by Kiki Swinson
“Are you gonna cook?” I yelled back.
“No, I bought a couple of tuna fish sandwiches from the deli down the street.”
“Sounds good. I’ll wait until you get in here so we can eat together,” I insisted.
“I’m on my way now,” she replied, and then she appeared around the corner. Armed with a smile, she walked into the kitchen, carrying a clear package with a new doorknob lock-and-key set. “I stopped by the hardware store and picked up this beauty,” she said while she handed it to me.
“Cool. Thanks,” I replied after I took it from her hands and looked it over. “How much did it cost?” I wanted to know. She was already allowing me to stay in her apartment, so buying me a new lock for my apartment was very thoughtful.
“It was a little over forty dollars,” she told me. And before I could comment, her cell phone rang. “Where did I leave my phone?” she wondered aloud.
“It’s in your bedroom. I’ll get it,” I told her, and then I headed to her bedroom. Midway to her bedroom, her doorbell rang. I stopped and turned toward her. She stood there in the entryway of the kitchen and looked back at me. “Are you expecting someone?” I whispered.
“No. I’m not,” she whispered back. “Go to my bedroom and close my door. I will come get you when they’re gone,” she assured me.
“Okay,” I said as my heart rate sped up.
Mrs. Mabel watched me until I walked into her bedroom and closed the door behind myself. I stood there on the other side of the door with my ear to it so I could hear whoever was at the front door. I was so freaking nervous; it sounded like I was breathing hard at one point, so I held my breath. When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I started breathing as quietly as I could. “Who is it?” I heard her yell.
I couldn’t hear the person on the other side of the door, but when Mrs. Mabel asked the person to repeat it, I heard a man’s voice, but I couldn’t decipher his words.
“How can I help you?” she continued, and that’s when I cracked her bedroom door a little. It was slightly ajar so I could get a good look at who was at the front door, but at the same time, they wouldn’t be able to see me.
“My name is Officer Kahn and this is Officer Pax, and we would like to ask you some questions,” I heard the guy say to Mrs. Mabel.
I couldn’t get a look at the guy talking at the front door. At this angle, all I could see was the police patch stitched to the arm of the uniform. “What kind of questions do you need answering?” Mrs. Mabel asked him.
Before the gentleman answered, he swayed his head to the right of Mrs. Mabel’s shoulder so he could get a look inside of the apartment. “Are you looking for something?” Mrs. Mabel asked. It was apparent that she caught him looking over her shoulder.
“I’m just acting with precaution, ma’am,” he replied.
“I should be the least of your worries,” I replied sarcastically.
“Is there someone else in this apartment?” I heard the other person say. This alarmed me. And I felt that at any moment those cops could move Mrs. Mabel out of the way and rush back here with their quickness!
“No, I’m the only person here. And why do you ask?” she questioned them. The cop that looked over her shoulder the first time did it again. This time I saw his face. “Oh my God, it’s Ahmad,” I said, barely audible.
Fear and anxiety consumed my body all at once. I immediately closed the door to Mrs. Mabel’s room and locked it. Then I ran to the window and opened it. I punched the screen out of the window and watched it fall down on the ground. “Where are you going? You can’t come in here,” I heard Mrs. Mabel say, and then I heard a loud thud.
Confused and scared to death, I ran into Mrs. Mabel’s walk-in closet and closed the door. Only residents of the apartment complex knew that we have a small storage space in the ceiling of our closet, so I climbed to the top shelf and eased the hatch back quietly.
“The door is locked. She’s gotta be in here,” I heard an unfamiliar voice say.
“Open it,” I heard Ahmad instruct the other guy.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I whispered, trying to pull myself carefully up into the ceiling.
Boom! The sound of the bedroom door after it slammed the wall behind it terrified me. “Fuck! She climbed out of the window!” I heard Ahmad roar. His voice boomed. Anyone would be terrified to be around this guy. “Go get her before she gets away. Kill her. I want her dead,” Ahmad continued.
