Kathryn Lilley - Makeovers Can Be Murder

I didn′t pause to consider that I′d drawn blood; rage had taken the driver′s seat. I pushed Jonathan out of my bed and drove him before me. In the living room Jonathan opened the front door, then held on to the knob for a few seconds while I screamed foul-sounding names at him. I don′t even know what kinds of things I was screaming. I wasn′t even Kate Gallagher anymore. I was a Greek Fury, only with a vocabulary of pithy Irish insults.

After an uncertain amount of time passed in this drama, the sound of a dog′s barking jerked me into awareness of the world around us. In the house next door to mine, the older lady who heads our neighborhood watch group had emerged onto her lighted front porch. She was holding her Rottweiler by its collar.

″Dear, are you okay? Do you need the dog, or shall I call the police?″ she called to me in a worried-sounding voice.

″No, it′s okay. He is the police,″ I replied. ″I′m very sorry for the disturbance. Don′t worry, ma′am. We′re fine.″

Except that we weren′t. We never would be again.

The neighbor′s intervention had lanced my boil′s rage, releasing its pressure. I turned my head away from Jonathan.

″Go on now, Jonathan,″ I said, closing my eyes. ″Just go away.″

When I opened them again, he was gone.

I backed up against the couch and dropped onto it. I remained there for a very long time, dimly aware of the changes of light and cooling air coming through my front door, which was still open a few inches. At some point I must have closed it.

I snapped out of my trance when the alarm clock buzzer in the bedroom went off. It was five a.m.

My gaze landed on the dark red roses that Jonathan had brought with him earlier. I picked them up off the table and cradled them against me for a long moment, inhaling their delicate fragrance. I walked with them outside.

The morning air felt cool and moist against my skin as I headed down the sidewalk in front of my house. Destination: a Dumpster located in front of a house that was being built down the street.

In front of the Dumpster I hesitated a moment, cradling the damp-stemmed roses against me. Their fragrance mixed in my nostrils with the smells of concrete and sawdust from the construction bin. Then I heaved the bouquet into the trash. The roses broke apart in the air, scattering petals into the bin and the sidewalk below.

I walked away.

It was Sunday morning at eleven a.m., the time of day when many people in Durham were dressed up in their Sunday clothes, heading to their places of worship to bow their heads in prayer.

Inside Durham County Jail on East Main Street, a much less reverential scene was taking place. Antoine Hurley, accused murderer of Jana Miller, was sitting across from me in the inmates′ visitors room on the opposite side of a plastic partition. He was dressed in the orange scrubs of a county inmate, and his head was bowed. But not in prayer. Antoine was just eighteen years old, and he didn′t look like a murderer. He looked as scared as hell.

Antoine′s lawyer, Miles Goldberg, had arranged for me to bring a videographer to shoot some video of his client. We weren′t allowed to talk through the plastic partition-the lawyer would do all the talking later.

To hear Luke or any other cop describe Antoine, the boy was nothing but a gangbanger who′d killed Jana for easy money. Luke had called Antoine a ″scumbag.″ But that description didn′t jibe with what I was seeing through the divider between us. Antoine had the soft, studious features of a mathlete, right down to the rimless glasses. We sat opposite each other without speaking, which felt supremely weird. In fact it felt almost invasive, like Antoine had been trucked out to be videotaped like some kind of zoological specimen.

Antoine sat motionless for several moments, staring down at the graffiti-scarred desk in front of him. Then abruptly, he shifted to the side and reached into his pocket for something.

I felt a surge of alarm, even though there was a plastic partition between us. Then I realized that the object that Antoine was pulling from his pocket was a piece of paper, not a weapon.

Staring at me with large, liquid brown eyes that were rimmed with black lashes, Antoine held the paper up to the plastic. He flattened it out so that I could read the writing.

In careful, square-edged lettering, the paper said:

When you see my mama, please tell her that I love her.

And please tell her that I′m sorry.

An hour later Frank and I were riding in the broadcast truck, on our way to interview Antoine′s mother. They lived in the Centerville projects in east Durham. If you want to get an idea of what the projects are like, take any bad section of town you′ve ever seen, and then quadruple it. Then add streets patrolled by sociopaths carrying automatic weapons. That gives you the flavor of Centerville. It′s the worst of the urban worst. I knew from Jonathan that the cops donned full-body Kevlar armor and brought plenty of backup whenever they responded to an incident in the projects. They always had to be prepared to deal with the M Street Crew gang, which controlled the streets. Allegedly, Antoine was a gunman for that gang.

I had to find out whether that was true.

″I know everyone thinks my Antoine is a cold-blooded murderer. But they don′t know my son. Only I know him. My Antoine would never, ever kill anyone. He′s a good boy.″

Violet Hurley stared at me across the wooden table. We were sitting in her well-appointed and immaculately clean kitchen. A picture of Christ, his eyes cast upward and hands clasped in prayer, hung on the wall over the sink. Several tall votive candles were lined up on the window ledge. All were lit.

Next to Violet was a trim man who sat on the edge of the kitchen chair at an angle. He radiated intensity. It was Antoine′s lawyer, Miles Goldberg. He was a well-known criminal defense attorney in the tristate area.

Just for the record, I did not want to do this story. Lainey had handled all the stories so far about Jana′s carjacking and Antoine′s arrest. In fact, she′d done little more than regurgitate what officials had told her on the record. But Beatty had insisted that I do this one, for some reason. When I objected, orders came down from the GM for me to do the piece. God knows why they had a bug up their ass. Maybe they thought Lainey′s police stories were too soft.

But because this story involved my friend′s murder, I was uncomfortable in the extreme. I′d have to summon up all my objectivity to remain professional.

Frank, who had his camera on a tripod in the corner of the room, was adjusting the lens focus. He gave me a nod to indicate that we were ready to roll tape.

I looked at Violet. ″Mrs. Hurley, why do you think the police arrested Antoine if he′s innocent? ″

″I′ll answer that question,″ Goldberg the lawyer interjected smoothly. ″We believe that Antoine is being blamed for a crime that was actually committed by someone else. By someone in the M Street Crew gang.″