Baddest Apple

by Nisa Santiago

  “Why are you making statements?”

  “So my wife doesn’t get locked up for child abuse or neglect or some other shit. I told you ’bout leaving them alone, Kola. This was an accident, but those pigs gonna try to spin this as something more. If I don’t beat this shit then it’s my third strike,” he explained. “I’m done.”

  Two detectives came from out their home with hazard masks on. They saw a female talking to their suspect and immediately closed in.

  “Here they come,” Kamel warned. “Remember, you weren’t here.”

  Detectives Rothman and Brown were determined to make someone pay for what they had witnessed. It wasn’t an exceptionally gruesome crime scene, but they felt that a crime had been committed. It appeared Sophia had died in her sleep, but Eduardo Jr. had apparently woken up when he heard the alarms sounding. For the child to experience the exposure while awake would have made for a cruel and prolonged death. Common symptoms are nausea, dizziness, headache, abdominal pain, and impaired judgment. He was found in the master bedroom lying in a pool of his own vomit. Eduardo, Jr. had suffered. These children were murdered by the silent killer, and their guardians apparently had more important shit to attend to.

  Rothman didn’t like this couple. They were too young, and their home was too opulent. Both he and Brown could work three jobs and not afford to live this way. He had already run their names, and both had criminal records spanning back years for assault, guns, and drugs. Rothman deduced that they were drug dealers, hidden in plain sight of the community he vowed to protect and serve. The only way you could live like this and be young and African American is if you played sports or rapped. And they did none of the above. Detective Rothman had summed up the occupants of the home within minutes of arriving. His blood boiled when he saw Kamel’s Range in the driveway. His blinding diamonds and arrogance were like nails against a chalkboard for the seasoned detective. As he had walked through their home he wanted to fuck shit up—just take a baseball bat to all their nice shit—chandeliers, custom tables, and antique mirrors. He tried to charge them both, but the husband had readily absorbed all the blame.

  As they walked toward the female, Rothman eyed her vehicle. The sleek Benz was top of the line, at least six figures. He whispered to Brown, “I want her too.”

  Detective Brown pulled out his pad and asked, “Your name is?”

  “Why is my husband being detained?”

  Brown looked down at his notepad. “Are you his wife, Kola?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” Detective Brown was sorry, but not for Kamel and Kola. His condolences were part of his shtick. Today his role was the good cop.

  Kola nodded again. Detectives Rothman and Brown gave it a few seconds, expecting her to have a full meltdown. They both stared at the attractive female and assumed she was in shock when they didn’t witness a waterfall of emotion. Everyone processed death differently.

  “Where were you last night?” Rothman asked aggressively.

  “I already told you where she was,” Kamel shouted.

  Rothman gave him a stern look and then whistled. He caught the attention of a uniformed officer. “Gates, take him down to the station. Now!”

  The officer nodded and got into the driver’s seat of his patrol car. Kamel scowled at the detectives and snickered. “I’ll be out in a day!”

  When the police cruiser left the scene, Kola repeated what she was told to say.

  “And what’s Apple’s telephone number so we could verify?” Rothman pressed.

  “Am I being arrested?”

  “Not if your alibi checks out.”

  “I don’t need a fuckin’ alibi. My husband told you he left the kids.”

  “Ma’am, you do understand that two children are dead. I know they’re not your biological kids, but they’re human beings and deserved better than what they got,” Brown said.

  “It was an accident,” Kola said. Her voice was monotone and not an accurate representation of how she felt. “Accidents do happen.”

  Neither of the detectives couldn’t believe this woman. She sounded cavalier, unaffected, and unmoved by today’s events. They didn’t know that she was on medication and sleep deprived. “Accident? Our preliminary investigation concludes that all the carbon monoxide detectors were working and went off inside your home. There wasn’t any adult supervision to get both children to safety. Sophia was found dead in her bed, and Eduardo Jr. was found dead in the master bedroom. Apparently, he got up when he heard the alarm and went looking for someone—anyone—to help him. That young boy suffered!” Rothman shouted. “And you fucking say accidents do happen? You’re some piece of work with your fancy house and fancy car!”

