Ain't Your Bitch (Interracial Urban Erotica)(156)

Jamelia wanted to kiss her sister goodnight, one last time. Press her  lips against the forehead that so perfectly matched her own, and send  her sister off with good wishes.

But there was nowhere to send her sister off to. She was dead, she  hadn't just gone to sleep for a while. Jamelia grit her teeth and walked  out.

"Jamelia, if you need more time-"

"I was tearing my hair out, Captain. If you take me off the active roster, I don't know what I'd do."

"Watch some daytime television, maybe," he suggested, but there was no heart in the joke.

"Something like that, yeah."

"I don't know that we exactly needed you to identify the body-she had her I.D. and, I mean … "

"I know exactly what you mean. But legalities are legalities."

"Do you have a way to contact your father? He'll want to know."

She tried to keep herself from blurting out that there was no reason to  assume that. He hadn't cared when Mom died, why would Becca be any  different? That wasn't a conversation she wanted to have with her boss,  though.

"Who's on the case?"

"Assanti's lead, but-"

"Assanti? You've got to be kidding me. Vic, please, just-"

The Captain's thick eyebrows tightened. "Russo, you know I cannot. I know how you're feeling, alright?"

"He has a, what, seven in ten record?"

"He's the next best behind yours, and you know that."

"Compared to five in six. And the other one, he always comes in on something else sooner or later."

"I know, Jamelia, but I just can't give you the case. I know you want  it, and I know you'll show it every bit of your considerable talent. But  I can't, not even if I wanted to. It's a conflict of interests, and  everyone knows it. I'd be in the shit before you could say 'you're  fired.' "

Jamelia let out a breath. "Then I'll just look into it on my own."

"Russo, you know I can't let you do that. I don't want to, but I will suspend you if I have to."

"Then at least let me consult. Keep me in the loop."

"You shouldn't even be in the office again until Monday morning."

"Well, I've got nothing else to do. Get Assanti to print me off the  files he's got now, I'll look over them, and on Monday I'll have  something for him. You know I'm good for it, and you know the first week  is the most important time to get leads going. Two heads are better  than one, right? And Assanti can take lead. Just let me on the case."

"Jamelia, are you sure that you're going to be able to work under him?" The Captain put extra emphasis on sure.

"I'll do what I have to do to see my sister's killer put away, sir."

He looked at her a long moment. "Do not make me regret this, Russo. I'll  put in a call, we'll have files ready for you by noon. But you take  your box, you go home, and if you want my advice, I suggest you get good  and comfortable with daytime talk shows until Sunday night, and then  bring your box of files back unopened on Monday."

"Thank you, sir. You won't regret it."

She practically skipped out of the room. She might be furious over  Becca's death, and she knew some of that anger was pointed right back at  her.

But at least now she had someplace to spend it. She had something that  she could do to keep herself sane, at least. That much was enough, for  now.

She slipped into the Jeep and pulled her phone out of her pocket. This  was the part she wasn't looking forward to. She opened up her contacts  list. It was down to just one, now, after she deleted Becca's number,  but she couldn't make herself do it. Not right now.

She pressed on 'Dad' and then clicked 'call.' The phone rang until she  went to voicemail. She hung up without leaving a message and called  again. He never answered the first time, because if it was important, he  figured, they'd call back. Well, it was important.

He picked up on the last ring, and from his voice he might not have  realized that Becca was gone yet. After all, he still must have had Bud  Lights in the fridge.

"Who's this?"

Jamelia forced herself to sound as pleasant as she could, which was only a simmering rage.         

     



 

"Dad? It's Jamelia."

"Oh."

Oh? Was that it? After seven years, all he had to say was 'oh.' Oh.

"It's about Rebecca."

"One second," he said into the phone. He sounded like he could almost  stand up if he had to, from his voice over the phone. Some things never  changed. She heard him shout into the phone. "REBECCA!"

