Chapter 6

The courthouse lobby resounded with the raw tongue of a teenager motivating the mob through a bullhorn. Near a hundred people crowded the lobby, interrupting the hearings in the adjacent two courtrooms.

Bolinger exited the stairwell and hurried past the clerk’s office and into Prosecuting Attorney Madison Eijkman’s office.

“Tell me what the hell is going on in my town?” Bolinger said with an intimate voice.

Eijkman’s far-set green eyes widened when the mayor barged in unannounced. She shot up like an arrow, thin as a rail, flat chested, with a turkey neck and sharp-featured face. Her light complexion glowed beneath fine ash-blond hair.

“Mr. Mayor,” she sang with a dulcet voice. “I didn’t know you were coming in this morning.”

His mouth fell open. “There is a large mob on the steps of the courthouse, and a smaller mob on my lawn, trampling my wife’s flowers. Apparently our town is under siege by pissed-off teenagers and I want to know why.”

Chapter 7

I draw stares from practically everyone I pass whenever I’m walking with my sometimes-boss, attorney Candice Sullivan, a fifty-year-old white woman. You would think in today’s society, where such things are commonplace, there wouldn’t be as much shock at seeing a beautiful, older white woman on the arm of a much younger black man. But there are still those pockets of society.

Some of the people along the Country Club Plaza have that pained, lip-curling expression. A few wrinkle their noses and avert their gaze as quick as they notice us.

Candice tugs my hand. “Hey, you. You’ve been quiet all evening.”

Her emerald eyes twinkle up at me, and those generous lips are begging to be kissed. It isn’t often Candice dresses her curvaceous body in just a pair of jeans and cotton tee shirt. Tonight is one of those relaxed times.

She raises up on her toes, pressing her cone-shaped breasts against my arm and whispers, “What’s wrong? You’re not still thinking my divorce was your fault, are you?”

Before I can answer, the valet zooms up to the curb in my red Infiniti Q50 sedan. I hold the door open for Candice then walk around and tip the valet five bucks.

Candice is sitting on her left side, facing me, waiting for my answer.

“It amazes me you never see how people look at us,” I say.

“I see, I just don’t care. Why do you?”

“You don’t know what it’s like to be black and have to live in white society. The hate in some people’s eyes when they see me with you.”

Candice takes my hand. “Black or white, someone will always hate you for something, fear, jealousy, something.”

“Who are you telling?”

“You also know the haters need you to hate them back so they’ll feel justified in their hatred.”

Chapter 9

“Mr. Mills, please, do not let the racial hatred suck you in like it has everyone else. This family needs someone who can stay out of the fray and uncover the truth of what happened to Hailey.”

“And how do you expect someone to do that when you want them to focus entirely on a young black kid you’re not even sure was involved?”

“I don’t. So if you accept this case, you investigate it your way and follow the leads wherever they take you. If they lead you back to Mr. Mathews, so be it. And if a lead takes you somewhere else, follow it.”

Leaning on the roof of my car, I stare out across Raytown Road at the closed water park that will soon open for summer, and then I suddenly burst into laughter.

“I always wanted to be a cop. Ever since I was a kid and saw Sidney Poitier play Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night, I wanted to be a police detective.” I continue laughing, thinking of the movie’s racist Chief Gillespie and that Negro detective. “They call me Mr. Tibbs,” I mutter, quoting Poitier’s character from the show.

“Come again, Mr. Mills?”

“It must be torture for Sanders to have to lean on a Negro detective instead of his Gillespie.”

Gabbler hands me a check for ten thousand, a USB drive with the case file, and a general contract that my hand signs before my mouth can say no.

Chapter 11

Scared to death is the only way to describe Cindy Glasgow. She has her face buried just inches from her textbook, watching my approaching feet out of the corner of her eye while she’s pretending to be reading.

By now, I’m sure everyone has texted each other warning about the tall, baldheaded, black man roaming the halls with Officer Ragusa, investigating Hailey’s assault. I’d like to think they’re describing me as the well-dressed, handsome, black man, but then I’m not trying to pull any of these girls.

