2. Vice Blackwell #2
My aunt broke down before he could say anything else. Uncle Henry pulled her against him, holding her while she cried in his arms. I sat here staring at the floor, trying to process the fact that Sam’s heart had already stopped once and could stop again at any fucking minute.
I rubbed my aunt’s back while the doctor gave us a few more details that I’d barely heard. My mind was somewhere else.
Somebody wanted Sam dead. That much was obvious. The question was… Why?
The doctor excused himself a minute later, promising to let us know the second anything changed. As soon as the door closed, my aunt wiped at her face.
“Who would do something like this?” she asked nobody in particular.
I looked at the floor for a second before meeting her eyes.
“I don’t know…” It wasn’t the answer she wanted. Hell… It wasn’t the answer I wanted either. “But I’m gonna find out.”
…and I meant every damn word.
When we stepped back into the hallway, Mace was exactly where we’d left him. He looked up and asked, “What’d they say?”
“They got him stable for now.” Neither of us said anything else.
The silence lasted only a few seconds before one of the Atlanta detectives walked over with a folder tucked beneath his arm.
“Mr. Blackwell?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m Detective Harris.” He held out his hand, but instead of shaking it, I just looked at it. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
“What’s up?”
The detective nodded, and then went, “There’s also someone I think you should meet.”
I frowned. “Who?”
“The nurse who found your cousin…”
“The nurse who found my cousin?” I asked, pointing at myself.
Detective Harris nodded. “She was the first person to get to him. She stayed with him until the trauma team got outside.”
“Did she see who did it? I mean, why the fuck do I need to meet her?” I wasn’t at all trying to be mean or rude, but right now, my head was all the way fucked up to the point where I wasn’t tryna meet another mothafucka just to tell me the same thing I already knew.
“She heard the gunshots and saw the aftermath. As far as we know, she didn’t get a good look at the shooters.”
“Well, what did she hear before it happened?”
“We’re still trying to piece that together.”
That wasn’t the answer I wanted.
If my cousin said something before he got shot—or the people who pulled the trigger did—I needed to know what the hell it was.
Detective Harris must’ve seen the frustration on my face because he said, “She’s still here if you’d like to speak with her. I can’t promise she’ll have the answers you’re looking for, but she’s the only witness we’ve got.”
I didn’t hesitate as I told him, “Take me to her.”
He nodded and started down the hallway. I looked over at Mace. “Check on my aunt and uncle and let me know if anything changes.”
“You got it…”
I followed the detective until we stopped outside one of the conference rooms. He knocked once before opening the door.
“There he is,” one of the officers inside said as he stepped aside.
My eyes landed on the woman sitting at the table.
She still had blood on her navy-blue scrubs. A bottle of water sat untouched in front of her, and although she was doing a good job of holding herself together, I noticed the slight shake in her hands before she folded them together in her lap.
She looked up when we walked in, and for a second, neither of us said anything.
“This is Milan Rivers,” Detective Harris said, breaking the silence. “She’s the nurse who rendered aid to your cousin before our officers and doctors got to him.”
Her eyes stayed on me another second before she finally spoke.
“So… you’re his cousin,” she asked.
“Yeah, I am.”
“I’m sorry.”
Most days those two simple words would’ve been enough, but today, they didn’t mean a gotdamn thing.
Without responding to it, I pulled out the chair across from her and took a seat. “Before they shot my cousin, what did you hear?”
She let out a slow breath, her eyes dropping to the bottle of water sitting in front of her before she looked back at me.
“I didn’t mean to hear anything,” she said in a whisper. “I was walking into work when I heard two men arguing. At first, I tried to ignore it because it wasn’t any of my business, but the way they were talking…” She shook her head. “Something didn’t feel right.”
I leaned back in my chair without taking my eyes off her.
“What they say?”
“I couldn’t hear everything. They were on the other side of a row of SUVs.
” She paused, looking like she was replaying the conversation in her head.
“One of them sounded angry. The other one…” She swallowed hard.
“He was so calm it gave me chills. Like he already knew how everything was going to end.”
