by Layton Green
Claire’s son had just been murdered.
But Ari couldn’t stop thinking about how attractive she was.
Old insecurities she thought belonged to the past, products of her awkward teenage years, had returned tenfold.
Dammit, she thought. Not him. Not Joe.
She knew she hadn’t been herself over the last few months. One of the hardest things about having a real job, especially a job like hers, was the inability to leave it behind. No matter what kind of day she was having, whether she was depressed or too full of life to possibly spend a whole day in the office, she had to put everything aside and focus. She couldn’t phone in a prosecution or pretend to work while she surfed the Web. She had to give it her all.
Though maybe, she realized as she drove down busy Highway 15-501, easing into the brick skyline and narrow streets of downtown Durham, thinking again of Claire’s impossibly long legs, throwing herself into her work was just what she needed.
Sitting at her desk in her interior office, more akin to a cubicle than a proper attorney’s workplace, she rattled off a few discovery requests and then tapped her pen against a manila folder.
Despite her heavy caseload, Ari couldn’t let go of Ronald Jackson.
The notorious drug dealer had hired Meredith Verela, one of the best defense attorneys in the city, to represent him. In a fair fight, Fenton could hold his own against her. But not with the facts they had.
All the neighbors around the reputed stash house interviewed by the cops had sworn they had seen nothing on the night of the murders. They had no idea when Ronald had arrived, or if he was in the house at all. This was no surprise. Most residents of poor urban neighborhoods were terrified of narcing to the police. Without a murder weapon, and with no one to dispute Ronald’s story, there just wasn’t a case.
Except there was someone who disputed the story.
Ari didn’t believe Bentley’s testimony. She wanted to, but she didn’t. But what if she was wrong? And why were they assuming facts not in evidence? Was she making a judgment call based on his appearance and reputation?
She decided to probe.
After an hour spent looking into New Hawk Holdings Inc., she was pleasantly surprised to learn that Bentley had told the truth about his business activities. Just as he had said, the company had a patent portfolio and a dozen apps under its belt, ranging from streamlining real estate searches to board games aimed at minority children. There were a number of stories online, mostly in local news columns, about how his company was known for investing in local tech start-ups in the African American community. He also co-owned a company that focused on affordable housing in low-income neighborhoods. She felt guiltier and guiltier about her assumptions.
Was it possible he was legit?
A few minutes on the Secretary of State website and a quick search in the business journals confirmed that Bentley Washington had indeed sold his software company in 2005 to a tech company in Austin. It was impossible to tell from an online search how successful his businesses were—did she have the budget to hire an accountant?—but judging from his investments, it appeared he had a substantial amount of money.
Okay, then. Maybe this could work. Even if his seedier reputation emerged—which they might be able to keep out—Durham jurors would appreciate his community service.
She found it extremely odd that New Hawk Holdings Inc. belonged to the same man reputed to be a sinister drug dealer. On second thought, maybe she didn’t. Online reputations were easy to puff up or even invent. It could be that the software company had sold for ten thousand dollars, that the apps and the patents made no money, and that the entire portfolio was a front or a laundering scheme for the drug business.
Was Bentley Washington a self-taught polymath with a penchant for helping the community? Or a clever criminal who knew how to manipulate the Internet and public perception?
After making a few notes on her research, she walked down the hall for a coffee, mumbling greetings to coworkers along the way. By the time her mind started to perk, she had resolved to lay her own eyes on Bentley and Ronald’s neighborhood, as well as the scene of the crime.
Ari left the office and drove east on Main. After a block of cute bars and boutiques on the tail end of the hip section of town, she passed a few blocks of staid government buildings and handsome brick churches, as well as her beloved Cuban sandwich shop.
Once she crossed Fayetteville Street, she entered gentrification territory, a mix of street-corner commerce and transitional housing the developers were snatching up like gold coins. Every now and then a condo tower or a refurbished warehouse would pop up, and the Golden Belt was nearby, a mixed-use artists’ collective in a restored textile mill. It was not until she turned left on Alston that the scenery deteriorated into the grinding, semi-urban blight that had warranted Durham’s rough reputation over the years.
She passed a slew of apartment buildings in such disrepair she couldn’t tell if the people milling about were renters or squatters. Fried chicken shacks, discount marts, a boarded-up church, pawn shops with iron bars on the windows, no-name corner stores with parking lots busier than the inside of most bars on a Friday night.
Ari felt a dissonance as she drove, a visceral reaction to her environment that was more than just the poverty and the criminal presence. It struck her that the shortage of details was what made the scenery so jarring. The lack of paint on the buildings, not a tree or blade of grass in sight, the absence of those little touches of humanity that brought life to a place. Everything gray, bare, stripped to its essence.
Ari’s left hand twitched on the steering wheel. She did not consider herself the type of person who locked her doors every time she entered a rough neighborhood. She had traveled to more than twenty countries, many of them on her own, and had traipsed through sketchy cities on three continents.