  “Are you done?”

  “Oh, I’m just getting started,” Rothman threatened.

  “Your time to waste.”

  If this weren’t an affluent neighborhood, Rothman would have body slammed the slick talking bitch on the hard concrete. He wanted to smash his fist into her face and make her choke on her own blood. The rage he felt was palpable and beyond measure. Rothman didn’t like strong women, and he hated strong black women even more. When he was in college, his mother told him he was a misogynist. He countered and explained that he liked his women subservient.

  By now, Rothman was breathing heavily through his nostrils, angered and annoyed. He said, “Your husband will be arraigned tomorrow on two counts of negligent homicide and child abuse.”

  “Homicide?”

  The gravity was finally sinking in. Kola watched as two tiny bodies were carried out in black body bags. She wanted to run over and let them know that she was sorry, that she had failed them. Those were her babies. But her legs felt like slabs of steel, and although she willed them to move toward the van, her body was being less than cooperative. A round, plump tear slowly slid down her cheek as her bottom lip quivered. She had fucked up. Their deaths were on her sullied hands. She’d repeatedly left them home alone even though Kamel kept begging her not to. God had taken three children from her. This was more evidence that she wasn’t put on this earth to be a mother. Her mind crawled deeper into her dark pit and she lost herself in despair.

  “I wonder, Mrs. Carmichael, are your tears for the two dead children or your husband?” Rothman quipped.

  Kola didn’t respond. Eventually, she walked back to her car and got into her driver’s seat. Her eyes drank in the scene. House. Dead. Kids. Kola stared her ignition and slowly drove away. Where she was going? She didn’t have a clue. Suddenly, as if she had been struck by lightning, she slammed on her brakes as one word sent chills coursing through her veins. Eduardo!

  Hood steered his truck down the residential block just in time to see Nerd’s denim blue Volkswagen Beetle turn into a long driveway and pull around to the back of the house. Hood killed the ignition, glanced at Apple and IG, and chanted, “Let’s go get that nigga!”

  The three geared up with latex gloves and pistols. Apple surveyed the block crowded with tenement buildings and single-family homes and knew this was risky. Various interior lights were on, some shades were drawn, some weren’t, and at any second there could be movement on this street. But if done correctly, a home invasion could take place at any time, in any neighborhood, on any day of the week.

  Every movement they made to advance toward the house was calculated. Ski masks were pulled down because this wasn’t just an ambush. This would be a home invasion, and Apple wanted no casualties. They crouched low in the shadows under the cover of darkness doing a slow jog around back where Nerd was about to pull his trashcans to the curb for morning pickup.

  He saw the shadows from his peripheral vision and got spooked. There wasn’t anything he could do but put his arms up in surrender. Nerd wasn’t built like them. He wasn’t a killer. He didn’t carry a weapon. IG shoved the gun in his ribcage and commanded, “Open the door, tough guy,
’fore I open you up!”

  Nerd didn’t even realize he was crying until he felt a cool breeze on his face as his tears rolled down his cheeks. His body involuntarily shook, and he searched for the words to make it out of this alive, but none came.

  “Open the fuckin’ door!” IG barked again and bashed him on the side of his temple, causing Nerd to see spots of white lights that temporarily blinded his vision. The deep gash caused him excruciating pain as blood oozed through the open wound.

  It wasn’t that he was defying the orders; he just was slow to move and quick to process that this was it. He was a dead man. Nerd was being shoved by IG, and then he heard her voice. She was ski masked up, but he knew who she was.

  Apple spoke, “You gonna die tonight, nigga, if you don’t do what he said! Now open the door, and we’ll let you live.”

  Nerd then remembered that he had something to protect besides stalling to save his own life. His family—his mom, Gloria, dad, Henry, and little sister, Alexis—was upstairs, and he would not be the one responsible for literally bringing death to their front door.