The other guy’s footsteps went from walking to running, while Ahmad stayed behind. I thought one part of him must have had doubts that I climbed out of the window, because I heard him pushing around the stuff stored underneath Mrs. Mabel’s bed. He walked to the closet next. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I heard him open the closet door, move the clothes hangers around, and then I heard him shut the closet door back.
When I heard Ahmad open another door and close it, I knew he was looking in the hall closet directly across from Mrs. Mabel’s bedroom. After he closed that door, I heard the shower curtain move, so I knew he was in the bathroom.
I heard Ahmad making his way back out of the bathroom and I also heard the other guy with him panting. “She got away,” the other guy said.
“How the fuck did we let her get away?!” Ahmad’s voice boomed again.
“I told you we should’ve gotten her after we sent the kid to sell her the candy bar the first time,” the other guy said.
“You know we couldn’t get her. The feds were all over this place yesterday. Leaving when we did was the best course of action,” I heard Ahmad say.
“You may be right, but the boss isn’t gonna be happy when he calls today and we tell him that she got away.”
“We’ll tell him that the cops have been all over this place, and as soon as we get the chance, we’ll have her in our hands,” Ahmad explained.
“What about her mother and her boyfriend? What are we going to do with them?”
“Kill the boyfriend. And the mother, we’re gonna use her as bait.”
“What do you mean?”
“If we don’t pick her up by day’s end of tomorrow, we’ll get word out to her that we’ll trade her life for her mother’s.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“Just sit back and watch. Now let’s get out of here.”
“What we going to do about the old lady?” the other guy wanted to know.
“What kind of question is that? We’re going to leave her here,” Ahmad replied sarcastically, and then I heard them both as they left the apartment.
14
MY FLESH & BLOOD
Trying to piece everything I just heard together was becoming overwhelming. I mean, how fucking stupid did he think I was? To find out that Ahmad had that little boy come here to set me up was pretty clever, but I was two steps ahead of him. On the downside, the fact that Mrs. Mabel got caught up in this setup was pretty fucked up. Once again, I got someone shot and killed because of their affiliation with me. Granted, Mrs. Mabel was starting to get on my freaking nerves, but she helped me by giving me a place to lay low so the DEA and the local cops couldn’t touch me. She was a rider. So, how can I just let this shit go? Besides that, what would the cops say if they came here and saw this lady dead? My fingerprints would be all over this place. I’d be their main and only suspect. Now, how am I getting myself out of this one?
Afraid to move an inch, I sat there in the small space above the closet. Thinking about how I was going to maneuver around this situation, I buried my face into the palms of my hands. Filled up with a bunch of sorrow, I let out a floodgate of tears. Why was all this shit coming at me like this? I was just a fucking pharmacy tech at a pharmacy with an aspiration to become a pharmacist, but look at how I screwed that up. It seemed like every time I tried to remedy my situation and move forward, I got caught up in some bullshit. It never failed.
After sitting around in this little-ass ceiling space for every bit of ten minutes, I figured the coast was clear, so I very c
arefully slid the ceiling square cover from the opening off to the side; then I carefully stepped down onto the top shelf. Once my foot was firmly placed on the top shelf, I put my other foot down and then I made my way down to the closet floor. Immediately after I planted both of my feet on the floor, I opened the closet door as quietly as I could, to prevent anyone from hearing it if they were still lingering around the apartment. Things seemed quiet, so I stepped out of the closet, tiptoed to the bedroom door, and peered around the corner.
When I realized that I was still in the clear, I looked down the hallway toward the front door and noticed the door was closed shut. Taking direction from my gut, I tiptoed down the hallway toward the front door. When I got halfway down the hall, that’s when I saw Mrs. Mabel’s lifeless body lying on the floor four feet away from the front door. I rushed over toward her, and right when I was just about to drop down on my knees to see if she was breathing, my gut spoke again. It told me how that would be a bad idea, especially if I got her blood on my hands. But as I stood there and watched her lying in her own blood, I thought about the fact that if I hadn’t come here in the first place, then Mrs. Mabel would still be alive. I even thought about the fact that my mother’s boyfriend, Carl, was about to be murdered because of me. Now, why was that? Why was I always putting all these people in harm’s way? I knew my grandmother said that I wasn’t going to get into heaven by way of suicide, but what if I wasn’t supposed to go to heaven? With all the mess I caused, I deserved a one-way trip to hell. I guess I would soon find out.
