Ride or Die

by Solomon Jones

  Sarah Anderson stood in the middle of the bedroom she’d shared with her husband for the past twenty years and cried uncontrollably as she thought of John’s affair.

  Thinking back to her mother’s long-ago warnings about John and his family, Sarah shook her head and wondered how she could have been so stubborn. But then, as she thought back on her disdain for her mother, Sarah knew the answer to that question.

  Sarah’s mother was the woman who’d decided to stay with Sarah’s father even after Sarah told her that she’d caught him with another woman in his office.

  Sarah hated her for that decision, even though it was made in a time when powerful men were allowed such indiscretions, and women were obliged to ignore them.

  Perhaps it was that hatred that caused Sarah to disregard her mother’s warnings and instead make a promise to herself. Sarah would never allow a man to treat her as her father had treated her mother—like an accessory to be cast aside at his convenience.

  She hadn’t kept that promise to herself. She’d become her mother—an insignificant person dwelling in her husband’s shadow. And for years, she’d been paying the price.

  Sarah looked around their bedroom at the memories it contained—their bed was their first piece of furniture. John had broken the doorknob on the closet. And as she thought back on the hope she’d had for her marriage, she cried a little harder at the disappointment.

  Sarah had known for a long time that her marriage was all but over. But she’d hoped that it would end differently.

  There was only one thing left for her to do now. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier.

  She walked over to the closet in the corner of the room, opened it, and removed her suitcase. She hadn’t used her old satchel in years, she thought, as she opened it and threw it onto their bed.

  The last time she’d packed it was fifteen years ago, when they’d gone to Florida for the first and only time as a family. She remembered Keisha splashing at the edge of the pool. She recalled John lifting Keisha, and then Sarah, onto his shoulders, and carrying them into the water.

  She remembered laughter during those days, and passion during those nights. And she remembered how things began to change after that.

  Their lives became consumed with the minutiae of maintaining their home and their church. And in the process, their happiness dwindled away to nothing.

  Sarah looked at the suitcase, which appeared to be almost new, and wished that she’d used it more during their marriage. Perhaps if they had gone to other places and seen other things, there would still be passion between them instead of discord. Perhaps if they had taken more time for themselves, they would still see possibilities instead of endings.

  Sarah thought of all of these things, and her tears fell against the hardwood floor like raindrops.

  Opening the chest of drawers, she retrieved the remainder of her clothing, except for a skirt, a blouse, and a pair of heels, and threw it into the suitcase. She scrounged the makeup she rarely used from the top drawer, and took it with her into the bathroom.

  She opened the cabinet beneath the sink, took out her electric curlers, and plugged them into the wall. Then she dropped her dowdy clothes to the floor and turned on the shower’s hot water.

  Sarah opened the curtain, and a cloud of steam filled the room. She stepped into the water and allowed the heat to penetrate every fiber of her being. She was going to wash away twenty years of unhappiness. And then, she thought with a smile, she was going to go on with her life.

  Even with the confession in Commissioner Freeman’s murder, Keisha and Jamal couldn’t chance being caught.

  If they were ever to go to trial, the carjackings and gun charges would yield significant time. But when the dust settled and the truth about Officer Jim Hickey’s murder was revealed, they wouldn’t be facing years anymore. They’d be facing death.

  The decision was an easy one. They were going to run.

  When they told Joe what they’d decided to do, he nodded solemnly, because he knew the criminal justice system better than most.

  A confession could be overturned, even if it was genuine, because prosecutors were often more concerned with appearances than truth. Better to have a live defendant who could be sentenced to death by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania than a dead one who couldn’t.

  And even if Keisha and Jamal managed to avoid a death sentence, they would get life without parole. Their ability to love—the very thing that had brought them together—would be systematically stripped away.

  No, Joe thought as he waited for them to decide their next move. They couldn’t turn themselves in. They definitely had to run.

  “We gotta get as far away as we can right now,” Jamal said, walking over to Joe.

  “And go where?” Keisha asked.

  “We could drive to Canada,” he said.

  “My car won’t make it that far,” Joe said. “And I wouldn’t trust nothin’ else to get you there safe.”

  They were all silent as they tried to think of the best route of escape.

  Jamal looked at Joe. “Can you get us on a plane?”

  “I could get you tickets on the Internet. Question is, where would you go?”

  “What about the islands?” Keisha said.

  “You need passports to get there?” Jamal asked.

  Joe walked over to his laptop as Keisha and Jamal followed. “My girl used to fly there a lot,” he said. “She told me all you need is a birth certificate.”

  “We ain’t got birth certificates, and we ain’t got time to get ’em,” Jamal said.

  Joe booted up the computer and logged on to a Web site that provided discount airfare.

  “I got a friend a couple blocks away who makes birth certificates and driver’s licenses. He can have ’em made up for you in ten minutes.”

  “I don’t know if we can wait that long,” Jamal said.

  “What other choice you got?” Joe said.

  Keisha and Jamal looked at each other, knowing that Joe was right. They could use fake identities, or they could take their chances and be caught and tried for murder.