“The calm one,” I said, automatically assuming she was referring to Sam. That niggas stayed calm, no matter what the circumstances were. “What about him? What he say?”
“He said something about Vice finding something out… Then he said he wasn’t covering this shit up for nobody… He never said what he wasn’t covering up, though.”
I clenched my teeth before dragging my top teeth over my bottom lip.
“What else?”
“The guy asked him if he was sure he didn’t want to keep whatever it was to himself...”
Then, I asked, “You sure he said Vice?”
She nodded, taking in a heavy breath and slowly releasing it. “I’m positive. It stood out because… I remember thinking Vice was a strange name.”
“What happened after that?”
“The calm one said fuck them, and that’s when they…” She shook her head and bit down on her bottom lip, unable to finish her sentence.
Nobody said anything for a few seconds, giving her time to pull herself together. For the first time since I’d walked into the room, I saw the fear she’d been trying so hard to keep hidden.
“I turned around just in time to see your cousin stumbling toward me. He was holding his side…” She huffed out a heavy breath. “There was so much blood.”
Nobody said anything because honestly, there wasn’t shit to say.
“I tried to help him.” She looked down at her hands like she could still see his blood on them. “I kept telling him to stay with me until the trauma team got outside.”
“You never heard a name?” I asked.
She slowly shook her head but didn’t give a verbal answer. I studied her for a few seconds. She wasn’t lying. I’d spent too many years reading people not to know the difference. Everything about her said the same thing.
She was telling me exactly what she remembered.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my jaw.
“They saw you?” She looked up in confusion, but I didn’t know what was so confusing about that question. “The men who shot my cousin.” I held her gaze. “They saw you standing there, didn’t they?”
The color slowly drained from her face.
“I…”
“You said one of them looked at you.”
She nodded and mumbled, “He did.”
“He knew you heard them.”
She nodded again. “I think so.”
“No… You don’t think so.” I leaned forward again, keeping my voice calm. “You know he did.”
Lil’ Mama didn’t answer right away. She stared at me for a couple of seconds before lowering her eyes, and when she finally spoke, her voice barely rose above a whisper.
“Yeah… One of them told the other one that I’d heard them.” She wrapped both hands around the water bottle sitting in front of her like she needed something to hold onto. “I think he was coming after me.”
I didn’t know what my cousin had gotten himself into, but I knew she was right. What she’d seen and heard had definitely put a target on her back.
The detective shifted in his chair.
“We’ve already arranged for patrol officers to keep an eye on her apartment for the next few days.”
I looked at him through dimmed eyes and asked, “For the next few days?”
“Until we have more to go on.”
I held his stare for a long second before looking back at her. That shit wasn’t going to be enough… Not even close.
Detective Harris shifted his weight before breaking the silence. “We’re following every lead we’ve got. The parking garage cameras are being pulled now, and we’re interviewing everybody who was in the area.”
“So, you think the cameras caught their faces?”
“We’re hoping they caught something.”
“Hoping don’t solve shit, especially murders.”
He didn’t argue with me because the nigga knew I was right.
My attention then drifted back to Milan. She’d gotten quiet again, her fingers wrapped around the water bottle so tight I wondered if she even realized it. Every now and then she’d blink, like she was trying to push the entire night out of her head, but it wasn’t working.
“You live alone?” I asked.
Her head snapped up as she gave me that confused look again. “Excuse me?”
“I said… do you live alone?”
She hesitated for a second before answering. “Yes.”
“You got anybody to stay with you?”
“No…”
The detective frowned. “Mr. Blackwell, why are you asking her that?”
I ignored him and didn’t take my eyes off Milan.
“I’m pretty cure those mothafuckas got a good look at you…”
She thought about what I said before nodding. “Yeah, I’m sure because the one wearing the hoodie looked right at me.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know… maybe a second or two.”
“And a second or two is all it takes.”
The detective folded his arms across his chest, already knowing what I was hinting at. “We don’t know that she’s in any danger.”
I finally looked at his ass.