Knowing that I needed to leave this apartment ASAP, I grabbed my duffel bag from the guest bedroom and started piling all of my stuff inside of it. I went into the bathroom, grabbed my bath cloth, and toothbrush. Next, I ran into Mrs. Mabel’s bedroom with my duffel bag in hand and grabbed her purse, took her car keys and $74 she had inside of it, and stuffed them both down inside of my front pants pocket. From there, I ran into the kitchen and grabbed both deli sandwiches, because I knew that I was going to be hungry at any given moment. But then something happened and my peripheral vision caught it. I turned my complete focus around and that’s when I saw three cops running toward Mrs. Mabel’s apartment.
“What the fuck!” I said as fear engulfed me, and then I sprinted back to Mrs. Mabel’s bedroom, where my duffel bag was. “No! No! No! They’re gonna pin her murder on me. And then I’m gonna be booked on two counts of murder. I can’t let this happen. No! No! No!” I whispered while my heart rate far exceeded sixty miles per hour.
The moment I walked into Mrs. Mabel’s bedroom, I locked the bedroom door, grabbed my duffel bag from her bed, and then looked at the window. Realizing once again that I probably wouldn’t be able to squeeze my body through it, much less my bag, I raced to the closet and climbed back up the shelves. At the top shelf, I shoved my duffel bag into the space first, and while I was pulling myself into the ceiling space, the cops kicked in the front door. “Virginia Beach Police,” I heard one of them shout.
“Oh shit!” I heard another cop say.
“Is she alive?” I heard a third voice say.
“No. I’m dispatching homicide right now.”
“Check the other rooms. We may not be alone,” the first officer said. By then, I had climbed back into the ceiling space and closed the square peg back into its place. Feelings of regret, fear, and trepidation overwhelmed me as I heard cops emerge.
“Clear,” one said from another room.
The cop that entered Mrs. Mabel’s had to kick the door in first. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I heard him meticulously covering himself with every step he took. When he opened the closet door, he pushed and pulled the clothes hanging from their hangers. Once he saw that it was empty, he yelled to the other officers that his area was clear. “Whoever was here had to have jumped out of the window. So I’m gonna go outside and check the perimeter,” he continued.
“Johns, have you dispatched the coroners?” I heard one of the officers ask.
“Yeah, they’re en route now,” another officer replied. Although all three of the cops were in the front room of the apartment, I could hear every word they uttered.
“Who could do this to an old lady?” one of the cops said.
“We got a lot of heartless people in the world,” another cop replied.
“I’m gonna go back to the car to get the yellow tape,” the other cop said.
“Make sure you keep the neighbors back an extra sixty feet.”
“Will do.”
* * *
It didn’t take the local cops long to dispatch homicide detectives and the city coroners. They were all in Mrs. Mabel’s apartment five minutes after they were called. It didn’t surprise me when Detective Belle and her partner, Detective Caesar, appeared on the scene. I realized they were here after they entered into Mrs. Mabel’s bedroom and asked the forensic specialist that was at the window dusting for prints if he had found any visible prints. He told them he had two sets of prints and this made them happy. “Think her murder is connected to the Misty Heiress case?” I heard Detective Caesar ask.
“There’s a huge possibility,” I heard Detective Belle reply.
“If that’s the case, what do you think happened?” he wanted to know.
“I don’t know. But we will have an answer by the end of the day,” Belle said.
“Hey, you guys, I found prints in the second bathroom. Whoever was here used the toilet, the sink maybe to brush their teeth, and they also took a shower, because they left a bath cloth, so there’s gonna be DNA all over it.”
“Sounds good,” Belle said.
“Yeah, that’s awesome,” I heard the other detective agree.
“Hey, Caesar, Belle,” another person shouted.
“Yeah,” Belle and Caesar said in unison.