  Jamal grabbed Keisha’s hand and held it tightly as Keisha looked into his eyes.

  “Make the call,” Jamal said.

  19

  John Anderson was siting alone in a dim cinderblock room just down the hall from where Nola Langston and Frank Nichols were trying to decide just how much of the truth they wanted to tell.

  It was odd, he thought, that he should find himself here, on this side of the fence, when he’d begun his journey on the other side. But here he was. Strange as it seemed, he was willing to accept it.

  “How are you, Reverend Anderson?” Lynch asked as he breezed into the room.

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  “Physically or mentally?”

  “Both.”

  Lynch sat back and looked into the preacher’s eyes. He saw the fatigue of which John spoke. But he saw something else there as well. John looked like a man at the end of a long struggle, a man who was tired of fighting.

  There was at least one more battle for the preacher to fight, Lynch thought as he looked at him. And Lynch was about to draw first blood.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you’d had an affair with Nichols’s girlfriend?” Lynch said.

  “I guess I didn’t think it was important.”

  “You didn’t think it was important to tell me about someone with intimate knowledge of both you and the man behind your daughter’s disappearance?”

  John shrugged. “I thought I could find Nola’s connectiori to all this on my own.”

  “Is that why you had that sawed-off in your bag?”

  John didn’t answer.

  “We had detectives talk to a few people on the scene. They saw you get in the car with the bag.”

  “I wasn’t going to—”

  “Look,” Lynch said. “All I wanna know is, did you know that Nola was the cause of your daughter being kidnapped, and di
d you plan to kill her with that gun?”

  John didn’t know what to say. So he didn’t say anything.

  “Reverend, I like you,” Lynch said. “But here’s the truth, whether you like it or not. Your daughter’s missing, and she’s probably with Frank Nichols’s son because she wants to be. Your marriage is in trouble because you slept with another woman right under your wife’s nose. You’ve got Nola Langston telling people that you’re a murderer. And if you think folks are going to be flocking to your church once they find all that out, you’ve got another think coming.”

  Lynch leaned in close to John. “You don’t have a whole lot left to lose by telling me the truth,” he said.

  John Anderson sat back in his chair, knowing that the battle that raged inside him was all but over. The man he’d been was just about dead now. And the voice inside him—the one that had called him to the ministry—was loudly telling him to surrender.

  John smiled as he heeded the voice and decided that it was time to let go. It was time to allow the secrets that had held on to him for so long to turn to dust. It was time to throw that dust on the grave of the man he used to be.

  The preacher looked into the detective’s eyes. And then he looked past them and stared, red-eyed, into the past he’d avoided for so long.

  “There was a small-time dealer named Ben Carter,” John said softly. “He tried to sell heroin near one of my father’s spots. My father didn’t like competition, so he told me to handle it for him. In the summer of ’sixty-five, I did. I shot him down on Diamond Street on a clear August night.”

  He shook his head sadly at the memory. “It seems like nothing’s been clear for me since then.”

  John rubbed his tired eyes with his fingers.

  “I guess I never thought Ben would have a son who loved him as much as I loved my father,” he said. “A son who would have the guts to do what I never did—avenge his father’s death.”

  “Are you saying Ishmael Carter is the son of the man you killed?”

  “Yes,” John said. “That’s what he told me right before he tried to kill me.”

  “Did he tell you anything else?”

  “He said that I’d abused Nola—tied her up and burned her and threatened to kill her. He said Nola told him that I was the one who’d killed his father. And he talked about the shooting as if it was yesterday—like he’d been carrying this rage his entire life.”

  “The things he accused you of doing,” Lynch said. “Was any of it true?”

  “Not the part about me abusing Nola,” he said. “I never did anything like that. But the part about Ben Carter, well, yes, like I said before, I killed him.”

  A tear fell from the pastor’s eye, and he quickly wiped it away. “I murdered a man, Lieutenant Lynch. And after all these years, I guess it’s finally time for me to face that.”

  Lynch’s face fell as he took in John’s admission, because he knew that the pastor’s punishment was just beginning. Though John had managed to avoid Ishmael’s street justice, he would soon face the wrath of the criminal justice system. And the system wouldn’t be so kind.

  John could see the sadness in the detective’s eyes. But he knew that there was more to his plight than what appeared on the surface.

  “Lieutenant,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, “there’s a story in the Bible about Paul and Barnabus being jailed. They sang and praised God all night, until their shackles fell off and the bars of the jail swung open.

  “Their Roman jailer was about to kill himself for allowing them to escape. But they stayed, and they ministered to that man, and they saved him and his family.”

  Lynch looked up into the preacher’s face.

  “My ministry isn’t in that church on York Street, anymore,” John Anderson said with a smile. “That’s why it doesn’t matter what the world thinks about the things I’ve done.”

  John pointed his finger to a point somewhere in the distance. “My ministry is out there, in whatever prison they decide to send me to. That’s God’s purpose in all this, Lieutenant. And I think, after all these years, I finally understand that.”

