Daniel Blake - Soul Murder

‘Then you ain’t talkin’ to no one, girl,’ someone shouted from the crowd, to a smattering of laughter.

Trent was standing at the window, one of the uniforms next to him. For a moment, he looked not like a gangbanger-in-waiting, but like what he was; a frightened and confused teenager.

‘I’ll be back, my darlin’,’ Shaniqua shouted. ‘I love you for both. Just do good.’

Homewood flashed more depressing vistas past the cruiser’s windows as Beradino drove them back to headquarters: telephone pole memorials to homicide victims, abandoned buildings plastered with official destruction notices. The Bureau of Building Inspection spent a third of its annual citywide demolition budget in Homewood alone. It could have spent it all here, several times over.

Patrese, forcing his thoughts back to the present, tried to imagine a child growing up here and wanting to play.

He couldn’t.

He turned to face Shaniqua through the grille.

‘Is there somewhere Trent can go?’

‘JK’ll look after him.’

Patrese nodded. JK was John Knight, a pastor who ran an institution in Homewood for young gang members and anyone else who needed him. The institution was called The 50/50, gang slang for someone who was neutral, not a gang member. Knight had also taken a Master of Divinity degree, served as a missionary in South America, and been chaplain of a prison in Arizona. He was a good man, but no pushover; even in his fifties, he carried himself like the linebacker he’d once been, and shaved his black head to a gleaming shine every morning.

That was it for conversation with Shaniqua till they reached headquarters. Patrese didn’t bother asking why someone with Shaniqua’s looks, personality, and what he guessed was no small amount of brains behind the front she presented to the world, should have wasted her time on the bunch of losers she’d welcomed into her bed, and her life, over the years.

He didn’t ask for one reason: he already knew the answer.

There were always fewer men than women in places like Homewood; too many men were in jail or six feet under. So the women had to fight for the remaining men, and fight they did. There was no surer way for a girl to get status than to be on the arm of a big player.

But on the arm sooner or later meant up the duff and, when that happened, the men were out of there. Some were gone so fast they left skid marks. They didn’t want to stay around to be pussy-whipped; that was bad for their rep. Far as they were concerned, monogamy was what high-class furniture was made of.

So out and on they went, and in time their sons, growing up without a daddy – or, perhaps even worse, with a step-daddy who cared little and lashed out lots – did the same thing. Beneath the puppy fat, Trent was a good-looking boy. Give him a year or two and he’d be breaking hearts wide open, just as his father had done to Shaniqua.

At headquarters, Beradino logged her arrest with the clerk, found an empty interview room, and turned on the tape recorder.

‘Detectives Mark Beradino and Franco Patrese, interviewing Shaniqua Davenport on suspicion of the murder of J’Juan Weaver. Interview commences at’ – Beradino checked his watch

– ‘ten eighteen a.m., Monday, October fourth.’

He turned to Shaniqua and gave her the Miranda rights off the top of his head.

Detectives had been discouraged from reading the Miranda script for a couple of years now, ever since Patrese had left the card lying on the table during an interrogation. Several hours into the interview and on the point of confession, the suspect had glanced at the card, suddenly remembered he had the right to an attorney, and shazam! No confession and, in that instance, no case.

‘You have the right to remain silent,’ Beradino said. ‘Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?’

Shaniqua nodded.

‘Suspect has indicated assent by nodding,’ Beradino said to the tape recorder.

‘You damn right I assent,’ she said.

There’s usually a time in a homicide interrogation when the suspect cracks, the floodgates open, and they tell the police anything and everything. That time may come several hours into questioning, sometimes even days; rarely does it come right at the start.

But Shaniqua could hardly wait.

‘J’Juan dealt horse, that ain’t no secret,’ she said. ‘And sometimes he’d bring his, er, his clients ’ – she arched her eyebrows – ‘back to our house, when they were too wasted to get the fuck back to their own homes.’

‘You were happy with this?’

‘You lemme tell you what happened, we’ll get done here a whole lot quicker.’

Beradino was far too much of a pro to take offense. He smiled and gestured with his head: Go on.

‘No, I weren’t happy. I done seen too much of what drugs do, and I don’t want no part of it. Not in my house. Every time he brings someone back – black, white, boy, girl, it don’t matter – I hit the roof. Every time, he swears it’s the last time.

‘And every time, like a fool, I believe him.

‘But today, when it happens, I’ve just had enough, I dunno why. We in the bedroom, Trent and I, sittin’ on the bed, chattin’ ’bout tings: school, grandma – those kinda tings. We talk a lot, my boy and me; we’re tight. He tells me tings, I tells him tings. Only man in my life I can trust. Anyhow, J’Juan comes in, says he off out now, and I says, “You take that skanky-ass bitch with you, like five minutes ago, or I’m callin’ the police.”

‘He looks surprised, then he narrows his eyes. Man can look mean as a snake when he wants to, you know?

‘“You do that and I’ll kill you, bitch,” he says.

‘Trent says to him, “Don’t you talk to my mama like that.”

‘J’Juan tells Trent to butt the fuck out, it ain’t nothin’ to do with him.

‘“Come on, Trent,” I say, gettin’ up from off the bed, “let’s go.”

‘“Go where?” says J’Juan. “Go the fuck where? You leavin’ me, bitch?”

‘“No,” I says, “we just goin’ for a walk while you cool the fuck off.”

‘“You leavin’ me?” he keeps sayin’. “You goin’ to the cops?”

‘“You keep on like this,” I says, “then, yeah, we’re leavin’ you. Gonna go live with my auntie in Des Moines. Gotta be better than bein’ stuck here.”

‘I’m nearest the door, J’Juan’s standin’ by the end of the bed. He’s between me and Trent, between Trent and the door.

‘He grabs Trent, and says we ain’t goin’ nowhere.

‘And right then, I see he’s left his gun on the sill.

‘So I pick up the gun, and I level it at him.

‘He’s got his back to me, so he don’t see straight away; but Trent sees, and his eyes go like this wide’ – she pulled her own eyes open as wide as they’ll go – ‘and I say to J’Juan, “You leave that boy the fuck alone.”

‘And he turns to me all slow like, and he says “Put that fuckin’ ting down. You don’t know what you’re doin’.”

‘And I say, “Trent, come on.”

‘And J’Juan looks at me, and then at Trent, and then at me again, and he says – I’ll never forget this – he says: “You walk out that door, I’ll kill this little motherfucker with my bare hands.”

‘And Trent tries to break free, and J’Juan dives for Trent, and I just shoot him. I said I would, and I did, ’cos he was gonna hurt my boy, right before my eyes, and he does that over my dead body.