Poor Cindy can’t figure out if I’m just an investigator or Sanders’ hatchet man. When I’m close enough, she slowly looks up. She’s an odd looking girl—pale, yellowish-pink skin and auburn hair, twelve-gauge nostrils, the tiniest damn ears, and all leg, little torso.

“I don’t know anything. I was outside all night. I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything.”

“Everyone knows something. Let’s start with do you know who I am?”

Chapter 14

“Don’t you want to know what happened?”

“I was there, Natasha. Besides, I only want to know what happened this past Friday night.”

Natasha sits up. “DeShawn Mills, I’m ashamed of you. Do you not see what is happening here?” She points at the TV. “This could be worse than Ferguson, Missouri.”

“Ferguson? Ferguson was bullshit and you know it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Some thug, high on drugs, robs a convenient store and assaults the store owner, then assaults the responding cop and goes for his gun. When the little white cop, who’s just doing his job, shoots the mammoth brother in self-defense, we cry racism and lie to the public about what really happened. Then we burn down the town, but not the police station, only the businesses that belong to hard-working individuals who had nothing to do with any of it, like that convenient store owner who got assaulted.”

“I don’t think you appreciate the burden of being black.”

“The burden of being black?” Sometimes you just have to laugh. “My burden of being black is other blacks. We do more harm to ourselves than whites do to us. My black father walked out on my mother, sister, and me; damn the white man. Black gangbangers murdered my sister; the white man must’ve put them up to it. Blacks came at me in prison, but a white man took me under his wing and helped me earn a college degree from behind bars so I could make something of myself when I got out. That had to have been some kind of trick by the white establishment to hold me down.”

Natasha’s mouth slackens and she rubs her brow. “Harold Sanders hasn’t done a damn thing for you or any of us. I don’t understand how you can work for him and align yourself with his white police force. You should be—”

“Natasha, stop your rhetoric. First, Harold Sanders isn’t holding me back, he’s paying me a handsome retainer to do honest work. Second, I’m not aligned with his so-called white police force.”

I shift my weight and turn sideways on the sofa to face her. “Do you know why we have no credibility with white people? It’s because every time something happens to someone of color and it makes the news, we get angry and start waving our fists. We never take the time to consider if we should be getting behind the person, or whether we should be advocating against what happened. Even when we manage to get it right, our message gets lost when ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter show up to riot, burn, and loot—radical blacks undermining the legitimate message of righteous blacks. It ends up a lost cause.”

“You’re insane to think we shouldn’t have each other’s back out there.”

“That’s not the point I’m making, Natasha. I’m saying we tend to get behind the wrong situation, like what happened in Ferguson. Instead, we should’ve rallied behind the twelve year old in Ohio who was playing by himself with a toy gun and got shot to death by two white cops who rolled up on him without asking any questions and just started shooting. We would’ve had credibility in that instance. We would’ve come out as champions. Instead, we get behind a doped-up criminal and a bunch of liars.”

“We can’t always pick our fights, DeShawn.”

“Yes, we can!” I slice my finger through the air like a sword. “Hell, Natasha, we’re even making shit up. A Hollywood actor staged a false attack with a couple of brothers posing as white Trump supporters. A young Muslim girl claimed to have been attacked by whites on a subway, just so her parents wouldn’t punish her for breaking curfew or whatever it was she did. And let’s not forget the black lawmaker who lied about being assaulted in a grocery store and told to go back where she came from, when all that happened was a customer called her out for jumping into the express lane with a cart filled with groceries.” I take a deep breath. “It’s gotten so bad I’m reluctant to believe us when we’re telling the truth.”

Chapter 14

Candice sneers and shakes her head. “It doesn’t prove anything they didn’t already know. Quentin admitted to O’Dell he was with Hailey earlier that night. Their problem is the 911 call came well after he left the party.”

“And your problem is Quentin can’t say conclusively when he left the party.”

Candice tips her glass at me. “My problem,” she says winking, “is competing with a woman who’s almost half my age for your affection.”

“Not tonight, Candice. I’m not feeling it this evening.”