  Lynch sat back in his seat and thought about what John had said.

  “Who knows, Reverend Anderson?” he said after a long pause. “He might have a bigger purpose for you than prison.”

  John nodded as Lynch regained his bearings and returned to the questions at hand.

  “There is one thing that still doesn’t make sense about what Nola told us,” Lynch said.

  “What’s that?”

  “She said you never told her who the victim was,” Lynch said. “Is that true?”

  John remembered mentioning his past involvement with his father’s drug business to Nola. But he didn’t remember giving her names.

  “Yes,” John said. “I guess it is.”

  “Then how would she know who you’d killed?” Lynch asked. “And how would she track down the man’s son, and put him up to killing you? Better yet, why would she even bother?”

  “I don’t know,” John said. “Maybe Frank told her to.”

  “Did Frank know that you killed Ben Carter?”

  “No,” John said. “No one knew, as far as I could tell. My father gave the order directly to me. He didn’t tell anyone else, and neither did I. I didn’t even know that anyone else knew, until today.”

  “That’s the other thing that’s bothering me,” Lynch said. “This guy, Ishmael Carter, pops up and tries to kill you, and he swears on his deathbed that it was Nola who put him up to it. But when I confronted her about it, Nola acted like she’d never heard of Ishmael Carter. I even described him, which wasn’t hard, because he looks like an older version of Jamal Nichols. She still acted like she didn’t know him, and from what I could see, she was telling the truth.”

  Anderson smiled. “Nola can be very … convincing, even when she’s telling a lie.”

  Lynch grunted in response.

  “Are you sure there wasn’t anyone else who knew about you shooting Ben Carter?” he said absently.

  Reverend Anderson spent the next few minutes in deep thought. And then realization swept across his face, along with something else. Something infinitely deeper.

  “There is one person,” he said, looking up at the detective. “But before I take you there, there’s something I want you to do for me.”

  A detective opened the door to the interrogation room where Frank Nichols was waiting with his lawyer.

  “Counselor, we’re getting ready to transport your client to a holding cell downstairs,” the detective said.

  “Is he being charged?”

  “Not yet. But we can’t hold him here any longer. We need this room.

  “Okay,” the lawyer said, gathering his papers and walking toward the door. “Frank, you call if you need me.”

  Nichols nodded. He wasn’t in the mood to talk anymore. Especially not with the looming threat of being charged with the commissioner’s murder.

  But that wasn’t his most pressing problem. His worst problem was on its way into the room.

  The door eased open, and Frank looked up from his seat as a detective escorted John Anderson inside. The detective unlocked the pastor’s handcuffs and shot a look at Frank Nichols. Then he closed the door behind him and locked it.

  “John,” Nichols said with a stiff smile. “What a surprise.”

  The pastor didn’t waste any time. He walked slowly around the table, the sound of his heavy footsteps filling the room, and stopped in front of Frank Nichols. Towering over him, he asked the question that had haunted him for thirty-five years.

  “Why did you kill my father?” he said, staring down into the smaller man’s face.

  Frank looked down at his hands and tried to come up with an answer. He couldn’t.

  “He took care of you like you were his own son,” John said with quiet anger. “I even thought he loved you more than me. And then you killed him.”

  Nichols sighed as he felt the familiar rush
of guilt over the only crime he’d ever regretted.

  “It wasn’t that simple, John,” he said quietly. “Other people was in it, too. People who thought your father was outta control. When they came to me—”

  John Anderson reached down with gigantic hands and snatched him out of his seat.

  “I don’t care who came to you!” he said, shaking with rage. “You were like a son to him! You were supposed to protect him, the same way he protected you!”

  Frank reached up and pushed John’s hands away from him. Then he looked up into the taller man’s face.

  “That was always the problem with you, John,” he said, as his eyes bugged out with rage. “You was always worried about the next man.”

  “He was my father!” John shouted.

  “Yeah, he was,” Frank said, nodding in agreement. “He taught me everything I know. But your father knew the game he was in. He knew somebody was gon’ take him out sooner or later. He probably was glad I had enough heart to do it.”

  Enraged, John yelled and swung wildly at Nichols’s jaw. Frank ducked the right hand and threw a hard left hook and right cross to John’s midsection.

  The bigger man doubled over, and Nichols kneed him in his chin. John fell backward and Nichols pounced, landing one punch to John’s jaw before brute strength overcame quickness.

  With one hand, John grabbed him by the collar and flung him into the side of the steel table. Then John flipped over and straddled Frank’s chest so that he couldn’t move.

  He smashed his fist into the middle of his face. There was the sound of cracking bone and a spurt of blood as Frank’s nose gave way.

  “I told you I would see you if anything happened to my daughter, didn’t I?”

  John pounded his fist into his temple as Frank tried in vain to fend off the blow.

  “Where your guns at now, huh?” John pummeled him, causing his head to bang against the concrete floor. “Who you gonna kill now, Frank?”

  He slapped him with the front of his hand. Then he slapped him again with the back.