Still, as Bentley had mentioned, the inner-city ghettos of America were the closest thing she had ever seen to a true war zone. She decided to lock the door, surprised at how much thought she gave the decision. Did having a steady paycheck make her more cautious in life ? A mile or so past Alston, she turned left again, into the residential heart of East Durham. This was a different type of poverty. A Southern one. Instead of contiguous row houses or sprawling ghettos, she saw block after block of bungalows and ranch homes, homes built for the working class gone to seed. Sagging front porches, broken windows, the roots of ragged oak trees cracking the sidewalks.
Most of the houses had good bones. Solid wood, wide front porches, craftsman trim on the eaves. Yet time and entropy, the dirty uncles of poverty, had taken their toll. An entire section of the city ground into the earth like the twist of a pepper shaker.
After checking her mirrors, she pulled to the curb in front of a green Cadillac, across the street from the address of the double murder. The shotgun-style house had a covered front porch, a weed-filled front yard, and a chain-link fence enclosing the rear of the property. Blackout curtains on the windows.
She could envision the night in her mind. The desperate ploy of a teenage girl kept as chattel. Convincing some gullible mark to help her hit the stash house so they could run away together. Or maybe it was true love—who was Ari to say?
Downing shots of cheap liquor for courage, hiding guns in their jackets, maybe pretending to have a message from Ronald as they knocked on the front door. No way that stash house had been empty except for the bodies before Ronald had arrived, as he had told the police. Someone must have been inside the whole time, guarding the product. Either someone had ratted out the would-be Bonnie and Clyde, or whoever was inside had overpowered them and held them hostage until Ronald arrived and left their brains dripping down the wall like spaghetti.
Ari’s hands tightened on the wheel as she stared at the house. God, it was a violent world.
There was no one on the street. Plenty of vine-smothered oaks to support Bentley’s claim he had hidden behind a tree. Unless someone had slipped into the backyard from another house
, no one could have arrived unseen from the street, if Bentley had truly been watching.
Someone rapped on Ari’s driver’s-side window.
Startled, she looked over and saw a black teenager wearing an electric blue bomber jacket and a brown bandanna. He waved at her to lower the window. When she turned back to the street, ready to floor the accelerator, she saw an even younger kid in a faded army jacket standing right in front of her car. A similar brown bandanna hung from a pocket of his jeans.
Ari knew that roughly fifteen street gangs operated in Durham, pulling in youths as young as twelve. Sometimes even younger kids, emulating their family members, carried the culture to the elementary schools.
The kid beside her window smiled as he waved. The thinner boy in front of the car had lifeless, heavy-lidded eyes and a hand tucked under his jacket. Ari gripped the steering wheel and thought as fast as she could.
The knocking continued. She had to do something. Moving slowly, she reached for her purse with her right hand while she cracked her window to disguise the movement. If one of them pulled a gun, she would do what she had to: duck and floor the accelerator.
The smiling kid leaned down to speak into the cracked window. “Hey, pretty lady!”
“Can I help you?”
“Ah, we just wanted to say hi. Welcome you to the ‘hood.”
Ari had her hand on her purse. Her cell phone was inside. “Hi yourself,” she said. “I have somewhere to be. Do you mind moving?” The kid moved his face closer to the window. She guessed he was sixteen. “We need you to do something for us.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re a little thirsty. Hey, how old you think I am?”
“Eighteen?”
He grinned wider, puffing out his chest. “You hear that, Devonte ? She thinks I’m legal.”
When she brought the purse to her lap, the kid in front of the car, Devonte, tensed and tucked his hand deeper inside his jacket. Ari stopped moving.
“You’re not eighteen?” she said, trying to disguise her fear.
“I’m fourteen. Devonte, he sixteen. I look older though, don’t I?” “Fourteen and sixteen? Shouldn’t you be in school ?”
“Nah, we too smart for that. Tested out and shit. Listen pretty lady, we need you to buy us a bottle of something nice. Some Crown.”
“I can’t do that,” she said.
He laughed. “Hey, I’m a nice guy, but Devonte, he don’t like to hear no. Do you, Devonte ?”
Devonte didn’t twitch a muscle.
“Just unlock this door and let us in, okay?” He reached up with his left hand and put his fingers in the crack of the window. “We’ll take you to the corner store, be done before you know it.”
Ari had heard enough. She was scared, but these were kids, and she was a professional woman in a position of power.
“Do you know who I am?” she said, loud enough for Devonte to hear.
“Sure, pretty lady. You my boo, soon as we get some Crown.”
That pissed her off. “What’s your name ?”
“Me ? Jackson Brown. Action Jackson, like the movie.”
“Jackson, Devonte, my name is Ari Hale, and I’m a prosecutor for the city of Durham.”
That caused his fingers to slip away from the window. “A lawyer? Driving that thing?”
Keeping an eye on Devonte, who kept staring at her with those dull eyes, she reached into her purse and dug her government ID out of her purse. When she held it up, Jackson’s smile cracked.
“I could have you arrested for truancy, solicitation to buy alcohol, assault, and attempted grand theft auto.”
“Hey now, you don’t need—”
“Add attempted armed robbery to that, if Devonte actually has a gun under that jacket.”