She chuckles. “Surely your reporter girlfriend didn’t wear you out.”

I push her back from trying to kiss me.

Her eyes fall and she squirms away rubbing the back of her neck. “I’m sorry, DeShawn. I wasn’t aware the two of you had gotten that serious.”

“Candice. It’s not Natasha, it’s everything that has happened these last forty-eight hours.”

A shaky laugh escapes her slow smile. “Well, please don’t tell me this case and Harold Sanders have turned you off of white women.”

“Will you stop with the jealousy and put your insecurity in check?”

Her slow smile suddenly explodes as she thrusts her chest out. “Oh, DeShawn, I’m just teasing. Don’t get so bent out of shape.”

“This case is making it difficult to know when you’re playing.”

“It’s an ugly case, isn’t it?” Candice steps close and rubs my arm. “All this prejudice and hate is a nasty cloud, and it looms over everyone, not just blacks but whites as well. And it looms the heaviest over those who are indifferent and have no desire to stop it.”

She nuzzles her cheek against mine then whispers, “Let me help you relax.”

Chapter 20

I find Santiago in the cereal section, slowly making her way through the maze of aisles. She’s an older woman with gray-streaked black hair pulled back behind her ears, revealing plain, gold hoop earrings. She is fair-skinned and appears to be of mixed blood. Beneath her hair sets a strong face with a strange certainty in her eyes. Life has been kind to Mary Santiago; she has aged well.

As I move towards her, she spots me and doesn’t look away. Perhaps she recognizes me from the news, but I don’t recall having my face plastered on any of the channels. Nevertheless, she’s not the least bit afraid.

“I know you, Mr. Mills. I have seen videos of you fighting with the students at Barren’s high school. I saw you fighting your own people and heard you accuse Barren of harming that beautiful girl, Hailey Sanders. Is there any truth to your accusation?”

Chapter 21

Francesco’s eyebrows shoot up. “I’ve been busy, too.” She blows on her coffee then sips. “I called Raytown P.D. They still have Carla Wilbanks’ untested rape kit. I’m on my way there after I finish visiting with you.”

I gesture to a sofa back in my office. “Please, have a seat.” I sit across from her in an easy chair. “Why was the kit never tested?”

“Do you want to know why most kits in general don’t get tested or just Wilbanks’ kit?”

“I imagine it’s the same reason: testing is expensive.”

“Twenty years ago it was. Today, testing a kit costs less than a thousand dollars.” Francesco shakes her head. “No, it was because Miss Wilbanks was labeled uncooperative and the investigation closed. Once that happened, the kit was warehoused.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The ugliness of rape investigations in a nutshell is this: most rapes are not committed by strangers; the woman knows the rapist. Serial rapists are the exceptions, but even then one of the victims will know him. In those cases when the woman and the rapist are acquainted many rape investigators, male investigators, will doubt the woman’s story and blame her for what happened. More so when a rape happens at a party in which the young woman got drunk and made a bad choice. Some of my fellow detectives will conclude the woman had been out partying and had sex willingly then later regretted it. I had a partner who once suggested the woman had it coming.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“Pissed off. Rape is by far the easiest violent crime to get away with. And because it is the least-reported and least-investigated crime, the rapist escapes and more often than not rapes again. In my opinion, rape is the only crime we make the victim out to be the accused, demanding she prove her good name and that she’s not crazy. Having said that, you might understand how difficult it might be to investigate a rape reported by a prostitute, who is automatically suspected of lodging a false complaint against a john who ducked out without paying.”

“I still don’t understand why they don’t test the kits anyway just to cover their ass procedurally, especially if it doesn’t cost but a few hundred dollars.”

Francesco runs the tip of her finger around the brim of her cup. “Because no one wants to smear a potentially innocent man’s reputation or take away his liberty because of a false report.”

Reputation is everything, I know. Once you’ve established it, you guard it with your life because everything depends on it. All the Alan Lacys and Harold Sanders of the world are proof of that. And once it’s smeared you play Hell restoring it. I’m proof of that.

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