Chapter Nine
They went up the stairs to the porch, and Sam rang the doorbell.
Misty came to the door, looking like she hadn’t slept. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. “Hi.”
“Hi, Misty. We were wondering if we might have a word with you, your mother and your sister?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess.”
“Is this a good time?”
She shrugged. “As good as any.” Stepping aside, she ushered them into the house.
It went against everything Sam believed in to turn her back on anyone while on the job, but she bent her rules out of deference to the girl’s obvious grief.
“They’re in the back.” Misty gestured for them to lead the way down a narrow hallway that led to a bright, sunny kitchen with yellow walls.
The cheerful atmosphere was in stark contrast to the pervasive grief that clung to the people gathered around the table and standing against the counter.
At quick glance, Sam counted ten people, including Danita and Tamara.
“Mama, Lieutenant Holland is here to see you,” Misty said.
Danita, who’d had her head in her hands, looked up at them, her face ravaged. She’d aged ten years overnight. “Have you found the person who shot my baby?”
“I’m afraid not,” Sam said. “But we’re working on it. I wondered if I might have a private word with you and your daughters.”
“Um, okay.” Danita glanced at the others and tipped her head, asking them to leave the room.
More than one of them took a good long look at Sam as they filed out. She recalled Nick’s goldfish analogy, which was a fitting way to describe how people looked at her these days. They felt like they knew her—and him. But in truth, they only knew what the media reported, which wasn’t much.
Sam took a seat at the table while Freddie remained standing.
“What do you want to know?” Danita took a tissue from a box on the table and blew her nose.
“Yesterday I asked if there was anything going on in any of your lives that could’ve led to Jamal being shot. Now that you’ve had some time to think about it, perhaps you may have something more to tell us.”
A flash of anger crossed Danita’s face. “We have nothing to tell you.”
Tamara and Misty looked down at their hands on the table, immediately rousing Sam’s suspicions. “Ladies, do you have anything you’d like to say? And I’ll remind you that withholding information from a homicide investigation is a crime.”
“I’d like you to leave my home now,” Danita said, glaring at Sam.
Following a hunch, Sam remained seated, her gaze firmly fixed on the two young women. After a minute or two of charged silence, Tamara began to cry.
“Just tell her,” Misty said.
“What’re you talking about?” Danita snapped at her daughter.
Misty looked at her sister.
“I-I’m so sorry, Mama,” Tamara said between sobs. “It’s all my fault that Jamal is dead.”
“What’ve you done?” Danita asked in a whisper.
Tamara cried so hard she couldn’t speak.
Danita looked to Misty. “Start talking. Right now.”
Misty swallowed hard. “She’s been seeing Trace—”
Danita slammed her hand on the table, startling everyone. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Tamara wailed, sobs racking her petite body. “I’m so sorry, Mama. I never thought—”
Danita stood and looked down at her daughters with fire in her eyes. “I was very clear with you that he was off-limits, Tamara. And you,” she said to Misty, “you knew this and didn’t tell me?”
Sam cleared her throat. “Um, could someone please tell me who Trace is?”
“Trace Simmons is a gangbanger who grew up with my daughters. They were expressly forbidden to have anything to do with him.”
Sam glanced at Freddie and saw his eyes widen with shock. He too remembered Trace was an associate of Darius Gardner, the gangbanger who’d shot at them the week of Sam’s wedding. They’d been trying to talk to Gardner about a possible lead in Sam’s father’s case.
“I love him, Mama!”
Danita scoffed. “Like hell you love him. He’s a violent, drug-dealing, piece of shit, and you can do better!”
Tamara clutched her chest, and Sam realized she was hyperventilating. She jumped up. “Get me a bag or something for her to breathe into.”
With shaking hands, Misty got up, opened a drawer and withdrew a brown lunch bag that Sam placed over Tamara’s face.
“Take some deep breaths,” Sam said, rubbing the girl’s back. “You have to calm down.”
Tamara did as Sam directed, blowing into the bag repeatedly until she began to breathe more regularly again.
Sam pulled some tissues from a box on the table and handed them to Tamara, who wiped her face and blew her nose.
“Can we get her some water?”
Misty saw to the request while Danita continued to glare at Tamara, her fury palpable.
“If you love him,” Danita said disdainfully, “why would he want to kill your brother?”
Sam had the same question and appreciated Danita asking it.
Tamara took a drink from the glass Misty gave her.
“I… I told him… I said my mama didn’t want me to see him, and if she found out, I’d be in a lot of trouble.
He… He said things, rude things about you…
” Another sob choked her. “I told him he couldn’t talk about you that way, and he slapped me.
