Ain't Your Bitch (Interracial Urban Erotica)(177)

The divide only grew wider as the photos got older. Nothing more recent  than five years or so. It gave Jamelia some hope that things had gotten  turned around, but what she was seeing hit her hard in the gut. This was  what life was for them, huh? What a fuck up.

She took a breath. She couldn't let it upset her, as much as it was  going to upset her in either case. She needed to keep her head level.

"I'm fine," she said in response to Roy's concerned look.

He handed her a pair of rubber gloves and fitted a pair onto his own hands as they walked back.

"We found him in the back."

She followed Roy past the bathroom. There couldn't have been more than  four rooms in the whole place, no basement in evidence. The place was  about as tiny as anyone could find, anywhere. Jamelia took a breath as  he stepped through the door and braced for impact.

The floor seemed to fall out from under her feet when she stepped  through and the room held no evidence of her father's body except for a  wicker rocking chair, stained red. There was violence in the room,  though. 'Signs of a struggle,' she thought to herself. Trying to  maintain her distance as best she could.

A record player on the floor. A speaker system with the front panel  kicked in. A second chair, overturned. The blood was all over the room,  but in the end the darkest spot was the chair.

"We found him there. In the chair."

"He would have fought back."

"And the room suggests he did," Roy agreed. "But local P.D. found him sitting up in that chair."

"Do we have a time of death?"

"They caught it pretty soon after the guy left. One of the neighbors  called, said he heard some loud noises like a fight, saw someone run  off, and went over to check on your father."

"Why am I here?"

"I'm getting to that," he said. "She didn't get an answer, called the  cops-witness says that the murder took place at around 2:53 in the  afternoon, yesterday. Medical examiner's estimate essentially matches  that timeline."

"Okay."

"I want to understand why he did this, just as much as you do, Jamelia.  Which means we have to ask the important questions, don't you agree?"  She agreed, though she didn't like the discussion one bit. "Which means  we need to understand why they would kill a fifty-six year old man who,  by all accounts, rarely left the house. Every other murder was in  public, young, women. Now we've got a man who looked to rarely go  further than the front couch, and he's dead in his house."

"I don't know what to say."

"I know you don't. But we need someone who knows more than we do, or we  lose the biggest opportunity we're going to have to catch this guy."





Thirty-Four



Jamelia wasn't sure that she was who they needed. Someone who knew him?  Her father was a closed book to her. She knew as much as she could imply  from the pictures on the walls. She knew as much as Mom had told her,  and most of that had been delirious. She knew that he was the man who  had left her mother to fall apart because he didn't like the dust on the  wind, the dirty air, and the heat that never got too extreme.

The droughts hadn't even started by then. He had just left his wife and  daughter to their fates and that was the man she knew him to be.

"What do you need from me?"

"We need some sort of insight. Why him? Why now?"

Jamelia took a breath. It had something to do with her sister, she knew.  But Becca had been a closed book, too. When she was fifteen, she'd  liked the same things everyone liked in 2005.

That had been more than fifteen years ago. The girl who she'd seen dead  on that slab was a stranger. It wasn't fun to admit that the person who  Jamelia owed the most, the one who had taken responsibility for watching  Dad, the one who had been her twin, a second person exactly like her,  was a complete and total stranger.

She shouldn't have been thinking about it, and she certainly shouldn't  have been thinking about it in those terms. Jamelia knew she needed to  have her wits about her, and beating herself up wasn't helping.

"I don't know if I can help you. I don't know anything about my sister's life."

"I don't know if we're talking about something to do with your sister, Jamelia."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She let her irritation touch her voice  in spite of herself. "Becca was killed by the same guy, might even have  been the same knife. Or if not the same guy, definitely the same couple  of guys. There's obviously a connection. I just don't know what it is."         

     



 

"Maybe you do, Jamelia. Who knew your sister? Who knew her well?"

"I don't know. Probably a lot of people. She was always popular in school."

"But who knew her well enough to know her father, to know that he lived  alone apart from her? Who knew where the house was? Who had a grudge  against him?"

Jamelia let out a disappointed sigh. "I can think of one person."

"Oh yeah?"

"I did."

Roy dipped his head to look up into her downturned eyes. Jamelia turned her back.

"But you didn't do it."

"I might have, if I had the opportunity."

"I also know you weren't here yesterday at 2 o'Clock P.M."

"That's right," she said. "So it wasn't me. But I don't know anyone else  with a motive. The man didn't leave the house except to buy booze. He  paid the mortgage with welfare money and Becca's work on the side, I'd  guess. The few times I've taken his calls, she's working, he's drunk."

There was no story to be told here. Someone had died here, and they'd  sat Dad back in his seat as if to try to rub it all in her face.

She took a deep breath in, held it an instant, and breathed it back out.  Slow. She had to think. Someone else with a motive. Someone else who  knew her sister. She was an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.

"Hutchinson."

"You figure?" The expression on Roy's face told her that he'd already considered the idea, and he hadn't dismissed it.

"I told him about Dad. He seemed to already know, and then he made a  remark about how, if it was his dad, he wouldn't let him get away with  it."

"That sounds like he was considering this already."

"And maybe he was. But why? She was already dead. Eventually he'd have  realized what happened when the beers in the fridge ran out. He was on a  downward trajectory already. No reason to kill him now."

"I don't know, but we have a connection now, and a solid one."

"Do you mind if I just-can I wait outside?"

"Sure," Roy said, suddenly seeming to realize where they both were, and  what she must have been feeling as she stood there surrounded by the  tatters of her sister's life.

Jamelia managed to keep herself looking professional until she hit the  door, and that was about all she could manage. What was wrong with her?  What was wrong with Dad? Why would Becca stay in a place like that? It  looked lifeless, the whole place. Jamelia liked small places. She liked  her apartment, which was only half the size of the house she just walked  out of, and no garage.

But that place looked less like a happy home than it did a tomb, where  her father waited to die and her sister hadn't been able to touch, not  in ten years.

She sucked in a breath. This was a mistake. She shouldn't have come  here. It was only upsetting her. But she couldn't change where she was.  Why had Roy brought her here? Why did he think she needed to see this?  Was he trying to hurt her?

No, she thought. That didn't make sense. He wasn't that kind, not  normally. There was something else at work here, but she couldn't begin  to figure what it was. That was the worst part, was thinking that she  couldn't be sure why any of this.

She had about caught her breath when Roy came out and sat down on the stoop beside her.

"You okay?"

"I will be," she answered, only half-sure that she was telling the truth.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking over across the street at a much nicer house instead of looking at her.

"I know." She let out another deep breath. "I got something before you  called. You got me a few minutes after I left the L.A. field office. I  heard you were gone, so I just didn't know how to get in contact."

"Yeah. I had to turn off the phone. Descent."

Jamelia didn't know whether to believe him. She decided to ignore it.  "Someone slipped an envelope under my door, an envelope with my name on  it. Inside was …  I dunno, a confession? Diary? Journal? Someone had torn a  page out of a book, and as far as I was able to decipher it in a couple  hours of slowly slogging through-the handwriting was just. Oh, boy. It  talked about a killing, not unlike these ones. Seven stab wounds."

"We'll start comparing it as best we can with the previous four murders when we get back to California."

"That's just it. I think it's older than that. The paper I was holding,  looked like it couldn't have been any newer than, say, ten years old.  Maybe more. Could've been as many as fifteen years ago, that page was  written. There wasn't any date, at least not on the page I saw."