  “I can’t. My mother—” Nerd’s airwave was cut off when Hood grabbed him in a chokehold and pulled. His strength lifted Nerd off his feet. Hood’s muscles bulged on his forearm as he applied direct pressure. Nerd was balancing on his tippy toes as he struggled to stay conscious. IG walked up and hit him with a two-piece, one quick jab to his ribs and an uppercut to his stomach. Nerd felt like he was about to go into cardiac arrest, trying to suck in air and slow his heart rate. Instantly his body went limp in Hood’s arms.

  Apple searched his pockets and found his house keys. They already knew that he rented the main floor apartment from his parents and anticipated that they would have his whole home to themselves.

  “Money,” Apple uttered and dangled the keys. The back security gate was unlocked, and then she placed the key inside the back door. Before she turned it, she said, “Do you have an alarm system? And before you give me the duress code, think about who lives upstairs. It’ll take less than a couple minutes to go from murder to quadruple homicide!”

  Nerd was still dazed and confused, but he had understood the word murder. “I-I-I,” he stuttered, “thought you said you wouldn’t hurt me?”

  “I won’t if you give me the correct code.”

  “2-4-7-8.”

  Apple entered first and disengaged the alarm. She placed a police scanner on the coffee table and turned it on. It crackled first before a dispatcher was heard running down reported crimes in the nearby neighborhood.

  Hood dragged Nerd inside by his collar and threw him on his couch in his living room. “Watch him,” he ordered to IG, who nodded while Hood searched the small one-bedroom apartment for any signs of life.

  Nerd was baffled. They weren’t supposed to be there. He did not protect trap houses, and he wasn’t cutting up coke or bagging up the dope. This was his parents’ two-family home that should have been off limits. He understood the obvious was that he assisted a drug organization in obtaining information, but he wasn’t dealing drugs. He was a geek, a hacker, a twenty-year-old virgin—but nonetheless, he was preyed upon. Naively, Nerd thought a home invasion’s sole purpose was to steal the ill-gotten gains acquired from distributing drugs usually hidden in someone’s home. He said, “I don’t have any money.”

  Apple looked around and snorted. “Obviously. How much that bitch paying you?” It was a rhetorical question. “Had you worked for me, you would have seen better days.”

  There it was again, the threat of his impending death hovering in the air, strangling any morsel of courage to face his consequences like a man. He couldn’t accept that Apple used past tense verbiage when summing up his life. Like a fiction novel, she could turn the page, and what was written next was solely in her hands.

  Apple knew Nerd was important to Queenie’s organization. His spying skills gave the L.E.S. Crips an edge over rival gangs. Nerd’s hacking and cyber-stalking were what placed this voyeur on Apple’s kill list.

  Nerd had one job to do. And from the first day Queenie showed up at Apple’s front door, she knew that he did it well.

  “Where’s the DVR?”

  Nerd’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “This nigga wanna lose limbs? Or maybe he wants me to send y’all upstairs?” Apple glanced at his interior cameras, which was expected from someone of his caliber. “The DVR that records all of it. Where is it? And if I have to ask you again you’re gonna have a problem.”

  Nerd gave up the hidden location of his DVR and now wished that he had a live stream to his security company. But the voyeur who took great pride and pleasure snooping into people’s lives wanted something that he never afforded his victims: privacy.

  He whined, “Please don’t kill me. I can be of value to your organization. Just let me live, and I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “You’re gonna tell us what we want regardless,” Apple said. “You have no leverage, so stop fuckin’ talking until I ask you a specific question.”

  Hood retrieved the DVR and dismantled all the interior cameras before walking back into the living room and giving Apple a head nod. Now, everyone relaxed. The trio pulled their ski masks back just above their eyes so they could continue with a conversation where Nerd either dispensed intel or be tortured first. The choice was his to make on how he wanted his life to end. The fact that they were now unmasked was the last act of confirmation needed to snuff out that 1% of hope to live to see another day lingering for Nerd.

