meanwhile, could you please tell me what the hell just happened?
“Fine,” Mulrooney stated as he pulled a cell phone from its holster and slid into the car. “Not to discourage you, but Conroy is a fine investigator. I’m sure he’s capable of handling this on his own.”
I wracked my brain for a response. It felt like fishing in barren waters.
“I … just hate sitting back and doing nothing,” I said, for lack of a better thought.
“Hmm.” Mulrooney hummed like a pipe organ. “I understand. Just be sure to coordinate whatever you do with Ellis.”
“Um, it might help if I knew what motivation you were talking about in there. Or, actually, not talking about.”
Mulrooney got that thoughtful look again. “
I’d … like the client to make the call on revealing that.”
Oh, great. “Are you sure that won’t make my job harder?”
“It won’t,” he assured me. “In a sense, it should make it easier.” With that, he shut the door.
I nodded and turned toward Jamila’s car, thinking I hope to hell you’re right.
*****
I drove toward Ocean City with thoughts of the Maryland State Bar Association’s convention worming their way into my consciousness. I assumed Jamila’s parents wouldn’t have a problem with the bail bond. Even so, the bond on $5 million bail wasn’t chump change. On top of that, she was supposed to give a presentation on ethics in four days.
How ironic was that? How would it look if news of her arrest came out? For that matter, had it already?
I pulled into the lot of a convenience store and bought a local paper. As I walked, I flipped through the pages, nearly tripping over a toddler. His mother glared at me.
“I … I’m sorry,” I sputtered.
She shook her head. “People should pay more attention. They read when they drive, they talk on phones and text. What could be so all-fired important in that paper?”
“My best friend’s been accused of murder. Excuse me, ma’am.”
I beat a hasty retreat, feeling her stare boring into my back.
*****
Once I’d gotten to the car, I riffled through the paper. Nothing in the first few pages. Good. I flipped to an inside section and my heart sank. A headline screamed across the top of the page: “Visiting Attorney Arrested for Murder of Local Magnate’s Stepson.”
While the lead described her only as “an attorney in town for the annual Maryland State Bar Association convention,” her name and age were revealed farther down. Along with the fact that she’d filed a report with the police about the decedent, who as it turned out was the stepson of Marshall Bower, a local entrepreneur with a finger in every pie in town.
CHAPTER SIX
Okay, I thought. It’s Tuesday. The convention doesn’t officially start until tomorrow. Even then, most people don’t show up on the very first day. A lot of people will miss this.