Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

“About a year after the fact. Jail-house snitch came looking for a deal, spilled for us.”

“I’m so disappointed,” I said, nudging him to make room in the bed; he seemed to have spread out. “Where were you great big detectives all that time? Out eating doughnuts?”

“If it had been my case from the beginning, we would have gotten Conklin on day one.” Mike sounded defensive. “The original investigators screwed up on it, got lazy I think, didn’t follow up on leads. They talked to Conklin, but they let him go. The department did a six-month follow-up, then filed the case away for another six months. It probably would have stayed in limbo, except Chuckie Conklin got himself sent to jail on an unrelated charge-crimes against a child-and couldn’t keep his mouth shut. To keep from getting poop-chuted all day like the other pedophiles, he started bragging that he had taken out a cop.”

“Poop-chuted?” I said.

“Think about it.” He set the clippings aside.

“Oh,” I said when I got it. Mike should have come with a glossary of cop-speak. “Was he in jail when you arrested him?”

“No. He was out terrorizing the neighborhood again by the time we bagged him. It was a tough case to make; no one would ID him when he was out loose. Everyone was afraid of him, of his whole damn family-especially the kids. I told you, we helped him decide to move on.”

“You want to explain how you helped him decide?”

Mike yawned. “Aren’t you tired yet?”

“No,” I said. “I just love to listen to you talk. I could stay up all night.”

He looked down at me. “What is this? You have a recorder hidden somewhere?”

“Sho’, you right,” I said in my best imitation of Mike.

“Let me see.” He yanked off the covers and grabbed the front of my robe-his robe-and started to peel it off me. “I know you’ve got a bug in here somewhere. Give it up before this gets ugly.”

“Sometimes I like it ugly,” I said, laughing, trying to hang on to the robe.

“You called it.” His stiff little mustache tickled the inside of my thighs as he searched. And probed. I just threw off the robe and gave him access.

Mike is a genius with his hands and his tongue-expertise that comes from vast experience. After all of the wild and crazy things we have done with and to each other, he can still amaze me, make my eyes roll back in my head. But that night, though Mike was in peak form, I couldn’t clear my mind enough to be of much help. After a few minutes he figured something was wrong and raised himself. He looked at me, his face framed between my knees.

“Where did I lose you?” he asked.

“I’m confused.” I reached out for a handful of his hair. “I’m trying to put things together. I have two piles of information that should flow together, but they simply do not seem to exist on the same plane of truth. They will not merge.”

“Someone lie to you?”

“You.” I sat up to look him square on, feeling angry and confused. “I know you lie to me all the time about things you’ve done on the job-you pretty things up so I won’t judge you.”

“That isn’t lying. If you haven’t been on the streets, there’s no way you can understand what goes down.”

“Maybe,” I said. I had backed up from him, out of his zone of magnetism. I tried to, anyway. As mad as I was, I still wanted to hold him. Realizing that made me even angrier. “Maybe not. Right now I need you to tell me the truth. The names of the little girl witnesses? They wouldn’t be LaShonda DeBevis and Hanna Rhodes, would they?”

He sighed.

“You’re using me again, Mike. I don’t like the way that feels.”

“Me, too.”

“You better explain.”

He sat naked in front of me, looking shamed. And gorgeous. I think that if he hadn’t been naked I would have been a whole lot angrier. Mike doesn’t leave himself vulnerable, ever. If he could sit there completely exposed, then he felt safe with me. That is, whatever he’d done wasn’t so bad it would make me turn on him.

“Just spill it, Mike,” I said, sitting cross-legged in front of him, our knees touching.

“I’m under orders,” he said. “I can’t talk to anyone who was involved in the case.”

I nodded. “The department is reinvestigating for you, but you can’t play.”

“Not exactly reinvestigating. The department is going over procedure, making sure we did things right the first time. That’s all. But I want more. The D.A. and this asshole evangelical private eye, Leroy Burgess, are trying to get a convicted murderer out of prison on a technicality. The city doesn’t give a shit if he gets out, as long as we don’t come off looking too bad. Doesn’t anyone but me care that he’s guilty?”

“You want me to talk to the witnesses?”

“In the course of this project you have going, if you were to talk to them, that would be good.”

“What is it you want me to find out from them?”

“Just if the girls are okay. If you can find them and they’re okay, that’s enough for me.”

“No message?”

“No. Except maybe watch out. The D.A. said he has new affidavits from them saying they were coerced all those years ago. If they were ever coerced, it was when they signed those new affidavits. This whole thing really stinks, Mag. I worry that LaShonda and Hanna might be in some trouble.”

“I’ll do what I can. Just don’t lie to me anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You already said that.”

“I don’t know what else to say. Problem is, I’m used to taking care of my own problems. I’m not good at asking for help, but I can’t get inside alone this time. Since you were in the neighborhood, I hoped maybe you’d knock on a few doors for me.”

“You have to say, please Maggie, give me a hand.”

“I just did.”

“You’re some tough guy, Flint,” I said, softened by his anguish. “You’ve got skin like a baby, but you’re some tough guy.”

He tried to get up an attitude. “I don’t have skin like a baby.”

“Yes you do,” I said, nuzzling his abdomen. “And dimples on your vanilla ice cream butt.”

“Ass,” he said, breaking into a smile, getting hard again. “And no, I don’t.”

But he does.

The telephone rang deep in the small hours of the night. Startled out of my sleep, I made a quick accounting of my near and dear as I rose to the surface of wakefulness: Michael and Casey were both safely tucked into bed, Mike was wrapped around me. Panic abated.

Mike reached through the dark and picked up the phone, muttered something, then tapped me with the receiver.

“It’s for you,” he said, and fell face down into his pillow.

I managed, “Hello?” expecting to hear my mother or father with dire news.

“Miss MacGowen? It’s me, Etta Harkness. You ax me to tell you if I know anything about Hanna Rhodes?”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Hanna just got herself shot. Up on Hunnerd-twelve. Baby Boy say she still lyin’ up there on the sidewalk. The ambulance only just got there.”

“Where is this?”

“Hunnerd-twelve and Wilmington.”

“Is she badly hurt?”

Etta coughed. “She dead.”

I was awake, but I felt disoriented, still unaccustomed to waking up in Mike’s bedroom. I reached over and gave his shoulder a nudge. “Etta says Hanna Rhodes is dead.”

Mike took the phone from me and grilled Etta for a few minutes. He said good-bye and turned on the light to dial Southeast Division. He asked for the sergeant on duty and grilled him, too. When he finally hung up, he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.

“What happened?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Don’t know. Southeast only got the shooting call twenty minutes ago.”