He said no one tells him what to do. After that…
I wouldn’t talk to him or take his calls.
He told me I was going to be sorry for ignoring him. No one ignores him.”
“You stupid, stupid little girl,” Danita hissed. “Why do you think I told you to stay away from him? Any man who would hit you, disparage your mother and make threats doesn’t deserve five minutes of your time.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it before! I told you this would happen!”
Sam glanced at Freddie, using her eyes to ask him to remove Danita from the room.
“Mrs. Jackson,” he said, “let’s get some air.”
Fortunately, she allowed Freddie to lead her from the room after shooting another disgusted glance at her daughters.
Both girls seemed to relax ever so slightly after she was gone.
“Let’s talk about Trace,” Sam said.
An hour later, Sam and Freddie left the Jackson home with a new thread to pull.
“Get me the Gang Unit captain on the line. What’s his name again?”
“Harrison.”
Sam snapped her fingers. “That’s it! I couldn’t remember his name to save my life.”
“Just ask me, your seeing-eye partner. I have all the answers.”
“Yeah, yeah. Intense in there, huh?”
“I feel sorry for Danita,” Freddie said. “She’s done everything right with her kids, but when they become legal adults it’s harder to control their every move.”
“I feel sorry for Tamara. She grew up with Trace. Knew him before the gang got its hooks in him. She’s still looking for the boy she knew in the man he is now and hasn’t figured out that boy is long gone.”
“Brings it all back, that day with Gardner, his threats to Faith Miller, the rape charge that didn’t stick.”
“Until we nailed his ass to the wall,” Sam said, smirking.
“That we did. What do you want me to say to Harrison?”
“Ask him to have his team pick up Simmons for us and get him to HQ. Also, check to see if he or any of his known associates drives a black sedan.”
“On it.”
While Freddie made his call, she contacted Captain Malone to update him on the info they’d gotten from Tamara Jackson and to request a warrant to search Simmons’s place.
“I’ll get the warrant moving now. Good work, Lieutenant. This guy could be the key to the whole thing.”
“Let’s hope so. What’re you hearing on the search for the car?”
“Slow going. We’re going one by one to rule out every black sedan in the city. Did you know that black is a rather popular car color?”
“I’d heard that rumor. Keep me posted if anything pops.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
As Sam ended her call, Freddie finished up with Harrison.
“What’d he say?” she asked.
“He blew out a low whistle when I mentioned Simmons’s name. He knows the guy well. Was more than happy to arrange for pickup and transport to HQ. And he’s hoping we’ve got something on him that’ll put him in jail for, and I quote, ‘the rest of this lifetime and the next.’”
“Good to know we have his full support.”
“We definitely do. I relayed what Tamara told us, and he said it fits Simmons’s usual MO when he thinks he’s been disrespected. He said he’s not sure about the black sedan, but he’ll have his people check on that.”
“I like the feel of this thread,” Sam said as she drove toward HQ, again thankful for the lack of traffic. “I like it a lot.”
“You know how I hate to be a buzz killer…”
Sam rolled her eyes at him. “You love to kill my buzz. What’s it going to be this time?”
“I can’t help but wonder if Trace wanted to get even with Tamara for disrespecting him, I can see him taking out Jamal. But why would he take out three other people? He’s already fully initiated, so it can’t be about that.”
“Maybe he was trying to make Jamal’s killing appear random?”
“That’s possible, but it seems like overkill. No pun intended.”
Sam had to agree with him, even if she didn’t want to. “You are indeed a buzz killer, Detective Cruz.”
“At least I’m consistent.”
“That’s one of my lines, and it’s fully copyrighted. You’re not allowed to use it without prior written permission.”
“Did you make up your own rules to every game you played as a kid?”
She shot him a disdainful look. “What do you think?”
“That you’re lucky you survived childhood?”
Sam snorted out a laugh. “My sisters often wanted to kill me.” Her phone rang and she took the call from Nick. “Hey, babe.”
“Hey,” he said, sounding gruff and sleepy, as if he’d just woken up. She wished she was with him and not chasing down a killer. “You left without saying goodbye.”
“I did say goodbye. I even kissed you.”
“It doesn’t count if I’m not awake to enjoy it.”
“I’ll make it up to you later.”
Freddie put his hands over his ears, making Sam laugh. “Not in front of the children,” he said.
“What’s funny?”
“Freddie trying to hide from my side of this conversation. Maybe I should be specific about how I’m going to make it up to you.”
As Nick said, “Yes, please,” Freddie said, “Don’t you dare.”