  Apple kneeled in front of the wounded victim and asked, “What’s Queenie’s address, the addresses to all her stash houses, and what’s numero uno? What that bitch got planned?”

  Nerd thought about lying, he did. Why give them what they wanted? They wouldn’t know if his information would be legit or not until they tested it, and he would be dead so there would be no additional way they could retaliate against him. They would just have to trust him. But Nerd was cerebral. He was thinking a couple steps ahead to his death and his burial. He was about to be murdered, a casualty of war, and his family would grieve. His parents and his sister would deeply mourn him, and yet he knew that his boss would give no fucks. Queenie was protected by her goons—her armed henchmen who had a shot at winning this war between the two factions. If he gave up his boss, then maybe he would see her on the other side. He couldn’t stand to be the only one going in the ground for beef that wasn’t his to begin with.

  “And if you’re thinking about giving me false information, I can promise you this: We will come back and park a bullet in your little sister’s head and make your parents watch. And then my guy over here,” Apple pointed toward IG, “he’ll get his hands dirty torturing your moms while your father watches, and you know how the rest will play out.”

  Oh wow. He hadn’t thought of that. But the threat was no longer needed. Nerd gave it all up. Any information he knew about Queenie and the L.E.S. Crips was dispensed to the stone-cold killer, the Baddest Apple.

  The click-clacking of a lock turning and the sudden entrance of Nerd’s mom startled everyone, including Nerd. He had told his mother on a million occasions to stop using her spare key to invade his space. He was a grown man.

  But there she was, holding a plate of food she had made for him at her office party earlier that evening. Her eyes looked at all the intruders, her son’s bruised and bloody face, and she still had the wherewithal and wits to run. Nerd’s mother took flight toward her upstairs apartment with Hood and IG right on her heels.

  “Ma, run!” Nerd yelled, and the butt of Apple’s gun swiped him across his mouth, knocking out both of his front teeth. A surge of adrenaline coursed through his veins and Nerd lunged forward and tackled her to the ground. Apple fell backward and hit her head on his tiled floor with a hard thud. There wasn’t any time for her to process the pain because Nerd’s lean body was lying on top of hers. His bodyweight mad
e it difficult for her to regain control of her pistol. The struggle was intense as the barrel of the gun turned into a compass, pointing north and then back south. If the bullet landed true north, then Apple would be dead. This was a battle of strength, survival, and sheer willpower. Who wanted to live more? Blood from his wound was spilling into Nerd’s blurry eye, but he fought through his pain. With his vision impaired, he squeezed the trigger.

  Bak! Bak!

  The bullets landed just inches from Apple’s ear, nearly rupturing her eardrum. This close encounter was the most fear she had felt in a long time. The sound startled Nerd, and for one split second his grip on the pistol eased up just enough for Apple to get the upper hand. She twisted Nerd’s wrist back and fired her cannon into his chest.

  Bak! Bak! Bak!

  Nerd stopped struggling and collapsed his head on Apple’s face. She forcefully pushed his dead weight off of her and climbed to her feet. This was messy. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this, especially when she saw Hood and IG march Nerd’s parents and his seven-year-old sister into the living room that was now a crime scene.

  Everyone was crying and screaming hysterically, and Apple didn’t know if the gunshots had alerted the neighbors. Police could be on their way. Time was of the essence, and she had a crucial decision to make. Apple held up two fingers on her hand. Both Hood and IG looked at the little girl, and Apple shook her head.

  “But she’s seen our faces!”

  “You heard what the fuck I said. Now let’s go!”

  Without hesitation, Gloria and Henry were shot point-blank in the back of their heads. Their bodies keeled over and slumped to the ground. Alexis threw her body over her mother’s and just sobbed. She was young and understood little, but she knew murder. She realized that everyone had been shot and she needed to get help. Alexis looked up, and the bad guys were gone. She did as she had been taught to do and went searching for a cell phone to call for help. Her small hands were saturated in her mother’s blood as she dialed 9-1-1.