A moment later he put the phone back to his ear. "She's not here,  Jamelia. I'll have her call you when she gets back. Thanks for calling.  Now, if you don't mind, I was watching-"

"Dad, you need to listen to me. Rebecca came to Los Angeles."

"What? Why would she go to Los Angeles?"

Maybe to see her sister, who was off getting fucked like some floozy, Jamelia thought to herself. She didn't say that.

"Dad, stop it. Stop talking and listen."

"Okay, gosh."

"Dad, Becca is dead. She was stabbed-"

"Well-what the hell? How am I supposed to-"

Jamelia clicked the phone off before he had a chance to finish the thought. Classic Dad.

How fucking typical. She took a deep breath and tried to keep herself  calm. It wasn't that he didn't care. It was that he couldn't care. She  reminded herself of that.

Maybe there was a time that he was capable of it. However Mom had  managed to get along with him all that time, there must have been  something to him before he became …  what he was. But now, he was like a  child. Incapable of thinking of others.

It didn't help her feel better as much as she had hoped.





Eight



The box was lighter than it looked, but it tired Jamelia out anyways. It  shouldn't have, but that didn't change the fact that it did. Maybe the  Captain was right. Maybe she should take the next few days and try to  get her head straightened out. But she couldn't afford that kind of  luxury, not when her sister, the only person in the world who had ever  cared about her, was lying there on a slab in the coroner's office with a  half-dozen stab wounds to the abdomen.

She opened the box up. A handful of photographs, printed on large paper,  and a file with the basic paperwork. Jamelia laid out the photos on her  coffee table.

She'd already seen the body, so that part wasn't nearly as upsetting as  it could have been. What she was looking for now was anything she could  get from the scene. It would have been better to be there, to see it.  But with how queasy the photos were making her, there was a real  question how well she would have handled it. She forced herself to keep  looking.

Why was her sister even in a place like this? It didn't fit with her,  and she didn't fit with an end-of-the-road alleyway in the bad part of  town. There was blood all around, so clearly she'd bled to death in that  spot. It wasn't a body dump, then.

Could it have been a case of a mistake? She just went out there without  knowing how rough the area was? Jamelia shook her head. No, no way.  There were people who wouldn't pick up on the signs, and people who  assumed they were just misinterpreting, but Becca had never been that  kind. She knew what she was getting herself into when she stepped over  there.

It left the question, of course, why she was in L.A. at all. She'd been  living with Dad in Minnesota for the last ten years, why would she  suddenly need to come and make friends with dear sis. Unless she wasn't  there to meet Jamelia at all.

That made less sense, though, because so far as Jamelia knew, her sister  was still working some dead-end job because Dad couldn't be left alone  long enough to take trips across the country for something very serious.

Every avenue of approach just led to more questions.

Two questions bubbled to the top, though, as the most important ones.  First, what had brought her here? Second, what brought her to an alley  in the middle of a no-go zone?

There were answers that Jamelia could think of, but none seemed to be a sure thing, not even necessarily very likely.

She wrote the questions down on the top of her pad and dropped it on the  couch beside her, and then pulled out the paperwork and started reading  through it.

The body was found at ten P.M. the night before Captain called her.  Which means that essentially as soon as he got back to the office he had  called Jamelia to tell her to expect something bad when she got back.

Bad didn't begin to cover it, but then again he hadn't used that word  exactly, either. Jamelia sucked in a breath and kept reading. The  location was more-or-less where she thought it was. The difference a few  blocks made could be surprising, but she had already narrowed it down  to that area from the graffiti and the used condoms and dirty needles  just lying around.

They got into what had happened specifically. An anonymous tip called in  from a cell phone belonging to a local, Marco Rodrigues. He was known  to the station to be involved in the narcotics trade, but when they rode  around to talk to him about it, the route was a dead end. Jamelia  hadn't expected it to go that easily, but she was surprised to find that  they'd moved so quickly on the first lead. Maybe they were working the  case seriously after all.