“We were just playin—’” he said weakly.
“Jackson. Walk away, right now. Go back to school.”
She took out her phone. He opened his mouth as if to retort, closed it, and slowly backed away. “C’mon, Devonte.” The cocky smile returned, and he said, “Don’t forget me, pretty lady. Run with me, I’ll put you in a Beemer.”
Devonte stepped away from the windshield and onto the curb. He was no longer looking at Ari or, as far as she could tell, anything at all.
As she drove out of East Durham, Ari noticed her hands had stopped shaking, and she didn’t feel nearly as afraid as she thought she would. Instead she felt a heady rush of power that, instead of feeling good, made her feel conflicted.
The other thing she felt was a yawning sadness at the life of those two kids.
Soon after she returned to the office, an email popped up from Ronald’s defense attorney, Meredith Verela, saying she wanted charges dropped against her client immediately for lack of evidence, before the grand jury convened. Meredith must have come to the same conclusion as the DA’s office: They had nothing except Bentley’s dubious testimony.
Just as Ari was about to leave for the night, her phone rang. An unlisted number that she let go to voicemail.
“Ms. Hale? Bentley Montgomery here. There’s something I need to talk to you about—”
She snatched the phone. “This is Ari.”
“I thought you might pick up, if you were in.”
“What is it ?”
“I’ll just come out and say it. There was someone with me that night. A woman.”
She sat up straighter in her chair. “The night of the murders ?” “That’s right. I didn’t say anything about it because, well, it’s complicated. I’ve got a steady girlfriend, and this woman ain’t she.”
“I don’t like being jerked around, Bentley.”
“Who does?”
“She saw everything you did? And is willing to testify?”
“Just so.”
“What’s her name ? I’ll need to talk to her immediately. The defense is pressing us to drop the case.”
He chuckled. “Y’all don’t want me on the stand, do you?”
“When can we meet, Bentley?”
“Monday. I’ll bring her in after her shift, at five o’clock. Make sure you’re around.”
“Why don’t we . . .” Ari said, then trailed off because he had already hung up.
14
Preach strode into the station and went straight to Chief Higgins’s office. As he entered, she opened a folder on her desk, revealing a small stack of spreadsheets broken into neat columns. Three months’ worth of David’s phone records, including the content of the text messages over the last ten days, thanks to the court order. “Take a look at October 1.” “This is the day before his murder,” Preach said, as he scanned the printout. David had sent enough texts that Preach had to flip the page. The folder underneath likely contained a list of phone calls made and received.
“The string you want starts at 7:31 a.m.,” she said.
“Right before school.”
Using his finger to pinpoint the column, he sucked in a breath as he read the three lines of text that followed.
And then the last one, sent by David almost immediately after the reply.
Preach stared down at the printout, his palms pressing into the top of the desk. “Are there any more exchanges between those two numbers?”
“Not after, no. There’s a handful before, but nothing revealing. Short discussions about getting rides to practice and such. I assume you don’t recognize the number?”
“Wait” he said grimly, thinking the number did look familiar as he dug his notebook out of his jacket pocket. He flipped back a few pages and read the phone number he had written down at Claire’s house.
It matched.
Preach slowly looked up. “It’s Brett’s.”
“Claire’s boyfriend?”
He steepled his fingers against his lips and nodded, then rea
d the texts again. “Last chance for what? Tell who by Friday? Claire ?”
“You don’t think they were . . . you know,” she muttered.
“I hadn’t thought of that. But I don’t think so. By all accounts, Brett and David didn’t like each other very much.”
“Then what the hell is that about?”
“I don’t know,” he said, tucking the phone records under his arm. “But I’m gonna find out.”
As eager as he was to confront Brett, Preach took the time to flip through the records himself. He went to his office and hunkered down, shutting out the ringing phones and the banter of the other officers.
On the night of his disappearance, the last time David had used his cell phone had been to call his mother at 6 p.m. Probably checking on dinner after practice, or asking if she needed something from the store. Preach found no other sign of Brett’s number in the call log over the entire week. The only other number he knew at this point was Claire’s, so until they compiled a list of phone numbers for the players involved, the call log wouldn’t be much help.
Except for the exchange with Brett, the content of the text messages was unhelpful. He found plenty of innocuous exchanges with Claire, a slew of flirtatious texts with a slew of different numbers, and the usual coarse banter between teens.
Two hours later, satisfied he had learned all there was to learn at the moment, he clasped his hands atop the folders, leaning back in his chair as he thought. He found the lack of phone activity on the night of David’s disappearance strange. What do kids do at that age when they’re upset ? They get on their devices and vent to their friends.
But wherever David had gone or whatever he had done after the argument with Claire, he had not texted or called anyone.
Which meant, most likely, that he had gone to vent in person—or something else had intervened.
Preach took Officer Terry Haskins with him to Brett Moreland’s house. As soon as the businessman opened the door holding a coffee cup that read “I’m the Boss” his eyes slipped past Preach and focused on Terry’s ferret-like face, no doubt wondering why a second officer had come along.