“Got a lady outside saying that the lady who lived here had a female visitor,” I heard the person say.
“Where is she?” Belle asked.
“She’s right outside of the yellow tape,” the guy replied.
“Come on, Caesar, let’s hear what she has to say,” I heard Belle say to Detective Caesar.
Hearing Detective Belle instruct her partner to follow her outside to speak with an eyewitness made my heart nearly jump out of my freaking chest. Who in the hell knows that I am here? No one saw me when I initially walked into Mrs. Mabel’s apartment, so where did they get their information from? Had Mrs. Mabel had a chance to tell someone that I was here? And if she did, who could it be? And why would she do it? She knew I was trying to lay low. Was I missing something here?
Knowing that Detective Belle and Detective Caesar were on their way to speak with this so-called witness had me terrified. Not to mention, the fact that I left my bath cloth behind in the bathroom. And now that the cops had it, they would indeed pull my DNA from it. How in the hell did I forget to grab it?
For the duration of the evidence gathering, I heard different cop voices as the cops walked about Mrs. Mabel’s apartment. I heard one guy say that whoever murdered Mrs. Mabel was a heartless person. I heard another guy say that it looked like a robbery. The same guy who had just spoken also said that he found a store receipt in the kitchen that indicated that Mrs. Mabel purchased two sandwiches, and from the time of the receipt, it was 12:05, which was less than thirty minutes ago. So, not only were the two sandwiches missing, they knew what time Mrs. Mabel was killed. I swear, all of this news was killing me on the inside. These cops weren’t going to let up with this investigation. When they found out it was me, Detective Belle and Agent Sims were not going to sleep until they locked my ass up. I felt sick in the stomach and wanted to throw up all over this ceiling storage, but when I thought of them finding me and hauling me off to jail, I fought back the urge of regurgitating.
15
THE FIRST FORTY-EIGHT HOURS
It seemed like time was creeping by slowly. It felt like these guys had no intentions of leaving. Every time I heard one cop announce that they’d cleared one room, m
eaning they logged all the evidence, I’d hear another cop say that they found something else. It was like a fucking circus; everyone was juggling their own act with no intentions of leaving.
Detective Belle walked back into Mrs. Mabel’s apartment with her partner, Caesar, in tow. She made an announcement and it sounded like she was making it in the living-room area. “I just spoke with one of the neighbors. Her name was Tina. She’s an older woman. Looked to be in her late forties. She said that she knew Mrs. Mabel for a long time. She was like the neighborhood grandmother. She was a nice lady and everyone loved her, so it’s hard to believe that someone would kill her. She also said that she spoke to Mrs. Mabel this morning and everything seemed fine. But when she saw two uniformed cops run away from this apartment, she felt something was wrong, because cops only run when they’re in pursuit of someone. And you know what, guy?” Belle said.
“What?” a few cops said in unison.
“She’s right. And you wanna know why?” Belle continued.
“Why?” the same cops said.
“Because within the last hour, there weren’t any calls from dispatch for this area or any area within twenty miles. So tell me who were those two cops that the lady saw?”
“Was she sure that they were cops? I mean, they could’ve been security officers,” I heard one of the guys say.
“We asked her that same question. And she said she knows what Virginia Beach Police uniforms look like. She also said that they were driving one of the city’s police vehicles too,” I heard Detective Caesar reply.
“Don’t you think it’s ironic that a murder was committed at the apartment next door and now we’re investigating another one?” I heard someone ask. I couldn’t make out the voice because there were over eight to ten people.
“There’s a strong possibility. And also remember that we have the suspect April, who has agreed to testify in front of a grand jury and say Terrell Mason was already dead when she entered into the apartment next door. Now fast-forward to now, when Agent Sims and I tried to speak with this lady here, she wouldn’t cooperate with us. It almost seemed like she had a bond with Misty Heiress, which was why she expressed her grievances with us for going through Misty’s things in her apartment. So, what if someone from Terrell’s family or a friend of his came by Misty’s apartment to seek revenge and Mrs. Mabel got in their way?” Belle said.